An Israel-Syria war would not be a ‘surprise’

By Shmuel Rosner

There have been too many declarations, threats, and drills for a war with Syria to take Israelis by surprise.

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California: the left’s laboratory
Dennis Prager

By Dennis Prager

Our state of California has become a laboratory. The progressive party, the Democrats, holds every statewide office, from governor on down, and they hold super-majorities in both houses of the state legislature.

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Helping grads on their Jewish journey
Opinion

by Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman

As a Hillel director for the last seven years, I have come to love this time of year. Graduation is the moment to celebrate not just academic learning, but the personal growth and discovery students experience during their university years.

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IRS’ ‘return free’ bad for most vulnerable
Opinion

by Rabbi Elliot Dorff

As April 15 nears each year, American taxpayers take inventory of their income and expenses and hand over a year’s worth of detail to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Many of us utilize the expertise of accountants to prepare what will become a complex analysis of the many life happenings that impact the sum of the taxes we owe or our refund.

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Dinner table revelations: The unexamined life
Gina Nahai

By Gina Nahai

You don’t know what a bad person you are, or how bad your hair looks, until you’ve sat down with my religious relatives for a meal and tried to conduct a conversation.

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Outstanding Graduate: Ruth Maouda — Putting the pieces together
Graduation

by Julie Bien

Much has been written about the world’s heroes — big and small — but sometimes making a major difference in someone’s life doesn’t take a single word.

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Outstanding Graduate: Gabe Freeman — A leading player
Graduation

by Claudia Boyd-Barrett

Gabe Freeman had always dreamed of playing tackle football but never imagined he actually would.

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Outstanding Graduate: Michael Sacks — Leading the way
Graduation

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

As a key leader in a number of organizations at Sierra Canyon School in Chatsworth, it’s hard to imagine that Michael Sacks ever felt left out.

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Oustanding Graduate: Sepora Makabeh — Using gift of gab for good
Graduation

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

Sepora Makabeh is a social butterfly — outgoing, talkative, friendly and approachable. But rather than using this quality to just collect friends and speak her mind, the 18-year-old senior at Milken Community High School has employed it to assist people with special needs and desperate teens seeking help.

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Outstanding Graduate: Rachel Arditi — Family inspiration
Graduation

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

Above all else, Rachel Arditi, 17, is passionate about helping others.

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Outstanding Graduate: Sam Lyons — Finding his voice
Graduation

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

When the Wall Street Journal recently ran a satirical op-ed by a high school student taking aim at college admission diversity requirements, Sam Lyons took his passionate retort to his Huffington Post blog.

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Outstanding Graduate: Raphi Heldman — Lessons on the run
Graduation

By Ryan Torok

While a typical high school student may spend weekends relaxing, 17-year-old Raphi Heldman is much more likely to be on the run — for up to 26.2 miles, to be precise.

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Outstanding Graduate: Joelle Milman — Transforming herself
Graduation

By Ryan Torok

When Joelle Milman was a high school sophomore, she met award-winning photographer Art Streiber, who has contributed to Vanity Fair among other high-profile publications.

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Israel bans illegal migrants from sending out money
Israel

JTA

The Knesset passed a measure barring illegal migrants from sending money out of Israel and limiting how much they can take when they leave.

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Israel’s chief rabbis receive death threats over Women of the Wall prayer
Israel

JTA

Israel’s chief rabbis received death threats in letters to their offices warning them to allow the Women of the Wall to pray “in accordance with our customs.”

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Brain-dead Israeli boy’s kidney donated to Palestinian child
Israel

JTA

The kidney of a 3-year-old Israeli boy was successfully transplanted to a 10-year-old Palestinian child.

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Mass Arab grave from 1948 war discovered in Jaffa
Israel

JTA

A mass grave holding the remains of dozens of Arabs killed during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence was unearthed at a Muslim cemetery in Jaffa.

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Bronfman Prize goes to leading disability rights innovator Eric Rosenthal
Nation

by Michelle Wolf, contributing writer

Eric Rosenthal, founder and director of Disability Rights International (DRI), who has focused world-wide attention on the inhumane institutionalization of children and adults with disabilities, has been awarded the 2013 Charles Bronfman Prize for his global leadership in the field of human rights, advocating for those most vulnerable to abuse.

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Q&A with Jewish Agency chair Natan Sharansky
Israel

By Jonah Lowenfeld

The Russian-born Israeli Natan Sharansky, 65, a former member of the Knesset and now chair of the Jewish Agency, visited Los Angeles last week, hosted jointly by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Beth Jacob Congregation of Beverly Hills.

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Philanthropist donates $250,000 to Mount Zion cemetery repair
Los Angeles

by Jared Sichel

Shlomo Rechnitz, a Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist, has donated $250,000 to restore the badly vandalized Mount Zion Cemetery in East Los Angeles

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Kosher oversight welcomed
Los Angeles

By Jonah Lowenfeld

The Rabbinical Council of California (RCC), a local nonprofit consortium of Orthodox rabbis, has brought in two national kosher organizations to review the restaurants in Los Angeles under its supervision.

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Slavin Library collection dispersal benefits many
Los Angeles

by Jared Sichel

The 10,000 books, games, CDs and DVDs that once lined the walls of the Slavin Children’s Library at 6505 Wilshire Blvd. are on track to once more be made available to the public later this month.

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Priest discusses Holocaust documentation efforts
Los Angeles

By Ryan Torok

The Rev. Patrick Desbois, secretary to the French Conference of Bishops for relations with Judaism and adviser to the Vatican on the Jewish religion, appeared at Wilshire Boulevard Temple on May 22 to discuss his effort to locate the mass graves of the approximately 1.5 million Jews who were murdered in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust between 1941 and 1944.

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Moving and Shaking: Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti attends BCC awards, Stanley Black receives award
Los Angeles

By Ryan Torok

Los Angeles Mayor-elect Eric Garcetti attended Beth Chayim Chadashim’s (BCC) annual awards brunch on June 2 and presented the 2013 Rabbi Erwin and Agnes Herman Humanitarian Award to BCC honoree David Codell.

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$10,000 scholarships awarded to four local grads
Los Angeles

by Jared Sichel

Four local Jewish high school graduates each have each won annual $10,000 college scholarships from the Geri and Richard Brawerman Leadership Institute.

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Hertzberg to run for valley district senate seat
Los Angeles

By Tom Tugend

Like a veteran warhorse galloping back into the fray, Robert M. (Bob) Hertzberg has announced he is running for a State Senate seat in a district encompassing most of the San Fernando Valley.

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Students, survivors engage in righteous conversations
Graduation

By Danielle Berrin

On a crisp, spring Thursday last April, Milken Community High School looked like a ghost town.

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Stephen Macht: The accidental chaplain
Graduation

By Naomi Pfefferman

Amid icy rain in September 2003, actor Stephen Macht and his wife, Suzanne, were driving on the I-70 in rural east Kansas when their Chevy Tahoe hit a patch of black ice and swerved 180 degrees to face the headlights of an 18-wheeler.

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‘Hannah Arendt’ — the thinking person’s action film

By Tom Tugend

In covering the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem for The New Yorker, political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt shaped our perception of "the banality of evil."

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Memoirs of Chasidic masters’ liberated Scion
Culture

By Michael Berenbaum

A decade ago, distinguished Orthodox filmmaker Menachem Daum produced and directed the documentary “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,” a restrained and loving effort to introduce the seemingly strange and alien world of Chasidism to outsiders.

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Mark Winkler: Music’s past becomes present
Culture

by Kirk Silsbee

At 62, the boyishly enthusiastic jazz singer and songwriter Mark Winkler has the moxie and perspective to mine and enlarge the jazz elements of pop songs from the 1960s and ’70s.

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Soccer tourney brings Arabs, Jews together
Sports

by Julie Bien

Despite the summer heat radiating off of the soccer field, dozens of former professional soccer players from all over the world — and of varying faiths — gathered to play a friendly “Soccer Peace Tournament” on June 2 at Calabasas High School.

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Conversion: A big leap, one small step at a time
Religion

by Kylie Jane Wakefield

Jazmine Green’s Jewish journey began when she met the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. It wasn’t until a brief separation from her boyfriend, however, that she knew she was making the right decision — to convert.

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Poem: Sravana
Poetry

by Carly Sachs

Let the coffee pot and the crows,
let the car horns and the upstairs neighbors.

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Obituaries
Obituaries

Rupert Adler died April 18 at 92. Survived by wife Rona; great-niece Lisa (Victor) Kohn. Mount Sinai

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