By Danielle Berrin
by Maya Paley
The Jerusalem Post recently reported on the Molotov cocktails thrown into a Nigerian woman’s open day care and an Eritrean family’s private apartment in Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood. Luckily no one was hurt, but this incident reminded me of all the violence and hatred ensuing in Israeli society toward African asylum seekers. This is not the first case of violence against African asylum seekers. There have been many hate crimes perpetrated against Eritrean, Sudanese and other asylum seekers of African descent for the past few years. Whether it’s the government, the media or Israeli society influencing or perpetrating these abominable acts, this racial violence and prejudice must be stopped.
by Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan
By now everyone has heard that Eduardo Saverin, one of the co-founders of Facebook, filed legal papers in September 2011 to formally renounce his American citizenship. Brazilian by birth, Saverin became an American citizen in 1998. Born in Sao Paulo, Saverin’s father was, according to press accounts, a wealthy Jewish industrialist with varied interests in clothing, shipping, real estate and commercial exports.
By Shmuel Rosner
Once again, nuclear negotiations are taking place, and once again there’s a gap between the gloomy tone of the Israeli observers and the optimistic, albeit guarded, noises on the American side.
by Seth Menachem
Alex wrote to me asking why I didn’t have any gay single peeps on my site. I told him I do — “you should take another look” — and then offered to interview him sight unseen. Because I’m awesome like that. He took me up on it. Because he’s trusting like that.
By Jane Ulman
Jack Seror didn’t know what to do. He was 25 and knew he had to leave Salonika; it wasn’t safe for Jews. And now a contact from the Greek resistance had come to fetch him. Jack stood with his parents in their living room, crying. They hugged, kissed and hugged some more. “We have to leave,” the contact said. Half of Jack wanted to stay with his parents; the other half wanted to escape. Finally, his father, with tears in his eyes, said, “Go. And remember, if you survive, to say Kaddish for us.”
By Rabbi Elazar Muskin
My daughter, Dina, accepted a summer job here in Los Angeles last year. Before being hired, she explained that she was an observant Jew who would have to take off two days in early June to celebrate the holiday of Shavuot. The manager, respecting Dina’s religious commitment, said it would be no problem.
By Steve Greenberg
In praising the venture capital investment ideas of Chemi Peres, the son of Israeli president Shimon Peres, Rob Eshman writes, “An hour into [a discussion of these ideas], I realized no one had mentioned ‘peace process’ or ‘settlements’ or any of the other sinkholes of Middle East hope” (“The Arabpreneurs,” May 18).
By Jane Ulman
This Memorial Day, World War II Veteran Bea Abrams Cohen will be attending ceremonies at Los Angeles National Cemetery, paying tribute to all the men and women who have died fighting while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
by Jon Gold
Craig Taubman vividly remembers when Bill Kaplan first showed him around the grounds of the Shalom Institute, neatly tucked into the vast Santa Monica Mountains of Malibu.
By Jonah Lowenfeld
Most Jews around the world observe Shavuot in the relative comfort of their synagogues and homes. Not so for Wilderness Torah, a Berkeley-based nonprofit.
by Jonathan Maseng, Contributing Writer
When Federico Garcia Lorca was a child, long before his ascension to the heights of Spanish literary circles, he idolized his mother’s gift for playing the piano. The young Garcia Lorca studied piano, hoping that he shared some of his mother’s talent, but Garcia Lorca would never become an influential musician. It was through the pen that he found his voice. Nevertheless, Garcia Lorca’s first works, with titles like “Nocturne” and “Sonata,” drew heavily upon his musical background, and throughout his short life, his poetry and prose would reflect an obsession with music and rhythm, with Beethoven and Chopin. So it seems natural that nearly a century later, a man who was inspired by Garcia Lorca’s words would turn his life into music.
By Tom Tugend
Back in the 1930s and ’40s, when Diaspora Jews desperately needed a symbol of Jewish strength and pride, the brawny, sunburned kibbutznik became the poster image for the new Jew emerging in Palestine.
By Rachel Heller
Al Azus has found his fountain of youth, and he’s not keeping it a secret. In fact, the 92-year-old philanthropist recently published a memoir whose title all but gives his formula away: “Live Longer by Giving.”
By Rabbi Laura Geller
“Boomers [people born between 1946 and 1964] are the first generation in human history … to reasonably anticipate living well and wholesomely into their 80s and 90s, if not beyond,” sociologist Steven Cohen writes. “But not only are Jews (as others) living longer, they are living in an age of meaning-seeking, with the interest and wherewithal to make living a life of meaning an ultimate and reasonably obtainable objective for any point in their lives.”
By Ryan Torok
Celebrating his 50th birthday and 30 years in comedy, the acclaimed actor-comedian (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) appears in person to perform an evening of stand-up. Tribe favorite Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt (“Ratatouille,” “King of Queens”), Bob Odenkirk (“Breaking Bad”), Bill Burr and others join Garlin. Expect irreverent, wacky and Jewy humor. Proceeds benefit The Littlest Tumor Foundation. Fri. 9 p.m. $40 (online only). Largo at the Coronet, 366 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 855-0350.
Sheldon Allen died April 1 at 85. Survived by wife Marilyn; daughter Deborah (Jay Layman) Worth; son Scott (Corkey Ahrendt); 4 grandchildren; 1 great-grandchild. Mount Sinai
by Ben Sales, JTA
To the outside observer, the Charedi Orthodox anti-Internet rally at New York’s Citi Field may have looked uniform: a single mass of black hats, white shirts and brown beards.
JTA
Tamara Brooks, a noted choral conductor, and the wife and musical partner of singer-actor Theodore Bikel, has died.
By Marty Kaplan
We’re getting used to what’s been going on during this campaign. That’s dangerous. We should be reminding ourselves just how strange it is.
By Julie Gruenbaum Fax
Trader Joe’s got slammed last week by a combination of hysteria and hoarding by kosher bakers when word leaked out that its semisweet chocolate chips were going from pareve to dairy.
By Jonah Lowenfeld
When Peter Beinart's new book, "The Crisis of Zionism," was published earlier this year, it was met with a tsunami of responses -- from reviews, to op-ed pieces and a fury of blogging.
by Edmon J. Rodman, JTA
Are the Ten Commandments only to be heard but not seen? And when they are seen, how should they look?
If the TSA isn't catching bombs, should we be screened?
