October 1, 2008
The gospel choir sang "God Bless America." If you weren't thinking of the Jewish immigrant Irving Berlin who wrote that song, you couldn't appreciate the beautiful irony of the moment.
"Who will live and who will die?" goes the prayer. "Who will become impoverished and who will become wealthy?"
It's a fact of life: Israel's blue and white is a red flag for the fanatics. Wave it, and they are likely to charge.
But as much as she loves the pulpit, Naomi, like me, finds the modern synagogue problematic. She believes that Judaism offers people a sense of purpose, a mission to heal society and a fulfilling spiritual path, but that too often standard synagogue services don't attract or inspire Jews, much less compel them to commit to a community.
Since 1978, Iranian Jews have injected into a stable, maybe even staid Jewish community talent, industry, a profound connection to their Jewish roots and a desire to have a positive political and social impact on the city. They have energized a Jewish community that could always use invigorating.
Then I asked Çakirözer, from Turkey, what he liked best about America. He said it was something he had never seen in his country, and never seen in all the countries to which he'd traveled. Yet it was something that said a lot about the core values of a rich and prosperous nation.
The Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church will hold back-to-back public conversations this Saturday, Aug. 16, with the two presumptive presidential
candidates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain. The conversations, on the topic of "Compassion and Leadership," will be broadcast at 8 p.m. on CNN
Most of the anti-Semitic mail I get these days doesn't concern Israel, Hollywood or even the threat of a nuclear war in the Middle East -- it's about meat.
First they came for the Outdoor section, and I said nothing. Then they combined and demoted the Opinion and Book Review sections, and I said nothing.
Natan Sharansky's previous book, "The Case for Democracy," changed the world. It inspired a generation of U.S. policymakers and influenced President George
W. Bush in his decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein. So when Sharansky's second book, "Defending Identity," came out this month, I thought I'd better read it, quick
I love Los Angeles, but let's face facts: We're fast becoming a second-rate city. Public safety is broken. Jews in Los Angeles were rightly outraged in June when Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza killed one Israeli in Sderot. But in one weekend of that same month, 14 Angelenos were murdered in gang-related shootings.
It turns out, see, that I am endangered: I am a non-Orthodox Jewish man engaged in Jewish life.
Everybody keeps asking me whether George Carlin was Jewish. "I heard he was related to the Karlin-Stoliner rebbe," a colleague said.
What you get instead is a God's eye view of the Holy Land: close enough to see day-to-day life, far enough not to get involved -- just like God.
Signs of Israel's military readiness are everywhere near Gaza -- the military base at Nahal Oz, with its rows of dust-caked tanks and rooms of advanced surveillance equipment, the high-tech spy blimps floating like hard white clouds above the border
Last Sunday night in an amphitheatre outside Jerusalem, I had a flash of insight into how to get disaffected Jews excited and involved in Jewish life: Make it free!
Theodicy and ALS
One of the benefits of the creation of the State of Israel is the creativity and industry of the Israeli people ... living in Los Angeles.
Yes, the Zionist ideal is that all Jews would move to Israel, and those born there would grow up to be proud citizens of a noble land, etc., etc.
The two greatest Jewish inventions of the 20th century are, to my mind at least, Hollywood and Israel.
In Washington and abroad, longstanding Jewish organizations added their voices of protest against the genocide in Darfur.
But guess what: It's not enough.
Book review of Matthais Kuntze's "Jihad and Jew Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11" (Telos Press, 2007).
If Israel relaunches its invasion of Gaza, no one should blame it. A country must do everything it can to protect its citizens from constant attack. I know it's been said, but it bears repeating: No other country in the world would countenance even a single missile crossing its borders and landing on its citizens. Much less 7,000 missiles.
It turns out there is something eternal and topical about the ancient wedding ritual of breaking the glass at the wedding, of the Jewish reality being forever black and white, of the Nazi in the hot tub.
Thank you. That's the profound message of this column: Thank you. The instigators, organizers and volunteers who brought Limmud to Los Angeles last weekend deserve our gratitude for challenging one of the long-held orthodoxies of the L.A. Jewish community: There is no Jewish community.
As I wrote here three weeks ago, I am a supporter of CAMERA and its mission. They do good work. But I believe they were taking the wrong tact in trying to tell a local church with a long history of support for Israel and Jewish causes whom it should and shouldn't listen to. CAMERA and I disagree on only one thing: tactics.
About 15 years ago some stick-like things began appearing on the hard, ugly stretch of Venice Boulevard from where it crosses Lincoln and continues to the beach.
The sticks were trees, but pitifully thin, with trunks a woman could wrap her fingers around and no more than a handful of leaves. Cynical locals like myself were certain the trees would end up stolen, vandalized or turned into a homeless person's campfire.
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10/7/08 7:30 pm
Jewish Philosophy and Wellness Medicine
10/7/08 7:30 pm
Israeli Folk Dance Tuesdays at Westside JCC with James Zimmer
10/8/08 10:00 am
Writing with Light
10/8/08 10:00 am
Picturing the Process: Landscape Through Time and Space
10/8/08 10:00 am
A Literacy of Images: Nancy Newhall and the Art of Photography
10/10 6:06 p.m. PDT
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Parshat Vayeilech (Deuteronomy 31:1-31:30) Didn't we just finish Pesach? How is Rosh Hashanah already here again? Another year has slipped away.