New kind of mikveh washes off ritual’s negative image

By Amy Klein
Published on December 6, 2007

"I'm pretty much your classic disaffected Gen-X kind of gal. I have too many shoes, I work too hard, I'm cynical, I'm broke. So when it came time for me to immerse before my wedding, I figured I'd bring some friends, we'd hang out, I'd get wet, we'd go eat, and that would be the end of it."

All Hebrew, All the Time

By Julie G Fax
Published on March 17, 2005

Education

Young Ambassadors in Israel Prepare for Return Home

By Andrea Adelson
Published on January 1, 2004

There is unanimity on one point only: Two young Irvine women, who are midway through a 10-month subsidized stay in Israel, will return home next June speaking conversational Hebrew.

But little else is certain as both girls' parents predict their offspring will return changed by the immersion in voluntary social service, language training and civics lessons.

Lovin’ the

By David Finnigan
Published on December 11, 2003

For playwright Miriam Hoffman, Yiddish is hardly a dying language. "It just doesn't want to die," said Hoffman, who will teach Yiddish at the Dec. 14-20 intensive language/culture immersion courses at UCLA and the University of Judaism.

"Yiddish was always a problem since its birth," said Hoffman, who writes children's books on the subject, lectures at Columbia University and writes for the Yiddish-language newspaper, Forvertz. "It had to compete with the sacred language, which is Hebrew. Yiddish carried [Zionism] on its back for 1,000 years."