David Siegel, Israel’s new consul general for the southwestern United States, along with his wife, Myra, and their three kids, arrived in Los Angeles on a Monday in late August and hit the ground running.
A community in central Israel has founded a philanthropic foundation based on the Jewish Federation model. The community of Ramat Hasharon will launch its Takdim –The Ramat Hasharon Community Foundation later this month. Takdim is Hebrew for precedent.
“We ride for those who died” — that’s the motto of the national Police Unity Tour (PUT), a grueling, three-day bicycle ride in which teams of police officers from across the United States pedal to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C. The annual spring event is held to honor the memory of officers killed each year in the line of duty.
Gender segregation on Israeli public buses may continue as long as passengers agree, the country\’s Supreme Court ruled. The practice will still be allowed on dozens of bus lines serving the haredi Orthodox community, known as Mehadrin lines, as long as passengers are not coerced and no violence erupts, according to the ruling issued Thursday. The finding adopted recommendations made last year by a Transportation Ministry committee which found that the Mehadrin lines should be allowed as long as the segregation was voluntary and women were not forced to sit in the back of the bus, Haaretz reported. The state had accepted the finding. The legal opinion was in response to a lawsuit filed in 2007 by a group of women and the Israel Religious Action Center, an organization of Israel\’s Reform, or Progressive, movement.
Israel’s ambassador to Greece, Arye Mekel, was on the phone with a journalist earlier this month when the call came in that Israel’s Carmel region was up in flames. The Israeli prime minister needed to speak urgently with his Greek counterpart. Mekel quickly located Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in Poland, where he was meeting with the Polish president. But a Papandreou aide told Mekel the meeting could not be interrupted. “Tell him Bibi Netanyahu wants to speak with him urgently,” Mekel pressed, using the Israeli prime minister’s nickname.
Jewish emergency info card a hit With LAPD; Postcard and dog tag campaign seeks release of Israeli soldiers; Jewish Home Taps Caan for Walk
Community Briefs.
Gayle Gale started Kids for Peace after she returned to Los Angeles from a series of trips to Israel as a visiting artist at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba in 1994 and 1995. With assistance from the local Israeli consulate and a grant obtained with help from the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity from the Jewish Community Foundation, she set out to teach youth about Israel through artistic means. In the years since, Gale has found herself doing much more.
Although the organization originally began in 2001 as a pro-Israel advocacy group, when other organizations like StandWithUs began to effectively fill that role, the CIC changed direction to try to foster a relationship between Israelis and Israel, its culture and values.
At the risk of sounding like a cranky old-timer, the Jewish festivals of yore — the \’70s and \’80s — had a distinctive communitywide feel to them. The festival that was once held in Rancho Park drew thousands of people from across the communal spectrum — young, old, Orthodox, Reform, Israeli, American, rich, poor.\n\nPart of the celebration was a morning march through the city, the marchers waving flags and accruing donations for Israeli charities for each mile they walked. The booths reflected the entire spectrum of Jewish involvement, and the entertainment — David Broza, Theodore Bikel — had a multigenerational, cross-cultural appeal.\n\n\”It was amazing,\” said Temple Aliyah\’s Rabbi Stuart Vogel of the Rancho Park Jewish Festival — affirming my nostalgia. \”The whole Jewish community turned out.\”
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