Comfort during a crisis

Published on March 20, 2013

In the summer of 1999, a self-proclaimed white supremacist walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center and started shooting. The bullets hit the school’s secretary, a teen counselor and three children, all of whom survived. But the trauma of the shooting rippled beyond the immediate victims and throughout the community — to parents and other children present, and to every witness and bystander of every age.

Left without a JCC, Valley Jews look to start anew

Published on March 6, 2013

For Amanda Prosin, Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Sherman Oaks was her Jewish home when she was growing up. She went there for summer camp, learned about Jewish holidays and made lasting relationships. For her, it made Judaism, well, fun.

A shooting: Just like yesterday

Published on December 20, 2012

When I heard about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I shut my office door and wept. And I couldn’t help but remember another day 13 years ago.

Training for a trade

Published on December 12, 2012

For the first time in his life, Reuven Zulauf is making lists — the type of lists that can never truly be completely checked off.

Community Briefs

Published on August 12, 2004

Community Briefs

Court: JCC Parents Can Sue Gunmakers

By Tom Tugend
Published on June 3, 2004

Three families, whose children were shot by a white supremacist in an attack on the North Valley Jewish Community Center (NVJCC), can pursue their lawsuit against the makers of the weapons used in the shooting spree.

The May 28 ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco was greeted with relief by the three families and by the mother of postal carrier Joseph S. Ileto, who was slain by the same gunman in a separate attack.

The suit grew out of the Aug. 10, 1999 attack by Buford O. Furrow Jr., a self-avowed anti-Semite and white supremacist, on the Jewish center in Granada Hills, which left three children, one teenager and one adult wounded.

Never Say Die

By Wendy J. Madnick
Published on May 30, 2002

While the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles (JCCGLA) closes facilities around the Southland, leaders of the North Valley Jewish Community Center (NVJCC) have decided to emulate their big brother in the West Valley and try to take control of their center themselves.

Waging Peace

By Wendy J. Madnick
Published on August 17, 2000

In a small grove of trees on the campus of Pierce College in Woodland Hills this past Sunday, a group of government officials and concerned citizens gathered to honor the victims of hate crimes. About 300 people representing a cross-section of the diverse Los Angeles community attended the Unity Over Hate Rally, all braving the intense August sun to share their support for peace, both locally and across the nation.The rally's main focus was to commemorate the events of Aug. 10, 1999. The families of those wounded that day in the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center and of Joseph Ileto, the Filipino-American postal worker gunned down by the same alleged perpetrator, came up to the podium and tried to bring meaning to their personal tragedies. Alongside the stage stood a poster of Ileto, with his first name used as an acronym for Join Our Struggle [to] Educate [and] Prevent Hate.Ismael Ileto, Joseph's brother, gave the morning's most moving speech, noting that it had been a year of heavy losses for his family.

One Year Later

By Wendy J. Madnick
Published on August 10, 2000

August 10, 1999. It was a day that will never be forgotten. One man was killed. Five people - including three children - were badly injured. Six innocent human beings became targets of a gutless killer's hatred, and when that happened, an entire community was shaken to its core. What a long, strange trip it's been since the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center and the murder of mail carrier Joseph Ileto on a Tuesday morning one year ago. For weeks, even months, people spoke of little else.

Waiting for Furrow

By Tom Tugend
Published on August 10, 2000

A year and a day after Buford O. Furrow Jr. allegedly burst into the North Valley Jewish Community Center, spraying the lobby with 70 bullets from a 9mm semiautomatic assault weapon, the case is slowly winding its way through the federal legal system - very slowly.

Safety First?

By Beverly Gray
Published on September 23, 1999

On the first day of school, when Barbara Gindi escorted her children to Maimonides Academy, she was appalled by what she saw: Two security guards stood out front, a Sheriff's squad car was parked at the curb, and the administrative staff was on high alert.
"It brought tears to my eyes," Gindi says. "Is this what our world is coming to?"

How to account for the different stories

Published on September 23, 1999

I read Gary Rosenblatt's indictment of Los Angeles' rabbinate with some unease. It did not square with my understanding of what had occurred in the aftermath of the shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills. Accounts from our reporter, Julie Gruenbaum Fax, suggested that the community as a whole, the rabbis included, had come forward to lend support, both moral and practical. However, it was his view that the 100,000-plus readers of The Jewish Week of New York took away from the events of that tragic day.

“I Heard a Loud Pop and We Ran Outside”

By Tom Tugend
Published on August 11, 1999

Going north on the 405 "felt like the second-longest drive of my life," said parent Richard Macales. The first was 10 years ago, when his first child unexpectedly died of natural causes.