COMMUNITY BRIEFS: Child Abuse, Christian University Jewish Program, Lee Baca

Published on April 16, 2009

In the last several months, reports from around the country have been confirming what child welfare experts feared: Economic hard times bring a drastic increase in child abuse and domestic violence. Newspapers nationally are reporting 30 percent to 50 percent increases in some regions of the country; in Los Angeles, both Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services and Jewish Family Service (JFS) report spikes in their clientele.

African AIDS fight uses Israeli circumcision skills

By Dina Kraft
Published on November 26, 2008

The United Nations announced last year that the procedure could reduce the rate of HIV transmission by up to 60 percent. It was in Israel, with its experience performing adult male circumcision on a wide scale, that the international medical community found an unlikely partner in the global fight against AIDS.

Sculpture? It’s a Klapper! Ballet in Bel Air

By Danielle Berrin
Published on August 23, 2007

Scene and Heard

How one Boston synagogue met the challenge of the cantor’s sexual abuse

By Richard Greenberg
Published on January 11, 2007

As an attorney representing several victims of sexually predatory Catholic priests, Mark Itzkowitz has witnessed the church's pedophilia scandal from an almost too-close-for-comfort vantage point. Not long ago, Itzkowitz's life took a surreal turn when he found himself confronting clergy sexual abuse from a different perspective: The problem had come home to roost in his own synagogue.

What’s So Bad About Torture?

By Arnold Steinberg
Published on March 23, 2006

Suppose your child were kidnapped. She is buried alive with a limited air supply. Police arrest one of the kidnappers. Indeed, he was on a store videotape luring the child and then abducting her. Witnesses saw him put the child in a car. His handwriting is on the ransom note. He admits he knows where she is but remains stubbornly unresponsive.

Israel Security Experts Advise L.A.

By Mike Levy
Published on June 27, 2002

The topic was terrorism. "How underprepared are we in the U.S.?" "Very." That exchange, between an emergency care physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and Dr. Jonathan Halevy, director of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, was part of an ongoing effort in Los Angeles to change the answer.