Featured Stories
By Rob Eshman
The year started tragically. When the 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Haiti on Jan. 12, it looked as if fate finally had humanity on the ropes. The scale of devastation scoured our hearts. Children crushed by their own classrooms, bodies heaped onto the backs of trucks and ferried out to mass graves. When the president of Haiti said it would take three years just to clear the debris, I wondered how, in an age when attention is measured in nano-spans, the people of Haiti would ever get the help they need.
By JewishJournal.com
L.A. Clippers star Baron Davis and Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast attended a Feb. 8 rally at Calabasas High School to accept $115,000 from Jewish World Watch (JWW) — on behalf of student activists — which will fund two schools for Darfuri refugees. New Community Jewish High School, Heschel West and Shalom Institute were among those celebrating the New Year for Trees (Tu b’Shevat), and artist Rick Hyman helped students explore family trees through paintings based on family photos and oral histories for “An Uncommon Journey to Diversity,” an exhibition at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus’ Finegood Art Gallery. Producer Marc Platt (“Legally Blonde”) delivered the keynote at the Ruby & Lion of Judah luncheon, which drew more than 350 women. And Congregation Or Ami, known for its aid to children in foster care, honored leaders of its ChildSpree, Prom Prep, Mitzvah Day, Shoes That Fit and Adopt a Child-Abuse Caseworker projects.
by Leonard Lee Buschel
Logan was a small Jewish neighborhood in North Philly. That’s were I was born, smack in the middle of the last century.
by Rabbi Paul J. Kipnes
When our Israelite ancestors participated in the Exodus from Egypt, they liberated themselves from much more than just slavery and Pharaoh’s taskmasters. By means of the Ten Plagues, which dismantled the Egyptian pantheon, the Israelites witnessed the defeat of the Nile god, Sun god and Pharaoh’s (false) god complex. Crossing Yam Suf (“Sea of Reeds”), they left behind 400 years of Egyptian-influenced preconceptions about religious faith.
By Rachel Heller
Tefillah, sports, study sessions and even a dance — the four-day youth convention on Nabugoye Hill in late January was almost like a typical United Synagogue Youth (USY) convention, according to the three Southland USYers who traveled to Uganda to help run the event.
Wendy Jaffe
They tore down my old synagogue last month without asking my permission. Maybe they didn’t ask me because, if they had, I would have told them “no.” No, you can’t bulldoze the bimah where my grandparents handed the Torah to my parents, who then handed it to me on the day of my bat mitzvah; no, you can’t sell the fourth-row pew where my family sat during the High Holy Days and Shabbat services; no, you can’t tear down the bathroom where my friends and I would fix our hair and apply strawberry-flavored Lip Smackers before flirting with our respective Hebrew-school crushes.
By Dikla Kadosh
The Stein family communicates in music. Birthday parties were always marked by jam sessions. Instead of playing geography on family road trips, the Steins would play “repeat that harmony.”
Dinners inevitably turned into a cappella performances. And a severe blackout during a spring storm became the impetus for the formation of a family band, The Rolling Steins.
By Shoshana Lewin Fischer
Railfest 2010
Train enthusiasts of all ages are invited to celebrate a weekend of riding the rails. Events include frontier gunfighters, vintage train rides, model train displays, crafts, food, a family murder-mystery dinner train and more. 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Also March 28. Sponsored by the Fillmore & Western Railway and the Santa Clara River Valley Railroad Historical Society. Fillmore. (805) 524-2546. fwry.com.
Emily Kaplan
In late August, as the summer light begins to fade and families prepare for the coming fall with back-to-school shopping, Camp Ramah in Ojai will conclude its programming with a session for families of children with special needs — Camp Ohr Lanu.
What It Is:
Passover, or Pesach, celebrates the Jewish exodus out of Egypt, aided by the Ten Plagues. The word “Passover” refers to the fact that the homes of Jews were passed over during the 10th plague, which caused the death of all Egyptian first-born males.
According to the 2000-01 National Jewish Population Survey, 79 percent of Jews attend a Passover seder, making it the most commonly observed holiday among Jews.
“Passover is one of the pinnacles of the Jewish year,” said Valley Beth Shalom’s Rabbi Paul Steinberg, author of the award-winning book “Celebrating the Jewish Year.” “It was the really definitive event of Jewishhood and led to our freedom and the responsibilities that come with freedom.”
