Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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News Councilman Tests Latino-Jewish Relations in California
Los Angeles – Last December, when Sharron Aisenman read in her local newspaper about a lawsuit over a city council member’s alleged antisemitic remarks, it was the first she had heard of anti-Jewish bias in her tiny, overwhelmingly Latino city tucked away in Los Angeles County’s San Fernando Valley. And, she determined, it would also…
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News Hollywood Execs Tune In to Israeli Television
Los Angeles – As Hollywood executives roll out the red carpet for television shows imported from overseas, Israel is emerging as an unlikely new starlet. In the wake of this season’s new HBO drama, “In Treatment” — the Israeli television hit remade for an American audience — a spate of fresh shows from the Jewish…
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News Radnor: Not Your Average TV Star
Actor Josh Radnor is glad to be back at work. During the recent writers’ strike, production of his CBS show, “How I Met Your Mother,” was shut down for three months, along with nearly every other scripted television series. Now taping again and in its third season, the sitcom isn’t quite a runaway hit, nor…
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Culture Of Folk, Faith and Famous Father-in-Law
Peter Himmelman is an eclectic musician who has earned critical accolades for everything from his television show scores to his folk-rock albums. His work scoring the TV series “Judging Amy” garnered him an Emmy nomination in 2002, and just a few months ago, his latest children’s album, “My Green Kite,” was nominated for a Grammy….
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Culture At the L.A. Opera, a Lifelong History Project
When the music director of the Los Angeles Opera, James Conlon, presented “Der Zerbrochene Krug” (“The Broken Jug”) on a recent Sunday afternoon, it marked the first time that an American audience had seen the one-act comedy composed by Viktor Ullmann, a Czech Jew who was dragged off to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and later…
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News In Wake of Movement’s Shift, California Conservative Rabbis Rally Behind Same-Sex Marriage Rights
Los Angeles — In 2005, when a Jewish gay-marriage activist first pressed California rabbis to sign a statement supporting full marriage equality for gays and lesbians, only a handful of Conservative rabbis lent their names. Over the course of the past two months, however, more than a dozen Conservative rabbis here have signed on to…
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News Long-Silenced Iranian Jews Find Their Political Voice
Los Angeles – When Beverly Hills’s Iranian Jewish mayor, Jimmy Jamshid Delshad, ran for office in 2007, he faced an uphill battle. But contrary to conventional wisdom, his biggest challenge wasn’t persuading skeptical non-Iranians to rally behind him. Instead, Delshad’s toughest fight was convincing his natural constituency — the city’s roughly 8,000 Iranian American Jews…
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News L.A.’s Latino Mayor Welcomed as One of the Tribe
Los Angeles – When Israel launches its 60th anniversary celebrations across America, the Los Angeles ceremony will be led not by one of this city’s many boldface-named Jews but by its Mexican-American mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. The choice is unsurprising to those familiar with the 55-year-old politician, who enjoys an unusually strong connection to Jews and…
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