Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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Culture Donor Saves L.A. Yiddish Program
A major contribution from an anonymous donor will allow a pilot program that teaches Yiddish to Los Angeles high-school students to survive. Yiddishkayt Los Angeles, a not-for-profit organization devoted to furthering Yiddish in the area, recently received an unsolicited $250,000 gift earmarked for a program that aims to bring Yiddish-language classes into high schools. “It’s…
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News Synagogues Throw Energy Behind Green Movement
When their synagogue opens in less than a year, members of the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation in Evanston, Ill., will have to adjust to a lot more than just a new roof over their heads. For starters, they’ll have showers and bike racks — just in case they want to pedal to services — and tinted…
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News U.S. Unions Organize Against British Boycott
The controversy surrounding calls by British unions to boycott Israel is threatening to spill over into a major international union’s next election. Leaders of some of America’s most powerful unions are said to be considering whether to pull support for a top British union official, Keith Sonnet, in his bid to lead a major international…
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News Reform Slams Knesset Plan for JNF Land
America’s largest Jewish denomination is issuing calls for the Israeli Knesset to reverse course on a controversial piece of legislation declaring that Jewish National Fund lands can be leased only to Jews. The legislation, introduced by three Israeli Knesset members, passed last week in a vote of 64-16 in its first reading. In order for…
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Israel News Hollywood Politics
A new tale is coming out of Hollywood, but it’s not clear whether it’s an international thriller or a Tinseltown farce. As aspiring screenwriter Jason Ressler tells it, he never expected that the events described in his script, involving a terrorist plot and unseemly Saudi businessmen’s double dealings in America, would materialize in the real…
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Culture A Legend Looks Back: A Visit With Kirk Douglas
Los Angeles – Over the course of an illustrious Hollywood career spanning more than five decades, Kirk Douglas has played many parts: Vincent Van Gogh, Spartacus and boxer Midge Kelly, to name just a formidable few. But the one character he has never played — to his deep regret, he now says — was that…
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News Accounting Shift at Claims Conference
As the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany held its annual board meeting this week, it took a step that may help it fend off recent charges of financial mismanagement. A few days before the annual meeting of the Claims Conference — the international body charged with negotiating Holocaust restitution settlements — the organization…
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News As Kids Head to Camp, Parents Ask If They’re Having Enough Fun
At Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, Jewish campers wake up every morning at 7:30 and daven the morning prayers. After some swimming or maybe a Frisbee game, the older kids can, if they want, daven again in the afternoon. And at the end of a day that includes a 45-minute Judaic learning session, well, they…
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