Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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News Bush’s Buddy: Orthodox — and Liberal
Los Angeles – When attorney Donald Etra was invited to join President Bush at Camp David for a spring weekend in 2005, the invitation put him in a quandary. It was already Friday afternoon, and Etra, an Orthodox Jew, feared that if he traveled by car from the White House as planned, he’d never make…
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Israel News Larry King’s Stand Up Act
As the publishing industry descended on Los Angeles the final week of May for this year’s Book Expo America, at least one L.A. celebrity was heard cracking Jewish jokes at his own expense. CNN talk show host Larry King, who hosted a book party at his Beverly Hills home for his longtime friend and boss,…
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News Demand for Kosher Cuisine Swells Ranks of Jewish Prison Chaplains
Los Angeles – Mendel Slavin went to work as a chaplain in a San Diego prison in 2006. A Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic rabbi from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, he was one of about a dozen Jewish chaplains serving California’s fractional Jewish inmate population at the time. But in the two years since then, that…
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News Gay Jewish Couples Head to the Altar
Los Angeles – In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s historic May 15 decision granting gay men and lesbians the legal right to marry, scores of gay Jewish couples are marking dates for their long-awaited opportunity to stand under the wedding canopy and break a glass. “Wedding fever has struck,” said Rabbi Denise Eger…
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News Seattle Activists Aim To Put Israel Divestment on City’s Agenda
Los Angeles — If a local activist group has its way, Seattle could soon become the first major American city to divest from companies that provide material support to Israel. Seattle Divest From War and Occupation, a citizens group, is angling to get an initiative on the ballot that would mandate city pension funds to…
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News Think Tank Aims To Infuse Jewish Mainstream With Dashes of Color
San Francisco – Go to almost any Jewish conference and you’ll likely find the ethnic makeup to be largely, and unsurprisingly, white. But at a recent plenum in San Francisco, a group championing ethnic diversity in Jewish life turned that situation on its head, as scores of black, Latino and Asian Jews from around the…
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News Orthodox Woman Runs for L.A. City Council
Los Angeles – Growing up in New Haven, Conn., just across the street from Senator Joe Lieberman, Adeena Bleich never thought it was out of the ordinary for an Orthodox Jew to run for political office. Now, the 30-year-old West Coast transplant is herself running for office in Los Angeles, angling to become the city’s…
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News Ailing Editor Set To Close the Book on Venerable Yiddish Journal
Los Angeles – Last October, a top Yiddish literary journal based in Los Angeles celebrated the publication of its 150th issue. Now it appears that its sesquicentennial issue may have been its last. Heshbon, the crowning jewel of L.A.’s once-vibrant Yiddish literature scene, will more than likely cease publication in the wake of the resignation…
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