Sharon Rosen Leib is a former Deputy Attorney General in California’s Department of Justice, an award-winning freelance journalist and contributing writer for the Forward and the San Diego Jewish Journal.
Sharon Rosen Leib
By Sharon Rosen Leib
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Culture The 28-year-old studio executive who helped Hollywood survive its first pandemic
The Spanish flu pandemic hit Hollywood hard. The lethal flu strain killed approximately 650,000 U.S. citizens from 1918-19, and threatened to collapse the nascent movie industry. One year before the outbreak, my great-grandfather, pioneer producer Sol M. Wurtzel, arrived to run the original Fox Studio at Sunset Blvd. and Western Ave. Sol had personally experienced…
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Community Fighting police brutality, the Johnnie Cochran way
When Johnnie Cochran and his entourage strode into the California Attorney General’s Los Angeles Office in 1989, a buzz rippled down the hallway. We stepped away from our onerous caseloads to catch a glimpse of LA’s premiere African American attorney, famous nationwide for winning multi-million-dollar jury verdicts in police brutality cases. As a 26-year-old newbie…
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News One year later, Chabad of Poway shooting’s legacy of pain and hope
In a moving virtual ceremony last Sunday, Dr. Howard Kaye spoke of his late wife of 34 years, Lori Gilbert-Kaye. It has been one year since a gunman shot and killed Gilbert-Kaye inside Chabad of Poway, and the memorial service to mark the event was a virtual one. “Lori took every mitzvah and every kindness…
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News Letter from San Luis Obispo: COVID-19 hits “One of America’s Happiest Cities”
Way back in February, when my beloved younger brother invited my family to celebrate Passover with his wife and two kids, I politely declined. I couldn’t fathom making the 300-mile drive from San Diego after my husband and I returned from visiting our 20-year-old study abroad daughter in Australia the night before. That was then…
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Life ‘We Were All Assimilating’: Why I Dropped My Family’s Christmas Tree
The lush, fragrant pines penned up in Christmas tree lots waiting to be hauled home and decorated beckon Jewish kids like a siren song. Oh, how my three daughters longed for one. Alas, their wish for a festive tree remained unfulfilled: Neither Santa Claus nor their Reform Jewish parents delivered one while they lived under…
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Community 20th Century Fox Was My Family’s Jewish Success Story. Will Disney Destroy Our Legacy?
Disney’s impending takeover of 20th Century Fox film studio feels like a death in the family. Why? Because I carry Wurtzel blood. Three generations of my family toiled to make Fox a Hollywood powerhouse. Just over 100 years ago, New York Jewish movie mogul William Fox dispatched my great-grandfather Sol M. Wurtzel from the Lower…
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Life Jewish Retirement Home Activists’ Epistolary Protest
Their handwriting may be a little shaky but their messages were loud and clear. Residents of Seacrest Village, a Jewish retirement community in Encinitas, California, and their volunteer assistants penned over 500 postcards during the March 15 Ides of Trump campaign. A grassroots, social-media driven effort hatched in California, the Ides of Trump created a…
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Life A Jewish Mother Reports from the Enormous Los Angeles Women’s March
Like the juggernaut hit “La La Land,” the Women’s March Los Angeles revealed a sparkling city of stars. An estimated 750,000 participants showed up to demonstrate solidarity and celebrate human rights. The record-shattering attendance made the L.A. March the biggest of them all. Friday’s heavy rainstorm dusted off palm trees, hosed down sidewalks and power-washed…
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Opinion I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence?
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News The great tent conspiracy theory: Are ‘outside agitators’ supplying protesters’ tents?
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Opinion I teach Israel studies at NYU. We are importing the worst of Israel and Palestine to our campuses
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Fast Forward Marjorie Taylor Greene says she opposed antisemitism bill because it rejects ‘Gospel’ that ‘the Jews’ handed Jesus to executioners
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Fast Forward Marjorie Taylor Greene says she opposed antisemitism bill because it rejects ‘Gospel’ that ‘the Jews’ handed Jesus to executioners
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Film & TV Just how accurate is the Peacock series ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz?’
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Opinion I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence?
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Opinion Violence at UCLA will only produce more violence. A remarkable Palestinian peace activist showed me an alternate way