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JCCs Fall by the Wayside in L.A.
LOS ANGELES — A ramshackle brick building in the bohemian Silver Lake neighborhood here still carries the name Jewish Community Center, but it is only because of some desperate local teamwork and a very non-Jewish hero. A year ago, the Silverlake JCC’s property was on the market and ready to go to the highest bidder….
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Harold Pinter, Son of a Tailor and Weaver of the Absurd, Awarded a Nobel
On October 13, the Swedish Academy awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature to Harold Pinter — a writer who, in the words of the official citation, “uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms.” Until that day, the only closed room to which many in the literary world wanted…
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Storm Victims Go Home for the Holiday
NEW ORLEANS — Expectations for the Kol Nidre turnout at New Orleans’s oldest Reform synagogue were so low that synagogue leaders originally planned to hold services in the building’s small chapel. But five minutes after prayers were scheduled to begin, as 300 people overflowed to folding chairs in the hall, it was clear they had…
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Anti-war Activist Addresses Congregation
Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan wasted no time trying to clear the air on Yom Kippur. Moments after taking the microphone during an afternoon break in the congregation Beyt Tikkun’s service, the slain soldier’s mother — who drew international attention in August with her weeks-long anti-war vigil outside President Bush’s vacation home — noted that it…
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Entrepreneurial Spirit Helps Revive Center
LOS ANGELES — Four-time Olympic gold-medal winner Lenny Krayzelburg now works in an office one floor down from the Los Angeles offices of American for Peace Now and the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. Krayzelburg opened his swim school in the new Westside Jewish Community Center. The building is not new — it is actually a dilapidated…
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Newsdesk October 21, 2005
Press Group Files Brief An organization that advocates freedom of the press is asking a federal court to accept an amicus brief. The brief highlights the dangers to journalistic freedoms that may be caused by trying two former pro-Israel lobbyists and one former Pentagon employee for communicating classified information. Last week the Washington-based Reporters Committee…
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Orthodox Worshippers Attack Israeli Military Chief
Israeli Police are investigating two suspects in the Sabbath-evening attack by dozens of Orthodox worshippers at the Western Wall on the Israeli military’s personnel chief, Elazar Stern. The attackers were apparently motivated by Stern’s role in Israel’s pullout from Gaza, which was completed last month. Stern was adamant about denouncing calls by leading Orthodox rabbis…
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Talks With P.A. Halted After Shootings
TEL AVIV — Prospects for renewal of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue, already stalled in the wake of two canceled summits this month, went into a deep freeze this week following a pair of Palestinian terrorist attacks in the West Bank that left three Israelis dead and five wounded over the post-Yom Kippur weekend. Israel immediately reinstituted a…
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Ethiopian Rabbis Demand Equal Pay
Seventeen Ethiopian religious leaders in Israel wrote last week to the office of Prime Minister Sharon, demanding that they be paid the same wages as rabbis who are not of Ethiopian origin. Sharon’s office has been in charge of religious services since the Religious Affairs Ministry was disbanded. The request was based on a government…
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Chickpeas
llan E. Mallenbaum from Plainview, N.Y., inquires: “Have you ever delved into the etymology of the Yiddish word arbes, referring to the cooked chickpeas seasoned with ground pepper that my northern Polish grandmother served to guests (like me) many (many) decades ago? I can see possible cognates in Spanish garbanzo and Greek erebinthos. I can…
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Dancing Around a Delicate Issue
‘Joy shatters barriers,” says a well-known Jewish aphorism. It’s a phrase that many Orthodox synagogues will take literally Tuesday evening with the beginning of Simchat Torah, one of the Jewish calendar’s most joyous days. When the yearlong Torah-reading cycle comes to a close, all Orthodox congregations will dance with their Torahs. But some will do…
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