Gamal Palmer was 9 years old when he marched into the local synagogue and demanded an appointment with the rabbi. “His secretary looked at me, this little brown child, like, ‘What?’” As the son of a white Jewish mother and a Black father, Palmer was used to these kinds of looks, the ones that consciously…
Early on in Jim Scheinman’s investment career, a cousin suggested he take a look at a video-conferencing startup called Saasbee. Scheinman liked the company for its social benefit but thought the name was awful. He suggested an alternative, inspired by one of his children’s favorite books: “Zoom City,” which he said conveyed the concepts of…
For Father’s Day, I recently spoke with Dena Schechter and Mel Levine about their father, Sid Levine, who died in 1995 at the age of 82. I had interviewed Sid years ago for the documentary, “Meet Me at Brooklyn & Soto,” about the East Los Angeles Jewish community where he grew up. He described the…
(JTA) — The president of the student government at the University of California, Davis, vetoed a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. The day after the measure passed last week, Kyle Krueger said he acted “because it included minimal to no input from the Jewish community beforehand,” and the resolution “has…
(JTA) — A Los Angeles synagogue found itself having to deny misinformation about the George Floyd protests after a rumor spread — and was briefly amplified by the White House — that its security barriers were actually tools for looters. Chabad of Sherman Oaks installed vertical barriers filled with rocks last year in a move…
Apart from areas of downtown, no other part of Los Angeles has suffered so grievously in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis as the Fifth City Council District. “We have a lot of white people in my district and we have a lot of businesses, some of them high-value targets; there was good…
The Beverly-Fairfax district, a center of Jewish life in Los Angeles, was hit hard during the protests that rocked the city May 30 and May 31. Many Jewish stores in the area were vandalized and looted, among them, Ariel Glatt Kosher Market, Mensch Bakery and Syd’s Pharmacy and Kosher market. Some synagogues in the area…
At 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, building security alarms were still ringing at retail establishments in the affluent Los Angeles neighborhood around the Beverly Center, where the night before, what began as a peaceful protest for racial justice took a darker turn into destruction, looting and vandalism. LAPD had cordoned off the hardest-hit areas, including…
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