IJN Special Sections
LOS ANGELES — On Shavuot, we celebrate the revelation of the Torah by reading from it. But first we need to find the place.
How do we find our place in the Torah?
Newbies to the ways of a Torah scroll will soon realize that unlike the mass-produced technological marvels that bring order and wonder into their lives, this handmade inspiration comes without an operating manual.
I discovered this the first time I tried to find my place amid the perfect columns of scribed, unvoweled Hebrew.
It seemed like a phone book without page numbers in a foreign language.
LOS ANGELES — Some 65 years after a band of foreign volunteers took to the skies to ensure Israel’s birth and survival, filmmakers are racing to bring their exploits to the screen before the last of the breed passes away.
Among the competing producers and their financial backers are such famous names as Spielberg and Lansky. Although their budgets fall well short of Hollywood blockbuster standards, their competitive spirits are just as intense.
Nancy Spielberg, the youngest of Steven Spiel...
Ofer Ben-Amots was just six when he dared touch the new piano in his Haifa home. It was love at first sound — and they’ve been married ever since. Fifty-two years later, the world famous composer marvels at the relationship between accident, design and G-d in human destiny.
“The story of how that piano arrived at our house is an interesting one,” Ben-Amots explains in the IJN conference room. “My grandfather was Bulgarian and spent three years in an internment camp there during the Ho...
FOR a long time, Israeli wines — like those of California — suffered from what could be called the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome: They didn’t get any respect.
Wine connoisseurs considered the handful of Israeli wines made in the years before and after the Jewish state gained independence in 1948 to be syrupy, unsophisticated, “unexciting.”
Not worthy, in other words, of serious consideration.
Sixty-five years later, even the most high-browed, nose-in-the-air sommeliers, oenologists an...
During certain times of the year, shoppers at King Soopers in Greenwood Village are likely to encounter young men dressed in bright green tee-shirts somewhere i
n the produce department. While examining their tomatoes or thumping their melons, shoppers may find themselves in a cordial conversation with these friendly men about an upcoming Jewish holiday, or about the abundance of kosher items at the grocery store.
And yes, these hip guys are rabbis, too. Rabbis of JOI — the Jewish Outreach...