This past Friday, as a community partner, I was invited to visit the National Council for Jewish Women's (NCJW) new distribution center set to open the next day in Highland Park. As I looked around at the displays and the goods available for those adversely affected by the fires, I experienc…
For this week's column, I thought I would share some of the remarks I made during this past Sunday's 30th Annual Meeting:
As many of you may know, I began working at our Jewish Federation on March 1, 2005, making this past Saturday the start of my 21st year here. When I first started, I…
As the news broke and information has continued to pour out last week regarding the status of the remains of the Bibas, especially the children, to say that I was horrified, by the grotesque way Hamas chose to murder Ariel and Kfir Bibas, with "their bare hands", would be an absolute underst…
This past Sunday, people across the country came together for one of the most celebrated unofficial American holidays… the Super Bowl. It is one of my favorite days of the year because of my love of sports and competition. However, the Super Bowl has held a little extra importance for the …
Yesterday was January 27. In 2005, the United Nations established UN International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and they chose that day because that was the day, back in 1945, when Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. Yesterday marked the 80th Anniversary of the liberation of that death camp. In …
The last seven days since my last column have been extremely eventful around the world. Between yesterday’s Inauguration, to getting a chance to tour the Eaton Fire area in Altadena with Rabbi Hanoka from Chabad of Pasadena and the Consul General of Israel Israel Bachar on Wednesday, and t…
It has been almost 5 years since I began writing this weekly column in an effort to keep our community connected at the start of the COVID pandemic. Since then, so many people in the community have commented on how much they appreciate these messages, and because of that, I've continued. Eve…
Community.
It is very likely THE word that I think, speak, and/or write about most in all of my years as our Jewish Federation’s Executive Director. In essence, it is the very reason why the entire Jewish Federation movement was created. Jewish Federations are an amalgamation of several J…
As you may remember, I was nominated by LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger to be a commissioner on the LA County Commission on Human Relations. The commission's mission is to promote better human relations in LA County and help build vibrant, thriving communities by working to transform pre…
You would think that after all these years, I would get used to how busy my weeks sometimes get. Take last week for instance…
As you may have seen (or attended), we held a special Israel Town Hall Meeting last week with what we billed as a “leading Israel Expert.” That expert happened…
Last week was very busy at our Jewish Federation. Not only are we in the midst of our Jewish Book Festival and held a local authors event at Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park, our newly formed Jewish Community Relations Council held its first meeting, but for the first time in several year…
This past week may go down as one of the most monumental and impactful for our community in recent years. Between the election, the buycott our Jewish Federation initiated and implemented in support of Trader Joe's carrying Israeli products, to what many are calling a pogrom in Amsterdam tha…
As you might've noticed, our Jewish Federation has increased our advocacy in and around our community over the last several years. Whether it was our fight against the renaming of a section of Crescenta Valley Park back in 2017, the development of a Comprehensive Community-wide Security Plan…
Anyone who has come to my office for a meeting or just to stop by and say hi might see me in my office chair. From where I sit (which is the title of my monthly JLife SGPV column), even though I sit inside my office with only an interior window, I get the opportunity to look out at and acros…
As the news broke last week of Yahya Sinwar being killed by the IDF, I experienced many emotions, as I'm sure many people did. Surprisingly, one of the thoughts that filtered into my brain was the idea of character. Thinking about one's character has been on my mind as I have come out of the…
