Results tagged “jewish”

An early morning shooting at a North Hollywood synagogue has set in motion a series of precautionary actions just in case the incident was part of a larger plan. The LAPD is now on a citywide tactical alert, the Operations Center has been activated at a Level One and the FBI has joined into the investigation. Police say they are increasing patrols around "critical Jewish sites in their areas" and has alertet all Jewish day schools and synagogues of the incident.

It's a very festive time right now. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and there's a lot of copying & pasting in Film Digest land. The Indian Film Festival continues its run at the Arclight, as well as its mixed masala line-up. Joining it are the 10th Annual Polish Film Festival, the 4th Annual Jewish Film Festival & a virtual continuation of last week's Japanese Film Festival at the Egyptian with a series dedicated to controversial auteur Nagisa Oshima. If those aren't exotic enough, you can always make the journey to San Pedro for the L.A. Harbor Film Festival, or trek all the way to Orange County for the Newport Beach Film Festival. Even the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is getting in on the act, with panels dedicated to Hollywood biographers & the adaptation of The Soloist.

Here's a group of Orthodox Jews blessing the sun this morning at La Brea and Oakwood. Why are they standing there?

With the heightened sense of urgency that exists throughout the world today, it is easy to be uncertain or afraid. There is a gimme gimme attitude, built partly out of necessity in today’s climate, but also out of generations of relaxed approaches to consumption and spending. That’s why it’s so refreshing to see true stories of unbelievably strong people sacrificing everything they can to help others, many of whom they have never (and may never) meet. With such an ambitious goal, the success is often not in the end result, but in the trying.

When deciding to take on a career in the arts, the one thing that will separate you from a herd of like-minded cattle is ‘finding your voice’. This, simply, means getting comfortable with yourself, your medium, and your material. Once you reach that easygoing level, you can maneuver within it to truly discover the reasons you were drawn towards your creative craft in the first place.

It's Christmas and hey, not everything is closed. So here are some options of what you can do today...

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah and was observed accordingly by Jews all over Los Angeles by the lighting of the first of eight candles on the menorah. But the "Festival of Lights" this year might be casting a greenish glow on its observers as the move to make the ancient holiday more "eco-friendly" takes motion.

Jamie Sneider is, for all intents and purposes, a nice Jewish girl. She grew up Reform Jewish outside of Boston, went to NYU, and lived in New York for years working as a writer and performer before moving to L.A.

Tomorrow Los Angeles will take part in Holocaust Remembrance Day--called Yom Hashoah in Hebrew--in ceremonies around the city, with the largest one in California set for early Sunday afternoon in Pan Pacific Park.

"Why is this night different from all other nights?" you might ask. Well, it's the first night of Passover, and even folks who will be sitting down to a seder somewhere in the Southland tonight will also be asking the same thing, because it's one of four questions that are posed in the traditional pre-dinner ceremony.

Earlier this year, Mayor Villaraigosa introduced his 2008 Traffic Relief Initiatives, which outlines ten proposals for improving driving conditions throughout the city (full document downloadable here). One of the initiatives is called "Pico East Olympic West" (or, alternatively "Olympic West Pico East") which was labeled a "Priority Express Corridor." The three-phase project will see a "seven-mile stretch of both streets between La Brea Boulevard and Centinela Avenue" have more "consistent rush hour parking restrictions" first, followed by a change in signal timing to promote traffic flow, then lastly a re-striping of the streets that will see more lanes going West on Olympic and East on Pico.

A friend of mine told me yesterday that she was feeling left out of all the Christmas merriment--she converted to Judaism prior to her marriage to a member of the tribe--so she sent her husband to the mall to buy her a gift. While my friend is a bit of a nutjob, I can imagine that for those who don't celebrate Christmas today, especially in this age of consumerism, there's a risk of feeling a bit left out. So here's Sarah Silverman's musical plea: "Give the Jew Girl Toys."

How an Evangelical Minister helped save My Yom Kippur It's a dark and stormy Friday night in Culver City. I sit in my car and listen to the rain pound all around me. I have 11 hours to solve a very large problem and do not know where to start. Understand that an hour ago I had 1,500 congregants very unhappy with me. You see, I am the head of the volunteer sound crew for...

We thought we knew uber-blogger and writer Luke Ford. He's best-known for his probing stories about the porn industry (nsfw), and most recently admired for being the first reporter to state that Mayor Tony's marriage was dunzo. But it wasn't until this week's interview with the Jewish Journal that we learned how real Ford keeps it. From his 300-square-foot Pico-Robertson crib, the fact that he used to live out of his car, or the...

We all say it's what we want, a guy who is well-endowed, but ladies, have you ever been with a guy who REALLY IS well-endowed? And I don’t just mean above-average here. Have you been with a guy big enough where it may become a problem? Like a pain problem? If you haven’t been in that situation then be thankful, and if you have experienced it, I know you feel my pain…literally. So Sports...

For a while Howard Stern called Jackie Mason the greatest stand-up comedian ever, but he eventually had to include Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock. In a valiant effort to flush his credibility down the drain, Mason has produced dozens of video blogs that he has uploaded on YouTube under the username TheUltimateJew. When he isn't rattling on while on a treadmill, owning every bit of the old man that he's become, he attacks Keith...

Brrrrrrrrr... did you enjoy cuddling under your blankets last night during that blast of cold weather? Don't forget that it snowed in Los Angeles less than a year ago (and will SCV be so lucky?). Maybe this is Los Angeles' way of saying hello to Beckham with a little frosty cold treat. We're enjoying it. After all, some of us are transplants. Besides the top stories that you probably already know by now, A.M....

Last week Michael Richards hired a mouthpiece because his mouth was clearly defective. PR genius Howard Rubenstein (David Blaine, Worldwide Pants, Danielle Steel, News Corp) was called in to put out the fire and one of the first things that he addressed was the issue that the actor most-commonly known as Kramer went off in April on an anti-Semitic rant while on-stage. Rubenstein basically said it was kosher because Richards "is Jewish. He's not...

Now we're very confused. On Tuesday we reported that the Jewish Journal had written that the former Seinfeld star Michael Richards was not a member of the tribe. But this afternoon we read in Gothamist that the actor's newly hired PR man says that Richards is indeed Jewish. All of this stems from a new allegation that Richards once went on an anti-Semetic tirade on some audience members at The Improv in April. "He is...