Rebecca Spence
By Rebecca Spence
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Culture Cosmetic Differences
When cosmetics queen Helena Rubinstein first opened her New York beauty salon on East 49th Street, her chief competitor, Elizabeth Arden, promptly moved her salon just four blocks away, to East 53rd Street. Years later, when the flamboyant Rubinstein, known as “Madame Rubinstein,” married a Georgian prince, Arden followed suit and tied the knot with…
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News UJC’s Future at Stake as Local Charities Call for Dramatic Cuts
United Jewish Communities, the national association of federated Jewish charities, is facing calls from a host of federation leaders for drastic cuts in next year’s budget. A combination of tough economic times and widespread dissatisfaction with UJC has led to the calls for change. At least one proposal would strip the national organization down to…
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News Plans To Move L.A. Community Library
For the past seven years, Larry Adler has made a habit of borrowing books and videos from the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles. He signs out Jewish cookbooks to feed his love of the culinary arts, religious books to enhance his knowledge of Jewish texts and children’s books to help teach his 11-year-old daughter…
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News Orthodox Look at Gay Nups Proposal
As the cultural divide over gay marriage deepens, two public intellectuals on opposite sides of the debate are floating a new proposal that could bridge the gap between religious conservatives — including Orthodox Jewish groups — and advocates for same-sex marriage. The compromise, proposed by Jonathan Rauch and David Blankenhorn, would grant federal civil union…
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News Protesters Rally Outside a Home as Debate Continues Over Best Get Tactics
On the day known as Ta’anit Esther — when observant Jews fast before Purim — more than 150 members of Los Angeles’s close-knit Orthodox community gathered for a protest rally outside the family home of a man they claim has refused to grant his wife a Jewish divorce, known as a get. They chanted and…
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News Once-Quiet Campuses See Surge in Anti-Israel Activism
When attendees at a recent symposium on “Human Rights and Gaza,” sponsored by the University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Near Eastern Studies, began chanting such slogans as “Zionism is Nazism,” it was not a typical scene for UCLA. While a handful of California campuses have notoriously grappled with heavy anti-Israel sentiment, at UCLA,…
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News In Iran, Baha’i Leaders Stand Accused of Spying for Israel
When Pooya Dayanim, a Los Angeles-based Iranian-Jewish activist, went public a decade ago with the case of 13 Jews jailed in Iran on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel, he based his strategy on that of the Baha’is, a religious minority long persecuted by the Iranian government. “When I decided to take the Shiraz 13…
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News Tikkun’s Founder: ‘I Have Cancer,’ Give to My Cause
When Michael Lerner, founder of Tikkun magazine, was recently diagnosed with lung cancer, he alerted his supporters in an e-mail message that went beyond delivering bad news. The message folded Lerner’s diagnosis in with a plea for supporters to devote more money and time to his cause, the Network of Spiritual Progressives. With a subject…
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