Jewish Federation

I commend Chely Wright's courage in coming out ["Ready to Face the Music," by Geoff Boucher, May 7]. If she has, indeed, committed career suicide, at least she will have gained an authentic life. Country music fans who choose to abandon her abandon themselves in their shallow judgment. The line that struck me most from the article is Chely's: "I have been a good steward of my life." I suspect if there is anyone at the pearly gates when she arrives, this is what they will ask, not, "Who did you sleep with?"

MOSCOW - Unique not only in its high-tech content but also in its political importance, a museum of Jewish history and culture opened to the public Sunday in Moscow, the capital of a nation beset by anti-Semitism for more than two centuries. Several hundred visitors filed into the more than 90,000-square-foot former bus garage and found themselves immersed in a lesson in tolerance. "The opening of such a museum in Moscow is a qualitatively new stage of Jewish life in Russia," said Alexander Boroda, president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia.

Charles Karp of Newport Beach has been elected president of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, the central organizing body and fund-raising arm of the local Jewish community. Karp, managing director of CDK Capital Holdings, served as major gifts chairman for the 1999 Jewish Federation Annual Campaign. The campaign raised $2.1 million for Jewish community services in Orange County, Israel and around the world.

Pamela Geller, the controversial author and activist, was set to deliver a lecture Sunday morning to the Zionist Organization of America that she had given many times before, billed by organizers as a revelation of the "root cause of war in the Middle East. " But instead of taking her place before the few dozen people inside the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, Geller and those who had come to see her milled around the sidewalk on Wilshire Boulevard. The Jewish Federation, just hours earlier, canceled the event.

Thousands of Holocaust survivors and the families of those who perished may be eligible to receive term or total life insurance money thought lost in the war. The Jewish Federation will sponsor a workshop tonight at the Milken Community Campus to explain how to track down unknown or forgotten insurance policies. "This provides a broad picture of what's going on," said Marcia Reines Josephy, director and curator of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

About 2,000 volunteers were expected to phone an estimated 50,000 potential donors Sunday during the Jewish Federation's annual "Super Sunday," its biggest single fundraising event of the year. "This constitutes about 10% of our annual campaign," Deborah Dragon, the federation's vice president of public relations, said of the phone calls made from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. from three locations throughout Los Angeles County.

More than 500 volunteers are expected to participate in the fourth annual "Tikkun L.A.," an event organized by the Jewish Federation to distribute food and gifts at 30 sites on Christmas. Tikkun means "repair" in Hebrew, co-chairwoman Monique Maas Gibbons said. "Part of being Jewish is being responsible for your community, Jews and non-Jews alike," Gibbons said. Volunteers will gather at the Westside Pavilion at 11:30 a.m.

In its 18th annual fund-raiser Sunday, volunteers for the Jewish Federation called about 50,000 Los Angeles-area residents, hoping to drum up $4 million in donations for its community and international services. Local and state political leaders, including county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Assembly Speaker-elect Antonio Villaraigosa and Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, made some morning calls for the organization during the "Super Sunday Phone-A-Thon," which ran from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

In an effort to preserve a historic synagogue, the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles has announced a $15,000 grant to be used for the landmark Breed Street Shul. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the synagogue Thursday as part of the Save America's Treasures campaign, which seeks to preserve America's historical sites. The Jewish Federation grant will be used to install a temporary roof covering for the shul, which was closed in 1993 and was damaged in last winter's storms.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles collected pledges totaling more than $4.4 million during its "Super Sunday" effort, the nonprofit organization's largest annual fundraising event, officials said. The daylong fundraising drive, relying on more than 2,000 volunteers phoning about 50,000 potential donors in the Los Angeles area, typically brings in about 10% of the annual donations to the regional federation.

This spring marks 70 years since Nazi Germany invaded what was then Yugoslavia, ultimately deporting and exterminating most of the Sephardic Jewish communities of the Balkans. In Sarajevo, a Muslim woman named Zeyneba Hardaga hid her Jewish friend Josef Kabilo from the Nazis and in 1985 was recognized by Israel as a "Righteous Gentile" whose acts had saved a Jewish life. Fast forward to 1994, the height of the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo, which killed 12,500 of the city's residents over three years.

I commend Chely Wright's courage in coming out ["Ready to Face the Music," by Geoff Boucher, May 7]. If she has, indeed, committed career suicide, at least she will have gained an authentic life. Country music fans who choose to abandon her abandon themselves in their shallow judgment. The line that struck me most from the article is Chely's: "I have been a good steward of my life." I suspect if there is anyone at the pearly gates when she arrives, this is what they will ask, not, "Who did you sleep with?"

Few newspapers or magazines escaped 2009 without losses and the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles suffered like many others. Operators of the weekly news outlet trimmed staff. They cut salaries 20%. Still, they worried whether the Journal — chronicler of a variety of topics including Torah portions, sexual mores, Mideast politics and entertainment industry chatter — would make it to its 25th anniversary next year. But by banking hard on two of the most robust growth trends in 21st century media — niche journalism and philanthropy — the Jewish Journal appears to have extended its life expectancy and expanded its coverage of Jewish life in Southern California.

Naveed Haq insists he's not the same man who stalked the halls of the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle in 2006, killing one woman and wounding five others to vent his hatred of Israel and Judaism. In a courtroom filled with victims and their relatives, Haq said Thursday that the man who attacked the federation was filled with rage from mental illness and the wrong medications. "I am not a man filled with hate," he said. "That Naveed Haq at the federation that July day was not the real Naveed Haq."

Hundreds more Jewish young people from Los Angeles will be able to take free educational trips to Israel because of a $700,000 donation from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles to the Birthright Israel Foundation, the two organizations have announced. The gift from the federation also leveraged a 2-to-1 match by the Adelson Family Foundation, making a total of $2.1 million available to help buy down the popular Birthright program's long wait list of Los Angeles applicants.

A King County jury on Tuesday found Naveed Haq guilty of aggravated first-degree murder in the 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, a verdict that carries an automatic life sentence. After hearing seven weeks of testimony, the jury also found Haq guilty of five counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of unlawful imprisonment and one count of malicious harassment, the state's hate-crime law. Haq opened fire in the center's offices, killing Pamela Waechter, 58. Several of the shooting victims who were in the courtroom hugged tearfully when the verdicts were announced.

The longtime chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles announced Monday that he will resign at the end of the year. John R. Fishel, 60, who has led the nonprofit agency for nearly 17 years and is credited by many with putting it on sound financial footing, said he wants to pursue other interests. He made the announcement at the federation's board of directors' meeting, surprising many in the room.

Herbert R. Bloch Jr., 92, a former senior executive with Federated Department stores who for several years was president of Bullock's department stores in Los Angeles, died Jan. 2 at a hospice in Cincinnati after a brief illness. Bloch spent 39 years with Federated, which is now Macy's Inc., serving in several positions at Shillito's department store in Cincinnati, including executive vice president, before moving west in 1973 to take the position at Bullock's (which is now defunct)