BUSINESS
March 29, 2012 | By Jerry Hirsch
Is this a buy sign for bread crumbs? Billionaire Warren Buffett purchased bread crumbs -- and just about anything else that has wheat and the other grains forbidden to Jews during the observance of Passover -- from a local rabbi, Jonathan Gross of Beth Israel Synagogue in Omaha, Neb. It is ritual that goes on worldwide in Jewish communities. Families designate rabbis to find a non-Jew such as Buffett to purchase their chametz, or food made with leavening, before the holiday.
NATIONAL
March 14, 2012 | By Amy Hubbard
This post has been corrected. See note below for details. Jew Pond likely will not be Jew Pond much longer. Mont Vernon, N.H., voted Tuesday night to petition to have the moniker changed. It was not a unanimous vote. Feelings were mixed on the subject in the small New England town. "Here in New England, there's a lot of history and tradition," Rich Masters, health officer for Mont Vernon, told The Times on Wednesday, "and a lot of folks highly value that.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 5, 2012
Steve Bridges Impersonator of George W. Bush Steve Bridges, 48, a comic actor and impersonator who was best known for his mimicry of President George W. Bush and appeared alongside the chief executive at the 2006 White House Correspondents Assn. dinner, was found dead Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. Bridges had recently returned home from China, where he had been performing, said his brother Phillip. He appeared to have died of natural causes, but an autopsy is scheduled.
OPINION
February 17, 2012
Taking baptisms too far Re "Mormon Church apologizes," Feb. 15 I am insulted to my core by the Mormon Church's posthumous baptism of Jews, including the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. My father's family was totally decimated by the Nazis, and so was part of my mother's family. Are we living in the 21st century or in the Dark Ages? This is cynicism at its highest form. It also exposes the Mormon Church as a lying entity. In the past, the church promised that this ghoulish practice of baptizing Jewish Holocaust victims would stop, but it didn't.
ENTERTAINMENT
December 9, 2011 | By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
"In Darkness" is a pitiless glimpse into the inferno, into hell not only on earth but below it. Based on a true story, it takes you into the sewers of the Polish city of Lvov during World War II, a place where a group of Jews lived for more than a year under circumstances that are almost unimaginable. But, as directed by the veteran Agnieszka Holland, "In Darkness" is not a typical Holocaust film. For one thing, even more than in her 1990 film "Europa, Europa," Holland's directing style is cool, almost dispassionate.
WORLD
October 16, 2011 | By Benjamin Haas, Los Angeles Times
As a child growing up in Kaifeng in central China, Jin Jin was constantly reminded of her unusual heritage. "We weren't supposed to eat pork, our graves were different from other people, and we had a mezuza on our door," said the 25-year-old, referring to the prayer scroll affixed to doorways of Jewish homes. Her father told her of a faraway land called Israel that he said was her rightful home, she recalls. But "we didn't know anything about daily prayers or the weekly reading of the Torah.