Jews Blacks

An American family that converted to Conservative Judaism has received temporary Israeli visas after being refused entry into the Jewish state in another flare-up in the dispute between Israel's Orthodox establishment and non-Orthodox Judaism. Elezar Yisrael, his wife and six children arrived in Israel on May 12. After first being denied entry, they were given 30-day visas.

An e-mail alleging anti-Semitic remarks by the local leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference set off a weeklong firestorm in the Jewish community that was only beginning to cool Friday. The e-mail was sent to friends April 4 by Jewish philanthropist Daphna Ziman after she attended an awards ceremony that day sponsored by the Western Province of Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically African American fraternity. She described the Rev.

The West Los Angeles Jewish community has joined the hunt for those responsible for the recent rash of church burnings across the nation. "An attack against a church is an attack against us, our synagogues, our places of worship," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Wednesday.

Few subjects are more charged in contemporary society than relations between American blacks and American Jews. In the 1960s, Jews were at the forefront of white efforts to aid the cause of civil rights, while in the 1990s, black-Jewish relations were a touchstone of ethnic and racial tensions. The animosity between Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, and the violence between Hasidic Jews and neighboring African Americans in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The shared cultural history of Jews and blacks will be the focus of the brotherhood breakfast of the Valley Jewish Business Leaders Assn. on Thursday. "We will speak a lot about the necessity for economic development within the San Fernando Valley, especially in reference to affirmative action, how it relates to the minority community and that economic development," said the Rev. Zedar Broadous, who will address the group. Broadous, president of the Valley branch of the National Assn.

Since the destruction of their temple in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago, religious Jews have refrained from playing music on the anniversary of that calamitous event. This year, when that anniversary coincided with the anniversary of the race riots that engulfed the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, a small group of ultra-Orthodox Hasidim broke with ancient tradition.

Hate leaflets targeting Jews and African Americans were dumped at two south Orange County public schools early Wednesday, less than a week after someone sent anti-Semitic e-mail to 400 employees at nearby Irvine Valley College. The latest incidents shocked school officials, who denounced the actions. "It's cowardly," said Jack Clement, principal of Lake Forest's El Toro High School, one of the campuses hit Wednesday. "These are random acts, and we were the unlucky recipients."

Now that several Jewish legislators have publicly assailed California's Assembly Speaker, Willie Brown, for agreeing to co-chair Jesse Jackson's national presidential campaign, it is appropriate to look with introspection at the causes of Jewish hostility to Jackson.

Violence flared Tuesday night between residents and police officers in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, one day after a fatal car accident spawned retaliatory violence that left one man dead. Fifteen police officers were injured when youths hurled bottles and rocks at lines of police in riot gear, Deputy Police Commissioner Suzanne Trazoff said. Three police vehicles were damaged, including one set afire, she said. Two stores were looted and one was set ablaze, she said.

Jewish leaders and representatives of the NAACP and a gay-and-lesbian rights group in Ventura County on Monday denounced a U. S. Supreme Court decision that cast doubt on the constitutionality of state and local "hate crime" laws. In a unanimous decision, the justices struck down a St. Paul, Minn., ordinance banning cross burning, swastika displays and related expressions of racial bias, declaring that the local law violated the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment.

Hate leaflets targeting Jews and African Americans were dumped at two south Orange County public schools early Wednesday, less than a week after someone sent anti-Semitic e-mail to 400 employees at nearby Irvine Valley College. The latest incidents shocked school officials, who denounced the actions. "It's cowardly," said Jack Clement, principal of Lake Forest's El Toro High School, one of the campuses hit Wednesday. "These are random acts, and we were the unlucky recipients."

An American family that converted to Conservative Judaism has received temporary Israeli visas after being refused entry into the Jewish state in another flare-up in the dispute between Israel's Orthodox establishment and non-Orthodox Judaism. Elezar Yisrael, his wife and six children arrived in Israel on May 12. After first being denied entry, they were given 30-day visas.

The West Los Angeles Jewish community has joined the hunt for those responsible for the recent rash of church burnings across the nation. "An attack against a church is an attack against us, our synagogues, our places of worship," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Wednesday.

The shared cultural history of Jews and blacks will be the focus of the brotherhood breakfast of the Valley Jewish Business Leaders Assn. on Thursday. "We will speak a lot about the necessity for economic development within the San Fernando Valley, especially in reference to affirmative action, how it relates to the minority community and that economic development," said the Rev. Zedar Broadous, who will address the group. Broadous, president of the Valley branch of the National Assn.

Upstairs at the First Christian Church, where families awaited word of their loved ones, there was little talk of God. Then a chaplain began to help notify a family that a baby had died in the federal building bombing; the baby's two grandparents were missing and presumed dead. It was, the chaplain said offhandedly, one of God's miracles that so many people had survived.

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles returned a seven-count indictment Thursday against a 20-year-old Long Beach man, charging him with conspiracy to make and use bombs in a campaign of terror against prominent Jewish and African-American people and organizations. The suspect, Christopher David Fisher, is accused of leading a group of young white supremacists who called themselves the Fourth Reich Skinheads.

Few subjects are more charged in contemporary society than relations between American blacks and American Jews. In the 1960s, Jews were at the forefront of white efforts to aid the cause of civil rights, while in the 1990s, black-Jewish relations were a touchstone of ethnic and racial tensions. The animosity between Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam and Jewish groups such as the Anti-Defamation League, and the violence between Hasidic Jews and neighboring African Americans in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Admit it. The only reason you're reading this now is because you got lost on your way to the funnies. Such is the secret anxiety of every writer in this section of the newspaper: the fear that most readers only skim their articles on their way to spending a few quality moments with Mary Worth, Beetle Bailey and Mr. Boffo. Now along comes the Oct. 5 Entertainment Weekly to further undermine any illusions about what really matters in a newspaper features section.

A comprehensive state report concluded Tuesday that Mayor David N. Dinkins "failed to act in a timely and decisive manner" to protect lives and property during a four-day outbreak of racial violence in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in August, 1991. The rioting--between Hasidic Jews and blacks in the long-troubled community--was the worst in New York City in more than two decades.

As Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition moves forward with its national campaign to attack liberalism at the grass roots, his organization is touting its controversial school board campaign in New York City as a high-water mark of religious and ethnic cooperation. At a news conference here Wednesday, black and Jewish leaders weighed in with endorsements of the coalition's campaign of indirect support for candidates who bring "traditional values" into the schools.