Ralph Alpert

Ralph Alpert, a retired Southern California businessman who became a Talmudic scholar and a campus crusader for Orthodox Judaism, has died at 78. Alpert died Monday at Tarzana Regional Medical Center after suffering from liver cancer. Founder of the Young Israel Synagogue of Northridge and Chizuk L'limud Torah, a foundation to aid Jewish students, Alpert was credited by local Jewish leaders with dramatically increasing student interest in the religion at Cal State Northridge.

Ralph Alpert, a retired Southern California businessman who became a Talmudic scholar and a campus crusader for Orthodox Judaism, has died at 78. Alpert died Monday at Tarzana Regional Medical Center after suffering from liver cancer. Founder of the Young Israel Synagogue of Northridge and Chizuk L'limud Torah, a foundation to aid Jewish students, Alpert was credited by local Jewish leaders with dramatically increasing student interest in the religion at Cal State Northridge.

About 73,000 donors, each giving less than $100, made up nearly three-quarters of the $890,262 collected through July 15 by the Voter Revolt organization, sponsor of the insurance initiative backed by Ralph Nader, according to contribution reports filed Tuesday. The small gifts to Proposition 103 totaled $647,751 of the $679,411 given directly to the campaign in contributions. Another $210,851 came in loans, some from philanthropists and some from the campaign's consultant, Bill Zimmerman.

On the day before the start of spring semester last week, Rabbi Aharon Simkin spent five hours on the Cal State Northridge campus immersing pots and food preparation utensils in rapidly boiling water, washing down metal work surfaces with equally hot water and subjecting knives to the intense heat of blow-torches.

Richard A. Macales still remembers being one of the few Jewish children during the late 1950s in his Northridge neighborhood of ranch-style homes and orange groves. "Our family definitely felt different, because we were an island of Yiddishkeit" or Jewishness, he said, "in an area that had very little Jewish communal life." Macales, 34, was born there, went to the public schools from kindergarten to college there and still lives there with his wife, Beverly, and their two children.

On the day before the start of spring semester last week, Rabbi Aharon Simkin spent five hours on the Cal State Northridge campus immersing pots and food preparation utensils in rapidly boiling water, washing down metal work surfaces with equally hot water and subjecting knives to the intense heat of blowtorches.