It was centered in Chino Hills and was a magnitude 5.4. The quake was about seven miles deep.
Las Vegas felt this.
I think this is the biggest earthquake I’ve felt.
I wasn’t here for the big Northridge one in January 1994.
Schools are evacuating.
It’s rare to have a substantive foreshock to a bigger earthquake.
I checked latimes.com at 11:54, 12 minutes after the quake, and the site said its server is down.
The Los Angeles basin is like a big bowl of jello and we feel these things harder than those in the mountains, even if they are closer to the epiccenter.
My friend Crissy Moran works about a mile from me on Wilshire Blvd. She reports: "I just ran down 8 flights of stairs. I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my life! I might move back to FL w/ the hurricanes."
According to this Cal tech scientist on TV, the odds are 5% that any earthquake in California is a foreshock. If this was a foreshock, the odds are the big earthquake would happen within a few hours.
Serious damage in California won’t happen until an earthquake hits about 6.0 on the richter scale.
Last July, just after ERSNew.com starting posting on the web, the story of Los Angele’s Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa having an “affair” with local Telemundo anchorwoman Mirthala Salinas splashed onto the internet first, followed by the traditional mainstream news media, jumping on the bandwagon. ERS was right there with them. Our stories and coverage of the scandal put our fledgling web news site on the media map. Nearly overnight we went from ERS who?, to being a primary media source for major media outlets from Los Angeles to London.
For over three months we investigated, reported and sometimes even went looking for the Mayor’s girlfriend Mirthala Salinas. We never found her, although we came close many times. Considering ERS is a two man operation in the field and only part time at that, we did a lot better than news organizations with a lot more people and a lot more resources. Ultimately Mirthala Salinas, the once rising star in Spanish language TV News in Los Angeles lost her job. She and the Mayor also split shortly thereafter. She later got a job in Spanish radio after the furor over the entire scandal died down.
As the radio broadcaster Paul Harvey would say, now the “rest of the story”
During the entire Mirthala and the Mayor or “Summer of Love” as the scandal became known, Ms. Salinas was living only a few blocks from where I was lived in Studio City, CA. I own a home there. She owned a condo. We even did a story on her purchasing the condo from one of the Mayor’s supporters, a key figure in a political PR and lobby firm. Even the owner of the local corner market where we both shopped on occasion told me Mirthala regularly showed up to shop there. I never saw her, never happened to run into her. All that changed a few Saturdays ago.
Many months ago I moved from Studio City, back to the more native confines of Orange County — back behind the “Orange Curtain” as Los Angelenos like to say. Since then I’ve been trying to rent my house in Studio City. So far no luck, but prospects are looking up. Over the past few months I’ve been holding open houses on Saturday’s to show the house to prospective renters. This past Saturday I had an unexpected visitor who was looking for new place to live. Her name was Mirthala Salinas.
That particular Saturday morning I waited for the many callers who had made “appointments” to see the house. They came and they went, some loved the house, others just came and went. Then I opened the door and there she was. Mirthala, the woman I had been seeking to talk with for so many months. I had tried her on the phone before, but she never called me back. She was there with her new husband, a man named “Yani” who I also recognized.
They had no idea who I was. They came in and I showed them around the house, giving them the “tour” I’ve now perfected over the many weekends. Mirthala was very cordial and friendly. She was quite shy and very polite. She asked me about the house and I showed her around. Her new husband “Yani” seemed interested; he asked me if I was possibly interested in selling the house or doing an option to buy it. He explained that they lived in a condo nearby and how hard it was to get a loan to buy a house. When they were ready to go Mirthala asked me a few questions more about the house and took down my number in her cell phone to get back to me if they were interested. I haven’t heard from them since.
Nonetheless, if Mirthala and Yani read this, nothing personal, it’s just my work as a reporter I’m sure you’ll understand. Nonetheless, either way the house is still for rent and I am interested in selling if you want to talk. If not, it was nice finally meeting you and good luck with your new marriage.
Mirthala, give me a call you’ve now got my cell phone number, don’t be shy, I’d still like to interview you for ERSNews about that whole dating the Mayor thing last summer!
Orthodox rabbis from the United States and Israel intend to set up an Orthodox court system as an alternative to Israel’s rabbinical courts and to the rigorous norms for conversion to Judaism imposed on U.S. rabbis.
Rabbi Marc Angel, past president of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), and Rabbi Avraham Weiss spearheaded the initiative following Israel’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar’s restrictions on Orthodox conversions in America.
Angel and Weiss founded the International Rabbinical Fellowship (IRF) to set up an alternative Orthodox courts system, which will also have a branch in Israel.
Several prominent Israeli rabbis have joined this initiative, prompted by the conversion crisis in Israel.
Some three months ago several Israeli rabbis attended the IRF’s founding conference. Among them were Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, of the West Bank settlement Efrat, Rabbi Yuval Sherlo and Rabbi Seth (Shaul) Farber, founder and director of ITIM, a non-profit organization that helps potential converts.
Weiss told Haaretz this week that the new organization was founded not because of the conversion crisis in Israel or the U.S. but due to the need for a "free discussion among Orthodox rabbis."
He conceded, however, that conversion will be at the top of the organization’s agenda.
Riskin was more resolved. "This rabbinical court system is required to deal with conversions and divorce, two issues whose handling by the Supreme Rabbinical Court is appalling. We plan to set up several branches, including in Israel, or operate a mobile rabbinical court that will hold hearings in various places around the world as required," he said.
Weiss said he did not believe the Chief Rabbinate would boycott the new rabbinical courts’ conversions "because we have numerous important rabbis behind us."
Most useful will be “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History” written and edited by Andrew G. Bostom (Prometheus Books, $39.95).
Bostom’s book is both exhaustive and exhausting, a tome of some 766 tall pages with small print. Clearly he intended it to be a reference work.
Bostom’s almost 200-page first chapter, “A Survey of Its [i.e., Islamic anti-Semitism’s] Theological-Juridical Origins and Historical Manifestations,” is oppressive reading, and not only because of its grim and depressing content.
The text is dryly written and poorly organized. Reading it is like trying to read an encyclopedia. Readers seeking a clear and easy-to-read summary of the subject are advised to examine instead the chapter “Islamic Antisemitism” in the Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin book “Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism.”
But as a reference tool, Bostom’s book is overwhelmingly successful. His own chapter marshals quotations and documentation – bolstered by nearly 1,000 footnotes – that should remove all doubt about how central anti-Semitism has been and still is to Islam and to the civilization built around it.
And if that isn’t enough, the rest of the book is an anthology of sources and documents that clinch the case. Bostom provides:
• Anti-Semitic passages from the Koran, the hadith (collected anecdotes about the Muslim prophet Mohammed’s life), the sira (early biographies of Mohammed).
• Anti-Semitic essays, speeches and excerpted book passages by Muslim scholars, theologians and thinkers from the Middle Ages to the present.
• Scholarly, witness and journalistic accounts of Muslim persecutions of and discrimination against Jews over more than 1,000 years.
I caught Dr. Bostom lecturing on his book a few weeks ago. His public speaking style, or lack of it, is every bit as oppressive as his book. During question-time however, when he stopped reading his speech and started speaking extemporaneously, he sounded almost human.
Uri Zedek is a burgeoning Orthodox social action group paralleling Maagalei Zedek in Israel. It insists that kashrut and yashrut, ritual concern and ethical sensitivity, go hand in hand. I am proud to say that one of the group’s leaders, Shmuly Yanklowitz, is a beloved student of mine; and in the classes that I give on Yoreh Deah to our Ohr Torah Stone rabbinical students I constantly stress the biblical emphasis on compassion as a major source for the laws of kashrut ("Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother’s milk," "For the soul is the blood of the animal," etc.), as well as the teachings of Rav Kook in his Sefer Hazon regarding the moral ambiguity in eating meat.
Hence when Shmuly informed me of the findings concerning Agriprocessors, and when I could not find a clear denial by the leaders of the company, I gave him the right to sign me on to his petition (I did not actually sign it myself). When a leading rabbi, whom I deeply respect, then told me he felt Agriprocessors were being maligned, I asked him to please supply me with corroborating facts, and I would publish a retraction.
I am pleased to report that before I received those facts, Shmuly found the leadership of Agriprocessors cooperating and attempting to right whatever wrongs were going on in the plant. For that reason Uri Zedek removed the boycott and is granting Agriprocessors every possibility of correcting the situation.
It is certainly to the credit of Agriprocessors that it is behaving in such a forthright manner. A meatpacking plant that is strengthened – in every area of halachic concern – can only result in a true sanctification of God’s name and a heightened appreciation of the all-encompassing quality of Jewish Law.
It’s Sunday morning in the rabbi’s office, and in his hands Goldberg holds his new 494-page book, Hallel Hakohen. Goldberg has written other books. As editor of the Intermountain Jewish News, he writes all the time, in English and Hebrew. But this book is different: It took six years of his life, 12 drafts and thousands of discarded pages, now packed away in boxes, stacked floor to ceiling.
On Sunday night, Goldberg’s feat was honored at the East Denver Orthodox Synagogue in a siyyum ceremony, which is done at the completion of any task.
The task? It’s a journey not to the Himalayas or into a mathematical conundrum, but deep inside the mind of a brilliant 18th century Jewish scholar and mystic known as Vilna Gaon (the genius of Vilna).
"The Gaon" wrote the definitive treatise on Jewish law, which is based on the 613 laws God gave to Moses. Trouble is, the Gaon wrote in fragments, in a kind of code, which hordes of scholars have been trying to unlock ever since.
"Everybody knew he was an unbelievable genius," Goldberg says, "but nobody could understand what he was saying!"
Goldberg decided to try to unravel one of the Gaon’s 1,500 or so chapters.
"I entered this project with extraordinary naivete," he grins, with all the boyish enthusiasm of an adventurer tackling a sheer icewall. "You know what I thought at the beginning? I’m running a newspaper; I don’t have time anymore to write books . . ."
He tackled the chapter on mikvahs, purification pools prescribed by Jewish law for women’s monthly ritual bathing. In a new Orthodox community, a mikvah is built before the first synagogue and is essential to Jewish family life, Goldberg, an adviser to a newly built Denver mikvah, explained to me in 2000.
Almost all of Britain’s social problems are caused by a loss of religion, the Chief Rabbi told Anglican bishops last night.
Societies without religion disintegrated and people succumbed to depression, stress, eating disorders and alcohol and drug abuse, Sir Jonathan Sacks told 650 bishops and their spouses in Canterbury.
Sir Jonathan, the first Chief Rabbi to address the Lambeth Conference, said that a society that lost its religion lost “graciousness”. “Relationships break down. Marriage grows weak. Families become fragile. Communities atrophy. And the result is that people feel vulnerable and alone.”
He continued: “That is where we are.” He said that mankind was “living through one of the most fateful ages of change since Homo sapiens first set foot on Earth”.
Globalisation and the new information technologies were fragmenting the world “into ever smaller sects of the like-minded”. At the same time, the fast flow of information was forcing people together as never before.
The conference is struggling to find a way to prevent the fragmentation of the worldwide Anglican Communion over such issues as biblical authority and the place of gay people in society.
I heard a lot of perplexing things during two years of Daf Yomi but none more perplexing than the case of the man who fell off a roof and into sex with a woman.
What an acrobat, I thought.
Then there’s the holy and horny rabbi who comes into town and seeks a wife for the night.
I could understand the desire but it didn’t fit my view of acceptable rabbinic behavior.
Despite his age, Prof. Breuer was always prompt in answering all of my questions, and I will be forever grateful. I am also in his debt for another reason. No doubt realizing that he would not be able to write about everything in his files, he offered to give me unpublished material relating to the controversy over the talmudic commentaries of R. Joseph Zvi Duenner, chief rabbi of Amsterdam. Needless to say, I was thrilled, and I thank my friend, Aharon Wexler, who went to his house, picked up the material, and mailed it to me. I hope to be able to publish it before too long.
For those who don’t know, Duenner’s approach anticipated that of Halivni in some respects, primarily in the assumption that the answers given by the amoraim, while binding for halakhic purposes, are not necessarily the best explanation of the Mishnah. Duenner also pointed to a couple of passages in the Talmud — both of which are in the current daf yomi tractate — which he believed are interpolations from the heretics, intended to mock the rabbis. He claimed that the rabbis would never have discussed the case of one who falls off a roof and while landing on a woman has sex with her (a highly improbable scenario, to put it mildly), or that a holy sage would come into a new town and announce that he was looking for a wife for the night (Yevamot 37b, 54a). According to Duenner, these texts are the product of those intending to mock the rabbis, and were unfortunately taken by later scholars as authentic.
Breuer’s grandfather, Rabbi S. Z. Breuer, was one of the leading opponents of Duenner, going so far as to threaten to place him into herem if he didn’t stop publishing his hiddushim, and put the ones already in print into genizah. Duenner refused, and the threat of a herem was never carried out. His hiddushim were later reprinted by Mossad ha-Rav Kook, and some unpublished material was also included in this new edition.
Professor Isadore Twersky once mentioned in class that although this book’s title should have mentioned Maimonides, in 1929 Harvard University Press would not publish a book with such a title. In this regard, he also called attention to the title of Sarah Heller Wilensky’s doctoral dissertation, “The Teaching of Issac Arama in the Framework of Philonic Philosophy.” This, too, is a false title, and the subject of the dissertation is seen more clearly by the title of the Hebrew book: R. Yitzhak Arama u-Mishnato. As Twersky explained, Harvard’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations did not want a dissertation on a Spanish Jewish thinker unless it was given a more universal theme, hence the “Philonic Philosophy,” an allusion to Wolfson’s theory of philosophy, but this was put in just for show. Incidentally, Fisher’s edition of Or ha-Shem is responsible for my taking credit as being the only student ever to have made Prof. Twersky laugh in class. It was the 1990-1991 year and we were studying Crescas in his seminar. Twersky would often ask me to read, during the course of which he would often correct my pronounciation. When Fisher’s edition of Crescas appeared I immediately bought it and brought it to class. When Twersky called upon me to read, I replied that this time he wa not going to be able to correct my pronounciation. He asked, “why not?” to which I replied, holding up my new book, that I just purchased a new edition of Or ha-Shem, and it is “menikid.” This was too much for even the eternally staid Twersky, and he too was brought to a chuckle. (From inyana de-yoma, someone asked me if Noah Feldman studied with Prof. Twersky. He was not in any of Twersky’s seminars that year. He was, however, in Prof. Septimus’ seminar as well as that of Prof. Leiman, who was at Harvard in fall 1989 as a visiting scholar. In those years, long before he became famous [now, notorious] I would often tell people that one of my fellow students, an undergraduate taking graduate classes, was perhaps the most brilliant person I knew – a much better head than mine – and I have known many intellectual heavyweights. Yet I have read some people, who certainly don’t know him, describing Feldman as an expert in Shas and poskim. This is laughable. He has a great mind, and can grasp a Tosafot quicker than almost anyone, but he never spent any serious time in limudei kodesh after high school. I think my father best summed matters up after reading his article. He said: “Feldman may be very smart, but he isn’t very wise.”
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)
