Pico-Robertson seems to have more homeless every month. I guess they know they will be well-treated in this religious neighborhood.

Albie Cohen emails:

Ever since I moved here three years ago, the trash on Pico — especially east of Robertson — has reminded me of winters in Montreal. Everyone talks and complains about it, but it never goes away.

Boaz Hepner wants to change that.

So when I met him the other day at Pico Café, it didn’t surprise me that one of the first things he did was take me for a walk. The more we went east and the closer we got to his shul, B’nai David-Judea Congregation, the more trash we saw.

The funny thing is, Hepner, a frum, single Jew born and raised in Pico-Robertson, is more of a social animator than a social activist. His claim to fame in the neighborhood is a Yahoo social group called Camp Boaz, with about 350 “friends and friends of friends” for whom he plans regular activities, like theater outings, co-ed softball and Shabbat potluck lunches in his backyard.

A few months ago, he had an “aha!” moment. He was walking along Pico with an empty soda can and he realized, block after block, that he had no place to put it. It took about five messy blocks before he found a trash can.

That’s when his “clean-up Pico” journey began.

There are so many ways in which we can express our support for Israel at this time of need. Below, please find the items that our Israel Action Committee and I want to highlight for this evening. These items are:
(1) Tomorrow's Rally, (2) Our upcoming Annual Israel Appeal, and (3) Contacting our Public Officials

(1) RALLY

Date: Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Time: 12 pm – 2:00 pm
Location: Federal Building in Westwood L.A.
Street: Veteran and Wilshire
StandWithUs, Bnei Akiva and the ILC in cooperation with the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, and Jewish Day Schools across Los Angeles, invite you to STAND IN SUPPORT OF ISRAEL's RIGHT TO DEFEND ITSELF AGAINST HAMAS

(2) B'NAI DAVID-JUDEA ANNUAL ISRAEL APPEAL

Date: Saturday, January 31, 2009
As you know, it is through this annual appeal that we, as a shul community, support vital organizations in Israel. This year's designated recipients include an organization that provides rehabilitative services to wounded soldiers, and one that provides social and economic support to Sderot. (The other recipients are programs addressing poverty and social ills in Israel). Over the coming Shabbatot you will be able to find pamphlets about the various recipient organizations for this year. Let's begin now to think about how we will be able to respond to the appeal on the 31st.

If you are interested in also making an immediate, direct contribution to an organization that is directly involved in the present crisis, we recommend
Operation Take a Break which provides a respite from the conditions that residents of the South are living under. www.connectionsisrael.com/donate
or

Package From Home which delivers care packages to IDF Soldiers in Gaza www.apackagefromhome.org/

(3) POLITICAL SUPPORT – SENATORS AND CONGRESSMAN

This is a VERY EASY way to email elected officials regarding Israel. Using the link below, provided by AIPAC, you simply type in your name and address and an email letter is sent to your Senators (in California Boxer and Feinstein) and Congressman (for most people Waxman). In addition, the cite then lets you type in the name of other email addresses to let those people lend their support. It takes less than a minute.
http://capwiz.com/aipac/issues/alert/?alertid=12364041&type=CO

POLITICAL SUPPORT – MAYOR VILLARAIGOSA
Update from Elliot Brandt at AIPAC :
I've heard from the Mayor's office, and his staff let me know that they have received countless calls of appreciation and gratitude. For as much they have gotten calls that were critical of the Mayor's support for Israel, as of now the positive calls far outweigh the negative ones. In speaking with the Mayor's staff, they asked that going forward, we please call (213) 978-0721, as this is a number that will allow them to handle what is becoming a very large volume of calls.

B'nai David-Judea
Israel Action Committee
310-276-9269
admin@bnaidavid.com

The thing that stuck with me about my liberal buddies in those years was their extraordinary venom toward the Bush administration. Every cell in their bodies oozed contempt for the "reckless cowboy" who had become the sad emblem of their country. They craved a change in the White House more than a heroin junkie craves another fix.

Now sweep wipe two years later, and I'm sitting at a Shabbat table in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood with a group of politically savvy Orthodox Jews, and, not surprisingly, I'm getting a whole different take on who should occupy the White House.

Clearly, most of my Orthodox brethren are in the Republican camp. There are significant exceptions, of course, especially at the more liberal B'nai David-Judea Congregation, but it's fair to say that the majority of Orthodox voters are an ideological world away from my liberal buddies at the Urth Caffé.

Join us this Shabbat (Aug. 23) afternoon for Mincha @ 6:30 PM followed by Seuda Shelishit with guest speaker Rav Menachem Leibtag:

Rabbi Menachem Leibtag. founder of the Tanach Study Center (www.tanach.org), is one of pioneers of Torah Education via the internet. His weekly essays on Parshat Ha'shavua, read by literally thousands of subscribers world wide, introduce a vibrant analytical approach to thematic study of the Bible and reflect over twenty-five years of experience as a teacher at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel. Rabbi Leibtag teaches as well at Yeshivat Shalaavim, Midreshet Lindenbaum, and at the Gruss Institute of Yeshiva University in Jerusalem.

Adeena Bleich and former Assembly Speaker
Bob Hertzberg at a bar mitzvah in Hancock Park.

If you want to really annoy Adeena Bleich, just ask her what it feels like to be a young Orthodox woman running for City Council. I know, because when we sat down recently for lunch at Shiloh's, the first thing I asked her is what it felt like to be a young Orthodox woman running for City Council.

She rolled her eyes like my teenage daughter Shanni does when I show off my knowledge of the latest music.

It's clear that Bleich is leery of being stereotyped, or worse, becoming some kind of political curiosity whose main calling card is her youth (she just turned 31), gender and Orthodox religion.

What she is, she says, is something a lot less dramatic: A hard-working individual who knows how local politics work and who wants to bring a new, practical attitude to serving the people.

All the people, of course.

Although she estimates that nearly half of the registered voters in her 5th District (which cuts a wide swath from West Los Angeles through Westwood, Pico-Robertson, the Fairfax area and right up to Sherman Oaks) are Jewish, she's savvy enough to realize that Jews alone won't carry her to victory. So Bleich, who is single and belongs to three Modern Orthodox shuls in Pico-Robertson (Young Israel of Century City, Beth Jacob Congregation and B'nai David Judea) wants to reach out.

She's not exactly a novice at this game. She spent years as City Council Deputy to Councilman Jack Weiss— and was knee-deep in the local dramas of neighborhood groups, pro-business groups and the maze of City Hall politics. She was also in the trenches with former Speaker of the California Assembly Bob Hertzberg when he ran for mayor of Los Angeles.

So she knows the lingo, and she also knows that she's up against some serious competition — from, among others, former city councilman Paul Koretz and neighborhood activist Ron Galperin. But she has no qualms about asking for your vote, because, as she says, she's got some great things cooking for your district and your neighborhood.

Candlelighting: 7:49 PM.

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Kabbalat Shabbat

@ 6:30

Alex Fax

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Parashat Balak

???

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Zman Kriat Shma:  9:25

Teen Minyan In the Beit Medrash

@ 9:15 AM followed by Teen (only) Kiddush

sponsored this week by

Leon & Leila Cohen in honor of their son

Avi's Bar Mitzvah Anniversary.

The homeless, elderly and poor of the Pico-Robertson district — 100 of them — held up white registration cards as they shuffled through the doors of B'nai David-Judea.

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, a man of 44 more prone to blue jeans than black suits, greeted each by name. One by one, he handed out $15 Ralphs gift cards to everyone except four newcomers who hadn't registered.

They swarmed him outside the synagogue after he finished with the others.

"Sir, I would like a gift card," said a man in a hooded sweat shirt.

"I'm sorry," Kanefsky answered.

"Sir, why can't you go back in there and get me a gift card?"

Kanefsky stood firm. "I can't do that," he said softly.

Like Jewish leaders elsewhere, this Modern Orthodox rabbi has long exhorted his congregants to give tzedakah, or charity.

Providing for the poor, he says, is not only a mitzvah — a good deed — but a holy act and a religious obligation. The message frames the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, when worshipers are reminded that charity is among the deeds that can avert an evil decree in the year to come.

But Kanefsky, who figures he has handed out $75,000 worth of Ralphs cards to the needy of his Westside neighborhood over the last 11 1/2 years, has found himself wrestling lately with the limits of goodwill.

How much, he wonders, is he helping when the demand only keeps outstripping his resources? And how does he continue to help the poor without turning his synagogue into a sanctuary for the homeless — possibly unsettling some of his parishioners?

"We have to have boundaries," said Kanefsky, who introduced the sign-up procedure after 200 people appeared one morning last fall, leading to pushing and shoving. "Otherwise, we have chaos."