National News

Less than a day before the start of Passover, the phone rang at the Brooklyn home of Rabbi Yisroel Belsky. On the line were concerned members of the Rabbinical Council of California, a rabbinical association in Los Angeles that provides kosher certification, among other services.

I join people here in the United States, in Israel, and around the world in observing Holocaust Remembrance Day. Today, we honor the memories of the six million Jewish victims and millions of others who perished in the darkness of the Shoah. As we reflect on the beautiful lives lost, and their great potential that would never be fulfilled, we also pay tribute to all those who resisted the Nazis’ heinous acts and all those who survived.

Local businessman Shlomo Rechnitz has bought a scandal-plagued kosher supermarket in Los Angeles from its former owner, who is suspected of mislabeling its meat.

Around 250 communal organizations and religious groups joined the mayors of Memphis and Shelby County, Tenn., in publishing a statement supporting diversity on the day the Ku Klux Klan staged a rally in the city.

Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a national Jewish leader and the only Jewish chaplain present at the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, died Thursday at the age of 95.

He could have been one of the ancient Israelites toiling for the Pharoah under the brutal Egyptian sun some 5,000 years ago. Even his name is biblical.

Washington — On page 15 of the most recent edition of the Kansas Independent Oil and Gas Association’s newsletter, beneath griping about perceived threats to the industry posed by President Obama’s tax and energy policies, was a nugget of positive news:

Los Angeles — “This is the most exciting and frustrating Jewish community in the country,” proclaimed Jay Sanderson, chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, the site and showcase of the annual Jewish Funders Network international conference held here over three days this week.

The Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association has elected an openly gay rabbi to lead the national rabbinic organization.

Editor’s Note: This article introduces a new column in which Rabbi Alfredo Borodowski, executive director of the Skirball Center for Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-el and founding rabbi of Congregation Sulam Yaakov in Larchmont, asks leading religious figures, thinkers and activists in Jewish life what they think about God? He began with Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism.