La Brea Boulevard is a major north-south street in Los Angeles that ends under the gaze of the iconic HOLLYWOOD sign. Folks driving past Trader Joe's on Third Street this past Sunday caught sight of what appeared to be a Jewish wedding procession, complete with Chuppah (canopy), a Klezmer band, plenty of rabbis, and cute little kids decked out in their "Sabbath-best."
Only the betrothed wasn't a young lady, and it wasn't exactly a wedding but the renewal of vows between the Jewish people and its sacred Torah. The scroll of the Five Books of Moses had just been completed with the final letters of Deuteronomy inscribed on parchment by a sage scribe. The sponsors—the Teichman family—lost many members in the Nazi Holocaust, so the inter-generational celebration of age-old tradition was especially compelling and poignant.
But we live in a time where we can no longer take such public displays by a religious minority for granted.
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