The combined voices of 300 members of...

The combined voices of 300 members of the Cantors Assembly will ring through the 6,000-seat Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles in a May 8 concert during the Jewish group’s 44th annual convention.

The five-day convention, which begins May 5, marks the first time the international body has met on the West Coast. Appropriately, the cantors, or hazzanim , are also celebrating the Jewish links to the entertainment industry.

Hollywood’s Jewish songwriters will be praised in a program the first night at Temple Beth Am, including a film tribute to Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein. A montage of film clips showing “the image of the cantor in cinema” will be shown May 8 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The concert in the Shrine Auditorium will feature the Israel Pops Orchestra and solos by 10 hazzanim , including Los Angeles cantors Joseph Gole, Nathan Lam and Moshe Schulhof.

Founded in 1947, the Cantors Assembly is part of the Conservative branch of Judaism and has about 450 members, primarily in the United States and Canada.

The convention co-chairmen are Lam of Stephen S. Wise Temple of Los Angeles and David Silverstein of Adat Ari El in North Hollywood.

KOREAN-BLACK

In the light of inner-city tensions between Korean and black residents, United Methodist Church caucuses of clergy and laity from those two communities will hold a dialogue at 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Faith United Methodist Church in Los Angeles. “Improving cultural understanding and affirming the church as a place of healing and reconciliation will be central to the dialogue,” said the Rev. M. A. Robinson-Gaither, pastor of the host church and the head of Black Methodists for Church Renewal. The Rev. Seog Whan Cho, pastor of Korean Central United Methodist Church, chairs the Korean Caucus.

DATES

The Rev. Allan Boesak, South African anti-apartheid activist, and the Rev. Shehadeh Shehadeh, Anglican canon at St. George Cathedral, Jerusalem, will discuss church roles for peace and justice in both South Africa and the Middle East 7 p.m. today at St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Los Angeles.

Author-speaker Joni Eareckson Tada, a widely influential advocate in evangelical churches on behalf of people with disabilities, will lead a prayer session Sunday night at Pasadena’s Lake Avenue Congregational Church after the 6 p.m. showing of her new film “The Journey.”

Theologian John Cobb will talk about his latest book, “Matters of Life and Death” (Westminster/John Knox Press), at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in the Mudd Theater of the School of Theology at Claremont. Cobb, who recently retired from the Methodist-run seminary, will be honored by the faculty at a post-lecture, book-signing ceremony.

The ninth annual Law Day “Red Mass,” which attracts scores of attorneys and jurists, will be celebrated by Archbishop Roger M. Mahony at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at Immaculate Conception Church near the Catholic archdiocese’s chancery offices. The Red Mass gets its name from the red robes worn by participants at Mass for the opening of court terms in 14th-Century England. The May 1 Mass, sponsored in part by the Loyola Law School, will include a homily by Jesuit Father Donald P. Merrifield, chancellor of Loyola Marymount University.

Bishop Vinton R. Anderson, who oversees African Methodist Episcopal churches in the western half of the United States, will address a scholarship luncheon 12:30 p.m. next Saturday at the Proud Bird Restaurant in Los Angeles, sponsored by alumni of Wilberforce (Ohio) University. Anderson this year was elected one of seven vice presidents of the World Council of Churches.