‘Schindler’s List’ Study Guides Issued

More than 1,000 study guides to the Oscar-winning motion picture “Schindler’s List,” which will be shown on NBC on Sunday night, were distributed through Los Angeles city schools and the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese.

The study guides were originally produced for the 1993 theater run of the Steven Spielberg-directed movie by Alex Grobman, then-director of the Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. The booklets were used in classrooms across the country at that time.

Jewish Federation officials decided to make the guides available again for this latest opportunity to teach the lessons of the Holocaust. The movie, which will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, tells the story of a Catholic war profiteer who saved the lives of many Jews faced with imprisonment and execution.

“The study guides provide a historical perspective to the material illustrated in the movie,” said Marcia Reines Josephy, acting museum director.

The guide, among other things, asks the question, “Why did this happen?” and invites discussion of terms such as “final solution” and “propaganda” that were used by the Nazi leaders before and during World War II.

AWARD

A $30,000 award to an outstanding Jewish religious school teacher has been established by philanthropists Lloyd Cotsen and Murray Pepper. The Cotsen-Pepper Master Teacher Fellowship Award will be administered by the Bureau of Jewish Education, which has 64 affiliated schools in the greater Los Angeles area. A panel will decide on the first winner in May and present the fellowship in June, said Gil Graff, BJE executive director. (213) 852-7799.

DATES

United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert of San Francisco, current president of the National Council of Churches, will address the 44th annual assembly of the South Coast Ecumenical Council on Thursday night in Long Beach. Once a pastor in Southern California, Talbert also supervised the Methodists’ Long Beach district in the late 1960s. Sister Barbara Boudreau, who serves St. Matthew’s Catholic Church, Long Beach, in adult education and volunteer training, will be installed as president of the regional council. The meeting, starting with a 6 p.m. dinner, will be at Lakewood First Presbyterian Church, 3955 Studebaker Road, Long Beach. $20. (310)595-0268.

* The Rt. Rev. James Ottley, the Anglican Church’s observer at the United Nations, will speak on “God at the U.N.” Monday at the Los Angeles Athletic Club as part of an ongoing luncheon series sponsored by the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. The luncheon is $20. Registration: (213) 388-3417.

* Baritone Jubilant Sykes will sing Sunday at the 11 a.m. service of Pilgrim Lutheran Church, 1730 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. Sykes, honored as Sacred Music USA’s 1996 vocalist of the year, has been a featured soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. (310)829-4113.

* Rabbi David Saperstein, director of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C., will speak on “Jewish Politics at the Nation’s Capital” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Temple Israel of Hollywood, 7300 Hollywood Blvd., in the synagogue’s annual Rabbi Max Nussbaum Memorial Lecture. Saperstein will also speak next Saturday at the Sabbath dinner-and-service at Temple Isaiah, 10345 W. Pico Blvd., on Los Angeles’ Westside. (310) 277-2772.

* Mozart and Episcopalians: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major” and his “Symphony No. 39 in E Flat” will be performed on Friday at 8:15 p.m., St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 1031 Bienveneda Ave., Pacific Palisades. $12. (310) 573-7787, ext. 2. On March 2 at 7:30 p.m., the composer’s “Requiem” will be performed by the choir and orchestra at St. James’ Episcopal Church, 3903 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. $10. (213) 387-8712.

* The efforts of Reform and Conservative Judaism to work for religious tolerance and improved status of their branches in Israel--especially in light of Jewish Orthodoxy’s influence there--will be explored on March 2 at Skirball Cultural Center in the Sepulveda Pass. The noon-to-3 p.m. panel will feature Rabbi Susan Laemmle, USC dean of religious life; Rabbi Ron Shulman of Congregation Ner Tamid, Rancho Palos Verdes, and Hillel Shuval, who chairs the Council for Freedom of Science, Religion and Culture in Israel. $20, lunch included. (818) 386-5557.

FINALLY

The Council on Islamic Education, based in Fountain Valley, has made notable strides in providing stereotype-free descriptions of Islam and Muslim history to textbook publishers and educational leaders.

The council, headed by Shabbir Mansuri, has done this through correspondence, appearances at curriculum hearings and an annual conference for educators and publishers in Orange County.

This year’s meeting, a colloquium on world history, for the first time has a broader scope with African American, Native American, Latino and Asian American scholars joining the talks to be attended by officials of eight publishing houses such as Harcourt Brace, Houghton Mifflin and Prentice Hall.

The colloquium today and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel in Orange includes a banquet with a talk by Ali A. Mazrui of the State University of New York, Binghamton, who is best known for his PBS special, “The Africans: A Triple Heritage.”

Notices may be mailed to Southern California File, c/o John Dart, L.A. Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or faxed to Religion desk (818) 772-3385. Items should arrive about three weeks before the event, except for spot news, and should include pertinent details about the people and organizations with address, phone number, date and time.

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PEOPLE

English-born Bishop Kallistos Ware, a Greek Orthodox prelate described by OneHeart, a Christian meditation group, as “one of the foremost teaching mystics in the church today,” will make two speaking appearances next weekend.

Ware, who teaches at Oxford University, will give the keynote address at 9 a.m. March 1 at a daylong conference of OneHeart at St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Los Angeles. The $65 admission includes lunch. (714) 879-0360.

The bishop will also speak March 2 on the contemporary meaning of Lent, which begins March 10 this year for Eastern Orthodoxy, at St. Stephen’s Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, 1621 W. Garvey Ave., Alhambra. The free lecture, at 2 p.m., is sponsored by the Council of Orthodox Christian Churches in Southern California.

* UC San Diego professor Richard E. Friedman, author of “The Disappearance of God,” will talk about the absence of God in the later books of the Hebrew Bible in upcoming lectures--Sunday afternoon at Caltech before the Skeptics Society and Friday night at a Reform Jewish temple in Tarzana.

Friedman, also the author of “Who Wrote the Bible?,” will relate the Big Bang theory of the universe’s beginnings to the Jewish mystical concepts of the kabbala in the same talk. The Altadena-based Skeptics Society will sponsor the 2 p.m. lecture at Caltech’s Baxter Lecture Hall. Nonmembers $8 at the door. (818) 794-3119.

Friedman will discuss those themes plus “Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and the ‘Death of God’ ” next weekend at Temple Judea, 5429 Lindley Ave., Tarzana. The series of lectures will be at 8:15 p.m. Friday, 4 p.m. March 1 and 10:30 a.m. March 2. (818) 758-3800.