Seminar to Focus on Achieving Mideast Peace

A daylong seminar on ways to bring peace to the Holy Land will be held Sunday at UCLA by a coalition of liberal Jewish peace activists, Muslim organizations and Christians.

“The Israeli-Palestinian Crisis: New Conversations for a Pluralist Future” will be sponsored by the Open Tent Middle East Coalition.

Speakers will include Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian Christian and historian who is director of the University of Chicago’s Center for International Studies; Ella Habiba Shohat, professor of media and cultural studies at City University of New York; Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine; Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Knesset member Marcia Freedman; author Marc Ellis; and peace activist Gila Svirsky of Israel.

Co-sponsors include Ed Asner, Americans for Peace Now, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA, Hillel Council at UCLA, Casey Kasem, the Muslim Women’s League, the National Lawyers Guild, the New Israel Fund and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. The seminar will be at 10 a.m. in Room 184 of Kinsey Hall. Admission is $20 general, $10 for students and seniors. A dinner buffet and concert follows, at $15. (323) 650-3157 or https://www.opentent.org.

“Anti-Semitism in the Arab World” will be discussed by Fred Diament, past president of the 1939 Club and a member of the advisory board of the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum, at 1 p.m. Thursday at Temple Judea, 5429 Lindley Ave., Tarzana. $1. (818) 705-3557.

Events

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual and political leader of Tibet, will speak on “Inner Peace for World Peace” at 6 p.m. May 26 at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion. Tickets, $16 to $100, are available at the UCLA ticket office or (310) 825-2101.

The implications of economic globalization for justice and the common good will be explored from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. today by theologian John Cobb, economist Gordon Douglass and agriculturist C. Dean Freudenberger at Northridge United Methodist Church, 9650 Reseda Blvd. $10, includes lunch. (818) 886-9105.

A guided “Jewish Tour of Mormon Temple Hill” and an introduction to Jewish genealogy at the West Los Angeles temple’s Family History Center, sponsored by the University of Judaism, will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday. $22. (310) 440-1246.

A program of free Torah and Hebrew school for all Jewish families sponsored by the United Conservative Torah School is underway and will continue through June 8. The school meets Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:15 p.m. (562) 424-9094 or (562) 429-0715.

Dance as identity and power in Jewish and Christian spirituality will be the subject of a lecture by Kathlyn A. Breazeale of Prescott College at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Haddon Conference Center of the Claremont School of Theology, 1325 N. College Ave., Claremont. $10, $5 seniors. (909) 626-3521.

Scientist, astronaut and author Brian O’Leary will join in a dialogue on “New Science, New Energy and Consciousness” at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, sponsored by the Philosophical Research Society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles. $15 donation. (323) 663-2167.

Music

The Chancel Choir, Angeles Choral Chamber Singers and Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra will perform works by Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart on Sunday at 2 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church, 1220 2nd St., Santa Monica. $10 general, $5 seniors and students. (310) 451-1303.

Spirituals, madrigals, gospel songs and contemporary music will be performed by the Onionares, directed by Marco Rambaldo, at a concert and Italian dinner at the Sepulveda Unitarian-Universalist Society, 9550 Haskell Ave., North Hills. Program at 4 p.m., dinner at 6 p.m. Advance tickets $10 for each. (818) 894-9251.

People

Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, an activist on behalf of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and organized labor, will receive the Rabbi Simon Greenberg Award from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies on Monday at Sinai Temple. Waxman, who was made Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II, has been the spiritual leader of Temple Israel of Great Neck, N.Y., for 53 years.

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