Community

Oakland Kochavim take ball hockey, community to the rinks

Yossi Offenberg is a die-hard fan of ball hockey, which is like roller hockey, only in shoes. He’s 48 and grew up in Toronto, where he and his friends would wait eagerly for the Saturday morning synagogue services to end so they could they rush home for lunch, and then out to play ball hockey in the streets.. They did this until the stars came out and Sabbath was over. Offenberg says those cold winter days were some of the best days of his youth.

Indie films star at Oakland Underground Film Festival

This weekend’s Oakland Underground Film Festival (OUFF) showcases local, independent films and new international works. The four-day festival begins Thursday at the Grand Lake Theater and continues at two other venues throughout the weekend. About 60 films will be screened, a mix of shorts, features and documentaries.

Parents, doctors and kids celebrate the fight against pediatric cancer

Amidst the clamor of construction and downtown traffic Tuesday, a crowd of patients, nurses and doctors met outside of Kaiser Oakland’s pediatric building to support National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Adorned in school bus-yellow t-shirts emblazoned with “Little Kids Get Cancer, Too,” health care providers and families gathered outside the hospital’s pediatric unit in downtown Oakland. Together, the group rallied to promote childhood cancer awareness and celebrate patients’ personal triumphs against the disease. The gathering was conceived by Clarence Berger-Greer,…