Sharon Rosen Leib, at The Blogs

Dec 5, 2019, 10:15 AM

Rich Leib, Sharon Rosen Leib and guide Alex Denishenko in front of L'viv's Opera House.

I dreaded visiting Ukraine last fall. The country sounded like a scary, war-torn neighborhood. An iffy destination for an upper-middle-class Jewish woman from a Southern California beach town like me. But I was determined to see the nation my...

Oct 5, 2019, 12:32 AM

Intimate Hollywood Letters: From Harsh to Humane

When author, producer, director Rocky Lang emailed me out of the blue asking for permission to publish one of my great-grandfather Sol M. Wurtzel’s letters in a book, I cringed. My Papa Sol, pioneer Jewish film producer and Fox...

Aug 26, 2019, 12:20 AM

USC’s Trojan Family Values

As the University of Southern California’s egregious infidelities piled up the past two years, I felt betrayed and doubted I could ever trust the institution again. I’ve savaged it as the University of Scandals and Coverups, refused to chant...

Nov 9, 2018, 12:03 AM

Norman Eisen’s Chronicle of Prague’s Jewish Palace

Just after World War I, a tremendously wealthy Czech Jewish banker/investor named Otto Petschek possessed the audacity, optimism and ego to build a sumptuous palace in Prague for his family. His obsessive and financially ruinous zeal to construct an...

Oct 16, 2018, 8:13 AM

The Weight of Warsaw

As our plane descended into Warsaw, I felt nauseous hurtling toward a country my maternal great-grandparents fled a century ago. Yet a sense of urgency to breathe the same pastoral air, walk the same birch forests and seek whatever...

About Me

Sharon Rosen Leib is an award-winning freelance journalist and longtime columnist/contributing writer for San Diego Jewish Journal. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Forward and Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. She served as a Deputy Attorney General in California's Department of Justice before leaving a life of criminal law to raise her three daughters. A native Los Angeleno, she currently resides in Solana Beach, California.

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