Unorthodox Loves L.A.

Our first Jewish guest is Rachel Sumekh, who founded Swipe Out Hunger, the leading nonprofit in addressing hunger on college campuses. She tells us why Swipe Out Hunger is a fundamentally Jewish project, inspired in part by her family’s dependence on food assistance after her parents immigrated to the U.S. from Iran, and how, as a Persian Jewish woman in the technology and social entrepreneurship world, she’s hoping to be more of a norm than an exception.

Our second Jewish guest is actor, screenwriter, and director Lauren Miller Rogen, whose most recent film, Like Father, stars Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer and is streaming on Netflix. After her mother was diagnosed at age 55 with early onset Alzheimer’s, Lauren created Hilarity for Charity, which has raised more than $10 million for Alzheimer’s awareness and research through star-studded variety show fundraisers (watch the latest one on Netflix). Lauren tells us about moving from Long Island to Lakeland, Florida, and becoming one of very few Jewish students getting active in Jewish youth organizations (while having to explain Hanukkah to her dentist), and what it’s like directing her husband in her films.