Professional Leaders Project seeks new recruits

The Professional Leaders Project (PLP) is recruiting Jews in their 20s and 30s to help build a new generation of leaders. Up to 85 young people will be selected to join PLP’s LiveNetworks, a program that provides participants with skills to set a Jewish agenda for the future. Applications are available online at www.jewishleaders.net. The deadline to apply is Monday, Aug. 6.

PLP offers a variety of leadership initiatives, including LiveNetworks, ThinkTanks and the scholarship program Academic Fellows. LiveNetworks fellows meet regularly in salon settings to network, develop leadership expertise and tackle challenges facing the Jewish community. For more information visit www.jewishleaders.net.

‘Book Buddies’ needs volunteers

Sixty new Book Buddies are being sought for the program in the San Francisco public schools.

A $40 donation to the program goes toward books for young people to read in class and keep. Each donor is then matched with a student who will write to the Book Buddy and explain what he or she liked about the book.

This is the second go-round for the program, which was launched in the spring with 50 Book Buddies.

To participate, send a check payable to Congregation Emanu-El to the attention of Terry Kraus, Congregation Emanu-El, 2 Lake St., San Francisco, CA 94118. Please be sure to include your address, telephone number and email address.

Court: Chief erred in suspending S.F. Jewish cop

As a filmmaker, Andrew Cohen may not be on par with Martin Scorsese. Be that as it may, an appeals court recently ruled he was due better treatment than what he received in 2005, when the Jewish San Francisco police officer’s amateur films were deemed offensive and he was suspended without pay by Police Chief Heather Fong.

The state Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled that Fong did not follow police department procedure in temporarily suspending Cohen after the films he made for a police party were leaked to the public and created a media-driven furor.

Cohen could only have been suspended in the case of an “emergency,” the court ruled.

The policeman was among 23 officers suspended without pay in the films’ fallout; he remains assigned to a desk job. His suspension was originally upheld in Superior Court last year.