"While growing up in Canada, I was a real science-fiction movie buff," says Jerusalem Report Los Angeles senior writer Sheli Teitelbaum, co-author of this issue's cover story on Steven Spielberg. "I came of age when Spielberg and George Lucas were making their first big films, so this assignment was in some ways closing a circle for me."

Teitelbaum, 38, has strong interests in both Jewish issues and the entertainment scene. Born and raised in Montreal, he studied history and political science at the city's Concordia University. After graduating, Teitelbaum, who had never been to Israel, decided in 1978 to enlist in the Israeli army. "Back in Montreal I saw a lot of lip service being paid to supporting Israel," he says, "which mainly meant supporting it financially. Although I didn't want to live in Israel permanently, I thought serving in the army would be a way of paying my dues without opening a checkbook."

Teitelbaum spent over four years in the IDF, including serving in Lebanon as a lieutenant in the paratroops. After leaving the army, he settled in Holon, met and married his wife Lilith, a native Israeli, and began working as a journalist. Among the publications he worked for in Israel were Newsview magazine, The Jerusalem Post and the Israeli science-fiction magazine Fantasia 2000.

In 1986 Teitelbaum moved to Los Angeles to further his career. There, besides writing for The Report, he is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times, Premiere and Entertainment Weekly.

Although he has written for The Report from such locales as war-torn former Yugoslavia, Teitelbaum's primary focus is the Los Angeles Jewish community, and particularly Jews in the entertainment business. For this magazine he has interviewed such celebrities as Leonard Cohen, Elliot Gould and Mike Nichols.

"Hollywood has a huge Jewish community," he says, "and its share of political activists, especially on the liberal side, who are very concerned with Israel. But my overall impression is that most of the Jews in the entertainment industry prefer a shallow, glitzy bagels-and-lox' Judaism. The high point of their Jewish life is a Seder at Spago's." o Covering the Los Angeles beat: Teitelbaum (right) meeting with the city's new mayor, Michael Riordan