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July 18, 2008 | 11:03 am
The new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is a hip amalgam of modern art. Daniel Liebeskind’s peculiar architectural dazzle looks like a giant Rubik’s Cube in metallic steel, standing on its tip beneath the city’s downtown skyscrapers. Beside it is the Jessie Street Power Substation, a brick and terra cotta structure in the classical revival style, a landmark building first erected in 1881 that Liebeskind adapted to the project.
The juxtaposition of the historic with the cutting-edge is an odd sight, but it does represent a spectrum of Jewish experience as a kind of past-future metaphor. The architecture—and the art—are a way of linking tradition with what is current. But once you enter the museum’s whitewashed asymmetrical orbit, the image of Judaism projected feels—well, not very Jewish.
Not that the current exhibitions aren’t provocative, interactive or innovative. Inside the new building is “John Zorn Presents the Alef-Bet Sound Project,” where various musicians and composers have written music based on the kabbalistic meaning of Hebrew letters. The result plays to great atmospheric effect inside the angular room with 36 diamond-shaped skylights that positively glow.
“In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis” is the most comprehensive exhibit, featuring a combination of historical art (Chagall, Rodin, etc.) and newly commissioned installations, where artists meditated on the modern relevance of the Genesis story. These creations are edgy, experiential and even abstruse.
Alan Berliner’s experimental film plays across separate horizontal screens that randomly flash words from Genesis in English. At the touch of a button, the word roll stops and somehow always forms a perfect (and poetic) sentence. If “God” comes up, thunder strikes and a montage of dramatic images from Jewish history play in montage (think: Holocaust).
While the offerings are stimulating and sometimes strange (check out Trenton Doyle Hancock’s “In the Beginning There Was the End, in the End There Was the Beginning,” about half-human, half-plant creatures attacked by jealous half-siblings who are then swallowed by the earth and become “Vegans") the Jewish content is sparse.
Where is Jewish history? No destruction of the Temple? No Babylonian exile? Not even Ellis Island? No, there’s only William Steig, The New Yorker cartoonist who created “Shrek.” And don’t expect a Zionist ode to Israel. In this museum’s version of Judaism, Israel might as well not exist. And as far as any instructive on Jewish religious observance—that’s pretty much limited to some audible Torah chanting as you roam around and a couple of Torah books sitting on a table for your reading pleasure (that is, if you’re fluent in Hebrew).
Here, the closest you’ll get to Shabbat is a pair of candlesticks in the museum gift shop.
All this, and Libeskind still insists Judaism was at the heart of his creation. He offered some insights into his process during a Q&A with Heeb magazine:
How did you choose chai as the one word that ended up embedded in the design of the museum?
I think it’s probably the most famous word in Jewish tradition and it’s also a number with a lot of meaning:18. It’s about bringing life, and I think emblems of life are part of the story they communicate. In this case, the Hud and Yud are organizing volumes for a new life, a new building outside an existing power station. And then I’ve also used proportions of 18 throughout the building.
In Hebrew letters are not just signs – the letters themselves are part of the story they create and they have a deep history. Jews are the only people who can read a text that’s 2000 years old without any sort of translation. You can’t do that in Latin or Greek because the language has changed, but in Hebrew the meaning of letters is unchanged and very specific.
Do you consider yourself religious?
Religion is so distorted today – fundamentalist occurrences have distorted it – but I think everyone is a believer, you believe before you even think about it. And Jewish tradition is something I’m very much a part of. But “Jewish” is complex, there’s not just one way to be Jewish. My own family, for example, includes a Hasidic strand, a Zionist strand, reformists, anarchists – they’re all part of the family, and all of those strands are part of the Jewish tradition.
What aspects of Jewish culture did you most want to highlight with your design?
I wanted to emphasize that Jewish culture is deeply rooted in the past but has always had an incredible horizon of freedom into the future. I wanted to create spaces that simultaneously connect you to history and reinvent history. That, to me, is part of Jewish tradition and I wanted to introduce that concept through not only the design but the use of the building, which is why there are spaces programmed for a multi-purpose room, education spaces, and event areas, not just galleries.
And I wanted it to be obvious that there is a Jewish sensibility to creating such a building. All of it – from the small to the big, both in the design and the way the building operates – is symbolically and truly Jewish. That’s why the area for kids and families is at the center, the front desk welcomes you with both a literal and mystical understanding [lights create the word pardes on the lobby wall behind the front desk] and the museum is located in an urban context. I think all of those things make you think about and consider Jewish culture in America. It’s not merely an appliqué of Jewish truth, it’s an extension of many Jewish themes through architecture.
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The not-so-Jewish museum by the bay7.18.08 at 11:03 am | The new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is hip, provocative and not very Jewish. But architect Daniel Libeskind ... (213)
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June 25, 2008 | 6:36 am
Thanks to the provocative Israeli film, “The Secrets,” featured in the 23rd Israel Film Festival, Orthodox Jewish seminaries are a hot topic this summer.
Our Calendar intern, Jina Davidovich, is choosing to spend a year studying torah at an all-girls theological college in Israel, like Naomi, the main character in the film.
However, the similarities end there. Jina, in contrast to Naomi, is not postponing an unwanted shiduch, but rather her college education. Bright and bubbly, the recent YULA graduate is also a far cry from the brooding, angst-ridden young woman in the film. At the moment, her most pressing dilemma doesn’t involve the proper place of a woman in religious life or her relationship to other female students, but rather the resorting of her closet. Here is Jina’s honest and endearing confession:
As I stood amongst a heap of discarded clothing, the frustration got the better of me, and I screamed. My parents raced down the stairs and cried, “What happened?” Reminiscent of my younger temper-tantrum days, I flung myself onto the pile of bright colored t-shirts and dresses and wailed, “I have nothing to wear in seminary! I’m not going!”
While this scene sounds like something out of a religious version of The Real World, I assure you, it’s a situation that many seminary-bound girls will find themselves in in a few short weeks as they pack their bags for Israel.
It has become an encouraged tradition for girls and boys from Orthodox American high schools to push off their collegiate plans for a year and attend the best seminaries and yeshivas in Israel. After countless arguments, I was sending a deposit to Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim (MMY) where I would spend the year with my head buried in various religious texts. Now, with less than a hundred days to go, I’m starting to panic.
While I am accustomed to the rules and rigorous standards that accompany life at an Orthodox, all-girls institution (I recently graduated from Yeshiva of Los Angeles), this was a whole new ballgame – I was playing with the big boys, well, girls. When I received my acceptance packet from MMY, I quickly flipped to the section detailing all the standards they require of their talmidot (students). While I knew the dress code would force me to cross every religious t and dot every modest i, seeing it in writing made me break a sweat. Shirts that covered my collarbone and my elbows, skirts that cover the knee while sitting or standing, and no open-toed shoes...I rushed to my closet to find that I was in dire need of a new wardrobe.
Now, every time my friends and I enter a store, we must tear our eyes away from the just-too-short summer dresses and those oh-so-cute jeans and head towards the ankle-length skirts and crew-neck shirts. As I stand in my closet and finger all the clothing with which I much part in a mere 69 days, I remind myself that in Israel, I won’t be working on my outside, but rather, my inside.
In the meantime, I’m trying to keep my tantrums to a minimum and my skirt lengths to a maximum.
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June 24, 2008 | 7:18 am
The secret is out. There is a steamy sexual scene between two gorgeous Israeli women in the film, “The Secrets.”
But the Israeli film, directed by Avi Nesher and spotlighted in this year’s Israel Film Festival, is not only about a lesbian love affair.
The film is much deeper than that.
To be sure, the title “The Secrets” is referring to the intimate bond two young religious girls form while studying at a seminary in Safed. The girls, both under societal and familial pressure to marry and fulfill their role as dutiful mothers and wives, must keep their romantic feelings hidden from the world and much of the film’s drama revolves around the clandestine coupling.
But there are other, more intense secrets in the film.
Like the cause of the main character, Naomi’s mother’s death. The family alludes to an illness and Naomi accuses her father of ignoring her mother’s depression, but the entire subject is seemingly swept under the ultra religious household’s rug.
Then there is the mysterious French woman in Safed who seeks the help of the two young seminary students to obtain redemption for a murder she committed. The terminally ill social outcast reveals a few of her dark secrets during the course of the film, while others remain hidden.
In attempting to purge the woman’s sins, Naomi delves into the forbidden secrets of Kabbalah, whose roots are strongly entrenched in the holy city of Safed. Almost like playing with the dark side of magic, Naomi unearths passages and rituals in the seminary’s ancient books and concocts a series of “tikkunim” - literally “fixes” - to cleanse the sinner’s soul.
“The Secrets” is a riveting labyrinth of hidden thoughts, mysterious deeds and concealed emotions that prompts you to consider numerous interesting questions, including whether sexual relations between women are forbidden in Judaism. The answer is not what you would expect.
You’ll have to see the movie to find out. Or ask your rabbi, although I think spending $11 is much easier.
For more great Israeli films, show times and theaters, visit www.israelfilmfest.com.
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June 17, 2008 | 7:29 am
Jewish Journal super-intern, Jina Davidovich, writes about her extracurricular activities for The Calendar Girls:
As a senior at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles Girls’ School, my obligations extend beyond surviving anxiety attacks that come with opening college decision letters, keeping up my grades and attempting to have a social life. Every week, YULA students are required to do one hour of community service (chesed) which is then recorded on yellow cards with blue stamps. Those blue stamps are highly coveted for the simple reason that not having enough of them means not graduating.
I pulled out my chesed card a couple of weeks ago and turned it over to find that five of the boxes were sans stamps. I started to panic. Luckily, our school psychologist had a suggestion—the Aleinu Family Services Hike-a-Thon, worthy of one blue stamp. While I am not the most enthusiastic nature lover, I knew Aleinu is a great organization so mustering up the desire to help wasn’t difficult.The Hike-a-Thon took place June 1st at Kenneth Hahn Park, where hundreds gathered to raise money for Aleinu’s Safety Kid project. In learning more about the extremely successful program, my interest was suddenly piqued. Safety Kid trains educators around the country to go into pre-school, elementary and middle schools to teach adolescents the importance of safety and ways to implement it in their day-to-day lives. In addition to demonstrations, the Child Safety Institute, which runs Safety Kid, has presentations for parents and educators to ensure that their steps toward safety come from a joined front of kids, adults, and teachers.
At the event, families gathered around water stations to rehydrate after the hike. Children were running around, parents were grinning, the weather was gorgeous and suddenly, the blue stamp didn’t matter. My job was to distribute prizes to the excited kids. Water guns were a predictable favorite, which resulted in my t-shirt being damp by the end of the day. My required hour was over, but I didn’t want to leave yet. I was having a great time.
Coincidentally, the YULA community service coordinator approached me with her four kids. “Looks like someone is in desperate need of hours,” she joked. “Nope,” I responded, “someone is just dedicated to the community and wants to lend a helping hand.” We both laughed at my slightly sarcastic comment, but I realized it was really true. Having heard so many stories of child abuse and abduction, it felt good to be helping to create a way to prevent children from being harmed.
I handed out my last water gun and headed home.
One stamp down, 4 to go.
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June 16, 2008 | 11:15 am
Where on Ventura Boulevard can you get a glatt kosher prime rib eye steak infused with a garlic herb rub, broiled in an open fire while singing along to popular Israeli love songs performed by the legendary Pini Cohen?
Only at Bocca steakhouse, the much anticipated and talked about phoenix that rose out of the ashes of what was once Tempo. Filling the shoes of such an iconic Israeli hangout of the San Fernando Valley is not going to be an easy task, but Bocca seems to be settling right in.
I visited the steakhouse, only several months old, last Thursday night and the place was hopping. Every seat in the house was being warmed by a well-dressed lady or gentleman. Handsome waiters dashed about, carrying martini glasses, gorgeous-looking appetizers and thick, juicy steaks. Pini Cohen, a legendary Israeli entertainer, milled about saying hello to loyal fans and chatting with old friends. Cohen drew enormous crowds every Thursday night for his Israeli sing-alongs at Tempo, and the owners of Bocca wisely kept that tradition going, all the while changing everything else around it.
Patrons at the old Tempo may not have necessarily come for the food, though I’ve heard the Mediterranean fare was appetizing enough, whereas Bocca is making a serious attempt to attract diners to their high end cuisine and not just their “go to be seen scene.”
Bocca’s menu makes you wish you could dine out every week. Appetizers include Asian chicken satay over spiced crispy rice and apricot-glazed Moroccan chicken wings served with couscous. There is a delicious selection of soups, salads and pastas, but I had no interest in those options that night. I skipped straight to the entrees: the Bocca steak with bearnaise sauce, center cut medallions, pepper crusted London broil, prime rib black angus...it was a big decision.
I settled on the garlic rubbed prime rib eye steak with rice pilaf and roasted potatoes. I was not disappointed. The food was delectable. Lucky for me, by the time the food arrived, the enchanting Pini Cohen was on stage, which forced me to look up from my plate every few seconds and breathe between bites. In Hebrew, you would say that Cohen “ose sameach,” which literally translates to “Cohen makes happy.” But the saying really means that Cohen gets the party started.
And that he did. As soon as he started singing, the steaks were forgotten, wine glasses abandoned and chairs pushed aside as people got up to dance and sing along.
The entire restaurant, decked out in elegant furnishings, designer light fixtures and romantic candles turned into a rocking party scene. It was quite a transformation.
If Bocca can continue to impress with its delicious (and kosher!) cuisine as well as delight with its vibrant live entertainment, the corner of Ventura and Hayvenhurst is going to be, once again, one of the hottest spots in the Valley.
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June 2, 2008 | 12:26 pm
At Camp Rikud, David Dassa’s annual Israeli folk dance weekend at Camp Hess Kramer in Malibu, there is always a talent show on the last night.
Many of the performers are painfully embarrassing to watch and leave you wondering how anyone could be so lacking in self-awareness. Like the high school girl who performed a slightly odd dance number in a loose strapless shirt that kept sliding down every time she turned, jumped or twirled. The performance was dangerously close to becoming a peep show and the audience was more preoccupied with gasping and giggling at the near-wardrobe malfunction than with the young girl’s awkward movements - which in the end, turned out fine for everyone: the audience was entertained and the girl was the talk of the night.
But the R-rated dance was not the performance that most accurately exemplifies the essence of an Israeli folk dance camp, although many Israelis, including my fiance, are convinced that the dance weekends resemble something out of “Dirty Dancing” - young girls being seduced by dance instructors, older married women having weekend flings, steamy late night dance parties in the staff quarters… I’ll get back to those scandalizing half-myths in a second.
A song sung by a veteran dancer, who actually has some musical talent, could very well be Rikud’s anthem. A few lines into the song, the 250-person audience began singing along:
“I could have danced all night!
I could have danced all night!
And still have begged for more.
I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things I’ve never done before.
I’ll never know what made it so exciting.
Why all at once my heart took flight.
I only know when he
began to dance with me
I could have danced, danced, danced all night!”
That’s how it feels to be at an Israeli folk dance camp: exhilarating.
And exhausting.
The camp, which starts on Friday afternoon every year on Memorial Day weekend and ends on Monday afternoon, is one long dance marathon, broken up by meals and a few other activities: the talent show, havdallah, melaveh malka. Dancers learn new dances all day during teaching sessions taught by Israeli choreographers and every night, an open dance session lasts into the morning hours. On the last night, Sunday night, the session goes until 8 or 9 a.m. the next morning - hence the “I could have danced all night” anthem.
There are several other Israeli dance camps in the United States throughout the year and the people who attend them vary greatly: most are American, but many are Israeli. The age varies too - more so at Rikud where there is always a large group of high schoolers who David Dassa teaches as well as a large contingency of young dancers he cultivates. There are beginners and dancers who have been dancing for 30 years. People come from Israel, Canada, South America, Mexico and the East Coast to dance at Rikud.
There are those that come seeking romance. And there are people who are rumored to be having extramarital affairs. Sitting on the sidelines, you could probably spot a few smoldering looks exchanged between dance partners or glimpse a couple sneaking off towards the bungalows. There are definitely whispers about the revered Israeli choreographers (the rock stars of the Israeli folk dance world) taking advantage of their sway with female dancers. However, that kind of activity for which Israeli folk dancing is often stigmatized in Israeli culture, is a minor part of the dance experience. And, it’s natural. After all, dancing is a social activity where people connect in many ways.
I met my fiance at an Israeli folk dance session, though he danced only briefly. One of my best friends, Anita, who will be a bridesmaid at my wedding, is someone I became close to at David’s weekly dance sessions. My fiance’s brothers became business partners with someone they met through dancing. There are numerous siblings and husbands and wives whose bond is strengthened by this shared activity.
Once a year, these avid dancers from around the world gather at Rikud to share their passion, to connect with one another, and to dance, dance, dance all night!
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May 13, 2008 | 12:52 pm
“Don’t you know? Auschwitz isn’t just for the Jews anymore,” says Lukas, the disturbed (and disturbing) protagonist of “The Memory Thief,” a film by Gil Kofman that was screened Monday night, May 12, at the Jewish Film Festival.
Lukas is an exceedingly desperate character - a young man with no past and no hope of a future who works as a tollbooth cashier by day and watches pornography in his ramshackle apartment by night. He visits a catatonic woman in the hospital, pretending she is his mother and wonders about the lives of the thousands of drivers who whiz by him everyday.
“I bet not one of them would remember my face,” he muses gloomily.
When one of those drivers, a Holocaust survivor, stops to talk to him, Lukas begins to take an interest in the lives of Jews who were victimized during World War II. His interest becomes a frightening obsession that consumes Lukas, a non-Jew, to the point where he assumes the identity of a survivor - stealing memories that are not his own and creating a future for himself that may be more concrete and certain, but definitely not any less dismal.
This psychological twister is well made and intriguing, but plan to get ice cream or something sweet after the movie to alleviate the gloomy state of mind you’ll undoubtedly be in.
“The Memory Thief” opens May 30 at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills. For more info, check out www.memorythiefmovie.com.
The Jewish Film Festival continues this week with several more screenings, two of which are worth highlighting:
Details of the screenings at www.lajfilmfest.org.
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May 8, 2008 | 12:47 pm
JJLA Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman was featured today on 89.3 KPCC. In case you missed his segment about Israel during your drive to work this morning, here it is in its entirety:
I love Israel.
When I hear an American Jew say that, when I hear myself say that, I always stop to wonder: what exactly does it mean?
Do we love it so much that we would, as the school kids say, marry it? Apparently not. Though Israel’s Law of Return entitles any Jew anywhere in the world to citizenship, a minuscule number of American Jews have picked up and moved there.
Do we love Israel enough to fight for it? No. Only a handful of us have actually taken up arms during any of Israel’s wars. The American Jewish arrangement has long been: we give our money, you give your sons. We give our opinions, you give your lives.
The truth is, too many of us love Israel like young girls love Miley Cyrus, like women love George Clooney, like white guys love Springsteen. We swoon. We idealize. We have a crush.
Once we believed Israel existed to physically save us, to be our refuge when the world came after us. Now we know better: many more Jews leave Israel to come here than leave America to settle there.
So 60 years after the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland came true, Israel has become more of a spiritual refuge for American Jews than a physical one. It’s an emotional home away from home.
We boast of its remarkable accomplishments in technology and culture, its vibrant free press, its social vitality. And we leap to its defense against its many enemies and critics.
But the problem with crushes is that the instant our crush disappoints us, we become disillusioned. The problem with crushes is we overlook faults until they turn dangerous and tragic.
Israel at 60 is a wonderful achievement. But it also faces monumental problems that cannot be overlooked: it desperately needs to improve the quality of its democracy. It needs to narrow the gaps between rich and poor, between secular and religious, between Arab and Jewish Israelis. It needs to pursue agreements with its enemies. It needs to reject the ideologies that have mired it in the folly of settlements for the past 40 years.
And we who love Israel have to learn to scold it, to correct it, to not stay away out of disillusionment or keep quiet out of deference. The father of Zionism, Theodore Herzl, once said, “Nothing happens as one hopes, nor as one fears.” A real state in the real world doesn’t demand reverence, it demands we raise our voices and get involved.
Crushes are fine when we’re young. But Israel is turning 60; it’s time we grew up too.
To listen to Rob’s segment, click here.
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