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Jewish Journal

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May 22, 1997

Family Business

Leave a Comment / Film, Old Stories /

Seated, the late Max Laemmle, founder of the theater chain, with son Robert, left, and grandson Greg.

Back in the heyday of the self-made Jewish movie moguls, the studios were, to a certain degree, family businesses. For Louis B. Mayer, Jack and Harry Warner, and others, nepotism was standard operating procedure, a way to protectively surround themselves with their own kind and to lend a hand to relatives and friends who otherwise may have had a rockier time of it, particularly during the Depression.

Nepotism reached unprecedented heights at Universal Pictures, which was founded in 1915 by Carl Laemmle, an affable and unpretentious German-Jewish immigrant. According to author Neal Gabler’s “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” Laemmle at one time had more than 70 friends and relatives on the studio payroll. It was a source of amusement within the industry, prompting Jack Warner to quip that Laemmle “was making the world safe for nephews.”

In retrospect, contemporary Los Angeles filmgoers have “Uncle Carl” and his unabashed nepotism to thank for the eventual creation of a lively, eclectic chain of movie theaters.

Two years after the family’s ties to the studio were severed during a 1936 corporate reorganization, Max Laemmle, a nephew who had been an able Universal executive under the elderly Laemmle, co-founded the Laemmle Theatre chain with his brother, Kurt. Today, almost 60 years later, Max’s son, Robert, and grandson, Greg, run the family business as president and vice president, respectively.

Laemmle movie houses — there are eight locations in all — dot the Los Angeles landscape, from Pasadena to the grand Royal in West Los Angeles. On any given weekend, the chain screens a smart and interesting mix of mainstream hits, independent art films, festivals and retrospectives. Foreign-film showcases, revival screenings and campier themes, such as a recent series centered around noir-ish femme fatales, are Laemmle mainstays.

Last week’s movie listings are a case in point. Along with commercial flicks such as “Volcano,” “Father’s Day,” “Breakdown” and Bruce Willis’ new sci-fi epic, “The Fifth Element,” Laemmles also screened “Gray’s Anatomy,” “Das Boot,” “Ridicule,” “Pink Flamingos” and “I Was a Jewish Sex Worker.” As a result, the chain attracts a diverse audience — from the popcorn-munching masses to the culture vultures and film-school wonks who patronize such nonprofit venues as UCLA’s Melnitz Theater, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater.

To a great degree, the bigger, slicker pictures at the chain’s multiple screen houses pay for the more marginal movies, including titles of Jewish interest such as “Carpati” and “Anne Frank Remembered.”

“In some respects, the special series that we do exist because of the multiplex phenomenon,” said Greg Laemmle, during a recent interview. “We couldn’t do this kind of programming without them.”

Greg Laemmle’s latest project is the Jewish Cinema Series, which begins on Friday, May 23, and runs through June 26. He also programs the company’s wintertime Cinema Judaica festival. Partly because of those efforts, the theater chain has become an important part of the local Jewish cultural landscape.

For Laemmle, a thirtysomething graduate of UC Berkeley and a onetime administrator at Brandeis-Bardin, it’s a role that he particularly enjoys.

“It was a lot of fun putting [the Jewish Cinema Series] together,” he said. “I remember being taken as a child to see ‘Hester Street’ and ‘Lies My Father Told Me.’ Movies aren’t the same as going to day school or to synagogue, but Jewish film is a fun, recognizable experience. You see your experiences documented up on the screen, and it puts them in a context.”

The series opens with “Like a Bride,” a Mexican production that chronicles the coming-of-age of two Jewish girls in 1960s Mexico City: One is from a traditional, marriage-minded family of Turkish-Jewish immigrants in the garment business. Her friend is the daughter of intellectual Eastern European Holocaust refugees.

“Saint Clara,” an offbeat Israeli-Czech production, follows with a one-week run, beginning on May 30. Opening on June 6 is the memorable klezmer documentary “A Tickle in the Heart,” the story of the “rediscovered” Epstein brothers. Interestingly, it was jointly produced by the German government and a Brooklyn yeshiva.

While all three films have made the rounds of the festival circuit — including previous stops in Los Angeles — they merit a second look.

A scene from “Mamele.”

Also getting some much-needed exposure are the 23 films from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that constitute the “Yiddish Film Festival,” the final portion of the Laemmle series. These films first premièred as a major retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1991, before traveling to the Soviet Union, Europe and other American cities. They were restored and presented at MOMA by Brandeis University’s National Center for Jewish Film, which is co-presenting their Los Angeles première on June 14.

Several Yiddish actors featured in the series are tentatively scheduled to attend local screenings. For older moviegoers, titles such as “Mamele,” “The Light Ahead,” “Without a Home” and “Yiddle With a Fiddle” may bring back a welcome rush of half-remembered sounds and images. For the rest of us, they represent a rare chance to see up on the screen an earthy, witty and vital world that mostly vanished with the Holocaust.

As for the current state of “Jewish film,” Greg Laemmle finds the field of American independent features to be a bit discouraging.

“Jewish cinema may be all over the place in terms of directorial style, language, etc., but what the films have in common is that they address the Jewish experience,” he said. “The next question, of course, is quality. Unfortunately, I see a lot of stuff that may address Jewish content but doesn’t deserve to be in the theater.”

Laemmle pointed to a dependence on schmaltzy clichés as one example. Superficial, juvenile treatment of subject matter is another.

“What I see mostly is angry and dealing in stereotypes — usually revolving around the bar mitzvah experience,” he said, with a laugh. “Documentaries, on the other hand, have been a rich field. In a sense, this is really a great age for cinema, in that anyone with a camera can make a film. I’ve seen such compelling, authentic stories about Jewish subjects…but, unfortunately, if it’s a documentary, the public still regards it as academic, educational — something that will be ‘good for them’ like eating vegetables.”

Laemmle, who is married and the father of young triplets, maintains that despite their iffy profitability, Jewish film festivals provide an important cultural contribution in an era of rapid assimilation.

“So far, I’ve gotten very positive feedback,” he said, “but we’ve only put this festival on for two years now, and these things grow very slowly…. We do this without any financial support from the Jewish community. We don’t go out and solicit grants and donations or anything like that. We’re prepared to do it and perhaps lose a little money. But audience attendance and support will justify this program. If people think this is worthwhile, they have to get up off their butts and go buy tickets.”

Uncle Carl couldn’t have said it better.

The Jewish Cinema Series runs from May 23 to June 26 at Laemmle’s Music Hall Theatre, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Some movies from the Yiddish Film Festival will also screen at the Laemmle Town Center 5 in Encino. For a festival schedule or other information, call (310) 274-6869.

Three Films to See

“Like a Bride” (“Novia Que Te Vea”)

Filmmaker Guita Schyfter presents us with a rich, sharply rendered portrait of Mexico City’s Jewish enclave during the 1960s with this quiet, coming-of-age movie, based on a novel by Rosa Nissan. Through her two female protagonists — Oshinica Mataroso (Claudette Maille) and Rifke Groman (Maya Mishalska) — Schyfter explores the tensions between a Jewish minority and a Catholic majority, tradition and modernity, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, and men and women.

Oshinica, the dark-eyed daughter of Turkish-Jewish immigrants, dreams of studying to become a painter, a notion that her wedding-minded family finds ridiculous. She is groomed for marriage from such an early age that she recalls cavorting in the gowns from her trousseau as a young girl. Her best friend, Rifke, a firebrand and the daughter of intellectual Holocaust refugees, finds her own Zionist identity rocked by a love affair with a handsome, non-Jewish political rebel, the son of a right-wing politician.

The struggles of both friends to define their place in the shifting sands of the 1960s defines the narrative of this freshly told wry tale, but it’s the larger emotional crosscurrents and visual details of Jewish Mexico City that Schyfter nails with affectionate relish. Oshinica’s father conducts his Luganilla market shmatte business with appropriate theatrics. The local Jewish youth group is flush with Spanish-accented kibbutz idealism. The older women set the tone at home during their sewing circles and canasta games.

The direction is sometimes plodding, and Maille, best known here for her role in “Like Water for Chocolate,” delivers a rather stolid performance, but “Like A Bride” is ultimately a treat — restrained, funny, moody and brimming with la vida.

English subtitles. Opens on May 23.

“Saint Clara”

A quirky blend of Israeli attitude and Czech surrealism, “Saint Clara” is set in the Golda Meir junior high school of a remote Israeli industrial town. The eponymous Clara, a Russian immigrant and a wide-eyed teen psychic, falls in with a group of scruffy, punkish classmates who suddenly begin acing their math tests with the aid of her clairvoyant powers.

The movie, directed by Ari Folman and Ori Sivan and based on a novel by Czech dissident Pavel Kohout, veers between amateurish stabs at realism and delightful forays into dark absurdity reminiscent of “Montenegro” or the films of Jim Jarmusch. Despite uneven performances and the self-conscious hipness, there are some things to like about “Saint Clara.” Well-known stage actor Yigal Naor’s portrayal of Headmaster Tissona, a pompous and passionate Francophile with lonely delusions of Edith Piaf, is a central highlight. His character deserves a movie of his own. Israel Damidov is also fine as Elvis, Clara’s tragicomic Russian uncle. And for moviegoers who still entertain images of Israeli youths as the straight-arrow, ballad-singing kibbutzniks of old travel posters, this film should give them a bit of a surprise.

English subtitles. Opens on May 30.

“A Tickle in the Heart”

The engaging title refers to the emotions evoked by Yiddish music, and, happily, it’s also an apt description for the overall effect wrought by this beautifully photographed documentary. It tells the story of Max (on clarinet), Willie (on trumpet) and Julius (on drums) Epstein, three brothers who began playing klezmer music 60 years ago, only to watch it die out from the vantage point of their retirement community in Florida. To their astonishment and delight, the music’s resurgent popularity among a new generation leads them back out on the road, playing to affectionate crowds in Germany, along with gigs in Poland, Brooklyn and Florida.

Along the way, director Stefan Schweitert captures poignant, revealing and funny visual details. With the buoyant, elderly Epstein brothers as his subject, Schweitert has created a love letter to klezmer music and its bittersweet history that is infused with sensitivity and good humor.

Opens on June 6. — Diane Arieff Zaga, Arts Editor

Family Business Read More »

Up Front

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Music, Old Stories, Rob Eshman, Up Front /

The Jerusalem Jazz Band
At the Dixieland Jubilee in Sacramento, the annual super bowl of jazz, the band that got the most ecstatic reception a couple of years ago was cradled a few thousand miles east of New Orleans.

It was the Jerusalem Jazz Band, whose members hail each other by such fine old Southern names as Boris, Mika, Shmulik, Stanislav and Aaron.

“This band is hot, confident and slick, without losing an interpretive freshness,” wrote the jazz critic for the Sacramento Union. “[Band leader Boris] Gammer can scat sing like Louis Armstrong, but he’s best at jamming, freilach style, on the clarinet. There are hints of Klezmer in the tunes, which make them special. But this group could probably play the telephone book, and people would want to get up and dance.”

After this Memorial Day weekend’s Sacramento festival, the Jerusalem Jazz Band will stop over for a one-night stand in Los Angeles, on Tuesday, May 27, performing at the Veterans Wadsworth Theatre.

All proceeds will go to the Habonim Dror Camp Gilboa and the Habonim leadership program in Israel.

As to the group’s enthusiastic reception in Sacramento, Aaron Chankin, who plays the tenor sax and is a native Angeleno, said, “First, we got a lot of attention because we were considered sort of exotic, but they came back because of the quality of our playing.”

He describes the group’s special sound as “Dixie-freilach,” which lends a distinctive Yiddish inflection of their rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” and a dose of Dixie to “Rabbi Elimelech.”

Gammer, the band’s leader, arranger, clarinet and saxophone player, was a musical prodigy in his native Riga, Latvia, and formed a prize-winning combo at age 17. He went on to win 18 Soviet and international jazz awards before emigrating to Israel.

He has performed with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea and Michael Brecker, and also teaches at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem.

Three other band members are from the former Soviet Union, two are Israeli sabras, with Chankin as the only American.

The May 27 event is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts and the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, himself a Habonim alumnus, is the honorary chair.

Tickets are available at all Ticketmaster outlets and the UCLA Central Ticket Office, at (310) 825-2101. For further information, call the Habonim office at (213) 655-6576. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

Tolerance, Please

Can’t we all just get along? We don’t mean Jews and African-Americans, or Jews and Christians, or Jews and Arabs. We’re talking about Jews and Jews. From the political and religious extremists in Israel to the Chassids in New York who decided a majority of us don’t practice real Judaism, the Tribe seems more and more like Jung’s tail-eating serpent, minus the regeneration. We’re just attacking ourselves to death.

Anyway, here in Los Angeles, three upcoming events are slated to deal head-on with the issues of tolerance and diversity within Judaism.

* Sunday, May 25: Nine rabbis — three Reform, three Conservative and three Orthodox– will meet at Beverly Hills High School for a “Day of Healing and Learning.” The idea is to bring the movements together through the study of our tradition. (Hmm, tell that to the Reconstructionists.) Scheduled to participate are rabbis Richard Levy, Harvey Fields, Harold Schulweis, Abner Weiss, Levi Meier, Yossi Kanefsky and two more Conservative rabbis. The event is co-sponsored by the three movements and the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. For more information, call (213) 388-2401.

* Monday, June 2: The UCLA Hillel Council will present a town meeting entitled “Who Is a Jew? Who Is a Rabbi? In Pursuit of Jewish Unity.” Honoring the memory of Jerry Weber, the panel discussion will feature Rabbis Yosef Kanefsky (Orthodox), Ed Feinstein (Conservative) and Richard Levy (Reform). Arriving early for tickets and a good seat is recommended — issues don’t get much more heated, or topical, than this. For more information, call UCLA Hillel at (310) 208-3081.

* Tuesday, June 3: The Chazak Circle and the Maimonides Society of the Valley Alliance/Jewish Federation will present a talk and response on “American and Israeli Jews: A Shared History, a Shared Future?” with Avraham Infeld, founding director of the Melitz Institute for Zionist Education, and Yoav Ben Horin, associate director of the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies. The event will take place at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus. For information, call (818) 587-3200.

Goodbye Bronze, Hello Iron

According to Jerry Berman, no period in human history is as dramatic or important as the 50-year span between 1225 and 1175 B.C.E.

We know that’s hard to believe, considering that the last two years alone have brought such cataclysmic events as O.J. Simpson’s acquittal and The Jewish Journal’s format change, but consider Berman’s proof text: the Torah itself.

“If you want to understand the context of the biblical world, you have to understand the end of the Bronze age,” says Berman, who is executive director of the California Museum of Ancient Art.

The world that emerged at the end of the Bronze Age produced the Bible, he says, and you can’t understand the latter without understanding the former.

In that short 50-year blink of human history, virtually all established city states and empires were wiped out. Goodbye, Hatzor; so long, Ugarit, Knossos and Troy. Egypt suffered a devastating attack, and the Hittite empire collapsed. Why? Was it famine, earthquake or sudden changes in the technology of warfare that did in these empires?

Around the same time, in the lithic hills of Judea and Samaria, a certain people begin settling down, developing their own style of housing and pottery. Archaeologists call these ancestors of Einstein, Spielberg and you “proto-Israelites.” In 1207, the first extra-biblical mention is made of “Israel” on a stele commemorating Israel’s defeat in battle.

Where did the proto-Israelites come from? Were they displaced Canaanites, part of an agrarian social-reform movement, as some scholars believe? Were they a distinct ethnic group at all?

And what of those other post-Bronze Age people, the Philistines, who themselves would figure in the biblical narrative? Were they Philistine, as popular belief would have it, or the sophisticated creators of an artful and urbane civilization?

You can learn the answers to these questions from two of the world’s leading experts on the subject. On Tuesday, May 27, Dr. William Dever of the University of Arizona will speak on the origins of early Israel. On June 3, Tammi Schneider, associate professor of Old Testament Studies at Claremont Graduate School, will speak on the development of Philistine culture. Both lectures, part of a series on the end of the Bronze Age sponsored by the museum, will take place at the Gallery Theatre in Barnsdall Park, from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tickets for the lectures are $18 for non-museum members. Call (818) 762-5500 for more information. n

Up Front Read More »

After the

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Rob Eshman /

The most astonishing account in Hector Feliciano’s always-astonishing new nonfiction book, “The Lost Museum” (Basic Books), follows Adolf Hitler on a visit to the Paris Opera House on June 28, 1940, the Führer’s first, and only, visit to the city. The tour began at 5:30 a.m. The Führer and his entourage had driven directly from the airport to the museum. “Hitler had carefully studied the architectural plans of the building and acted as the group’s tour guide,” Feliciano writes. He asked an attendant if it weren’t true that a salon in the building’s original plans was missing. It was. “‘There, you see how well I know my way about,’ Hitler commented complacently.'”

The thieving and looting that characterized Nazi-controlled Europe only makes sense when you understand Hitler’s lifelong obsession with art. “Can you imagine any current politician sneaking out after a fund-raiser to look at a Rembrandt?” said Feliciano, who was in town last week to promote his book and to speak at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Later, he sat for an interview with The Jewish Journal at a local hotel.

Hitler planned to display his stolen masterpieces in a museum in his hometown of Linz, in northern Austria. Other Nazi leaders, such as Hermann Göring, shared Hitler’s passion, either for Western masterpieces or for their easy liquidity.

The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), a government branch headed by Nazi propagandist and official Alfred Rosenberg, seized the art collections of Jews fleeing the country or rounded up for the camps. More than 20,000 works of arts were stolen in this way. After the war, many were returned to their owners, but about 20 percent found their way to auction houses in the United States, private collections, or French national museums.

That’s where Feliciano comes in. The Paris-based journalist spent seven years and much of his own money tracking down the missing artworks of five of France’s leading Jewish collectors and gallery owners, uncovering an unconscionable trail of deceit, willful ignorance and greed. “The more you want to know,” Feliciano said of the French museums he dealt with, “the more they don’t want you to know. They consider it a state secret.”

Fortunately, the U.S. Army retained the photocopies of ERR documents recording looted paintings, and Feliciano spent weeks at the National Archives in Washington, tracing assorted artworks by Renoir, Degas, Picasso and Rembrandt back to their rightful owners.

Feliciano’s book documents the serpentine path of these artworks following the chaos of war. The 2,000 paintings that ended up in some of France’s leading museums were simply stamped “Unclaimed,” and officials made no efforts to find the rightful heirs.

How did those in complicity with the wartime looting think that they’d get away with it? “Everyone thought the Nazis were going to win,” said Feliciano. Many of the paintings were plundered before 1943, when the tide of war turned against Germany.

The nature of the crime and its coverup went undocumented for decades, until the French publication, in 1995, of Feliciano’s book. It was an instant cause célébre. Museum officials challenged Feliciano to public debates, which the journalist, who has degrees from Brandeis, the University of Paris and Columbia, handily won. “They liked these paintings and didn’t want to let go,” he said.

The Jewish heirs hardly pressed the issue earlier. “They were just happy to have survived,” said Feliciano. And, considering the enormity of German atrocities against human beings, the theft of paintings seemed relatively insignificant.

Feliciano, who was born in Puerto Rico to Sephardic parents, has now become a pivotal figure in righting these injustices. He continues to work on the story (so far, his research has neglected all the art looted from countries other than France), and the World Jewish Congress, which has fought governments for the reclamation of looted Jewish gold and bank accounts, will soon join his cause. With Feliciano’s help, Yale University plans to create a repository for archival evidence of the “lost museum.” “Only public opinion will keep the pressure on these governments and institutions,” said Feliciano. “So many [owners] have died, but this is the best we can do.”

If you would like to inquire about the whereabouts of art you think might have been stolen by the Nazis, write to: M. Amigues, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, quai d’Orsay, Paris 75007.

Legacy Lost

… and Nick Goodman follows in the wake of his father’s quest to find the family’s art collection

Nick Goodman, left, with his brother, Simon.
Nick Goodman knows the truth behind Hector Feliciano’s “The Lost Museum” all too well: His own grandfather’s priceless legacy of French art and German silver disappeared during the war.

Since then, the Goodman family, starting with Nick’s father and continuing with Nick, his aunt and his brother, has tried to track down the long-scattered pieces.

Their most dramatic effort yet will come to a climax next month, when Goodman, a 52-year-old art director and father of three, who lives in the Hollywood Hills, will face off in a Chicago courtroom against pharmaceutical tycoon Daniel Searle. In 1987, Searle purchased a painting by Edgar Degas at a Sotheby’s auction for $850,000. When Goodman’s brother, Simon, found a picture of the landscape in an exhibit catalog from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he matched it to a black-and-white photo of his grandfather’s painting. A lawyer sent a letter to Searle, explaining the situation. Searle refused to return the painting or to compensate the Goodmans. The case, which has been featured on television’s “60 Minutes” and in news media around the world, is expected to set a precedent for the return of Nazi-stolen art treasures to their rightful owners.

In any event, it will close one chapter in a long and painful saga of the Goodman family. By the turn of the century, Goodman’s great-grandfather, Eugen Gutmann, had built the second-largest bank in all of Germany, the Bank of Dresden. In order to be accepted into the highest social and governmental circles, Gutmann converted to Protestantism.

Friedrich Gutmann in Paris, as photographed by Man RayWorld War I, Gutmann’s son, Friedrich (“Fritz”), moved to Holland, where he created the Dutch branch of the Bank of Dresden. With the family’s enormous wealth, he bought paintings by Impressionist masters such as Degas and Renoir.

But, by 1938, with war on the horizon, Friedrich sent his paintings to Paris, which, he believed, would never fall to the Nazis. While Nick’s father, Bernard, was, by then, in school at Cambridge, Friedrich and his wife, Louise, remained in Holland. The Bank of Dresden was nationalized by the Reich, and the Gutmanns struggled to survive. Though letters from diplomatic friends seemed to protect them from deportation, Fried-
rich, a Protestant with Jewish blood, was not permitted to work.

Hitler’s minister of the interior, Hermann Göring, coveted the Gutmann family collection of rare medieval German silver. When Gutmann refused to part with it, the train that was supposed to deliver him to his daughter, Lili, in Italy was mysteriously rerouted to Thieresenstadt. There, Gutmann was beaten to death. His wife was murdered in Auschwitz. For several days, Lili went to the station to meet a train that never arrived.

When Goodman immigrated to the United States from England in 1968, he assumed that all his family paintings had been either reclaimed or permanently lost. But his Aunt Lili told him that at least three — two Degas’ and a Renoir — were still at large. Willy Korte, a German expert on Nazi looting, told him that, after the war, most paintings found their way to Switzerland and, from there, to the United States. “He said, ‘Your paintings are probably in America,'” Goodman says. “I was stunned.”

Shortly afterward, a friend, working at the Getty Museum, discovered that the Renoir had been put up for auction by Sotheby’s in 1969. The owners worked out a confidential arrangement with the Goodman family.

Degas’ painting “Landscape with Smokestacks” is at the center of controversy.Following Goodman was hoping that a similar agreement could be struck with Searle for the Degas, which is estimated to be worth at least $1 million. The title of the work is “Landscape with Smokestacks.” “Slightly ironic,” Goodman says, “considering the fate of my grandmother.” That Searle, whose worth is estimated at $500 million, would refuse to part with the painting is “astonishing,” says Goodman, especially considering the fate of its owners.

Meanwhile, the Goodman family took Sotheby’s to court to force the auction house to reveal the names of buyers who purchased other pieces of the Guttman collection over the years. Last week, the court decided Sotheby’s would have to tell.

Although Goodman says that the search for his family’s legacy is costly and time-consuming, he refuses to give up. His father, Bernard, a travel agent, died in 1995, leaving behind extensive notes on the family collection. About 15 paintings are still unaccounted for, including two precious works by Guardi. Goodman says that his own profession makes him especially qualified for the task of tracking the paintings down. “My job is finding strange things directors want, though no one knows where they are,” he says.

“It’s especially important because my father spent 50 years searching and went to his grave frustrated. We’re continuing this search for him.” n

After the Read More »

On Strongmen and

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Matt Gottlieb as Noriega and Max Wright as the archbishop in “The General & the Archbishop.”

‘The General & the Archbishop’

Donald Freed is a rarity among playwrights: He is primarily an ideologue who, instead of producing documentary films or constructing journalistic accounts of the “truth” behind the news headlines, writes plays. What he appears to do is imagine a specific scene or a dramatic situation that illuminates the political landscape, usually in ways and with perceptions that are strikingly at odds with what passes as the conventional wisdom.

“Secret Honor,” his one-man portrait of Richard Nixon on the eve of the president’s resignation over Watergate, was a highly charged and surprising drama that managed to evoke compassion for a man whose policies and practices Freed loathed. It was a compelling theatrical piece and all the more surprising for its unexpected “take” on Nixon.

Now, in “The General & the Archbishop,” he is once again looking at political history and its leading actors. The General is Panama’s former president, Manuel Noriega, and the scene that Freed imagines occurs just before the strongman surrenders to the CIA and the American forces that have invaded Panama. The Archbishop, weary and shed long ago of illusions, is the Vatican’s envoy in Panama City. He is the go-between who will deliver Noriega to the Americans or to a foreign embassy, if one can be found that will take him in.

It is his vision of history — cleareyed, cynical, almost detached, that dominates the play and offers us Freed’s view of our corrupt political life.

He is allied with God, if indeed God exists, unlike the Vatican, which has joined forces with the more sordid realities of political mendacity.

The play itself is driven by a series of dramatic threats and confessions, all by Noriega, that lay out the true facts of history — according to Freed — how Noriega was set in place by the CIA; how the United States wanted him to launch an invasion against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; how drugs and drug money were the underpinnings of America and American policy; how the Vatican itself was complicit in this vast Western conspiracy to exploit the poor and the vulnerable. And, then, just as in “Secret Honor,” the twist: the vulnerability of Noriega, a victim himself, the poor boy from the provinces who wanted, eventually, to use the drug money to help his own people as well as himself.

Some basic problems follow from this approach to theater. There is, for example, a tendency for pedagogy to overwhelm drama. There is also a need to share the writer’s “take” on the nature of man and society. For readers of “In Our Times” and the old I.F. Stone newsletter, it is an easy leap of faith — as it is probably for those who tend to see all power as corrupt and all political leaders as base (until they fall). For the rest, Freed’s spin on the facts requires an act of faith or a drama so moving and enveloping as to render disbelief irrelevant.

In “The General & the Archbishop,” the playwright is helped mightily by two good performances: Matt Gottlieb in the role of Noriega and Max Wright, most commanding, as the archbishop, the conscience of the play. Indeed, Wright’s performance is reason enough to catch this play.

The direction by Maria Gobetti rightly emphasizes the confessional unfolding of Noriega’s character, and shapes a drama out of the contrast between the general’s energy (and belief in himself) and the archbishop’s despair (and faltering but still held belief in God).

At the Victory Theater, 3326 Victory Blvd., Burbank, Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun. 7 p.m. For information, call (818) 841-5421. — Gene Lichtenstein, Editor-in-Chief

‘Shlemiel the First’

Shlemiel the First” is a musical that — like Sally Field — you really want to like.

It is based on the writings of the master storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer, boasts a first-class klezmer band, and was put together by creative collaborators of national standing.

So what could go wrong? Foremost is the attempt to stretch out a whimsical, though psychologically acute, Singer short story for children into a two-act burlesque skit, replete with clownish physical shticks and erotic byplay.

The kernel embedded in this superstructure at the Geffen Playhouse is the short story “When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw.” In it, our hero, the shamas of Chelm, sets out for the big city, gets turned around in his direction, and, after one day and night, arrives back in Chelm.

He is welcomed by his long-suffering wife and their children, but Shlemiel is convinced that he has arrived at a second, mirror-image Chelm, where everybody happens to look the same as in Chelm One.

The conundrum is presented to the famous elders of Chelm, renowned for finding elaborate, foolish solutions to simple problems; they agree that there are indeed two Chelms and, therefore, two Shlemiels.

Since somebody, in the absence of Shlemiel One, has to care for the Shlemiel children while Mrs. Shlemiel sells her vegetables at the market, what to do? The answer, conclude the sages after due deliberation, is to pay Shlemiel Two a small stipend to live in his old house and watch the kids — precisely the same arrangement that prevailed before.

Accepting the situation, the “former” husband and wife rediscover their basic affection for each other and live sort of happily thereafter.

This reviewer is no expert on Singer, so, to check my reaction to the play, I turned to an authority on the great Yiddish writer (who, by the way, won the Nobel Prize, not the Pulitzer Prize, as the box office recording has it).

Our resident maven is Dr. Janet Hadda, UCLA professor of Yiddish, whose captivating biography, “Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life,” has just been published by Oxford University Press.

After praising the production’s joyous music and imaginative sets, Hadda writes:

“By featuring such slapstick elements as a year-round dreidel and a yenta with a giant pickle, the play reinforces stereotypes of vulgarity and backwardness about a culture that was actually vastly complex, marvelously sophisticated and sometimes even avant-garde. The result is a tendency toward caricature — while audiences may be convinced, I fear, that they’ve experienced the real thing.”

Hadda is right on the money in her criticism (particularly of the awful green papier-mâché pickle, which comes down on the chief sage’s head and stomach like a clown’s pig bladder) as well as in her praise.

Robert Israel’s askew and slightly surrealistic stage set, reflecting a touch of Chagall, with a dollop of Dalí, is wonderful.

Ditto for the eight-piece Golden State Klezmers and Catherine Zuber’s ingenious costumes, which allow the actors to change genders in record time.

The musical score by Hankus Netsky and Zalmen Mlotek, with lyrics by Arnold Weinstein, has its moments, particularly in such numbers as the morbidly funny “He’s Going to Die,” as well as “Twos” and “My One and Only Shlemiel.”

The latter duet allows Alice Playten as Mrs. Shlemiel to display her appealing voice, which, complemented by her warm stage presence, makes Playten the most effective member of the cast.

Thomas Derrah is pleasant enough in the title role, and Charles Levin is frequently amusing as Groman Ox, the wisest of the wise, at least in Chelm.

Puzzlingly, in the final scene, Groman Ox admits that he may not be such a sage after all, which undercuts not only the play’s basic premise but everything that’s gone before.

More apropos, and profound, are the closing words in the original Singer story, when Shlemiel muses:

“Those who leave Chelm end up in Chelm.

“Those who remain in Chelm are certainly in Chelm.

“All the world is one big Chelm.”

“Shlemiel the First,” conceived and adapted by Robert Brustein and directed and choreographed by David Gordon, continues through June 8 at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. For ticket information, call (310) 208-5454 , and for Telecharge, call (800) 233-3123. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

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LettersNo Respect

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Old Stories, Opinion /

Your giving front-page coverage and a review of “Harlot by the Side of the Road,” a biblical evaluation by a lawyer, Jonathan Kirsch, was a sad reflection of The Journal’s viewpoint of Judaism (“Taking on the Bible,” May 9).

Let us ignore for a moment that the book reflects the author’s juvenile preoccupation with sexuality as he analyzes the “juicy parts” of the holy Torah. More significantly, he ignores one of Rambam’s Thirteen Principles of Jewish Faith, “I believe with complete faith that the entire Torah now in our hands is the same one that was given to Moses.”

Instead the author accepts German biblical criticism by brazenly stating the Divine Torah was of “human authorship.” This unkosher viewpoint is not only twisted religiosity but, as our Torah sages warn us, just one step above potential descent to atheism. This book deserves front-page billing in the “Pagan” rather than The Jewish Journal.

Martin S. Rosenberg

Thousand Oaks

The Shame of Belzec

In reference to the story “Overgrown with Weeds and Invaded by Pop Music” (May 2), I too visited Belzec some eight years ago and Alan Elsner’s story brought back my own memories of that visit.

Allow me to explain. The name Belzec has been etched in my memory since June 11, 1942. It was on that tragic day that I was destined to be sent to Belzec. I was not even 14 and, only through a “miracle,” I escaped certain death in that place. However, on June 15, my parents and other members of my family were transported to Belzec, never to be heard from again.

Belzec, the Nazi extermination camp, with not one survivor, is located in one of the most desolate parts of Poland. Several acres of barren land, with a fence and sign that 600,000 Jews perished there, is all that testifies to the banality of evil and man’s inhumanity.

When I scooped the barren soil, human bone particles remained in my own hand; were these remains of my own parents, my uncles and aunts or, perhaps, my 28 classmates who perished there? Who could tell?

Yes, Elsner is correct, the statue of the emaciated figure is the only present reminder (not even a Star of David) of this evil. This terrible place, where so many men, women, and children perished, needs to be remembered and, those of us who lost our families there, must do something about it.

Dr. Sam Goetz

Immediate Past Chair

Martyrs Memorial

Past President

The 1939 Club

Lukewarm Review

Robert Eshman reviewed a newly published cookbook by the Jewish Home for the Aging, “Mama Cooks California Style–New Twists on Jewish Classics” (“Up Front,” May 9).

During the same week, the Food Editor of the Los Angeles Daily News thought the cookbook merited a front page color spread and another page of background and recipes. Melinda Lee of KABC reviewed the book on Mother’s Day morning, saying how wonderful she found it. Dutton’s, Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Brentano’s, Walden’s, Bloomingdale’s and Gelson’s are all going to stock “Mama.”

So why do we care about Mr. Eshman’s lukewarm review? It was not accurate and it was not professional. He left out the subtitle, “New Twists on Jewish Classics,” which explains why this cookbook is unique. The receipt ingredients that he thought sounded terrible together were not together, and last but not least, he didn’t even mention the “I Remember Mama” chapter, which is the heart of the cookbook — the recipes and anecdotes from the Jewish Home’s Resident’s, families and friends.

Mr. Eshman also neglected to say that the proceeds from the sale of this cookbook go to enhance the lives of the residents at the JHA– and what better way than The Jewish Journal to get this message across… or so we thought.

When we think about the support from mostly non-Jews, it’s hard to understand where Mr. Eshman’s head is, let alone his heart.

Harriet Part

Food Editor, Home Economist

“Mama Cooks California Style–New Twists on Jewish Classics”

Forces of Bigotry

The recent statement by a segment of the Orthodox community concerning Reform and Conservative Jews has engendered ill feelings. For the first time in recent memory, we have feelings of suffering bigotry “from within.” My first reaction was humorous. “The Orthodox don’t want us, and the Southern Baptists do.”

The Jewish people, our people, at many times in history, have witnessed and survived the forces of bigotry from the outside world. Now, certain members of the Orthodox community have decided that Conservative and Reform Jewish Temples are “outside of Judaism” and are not entitled to recognition in Israel or as legitimate members of the Jewish community. This is nothing less than verbal fratricide and ought to be condemned.

For a people who have lost more than 6 million, to even chance the loss of one Jew is unacceptable. Those of you who heard Leopold Page speak at Kol Tikvah were deeply moved by how thankful we all are that his life was saved by a “righteous Gentile,” Oskar Schindler.

Should not all Jews, whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, gay, or straight, believers or not, protect and accept one another? Yes, we should. The few Orthodox rabbis have desecrated God’s name and millions of Jews also.

Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs

Kol Tikvah

Woodland Hills

*

It’s enough already with this quarrelsome business of “Who’s a Jew?” My mother would have declared it all narishkeit (nonsense.)

Raised in the orthodox tradition, in my teen years, I was drawn more to the “unity of the Jewish people for the highest purpose of humanity” through community service and found myself at home in all three forms of worship at the time (orthodox, conservative and reform). As an adult, I chose reform because of my regard for the congregation’s rabbi(s), and social relationships in my home town, New Haven, and subsequently here in Los Angeles.

Regarding Rabbi Hecht’s letter, “For the Love of God” (April 25), I “love God, love Torah and love my fellow Jew.” Why does he find the way I pray offensive and the cause for the rift that threatens Jewish unity? Narishkeit.

Self-interest motivates all of us in what we believe and do. But self-interest is best served when there is mutual regard and respect for one another.

Peace comes to one when self is satisfied with self and extends a hand of friendship to all who care about humanity.

Enough already. We have differences over issues, over principles and meanings of words like “democracy… theocracy,” but none will be resolved by conflict.

Hyman H. Haves

Pacific Palisades

*

Rabbi Eli Hecht’s letter (“For the Love of God,” April 25) is an eloquent and reasonable exposition of Orthodoxy, but he errs in his understanding of history when he says that “Reform and Conservative movements have destroyed Jewish solidarity by creating their new trend in religious practice called “branches of religion.”

Reform, and later, Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism arose in response to the abandonment of what we now call Orthodoxy by the majority of the Jewish community in Western Europe and America. They were created as religious alternatives for Jews who had already rejected the premises and, in many cases, the practices of Orthodoxy, and were designed to prevent alienation and assimilation.

Rabbi Hecht’s statement that “the Orthodox have not changed their religion or their method of observance” (which I assume includes Chabad and other Chassidism) would certainly come as a surprise to the great Vilna Gaon, who was instrumental in promoting bans just short of excommunication against Chassidic institutions and practices in the late 18th century. For years, Mitnagdim (the Traditional Lithuanian teachers) have accused Chassidism of doing precisely that.

Rabbi Hecht is right in noting that Conservative and Reform rabbis understand Torah and God’s expectations of them in ways that differ from those common to Orthodox Jews. That doesn’t mean they have “ignored” the Torah and the laws. It means they don’t accept Rabbi Hecht’s theology, but have their own which differs in varying degrees from his.

Of course Jewish solidarity could be established if everyone would become Orthodox or Reform, for that matter. The concept of respectful pluralism is based on the assumption that this will not happen and that Jewish unity must transcend religious and political differences.

Rabbi Gilbert Kollin

Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center

About Georgia Mercer

I was appalled at a recent letter The Jewish Journal published by a reader who viciously attacked Georgia Mercer, a candidate to replace retiring Los Angeles City Councilman Marvin Braude.

Mr. Ernie Frankel, who has probably never met Georgia Mercer, questions her education and, strangely enough, calls her an “insider” while saying she has no government experience.

I have known Georgia Mercer for years, and I have worked side by side with her. She is a woman who gets things done. She has been an active volunteer in our community, working to preserve choice for women and to protect our environment. She co-founded Women For:, one of the most forward-looking women’s organizations in Los Angeles. She worked for Mayor Riordan as his Valley point-person, as well as his liaison to the Jewish community.

Georgia’s opponent, however, was a City bureaucrat for 22 years. She claims almost sole credit for protecting the Santa Monica Mountains, but in truth, longtime Congressman Tony Beilenson, who is supporting Georgia, made that conservation a reality.

Georgia’s opponent recently sent out a mailer, signed by several Jewish political activists, which intimates that she is Jewish. The truth is that she is not Jewish, and I am offended that she has chosen to hide behind some Jewish supporters and her brief position at the Skirball Center to make voters think that she is Jewish.

I am supporting Georgia because she knows how to bring people together to solve problems. The last thing we need in City Hall is another bureaucrat who will continue to do things the way they’ve always been done.

Evelyn Jerome

Los Angeles

Cultural Ties

We are pleased to announce a momentous event dedicated to building U.S.-Israel cultural ties. The second Western States Conference on Israeli Culture will be held June 15-16, at the University of California, San Diego. The conference is sponsored by the State of Israel, represented by the Consulates-General of Israel in Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco, in cooperation with the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity and the Judaic Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego.

For more information, contact the Department of Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of israel in Los Angeles at (213) 852-5521.

Ido Aharoni

Consul for Communications and Public Affairs

John Rauch

President, Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity

Thomas E. Levy

Chair, Judaic Studies Program, UCSD

SEND YOUR OWN LETTER TO THE JEWISH JOURNAL AT ab871@lafn.org

Attention: Letters.

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Celebrating Israel’s Independence

Leave a Comment / Celebrations/Simchas, Entertainment, Old Stories, What's Happening /

While it may be true that if you ask two Jews a question, you’re likely to get three different opinions, it appears that thousands were in agreement last Sunday: The Israel Independence Day Festival at Hansen Dam was the place to be to celebrate the Jewish State’s 49th birthday. Festival organizers said that attendance reached 10,000 for the daylong event, which featured food, live entertainment, cultural exhibits, picnic areas and a children’s amusement park.

“This was our most organized year ever, from parking to vendors to everything else,” said staffer Haim Linder. “The kids had a great time, the weather was beautiful, and the new Sephardic Pavilion was a success. [Israeli pop singer] Matti Caspi had everybody there until a quarter of 6, even though the day was supposed to end at 5…. It was really a happy, community atmosphere.”

And, as it does every year, the Israeli Flight Club, composed of Israeli pilots now settled in Los Angeles, flew in formation over the festival to salute another year of independence. — Diane Arieff Zaga, Arts Editor n

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The Great Mulholland Divide

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles, Old Stories, United States /

When I was a UCLA student, some…uh…50 years ago and lived in Hollywood, I thought nothing of picking up a date in Boyle Heights, but I wouldn’t even consider going out with a girl from the San Fernando Valley.

I shared the common Angeleno perception that the Valley was some remote shtetl and that anything north of Mulholland Drive was terra incognita.

In the early 1960s, I returned from a year at the Weizmann Institute in Israel with my wife and two young daughters. We thought it was time to redeem our California birthright and buy our own home.

Thanks to the GI Bill, Cal-Vet loans and a generous subsidy from my mother, we figured that, stretching our limits, we might be able to afford a mortgage on a $30,000 home.

Since my job was at UCLA, our first choice was Westwood, Brentwood or Pacific Palisades. Of course, real estate brokers sneered at our pathetic pretensions and condescendingly advised us to look for a hovel in the…ugh…San Fernando Valley.

We bought a nice, small house in Sepulveda, and I quickly adjusted to the daily drive across the Santa Monica Mountains to Westwood.

But when I invited UCLA colleagues to my home, I sensed their puzzlement, if not outright panic. How in the world would they find Sepulveda? What should they wear for the daring expedition? What language did the natives speak, etc.

For the past 29 years, I have lived in the Sherman Oaks hills, a half mile on the wrong side of Bel Air. But the basic Valley-Los Angeles Basin law still holds:

It’s an easy ride from the Valley to Los Angeles, but the same route in reverse, from Los Angeles to the Valley, presages a torturous excursion.

Admittedly, we San Fernando Valleyites have a similar block about driving to the San Gabriel Valley. I think nothing of going to the downtown Music Center for an evening’s entertainment, but driving the equal distance to the Pasadena Playhouse seems a daunting venture.

Mulholland Drive is the great social divide, the Berlin Wall separating metropolitan Los Angeles.

If you live on the south side of Mulholland, you are a wealthy, liberal and sophisticated resident of Bel Air or Beverly Hills. But move across the street, to the north side, you instantly turn into a redneck, reactionary couch potato, quaffing Bud instead of chardonnay.

Almost half of the metropolitan area’s Jews live in the Valley. Curiously, they are largely unfazed by their “inferior” status and are busy building thriving Jewish community centers, schools and synagogues.

I have a dream that, one day, perhaps when Moshiach comes, the Mulholland Wall will crumble. Then, the sons and daughters of Valleyites will link hands with their brethren in West Los Angeles and Fairfax and become as one people.

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