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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

July 17, 1997

Up Front

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

Dr. Susan Marilyn Block is a nice Jewish girl, who talks about sex on late-night cable TV.

From Esther to… Dr. Suzy?

She dresses up in lingerie that redefines the concept of negative space. She leers at the camera, uses various erotic, um, implements to demonstrate the paths to fulfillment, and generally strives to make callers to her late-night cable access TV show feel that if it feels good and it doesn’t hurt anyone, sex is OK.

If the 40-year-old Dr. Susan Marilyn Block pushes sexual expression with the same single-minded determination of a Jewish parent pushing a bowl of cold borscht, it’s not a coincidence. Block, it may surprise no one to know, is a nice Jewish girl from a dedicated Conservative Jewish upbringing.

Raised in Philadelphia, bat mitzvahed and confirmed at Temple Har Zion, she credits Rabbi Gerald Wolpe and Rabbi Ivan Caine of Society Hill Synagogue with inspiring her to convey serious topics theatrically, and to think critically. Her “Dr. Susan Block Show,” which has inspired an Internet site (www.drsusanblock.com), a book (“The Ten Commandments of Pleasure”) and two HBO specials, combines elements of both. As Block, who has her doctorate in philosophy, vamps suggestively, she answers callers’ questions on sexual issues.

The show is not for the delicate, but it can be entertaining and occasionally insightful. On Purim, she retold the story of Queen Esther, though with a decidedly NC-17 twist.

Indeed, Block places herself in a long line of (she says) sensually expressive Jewish women, from Miriam to Esther, from Dr. Ruth to Naomi Wolf. The message? “We can do bad things, but sex in itself is not bad,” she told Up Front.

Block’s first HBO special generated some of the network’s highest ratings. Her second, “Radio Sex TV-2,” will air on HBO on Friday, July 25, at midnight.

Book Soup

Project Chicken Soup volunteers prepare food at Hirsh Family Kitchen in the Fairfax area.Volunteers for Los Angeles Jewish AIDS Services’ Project Chicken Soup have always delivered more than noodle soup to people living with AIDS; they’ve provided healthy kosher meals, over-the-counter medication, household and personal hygiene supplies and holiday items and greetings. Now, thanks to a brainstorm of Abigail Yasgur, the new director of the Jewish Federation Council’s Jewish Community Library, paperback books and, soon, videos will be part of the care package.

“I’m very interested in reaching populations that otherwise can’t get to the library,” Yasgur told Up Front.

Volunteers have already delivered the first of their twice-monthly shipments of paperbacks, which are tied with purple ribbons that sport a message inviting recipients to contact the library directly for specific literary requests. Rabbi Rafael Goldstein, director of Los Angeles Jewish AIDS Services, a program of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, said that he was thrilled with the idea of delivering books and videos to those with AIDS.

“Most of our clients can’t afford to buy paperbacks,” he said. “A lot of people end up not being able to do much with their time except sit around.”

The library had only a small supply of paperbacks to send out last Sunday and is hoping to replenish and expand its supply with fresh donations of books and videos — Jewish content and authors welcome but not necessary.

To make a donation, call the library at (213) 852-3272. To volunteer to cook or deliver meals, contact Los Angeles Jewish AIDS Services at (213) 653-8313 or via e-mail at lajaspcs@aol.com. — Ruth Stroud, Staff Writer

Operation Moses on the Big Screen

Israel’s rescue of Ethiopian Jews may be coming soon to a theater near you, courtesy of producer Jerry Bruckheimer.The rescue and airlift to Israel of some 10,000 Ethiopian Jews will be the focus of a major motion picture, but with a Hollywood twist.

In the “fact-based” movie, provisionally titled “Falasha,” the hero is an actual New York stockbroker who says that he was approached by the Mossad while vacationing in Israel and asked to set up a Club Med resort in the Sudan.

The stockbroker, whose name is being kept secret “for fear of reprisals,” claims that he did as he was bid. While the Club Med catered to tourists during the day, at night, its workers infiltrated an internment camp holding Ethiopian Jews and whisked them away.

The stockbroker outlined his adventures in a 15-page “pitch” — as the Hollywood idiom has it — which concluded with the claim that over a 10-year period, the Club Med in the Sudan served as the conduit for 10,000 Ethiopian Jews on their way to Israel.

(The figure resembles the number of Jews airlifted to Israel, via the Sudan, during the 1984-85 Operation Moses.)

The pitch, to be expanded into a book by the stockbroker, hit pay dirt immediately. Both Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox bid for the rights but were beaten out by Jerry Bruckheimer, an independent production company associated with the Walt Disney Company.

The price tag for the story was in the low- to mid-six figures.

“Falasha” has already been dubbed a contemporary “Schindler’s List,” but Chad Oman, the Bruckheimer executive vice president in charge of the movie project, denied, in a phone interview, that he was influenced by the success of the Steven Spielberg film.

“There are many stories of people who suffer and are helped by others willing to risk their lives,” said Oman. “What attracted us to ‘Falasha’ was a strong story line with a strong hero.”

Oman said that there was nothing unusual in green-lighting an expensive movie on the strength of a short pitch.

“It happens all the time — what you need is a strong story and a strong character,” he said.

Oman said that he was at least a year away from the start of filming, and, at this point, no budget, director or cast has been set. He hopes, however, to shoot as close to the story’s actual locale as possible.

“Right now, I am trying to find the best screenwriter available,” Oman said.

Bruckheimer produced the now-showing action-thriller “Con Air,” and his past successes include “Crimson Tide.” Two upcoming films are “Enemy of the State,” with Will Smith, and “Armageddon,” with Bruce Willis. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

Up Front Read More »

Do You Believe

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Torah /

For a small donation, you can now e-mail your prayers to a site in Jerusalem where they will be placed into the Kotel, the Western Wall, on your behalf.

With a powerful computer, scholars in Israel have revealed the secret codes embedded in the text of the Torah — codes predicting the Holocaust, the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, as well as calamities yet to come.

A local religious group touts the healing benefits of scanning pages of mystical texts, regardless of whether one can read the words or understand their meaning. Just having a set of the text in my home, an adherent urges, will bring blessings to my family.

How seductive is magic? Hidden knowledge, secret powers, special access to the inner workings of the universe — who can resist? It is an addiction that plays upon a deep sense of powerlessness and frustration with a complex world. I doubt my ability to navigate this world, so I turn to signs, omens and secret incantations to bring success and happiness. I doubt the presence of God in a world of AIDS, drive-by shootings and moral lunacy, so I look to secret codes for reassurance and guidance. But at what cost?

In turning to secrets and signs, do I not surrender the power of my intelligence, my judgment, my reason? Do I not surrender my capacity to imagine and create a better life, a better world?

This week’s Torah portion, which is about the lure of magic, breaks the narrative flow describing the desert journey of the Israelites and takes us to Moab, one of the nations in Israel’s path.

The king of Moab, terrified by the advancing Israelites, realizes that his only chance is to enlist the power of a well-known wizard, Balaam, to render them vulnerable. There ensues a remarkable negotiation. The king believes in the power of magic to destroy his enemies, and in his ability to buy this power. He believes in the multitiered cosmology of paganism. On the lowest level , human beings — pitifully weak and vulnerable. Above, rule the gods, who control the forces of nature. But above the gods, there is another level — the mysterious forces of ultimate fate. The only chance human beings have of shaping their own destiny is to employ secrets of these upper powers to manipulate the gods, forcing them to do human bidding.

This is the essence of magic — the manipulation of the forces of destiny through secret knowledge, spells and rites. So the king sends a bribe, contracting the wizard to curse Israel. But this is no ordinary wizard. In fact, he is no wizard at all. Balaam is a true prophet, who continually insists that he is only a conduit for the one, sole power in the universe — the God of history. This God works His will in history and will not be manipulated or bought.

In this remarkable exchange between the king and the wizard, the Torah has placed the contest between magic and monotheism. Magic is a form of slavery, confirming a sense of human powerlessness in the face of mysterious forces of destiny.

The God of the history takes us out of bondage, empowering human beings to shape our own destiny, to seek the Promised Land, with His gifts of intelligence, conscience and imagination.

When, at last, a final, huge bribe persuades the wizard to accompany the king, he stands over the Israelite camp, and out of his mouth come, not curses, but blessings: “Ma tovu ohalecha ya’akov” — “How good are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel!”

God will neither be bought nor manipulated. God is not amenable to secrets. But God has shown us the way to turn curses into blessings whenever we are prepared to listen.

Ed Feinstein is rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino.

Do You Believe Read More »

Checking My Mailbox

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Singles /

ou read me! You really read me!

When I perused the stack of letters in response to my recent column on the difficulty of finding friends in a new city, I not only felt less like a huge loser, but I was reminded what it means to have a community. When I question why being Jewish is important, I will look at those letters and know.

You sent me cards (one woman even made me a “friendship collage”), invited me to your homes for dinner, and generally proved the point that when you leap, the net will appear.

Once, as a reporter in San Francisco, I covered the story of a young Jewish woman who was bitten in the face by a hyena while on a safari in Africa. There’s no punch line here; this is a true story. When she woke up in the hospital, she was surrounded by every Jewish mother living in a 50-mile radius of Nairobi. That’s what I love about being Jewish.

Speaking of Jewish mothers, I also received much mail regarding my call for eligible Jewish men (I had asked mothers to describe their single sons). I’ll share some of their letters.

One cautionary note: I can’t vouch for these men, but their mothers can. First, Maya Spector Catanzarite describes her son, David, as “charming, handsome, athletic and intelligent. Stanford and USC grad. Teaches theater at an elite college. Speaks fluent German and Italian and is well-read and well-traveled. Is polite, tactful, personable, very good company and loves children. His interests are marriage, ecology and world peace.”

Polly Stone lists the virtues of her son, Josh: “A) A face everyone loves. B) Romantic to a fault. C) Extremely bright. This is no lie; he is attending USC-HUC to earn a double master’s degree. D) He is truly sweet, loving and thoughtful. E-Z) Too numerous to mention.”

I can’t be sure that this next letter was actually from Dan Satlow’s grandmother. Perhaps he shouldn’t have used his own return address label, or requested the photos be returned to “my grandson.” But what can I say; I was charmed. Encino Dan’s “grand-mother” writes: “He was never shy, that one, with the acting and singing and getting up in front of people. And he loves the outdoors — hiking, rafting and camping…. And that sense of humor, from his father, no doubt. Still, he’s a nice boy, very helpful and sensitive. P.S., if you speak with him, tell him he should call me more often.”Thanks to everyone who wrote — and to all of you who mentioned how difficult it is to meet Jewish women who aren’t “JAPs,” (an offensive term) that is a big, juicy apple of an issue, of which I’ll be taking a bite in an upcoming column.

Teresa Strasser is a twentysomething contributing writer for The Jewish Journal.

All rights reserved by author.

Checking My Mailbox Read More »

Switzerland’s

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories, Television /

Photo ID card of Gertrud Levy.

Switzerland’s

‘Blood Money’

By Tom Tugend,

Contributing Editor

About the time one is tempted to feel a wee bit sorry for the Swiss over the barrage of flak they’re now getting, along comes a new probe of the country’s conduct during World War II to set the blood boiling again.

The latest entry is the first-rate “Investigative Reports: Blood Money: Switzerland’s Nazi Gold,” which will première on July 26, at 10 p.m., over the A&E cable television network.

“Blood Money,” which runs for two hours, is not to be confused with last month’s spotty and unsatisfactory one-hour PBS “Frontline” program on the same topic.

Obviously, the A&E producers not only have dug more deeply than their PBS counterparts but have cast their investigative net more widely, while adding valuable background material.

For one, the Swiss are given a fair crack at making their case, with lengthy explanations by their special envoy, Thomas Borer, and the photogenic Robert Studer.

Studer, who heads the Union Bank of Switzerland, tries to explain, rather lamely, why his enterprise shredded wartime records of Jewish accounts.

Another witness for the defense is Hans Baer, chairman of the only Jewish-owned bank in Switzerland, but he seemed a bit ambivalent.

The Swiss generally claim that they were forced to cooperate with the Nazis but, in their hearts, were for the Allies. But Baer had a slightly different take.

While the French-speaking Swiss were for France, the preponderant German-speaking majority of the population favored the Reich until realizing that the war was going the other way, Baer noted, mildly.

“Blood Money” reveals other interesting facts:

  • While claiming that it was unable to accommodate more Jewish refugees because “the boat was full,” Switzerland managed to find room for 235,000 refugees, of whom only 27,000 were Jews. The latter depended on support from the small resident Jewish community, or were put into labor camps.
  • Swiss banks shipped gold looted by the Nazis to South America, in what is described as “the biggest capital transfer in history.”
  • After the war, Switzerland helped Nazi bigwigs to escape — of course, charging their guests big money for temporary Swiss residence permits.

Among its rare footage, “Blood Money” shows the only Allied air raid on a Swiss target, a ball-bearing plant in Schaffhausen that was working for the German war machine.

Not all Swiss are trying to stonewall or exculpate their wartime deeds. For instance, parliamentarian Verena Grendelmeier is urging her countrymen to face up to their misdeeds and responsibilities.

Through it all, the deepest impressions are of the children of Holocaust martyrs, who have spent decade after decade trying to access their parents’ Swiss bank accounts.

Most moving is the testimony of Estelle Sapir, who’s living in a single room in a New York boarding house. She has been trying to convince Swiss bank officials for the last 50 years that she couldn’t produce her father’s death certificate, since none were issued at Auschwitz.

Host Bill Kurtis keeps the plot line moving and connected in his sparse and effective narrative.

Switzerland’s Read More »

News of Our Own

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Womans Voice /

I see that it’s time for the media to replay the perennial horror story known as The Dying Jew. “The Vanishing Jew,” by Alan Dershowitz, is a mea culpa over his son’s intermarriage. Elliot Abrams, the former Reagan administration official, has written “Faith or Fear: How Jews Can Survive in a Christian America,” a political argument against liberalism and in favor of blurring the lines between church and state. New York magazine’s cover story this week asks, “Are American Jews Disappearing?” and rounds up the usual Orthodox, Conservative and Reform suspects for the unsurprising reply: maybe. The Dying Jew has become our Loch Ness monster, a friendly nightmare story brought out during summer doldrums, a crime story without a real perpetrator.

But, this summer, such news does not stand alone: As the stories of Jewish extinction are being repeated, the women’s group Hadassah has announced a $1 million grant to fund a new International Research Institute on Jewish Women at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Its purpose: to study the entire Jewish woman’s experience as reflected in spirituality and religion, the arts and media, Israel, the Holocaust, family and community. For the first time, an educational institution will study women’s lives as a special component of the Jewish people, discrete and real.

Naturally, this research institute lacks the sex appeal of the Dying Jew story (New York magazine will never put it on the cover). Nevertheless, to rewrite Virginia Woolf, even the press release announcing that Barbra Streisand is the think tank’s honorary chair constitutes, for women, true “news of our own.”

“As a Jewish woman, I have always been bothered by negative stereotypes about us,” read a statement prepared by the woman whose life is a Rorschach test of a Jewish woman’s acceptability in America. “[This] is the first institute in the world that focuses the spotlight on Jewish women.”

The Dying Jew stories prove why such a spotlight is needed. The unnoticed (though obvious) fact is that such accounts about Jewish extinction are written by men. If men see Jewish life as a trail that has come to the end, so be it. But women have another point of view.

Jewish men and women have had two distinct histories in America, a fact conveniently ignored until now. Men have held the license over the American Jewish experience; from men’s exploits (creating Hollywood) and stories (Roth, Malamud, et al.), we have learned about our success and our roadblocks. They’ve defined who we are.

How distinct is the Jewish woman’s experience? That’s a question the institute will help us answer. But it starts from the fact that women are two generations behind men in all indices: While Jewish men began to assimilate in the first generation, women held back. While men changed their names, gained jobs in banking and industry, intermarried, women stayed home, keeping the Jewish world intact. Our mothers and grandmothers were less distracted by American values, if only because they were less free to know them.

“We’re half the Jewish people, but our role in history has been obliterated,” Shulamit Reinharz, professor of sociology at Brandeis and director of the new institute, told me. “We’re not part of the people as men have always been.”

Though women have been integral to Zionism, the building of the Jewish state, and the creation of American communal organizations, J.J. Goldberg, in his 1996 study “Jewish Power,” barely mentions them.

This male domination of the Jewish experience must be questioned now before the Dying Jew becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy. Like a cancer patient who thinks he’s got a month to live, a people who are told that they are dying will no doubt act accordingly.

“There’s a real half- empty/half-full syndrome going on about Jewish life,” said Reinharz, who also heads Brandeis’ women’s studies department. If men are becoming either strident or giving up hope, she said, “women are energized.”

If I sound excited about what might ordinarily be an academic exercise, there’s a reason. Here’s the first think tank with the money to address a problem that goes back three generations: For all our education, energy and high- level employment, Jewish women continue to feel stereotyped, outcast and isolated within both America and the Jewish world; we use TV and movies as our mirror, only to find, as Streisand correctly implies, a world that seems to scorn us. But, now, through research and study, we finally will broaden the picture.

Reinharz said that the Institute’s first goal is to help Jewish women rethink themselves, and then to help men see the Jewish world more accurately by incorporating the truth of women’s lives. There will be scholars-in- residence, conferences and discussion of policy issues from a woman’s perspective.

Men may think the Jewish people is dying, but women are not taking that prophecy lying down.

Marlene Adler Marks is editor-at-large of The Jewish Journal. Her e-mail address is wvoice@aol.com.

All rights reserved by author.

SEND EMAIL TO MARLENE ADLER MARKS: wvoice@aol.com

Read a previous week’s column by Marlene Adler Marks:

July 11, 1997 — Celluloid Heroes

July 4, 1997 — Meet the Seekowitzes

June 27, 1997 — The Facts of Life

June 20, 1997 — Reality Bites

June 13, 1997 — The Family Man

News of Our Own Read More »

Letters

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

Responses to Sexuality

I was disappointed by your June 27 issue, which overall equates non-marital sex with maturity, and warns parents not to be judgmental about their children’s behavior. In light of evidence showing that people who are sexually active prior to marriage have more than twice the divorce rate of those who do not, contraception cannot shield us from the costs of early sexual experimentation.

At least three reasons explain the correlation. First, sexual activity distorts courtship. People who expect sex in dating may seek sexual desirability instead of character compatibility in their dates. Such focus hinders one’s search for Mr./Ms. Right. The Janus Report revealed individuals drawn to their spouse’s “sexiness” had more than twice the divorce rate of those who selected for “personality.”

Second, sexual relationships generally involve greater emotional investment, and thus greater emotional loss at their demise. After suffering several breakups, one learns to expect finite relationships, and to “look out for number one.” Such defensiveness is inconsistent with the mutual compromise and commitment a successful relationship needs.

Finally, most people who begin their sexual careers with a non-spouse do not contemplate lifelong sexual monogamy. “Rotating polygamy” creates a taste for sexual variety and impedes subsequent marital fidelity. A recent study reported women with four or more sexual partners were 20 times more likely to commit adultery.

Memories and emotions from past intimate relationships challenge young marriages. The biggest losers in the divorce revolution are its children; we owe them the standards that protect them from family disintegration.

Mitchell Keiter

Los Angeles

Thank you Gene Lichtenstein for your wonderfully balanced editorial on a brave, delicate subject (“From One Generation to the Next,” June 27). Of all the fine articles, yours asked as many questions as it answered, acknowledging from your unique personal view that every generation must tread through its equally unique treacherous shoals of sexuality. In the chaos of the sexual revolution of the late ’60s and early ’70s, there was the belief that real values clarifications would emerge. Some light did fall on some of us.

For example, I dared to live with the man who became husband number two. This would have been social suicide had I done so with husband number one; never mind that it would have saved us from one unhappy first marriage.

Would I want my son or a daughter to do the same, i.e. be sexually involved with a future mate? Not necessarily. Once again, the times have changed, and not only as Marlene Marks points out, sex can be fatal (“The Facts of Life,” June 27).

We “sexual libertarians” learned that having sex before marriage answered some, but not all the questions. For many, it did not guarantee wedded bliss any better than a carefully arranged marriage does.

Shalhevet’s sex education approach in such honest hands as the Finkelsteins’ sounds promising (“The Birds and the Bees and Judaism,” June 27). Relying on the empowerment that we don’t have to do things the way everyone else does? Maybe.

Keeping those hormone-driven questions out of the dark and in the open light seems best.

Josie Levy Martin

Los Angeles

Your June 27 cover story, “Jewish Girls & Sexuality,” made for a sensational issue. Having raised three girls during the Beatles period, and “flower people,” was an experience I wouldn’t wish on any parent. But they survived. And so will this generation.

Survival is the intent of sex. That moment of ecstasy is what creates the spark for all life to continue.

There is basically nothing different between the urges, male and female, regardless of birth origin and/or religious affiliation. It’s the latter that sets moral guidelines, and mandates behavior for Jews. But you fail to make that point in what’s reported.

Hyman H. Haves

Pacific Palisades

Friedlander at UCLA

I would like to thank the Journal for publishing the interview with Professor Saul Friedlander (“The Years of Persecution,” July 4).

Tom Tugend’s well-written review of Friedlander’s new book and his past, capture the essence and the core of the Jewish tragedy in Europe. A human face on the collective loss of six million, so difficult to comprehend.

Tom omitted one aspect of Friedlander’s life: what brought him to Los Angeles and UCLA. Professor Friedlander is an incumbent of the 1939 Club Chair of Holocaust Studies at UCLA.

The endowment of the chair, presently over $2 million, began some seventeen years ago. It was in 1979 when a group of survivors affiliated with the 1939 Club began to raise money for the first chair on Holocaust studies in a public university. After gaining the approval of the Regents of the University of California, in January 1979, the chair became a reality.

Having personally spearheaded the drive to establish the chair, and serving as an ex-officio on the academic committee that invited Professor Friedlander to UCLA, I am proud to say that in addition to the large undergraduate enrollment, numerous graduate students have completed their Ph.D. degrees with specialization in Holocaust studies.

For us, the generation that lived through the actual events, the need to preserve the historical facts through education and transmission to future generations remains very critical. But it also serves as a permanent living memorial to those six million who perished.

Dr. Sam Goetz

Past President of the 1939 Club

Los Angeles

Israelis in L.A.

I noted with interest the discussion of the number of Israeli immigrants in Los Angeles served by the Israeli press (“Power of the Hebrew Press,” July 4). As a demographer, I have studied the topic for a while and wanted to clarify the question as to the numbers.

In the May 1997 edition of the prestigious peer reviewed journal Demography, Professors Yinon Cohen and Yitchak Haberfeld of Tel Aviv University, reconfirmed through their own independent research, my 1983 published estimate of 100,000 to 120,000 Israeli immigrants in the United States. In my 1983 study, which was also published in Moment magazine (Sept. 1983), I estimated the Israeli immigrant population in the Los Angeles area at 10,000 to 12,000. In tracking the trends of Israeli migration over the past fourteen years, I have seen no evidence that the number of Israeli immigrants in Los Angeles has grown greatly.

I am currently tabulating and analyzing the results of the 1997 Los Angeles Jewish Population Survey and I am looking forward to publishing updated estimates of the Israeli and other communities in September.

Pini Herman, Ph.D.

Research Coordinator, Planning and Allocations Department

Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

Paying Their Dues

This letter is being written by a Jewish family who is taking issue with a Reform temple in Thousand Oaks. The question that is raised is whether meeting the financial requirements of the temple is more important than allowing a family to practice their religion, at a cost that is affordable to them. Our family was recently turned away from this congregation because we could not afford their membership dues. The shortfall was about $69 per month.

We were very disappointed with this decision and, frankly, stunned at their attitude. We were not looking for membership in a country club but inclusion in a temple.

Mitzvot might be a good description for the Jewish religion. It means the doing of good deeds, not the doing of pettiness. We think this temple has forgotten its place and purpose. A closed door to any Jewish family is not a door that belongs to any self-respecting temple.

Without members there is no temple, and then there is no Jewish community! As Rabbi Hillel said: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only what am I? And if not now when?”

Mr. and Mrs. William E. Kirsch

Agoura

Excluded

Although we applaud the recent flurry of forums, panels and town meetings whose purpose appeared to bring healing and reconciliation to the disparate elements of the Jewish community, we were both surprised and deeply saddened by the exclusion of the Reconstructionist movement from these public events.

The Reconstructionist movement has been a separate movement in North American Judaism since 1968 and has contributed significantly to American Jewish life. The result of ignoring the Reconstructionist movement was that all the publicity surrounding these events was therefore misleading to the community. The many Jews in Los Angeles who do affiliate and identify with Reconstructionism, felt further alienated and discounted by the very events designed to promote inclusion.

We urge every responsible Jewish agency in our community to contact us for sponsorship and participation in all community-wide events in the future, and hope that they will therefore truly be opportunities for healing, learning and bringing our too fragmented Jewish community together again.

Neil Selman, President, Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben: Kehillat Israel, Pacific Palisades;

Shira Adler Schwartz, Rabbi Neal Weinberg: Los Angeles Reconstructionist Community of Havurot;

George Greenberg, President, Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue;

Randy Klinenberg, President, South Bay Havurah;

Louis J. Wiener, President, Whittier Havurah;

Linda Schibel, National Vice President, Sandra M. Rubenstein, Regional Director: Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, West Coast Region, Los Angeles

Where Are the Arabs?

Donald S. Bustany believes that if over half the Jews in the Knesset would be like Stanley Sheinbaum the road to peace in the Middle East would be a snap (“An Outsider’s View,” Letters, May 16).

He misses an important point. Over the years, innumerable Jews in and out of Israel have spoken out forcefully whenever they thought Israel was acting unfairly to Arabs. I have never heard one word by an Arab taking any responsibility for the conflict.

Where are the Arab Stanley Sheinbaums? I want to hear them condemn egregious Arab acts such as the pressure on Britain to limit jewish immigration. They were opposed to Jews immigrating to Palestine all through the 20th century, but were not opposed to Arabs, with no national, historical ties to the land, coming. Jews had a continuous presence there for 3,500 years, and had been the only sovereign nation there during that time. Where were the condemnations of the 1929 Hebron massacre, and the refusal to accept partition, even after 76 percent of Palestine was used to create Jordan, a country that had never existed before in the history of the world.

Why didn’t they condemn the attack on Israel in 1948? Where were their outcries in 1967, when their fellow Arabs massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Israel’s border, and threatened to push the Jews into the sea. All they did was whine about Israel being an aggressor for trying to save its own life.

When the Arab Stanley Sheinbaums start to speak out loudly and frequently about Arab responsibility, then peace will be a snap in the Middle East. The Jews have had Stanley Sheinbaums since the days of the Prophets. Whatever short comings we Jews have, a lack of self-criticism is not one of them.

It is time for the Arabs to stop whining and wallowing in self-pity and victimization, and blame the Jews for all of their own problems. Come on, Mr. Bustany, share in the responsibility, and we will all have a better life.

Robert Miller

Sherman Oaks

Remember Neal Schnall

I have never felt the need to write a letter to a newspaper, but when I read the excellent article by Beverly Gray (“The Gates of Hope,” June 20), I wanted to correct an omission.

Gray writes so movingly about the Valley Beth Shalom programs for the developmentally disabled, but regrettably, the name of the man who brought the program to our synagogue and developed it with great love and care, is not mentioned.

Neal Schnall, our Hebrew school principal, has nurtured this program from its infancy. He has put his heart and soul, not only into the program, but into every one of the students.

Thank you so much for bringing this wonderful timeless program to the attention of the Los Angeles Jewish community.

Cantor Herschel Fox

Valley Beth Shalom

Encino

Seeking Videos

Israel Television’s Department of Children and Youth is in the process of creating a series of short documentaries depicting how American young people view Judaism and Zionism. These documentaries will include segments dealing with the significant daily issues confronted by American youth.

Certain organizations or individuals in your community may be interested in submitting video tapes about or made by American Jewish youth to Israel Television for consideration. We heartily encourage your participation.

These tapes should focus on how American Jewish youth relate to Jewish and Zionist issues. Clips should be approximately three minutes in length and can be filmed using any type of video camera. Tapes should be sent to the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles, 6380 Wilshire Blvd. ‘1700, Los Angeles, CA 90048. If you would like more information about this program, please call us at (213) 852-5524.

Ido Aharoni

Consul for Communications and Public Affairs

SEND YOUR OWN LETTER TO THE JEWISH JOURNAL AT ab871@lafn.orgAttention: Letters.

All letters must include full name, a valid address and phone number. Pseudonyms and initials will not be used, but names will be withheld on request. Please indicate that you are sending your letter in response to the web page.

Letters Read More »

From Sexuality to Sensuality

Leave a Comment / Family, Old Stories /

There we were, my family, 11 anarchists cruising down to Ensenada for four days on the Viking Serenade, celebrating my mother’s 85th birthday. I roomed with the birthday girl in one of those cabins where you have to yell, “Watch out!” when you exit the lavatory.

When we returned, I drove my mother to Senior Summer School at UC Santa Barbara. Riding down in the elevator, after bringing her suitcases up to her dormitory room, I said, kiddingly: “In your room before 11 p.m., write home but don’t come home, and don’t tell me about your sex life.” My mother laughed like a teen-ager along with the other women who were on their way to the cafeteria.

I looked at these zesty women and thought that cuddling — the socially acceptable sex life for a senior — was on their short list of sexy things to do. They were free, finally, of all that bound them to the conventions of their youth, and they were freed by their age, not by reading Erica Jong.

So when my editor suggested that I write about sex from the older perspective rather than a column about the family cruise, I cringed. When I wrote about seniors for the Los Angeles Times, every so often I was tempted to write a piece about sex and seniors. “What’s to write?” I asked myself. “What could possibly be the difference between the senior class and the freshman?” There certainly were a lot of similarities: drug problems, body self-consciousness, feelings of inadequacy, hair problems. “Must I be trapped in the problem prism? Wasn’t anyone having fun in bed?”

Then I interviewed Harold Mitchell, married more than 50 years to the same woman. I met him at a conference at USC’s Andrus Gerontology Center. Harold had a passion for life. He would be considered seductive for any age. I told him so. He told me that he was still courting his wife. He said that though the intimacies may be fewer, they are no longer rushed for the sake of reaching orgasm. And that’s how the conversation went, and I wrote it, and the Times published it.

Harold is among the 40 percent of people 65 and older who are sexually active. He said that he felt relieved after all these years to be less oriented toward sexual performance and more attuned to sensuality. In fact, he said that he felt ever-youthful because of how much longer it took to attain satisfaction. “Isn’t that what we always wanted when we were younger?” he asked.

Was it? I’m glad somebody was conscious. I was too busy being promiscuous. I can’t even conceive of how I would have turned out if my mother were a hippie or if boys read “Iron John” instead of “The Amboy Dukes” while I read “Forever Amber” and “Tropic of Cancer.” I had to travel to Europe for my sexual rebellion.

Now, kids rent a video, stay home and try to avoid catching their tongue studs on a pillowcase. Love yourself. Do what feels good. Rebellion is a lot scarier when there are no rules to rebel against. So much for the children of parents who brought us the “sexual revolution.”

Those in my mother’s generation became adults when they were still children. Two wars, an economic depression, influenza and working at age 9 forced people to grow up quickly. Sex was reserved for husbands and wives. However, my Aunt Ruthie rebelled. She was a flapper and smoked cigarettes, studied ballet, and broke the chastity rules.

Every generation of American women redefines itself by the times it lives in and measures itself by the progress of the women who came before. Naomi Wolf, 35, author of “Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood,” for instance, came of age during the Reagan-Bush years. She is first generation feminist movement. That is why I don’t get it when she writes, “Men were deciding for us if we were women.” Men didn’t decide if we were women; quite the contrary, we decide if they are men — but only if we understand we have that power. Otherwise, we do a lot of pretending and whining.

Postscript: Last year, Richard Gunther called me after getting my name from the UCLA Center On Aging. He wanted to explore the lives of older men. Let’s make it interesting, I suggested. Let’s try to find out if men, such as Harold Mitchell, make a transition from sexuality to sensuality. Is it natural, or does it have to be learned? What is the effect of lowered testosterone on the male spirit? How do we define and fulfill desire past 65? Instead of “navigating sexual turmoil” (Jewish Journal headline, June 27), let’s explore the open seas in a lighthearted, joyful way. Is there anybody out there who’s not in turmoil? All responses will be protected for their confidentiality.

Write to: Linda Feldman

c/o The Jewish Journal

3660 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 204

Los Angeles, CA 90010

Linda Feldman, a former columnist for the Los Angeles

Times, is the co-author of “Where To Go From Here: Discovering Your Own Life’s Wisdom,” due out his fall from Simon & Schuster.

All rights reserved by author

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Beyond Their Means?

Leave a Comment / Books, Cover Story, Entertainment, Old Stories /

“Jews: The Essence and Character of aPeople” by Arthur Hertzberg and AronHirt-Manheimer (HarperSanFrancisco, $25)

Can one speak of a “national character”? Whileacknowledging that the practice has a pernicious side, Rabbi ArthurHertzberg, in his provocative, if mislabeled, new work, points outthat many books speak of national character and are readily acceptedand praised. For example, Luigi Barzini’s book on the Italians,numerous modern works on the nature of the Russian people, or workson the character of the Greek or Roman peoples in antiquity all seemharmless exercises in interpreting the culture of another. While itis true that plumbing the “Jewish character” is an enterprise thathas been twisted by malevolence, particularly in the last century,that does not mean that certain traits cannot be said to distinguishthe Jewish people throughout their history.

For Hertzberg, Judaism has been sustained by thetwin riverbanks of chosenness and anti-Semitism. Both arise from theconviction that God has designated a special mission for the Jewishpeople. Hertzberg does not say whether he believes this to be true;more important is that Jews act as if it were true. To act chosen isthe guarantor of survival, and of worth. To act chosen means tobelieve in the betterment of the world, to “take actions because theyare right, not because they bring personal comfort and materialgain.”

Aron Hirt-Manheimer, left, withArthur Hertzberg. Photos by Rose Eichenbaum

These are not the random reflections of a Jewishdilettante. Arthur Hertzberg is a brilliant, blustery man who hasmanaged to combine the careers of scholar, pulpit rabbi, activist andpublic intellectual with brio and courage. Those who know him arefamiliar with his unblunted self-regard and combative mein, which areallied to a warmth and willingness to offer counsel and help. Once, Iwas sitting with Hertzberg in his study at NYU, and he left the room,whereupon I turned to his teaching assistant and asked what it waslike to work for him. “He is the best,” she said. “He is giving,kind, and I learn more from an hour of conversation with him thanfrom semester-long seminars with other teachers.”

I offer this sketch because “Jews” is an almostpersonal book. Almost personal, as there are no deep revelations orcharacter analyses. Still, Hertzberg uses this book to schmooze abouthis experiences, his view of the world, his presumptions about theJewish future. This is a book in the manner of the table-talk booksof the 19th century, the sort of book Hazlitt, Landor or Holmes wouldpen if they took Jewish history as their métier. The chapters,co-written with Reform magazine editor Aron Hirt-Manheimer, trolllightly through Jewish history, with stories, sketches and anecdotesloosely linked to the theme of “the Jewish essence.” SinceHertzberg’s life has been so rich, there is substance as well ascharm to his backward glances.

Unfortunately, the book is being marketed assomething other than it is. The flap copy and advertising leads oneto imagine that “The Jews” is a sustained, focused meditation on thecharacter and destiny of Judaism. It is not. Evidence ofrigorlessness abounds: Midrash is quoted as history (indeed, thepassage about Abraham’s smashing his father’s idols, a midrashiclegend, is quoted twice, and pivotally); vast phenomena are sweptaside with a bromide (“We Jews know why we suffer. Society resentsanyone who challenges its fundamental beliefs, behavior, andprejudices.” “That Jews have a special destiny…is why so manyparents want their children to marry a Jew”); and there are even somemisstatements (Isaac Luria did not “invent tikkun olam .”)

Much of the book is taken up with thumbnailsketches of some fascinating personalities. There are familiar names– Benjamin Disraeli, Spinoza the Baal Shem Tov — as well as namesknown to the cognoscenti, such as Isaac De Pinto, Abraham Seneor andJacob Emden. A few of the biographies contribute to the overridingthemes, while others make an appearance because of their intrinsicimportance or interest, but without adding to the general thrust ofthe argument.

At the end of the book, Hertzberg makes apassionate plea for pluralism. Raised in an Orthodox home (his fatherwas a well-known Chassidic Rabbi), he is indignant at what he regardsas Orthodox triumphalism and rigidity: “The incontrovertible fact isthat all of the modern Jewish movement, the very ones from whichOrthodoxy proclaims it will save us, arose because in the course ofthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries Orthodoxy could not keep mostof its children within its ranks.” He also cites the surprisingstatistic yielded by an analysis of the 1990 population study that ofrespondents raised Orthodox, only 22 percent still identified withthat branch of Judaism. Of those raised Conservative, 57 percentstill identified as such, and in the case of Reform, the percentagewas 78.

These are provocative assertions. While they arenot argued at length, and do not flow seamlessly from the preceding,the bite of the provocateur outweighs any puzzlement at the exactfocus of the argument.

Hertzberg’s prescription for Jewish survival isnot new: engagement with texts, seriousness about tikkun olam,grappling with the presence and absence of God, permitting aplurality of serious voices to be heard without delegitimizingothers.

What makes these arguments worth reading is therange of reference, the authority of the writer, and the pungency ofthe tone.

This book should be read less for information –though, surely all who read it will learn — than for an encounterwith an original. Arthur Hertzberg is a deeply learned and passionateman, that rare historian who has abandoned the academic sideline fora place in the fray. Read with a pencil in hand, for thesereflections will engage and infuriate. In the end, however, like theman, they will both charm and enlighten.


David Wolpe is spiritual leader of SinaiTemple.

A Living Legacy

By Diane Arieff Zaga, Arts Editor

“The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of DesertNomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels” by ThomasCahill (Doubleday, $23.50)

Combining the lyrical sensibility of a poet withan historian’s disciplined and far-ranging curiosity, author ThomasCahill explores the nature of Judaism’s contributions to the worldwith freshness and an elegant sense of wonder. “The Gifts of theJews” follows Cahill’s best-selling “How the Irish SavedCivilization.” It is the second work in his “Hinges of History”series, which explores pivotal moments in the evolution of the humansensibility.

This is not history written as a rote series ofnatural and man-made disasters. It’s not a dry, footnote-ladenacademic exercise either. Cahill manages something perhaps moredifficult, and certainly more compelling: He places the spiritualjourney of biblical-era Jewry firmly in a historical context whilesimultaneously making them come alive in a way that is almost sensoryin its immediacy.

Cahill’s overarching goal with this book, and withthe entire series, is to examine the various important legacies ofvarious peoples at unique passages in time. Not surprisingly then,the author exults in the rich contributions of the first monotheists– flawed and human, but revolutionary, too. “The role of the Jews,the inventors of Western culture,” Cahill writes, “is singular; thereis simply no one else remotely like them…their worldview has becomeso much a part of us that at this point it might as well have beenwritten into our cells as a genetic code.”

Beginning with patriarch Abraham’s startlingjourney from Sumeria to Canaan, and continuing on through theBabylonian exile, the author delves deep into the nature of theJewish “gift,” illuminating the links between ancient biblical eventsand the modern ideas and values we hold dear.

By trusting in his god, the intrepid Abraham wasthe first human being to believe that the future could be better thanthe past. Abraham’s journey was a complete break with the worldviewthat maintained that human experience was cyclical — the present arepetition of the past, as the future would be a repetition of thepresent, and that all human life was merely a diminutive version ofthe life of the gods. In Asia, Europe, the Americas, the dominantworldview was that human life existed within a wheel: passive,timeless, predetermined, nonindividualistic.

“The very idea of vocation, of a personal destiny,is a Jewish idea,” Cahill concludes. After Abraham, God is no longera petty kitchen god represented by a portable amulet. The Sumerianbusinessman-turned-nomadic-patriarch comes to have faith in a higherGod, mysterious, omnipotent and ultimately unknowable.

If Abraham’s journey was a dramatic symbol ofpersonal destiny, Moses’ later journey, leading the liberated slavesout of Egypt, broadened into the destiny of the People of Israel. Theescape from the land of Pharaoh and awe-filled scene at Mount Sinaiare familiar to Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike. Rightly, Cahillchooses not to linger in the detailed recounting of such familiarepisodes. Instead, he is intent on exploring how such cataclysmicevents shaped this band of nomads and, millennia later, shape usstill. Throughout, Cahill’s prose is peppered with contemporaryreferences that are usually welcome, if sometimes a bit precious.(the poetry of John Donne, modern Hebrew slang, even Bob Dylanlyrics).

But it is his passion and excitement for hissubject, combined with a gift of insight and almost cinematic feelfor drama, that make this book such an enjoyable and provocativeread. Of the grumbling band of desert wanderers who accompanied Mosesto the base of the “terrible mountain,” which he would ascend toreceive the Ten Commandments, Cahill writes:

“The people who first heard these words wereunrefined and basic, the Dusty Ones, wandering through Sinai’s lunarlandscape, denuded of the ordinary web of life, baked in absoluteheat and merciless light. This was no age or people or environmentfor anything but the plainest, harshest truths…. This was the time,this the place, these the people who must receive the unassailabletruth of the Ten Words and carry them forward.”

Cahill gives the reader a new opportunity to bemoved by biblical events that may have begun to seem stale, remote oreven inaccessible. The elementary rightness of the Ten Commandmentsas a prescription for living, a set of laws given withoutjustification or vacillation, represented the gruff sort of truththat would resonate deepest with Moses’ followers, yet they remainelegantly simple and flexible enough to contain all the complex moraldilemmas of modern life. Time, the author argues, has proved theircompleteness.

“…If I can peer through the mists of historyand see the begrimed, straightforward faces straining upward towardthe terrors of Mount Sinai and if I can imagine this immense throngof simple souls trudging through the whole of history — all theordinary people down the ages in need of moral guidance in all theincredibly various situations and cultures this planet has known –it must be admitted that it would be fairly impossible to improve onthe Decalogue as we have it.”

After the fateful climax at Sinai, Cahillcontinues his imaginative journey through ancient time, revisitingthe charismatic King David and the later, elegantly poignant calls tojustice by the prophet Isaiah. With each step, he makes the case forhis book’s title more convincingly. Our modern conception of justice,compassion, the idea of the Sabbath day of rest as the sign of a freepeople, all are rooted in the Jewish religious experience, one theauthor insists “remains fresh, even shocking, when it is read againstthe myths of other ancient literatures.”

The final chapter, entitled “From Then Til Now:The Jews Are Still It,” is a wake-up call of sorts, in which Cahillillustrates the still-relevant and still-radical power of the Bible,even if many of us, in this postmodern era, tend to approach it withweary, half-seeing eyes. Modern liberation movements in places suchas South Africa and Poland, for example, the abolitionist movement ofthe last century, and our pantheon of modern heroes (Gandhi,Sojourner Truth, Cesar Chavez, etc.) are unimaginable withoutreference to the collection of Jewish works we know as the Bible.”The Jews,” Cahill writes, “gave us the Outside and the Inside — ouroutlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning orcross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams andhope Jewish hopes.”

Those who grumble that the author doesn’tadequately explore differing scholarly interpretations of events, orthat he is unduly informal, almost glib in some of his meanderings,may be missing the point and the value of his latest work. Byconnecting us so vividly to the hearts and minds of our spiritualancestors, Thomas Cahill has given readers an important and lastinggift of his own.

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Beach Bio Bingo

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Old Stories /

Eventually, we all will have to read a biography of Steven Spielberg. No other filmmaker, and few other humans, have had such an impact on the culture we live in and the one our children will inherit. So far, it looks like the biography we’ll be reading will be Joseph McBride’s just-published “Steven Spielberg” (Simon & Schuster, $30).

McBride, who has published acclaimed studies on Frank Capra, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles, focuses much of this 490-page tome on the director-as-put-upon-Jewish-wimp. It was the Spielberg family’s constant moving (Arnold Spielberg was a brilliant engineer/technician on every defense contractor’s most-wanted list) followed by his parents’ divorce that reinforced Spielberg’s sense of living “an alien existence” and engendered his creation of a fantasy life underpinned with real longing for a connection with a father. McBride takes a long look at the anti-Semitism Spielberg experienced, and determines that it compelled him, first, to reach out to the widest possible audience and, later, to express his Jewishness through “Schindler’s List” and the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.

What emerges in this massively researched and elegantly written work is a man driven to make movies. You can fit Spielberg into dozens of psychological categories, but the fact remains that he was dead serious about making movies from the time he was a Boy Scout with an 8mm.

But McBride also makes convincing connections between the themes of almost every movie made by Spielberg-the-Man and the experiences and longings of Spielberg-the-Boy.

“Who the Devil Made It” (Knopf, $39.95) by Peter Bogdanovich.

This book, a compendium of in-depth interviews with 16 of the greatest film directors of all time, is somehow, for all its 804 pages, never boring. Sometimes, it reads like a clear manual of film how-to. And, sometimes, as when Leo McCarey talks about directing the Marx Brothers in “Duck Soup,” it quietly drops major revelation in your lap. But, mostly, it endlessly reveals the genius, luck, craft and serendipity at work behind great works of art. In interviews he conducted over the span of three decades, Bogdanovich speaks with such greats as Howard Hawks, George Cukor, Sidney Lumet, Otto Preminger, Chuck Jones, Alfred Hitchcock, Josef Von Sternberg and Raoul Walsh. They offer anecdote, perspective, gossip and drafts of insight into their work, the nature of film and, even, the nature of work.

The other profile to emerge from these interviews is that of Bogdanovich himself. His persistence as a financially challenged Hollywood hanger-on has obscured not only his great filmmaking abilities (“The Last Picture Show,” “What’s Up, Doc?” “Mask”) but also his profound knowledge of film, art and history. No journalist could match Bogdanovich’s easy access to questions about particular angles, obscure cameramen and thrown-away scenes. He enables the reader to understand how these men, because they had mastered their own world, helped determine how we experience our own.
A Distant Biography

“Conversations With Dvora” (University of California, $16.95, paper) by Amia Lieblich (translated by Naomi Seidman).

Long before she closed herself up in her Tel Aviv apartment, Dvora Baron had earned a reputation as one of the finest modern Hebrew writers.

Born in Lithuania, in 1887, she was a published short-story writer by age 15. In 1911, she emigrated to Palestine, married a journalist, and became part of the literary intelligentsia. Her fiction covered such groundbreaking topics as incest, divorce and domestic violence. But after her beloved brother died in 1923, Baron closed herself up in her apartment and stayed there until her death in 1956. Author Lieblich never met Baron, but she imagines in this book a series of conversations with Baron taking place in the great writer’s darkened apartment over the last year of her life. The result is interesting if uneven.

Baron’s story, while well-realized and unique, stands as a kind of ur-story for a generation of pioneers. There is hope, disillusionment, fulfillment and tragedy. Lieblich fills her book with such details and makes Baron into a convincing, seductive storyteller. But the artifice at times wears thin — there’s far too many “I askeds” and “she saids.” And the language, especially given Baron’s reputation as an innovator, often stales.

But included in the volume is a translated story by the real Baron. “Fradl” is a powerful and perceptive portrait of a shtetl woman. Reading the story, it’s easy to understand how Lieblich would yearn to know Baron.

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On Exhibit: Diplomats and Émigrés

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories /

Hiroki Sugihara (foreground) is among the five Simon Wiesenthal Center honorees in the new exhibit, “Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats.”Members of a small and select club were remembered and honored on Monday with the opening of the exhibit “Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats” at the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

The five honorees, now all deceased, were consular officials who defied the orders of their respective governments by issuing life-saving visas and safe passes to a combined 150,000 Jewish refugees during World War II. These diplomats paid with their professional careers.

The exhibit of previously unpublished photographs and letters pays tribute to Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, Aristides de Sousa Mendes of Portugal, Chiune Sugihara of Japan, Hiram Bingham of the United States, and Jan Zwartendijk of Holland.

Sons of three of the diplomats were on hand to recognize their fathers’ courageous deeds during 1940, as desperate refugees sought to escape the Nazi juggernaut.

John Paul Abranches, son of Sousa Mendes, recalled the words of his father: “I would rather be with God against man, than with man against God.” While stationed in Bordeaux, France, Sousa Mendes and his family issued 30,000 visas during a three-day period.

William Bingham spoke of his father, who, while stationed in Marseilles, France, was instrumental in bringing to the United States such notables as Marc Chagall, writer Heinrich Mann, and 20 Jewish Nobel Prize winners.

Hiroki Sugihara noted that his father was considered a meshugener by colleagues for issuing visas to more than 10,000 Polish Jews while serving in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Eric Saul, who created the exhibit, noted that these five diplomats must be counted among the 36 Righteous Men of each generation, through whose merit the world is preserved.

Saul regretted that “less than 1 percent of Jews know even the names of these five rescuers.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said that an attempt will be made to mount the exhibit at the U.S. State Department, and later at the British and French foreign ministries.

“Visas for Life” is open to the public through Aug. 27 at the Museum of Tolerance.

In the same location, the exhibit “Beta Israel: The Jews of Ethiopia” will be on display until Aug. 10.

Through illustrated charts, primitive tools, handicraft, musical instruments and photos, the exhibit traces the likely origins, history and daily life of the Beta Israel.

The final panel shows the Ethiopian Jews’ present life in Israel through somewhat romanticized photos, but the accompanying text does not gloss over their difficulties in integrating into modern Israeli society.

For information on both exhibits, call (310) 553-9036.

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