fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

July 24, 1997

Up Front

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Old Stories, Up Front /

I love cookbooks, but on lazy summer days, I usually read fiction — few cookbooks are engaging enough to replace a good novel. And when I go into the kitchen at all, it’s usually just to stand in front of the open freezer. But when I do find a cookbook that captures me, cooking with it is just a plus.

Diana Shaw’s newest book, “The Essential Vegetarian” (Clarkson Potter, $22.50), meets all my foodie needs. Shaw, the author of the popular “Almost Vegetarian Cookbook,” is neither a complete vegetarian nor a professional chef. Writing in a relaxed, friendly manner, she makes it known early that she is not part of the food police. Many recipes feature eggs and dairy products, and some things include sugar. But everything is geared to a low-fat diet.

Eating about an 85-percent vegetarian diet myself — as do more and more people who keep kosher — I sometimes forget that there is more to meatless living than veggie burgers. Shaw gives many recipes for soups, risottoes, pastas and soufflés, and she makes them all sound incredibly easy. And her take on Jewish and Middle Eastern standbys such as baba ghanouj, borscht (both cherry and sweet-and-sour), pita bread, tabbouleh, blintz casserole, breakfast kugel and hummus emphasize low-fat, easy-to-follow preparations.

There are plenty of other recipes in this 600-page tome to entice you into the kitchen — Pumpkin Waffles, Artichoke Risotto and Sweet Potato Soufflé — even if, like me, you end up sprawled on the couch, air conditioner blasting, contentedly reading Shaw’s book.

— Tamara Liebman

From top Sydney Weisman, Dr. Judith Reichman, and Dr. Judy B. Rosener.

Coincidence or…?

W

here do you turn if you really want to find out what’s happening in Los Angeles? Well, there’s “Which Way, L.A.?” on KCRW, there’s Bill Rosendahl’s round tables on Century Cable, and there’s “Life & Times” on KCET.

Now, three new commentators have been tapped to appear on the acclaimed talking-heads show “Life & Times,” joining regulars Hugh Hewitt, Patt Morrison and Kerman Maddox on a rotating basis. The new commentators are Dr. Judith Reichman, a gynecologist and women’s health advocate; entrepreneur Sydney Weisman; and Dr. Judy B. Rosener, professor at UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Management. Reichman will discuss health and medical issues, Weisman will focus on small business, and Rosener will examine issues relating to work.

Up Front can’t help but notice that the three commentators chosen by show producers to dissect modern-day Los Angeles all happen to be Jewish women. Producer Val Zavalla laughed off any notion of intention: These are just three highly competent experts. And congratulations to them.

JTN’s ‘Big Shots’

If Showtime can do it, why not JTN? The Jewish Television Network has taken a page from the book of Showtime, HBO and other cable channels and has begun producing its own made-for-cable movies.

Its original, four-part drama, “Big Shots,” debuted on July 22 and will continue through Aug. 11, with episodes airing on local cable channels each Tuesday evening.

“Big Shots” examines how five fictional characters combine their Jewish identities with their Hollywood careers. Cast members share memories from personal journals, providing insights, says the press release, “into characters’ thoughts, feelings and ultimate career path.” A kind of “Blue-and-White Shoe Diaries,” if you will.

The series stars Ed Asner, Bonnie Franklin, Steve Landesberg, Jonathan Prince and Larry Pressman. Al Rabin directed from scripts by Richard Allen. Funding came from JTN’s board of directors, which includes many people who know a thing or two about entertainment-industry success and being Jewish, among them Jeff Sagansky, Bruce Ramer and Danny Goldberg.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, the not-for-profit JTN is the only Jewish broadcast network in the United States. It is carried in 5 million homes across the country. Call your local cable company to find out when “Big Shots” airs.

An Israeli-Saudi Alliance?

Who wouldn’t want to live in John Briley’s shoes for a while? When a wealthy, well-connected Moroccan businessman commissioned the Academy Award-winning screenwriter (“Gandhi”) to write a sympathetic screenplay about the Arab world, he put at the writer’s disposal a twin-engine French jet, two Swiss pilots, a flight attendant, passport-less entry to every Arab nation and immediate access to everyone, from ministers to camel herders.

When a production company asked Briley to write a film adaptation of the classic story of Israel’s independence, “O Jerusalem!” Briley toured Israel with the book’s co-author, Dominique LaPierre, meeting everyone, from Binyamin Netanyahu to Teddy Kollek to Palestinian leaders to Legionnaires.

The result of all this research is combined in Briley’s just-released novel, “The First Stone” (Morrow, $24), the story of a Jewish UCLA student named Lisa Cooper, who becomes a Mossad mole by marrying into a Saudi family. The plot turns on Lisa’s efforts to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together on the basis of shared interests and common enemies.

Briley latched onto the idea in a conversation with his father-in-law, who wondered aloud if Israel and the Saudi kingdom shouldn’t form a strategic alliance. Briley ran with it, incorporating insiders’ knowledge of life in a Saudi harem, on an Israeli kibbutz (his daughter spent time on Cabri, in the north) and as a Mossad mole (LaPierre introduced him to several).

But far from being a political treatise, Briley’s book is a quick summer read, as Frappacino-like as fiction gets. True, as Briley said in an interview with Up Front, the inevitable change in the Saudi regime will be a crisis for Israel and the world. And “The First Stone,” amid its double-dagger dealing and steamy desert sex, does make a case for worrying about it. And we will — when summer’s over.

Up Front Read More »

Torah Portion

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Torah /

You can’t miss her. All over town, huge billboards advertise not cigarettes, automobiles or banking services but the image of a scantily clad young woman, with the caption “Angelyne.” Her image is a caricature of male fantasies. What was once confined to the back pages of so-called “men’s magazines,” now decorates the public thoroughfare. From street level, it’s virtually impossible to miss her — her gigantic voluptuousness measured not in inches but in yards.

But having grown immune to every conceivable urban aberration, I hardly notice anymore. It was my son who paid attention: “Abba, who is that lady, Angelyne, and why is she on that billboard? What is she selling?” Good question. Why is this lady all over town? What do you tell a child about this phenomenon?

Well, kids, in our culture, and especially in this city, being famous is dearly valued. Fame conveys validation, fulfilling a deep need to be recognized. Celebrity is ontology — you’re not anyone until you’re on TV. “Is that someone?” I ask my wife, pointing to a lesser-known character actor sitting across us in a restaurant.

Most of all, fame is immortality. There are people so terribly anxious that their lives will amount to nothing — people who worry that they will live and die and leave no trace of themselves in the world, their lives touching no one, accomplishing nothing, making no difference — they fear no one will ever know that they lived. Somehow, being famous relieves them of this terror of oblivion.

For most, such as star athletes, actors, authors or musicians, fame is earned through the contribution of some talent or gift. Then, there are people who become famous accidentally (see Kato Kaelin) or those who are famous for no reason at all (Oprah Winfrey and Regis Philbin come to mind). Saddest of all, there are people so desperate to be known that they will do anything, even buy up billboards, just to be famous for a few moments. They will do anything to gain fame because only in fame will they ever feel important and real.

“Maybe she’s trying to make friends,” says my young daughter. Indeed. What an image to set before a little girl — a woman who buys her place in the world with peroxide and silicone. Evidence again that, for such a sophisticated culture, our appreciation and mastery of the mysterious power of sexuality remains so crude.

Of course, it’s not just Angelyne. The equation of a woman’s worth with the measure of her bust is a common American tale. It just seems to have gotten worse lately. Consider the phenomenon of the “supermodel.” Once an anonymous mannequin for the display of clothing, now they’ve become cultural heroes. For doing what? I want my daughter to emulate Golda Meir, Margaret Mead, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she’s constantly confronted with Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer.

For a culture that has come so far in liberating women from all that bound them for centuries, we have yet so far to go. Women today govern nations, manage major corporations, direct scientific missions to Mars. But the leading consumer product in 1990s America remains the “wonder bra.”

In this week’s haftarah, the section of the Prophets that’s read along with the weekly Torah portion, the prophet Jeremiah receives his calling. He is only 17 and looking for the mission and measure of his life. In what will he find success and fulfillment? Fame, wealth, power all beckon. But the word of God comes to him: “See, I appoint you this day over nations and kingdoms; to uproot and pull down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” He resists. The career of the prophet will make him anathema to his community and people — the anti-celebrity. But God will not be put off. What is celebrity, compared with the sacred work of speaking God’s word? In the shadow of the holy task of mending God’s world, the pursuit of fame brings only hopelessness and futility. And if you don’t believe Jeremiah, just ask Angelyne.

Ed Feinstein is rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino.

Torah Portion Read More »

Straight Talk About Blacks and Jews

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Old Stories, Television /

Issac Bitton meets Peter Noel, the man who saved his life during the Crown Heights riots.

Among Jews, the subject of black-Jewish relations inevitably brings to the surface two impassioned, if not unrelated sentiments: a liberal nostalgia for the integrated social activism of days gone by and an embittered cataloguing of the latest anti-Semitic soundbites to come out of the mouths of black leaders.

In “Blacks and Jews,” filmmakers Deborah Kaufman, Bari Scott and Alan Snitow explore the events that have given rise to resentment on both sides and trace the freefall of this once solid friendship with intelligence and a rigorous avoidance of platitudes. The documentary will air nationwide on Tuesday, July 29, the latest offering in PBS’s excellent “P.O.V.” series, a showcase for independent, non-fiction films now in its tenth year. (Locally, it airs on KCET.)

Those looking for some kind of upbeat closure will not find it here, yet there are some moments of inspiration: A black West Indian journalist rescues a bloodied Hasidic father and his son during the Crown Heights street rioting of 1991. After a reuinion much later, the journalist describes discovering the Morrocan immigrant and ex-hippie behind the Jewish man’s beard and black garb. In that same beleaguered section of Brooklyn, a black-Jewish rap group called “The Cure” belts out positive messages with affable swagger. There is also the story of how Chicago Rabbi Robert Marx joined in protest with black homebuyers in 1969 to protest racist bank practices and the cynical manipulations of local real estate speculators (many of whom were Jewish) when the city’s Lawndale area was making it’s rocky transition from a Jewish neighborhood to a black one. Few current Lawndale residents, the film points out, are old enough to remember those united efforts now.

These episodes are cheering, but they are like faint solos, easily drowned out on the larger stage of black-Jewish relations, which the filmmakers describe at the outset as having degenerated into “a public ritual of mutual blame.”

From the Crown Heights riots to the Million Man March on Washington in 1995 to the media circus that ensued after a group of predominantly black high school students in Oakland laughed disruptively during a screening of “Schindler’s List,” the filmmakers do not shy away from the deep wounds and facile stereotypes that shape the interactions of these two communities.

Much of what fuels the conflict portrayed so ably here is a microcosm of what ails the country at large: a climate of tribalism and victimology, the brutishness of public discourse and endless battles over language as a way to define and claim events. Hours after a Hasidic driver accidentally ran over 7-year-old Gavin Cato in Crown Heights that fateful day in August 1991, Hasidic student Yankel Rosenbaum was fatally stabbed. Many blacks called the eruption of violence an uprising. Jews called it a pogrom.

Nowhere in the film is the complexity of the failed relationship between blacks and Jews captured more vividly than in the final segment. In 1994, when 69 students from Oakland’s prediminantly black Castlemont High School went on a Martin Luther King Day field trip to see “Schindler’s List,” they were kicked out of the theater before the film was over. Their constant laughter — even during brutal execution scenes — got other movie patrons so upset that they stormed into the lobby to protest to the theatre manager. The real drama, however, happened later, after the news media had all gone home. Responding to student complaints that they were forced to learn about the Jewish Holocaust at the expense of their own history, Castlemont set aside a day for invited speakers to focus on the African-American experience. In one classroom a presenter is seen telling students, “This whole society’s job is to make you feel bad about being black.” Another tells them that Jews dominated the slave trade.

It’s a disturbing spectacle, but strangely enough, the most depressing moment in the entire film comes moments later, during an interview with a pair of youngish Castlemont teachers — one Jewish and one black –whose comments are interspersed throughout this segment. When the black teacher is asked about the objectionable material presented by these guest speakers, her response is dishearteningly noncomittal: “Well, out of 27 presenters, two raised some issues that the students challenged.” The Jewish teacher counters that propagating blatantly anti-Semitic lies is hardly the same as “raising some issues.” His black colleague smiles faintly and says nothing. Watching this telling scene play out like a subdued piece of cinema verité, one can’t help but feel that there remains a great deal that we shall not overcome.

Straight Talk About Blacks and Jews Read More »

A Perfect Orange

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories, United States /

In addition to the usual bathing suits,
socks and shorts, as suggested by Camp Hess Kramer on
its inventory list, my daughter, Samantha, needed an
orange sweat shirt with blue (preferably royal) lettering
spelling out the words “Leadership ’97” on the front and
her name on the back. Right away, I could foresee
trouble.

Leadership is a big deal at Wilshire Boulevard
Temple camps, which, after 45 years and 50,000
campers, are a big part of Los Angeles Jewish life. For
those 1,100 campers who will attend either Hess Kramer
or its sister, Gindling Hilltop, this summer, Leadership
walks on hallowed ground. Coming a stage before CIT,
two steps below counselor, Leadership is the crowning
achievement of camper life; part in-crowd, part initiation
into real authority.

“We sit with Administration!!!”
Samantha reminded me, nervously. Or, as Howard Kaplan,
camp director, wrote Samantha last February in his letter
of congratulations: “You become the bearer of a tradition
at Camp Hess Kramer, and you become a role model for
hundreds of younger campers who look up to
you.”

Mostly, it’s a lot of fun, marked by a three-day
hike, lots of singing, cheering and in-jokes, and, of course,
the distinguishing sweat shirt, a form of group of
cohesion. It all adds up to what most Leadership alumni
still recognize as “the time of their lives.”

“It comes at
exactly the right moment, when they’re most idealistic,”
Steve Breuer, executive director of Wilshire Boulevard
Temple, told me. He created the Leadership program
when he was camp director a generation ago. “But
because campers expect it to be wonderful, it is.”

As a
parent, I say it’s wonderful for me too. Jewish summer
camp is a 20th-century American innovation, and not
enough can be said in its favor. Through camp life, we see
contemporary Judaism in its three eternal verities:
Zionism, spiritual effusion, American idealism. Camp
builds all three into our children, hora and all, and, if this
is indoctrination, it works. There’s a suggestion that
Jewish camps begin an Israel component, taking high
school juniors to visit the Jewish state. Let me lobby
strongly for this worthwhile idea. In addition to locking
in Jewish values, camp may provide the only positive
Jewish experience, and the only Jewish community, a
child ever knows. Camp administrators would be more
than great tour guides; they’d know how to make the
Zionistic link explicit.

Certainly, if they could bottle
camp, and the feelings of purpose and joy a happy
camper brings into my family life, I’d be the first to
buy.

As for Leadership ’97, my daughter has been
looking forward to this special summer since her first 10-
day session at Hess Kramer seven years ago. From the
very beginning, camp has been the True North; its songs,
rituals and values provide the markers of real life,
making much of what we do at home seem like filling
time.

That is to say, if Howard Kaplan and Craig
Marantz, God’s surrogate as Leadership Unit Leader, want
orange-and-blue sweat shirts this summer, well, who are
we to judge?

A week before camp’s opening day, we
began the search. Let me tell you, sweat shirts come in
3,000 shades of gold, yellow, peach and red. Likewise,
there are 12 brands of orange T-shirts — long sleeves,
short sleeves, T-shirts with blue logos (Nike, Russell
Athletic, Ralph Lauren). We’ve gone from Oshman’s to
Macy’s to Sportmart: In all Los Angeles, not one sweat
shirt in naranja.

We were dismayed but resolute.
Having failed at finding the perfect orange sweat shirt,
we would make one ourselves. What could there be to
it?

“We’ll dye a white one,” I said, as if coloring apparel
is an everyday affair in my home. But after visiting a
dozen stores, and finding dyes mostly in black and
brown, I was turning pale.

“Do you think we can use
food coloring?” I asked the checkout clerk at Vons. I
described my plan to mix 12 drops of red with 24 drops
of yellow. An elderly gentleman shook his head.

“A
sweat shirt is not a hard-boiled egg,” he said.

And, so,
we kept searching store to store until, the day before she
was to leave for camp, we came upon a bottle of RIT
labeled “Tangerine” in a market close to home.

“That’s
it!” said Samantha.

“It’s Tangerine,” I said.

“It will be
orange enough for me.”

We still had to acquire the
letters, royal blue. The House of Fabrics had a white iron-
on cut-out alphabet, or large pieces of blue iron-on felt —
no pre-cut letters in blue.

So we bought white letters
and royal blue paint and stayed up all night, coloring
every single character of “Leadership ’97.”

In a wild,
manic way, it turned out to be fun. The camp officials, in
their wisdom, had not sent us on a wild-goose chase after
all. The sweat shirt was simply a form of karma yoga,
forging spirit and responsibility in campers by purposely
making them (and their parents) create the sweat shirts
themselves.

Then the big day was upon us, and we
packed the orange/tangerine sweat shirt, bathing suits
and all into the car.

I drove my daughter up to camp;
Samantha ran to Craig Marantz as if he were a long-lost
cousin. I could only stand and stare.

“Your sweat shirt!”
I said to Craig. “Why is your sweat shirt red?” Moreover,
why was his lettering in white?

“Didn’t anyone tell
you?” he asked benignly. “The parents all complained, so
they changed the color to red.”

My face, in the car
mirror, was a perfect orange.

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 18, 1997 — News of Our Own

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

A Perfect Orange Read More »

Disney, Boycotts and the Hollywood Elite

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories, United States /

It’s hard to feel sorry for the Walt Disney Company, a multibillion-dollar mouse-forged empire that seems to own a part of most children’s hearts, including that of my own 2 1/2-year-old. Yet, in recent weeks, the venerable Burbank entertainment giant has been subjected to two major boycotts, one from the right-leaning Southern Baptists and the other from Latino media activists.

Why target Disney? To a large extent, notes the Anti-Defamation League’s David Lehrer, it’s simply a reflection of that company’s success. “Disney is a big target because it’s big and successful,” he says. “It’s an easy place to get attention if you go after it.”

Yet there may be something more serious lurking behind these boycotts, Lehrer and others suspect — a revival of the traditional concerns among various groups about “Jewish control” of the means of mass communications. Disney might be less exploitative and venal in its product line than the rest of Hollywood, but its leadership comprises some of the most visible and powerful Jewish figures in the industry (not the least of whom is Chairman Michael Eisner).

Although this linkage between Hollywood and Jews is rarely spoken of in press releases here, Lehrer says that it is once again a regular staple in the somewhat snide British press. More ominously, however, the Southern Baptist boycott comes from the very organization that last year openly advocated the mass conversion of Jews from their faith.

“Southern Baptists don’t talk about Jews; they talk about the Walt Disney Company,” says Rabbi James Rudin, director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. “But in the back of their mind, they are thinking about Jews in the entertainment companies.”

Rudin is no stranger to the religious right, having worked assiduously to improve relations between conservative Christians and mainstream Jewish organizations. He points out that the Southern Baptists have become increasingly hard-line in recent years on issues from homosexuality and abortion to the conversion of non-Christians. In the process, he adds, they have lost thousands of members and much of their grass-roots support. Many Southern Baptists, including those around Orlando, Disney’s Florida hub, have distanced themselves from the boycott.

But Rudin suggests that the boycott does also reflect a legitimate complaint — that Hollywood, and its largely Jewish leadership, is guilty of a kind of “elitism,” particularly when it comes to the views felt in the “flyover zone” between the coasts. “It’s a bigger issue about control of the culture by elites, and the Jews are part of it,” Rudin says.

If this is true of Southern Baptists, much of the same can be said of the other boycotting group, the National Latino Media Coalition. Like other non-Jews in the entertainment media, many Latinos have felt excluded in their access to jobs, particularly in upper management at the studios. Many of them complain that the Hollywood elite sees only stereotypical roles for Latinos in the media, even though they live adjacent to the largest Hispanic community north of Mexico City.

“All we see are the stereotypes,” says Alex Nogales, chairman of the coalition, which has won the support of such prominent figures as Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina. “We have been people selling oranges under the freeway, the nanny, the gardener, the gangbanger. That’s what we seem to fit into.”

Nogales and other Latinos in the media believe that many Jewish executives, including Eisner, have become socially isolated from the diverse and complex multiracial Los Angeles that exists around them. Certainly, this is not only a Disney problem; Steven Spielberg’s wife, Kate Capshaw, once said that she wanted to move to New York to be in a “more diverse” city. One wonders whether she, and many other Hollywood types, ever sojourn east of La Cienega Boulevard.

This reflects a troubling tendency among Hollywood executives. Many of them may live in Los Angeles, the world’s most diverse major city, but are not of it. Instead, they cling to ethnic mentalities nurtured in the predominantly black-and-white environments of 1960s Chicago, New York or Boston of their youths. If they seek to open themselves to other influences, it tends to be more oriented to African-Americans, who have made huge strides into at least creative parts of the business.

“A lot of Jews have forgotten what it’s like to be a newcomer and have obstacles put in front of them,” Nogales says. “They have become so isolated — the Eisners and that type — they are now excluding others, just as the Jewish immigrant was once excluded.”

Although somewhat hyperbolic, Nogales’ assertions cannot be dismissed as anti-Semitic. For one thing, Nogales is married to a Jew and sends his kids to a Jewish summer camp. His concerns should also be those of our community: After being perhaps too solicitous of non-Jews in the days of the Mayers and the Warners, the Jewish Hollywood elite and others must face the fact that there is a growing chasm between the entertainment industry and large parts of its audience, as can be seen in repeated congressional hearings and in the growing movement to control and label Hollywood content.

This chasm represents an important issue that Jews, both inside and outside of the entertainment industry, will need to address among themselves in years ahead.

Not that the boycotts of Disney will do much to advance that discussion within our community or with outsiders. Although they work as publicity stunts, the two boycotts will likely fail to keep Baptist or Latino parents from their appointed rounds, taking their children to Disneyland, Disneyworld or to see “Hercules” at Hollywood’s El Capitan. What is needed instead is a more comprehensive dialogue between the entertainment moguls and their audience — both in the “flyover zone” and here in the heart of increasingly Latino Los Angeles — that addresses these complex issues in a less confrontational and more thoughtful way.

Joel Kotkin is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Pepperdine Institute for Public Policy and author of “Tribes: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success in the New Global Economy.”

Disney, Boycotts and the Hollywood Elite Read More »

The Apartment

Leave a Comment / Community, Old Stories /

Rabbi Chaim Rubin of Congregation Etz Chaim of Hancock Park is not contemplating civil disobedience, but he is dismayed, and the morale of his congregants is at an all-time low.

He recently received word that his Orthodox shtiebl may be evicted from the mansion it has been occupying at 303 S. Highland Ave., in a strictly residential zone of Hancock Park. By a unanimous vote, the Los Angeles City Council upheld two previous decisions that ruled the shul posed parking and other traffic problems to the neighborhood. The council also rejected the shtiebl’s request for a permit to remain in the residential zone.

At an emotional hearing, councilmembers heard all the usual arguments: Members of the Hancock Park Homeowners Association insisted that the shul would set a dangerous precedent and that the matter is not a religious issue, just a land-use issue.

Rubin’s supporters countered that the shtiebl’s location is crucial for elderly residents who can’t walk to synagogues on La Brea Avenue. They said that the issue was one of religious freedom.

But just weeks before the hearing, what congregants were hoping would be their ace in the hole — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 — was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Yet Rubin isn’t ready to give up. He filed a lawsuit against the city two weeks ago for violating congregants’ religious freedom and is hoping to push a religious-freedom act through Sacramento.

And about being evicted? “I’m just hoping the city will hold out until our lawsuit is resolved,” said Rubin, who is continuing services as usual. — Naomi Pfefferman, Senior Writer

The Art of Coca-Cola

Good old Israeli know-how has triumphed again, as was witnessed when Las Vegas recently unveiled its latest mind-boggling landmark: a 100-foot-high Coca-Cola bottle (a new world record) encasing two elevators that take visitors to the fourth story of a “showcase mall” dedicated to the World of Coca-Cola.

The giant bottle’s exterior, festooned with thousands of flashing bulbs and neon, lights up the Las Vegas Strip. Inside the bottle, folks riding the elevators are treated to “sounds of crackling ice, pouring soda and a sound track of dynamic Coca-Cola jingles,” read a breathless Coca-Cola all-points bulletin from Atlanta headquarters.

OK, the Israeli angle. On the third floor of the World of Coca-Cola, the “Contours of Art” exhibit “showcases folk art traditions from around the world in the form of oversized, three-dimensional Coca-Cola bottle shapes.”

Following a global competition, the top 15 “sculptures” were selected by “a professional panel and public vote.”

Carrying the colors for Israel was Zohar Gabay, a graphic design student from Tel Aviv. His 8-foot, 3-inch “mosaic sculpture,” featuring the Coca-Cola logo in Hebrew letters, won the judges’ admiration as “one of the collection’s highlights,” according to an enthusiastic Coca-Cola spokeswoman.

Specifically, she revealed, Gabay’s entry “features mosaic tiles in natural colors, placed on a polyurethane bottle foundation. The mosaic technique combines art forms and messages connected with ancient Israel, Greek art and modern times. Several Israeli symbols are prominent, including the Star of David and the Israeli flag.”

While cynical minds might suspect that the unique exhibit is but a commercial promotion for you-know-what, the “rationale,” described in a “fact sheet,” cites a loftier purpose:

“The Coca-Cola contour bottle has been, and continues to be, a source of inspiration for artists around the world. Folk and indigenous art is part of the fabric of life everywhere, and so is Coca-Cola. The exhibit celebrates the traditions and heritage of everyday life, using the Coca-Cola bottle as a symbol of friendship and sharing.”

Also featured in the World of Coca-Cola are a 1930s soda fountain; the 111-year history of Coca-Cola; a 1950s appliance store with “black-and-white television broadcasting favorite Coca-Cola commercials”; a working bottling plant; and a huge gift store that’s stocked with Coca-Cola memorabilia. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

The Apartment Read More »

Celebrating Sephardim

Leave a Comment / Community, Old Stories /

Left, flamenco dancer Laila Del Monte. Below left, a panel by artist Barbara Mendes entitled, “Shekhina Comes.”

The Sephardic Arts Festival will take place this Sunday at the Skirball Cultural Center, and it’s a welcome sign for Los Angeles’ some 100,000 Sephardic Jews.

Their perception has often been that Sephardic culture is marginalized by the dominant Ashkenazi culture, no matter that their forbearers were the first to arrive in the United States. “[There’s] the sense that Sephardic culture has been largely underrepresented and misunderstood,” says Jordan Elgrably, founder of the National Association of Sephardic Artists, Writers and Intellectuals (NASAWI).

He says that he grew up in the “assimilated Ashkenazi world, with the idea that being Jewish was going to be defined for me by reading Philip Roth and Saul Bellow.” Elgrably moved to Europe for a decade to find his identity before founding NASAWI back in Los Angeles.

The arts festival, NASAWI’s first major event, will “promote a more universalist view of Judaism, with roots in the East,” Elgrably says. It will help mend some of the differences between Sephardim and Ashkenazim, in a day of food, storytelling and song.

There will be flamenco music and a film, “Island of Roses,” about the Jews of Rhodes. In an art exhibit, the work of Morris Zagha will transform biblical archetypes into personal themes that are rendered in vibrant colors reminiscent of Eastern art.

“Saved by Am Yisrael,” part of a huge triptych, traces Barbara Mendes’ odyssey from psychedelic art, to the downtown loft scene, to becoming ba’alei teshuva. In the fantastically detailed painting, demons rip at the flesh of a giant woman, as glowing stars of David emerge from her wounds. The subject is Jewish, but the flavor is Hindi.

Robert Kirschner, the Skirball’s program director, says that the festival is the museum’s way of reaching out to Los Angeles’ Sephardic Jews, who trace their origins to Spain, Greece, the Middle East and North Africa. “We aim to reach all the diverse communities of Los Angeles,” he says, “and the place to begin a pluralistic vision is with a pluralistic vision of the Jewish people.”

The Sephardic Arts Festival, Sunday, July 27, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the Skirball Cultural Center. For more information, call (310) 440-4500.

Celebrating Sephardim Read More »

Dear Deborah

Leave a Comment / Dear Deborah, Old Stories /

Family events do not necessarily create closeness. Painting “Tompkins Square Park” by Morris Shulman, from “The Jews in America,” 1994

One Big, Happy…

Dear Deborah,

I have always had the fantasy of having a big family. I complained bitterly to my parents about being a single child, with no relatives in the same city. Now, I am married to a man who has three children and who is tied to his parents and huge, extended family. Every week, there is at least one wedding, bris, bar mitzvah or holiday gathering. Every time I turn around, there are family expectations, craziness, chaos — and I can’t be me.

For example, last Labor Day, we were put in charge of hosting the family’s annual picnic at the park. Because I was a relative newcomer to the family, I didn’t know about everyone’s tastes and made what I considered to be a beautiful, gourmet spread. Things weren’t as perfect as I thought — the food was “too gourmet” for the kids and in-laws, and they complained. Instead of thinking, “Too bad, I did my best,” or “I’ll have to learn about their tastes,” I took it personally, felt like a failure and let it affect my mood long after they had moved on.

My friends and parents say that it’s my problem and that I need to loosen up and get used to being in a large family. My father teases me about getting what I asked for.

I really love my husband and am learning to love his children — although I must admit that I cherish our time alone (his ex has the kids about two-thirds of the time) — but he becomes a different person with a different personality around his big family, and I lose myself; I hate who I am and how I feel so lost. He is too busy for me and seems annoyed by what he sees as my dependency.

I’ve tried to discuss this with him, but to no avail. He says pretty much the same thing as my parents and friends. I find myself getting “sick” a lot to avoid family functions. I know I need to learn that it’s not my problem, to not let their moods and criticisms spoil my time — but I don’t know how, and I am beginning to dread Labor Day. I fear blowing it again. Any suggestions?

Lost In Crowd

Dear Lost,

“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family — in another city,” quipped George Burns. It sounds like you are still in shock from your own romantic notions about the big family thing, aren’t you? You are overwhelmed, uninformed and lack practical experience, yet it is time to stop whimpering and to roll up our sleeves here and dive into a crash course on Self-Micro-Management in Large Families.

First, call the kindest person in the family and tell them you need some help planning the Labor Day picnic menu. He or she will feel flattered, and you get to learn about the tastes of these pedestrian eaters. So stop trying so hard, and hit the deli. At these gatherings, instead of attempting to get along with the whole herd all at once, focus on activities with one or two of your stepchildren or, better yet, another family neophyte because, remember, they too might be frantically bailing water out of the same boat. Also, start inviting just one family member, or couple, at a time to socialize outside of these, uh, conventions.

You get the drift. It’s about building individual relationships so that you have some way to begin connecting the dots of your new leviathan of a family. Also, it sounds as if your husband may not be too sympathetic, having always been in his big family, to what it’s like to be bit player in a cast of thousands. So explain, without sniveling or expecting him to solve it. If he is not called upon to fix it, he might display some compassion.

Artist’s Way

Dear Deborah,

Why would a grown woman spend every evening drawing? My 29-year-old attorney daughter has never taken an art class in her life, because she couldn’t draw a straight line. Now, suddenly, she has an insatiable appetite for art classes and goes to classes most nights and weekends. My wife and I are concerned about these activities, especially since we invested at least $100,000 in her education.

We worry about her neglecting the duties of her job, and not engaging in the business of a social life and finding a husband. We don’t know what to do with her. She insists that her life is just fine, that she’s on track with promotions and friends. Any thoughts?

Concerned Parents

Dear Concerned Parents,

Why does she love these art classes so? Perhaps they are a much-needed contrast to her day job. Perhaps she always wanted to draw but lacked the confidence, and through these classes, she may have discovered a hidden talent. Who knows? Maybe the classes are her social life. Or perhaps she hates being a lawyer but doesn’t have the heart to squander your “investment.”

In any case, it’s not your call. She’s an adult, with an adult job, making her own decisions. As parents, just because you invested in your child — a human “commodity” — does not make her your own. You’ve expressed your concern. Now

Dear Deborah Read More »

Her Life as a Montage

Leave a Comment / California, Entertainment, Old Stories /

Hannah Hoch’s first major U.S. retrospective has arrived at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; it’s been a long time coming.

The photomontage artist, who lived from 1889 to 1978, was considered one of the foremost media artists of her time. Her work long has gleaned attention in Europe but was virtually unknown in the United States until the current exhibit brought 170 of her works to New York, Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

Actually, she is best known as the only woman to belong to the bad-boy club of Berlin Dada, that radical group of anti-art subversives who held court in the late 1910s and early 1920s. With scissors and glue, through two world wars and beyond, Hoch, who was dubbed a “degenerate artist” by the Nazis, moved from political parody to surrealist fantasy to outright abstraction. She chronicled the century and unflinchingly explored the lives of women.

A small-town girl from a bourgeois family and the daughter of an insurance-agency official, Hoch took up the typically feminine pursuit of fabric and embroidery design at an early age. But, by her late teens, she had become what the Germans called a “New Woman”: free-spirited, independent. She carried on an affair with a married man, Raoul Hausmann, with whom she conceived two children (both aborted), and she joined the flamboyant Dada circle. With the monocled Dadaists, she pioneered the art of photomontage, a collage technique using printed photographs from the popular press.

It was a boisterous, political medium, and Hoch’s most famous work has the wicked Dada bite. The title says it all: “Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany.” (The piece, alas, is too fragile to travel to Los Angeles.)

“Dada Panorama” ridicules Weimar Republic leaders as comic, ineffectual and, yes, beer-bellied: They appear middle-aged, pudgy, with flowers stuck into their sagging swimsuits. Just under the president’s immaculate military boots (he’s wearing them with the swimsuit) is a slogan used to advertise a popular foot antiperspirant. The powers-that-be impotently float amid more silly slogans and soldiers standing stiffly at attention.

Around this time, Hoch was also becoming preoccupied with women’s issues, perhaps because she was encountering some of her own. Publicly, the Dadaists clamored for the rights of the “New Woman”; privately, they belittled Hoch’s work, which was wry and more whimsical than theirs. George Grosz and John Heartfield opposed her participation in the First International Dada Fair of 1920; Hans Richter condescendingly referred to her as the “good girl”; and even her lover, Hausmann, barely mentioned her in his memoirs. Rather, he asserted that she should support him because he was the artist; Hoch often hid her work from him when he visited her studio.

It was a period of considerable anguish for the photomontage artist, who, nevertheless, still was able to produce an impressive body of work. She achieves a not-so-subtle revenge in “Da Dandy” (1919), where several bob-haired “New Women” exist merely as fragments of the Da(daist)’s male fantasies. They are literally contained inside his head, which is a silhouette outlined in red.

The exploration of gender issues continues in pieces such as “The Coquette I” and “The Coquette II,” where grinning, doll-like women are objectified by men-beasts who place them on pedestals.

Hoch dared overt political satire, however, only in the earliest years of the Nazi era. She parodied their racial politics in “German Girl” and “Peasant Wedding Couple” (1931) — the groom wears storm-trooper boots and the bride, blond braids, though their features are ape-like and African. A silhouette of Max Schmeling, the champion boxer and Nazi Aryan superhero, looms over “The Strong Men” (1931).

Just before World War II, however, Hoch realized that she was in danger. She was a bisexual, an ex-Communist, and an ex-Dadaist besides. The Reich had blacklisted her as a “degenerate artist” and “cultural Bolshevist” and had canceled her show at the Dessau Bauhaus.

Actually, the Bauhaus itself had been shut down. Hoch’s avant-garde friends were being ridiculed in the infamous “Degenerate Art” exhibit, and most had left the country.

Hoch could not leave, due to poor finances and ill health — a thyroid condition had nearly killed her. And, so, she bought an old guardhouse on an abandoned World War I airfield in a distant Berlin suburb and retreated there to escape the watchful eyes of the Gestapo.

She survived the war by making herself as obscure as possible, by raising chickens and vegetables in her beloved garden (where, legend has it, she buried her Dada art and artifacts) and by limiting much of her work to escapist fantasy. A typical piece, “On the Nile II,” is a magical dreamscape awash with bright colors and strange, hybrid creatures.

Other works describe Hoch’s Hitler-anxiety in oblique fashion. In “Never Keep Both Feet on the Ground,” disembodied ballerinas’ legs dangle lifelessly from an amorphous, winged cloud. One cannot help but recall the image of Hitler descending through the clouds at the opening of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi epic, “Triumph of the Will.”

All in all, Hoch described the Nazi years as the time of her “great loneliness.”

In the end, she rode out the war in her hideaway guardhouse; there, she continued to live and to quietly paint until her death, at the age of 88, in 1978. By that time, she had attained a modicum of acclaim in Europe.

What riled her all her life, however, was that she was usually associated only with the Dada movement. “I’m sick and tired of Dada,” she said, not long before her death. “Everything else that has developed goes unnoticed.”

The Photomontages of Hannah Hoch, through Sept. 14, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 WIlshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 857-6000.

Her Life as a Montage Read More »

LettersDefending Dad

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

A copy of the Jewish Journal of March 21 has just come to my possession with an article entitled “An Unfashionable Opinion” by Sally Ogle Davis. This is based on the film “Shine” and an interview with Gillian and David Helfgott.

Davis describes David’s father’s depiction in the film as “a damaged, disappointed human being, fearful and distrustful of the world, determined to exert the maximum control over his son. The father is a type, of course, none of us would recognize, except maybe for almost every other child of a Holocaust survivor.”

Gillian Helfgott is quoted in the interview as saying she had received a “stack” of letters from children of Holocaust survivors identifying this image with their own fathers.

It should be noted that David’s father, Peter, was not himself a Holocaust survivor although he lost family members in the camps. Hence the very strong inference in the film that he was a concentration camp survivor is dramatic license exercised for the director’s own purposes, and not historical fact.

Secondly, Davis’ statement that Holocaust survivors constituted an identifiable “type” of parent — overbearing, prone to violence, cruel — as readily verified by their children, is not supported by available evidence. According to expert opinion, there is no existing evidence to suggest that Holocaust survivors as parents were harsher or more brutal to their children than any other sector of the population. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth according to researchers who have conducted extensive research with Holocaust survivors.

Hence, according to current knowledge, it seems that these “facts” too are baseless. Perhaps the “stack” of letters received by Mrs. Gillian Helfgott should be subject to scrutiny at a suitable academic institution, since they seem to constitute a new phenomenon in Holocaust documentation.

Davis regrets the criticism leveled against the historical inaccuracies of the film “Shine” which she describes as “uplifting and life-affirming.” The pity is that these very qualities of David Helfgott’s triumph against adversity should be debased by the film’s distortion of truth and history to enhance dramatic cinematographic appeal. While the presentation of drama can afford the luxury of “artistic license,” historical presentation involving real-named people still fresh in their family’s memory, should and must be true to historical fact.

History is not any old story the director chooses to tell.

Margaret Helfgott

Eldest sister of David Helfgott

Beersheva, Israel

The Pluralism Debate

While I believe there are a number of commendable points in Rabbi Avi Shafran’s “Will the Real Orthodox Please Stand Up?” (July 11), several points he makes are less so and merit some response.

Rabbi Shafran believes that the acceptance of multiple Judaisms in the United States “has only facilitated the widespread intermarriage, assimilation, and religious ennui that have blighted the Jewish landscape.” The implication of this statement is that were it not for all those Judaisms, these problems would not blight the landscape. I would argue the contrary. If Orthodox Judaism was the only choice that American Jews had, there would be even more intermarriage and assimilation, not less. Rabbi Shafran seems to harbor the illusion shared by a number of Orthodox rabbis that if it were not for the Conservative and Reform movements, everyone would be Orthodox, and that should our synagogues close down, all our members would just rush to Orthodox ones. Hardly. The fact is that Conservative and Reform communities bring far more people to God, Torah, and mitzvot than Rabbi Shafran would, or even could, acknowledge, and that many Jews do not choose between liberal or Orthodox Judaism, but between liberal Judaism or nothing.

In addition, Rabbi Shafran states that the Israeli vox populi is arrayed against liberal Judaism. While it is true that liberal Judaism has not made tremendous inroads into Israeli society, Orthodox Judaism is not wildly popular with general Israeli society either. Considering their involvement and control over various aspects of Israeli life (marriages, divorces, burials, and of course conversions), and their political power and influence, it is a wonder that more Israelis are not Orthodox already. However, the sad reality is that Orthodox rabbis have so tarnished the way Israelis view Judaism, that for the most part, secular Israelis want nothing to do with them and by extension their vision of Judaism.

Finally, Rabbi Shafran laments the fact that various leaders within the liberal Jewish community have taken to employing words that “identify Orthodox Jews with the venters of ill will rather than will protectors and embracers of their fellow Jews.” There is some truth to this statement, and I deeply regret that Orthodox Jews may be tarred by the strong reactions of some liberal Jewish leaders; for if they are being tarred, it is certainly unfair and it does contribute to the widening division among our people. However, if the Orthodox rabbis will please stand up and reject the violent language and actions of some of their own rabbis and adherents, then perhaps the tear in the fabric of klal Yisrael would not be as great as it is.

Jonathan Jaffe Bernhard

Assistant Rabbi, Adat Ari El

North Hollywood

*

In the dialogue of this past week’s Jewish Journal (“A Divided People?” July 11), there was one significant area that was not directly addressed: the possibility that the philosophical rift between liberal and traditional Judaism may be more of a strength than a liability. This necessitates a move past the rhetoric of hate and the admission that each others’ positions are carefully considered and based on solid historical, intellectual and philosophical underpinnings. Only then might it be possible to achieve a meaningful dialogue.

There must be an end to the kind of derogatory rhetoric that challenges the validity and authenticity of the other’s thought. Just as Orthodox Jews believe that their movement’s ideology is sound and well-grounded in their traditional perspective, so too do liberal Jews reach their conclusions and decisions from deep understanding of Judaism balanced by the realities that our modern world compels us to consider. To deride the validity of the decision-making processes of either group is to speak more about the ignorance of the accuser than about the actual movement itself.

Orthodoxy looks to past truths for its validity; liberal Judaism recognizes past experiences yet finds truths evident in contemporary understandings of the world. Though disagreeing with this approach, Orthodoxy cannot minimize it any more than liberal Judaism can minimize the Orthodox perspectives, even though we often vehemently disagree with the conclusions reached. However, we do share history, a national homeland, the words of prayers and a love of Torah and Jewish life — this is our common ground.

The expectation that Orthodox Jews should legitimate Reform ritual is an impossible request. The expectation that Reform Jews will begin to accept Orthodox strictures is equally unrealistic. Therefore we must operate from a reality-based position. Once we stop asking each other to do things that we will not and cannot do, we can move on to other tasks that this modern world challenges us to take on.

Rabbi Ronald H. Stern

Temple Ahavat Shalom

Northridge

A Sad Day

It is a sad day in Jewish journalism when the Journal profiles a woman who soft-pedals pornography on cable access television (“From Esther to… Dr. Suzy?” July 18). For Robert Eshman to call Dr. Susan Block, “a nice Jewish girl from a dedicated Conservative Jewish upbringing,” undermines the values that my movement, and dare I say, all of Judaism, holds to be holy.

Being Jewish is more than coincidentally being born Jewish, and it is more than going to Hebrew school. It is thinking like a Jew and, much more importantly, acting like a Jew. Block does neither, and Eshman, along with his editors, act irresponsibly when they publish this type of drivel.

Hazzan Keith Miller

Kehillat Ma’arav

Santa Monica

Desperately Seeking Friends

The article “On Finding Friends” by Teresa Strasser (July 4) was very identifiable. I’m 28, outgoing, have many different interests and am fun to be with. But here, nobody lets you into their clique that is already well established. I’ve tried public places, stores of common interests, social groups, work, etc. No matter how well the conversation went, the initial meetings never went further towards friendships. The people I have exchanged phone numbers with are there for a week or two, and then just fizzle out. I’ve heard of the transient people here and am beginning to agree with it.

All I want are friends. Not relationships with men as partners, but simply “men-friends” and “women-friends.” All of the write-ups in the back of newspapers are for singles who are looking for partners. I want the truly-as-stress-free-as-possible opportunity to meet “just friends” without a “singles” agenda behind it. Not singles for hiking, dancing singles, skiing singles, cruising singles. I’m sure there are many people here, newly arrived or not, who just want friends and are in the same disillusioned boat as me, but don’t want clubs, bars with alcohol and drugs, or an uncomfortable environment.

We live in an exciting city. I just wish it would be more welcoming.

Dawn Kaufman

Santa Monica

Following Trouble

I have just finished reading the latest issue of The Jewish Journal, and as usual, I am exhausted! Tired from trying to follow articles back and forth across the pages of the paper. On pages 10 and 11 of the July 11 issue, five separate, but related, stories are initiated, but each of these articles continue on other pages.

Is it possible to complete a story on contiguous pages? I’d imagine that I’m not the only reader annoyed by this overused style device in the Journal. I find that oftentimes, I’ll not finish stories because they are too difficult to follow; or I’ll miss others because I’ve been directed away from the page that they started on in order to follow one of the “tiles” of the mosaic of articles starting on that page.

How about trying to make the Journal more “user friendly”?

Robert A. Smith, DMD

Bakersfield

THE JEWISH JOURNAL welcomes letters from all readers. Letters should be no more than 250 words and we reserve the right to edit for space. All letters must include a signature, valid address and phone number. Pseudonyms and initials will not be used, but names will be withheld on request. Unsolicited manuscripts and other materials should include a self-addressed, stamped envelope in order to be returned.Address all mail to: Jewish Journal, 3660 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 204, Los Angeles, California 90010. Phone 213-738-7778, Fax 213-386-9501. E-mail at Los Angeles Freenet, ab871@lafn.org

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

Attention: Letters.

Please indicate that you are sending your letter in response to the web page.

LettersDefending Dad Read More »