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Jewish Journal

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December 11, 1997

L.A.’s Ultimate Power Broker

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

Eli Broad (left) is the primary moving force behind thefinancing of the downtown Disney Concert Hall designed by architectFrank Gehry, lining up corporations to drop megabucks into theproject..

For most of this century, Los Angeles has been a city of twoelites — one predominately WASPish, the other predominately Jewish.Although they occasionally collaborated on projects such as the MusicCenter, the two worlds remained largely separate and indifferent toeach other, living in a ruling-class version of institutionalapartheid.

But to Eli Broad, a native of New York and a University ofMichigan product who came here 35 years ago, neither Los Angeles northe Jewish community can any longer afford such a division. TheSunAmerica president and CEO thinks it is great that Jews arebuilding new schools, museums and other institutions, but he wonderswhat they’ll be worth if the city around them collapses intolong-term decay.

“There are many people who have gotten wealthy, who are Jewish,but don’t think of themselves as part of anything else,” Broad says.”Some members of the community just seem to want to stick bythemselves. For some, it’s fashionable to be negative about thecity.”

But Eli Broad is anything but negative about Los Angeles. Althoughclearly a member of the Westside elite, Broad has emerged as perhapsthe first Jew in this century to stand as the city’s leading businessvoice. As the primary moving force behind the financing of thedowntown Disney Concert Hall, he has been, along with Mayor RichardRiordan, the key player who’s helping persuade many largecorporations — including Times Mirror, Arco, Ralphs/Food for Less,Wells Fargo and, most recently, the Walt Disney Company — to dropmegabucks into the project.

“Eli Broad is a huge leader who does more than any organization,”says one longtime aide to Riordan, who counts Broad among hispersonal friends and advisers. “Without him, the Disney Hall wouldnever be anything but a parking lot.”

In many ways, it might have been tempting for Broad and others inthe heavily Jewish Westside business community to allow downtowncontinue to go to the dogs. Broadly speaking, Jews fared far betterthan the WASPs in the last recession. As Cal State Northridgedemographers James Allen and Eugene Turner point out in theirrecently published study, “The Ethnic Quilt,” Jews are vastlyoverrepresented in the entertainment and business service fields,which were relatively unscathed in the early 1990s and have thrivedever since. In contrast, the aerospace industry, which was wallopedduring the recession and is now only holding its own, boasts,according to Allen and Turner’s research, a notableoverrepresentation of white Protestants.

The same pattern can be seen in the economic geography where theJewish-dominated Westside has also vastly outperformed the old WASPstrongholds downtown. With entertainment leading the economicrecovery, the Westside now boasts a third more office space thandowntown. The prestige business addresses in Los Angeles — measuredboth by rental rates and fashionability — are predominately inBeverly Hills, along Ventura Boulevard, Century City, West LosAngeles and Santa Monica while the big empty blocks remain in andaround downtown. Today, according to the Los Angeles BusinessJournal, three of Los Angeles’ zip codes with the highestconcentrations of households with more than $500,000 in assets are inBrentwood, Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills, which are also amongthe most Jewish.

Yet this success, Broad notes, also has brought with it perils.Many affluent Jews who work in these glitzy areas don’t even considerthemselves Angelenos; they see themselves as citizens of theWestside. And with the growth of these centers and emergence of anincreasingly well-developed Jewish education system, there is ampleincentive to turn our back on downtown, the increasingly ThirdWorld-minded City Council and the bumbling Los Angeles Unified SchoolDistrict bureaucracy, and instead simply further feather our ownnest.

But such disdain would also be a repudiation of our own rich andcomplex history here in Los Angeles, a history that too few Jews areeven aware of. Although its future will be as an increasinglyLatino-Asian-dominated metropolis, Los Angeles has, perhaps more thanany city in the nation, been largely shaped by Jewish influence.

In the rough and heady pioneer days of Los Angeles, Jews were atthe city’s commercial epicenter. The Hellman family virtuallyinvented banking in Los Angeles, at one time controlling both theFarmers and Merchants Bank and Wells Fargo in San Francisco. Anotherlandsman, Karspare Cohn, founded the Union Bank, which, for decades,stood as the city’s premier middle-market bank.

Jews also operated at the highest levels of the political andsocial leadership. Members of the Jewish Newmark clan served duringthe 19th century variously as city attorney, city councilman andcounty supervisor.

“Anti-Semitism was virtually unknown in 19th-century California,even in the most exclusive circles,” says Kevin Starr, California’spremier historian. “The Bohemian Club in San Francisco and theCalifornia Club in Los Angeles each had prominent Jews among theirfounding memberships.”

It was only early in this century, Starr notes, with the massiveinflux of largely Midwestern WASPs to the city, that the bacillus ofelite anti-Semitism common in older cities began to infect LosAngeles. Soon, even prominent Jewish families found themselvesmarginalized and barred from the leading clubs and bestneighborhoods. The treatment of the more ethnically distinctivenewcomers from Eastern Europe — including the founders of the movieindustry — was, if anything, even more dismissive. Having nurturedLos Angeles in its pioneer days and created its most glamorousindustry, Jews remained politically marginalized; not a single memberof the community sat on the City Council for more than a half centurybefore the election of Rosalind Weiner in 1953.

As late as the 1970s, says Broad, Jews still did not rank highinside the city’s corporate power structure (with the notableexception of MCA’s Lew Wasserman), even if they dominated the garmentas well as the entertainment industry and controlled much of the mostvaluable Westside real estate.

“When I got there, the giants were the Ahmansons, Mark Taper, EdCarter, Asa Call, and you had the energy companies — ThortonBradshaw at Arco, Unocal. It was all downtown, WASPy and they sat onall the boards,” says Broad.

Yet Broad does not harbor any resentments for these largelyAnglo-Saxon entrepreneurs, largely because their “pioneering spirit”not only built great companies but created much of the basicinfrastructure of our city — the freeway system, the ports, theairport and the County Museum. The problem, as he sees it, is that,by the 1980s, many of these pioneers were retired or dead. Many oftheir scions removed themselves from civic involvement, preferringoften to relocate to the less ethnically diverse and contentiousValhallas of rural Northern California or the Pacific Northwest.

In addition, many of the companies they started were eventuallyabsorbed by other entities or taken over by placeless professionalmanagers, for whom Los Angeles was nothing more than an anonymoussubdivision by the Pacific. The disappearance of onetime downtownpowerhouses such as Security Pacific Bank, First Interstate and theBroadway Department Stores — precisely the corporations that mighthave funded such an enterprise — further weakened the elite.

“Those banks were the glue of this community,” says DennisStanfill, the former president of 20th Century Fox and one of the fewHollywood figures close to the old downtown establishment. “When youlost all those firms — and I have seen it over the last 32 years –you suddenly found there were no leaders. They were gone.”

For art collector Broad, who once bought a Roy Lichtensteinpainting for $2.5 million on his American Express card, the failureof the old elite to raise money for the downtown Disney Concert Hall– much beyond
the $50 million endowment provided by Walt Disney’swidow, Lillian — epitomized this growing “void” in the powerstructure. As Los Angeles’ economy stumbled badly in the early 1990s,the outlook for this new cultural icon grew bleaker as more and morebusiness fled downtown for the Westside, Orange County, the SanFernando Valley or out of the region completely.

To a large extent, Broad’s own career casts him an unlikely saviorfor downtown. As co-founder of Kaufman and Broad, the area’s largesthome builder, he helped construct the sprawling suburbs that hasteneddowntown’s decline. More recently, he has built his CenturyCity-based financial service company, SunAmerica, into a major power– in the 1990s, its market value has risen from $184 million to morethan $8 billion — and a linchpin of the resurgent Westside economy.

Yet, as an Angeleno, Broad believes that the city must have somesort of unifying core. Downtown may never regain its status as theregion’s leading commercial center — both the Westside and arguablyeven Irvine seem destined to surpass it — but it does remain thehistoric hub, the common touchstone for the city. “No great city inthe world exists without a symbolic center,” Broad says. “It’s likethe Eiffel Tower or the Sydney Opera House.”

To Broad, the Disney Concert Hall could become that signaturepiece for Los Angeles. “The success in building the hall is thedefining point for Los Angeles’ new leadership; it’s a newbeginning,” he says. “It’s a sign that the city is culturally cominginto its own.”

But it’s more than that. Disney Concert Hall — along with suchother ambitious building projects throughout the city, from theSkirball Cultural Center and the Getty Center in West Los Angeles tothe new sports arena and cathedral downtown — reflects a metropolisthat not only is recovering from the traumas of the recent past butis beginning to map out a new future that is quintessentially LosAngeles in its brashness and ambition.

But this time, Jews such as Eli Broad will not be merelyspectators, outsiders or incidental beneficiaries, but will be amongthe leaders and architects, just as they were when this city waslittle more than an obscure pueblo on the outer fringes of theAmerican continent.

Joel Kotkin, a senior fellow at the Pepperdine Institute forPublic Policy, is currently researching a report on the futureleadership in Southern California, in conjunction with the La JollaInstitute.

All rights reserved by author

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Deconstructing Woody

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Old Stories /

Woody Allen, Elizabeth Shue and Billy Crystal.

Film: Deconstructing Woody

By Sally Ogle Davis

Remember when Woody Allen, following the Soon Yi scandal, wasasked by the “60 Minutes” reporter how he could sleep with hisstepdaughter? He didn’t seem to understand the question. Hisinterviewer and he, it appeared, lived in two different moraluniverses. And all over America, people were asking, “What’s wrongwith this guy?”

In his latest movie, “Deconstructing Harry,” Woody answers thequestion. The poster boy for primary narcissism, Allen has alwaysdone work that’s about himself. It was clever, it was funny, and weloved him, I suspect, as much for his weaknesses — many of which werecognized in ourselves — as for his humor. We never promised thatlove would be unconditional, however, and Woody may finally haveimposed on our reservoir of affection once too often.

Never before has he painted such a complete self-portrait, wartsand all. It’s the corner flasher opening the grubby raincoat. And itis not a pretty sight.

“I’m spiritually bankrupt,” his writer character, Harry, wails atone point. “I’m empty; I’ve got no soul.” To which, on the evidencehe presents here, one can only say…”Guilty as charged.” This ismasochism and masturbation at one and the same time. The effect ischilling and, despite the plethora of funny lines, no longer all thatamusing.

Allen with Judy Davis.

Harry Block (as in blocked, emotionally) is a New York writer whodecimates friends, his several wives and his family by putting themin his stories, not bothering to disguise them and then actingtotally cavalier about the effect. (The film’s device is to have twocasts — the real wives and family, and the people who play them inhis books.)

Harry’s relationship to his writing is the only functioning onehe’s ever really had. When his old university decides to honor him,he can’t find a single friend to accompany him to the ceremony. So hehires a prostitute companion and kidnaps his young son, over whosecustody he and his ex are engaged in a battle to the death (shades ofAllen’s real-life battles with Mia Farrow).

For Harry, other people’s feelings don’t count. When one of hiswives, a therapist who works out of their home, attacks him forsleeping with one of her patients, Harry is offended. Cooped up allday in their apartment, writing, who else does she expect him to meetbut her patients? All the accusations hurled at the filmmaker/nebbishover the years are laid out here. Allen, it appears, agrees with allof them: that he is a man who hasn’t grown up emotionally (“I’m tooold for her,” he says of a woman he is pursuing, “but because of myimmaturity, I have a boyish quality that works”); that he ishopelessly attracted to neurotic women; that he’s a hypochondriac,obsessed with dying (“The most beautiful words in the Englishlanguage are not I love you,” he says, recycling one of his old gags.”They’re it’s benign”); that he is incapable of empathy, unable tosee how his actions affect others (in a running gag, Robin Williamsplays an actor who’s permanently out of focus. “You expect the worldto adjust to the distortion you have become,” says his wife. Later,Harry himself goes out of focus, too, just in case you missed thepoint).

We’ve heard it before, but this time he’s ratcheted it up severalnotches. Allen’s saving grace used to be subtlety, particularly inmatters sexual. Well, forget that. “Deconstructing Harry” is full ofraunchy sex, the language is gratuitously graphic, and the insultsmore in your face (nowhere more so than when he tackles his favoritewhipping boy — his Jewishness).

“You’re a self-hating Jew, and look at how you talk about us inyour stories,” his sister says, whereupon we switch to one of thosestories set at a bar mitzvah, where his mother learns that herhusband, his father, murdered a former wife and a mistress and atethem.

“Some folks bury, some drown ” he says nonchalantly, “I eat.”

Jewish parents as emotional cannibals. It’s hardly a new idea, buttrust Allen to make it literal. Thin-skinned Jews have often takenoffense at Allen’s gibes. This time, even if you have a hide like apachyderm, you’re going to wince. “Not only do I know we lost 6million,” he says in answer to his brother-in-law’s criticism, “butrecords are made to be broken.”

In discussing his own overactive libido, Allen’s Harry says: “TakeRaoul Wallenberg. Did he want to bang every cocktail waitress inEurope?”

His shrink wife transposed into one of his stories gets religionand makes a bracha before performing a particular sexual service on adelighted Harry. His observant sister loves him and makes excuses forhim, even as he pillories her in his stories as “too Jewish,professionally Jewish,” and depicts her in her kitchen, chewing on akosher pickle and slathering schmaltz on a turkey sandwich. But evenshe finds her tolerance strained.

“You’ve caricatured my religious dedication,” she says. “It’salways enraged you that I’ve returned to my roots.”

Harry accuses her, and by extension all Jews, of needing theconcept of ‘the other,’ “so you know who you should hate.”

“Your whole life,” his sister counters, more in sorrow than inanger, “is nihilism, cynicism, sarcasm and orgasm.”

“In France,” quips Harry, in one of the film’s funniest lines, “Icould run on that slogan.”

Interestingly, for the first time, Allen gives us a clue as to thesource of his hostility to his Jewish background. “Tradition,” Harrytells his sister, “is the illusion of permanence.” So Judaism, likethe pursuit of happiness, has failed him because it cannot grant himimmortality. The Almighty and Thomas Jefferson are equally damned.

This is Woody Allen at his most defiant. Sure, I’m all the thingsyou accuse me of being, he seems to be saying, but I’m an artist. Youmust judge me by my art, not by my failings.

“I’m no good at life,” Harry says at one point. “I’m good atwriting. All I have is my ability to bring pleasure to other people,and even that is drying up.”

In the end, when he finally goes back to his alma mater, only thecharacters in his books are gathered to honor him and deliver themessage of the movie: “Know yourself, stop kidding yourself…acceptyour limitations and get on with your life.”

What Allen has taken from the recent attacks on his morals, orlack of them, then is the feel-good message of the me generation:Accept yourself, love yourself. Accepting himself means acceptingthat he’s a miserable failure as a human being, but, boy, can hewrite.

Harry immediately starts work on a new story about a writer calledRifkin, who led “a fragmented and disjointed existence,” but whosewriting “had, in more ways than one, saved his life.” Rifkin knows afew things that Harry/Woody is trying to learn: “Our lives consist ofhow we choose to distort them.” Our art, not our lives, is whatmatters, says Harry, and that’s how we should be judged.

Do we buy the argument? Picasso is still the seminal artist of the20th century, even though we know of his cruelty to his women; we canmaybe even appreciate the glories of “Tannhauser” without everforgetting Wagner’s vicious anti-Semitism. But Woody’s art is allabout Woody. And I don’t know about you, but it’s getting harder andharder for me to laugh at Woody Allen the filmmaker, the more I knowabout Woody Allen the man.

Sally Ogle Davis writes about entertainment from Ventura.

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A Requiem for Rabin

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Music, Old Stories /

Yitzhak Rabin, by Peter Max

Writing, producing and arranging music for the likes of TinaTurner, Aretha Franklin and Carly Simon is what Aaron Zigman is bestknown for. So what possessed the 34-year-old Angeleno to spend sixmonths pouring his heart and soul into a serious classical work? Hewanted to offer a deeply felt musical response to the 1995assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Zigman explained in a recent phoneconversation.

“When I was watching CNN, and they showed the lyric sheet of thesong, ‘Shir L’Shalom,’ that [Rabin’s] speechwriter pulled from hispocket, it was such a poignant image to me,” Zigman said. “Being asongwriter and musician, to see blood on a beautiful piece of musicwas such a shock and symbol. It really affected me.”

The 35-minute, five-movement orchestral work will have its worldpremière at a Jewish Federation-sponsored Chanukah celebrationat the Westside Pavilion. The gala is scheduled to follow the TikkunL.A. afternoon of volunteerism on Christmas Day, the second day ofChanukah. The work, entitled “Rabin,” will be performed by the LosAngeles Jewish Symphony under the direction of Noreen Green.

Zigman said that after having watched the news of Rabin’s death onTV, he awoke early the next morning with the notes of his openingmovement coursing through his head. He jotted down the music andplayed it for his good friend, artist Peter Max, who encouraged himto expand it into a major piece.

Zigman read everything he could about Rabin and transformed whathe learned into musical form. The resulting work combines a modernclassical sound with familiar Jewish melodies of prayer andcelebration. It is, by turns, sad, passionate, joyous and reflective,as Zigman evokes the feeling of loss occasioned by the assassination;the love and fulfillment of Rabin’s relationship with his wife, Lea;the martial strains of the many battles in which he participated, andthe perpetual conflict over the land of Israel.

Zigman recalled being particularly moved by the Israeli primeminister’s speech at the conference with Yasser Arafat and hisreluctant handshake with the Palestinian leader. “He reminded me ofmy father. There was something about him that was so warm, yet hewasn’t perceived as so warm. He was shy, yet he had such strength forhis people.”

Zigman said that he is far more used to being a “behind-the-scenessort of person,” and had no illusions of becoming a world-renownedcomposer with the unveiling of “Rabin.” Still, he is gratified thatpeople will have a chance to hear the work played.

A few months ago, he presented the CD to Lea Rabin. ThePhiladelphia Orchestra has shown some interest in the work, butZigman’s greatest satisfaction would be to have the IsraelPhilharmonic perform it.

“Rabin” will be performed by the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony atthe Westside Pavilion during a Chanukah celebration that begins at3:30 p.m. on Dec. 25, following Tikkun L.A. For more information,call (213) 761-8241.

Aaron Zigman

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Rabbi Is Held Up at Westchester Synagogue

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

On Sunday afternoon, Nov. 30, as he worked on his computer in hisoffice at B’nai Tikvah Congregation in Westchester, Rabbi MichaelBeals saw a man he didn’t recognize walking through the synagogueparking lot. The rabbi waved, thinking the man might be a homelessperson en route to the congregation’s food bank or arriving early forthe evening bingo game. Instead, a few minutes later, the man burstinto the rabbi’s office, a nylon stocking covering his face and a guntrained on Beals.

“This is a stickup,” the robber said in a nervous, angry voice.”Give me your money.”

“It sounded so like television, I couldn’t believe it,” Beals, 34,said a week after the incident.

Not satisfied with the money inside Beals’ wallet, the man cockedhis gun, threatening to kill the rabbi if he didn’t hand over thecontents of the synagogue safe. Beals, who was installed at B’naiTikvah barely three months ago, led the intruder to the temple officeand opened some drawers to show him there wasn’t any money. Therobber forced Beals to lie face down on the carpet, which was stillwet from a recent cleaning. At that point, the rabbi said, “I thoughtthat was it.” He said the “Shema,” thinking of Rabbi Akiva, who hadalso recited the prayer as he was martyred by the Romans in Jerusalem2,000 years ago. Beals couldn’t believe his ears as he heard therobber close the synagogue’s front door on his way out. The rabbi laythere for a while, fearing the man would return. Then he called 911.

Sadly, this is not the first time he has been mugged. About fiveyears ago, when he was a rabbinical student, he and his wife, Elissa,whom he was dating at the time, were accosted in the Pico-Robertsonarea. It was Shabbat, and Beals had no money on him. But hiswife-to-be had the presence of mind to throw the mugger her purse.”She certainly saved my life,” he said.

Beals, still shaken from his second brush with death, said that hedidn’t want readers of this newspaper or his congregants to get theidea that B’nai Tikvah wasn’t safe. The holdup is the first suchincident in 50 years at the shul, and security measures are beingbeefed up. “This synagogue is very secure, and Westchester itself isconsidered one of the safest areas in Los Angeles and a verydesirable place to live,” he said.

Beals received comfort from temple members and colleagues in thedark days that followed the holdup. A group of clergy from theWestchester-Ladera Ministerial Association, to which the B’nai Tikvahrabbi belongs, formed a prayer circle around him two days after theevent and spontaneously prayed over the rabbi, thanking God for himand even praying for the soul of the robber. Beals, who was theJewish voice in an international AIDS day in the South Bay, realizedin the midst of a “Misheberach,” the Jewish prayer of healing, thathe was praying not only for those with AIDS but to be healed himself.

Many congregants have sent the rabbi gifts and cards or havecalled to comfort him. The outpouring helped Beals realize thatsometimes the healer needs to be healed himself — and that hisexperience, as horrible as it has been, will make him more sensitiveto the suffering of others.

“Sometimes, it helps to know the person comforting you is also agriever,” he said.

In his Friday-night sermon this week, Beals planned to relate hisown tale to the biblical story of Dina, the parasha for the week.Dina, Jacob’s daughter, is raped by a prince who then asks her fatherfor her hand in marriage. In revenge for his act, the prince iskilled by Jacob’s sons, who also slaughter others in the village.What occurred to Beals in the wake of his own victimization was thatthe Torah and the rabbinical commentaries never talk about Dina’sfeelings about what has happened to her. Instead, the story conveysthe idea that the rape is Dina’s punishment for her alluring dress,and the killing of her attacker and the villagers is her brothers’revenge for the wrong done them, not her.

“I wasn’t physically raped, thank God. But my well-being wasassaulted,” Beals said. “Dina was a silent victim, but I refuse to besilent. I don’t want to be self-indulgent, but I want to know whatfrom my experience can help others, especially people who aremourners.”

In a sense, the rabbi said, he feels like a mourner too. “I’mmourning my feeling of well-being and safety.”

So far, the suspect has not been found, and Beals doubts he willbe. But the rabbi remains comfortable with his choice of theWestchester pulpit.

“One of the reasons I chose this synagogue is that the people areso warm, caring and loving,” he said. “That’s why I don’t have acompelling need to go to a counselor, because they are showing me somuch support.”

B’nai Tikvah will have a healing service on Tuesday, Dec. 30, at 7p.m., at which Rabbi Beals will lead a support group for victims ofviolent crime. For more information, call (310) 645-6262.

Michael Beals

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At the United Nations

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Dr. Dore Goldis an American who grew up in Connecticut and as an adult madealiyah. From 1987 through 1996, he served as director of the U.S.Foreign and Defense Policy Project at the Jaffe Center for StrategicStudies, Tel Aviv University. When Binyamin Netanyahu was electedprime minister, he took Gold along with him, first as Foreign PolicyAdvisor and, more recently, as Israel’s Permanent Representative tothe United Nations. Below is a speech written and delivered by him tothe members of the U.N. last week. It spells out quite clearly thegovernment’s position on the peace process and on its negotiationswith the PLO.

United Nations, New York

In the last four years the people of Israel witnessed twocontrasting realities in their pursuit of peace with thePalestinians. True, there had been a stunning series of diplomaticbreakthroughs between Israel and the PLO, that was followed by apeace treaty with Jordan and a web of new relationships with a halfdozen Arab states. Israelis were filled with hope that at long lasttheir state of siege had ended and they could look forward to an eraof normalcy and safety.

Yet, the people of Israel witnessed another reality as well. Fromthe 1993 signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel andthe PLO, until the May 1996 election of the current Israeligovernment, nearly 250 Israelis died in an unprecedented wave ofPalestinian terrorism aimed at the heart of Israel’s cities and intheir vicinity: in Afula, Hadera, Beit-Lid, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.Indeed more Israelis died in these three years from such attacks thenin the previous decade. During 1997, while the frequency of theseattacks was reduced, the bombings continued nonetheless in the MahaneYehuda market and the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall in Jerusalem.

Israel had known terrorism before, but these cases reflected acompletely different situation. These were not occasional knifings orindividual drive-by shootings, but highly-lethal suicide bombingsbacked by a vast and expanding organizational infrastructure. Itrecruited and trained personnel, manufactured and stockpiled weaponsmaterials, commanded and financed elaborate operations.Military-grade explosives, that had not been used in such attacks inmore than 10 years, were suddenly available in large quantities withdevastating results. But whether belonging to the Izz-al Din alQassam units of the Hamas or to the Islamic Jihad, thisorganizational infrastructure was growing in the very sameterritories that had been given over to the jurisdiction of thePalestinian Authority of Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Today, there is a common misconception that the peace process wasin an idyllic state until last year and has only just latelydeteriorated. This is completely false. It is as false in thePalestinian negotiating track as it is in the Syrian track, whereIsrael went through two mini-wars in Lebanon and absorbed more than200 Katyusha rocket strikes from Syrian-controlled territory inLebanon. The fact is that the present government of Israel inheriteda peace process that was in a shambles because the core bargain ofthe Oslo agreements had been repeatedly violated: that Israel wouldaddress Palestinian aspirations by creating areas of Palestinianself-government and the Palestinian Authority would assumeresponsibility for security in those very same areas. This bargainhas not been kept. As a result innocent Israelis have paid for thiswith their lives in brutal suicide bombing after suicide bombing inthe heart of our cities.

Netanyahu’s Options

The government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had manyoptions to contend with this mounting terror. Israel could have letdespair and cynicism overtake diplomacy and declare that the peaceprocess had failed. The Israeli government rejected this option. Thegovernment could have ignored the truth behind these assaults in ourcities and blame only distant adversaries like Iran. This would havefailed to address the fact that the wave of terror attacks in Israelwas emanating from areas under the military control of ournegotiating partners. Only by insisting on their accountability couldwe save the lives of our people. Therefore we chose the option ofmaking an impaired peace process work by adding principles ofpeacemaking that previously had been lacking.

A Code of Conduct

This September, Israel’s Foreign Minister David Levy stood beforethe U.N. General Assembly and suggested a code of conduct forstrengthening negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Thefirst principle of the code of conduct states that violence istotally incompatible with peace and reconciliation. Removing violencefrom the negotiations means that the Palestinian fight againstterrorism be made constant and not be made contingent upon the extentof Israeli concessions, as explicitly demanded by Colonel JabrilRajub. Removing violence from negotiations means that Palestiniansecurity services quell street rioting in Bethlehem and Hebroninstead of inciting it. Removing violence means that Chairman Arafatgives no “green lights” to Hamas to attack Israel, as occurred onMarch 9, 1997. Removing violence means that the masterminds of the1996 Dizingoff Center bombing in Tel Aviv be prosecuted andimprisoned rather than be set free to organize new cells forattacking Israel, as is occurring today.

To make negotiations work, the code of conduct suggested moreover,that the continuity of contacts between Israelis and Palestinians beprotected and not disrupted for short-term gain. Normalizationbetween Israel and the wider region, it was suggested, should not behalted, but increased. And our differences should be resolved inbilateral negotiations and not in international fora. Beyond the codeof conduct, Israel has insisted that the Oslo process be based on theprinciple of reciprocity. On Jan. 15, 1997, both Prime MinisterBinyamin Netanyahu and Chairman Yasser Arafat specifically committedthemselves to implement their mutual obligations on the basis ofreciprocity in the “Note for the Record” that was signed by the U.S.Peace Coordinator, Dennis Ross. To this day, while parts of theinternational community want to place ever-mounting pressure onIsrael to move on with the peace process, not a single Palestiniancommitment that appears in that document, has been implemented:

* the revision of the Palestinian Covenant calling for Israel’sdestruction remains incomplete

* illegal firearms have not been collected

* the language of incitement continues

* not a single terrorist has been extradited

* and most importantly the organizational infrastructure ofterrorism remains intact within the areas of the PalestinianAuthority. And this is only a partial list.

What is Israel supposed to do under such circumstances? MustIsrael continue to pull back without getting anything in return?Israel re-deployed in Hebron, freed prisoners, and offered last Marcha first stage of further re-deployment that would have tripled the”A” area of full Palestinian control from 2.8 percent of the WestBank, which was turned over by Israel’s previous government, to 10.1percent. These are all tangible acts and not just atmospherics.Israel is now proposing a second further re-deployment; it is onlyseeking that the infrastructure of terrorism be finally dismantledand not just spillover automatically into any new areas that arehanded over to Palestinian control. Israel has re-engaged innegotiations on the airport, seaport and safe passage; Israel liftedclosure, more than doubling the number of Palestinian workers earningtheir living from the Israeli economy. Israel has complied with itscommitments to the Interim Agreement; the Palestinian Authority hasnot.

What stands behind the misconception, nonetheless, that Israel hasnot complied? Palestinian spokesmen point to settlement activity,knowing full well that settlement growth is no more a violation ofthe Oslo Agreements than the natural growth of Palestinian towns andvillages. Palestinian spokesmen point to our offer of furtherre-deployment as inadequate, yetthey know full well that accordingto Oslo, further re-deployment is unilaterally decided and executedby Israel. Indeed, Palestinian negotiators in January 1997, like AbuMazen and Saeb Erekat, termed further re-deployment in the Note forthe Record as an “issue for implementation” by Israel and not as”issue for negotiation” between the parties.

Chairman Arafat signed the Oslo II Interim Agreement in Washingtonon Sept. 28, 1995, knowing full well that his negotiators failed intheir attempts to achieve a one sided construction freeze on Israelibuilding. Indeed, our late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin confirmedthis fact when he stated one week later, as Oslo II was ratified bythe Knesset: ” … We made a commitment to the Knesset not to uprootany settlement in the framework of the Interim Agreement nor tofreeze construction and natural growth.” Chairman Arafat signed theInterim Agreement knowing that it left up to Israel alone, to decidethe size of a credible further re-deployment. What is happening todayis that Israel is being asked to make new concessions that go beyondthe Oslo Agreements in order to win Palestinian compliance withsecurity responsibilities that are within the Oslo Agreements. Ratherthan facing sanction for its adoption of violence, the PalestinianAuthority is expecting to be rewarded.

Adjusting Expectations

Despite all the difficulties and despite all the risks involved,the government of Israel is determined to make this peace processwork. Rather than become mired in the nuances of the InterimAgreement, Israel has recommended that the parties quickly enter andaccelerate their negotiations over permanent status. To achievesuccess in these negotiations, both Israelis and Palestinians willhave to adjust their expectations. Israel has began to adjust itsexpectations in accordance with Palestinian aspirations; thePalestinian’s need to adjust their expectations in accordance withIsraeli interests and concerns.

For diplomacy must take into account the true context of Israel’ssituation. Fifty years ago, the U.N. General Assembly adopted themajority report of the U.N. Special Commission on Palestine (UNSCOP)and passed a resolution calling for partition and the creation of aJewish State. Within a half a year, the State of Israel was declared– but was promptly invaded by armies of five Arab states whorejected out of hand the resolution of the General Assembly. Fromthat time onward, no one could talk about the Israel-Palestinianconflict in isolation of this broader context; Israelis andPalestinians were not located on an island in the Indian Ocean. As aresult, any solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict must notrob Israel of its capacity for self-defense in the wider Arab-Israelconflict.

That imperative became clear again when Israel faced a broadcoalition of armies that had massed their forces on our armisticelines during the months of May and early June 1967. In the Six DayWar that ensued, Israel came into control of the West Bank and becamedetermined never to

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Jewish Life on Film

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Sabrina Boudot is Rachel in “Nick and Rachel.”
If Los Angeles is the nation’s undisputed film capital, in recent months it also seems eligible for the title of the Jewish film capital, and that is largely because of the efforts of the Laemmle Theatres organization. Laemmle’s played host to the recent Israeli Film Festival and to its own screenings of independent films of Jewish interest throughout the year.

Beginning on Saturday, Dec. 13, Laemmle’s annual Cinema Judaica ’97 film festival begins its run, screening simultaneously at the Music Hall in Beverly Hills and at the Town Center 5 in Encino. Both locations will conclude the series on Dec. 24.

A quick scan of the film slate reads like an eclectic, cinematic buffet of Jewish life on film. There are features and documentaries, foreign films and American independents. Klezmer, Israeli history, assimilation and family life are some of the themes explored in this wide-ranging and ambitious festival.

A third of the films are older movies that form a retrospective of sorts: Among them are “Body & Soul” (screening on the 50th anniversary of the Hollywood blacklist), the Canadian coming-of-age tale, “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” Yale Strom’s “Carpati,” and “Exodus,” with a chiseled Paul Newman in the role of Ari Ben Canaan.

Also playing are some critically well-received films that have recently made the local rounds, separately from the festival slate. Their inclusion here offers another opportunity for audiences to see excellent movies they may have missed the first time around.

“My Mother’s Courage,” an offbeat chronicle of a woman’s road to survival in Nazi Europe, first debuted at the AFI film festival several years ago and has since gone on to critical acclaim. “Like a Bride” is an affectionate, wry look at Jewish life in Mexico that first screened at Laemmle’s a year ago. Other highlights are the klezmer documentary “A Tickle in the Heart”; “The Long Way Home,” which explores the hardships faced by Jewish survivors after the war; and Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman’s excellent “Chronicle of a Disappearance,” which was reviewed in these pages a month ago.

The third component of this year’s Cinema Judaica ’97 are the new films — for the most part, a lively melange of independent-spirited movies energized by contemporary issues in Western Jewish life. “Fairfax Fandango” explores the attraction between a secular woman and her Orthodox neighbor in that fabled local neighborhood. Marcia Jarmel’s provocative “The Return of Sarah’s Daughters” examines Orthodoxy with a distinct feminist sensibility. Also worth seeing is the elegant and understated documentary “Bonjour Shalom,” which takes the Montreal enclave of Outremont as its subject — a place where close-knit Orthodox Jews are bumping up against the rigidly Francophile majority.

The Music Hall Theatre is at 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Parking is available on Doheny at the WGA parking lot for $2.00. Call (310) 274-6869 for program information. The Town Center 5 is located at 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino. Call (818) 981-9811. Cinema Judaica ’97 runs from Dec. 13 to 24 at both locations.

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A Tour of Chanukah in

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Tired of spinning the same old dreidels, eatingthe same old latkes, singing the same old tired songs year after yearon Chanukah? Well, the personal computer and the World Wide Webprovide a fresh approach to the holiday, combining ancient traditionswith new technologies. In effect, they offer a selective tour ofChanukah in Cyberspace.

Software

First and foremost, there is a new game by thepeople who created “The Interactive Haggadah”; it’s called “Who StoleHanukkah?” Using vivid clay animation and a Carmen Sandiego-likeapproach to teaching the history and traditions of the holiday, thistruly multimedia game will be most popular with the 6- to 10-year-oldset. A red-headed, trench-coated detective called “Nerli” (Hebrew for”my candle”) guides players through clues in an effort to discoverwhich suspect pilfered the remaining oil from the rededication of thetemple. (When I played, Bomba, the cowardly orange elephant, was theculprit.) While younger children may have difficulty playing alone,this adult wasn’t bored while testing the game (in fact, it took metwo guesses to figure out who took the pitcher of miraculousoil).

The game is neither a chronological retelling ofthe holiday nor a comprehensive one, but it is clever andentertaining. Each time the game is played, a different “suspect” isguilty. The CD-ROM works for both Windows and Macintosh systems andcan be played in English, Hebrew, Russian, French and Spanish,providing an extra challenge for students of these languages. Theonly drawback is that at $19.95 per disk (for individual users,organizations may buy in 20 packs to sell as fund-raisers), the gamemay have a limited, one-time use, but this can be remedied by sharingit or packing it away with the chanukkiah for use again next year.Call (800) 871-0694 or visit their web site (www.jemm.co.il) to order the game.

Shopping

For many, Chanukah equals shopping. But instead ofvisiting The Gap online, or L.L. Bean, there are numerous sites forpurchasing Judaic items relating to the holiday. VirtualJerusalem, one of the best sites for anyof the Jewish holidays, offers shopping at www.virtual.co.il. Whether looking for books, chocolates or software, thisis a great place to browse (especially since it is open 24hours).

For America Online users, the Jewish Store(keyword: Jewish Store) is abound with gift ideas. Food baskets,Judaic items, music, calendars and even a gift subscription to yourfavorite Jewish publication (The Jewish Journal of Greater LosAngeles, of course) can be purchased here.

And if you simply must have something that lightsup like a you-know-what tree, then visit www.israelnow.com/gifts, where all electric menorah purchases come with a set oflight bulbs.

Recipes

There seem to be as many latke recipes online asthere are latke cooks. From traditional to nouveau, the oil-drenchedto the low-fat, the recipes can be found on nearly every Chanukahsite (including AOL’s Jewish.Community). The most comprehensive listI located (but searching yourself is part of the fun) was the

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Car Alarm

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You’ve read the newspaper ads or heard the pitches on the radio:Donate your old car to our worthy charity, which aidsorphans/immigrants/homeless/the halt and the lame, and enjoy agenerous tax write-off.

The American Red Cross is doing it, as is the National KidneyFoundation, Jewish Family Service, Jewish National Fund and Chabad.

And then there are the Jewish Foundation for Learning and theSouthern California Jewish Center. Never heard of them? Neither hasthe Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles or the Jewish CommunityCenters Association, so The Jewish Journal decided to do a littlechecking.

We called 1-800-362-2558 and asked the operator at the JewishFoundation for Learning for the name of the foundation’s director. Wewere referred to Carol Ruth Silver in San Francisco, although herphone number was unavailable. It wasn’t difficult to track downSilver, an attorney and former county supervisor who over the pastyear has served as the feisty spokeswoman for the Jewish EducationalCenter and as chair of its board of directors.

At its peak, the JEC ran one of the largest and most lucrativeused-car auction programs in the nation. It is now bankrupt, afterthe state attorney general’s office accused its founders, RabbiBentzion and Mattie Pil, of fraud, tax evasion and divertingcharitable funds to buy a house and stage a $40,000 bar mitzvah fortheir son. The Pils have denied any wrongdoing.

One of the JEC’s major programs was the Schneerson Hebrew DaySchool, which had an enrollment of 140 children, Silver said in aphone interview.

The Orthodox day school, now teaching 25 to 40 kids and housed ina Conservative synagogue, was not included in the bankruptcyproceedings. It is operating, legitimately, under the JewishFoundation for Learning auspices, as a “religious nonprofit”organization, with Silver, again, as chair of the board of directors.

The legal distinction between the school and the defunct JEC isimportant, explained state Deputy Attorney General Belinda Johns, whofiled the case against the JEC.

The JEC was classified as a “public benefit corporation” becauseits services extended to the general community, and it was thereforesubject to oversight by the attorney general. However, due to someastute lobbying, according to Johns, “religious nonprofits” areexempt from oversight by state authorities.

The Schneerson Day School is not affiliated with Chabad butfollows the teachings of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi MenachemMendel Schneerson, said Silver. However, following objections byChabad to the use of the rebbe’s name, the day school changed itsname to Torah Day School.

It is the Torah Day School that is the main beneficiary of theJewish Foundation for Learning’s car sales, although Silver is alsotrying to resurrect some other JEC programs, which, she saidbitterly, “were destroyed by the attorney general.” These includedEnglish-as-a-second-language classes for Russian immigrants and akosher nutrition program for the elderly.

Silver said that she didn’t know how many cars were processed whenthe defunct JEC solicited donations under its own name, but that thecar auctions provided the bulk of JEC’s $2 million annual budget.

(According to state documents, JEC’s income actually amounted to$8.54 million in fiscal year 1996, almost all of it from car sales.Only $1.46 million, or 17 percent, of this income was spent oncharitable programs, the Jewish Bulletin of Northern Californiareported.)

The Jewish Foundation for Learning car drive was launched onlyrecently, mainly in the Los Angeles area, and “we hope to get enoughdonations by the end of the year to survive,” said Silver.

It took a bit more digging to find the Southern California JewishCenter, which has been running radio appeals for car donations forabout a year.

A phone call to 1-800-936-HOPE was answered by “Linda,” who couldonly give a post office box as the center’s address and identifiedthe director as Rabbi Shimon Kay. Linda wouldn’t give out Kay’s phonenumber but said that he would call back and send a brochure.

After a week’s silence, we called again and, this time, told Lindathat we were preparing an article for The Jewish Journal.

A few hours later, Kay called and quickly demystified the SouthernCalifornia Jewish Center as the fund-raising arm of the WestwoodSephardic Center, which is listed in the phone book.

A few days later, we dropped in unannounced at the center onWestwood Boulevard. We were greeted hospitably by Kay, to allappearances, a sincere and harassed young rabbi, who turned to thecar-donation pitch in some desperation to keep his operation going.

In a modest two-story building, the center squeezes in a day-carecenter for about 25 children, an upstairs synagogue shtiebl, twomakeshift Hebrew-school classes, and a tiny outdoor play yard.

The 32-year-old rabbi, a native New Yorker, said that he waseducated at the Chabad yeshiva. In 1990, he was sent to Los Angelesby the Lubavitcher rebbe, although he now has no formal ties to theChabad organization.

The Sephardic Center, serving mainly Iranian immigrants, with asprinkling of Moroccans, Israelis and Russians, started off well andattracted substantial private donations. It hit hard times two yearsago, when Kay lost the lease on a much larger facility.

Attempts to raise funds from established secular or religiousJewish organizations came to nothing, and Kay finally turned to thecar-donation program as a saving moneymaker.

Kay said that he had no exact figures on how much of his annual$300,000 budget is provided by the car program. But he estimated thatdespite constantly rising costs for radio spots, about 70 percent ofthe profits are plowed back into his programs.

That is considerably better than the 20 percent of profits usuallyoffered by commercial middlemen, which is one reason Kay handles thecar donations himself. On an average, he gets about five to six carsa day — not a bad showing, given the intense competition.

Kay appeared somewhat ill at ease when asked why he didn’t run thecar program under the Westwood Sephardic Center’s own name. “It’seasier to remember the name of the Southern California JewishCenter,” he said at one point, adding later, “I don’t want to makeothers jealous; I don’t want too much publicity.”

Johns, of the attorney general’s office, specializes in charitablefund-raising cases, and she has some advice for potential donors.

One is to check out whether an organization actually conducts theprograms it advertises, which may require a fair amount of research.In any case, she agrees that probably some 90 percent of donors careonly about the tax deduction rather than the charity’s particularcause.

Also make sure that the title of the car is properly and quicklytransferred, Johns counsels. Not infrequently, a charity allows anemployee to drive the car under the old owner’s title, and many adonor has received parking and traffic tickets months after givingthe car away.

The attorney general’s office has just compiled a useful brochureon charitable solicitations, which can be obtained by writing to theAG Public Inquiry Unit, P.O. Box 944255, Sacramento, CA94244-2550.

 

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A Hole in Kosher L.A.

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A Hole in Kosher L.A.

By deciding to introduce meat products into itsformerly all-dairy outlets, Noah’s Bagels has provoked a strongresponse from observant Jewish noshers

By Diane Arieff Zaga, Arts Editor

You can tinker with the “classic” Coke recipe, add color to thegray New York Times, but don’t mess with my kosher Sunday-morninghangout. That’s the message observant Jews have been sending toNoah’s Bagels since the Northern California-based company decided tointroduce meat products into its formerly kosher, all-dairy LosAngeles outlets Nov. 1.

First, a bit of bagel background may be in order: Noah’s Bagels,which sells deli salads, knishes, lox, cream cheeses and Jewishbakery items, was originally a private company run by its founder,Noah Alper. In February 1996, Noah’s was bought by Einstein Bros.Bagels Corp., and the joint enterprise went public in August of thatyear. Boston Chicken is now the corporation’s majority shareholder.

Today, Noah’s familiar logo remains, dotting storefronts up anddown the West Coast. Here in Los Angeles, Noah’s attracts briskweekend traffic to its many outlets, several of which are situated inthe same sorts of trendy retail nexuses that house Starbucks Coffee,Tower Records and various juice shops.

The abrupt change in the kosher foodie landscape caused by Noah’smenu changeover has provoked strong community response in areas wherethere is a critical mass of observant Jewish noshers. Two Noah’sstores are in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood. Another is on Beverlyand Detroit, adjacent to Hancock Park. Both areas are home to highconcentrations of Orthodox Jews, who have stayed away from Noah’ssince the decision.

Gary Narin, a resident of Beverlywood and a Modern Orthodox Noah’sdevotee, has been active in trying to resolve this conflict overcorporate bagel kashrut. Along with other members of thePico-Robertson community, he contacted Noah’s main office about theNovember decision, urging the company to maintain kashrut at thoselocations that serve an observant clientele. Noah’s agreed to keepthe stores at Beverwil and Pico, Olympic and Doheny, and Beverly andDetroit as all-dairy restaurants.

So what’s the beef? When deli meats were introduced at thecompany’s other Southland sites, Rabbinical Council of Californiarabbis felt compelled to withdraw Noah’s local certification acrossthe board. Rabbi Abraham Union of the RCC was unavailable for commentat press time, but lay people affiliated with the board have venturedthat part of the reason the RCC no longer wanted to certify thosethree stores was because of the potential for confusion and erroramong customers who would be patronizing a bagel chain that waskosher in some neighborhoods and treif in others.

Another factor blocking certification is the issue of whetherNoah’s would agree to close on Shabbat. Although it’s a publicly heldfirm that’s not obligated by Jewish law to do so, the November menuchanges prompted the RCC to regard each outlet as a separate shop tobe considered individually, according to Dr. Mark Goldenberg, a laymember of the RCC. Noah’s is not willing to close down on Saturdays,so progress has been stalled. For the time being, these three dairyNoah’s are in uncertified kosher limbo, a status that disturbs Narinfor reasons that go beyond the loss of a good onion bialy.

“We were a little frustrated because they were losing theircertification, and it’s not because we couldn’t find a kosher bagel,”Narin said. “That’s not it at all. Noah’s was a great meetingplace…a place where all Jews could eat together.”

Narin said that he’s committed to building bridges between theOrthodox and non-Orthodox communities. And, in its own way, heexplained, Noah’s was part of that positive effort. “In my mind, itwas like a little Jewish community center, where everyone could sitand have a cup of coffee and a bagel. Non-Orthodox Jews who may notgravitate to other kosher places would go there…. In some ways,Noah’s did as much good in the community as some synagogues orFederation projects. It really became known as a gathering place.”

Narin is quick to point out that representatives from Noah’s wereresponsive to his complaints. At its Irvine and Granada Hillslocations, the company decided to maintain kashrut after the Jewishcommunities in those areas lobbied hard for them to do so.Certification didn’t come through the RCC, of course, but byindependent rabbinic supervision, something Noah’s is now shoppingfor in order to get its Pico-Robertson and Hancock Park outletsrecertified.

“The way we found independent supervision for the stores inGranada Hills and Irvine is through people in those communities whocontacted their rabbis, who then contacted us,” said Sydney DrellReiner, Noah’s director of community relations. “We’re still lookingfor supervision for the other three stores, and we’d like to get thatdone as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened yet.Frankly, we’re open to suggestions.”

Why bother with meat at all if it’s going to cause such abyzantine bagel brouhaha? The answer, of course, is dough, and notthe chewy kind. Kosher consumers are a minority of Noah’s diversecustomer base. According to Reiner, “Noah’s made the decision inOctober, based on the requests of a vast number of our customers –about 90 percent — who wanted us to expand our menu to include morechoices for breakfast and lunch. So in Seattle, Portland and LosAngeles, we introduced those products, which are doing quite well bythe way. But we always had the intention of maintaining koshersupervision at other outlets, as we do in Northern California.”

In other parts of the Los Angeles region where Noah’s serves asignificant Jewish clientele — such as Studio City, Sherman Oaks andSanta Monica, to name a few — there has been a low-level lamentabout the menu changeover too. Is it too late for those neighborhoodsto lobby for continued kosher status? Not at all, said Reiner. “We’reopen. We’re real open.”

Customers may call the company at 1-800-931-NOAH.

The Real Noah Speaks Out

By Robert Eshman,

Associate Editor

Go into any Noah’s New York Bagels these days, order a roast beefwith Swiss cheese, and they’ll give it to you, faster than you canspell Leviticus. The treifing of Noah’s, at one time the most visibleand contemporary of kosher food outlets, has upset many observantJews, and has even inspired organized protest (see accompanyingstory). Among those who are most upset: Noah himself.

Speaking with The Journal by phone from Jerusalem, Noah Alperwants to make it perfectly clear that he is no longer affiliated withthe chain that bears his name. “I get a feeling if the public werepolled, most of them would say, ‘He’s still in the back room makingbagels,'” said Alper. “I’d like to let the public know I’m notassociated with the business.”

Alper sold Noah’s to Einstein Bros. Bagels Corp. in 1996 andstayed on to help with the transition. But last February, he resignedfrom the board and went on to fulfill a lifelong dream: studyingJudaism in Israel.

“I’m over here making up for everything I never learned,” saidAlper. Last summer, he moved with his wife, Hope, and two children toa rented home in the German Colony section of Jerusalem. Alper’soldest son attends Brandeis University. The family expects to returnto their Bay Area home in July.

Alper, 50, takes classes at the Pardes Institute for JewishLearning, a progressive, traditional Jewish studies center headed byRabbi Daniel Landes, the former senior rabbi at Congregation B’naiDavid Judea in Los Angeles.

As he leads a more observant life, the stores that bear Alper’sname have become decidedly less observant. Alper said that he canunderstand the thinking behind it — Orthodox customers neveraccounted for more than 5 percent to 10 percent of sales. Even so,the corporate decision was made after he left the board.

Alper said his insistence that his stores keep kosher was nevermotivated by the bottom line. From the store’
s founding in 1989,Alper wanted Noah’s to reflect the joy and richness of Jewish life,and being kosher was part of that. His stores resembled tiled LowerEast Side delis. Their walls were adorned with photos from the Jewishpantheon– the Brooklyn Dodgers, Golda Meir, rebbes and radicals, andeven Alper family photos.

The overall effect certainly created strong brand identity.Einstein’s bought Noah’s 35 stores for $100 million (Alper receivedabout $10 million). The corporation paid the same price for more than300 Bruegger’s Bagels outlets. Noah’s was a marketing phenomenon,like Gap or Starbucks, which owned 20 percent of the chain. WhileEinstein’s corporate M.O. has been to buy up bagel chains and renamethe stores, it left the Noah’s name untouched, even opening numerousnew locations. Einstein’s was paying for a well-tended image –something more valuable than bagel-vending real estate.

Those who know Alper say that the Noah’s image accuratelyreflected the man. Murray Kalis, whose Pacific Palisades advertisingagency Kalis & Savage designed many of Noah’s ads and brochures,said Alper took his store’s commitment to Jewish communal lifeseriously. When visiting Los Angeles, he made sure to attend servicesat Temple Mishkon Tephilo on Main Street in Venice, just down thestreet from the company’s first Santa Monica store, and he donatedprofits and goods from his stores to local Jewish charities.

Now Noah Alper is, by his own admission, out of the loop. “I takemy kids to school and soccer practice,” said Alper, “and I study.”

Of course, even as he deepens his understanding of his heritage,he has had time to sample the bagels of Israel. “They’re not bad,” hesaid, “but I don’t think they’re as good as Noah’s.”

A Hole in Kosher L.A. Read More »

Community Briefs

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Metivta, a Westside “Center for Contemplative Judaism,” is holdinga two-day conference Dec. 13-14 at Adat Ari El synagogue in NorthHollywood. The event will include panel discussions led by an arrayof academics and rabbis, as well as a series of community workshopsin which “hands-on” exposure to Jewish meditation, chant, and otherspiritually-oriented practices will be taught.

Metivta’s director, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man, is a well-knownfigure in the Jewish meditation movement and one of the conference’spanelists. Other speakers will include Dr. Nan Fink, a co-founder ofTikkun magazine and currently co-director of Chochmat HaLev inBerkeley, and Rabbi David A. Cooper, the author of “God is a Verb.”

Workshops will explore various aspects of what has become knownrecently as Jewish Renewal: a reclamation of kabbalistic teachings,an introduction to meditation techniques, an examination of thespiritual connection between mind and body, and more.

Those who have not pre-registered, but who arrive during the 6p.m. registration period Saturday or on Sunday at 8 a.m. will be ableto participate if space is available. For more information, call(310) 477-7143. Adat Ari El is located at 12020 Burbank Blvd. atLaurel Canyon, in North Hollywood. Handicapped parking available. —Diane Arieff Zaga, Arts Editor

Beth Olam May Remain Open

The bankrupt Hollywood Memorial Park, and its Beth Olam cemetery,will apparently stay open, after all.

The venerable cemetery and its Jewish section, the last restingplace of many stars, was in danger of being padlocked after afruitless one-year search for a buyer.

At press time, David Isenberg, attorney for the memorial park’strustees, reported that Callanan Mortuary had made a bid for$375,000, which is expected to acceptable to all parties and thebankruptcy court.

Callanan is pledged to honor all previous purchases of “pre- need”burial plots, crypts and niches. Visitation rights to the cemeterywill continue uninterrupted, according to Isenberg. — Tom Tugend,Contributing Editor

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