fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

February 26, 1998

Up Front

Leave a Comment / Community, Old Stories /

Illustration by Shelley Adler

Cat-Aid

Yes, Israel has bigger problems than its cats anddogs. But, as the cliché goes — we think it was original whenGeorge Bernard Shaw said it — the truest measure of a society’sadvancement is how it treats its animals.

According to the people behind the Cat WelfareSociety, Israel’s got a ways to go. “Most Israelis generally dislikecats,” says Donna Pallas, a Los Angeles-based friend of thesociety.

Pallas was visiting Israel last December when shefound an abandoned kitten on the grounds of her hotel. Looking forhelp, she came across the society, based at Moshav Gan Haim.

She also discovered along the way that 90 percentof all pets in Israel are eventually abandoned, according to theJerusalem Post. The problem takes a tragic toll: Three Israelis diedlast year after contacting rabies, which spreads quickly throughstray populations.

The nonprofit society has a hospital, clinic andcat runs. Since its founding in 1990, it has neutered 3,500 cats andcared for more than 10,000, housing 300 at a time. The society reliesalmost completely on donations to continue its work. For moreinformation, call them in Israel at 011-972-9-902491 or write the CatWelfare Society, at Moshav Gan Haim 44910, Israel. — Staff Report

Cupful of Spirituality

Next month,Starbucks’ customers will be able to order up spirituality with theirdouble latte.

Copies of the paperback edition of “InvisibleLines of Connection: Sacred Stories of the Ordinary,” by RabbiLawrence Kushner (Jewish Lights), will be on sale in more than 400Starbucks shops around the country, including Los Angeleslocations.

A spokesperson for Starbucks in Seattle confirmedthat this is the first Jewish-oriented title the chain has offered.The book — a collection of stories written in a style described byNew York Jewish Week as “somewhere between vignette, personal essayand prayer” — is part of Starbucks’ newest book promotion, whichties in with the spring holiday season. “Pat the Bunny,” a populargift book, is also part of the promotion.

“It just struck me as a book full of verymeaningful little epiphanies about life, about people’s lives today,”said the spokesperson, who selected “Invisible Lines of Connection.”He praised Kushner’s “down-to-earth style and openheartedapproach.”

Stuart Matlins, president of Jewish Lights, pointsout that the book “appeals to people of all faiths.” He believes thatKushner’s brief inspirational stories are “the perfect thing to readover a cup of coffee.”

For Matlins, whose innovative, small publishingcompany is based in Woodstock, Vt. (where there are no Starbucksshops), the Starbucks connection is a dream come true. “Our wholefantasy since the beginning of Jewish Lights [in 1990] has been toreach out to Jews where they go, which all too often is not thesynagogue, and show them the relevance of Jewish life.”– Sandee Brawarsky

The Painting Party

Racial segregation is anathema to American life,but age segregation is still an accepted fact of it. The people atthe Jewish Home for the Aging in Reseda have set out to change that,operating on the belief that youth and age have much to offer eachother. We agree. That’s why, on Sunday, March 1, you’ll find Up Frontat JHA’s Multi-Generational Tile Painting Party, to be held from 11a.m. to 3 p.m. at JHA’s Grancell Village, 7150 Tampa Blvd.

At the party, children can paint tiles howeverthey wish. The finished glazed tiles will be mounted on the walls ofthe JHA’s garden to create a colorful backdrop. It is “a bridgebetween generations,” said Cynthia Seider, the event chair.

Adults can help paint too, of course, and there’llbe clowns, music, food, face painting and other activities for thechildren.

The event is sponsored by the Los AngelesSephardic Home for the Aging, which raises funds for the Jewish Homeand provides elderly outreach.

Organizers say they need 10,000 tiles for thewall. Donations to purchase the tiles begin at $20. For moreinformation, call (818) 774-3330. — StaffReport

Olympic Memories

His performance wasn’t golden in Nagano, but histallitwas.

Figure skater Misha Shmerkin, Israel’s first-everathlete to enter the Winter Olympics — he was 16th at Lillehammer,Norway, in 1992 — finished 18th out of 29 in the men’s competitionthis week in Japan. Israel’s other Winter Olympians, ice dancersGalit Chait and Sergei Saknovsky, finished 14th out of 24 in theirfirst Olympic appearance.

Two known Jewish members of the U.S. Olympic teamearned medals. Goaltender Sara De Costa took gold with the women’shockey team. Luger Gordy Sheer won silver with partner ChrisThorpe.

The performance of the Israeli skaters was a “giftto our state,” said delegation head Yossi Goldberg. “They representedthe best of Israel and the Jewish nation.”

Shmerkin, a 27-year-old Odessa native, skated hisprograms to a medley of Middle Eastern and Ashkenazic music,including “Hava Nagila.” His costume in the short program featured agold shirt with a menorah embroidered on the back, and a gold tallit.For the free program, he donned an outfit of black, green and redthat was patterned after the typical clothing of immigrants fromEastern Europe.

“It was my idea. [Everything] is a symbol ofJews,” Shmerkin said. “I want to say thank you to Israel.”

Chait and Saknovsky, whose musical accompanimentof traditional Jewish music included “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein,” worequasi-Chassidic costumes: Hers was a long dress, his a vest and darkslacks.

Chait, 22, of Paramus, N.J., said that a highlightfor her and Saknovsky, also 22, from Moscow, was the raising of theIsraeli flag in the Olympic Village. Japanese children sang”Hatikvah” and other Israeli songs. “It was an unbelievableexperience,” she said.

The pair plans to enter the 2002 Olympics in SaltLake City, Utah. — SteveLipman, JTA


Up Front Read More »

Notes from the Village

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Personal Voice /

In my mind, Icall him Mr. Droopy Pants, my elderly neighbor who shuffles down thehall every morning to steal my paper, his orange toupee askew. I lethim steal my paper because I know it is one of his few pleasures,along with listening to the baseball games that I hear blaringthrough his door from a buzzy AM radio.

It’s difficult to talk to Mr. Droopy Pants, who isancient and hard of hearing, but from our limited conversations I’vededuced that he has been living in my building for 30 years. The rentis dirt cheap and all he can afford after retiring from a series ofjobs he calls “manual labor, mostly.” In his tenure here, he has seencountless homicides on our block, been mugged four times and had hismonthly government check stolen from his bedroom.

For Mr. Droopy Pants, this is God’s Waiting Room;it is where he will die. For others in our decrepit building, this isjust a cheap launch pad, a place we will look back on when we laughabout the roaches and the omnipresent ice cream truck that constantlyblares “You Light Up My Life,” as if to announce what we all know –that the vehicle outside sells more crack than Popsicles. I hope Ifall into the launch pad category, but I can’t be sure how long I’llstay. And every day, as I pass my neighbors coming in and out of thecracked glass front door, I wonder how they got here, and what keepsthem up at night when the helicopters or car alarms turn our creepylittle stomping grounds into a scene from “Platoon.” I’m fascinatedby them all.

There’s Tired Man, who lives upstairs and who mybuilding manager informs me is suffering from chronic fatiguesyndrome. Tired Man can’t be older than 30, but he must be prettytired because I often find myself holding the door open for the Mealson Wheels delivery man, who comes to bring Tired Man beige plastictrays brimming with peas and carrots. I rarely see his neighbor, aHispanic woman with a daughter who is severely retarded. I oncecalled 911 when I heard her wailing in Spanish early one morning,frightened to death at the sight of her tiny daughter having aviolent but benign seizure.

Across the hall from me is an Asian transsexual.She has stopped the process of surgically removing her malenessbecause her HIV has become AIDS and it is all she can do to get outof bed some days.

Down my hall are two gay men who both drivemotorcycles and once entertained the possibility of being actors. Ilove these men because they are the closest thing I have to friendsin the Village of the Damned. They comment on the guys who come tocall on me. They notice the sound of workout videos blaring from mystudio apartment and tell me, “Girl, you look good.” They knock on mydoor when the meter maid has rounded the corner and is greedilyeyeing my windshield.

My upstairs neighbor looks like he’s barely 19.Unfortunately, he’s a dancer, a profession which forces him to listento the same eight counts of En Vogue for hours on end when I’msitting at my computer trying to write and able to think only “Nevergone get it, never gonna get it, never gonna get it, never gonna getit.” My motorcycle friends tell me he is quite talented, the tacitunderstanding being that he isn’t long for our Central Hollywoodabode.

When I tell people where I live and they ask theinevitable question — why — I give them my stock answer, “For thecrack.” I can’t explain the whole truth to those who ask. What’s anice Jewish girl doing in a ‘hood like this? True, there arefinancial considerations, the life of a freelance writer andperformer being precarious and often less than lucrative. But that’snot the only thing that keeps me here. Part of me feels at home,having always lived in urban areas on the edge of safety. I belonghere in some odd way, clutching my pepper spray, giving up my dailypaper to Mr. Droopy Pants and wondering what small pleasures keep myneighbors surviving.

This is my first apartment in Los Angeles, one Ichose six months ago in a hurry and in the deceivingly calm light ofday. I’ve tried to move, but the thought of increasing my overheadsends me into a panic, as if the act of moving will curse me and I’llnever work again. I could find a roommate, but than I’d have to worryabout interacting constantly with another human being, one who islikely to eat my food and take sloppy phone messages. For somereason, I’d rather risk my life here in Beirut.

I guess some would call it scarcity mentality, astate of mind I’ve probably inherited from my grandparents, two dirtpoor Jewish kids from the Bronx who managed to eke their way into themiddle class. Still, they always looked over their shoulder for thepoverty Boogie Man, the way I scurry into my building with one eyeout for a gun-toting gang member.

My grandmother never left Denny’s without wrappingup any stray piece of toast and stuffing into her handbag along witha few packs of Sweet N’ Low and several plastic squares of scarystrawberry jelly. I doubt she ever ate the toast, but she had it,just in case of sudden poverty or a nuclear holocaust.

I try to cultivate abundance mentality, mostly bybuying really expensive soap or the occasional pair of pricey NineWest shoes. Still, I remain here, sometimes knowing this will be aquaint story about my humble beginnings and sometimes imaginingmyself shuffling down the hall to steal some youngster’s paper in 50years.

For now, I don’t mind the address that evenDomino’s Pizza men fear. It’s the dormitory for the disenfranchised.It’s a dump, but it’s my dump.

Teresa Strasser is a twentysomethingcontributing writer for The Jewish Journal.


Notes from the Village Read More »

The Home of God

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

In October 1995, the Cleveland Jewish Newsreported that at the 50th-anniversary celebration of the localfederation’s Jewish Community Relations Committee, the guest speaker,Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League,shared his own 50th-anniversary story.

Foxman was born in Poland shortly before World WarII. During the war, his parents saved him by handing him over to hisnursemaid, who raised him as a Catholic. When the war ended, theyoung boy’s parents survived the Holocaust and returned to claimtheir son, much to the nursemaid’s surprise. Although they wereeternally grateful to the nursemaid for risking her own life byhiding their son from the Nazis for four years, Foxman’s parents werewilling to go to court in order to regain custody of theirson.

Young Abe, who had just spent four years living asa Christian, was not sure whether he wanted to remain Christian or

The Home of God Read More »

A Liberal Feminist Meets Modern Orthodoxy

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Womans Voice /

The second International Conference onOrthodoxy and Feminism was held at New York’s Grand Hyatt Hotel overPresidents Day weekend. For liberal women like me, such conferencesare a thrill even from a distance. Two thousand women attended,double the number at the pioneering event a year before. There werepanel discussions on every controversy facing the religiouscommunity, including the legal status of the agunah (the deserted wife who isdenied divorce), single women and rabbinic ordination. The big newsof the year concerned the newly created post of female “intern” –one who is “EBS” — everything but smicha (ordination). Next year,organizers promise that the conference will fill Madison SquareGarden.

But when I say that liberals are excited by suchOrthodox events, it is not a simple matter of gloating that the firesof feminism are finally catching on. The traditional movement knownas Modern Orthodoxy has been a steady source of inspiration to thosein Judaism’s progressive ranks. The old days of ridiculing religiousbelief are gone. Instead, we eye Modern Orthodox life with jealousy,trying to duplicate the aspects of it we want for ourselves:close-knit community, beliefs worth fighting for, an ambitiousstandard of integrity. Though our interpretations of Torah mightdiffer, on day-to-day Jewish goals, Modern Orthodox and liberals arenot so far apart as you might think.

This week, I spoke to leaders of Shirat Chana, thewomen’s prayer group based at B’nai David-Judea in the largelyOrthodox Pico-Robertson area. Shirat Chana is part of the nationalWomen’s Tefillah Network, which organized the conference at the GrandHyatt. As the only branch of the network on the West Coast, ShiratChana is a controversial, if noble, experiment within Orthodoxy, anapparently successful melding of two competing goals: inclusion ofwomen and halachic control over their prescribed roles.

“I’m not the least bit interested in feminism,”Alissa Rimmon told me. Rimmon, a nutritionist and mother of fourgirls, was raised in a Conservative home. “I go to Shirat Chanabecause I enjoy the learning. I like to hear women talk aboutbringing prayer and mitzvot into their lives. And I love to havewomen get together and lifting up their voices in song.”

The women’s group of about 50 participants startedlast May on Shavuot. It meets monthly, during mincha (afternoon)services. (The next meeting will be held on Purim, March 12.) Theypray, read and interpret Torah, sing and offer each other guidance onmatters of spiritual importance, such as visiting the sick. They willcelebrate their first bat mitzvah in a few months. For a generationof women educated in Jewish schools, Shirat Chana provides a chancefor direct participation in prayer service. The women are devoted toit, and proud.

“The basic idea is that we have more educated,skilled and capable Jewish women now than ever before,” B’nai David’sRabbi Yosef Kanefsky told me. “And it behooves us in the Orthodoxworld to give them the opportunities for Jewish self-expression. Todo otherwise is capricious.”

As mild as Shirat Chana’s goals seem, within theB’nai David-Judea community, Shirat Chana was initially suspect as aradical political statement. Kanefsky, 34, moved to Los Angeles fromthe Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, where one of the first women’stefillah groups started 20 years ago. He modified and somewhatnarrowed the Riverdale model to fit his new shul.

The women of Shirat Chana are not a minyan –“that’s 10 adult men,” I was told repeatedly. They are notegalitarian. And they don’t meet Shabbat morning, in order that thelarger community’s worship stays intact.

However, Rabbi Kanefsky made it clear that evenif, under his halachic interpretation, women reading Torah”technically does not qualify as a public reading,” it hasextraordinary benefits.

“The women are connecting to the parchment, theink, the scribal art, the scroll and the music of the Torah in theway we do as Jews,” Kanefsky said. “They have more than my approval.It’s a very powerful experience, a ‘Sinai-like’ experience and a verypositive thing, with wonderful benefits and outcomes.”

Certainly, he is right. Kanefsky and the ShiratChana women may not concur with me about whether a woman is part of aminyan and, hence, entitled, in the absence of men, to say the”Borchu.” But one thing we all agree upon is that for Jews, men andwomen, the experience is primal, and as close to the spiritual sourceas a Jew can get.

“For me, this is not about feminism; it’s aboutreading Torah,” says Julie Gruenbaum Fax, the group’s lay leader. “Iwas in day school my whole life. But I never saw an open sefer Torahuntil four years ago, when I joined a tefillah group. It changes yourrelationship with the tradition when you do it yourself.”

Of course, the limits on Shirat Chana wouldn’tsatisfy me. They are not intended to. Modern Orthodoxy has oneunderstanding of Jewish law; progressive Judaism has its own.

But when all the legalisms and rationales areover, we’ll both be reading Torah. And how we got there won’t matterat all.

Marlene Adler Marks is senior columnist of TheJewish

Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Her e-mailaddress is wmnsvoice@aol.com. Join her on Sunday, March 8, when herConversations series at the Skirball Cultural Center continues withessayist and commentator Richard Rodriguez.



SEND EMAIL TO MARLENE ADLER MARKS
wmnsvoice@aol.com

February 20, 1998 —Spinning theWeb

 

February 13, 1998 —How Do We DoIt?

 

February 6, 1998 —One by One byOne

 

January 30, 1998 —TheDaughter

 

January 23, 1998 —Babysitters NoMore

 

January 16, 1998 —FalseAlarms

 

November 28, 1997 —As AmericanAs…

 

November 21, 1997 —The ThirteenWants

 

November 14, 1997 —Music to MyEars

 

November 7, 1997 —< FONT SIZE="+2">Four Takes on50

 

October 31, 1997 —ChallengingHernandez

 

October 24, 1997 —CommonGround

 

October 17, 1997 —Taking Off theMask

 

October 10, 1997 —Life’s a MixedBag

 

October 3, 1997 —And Now ForSomething Completely Different

 

September 26, 1997— An OpenHeart

 

September 19, 1997— My BronxTale

 

September 12, 1997 — Of Goddesses andSaints

 

August 22, 1997 — Who is Not a Jew

 

August 15, 1997 — A LegendaryFriendship

 

July 25, 1997 — A Perfect Orange

 

July 18, 1997 — News of Our Own

 

July 11, 1997 — Celluloid Heroes

 

July 4, 1997 — Meet theSeekowitzes

 

June 27, 1997 — The Facts of Life

 

June 20, 1997 — Reality Bites

 

A Liberal Feminist Meets Modern Orthodoxy Read More »

Letters

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

J.J. Goldberg’s column on Israeli Finance MinisterNeeman’s proposal to gradually phase out American economic aid toIsrael missed several key points, leading readers to draw skewedconclusions (“Foreign Aid as Shell Game,” Feb. 13).

Israel has been a true foreign aid success story.Because of U.S. aid, Israel’s economic reforms have slashed inflationfrom 400 percent in 1985 to 7 percent last year and transformedIsrael into a magnet for foreign investment, which last year topped$3 billion.

At the same time, Israel’s forward-lookinginitiative accounts for the spiraling expense of maintaining itsqualitative edge. Half of the savings from reducing economic aidwould be used to increase extremely needed military aid from itscurrent level of $1.8 billion a year to $2.4 billion over 10-12years.

Revelations by chief U.N. inspector Richard Butlerthat Iraq has sufficient anthrax-tipped missiles to destroy Tel Aviv,and the participation by Iranian President Khatemi in a400,000-person protest against Israel, are sobering reminders of thethreats Israel faces.

It would be wrong to interpret these developmentsas signaling a diminution of the challenges facing supporters ofstrong U.S.-Israel relations. Israel will remain the largest U.S. aidrecipient and we will have to continue year-in and year-out to makethe case for those dollars. Aid is only one of the more than 130U.S.-Israel initiatives that fills our agenda.

Melvin Dow

Executive Director

AIPAC

Washington D.C.

Crazy Hair

I enjoyed Teresa Strasser’s article “My Hair, MySelf” (Jan. 2). However, my hair is naturally like “Seinfeld’s”Kramer. What did she mean by “crazy hair”?

I stopped dating a guy at UCLA who told me BarbraStreisand was “too Jewish.” I was a Hebrew major at the time.

Connie Craig

Van Nuys

On Elia Kazan

Charles Marowitz’s Feb. 6 puff piece “TheExoneration of Elia Kazan,” extolling the contemptible weasel whoratted on his colleagues was one of the most disgusting articles Ihave read recently. Perhaps I may look forward to another glowingreport on someone who was nice to his dog, “Blondie,” and who oftenkissed children in public: Adolf Hitler.

Emil M. Murad

Huntington Beach

The Singles Debate

After reading “Singles: The Debate” (Jan. 30), Ifelt compelled to respond. In my opinion, the rising rate ofintermarriage may be a direct result of the “excesses” of women’sliberation. Women today do significantly better economically than indays past (which is fine with me), but the bar also goes up for men,because many Jewish women we’ve dated expect to be “taken care of”(read: live very well).

Their expectations are unrealistic. By forcing usto submit to “the interview” that so many men complain about, theyexpect us to be able to show at the outset of the dating relationshipthat we are capable of providing them (and future children) with thestandard of living that their parents attained, or better.

Today’s single women generally already live well.Since women are doing better, men have to move up as much, or more.Otherwise, a woman isn’t interested because “there must be somethingwrong with him.” After all, marriage and everything that comes withit is an expensive proposition. Do they think we don’t knowthis?

In contrast, my Asian girlfriends have never caredhow much money I make. What’s important to them is that I know how tohave fun and still treat them like ladies, in addition to beingresponsible enough to keep a good job.

Jewish men are marrying Asian women in increasingnumbers because they take a traditional view of the male/femalerelationship. They know how to take care of us (and they do), inaddition to knowing how to be taken care of (and showing theirappreciation for it). Moreover, their values tend to be centeredaround making the relationship work, rather than how well they’ll beable to live.

My future children will be raised Jewish, and myfuture wife will attend temple as a Jew by choice. If this scenariobothers my Jewish-by-birth sisters, they have no one to blame butthemselves. They have “priced” themselves out of reach of the niceJewish boys they claim they really want. Money and material goods arenot the most important things. Happiness with the right partneris.

Randall Bassin

Woodland Hills

*

I must congratulate you on your Jan. 30 issue andyour balanced coverage of the Lewinsky “affair.” It never ceases toamaze me that timely articles can be assembled so rapidly.

But what I want to focus on is “Singles: TheDebate.” I think “Anonymous” and David Scher should meet and have itout in person.

Dawn Swift

Los Angeles

Bel-Air Prep

By printing Ilana Polyak’s article on Bel-Air Prepand allowing her to trash a wonderful, caring little school and itsgood reputation, you engaged in character assassination that Ithought beneath the integrity of the Jewish Journal (“False Valuesand Prep School Blues,” Feb. 6).

“It takes a village to raise a child” and Bel-Airis a school that holds up its end of responsibilities tostudents.

My son graduated two years ago, after fullyutilizing the golden opportunities that were open to him.Academically, he flourished. He was encouraged to experience varyingextra-curricular activities.

He got a lot out of his high school years becausehe put in a lot of time and energy. As a family, we encouraged hiswholesome activities, opened our home to his friends and supportedhis school.

Polyak brags that her parents didn’t pay a singlepsychotherapist’s bill. Perhaps they missed the boat. She sounds likea very angry young lady who is still harboring feelings ofinadequacy.

What right does a journalist have to assume thather personal experience was also the experience of others?

Roberta Klein

Los Angeles

Discovering Singles

Thank you, Marlene Adler Marks, for your column onsingles within the Jewish community (“One by One by One,” Feb. 6).You have brought to the forefront an important, and as you said,overlooked issue. I applaud you for that.

If the bias against the unmarried is fading, whyis dating the only service the Jewish community can offer? The Jewishcommunity can recognize their single members as individuals. Some ofus do want to get married, some of us do not.

Synagogues are becoming more sensitive to theissues of singles, but there is still a great deal of married bias.Even something as basic as stating the cost of a particular event asa “price per couple” shows the married bias.

By talking about only matchmaking services thatcan and should be offered, you are implying that all singles want tomeet and marry and that is all we want and need from the Jewishcommunity. Many of us do not want to marry; we think of ourselves aswhole people with full lives. Yes, it might be nice to date and havea companion of the opposite (or same) sex but marriage is notnecessarily our goal or desire.

We need to feel comfortable in our Jewishinstitutions as individuals, not as a single wanting to meet apotential mate. I want to be able to attend services and berecognized. I want to go to events and be a full participating memberof the Jewish community. I want to be viewed by others, by the Jewishcommunity, as a person who has much to contribute, with personalneeds. I do not want to be considered only or primarily as apotential date for someone.

Singles, as you pointed out, cover the fullspectrum of ages. The younger ones probably do want to get marriedand that might be the “best” service the Jewish community can offer.(Notice, I said “best” not “only” service.) But some of the oldersingles might not want to get married again, but don’t want to beleft out of Jewish life because of their single status.

Ginger Jacobs

Northridge

Thanks for the Mention

Thanks to Ruth Stroud for her article (“A TruePublic Servant,” Feb. 13). It made my parents proud.

Many Jewish organizations have room for youngleaders. If any young professional needs help connecting with a causeor organization, I would be happy to help if they call me at (310)859-5814.

Scott Svonkin

Canoga Park

 


THE JEWISH JOURNAL welcomes letters from all readers. Letters shouldbe 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 withheldon request. Unsolicited manuscripts and other materials shouldinclude a self-addressed, stamped envelope in order to bereturned.Publisher, Stanley Hirsh

THE JEWISH JOURNAL welcomes letters from allreaders. Letters should be no more than 250 words and we reserve theright to edit for space. All letters must include a signature, validaddress and phone number. Pseudonyms and initials will not be used,but names will be withheld on request. Unsolicited manuscripts andother materials should include a self-addressed, stamped envelope inorder to be returned.Publisher, Stanley Hirsh

Editor-in chief,Gene Lichtenstein

Managing editor, Robert Eshman

Assistant editor, Stig Jantz

Calendar and copy editor, William Yelles

Senior writer, NaomiPfefferman

Staff writer, RuthStroud

Production coordinator and

online editor, SaraEve Roseman

Community editor,Michael Aushenker

Arts editor, DianeArieff Zaga

Senior Columnist, Marlene Adler Marks

National Correspondent, J. J. Goldberg

Contributing writers, James David Besser (Washington), Larry Derfner (Tel Aviv),Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Linda Feldman, Beverly Gray, Joel Kotkin, RabbiSteven Leder, Yehuda Lev, Deborah Berger-Reiss, Eric Silver(Jerusalem), Teresa Strasser

Contributing editor, Tom Tugend

Art director,Shelley Adler

Photo/Graphics, Carvin Knowles

Advertising art director, Lionel Ochoa

Members of the corporation,

Ed Brennglass (1919-1997), Willard Chotiner, IrwinDaniels, Irwin Field, David Finegood, Herbert Gelfand, Osias Goren,Richard Gunther, Stanley Hirsh, Marvin Kristan, Mark Lainer

Legal counsel/ accountants, Leon Katz of Tyre, Kamins, Katz and Granoff; JonathanKirsch of Kirsch and Mitchell/Gerald Block of Block, Plant andEisner

THE JEWISH JOURNAL (ISSN 0888-0468) USPS 468530 ispublished weekly, every Thursday for $23.50 (out of state add $12.50)by Los Angeles Jewish Publications Inc., a community nonprofitcorporation, 3660 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 204, Los Angeles,California 90010. Address all mail to: Jewish Journal, 3660 WilshireBoulevard, Suite 204, Los Angeles, California 90010. Phone213-368-1661, Fax 213-368-1684. E-mail at Los Angeles Freenet,ab871@lafn.org

© 1998 Los Angeles Jewish PublicationsInc.

All rights reserved.

Periodicals Postage Paid at Los Angeles,California.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE JEWISHJOURNAL, 3660 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 204, Los Angeles, California90010. THE JEWISH JOURNAL is not responsible for unsolicitedmanuscripts or photographs. They will not be returned unless senderenclosed return postage.

THE JEWISH JOURNAL does not endorse the goods andservices advertised in its pages, and it makes no representation asto the kashrut of food products and services in suchadvertising.

 

The Jewish Journal is printed

on 100% recycled paper.

 

Letters Read More »

A War of Words

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

Jewish andJapanese American community leaders are headed for what could becomea bruising confrontation in the coming weeks, a battle of honor overthe urgent question of how to discuss World War II politely. We areentering, literally, a war of words.

The battlefield is a rocky outcropping in New YorkHarbor called Ellis Island. Once the main entryway for immigrants tothe United States, it is now a national park. The great hall, wheregreenhorns once waited and hoped, is now a museum celebrating theAmerican immigrant experience.

Starting April 4, the museum will host anexhibition that recalls a darker episode in the immigrant saga: themass internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans for nearly three yearsduring World War II. Congress apologized for the injustice in 1988and allocated $40 million in reparations — half to compensatevictims, half to fund educational programs to tell the story. TheEllis Island exhibit is one result.

The exhibit was put together in 1994 by theJapanese American National Museum of Los Angeles. It ran for nearlytwo years and won local acclaim, including praise from the JewishFederation of Greater Los Angeles’ Jewish Community RelationsCommittee.

In New York, however, some Jews plan to greet theexhibit with Bronx cheers. The reason? They don’t like its name,”America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese AmericanExperience.”

“We are aghast,” says Norman Liss, a leader inseveral local Jewish organizations and vice president of the private,nonsectarian Ellis Island Restoration Commission. “This is aninflammatory name. They’re probably using it just to attractattention. It demeans Ellis Island, and it demeans the United States,and we’re going to fight it. These were not concentrationcamps.”

“There is something disconcerting about thewholesale appropriation of language,” says David Harris, executivevice president of the American Jewish Committee, which is urgingJapanese American leaders to change the exhibit’s name. “We fullyunderstand the victimization of Japanese Americans at a shamefulperiod in American history. But to us the term ‘concentration camp’conjures up a very specific form of oppression, leading toextermination.”

Japanese Americans beg to differ. “To us,” saysHawaii attorney Frank Sogi, chairman emeritus of the JapaneseAmerican National Museum and a former internee, “the American campsare really what is meant by concentration camps. Auschwitz was anextermination camp.”

“No other community or organization has the rightto write our history for us,” says Ron Uba, president of the New Yorkchapter of the Japanese American Citizens League. “There wereJapanese Americans interned in camps at Ellis Island. It’s takenAmerica almost 50 years to acknowledge that any wrong was done. Weneed to educate.”

Caught in the middle is the National Park Service,the federal agency that runs Ellis Island. The park service approvedthe Japanese American exhibit more than a year ago, but officials saythey left the details for a semiprivate foundation that helps operatethe Ellis Island museum. Only recently did they realize that theywere in trouble.

In late January, fearing Jewish protests, the parkservice abruptly told the Japanese American museum to change theexhibit’s name or face cancellation. “New York City has a very largeJewish community that could be offended by or misunderstand the useof this phrase,” wrote Ellis Island Superintendent Diane Dayson onJan. 20.

Three weeks later, the threat was rescinded onorders from Dayson’s boss, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, after hereceived a visit from a leading Japanese American, Sen. DanielInouye, D-Hawaii. The exhibit is now back on schedule, its nameintact. But the story has not ended. “We’re going to make everyeffort to stop it,” says Liss.

Dayson has declined to be interviewed and won’tsay who or what prompted her to spring her threat on the JapaneseAmericans in January, barely two months before the show’s opening.But several officials said that the park service has been skittishsince another furor at Ellis Island last fall, when an exhibit on the1915 massacre of Armenians in Turkey had to be revised in midseason,following Turkish protests.

It was just one of many recent tempests at federalmuseums. Officials cite the Enola Gay and Israel-at-50 controversiesat the Smithsonian and the Arafat-invitation furor at the U.S.Holocaust Memorial Museum. These days, they say, federal museumcurators are nervous about offending anyone with the power to biteback.

This time, though, there may be no way out. TheJewish-Japanese feud has become a tug of war between two successfulethnic groups, both trying to establish their status as history’svictims. Neither one seems inclined to back down. Each side seesitself as speaking out for morality. Each sees the other as trying tothrow its weight around.

The term “concentration camp” was first used atthe turn of the century by the British army for prison camps housingBoer rebels. During the 1930s, the Nazis used it to describe prisoncamps such as Dachau, which housed political and other prisoners.Careful historians distinguish them from death camps set up to killJews, such as Auschwitz-Birkenau. But most Americans do not know thedifference.

During the 1940s, the U.S. government used theterm in internal documents to describe its Japanese Americandetention camps. Publicly, the camps were described more benignly as”relocation centers” or even “pioneer camps.” An investigativecommission named by Congress in 1980 urged that “euphemisms” beavoided in favor of “more accurate” terms: “internment camps,detention camps, prison camps or concentration camps.”

The dispute has begun to cause strains inside theJewish community. In Los Angeles, community leaders complain that theover-vigilance of the New York Jewish leadership is hurting their owncordial relationship with California’s Japanese American community.”People are starting to see us as bullies,” says one Jewish communityactivist in Los Angeles.

In some ways, the Ellis Island dispute isbecoming, like so many other Holocaust-related fights, a test of theJewish community’s willingness to stand on principle. Jews who onceused Holocaust imagery to protest Soviet anti-Semitism — a system ofcultural repression worlds removed from the Nazi murders — nowreject the same use of imagery to protest human-rights violationshere in America. Jews who combat the abuse of Holocaust imagery byPalestinians to attack Israel, or by Christian rightists to attackabortion clinics, are silent when the same grisly images are misusedby rabbis to attack Jews who marry Christians. Increasingly, itseems, the common denominator is the requirement that Holocaustimagery work to serve Jewish interests, narrowly defined.

Japanese American community leaders say that theydo not want to evoke the Holocaust at all, but simply to tell theirown community’s story in its own language. “We’re not trying to makeany comparisons to what happened in Europe,” says Chris Komai,spokesman of the Japanese American museum. “We’re talking aboutsomething that happened in America. We have to tell our own story ina straightforward manner. And that requires calling a spade a spade.”

J.J. Goldberg is the author of “Jewish Power:Inside the Amercan Jewish Establishment.” He writes regularly for theJewish Journal.


A War of Words Read More »

A Cinematic Salute to Israel

Leave a Comment / Film, Old Stories /

For the next five Tuesdays, Sephardic TempleTifereth Israel will commemorate Israel’s 50 years of independence,with free screenings of films produced in the nation or celebratingmoments in its history. The series begins this week with “Hanna’sWar,” the inspiring true story of Hanna Senesh, a Hungarian freedomfighter and paratrooper in pre-indepen-dence Palestine. Ellen Burstynstars in the 1988 feature.

On March 10, “Exodus 1947,” a new documentaryabout the infamous immigrant journey, will screen. The film includesfootage from the actual crossing. Showing the following week will be”Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer,” Israel’s first feature film in English. Itis the story of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, from the point ofview of four Israeli soldiers during separate cease-fires inJerusalem. The provocative 1955 film is considered by many to be aclassic.

Screening on March 24: “Clear Skies,” adocumentary about Israel’s air force, including its missions duringthe Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, Lebanon, freeing the hostages inEntebbe and the raid on Iraq’s nuclear facilities. The series willconclude on March 31 with “Two Warriors: The Lives of Moshe Dayan andYitzhak Rabin,” an episode from the A&E cable network’s”Biography” series that originally aired a few weeks after Rabin’sassassination.

Rabbi Daniel Bouskila of Sephardic Templecertainly had much to choose from when he made his series selections.”I tried to pick a diverse mix of feature films and documentariesthat show the birth and rise of the State of Israel,” he said.

All screenings will begin at 7:45 p.m. in thetemple’s Maurice Amado Hall, 10500 Wilshire Blvd., Westwood. (310)475-7311.

The Long Way to Oscar

The Simon Wiesenthal Center-produced “The Long WayHome” has returned for a weekend-morning engagement leading up toOscar night. The film about survivors of the Holocaust and how theyhelped settle Israel is up for an award in the best documentaryfeature category. See it at Laemmle’s Sunset 5, 8000 Sunset Blvd.,West Hollywood, Saturdays and Sundays, 10:30 a.m. (213)848-3500.

“Burn Hollywood Burn,” Please

Usually, I use this space for movies worthrecommending, but as a public service, I must warn you of a film toavoid. “Burn Hollywood Burn, An Alan Smithee Film” opens this week; Ihad the misfortune of seeing it a few months ago. It is a crude,self-congratulatory waste of time, concocted by overpaid screenwriterJoe Eszterhas, with a host of celebrities as themselves. Eric Idlestars as Smithee, a director who hijacks the print of his filmbecause he doesn’t like the studio’s plans for it. Fair enoughpremise, but the mock documentary style of the film is nothing but asuccession of talking heads, their language littered within-your-face, inflated expletives. It is a bankrupt film and, thoughearly, a safe bet for worst-of-the-year status.

At area theaters, if you dare.


A Cinematic Salute to Israel Read More »

Three Stories

Leave a Comment / Family, Old Stories /

My son, Jason,called the other day and jokingly said that I didn’t keep myword.

“About what?” I asked. “I have never broken apromise to you.”

“When I was 7,” he said, “you gave a radio headsetto someone, and when I asked you to buy me a set, you told me, ‘Yes– but not until you are 12.’ Well, Mom, I never got it.”

I laughed, “Put that on my tombstone.”

My memory, which has been on delete for severalyears, had absolutely no recollection of the headset or the promise.But I never doubted his recollection of the unkept promise. He wasraised to tell the truth.

I dubbed Jason the family historian when he wasyoung. Every family has one. He was the type of child who set therecord straight, no matter the situation. I remember telling ArthurSchlesinger Jr. how Jason’s middle name, Kenneth, was in memory ofRobert Kennedy, who had been killed only a few months before my son’sbirth. Jason interrupted and corrected me when I exaggerated adetail.

When you have a historian for a son, it’s a goodidea to solidly secure yourself with him; that way, the accounts ofthose times when you behaved badly aren’t so painful. There is noharsher history than the one recorded through a child’s eyes: Aguilty parent does not play well over time. A responsible, lovingparent does.

I recently attended a bar mitzvah of a child whoseparents are divorced. A month ago, the young man decided not to splithis time between his parents, as the court decided he should do, andto move in permanently with his mother. His father, a physicist,threatened retaliation. At the ceremony, each parent stood, facingthe boy as they made speeches, telling him how proud they were ofhim.

The father, after presenting his son with thetallit, which three generations of his family had worn at their barmitzvahs, told his son how each boy who wore this tallit found a wayto split from his father, and that he was now part of this history.When the boy made his speech, he thanked his parents and, looking athis father, said: “I hope things work out OK between us.”

I was so moved by this kid. The father lays downthe tallit gauntlet, the symbol of his challenge to his son’smanhood. But the father poses as the main obstacle. What kind of afuture is he thinking about? But the son is clear-headed: he onlywants a straight, loving relationship with his father.

I once asked the director of a nursing home in LosAngeles why children did not visit their parents. He told me thatonly a small percentage of patients had no visitors, but that he wasnot sympathetic to them.

He said that they had had a cruel history withtheir children. “Many of them were so embittered with their own livesthat they took it out on their children,” he said, “and now theirchildren want nothing to do with them. They had only unhappymemories. So what do you expect?” he asked.

What do you expect, indeed. Every day for eightyears at P.S. 133 in Queens, we recited: “Train up a child in the wayhe should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” My sonwas raised to be honest. But suppose he was raised to be a liar? Hecould either be this pathetic person who continues to lie and use hishistory as an excuse, or he can break with his history and then raisehis children in the way they should go.

If you’re lucky to get old, there comes a timewhen you sift through your history and separate the meaningful fromthe inconsequential, the effective from the destructive. What remainsis the significant, the joyful. Best to decide early in life how youwant your history to read or face late in life that you can breakwith history only by understanding the past — hopefully, before yousuffer from its consequences. Tombstones record who you were inrelation to others. I’ve never seen one that read, “Mother, Wife,Daughter and Writer.”

Columnist Linda Feldman is the co-author of”Where To Go From Here: Discovering Your Own Life’s Wisdom” (Simon& Schuster).


Three Stories Read More »

Twelve Quick Years

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Opinion /

Try as I will to guard against it, thepersonal always seems to intrude on my professional life.

I first came to Los Angeles from Cambridge, Mass.,in May 1985. My intention was to court someone I had met here twosummers earlier and then return, woman in hand, so to speak, to theEast Coast one year later.

But fate is willful and, as Oedipus learned, notalways under our control.

By summer, I had been approached by a committee ofAngelenos at the Jewish Federation who wanted to start an independentJewish newspaper — my name had popped up twice during their searchfor an editor. By autumn, we were underway, looking for office space,for a staff, for a name.

Our first issue appeared on Feb. 28, 1986, so thatmakes us roughly 12 years old with this week’s edition. Along theway, we have had our fair share of plaudits and darts; we haveperformed well and stumbled badly. But — and this is somewhatself-congratulatory — we have continued to improve steadily as aJewish community newspaper.

During these 12 years, we have benefited greatlyfrom the presence of three forward-thinking publishers. Initially,Richard Volpert was the guiding and protective hand that helpedlaunch The Jewish Journal. Two years later, Ed Brennglass (and agroup of benefactors) stepped in to help get this wobbly nonprofitenterprise on its business feet. And, now, following Ed Brennglass’srecent death, Stanley Hirsh has come forward to help guide the paperinto the 21st century.

In the 12 years that I have been The Journal’seditor, I have learned a great deal about Los Angeles, about ourJewish community and about myself. You might say that while you havebeen reading The Journal and finding out about our community, I havebeen gaining an education.

I started this newspaper 12 years ago withsomething I had learned: namely, that a newspaper is known by thequality and authority of its stories and its writing; if you will, byits editors and writers. But I have come to understand that anotherpresence is essential: the readers. Without you “out there” each weekreceiving, reading and responding to our efforts, pulling this weeklynewspaper together becomes just another exercise innarcissism.

So if you will allow me, a raising of my glass toyou for joining us in this enterprise. The birthday celebrations areyours as much as ours. And please keep up the letters and calls and,yes, the complaints.

Oh, yes…I never made it back to Cambridge, but Idid get the girl.

GeneLichtenstein,

Editor-in-Chief

Twelve Quick Years Read More »

God Takes the Field

Leave a Comment / Israel, Old Stories /

There’s nothing more peculiarly, confoundinglyIsraeli than soccer on Shabbat. But it may be coming to an end. It’sa sign of the times.

For 70 years, big-league soccer games in Israel –or, before 1948, in Palestine — have been played on Shabbat. Whilethe game is beloved by all sectors of the population, the mostnumerous and passionate fans can be found among working-classSephardim. Most players also come from this background.

Over the last generation, and especially in thisdecade, blue-collar Sephardim, nearly all of whom were raised”traditionally” religious, have been gripped by a new passion –fundamentalist Judaism. Where, in the past, these fans had no problemmaking the Friday-night kiddush and then screaming their lungs out atthe Shabbat afternoon games, more and more newly religious fans andplayers are now finding the guilt too much to bear.

They don’t want to give up soccer. But they don’twant to desecrate the Shabbat, either. So they have a new,revolutionary idea: Move National League (first division) soccergames from Shabbat to a weeknight.

The idea has been pushed hardest in recent yearsby the powerful Shas Party (Sephardi Orthodox) and its spiritualleader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. A number of soccer stars such as EliOhana and Haim Revivo have climbed on the bandwagon. And, now, theIsrael Football Association (soccer is called football everywhere butin the United States) declared recently that it favors moving itsNational League games from Shabbat to Sunday night, out ofconsideration for its observant fans and players.

The ties between soccer and religion have beengrowing closer and closer over the years. Many teams seek theblessings of prominent local rabbis before each game. Some soccerplayers make campaign appearances for Shas during election years.Fans, most of whom also bet on the Sportoto soccer pools, are knownto kiss mezuzot with greater-than-usual fervor as game dayapproaches.

The IFA’s proposal has, naturally, set off anationwide debate. Moving soccer from Shabbat would not only end abedrock national tradition, but it would also mean an upheaval inIsraeli leisure culture. Aside from soccer — at the stadiums, and onTV and radio — there isn’t much in the way of formal, organizedactivity on Shabbat. What will people do?

And wouldn’t this mean one more encroachment bythe religious into Israeli life? What would the left-wing, secularMeretz Party say?

It turns out that Meretz doesn’t have much to say.”If this is being done by choice, then who am I to tell someone thatthey must play on Shabbat?” says Knesset Member Yossi Sarid, leaderof the party.

Yet the switch to Sunday nights is by no meanscertain. The IFA says that it will only cancel Shabbat games if it iscertain that the move will not hurt attendance — and, by extension,the teams’ bottom lines. A public opinion poll by the respectedGeocartography Institute found that 34 percent of Israelis opposedending Shabbat soccer, while only 20 percent approved.

The soccer association is asking the harediparties to use their considerable influence in Knesset to guaranteethat the state would pick up any losses incurred by playing on Sundaynights instead of Shabbat. But the haredi parties have balked.

“I don’t think we have to ‘buy’ Shabbat,” saidRabbi Avraham Ravitz, head of the Degel Hatorah (Banner of the Torah)Party and chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee. “There would beno end to it. First, soccer clubs; then, factories; then, malls wouldask for money to stay closed on Shabbat. Shabbat is a gift; we don’thave to pay for it.”

There is a precedent for canceling Shabbat games:Most of the second division, or top minor-league, soccer teams havebeen playing on Friday afternoons for many years for the sake oftheir religious fans and players. In the working-class Sephardi cityof Lod, near Ben-Gurion Airport, the minor-league club Hapoel Lod hasbeen playing on Fridays since 1983. Hundreds of strictly religiousfans, including quite a few Chabadniks, are in the stands for everygame.

“I go every Friday. Everybody here prefers it thatway. All of Lod is going hozer betshuva [newly religious]. They haveto move the [National League] games from Shabbat; it’s the only way,”says Ya’acov Friedman, 17, a self-described hozer betshuva and soccer”lunatic.”

Besides seeking to accommodate Lod’s religiousfans and players, the team and the municipality hoped that by holdinggames on Friday, nonreligious fathers would spend more time withtheir families instead of being preoccupied with soccer. Yet thisobjective, say the locals, has not been achieved. Shabbat is stillsoccer day in Lod.

In a local shopping mall, Ruti, a 27-year-oldclerk, says that even though Hapoel Lod plays on Fridays, herhusband, also a soccer “lunatic,” spends all Shabbat obsessed withthe fortunes of the National League teams.

“He sits in the living room, watching the game onTV, and he’s got the headphones on so he can hear another game on theradio, and he’s got the Sportoto card in one hand and a pencil in theother. For me, it’s a headache. I tell him, ‘One of these days, I’mgoing to break the TV,'” she says.

Asked what her husband would do if the NationalLeague played on Sunday night, Ruti says, “So he’ll go to the gameson Sunday night.”

Then what will he do on Shabbat?

Ruti pauses. “I can’t even imagine,” shesays.

Likewise, it’s hard to imagine Israel withoutsoccer on Shabbat. It’s a tradition so deeply rooted in Israeli lifethat it’s become a modern Jewish ritual. Rituals die hard. But thegrowing power of fundamentalist Judaism may be stronger. Israel ischanging, and even Shabbat soccer isn’t sacred anymore.


God Takes the Field Read More »