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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

November 12, 1998

Reaching for Torah

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

Julia Celia Canhi Moreno remembers when 6-year-old Daniel would stand up at the Teva, the Ark, at Sephardic Temple, and reach for the Torah from his special foot bench.

Back then, she called him “Daniel the Prince.” Today, the 90-year-old great-grandmother addresses him as Rabbi Bouskila, the all-grown-up leader of the synagogue she has been a part of for 53 years.

It is the 34-year-old rabbi who is now giving Moreno a boost as she reaches for the Torah.

Moreno is one of about 35 students in Bouskila’s new adult bat mitzvah class at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel. She joins young Hebrew-school moms, career women and retirees.

“Many women in our community never had a bat mitzvah for the simple reason that, in the Sephardic community, there was no such thing,” Bouskila says.

But even more than the formal bat mitzvah ceremony, what many women are missing is a basic Jewish education, says Bouskila.

While many in the class have spent decades running traditional Jewish households, most missed out on a formal education, and some don’t even read Hebrew. “Every time I asked my grandfather for an explanation, he would say, ‘You’re a girl; you don’t need to know,'” says Moreno, who grew up in Brooklyn with her Orthodox Turkish family.

Now, Moreno is finally getting some of those answers. The course that Bouskila designed is an intense overview of Jewish history, literature, Bible, law, philosophy and prayer. The class will also delve into Sephardic traditions through a study of the holidays and Shabbat.

“I thought it would be a good opportunity to increase the level of Jewish education in our synagogue by giving women an opportunity to come and study in a forum which would lead to a formal ceremony,” Bouskila says.

The bat mitzvah ceremony will be held after the regular service on a Friday night this winter. The women will present readings in Tanach (Bible) and sing parts of the prayers and zemirot, songs for Shabbat. Each woman will be presented with a certificate and gifts of Jewish books.

In his six years at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Westwood, Bouskila has done much to bring women closer to ritual life. That has taken some ingenuity, since the synagogue is nonegalitarian.

“We deal with the tensions of being a traditional Sephardic synagogue influenced by the modern world,” Bouskila says. “We do our best to maintain tradition but accommodate the ideas of a modern society.”

That is the philosophy Bouskila worked with when he decided to update how girls celebrated bat mitzvahs at the largest Sephardic synagogue on the West Coast.

Before he arrived, girls celebrated on Friday night by leading parts of the service and then chanting the next day’s haftarah. While having any bat mitzvah ceremony was cutting-edge for a Sephardic congregation, Bouskila wanted to find something more relevant to the girls.

He eliminated the Friday-night haftarah chanting and instead helps the bat mitzvah girl prepare a portion of the Bible that has relevance to her. At Saturday-morning services, during the time when the rabbi usually delivers his sermon, the girl chants the portion she has prepared, then teaches it to the congregation, in addition to delivering a formal bat mitzvah address.

Bouskila faced some opposition from temple activists in introducing these innovations as well as others, such as giving women a Torah scroll to dance with on Simchat Torah.

“Clearly, [those who objected] felt that this meant that women would participate in the service, which is something we don’t do,” Bouskila says of the opposition to the adult bat mitzvah class. “But the moment they realized the ceremony is something that wouldn’t impact the prayer service, but be independent of it, they had no objections.”

Besides, Bouskila says, he views the ceremony as somewhat secondary to the educational aspect of the class, an idea many of his students also expressed.

“The bat mitzvah will be fun because of the camaraderie of women being together,” says Sarah Treves, a past president of the sisterhood. “But the ceremony doesn’t mean much. I’m going for the education.”

Esther Cohen, a 58-year-old in the fine arts business, says that the class gives a clearer picture of the religion than what she was offered growing up.

“Many women for a long time wanted to know more or would like to ask questions, and sometimes they were put off not so much by clergy but by other people saying we can’t do that, or you’re not allowed,” says Cohen. “We are finding that while you had a grandfather who said, ‘You can’t do that,’ you can learn and you can really enjoy.”

Reaching for Torah Read More »

Everybody Loved Kosher Comedy

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories, Theater /

“It’s an Italian-Jewish mother thing. They don’t understand that you’re not hungry anymore!”

Everybody loved Ray Romano as he broke the crowd with his anecdotal material in that trademark nasal whine. Romano, impressionist extraordinaire Kevin Pollak and Lewinsky-fixated comedian Richard Jeni headlined a long lineup of stand-ups who performed at the third annual Kosher Comedy Night fund-raiser, hosted by the United Jewish Fund’s Entertainment Division. The event — whose sponsors included Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, Creative Artists Agency, Endeavor, Three Arts Entertainment, Linda and Cary Meadow and Jon Turtletaub — was held last month at the Laugh Factory, with proceeds going to the Jewish Federation’s breadth of social programs.

The night’s unbilled surprise came well before the comedians even hit the stage, with the arrival of Howard Stern, perhaps the most talked about radio personality in the history of the medium. On spectator status, Stern was ushered by his small entourage upstairs to the VIP lounge, where the shock jock attempted in vain to remain incognito. Despite efforts to keep journalists, photographers and well-wishers away, Up Front penetrated Stern’s defenses for a fleeting one-on-one. And contrary to the bluster and braggadocio of his on-air persona, the self-proclaimed King of All Media was uncharacteristically shy and sincere when explaining the circumstances of his surprise West Coast appearance.

“I’m out here on business,” said Stern. “We were out with some friends, and we came to say hi.”

Despite nearly upstaging those on stage, Stern’s unscheduled appearance was a feather in the cap for the Entertainment Division, which raised more than $50,000 by night’s end.

As D.L. Hughley worked the audience, Up Front mingled with event co-chair Brad Krevoy and his charming wife, Susie. Krevoy , producer of lowbrow comedy classics “Dumb and Dumber” and “Kingpin,” modestly downplayed his significant contribution to the program. Over by the sushi platter, Susie Krevoy introduced Up Front to real-estate-agent-to-the-stars Sharona (Yes, that Sharona) Alperin, who pithily summed up the night’s raison d’être: “There’s nothing better than laughing!” — Michael Aushenker, Community Editor

Everybody Loved Kosher Comedy Read More »

Endangered Species

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Politics /

Pity the poor Jewish Republicans. This was supposed to be their year, the election that was sure to put them on the map at last as a serious force, both in the Republican Party and in the Jewish community. Instead, it put them on the endangered species list.

On Capitol Hill, their ranks, if that’s the right word, were slashed from three to just two — one each in the House and Senate. Nationwide, their expensive plan to help Republican candidates pick up Jewish votes, by coaching them to stand firm on Israel, went down in flames. Even Florida’s governor-elect, Jeb Bush, who actively courted the state’s huge Jewish community for years and expected to benefit hugely in Jewish votes, appears to have won less than 25 percent.

Overall, Republicans got just 21 percent of the Jewish vote in congressional races, their smallest share since 1982. In state races around the country, every Jewish Republican who was poised to enter high office went down to defeat. In Hawaii, Maui Mayor Linda Lingle dropped an early lead in her gubernatorial bid and lost to Democratic incumbent Ben Cayetano by a heartbreaking 5,200 votes. In the Minnesota governor’s race, St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman enjoyed a late surge in the polls, only to be felled by a vicious body-slam from former pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura of Ross Perot’s Reform Party.

Jewish Democrats, on the other hand, did better than ever. There are now 10 of them in the Senate, more than a fifth of the upper house’s 45 Democrats. There are so many, we’ll soon be watching them for internal factions. The big mystery: whether newcomer Charles Schumer will side with fellow Mideast hawk Joe Lieberman, or join up with doves Carl Levin and Frank Lautenberg. It’s a big tent.

In the House, Jewish Democrats’ numbers held steady at 21, but with a twist: Three of them will be women next January, the most ever. Together with the two Jewish women in the Senate, they could constitute a sort of congressional Jewish women’s caucus, a first. If this was anybody’s year, it was Democratic Jewish women.

“I think it’s wonderful,” says Rep.-elect Shelly Berkley of Las Vegas, an attorney long active in AIPAC and the local Jewish federation. “There’s strength in numbers. The more of us that are elected, the better off we are.”

Joining Berkley will be fellow freshman Janice Schakowsky of Chicago, a state legislator, and four-term House veteran Rep. Nita Lowey of New York. All three say they’re looking forward to working together.

“I know they’ll be concerned with a whole range of issues that matter to Jewish families,” says Lowey, the senior member of the group. “If you look at the role of Jews in the House, we’ve been leaders on the right to choose, improving education, cleaning up the environment, separation of church and state. These are issues that women, and especially Jewish women, cut our teeth on.”

Jewish lobbyists and community leaders in Washington and New York are greeting the Democratic triumph with mixed feelings. Many are Democrats themselves. But they have to lobby for Jewish causes in a Congress that’s still Republican-run. Having a few more Jewish Republicans to talk to would have been nice. Having friends of any sort is crucial.

In the eyes of some lobbyists, the main story in this election was the Jews’ failure to stand by their friends. Case number one: Republican Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York.

D’Amato made Jewish voters a centerpiece of his re-election effort, justifiably. He had probably done more than any Republican over the years for Jewish causes, from defending settlements to sponsoring the 1996 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act. Last year, he staged the dramatic Banking Committee hearings on Holocaust restitution. During the campaign, community leaders signaled by every possible nod and wink that D’Amato had earned Jewish gratitude.

Instead, Jews abandoned D’Amato in droves. By more than 3-to-1, they backed Democratic challenger Schumer.

An 18-year House veteran from Brooklyn, Schumer has a record on Israel that’s nearly as strong as D’Amato’s. And, unlike D’Amato, Schumer also had a record on domestic issues that pleased Jews. He sponsored the Brady Law, the assault weapons ban and the abortion clinic access law. D’Amato regularly voted with the gun lobby and the pro-life lobby. On Election Day, D’Amato got just 22 percent of the Jewish vote.

Pundits blamed the loss on D’Amato’s penchant for ethnic slurs, including, bizarrely, a Yiddish curse he hurled at Schumer. Republicans grumbled that D’Amato’s loss proved it was futile to befriend Jews, since Jews just don’t vote Republican. Given a choice, they said, Jews vote for other Jews.

The reality is more complicated. The same Jews who gave D’Amato 22 percent of their votes this year gave 38 percent to his running mate, Republican Gov. George Pataki. Pataki won.

D’Amato himself polled more than 40 percent of the Jewish vote back in 1992, enough to win that election. Then, too, he was running against a Jew.

In California this year, Republican senatorial candidate Matt Fong got 27 percent of the Jewish vote, according to a Los Angeles Times poll, in his unsuccessful race against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. But GOP gubernatorial hopeful Dan Lungren got just 18 percent in his race against Democrat Gray Davis. Boxer, who is Jewish, did worse among Jews than Davis, who is not.

The difference is ideology. Lungren was seen as more ideologically conservative than Fong. And Boxer, though Jewish, was seen as more ideologically liberal than Davis. Today’s Jews, it seems, shun extremes.

That same principle operated in the D’Amato race. Back in 1992, D’Amato was the most pro-Israel member of the Senate’s Republican minority. Grateful Jews gave him a big chunk of votes. But by 1998, a strongly ideological Republican majority was running Congress. Jews were frightened and angered at the way they did business.

Nearly every congressional Republican suffered for it. The only exceptions were those, such as Arlen Specter, who have stood up and defied the Christian right over the years. That’s the only way Jewish Republicans can hope to regain the confidence of their community.

Incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston can help. A longtime friend of Israel on the House Appropriations Committee, he’s promised to stake out a middle ground and end four years of partisan warfare. That’s the best hope for Jews, Republican and Democrat alike.

“The Jewish community has successfully worked in a bipartisan fashion on issues that affect Israel for years,” says Democratic freshman Schakowsky. “But there are Republicans and there are Republicans. If the right, which wants to blur the lines between church and state, turns out to be triumphant, that worries me a lot. The community needs to be attentive and watch closely.”

J.J. Goldberg writes a weekly column for The Jewish Journal.

Endangered Species Read More »

And the Nominees Are…

Leave a Comment / Film, Old Stories /

If you think the Academy Awards are unfair, biased and arbitrary, wait until you see what we’ve come up with for our first Jewish film awards.

Herewith are The Jewish Journal nominees for the best and worst in Jewish movies for 1998.

To cast your vote, e-mail us at ab871@lafn.org or mail this ballot to The Jewish Journal, Jewish Film Awards Committee, 3660 Wilshire Blvd., ‘204, Los Angeles, CA 90010.

Best Picture

*

“Life is Beautiful”

*

“Pi”

*

“The Truce”

Worst Picture

*

“Apt Pupil”

*

“A Price Above Rubies”

*

“Safe Men”

Best Jew playing a Jew

*

Ben Stiller (“Permanent &’009;&’009;&’009;Midnight”)

*

Julianna Marguiles (“A Price &’009;&’009;&’009;Above Rubies”)

*

Jeff Goldblum (Aaron in &’009;&’009;&’009;DreamWorks animated feature, &’009;&’009;&’009;”The Prince of Egypt”)

&’009;

Best non-Jew playing a Jew

*

Minnie Driver (“The &’009;&’009;&’009;&’009;Governess”)

*

Ally Sheedy (“High Art”)

*

John Turturro (“The Truce”)

*

Roberto Benigni (“Life is &’009;&’009;&’009;Beautiful”)

Best Jew playing a non-Jew

*

Patrick Stewart (Pharaoh in &’009;&’009;&’009;”The Prince of Egypt”)

*

Woody Allen (“Antz”)

The “Seinfeld” Award (for the best Jewish movie avoiding any overt reference to its Jewishness)

*

“Antz”

*

“The Wedding Singer”

*

“The Big Lebowski”

Jewish character you’d least want to bring home to mother

*

Ally Sheedy (“High Art”)

*

Ben Stiller (“Permanent Mid&’009;&’009;&’009;night”)

*

“Speed” Levitch (“The Cruise”)

And the Nominees Are… Read More »

An Art Form

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories /

Artists from places as far afield as Brooklyn, Baltimore and Tal-Shahar, Israel, and as near as Beverly Hills will be exhibiting at the 18th annual Festival of Jewish Artisans at Temple Isaiah on Nov. 21-22. Among the crafts on the display will be sandblasted glass, ceramics, gold and silver jewelry, textiles, calligraphy, papercutting, photography and inlaid wood. Eleven of the 28 artists are new to the festival, but many have been exhibiting in the social hall of the Pico Boulevard synagogue for years.

“It may not be the largest of the Judaic art festivals, but it is probably the nicest, quality-wise,” said Ruth Shapiro, a jeweler and silversmith who has been exhibiting there for 14 years. Shapiro, a Mar Vista resident, was one of 100 women artists from all over the world who participated recently in the Miriam’s Cup competition in New York — a competition to create a vessel to commemorate the part Miriam played in the Exodus from Egypt. Trained as a nurse, Shapiro began her career 15 years ago when she took a class in the technique of lost-wax casting at Santa Monica College. At Isaiah, she will sell mezuzot, yads, jewelry and other items. Judaic art “is absolutely booming,” she said. “When I started, there were only a handful of Judaic artists working in metal, and I thought I knew every one. Now, I don’t.”

This is the first Isaiah show for Ruth Levi, a papercut artist and calligrapher who makes custom ketubot, as well as wall-hangings, mezuzot and other Judaic items. “I’m really excited,” said Levi, who recently moved to Los Angeles from New York with her husband, Rabbi Peter Levi of Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Levi, 28, who is expecting the couple’s first child in February, became a full-time artist two years ago after several years as a grammar school teacher. Meeting fellow artists and getting exposure is an important motivation for participating in the festival, she said. “It also helps me to get a sense of what people like.”

The festival, among the first of its kind in the country, has inspired similar festivals throughout the United States, says founder Jean Abarbanel. An arts educator, Abarbanel co-chairs the festival with Marcia Reines Josephy, director of the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum and a well-known art historian. Since the show’s humble beginning as part of a temple lecture series on Jewish art, attendance has mushroomed to about 1,200 visitors. It attracts artists from as far away as Brazil, Israel and Canada, as well as from large and small towns across the U.S. There are four exhibitors from the tiny coastal town of Willits, Calif., in Mendocino County, where a small cadre of Judaica artisans thrive.

The show is “juried,” which means artists must send in slides of their work to be considered for the 28 to 29 available spaces. “We have a roster of over 300 artists from all over the world that we send applications to,” Abarbanel said. Selection criteria include the uniqueness, quality and Jewish character of the work. And the objects must be functional. “We want Judaic objects, as opposed to paintings or sculptures,” Abarbanel said. “The idea is that people will own objects that can be family heirlooms. And these objects carry the values of our culture. They’re the way we maintain our identity as Jews.”

An Art Form Read More »

‘Ballyhoo’ Fails to Inspire

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories /

“The Last Night of Ballyhoo” arrived at the Cañon Theatre in Beverly Hills last month with impeccable credentials. The author, after all, is Alfred Uhry, whose “Driving Miss Daisy” deservedly swept the New York and Hollywood award boards.

And “Ballyhoo” itself garnered the 1997 Tony Award for its Broadway production, in addition to a basketfull of other honors.

Regrettably, something must have happened on the transcontinental flight to the West Coast, even with the play’s original director, Ron Lagomarsino, on board.

The play is again set in Uhry’s native Atlanta, the time is December 1939, and two major events are agitating Georgia’s capital city and its Jews.

One is the world premiere of “Gone With The Wind;” the other is the upcoming Ballyhoo, the premier social event of the well-established and assimilated German Jews of the city.

Within the Jewish community, there are also “the others” — descendants of more recent immigrants from Eastern Europe. These Ostjuden, unfortunately, make a point of being Jewish and actually seem to enjoy their faith and culture. Fortunately, they reside mainly up north.

Lurking somewhere in the background — rarely mentioned — is Hitler, who has instigated World War II, which probably won’t be good for the Jews.

In the home of the Freitag-Levy clan, they’re busy decorating the Christmas tree. Members of the household are young first cousins, Lala (Perrey Reeves) and Sunny (Rebecca Gayheart), their widowed mothers Boo (Rhea Perlman) and Reba (Harriet Harris), and Uncle Adolph (Peter Michael Goetz), a lifelong bachelor and owner of the Dixie Bedding Co.

Cousin Lala is a bit of a neurotic and frets a great deal about looking “too Jewish.” Cousin Sunny is blonde, beautiful and studying at Wellesley. Mom Boo worries whether daughter, Lala, will get a date for the Ballyhoo, where she might even meet a potential husband.

Something doesn’t click in this production, as the perfunctory applause and post-curtain comments among the mostly elderly, mostly Jewish, crowd indicated. The reason, though, isn’t entirely clear. There is no doubt, as this reviewer knows from personal experience, that the type of German Jew portrayed here actually existed.

But at the Cañon, the emotional interplay among the characters — which rang so true and affecting in “Miss Daisy” — rarely enlists the concern and sympathy of the viewer.

The play closes with an astonishing scene, in which the whole clan, which has spent the last 90 minutes proving its indifference, if not embarrassment, at being Jewish, sits around the Shabbat table.

All link hands in a calendar-art painting of the devoted Jewish family. Some critics have found this scene affecting, but hokey might be more apt.

The stage setting by John Lee Beatty is brilliant, effortlessly switching from drawing room, to dance floor to a train compartment.

“The Last Night of Ballyhoo” runs through Jan. 3 at the Cañon Theatre. For information, call (310) 859-2830.

‘Ballyhoo’ Fails to Inspire Read More »

Bibi’s About-face

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

It’s remarkable: Palestinian terrorists set off three bomb attacks in as many weeks, yet Binyamin Netanyahu, of all people, goes ahead with his plans to relinquish 13 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians.

There was the grenade thrown at Beersheba’s central bus station, the attempt to blow up a busload of 35 schoolchildren in Gaza, and, finally, last Friday’s bombing in Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda open market, in which 21 Israelis were lightly injured.

After this last attack, Netanyahu talked tough, suspending Cabinet discussions of the Wye accord, yet made it clear that the debate would be resumed shortly. Indeed, on Thurs., the Israeli cabinet gave its approval to the accords, and the peace process — including Israel’s withdrawal from West Bank territory — would go on.

This policy is being carried out by a man who made his career as the scourge of Palestinian terror and a champion of Judea and Samaria. What has changed? Why is it that the peace process is going forward despite the current bombing spree?

One reason is that Netanyahu and the Likud aren’t there to lead demonstrations against the government in charge. One can only imagine what would be going on in the streets of Israel if Shimon Peres or any other Labor leader were trying to sell the Wye accord in the face of such attacks.

Secondly, the bombings have failed. Only one Israeli has been killed. With less luck, the death toll could have been in the scores. Had this been the case, it is difficult to see how the peace process could have proceeded.

There are other important reasons. The Israeli people — about three-quarters of them, according to a number of public opinion polls — want the Wye accord to be carried out and the Oslo peace process to continue. Netanyahu cannot defy such overwhelming popular will.

And, unlike previous bombings, the blame for these last ones is not falling so heavily on Yasser Arafat’s head. It has not been missed that Arafat placed Hamas’ spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest in Gaza, or that the Palestinian Authority has arrested some 100 Hamasniks and numerous Islamic Jihad activists.

When Iran’s spiritual leader, Ali Khameini, calls Arafat a “traitor” to the angry chants of Iranian crowds, and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah threatens to assassinate Arafat, this can’t help but raise his stock with Israelis. It appears the Palestinian leader really is cracking down on terrorists this time.

Arafat also made a point to profess his good intentions to the Israeli public, initiating an interview with Israel Television after the Mahane Yehuda attack; he promised to “pursue and imprison” the terrorists, noting that he called Netanyahu to “express my pain” over the bombing.

One other crucial element has changed: the Clinton administration. If Netanyahu had hoped the Monica affair would weaken Clinton and deter him from pressuring Israel on the peace process, the congressional elections extinguished that hope and stamped it into the ground.

Not only has Clinton emerged hugely empowered, but Netanyahu’s staunchest foreign ally — the Republicans — has been knocked spinning. Newt Gingrich, with whom Netanyahu conducted a mutual admiration society, has become the lamest possible duck. The net effect of the elections on the peace process is that Netanyahu, for lack of leverage, is now likely to be a much more agreeable partner.

With the Wye accord, the American role is greater than ever, placing it in the position of referee when Israel and the Palestinians disagree — as they always do — on who is to blame for holding up progress. This leaves Netanyahu with less room to maneuver — for instance, on the issue of the Palestinian Covenant.

Even before the Mahane Yehuda bombing, Netanyahu was coming under attack from many members of his Cabinet because the Wye accord did not require the Palestinians to undergo the full, drawn-out procedure for amending the covenant that Netanyahu had claimed he’d forced Arafat into accepting.

After the bombing, Netanyahu said that the Cabinet would not take up ratification of the Wye accord until Arafat promised to meet his demands on the Palestinian Covenant. However, the Clinton administration refused to back Netanyahu on this issue, saying the prime minister was demanding something Arafat had never agreed to at Wye.

With the West Bank settlers and their political patrons breathing down Netanyahu’s neck, the prime minister has been talking up his plans to build thousands of apartments for Jews in the disputed Har Homa area of Jerusalem. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright protested to Netanyahu — reportedly in the kind of tone that Albright might not have taken with the Israeli prime minister when Newt and Monica were still around.

Between the Clinton administration, Israeli public opinion, and the seemingly reformed ways of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu, even if he’d like to, cannot let one or even three botched terror attempts stop him from giving up land. If, however, Hamas or Islamic Jihad bombers do succeed in killing a number of Israelis, then the delicately fitting pieces of the Oslo puzzle will be tossed up into the air.

Bibi’s About-face Read More »

The Anti-Seinfeld Comes to L.A.

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

A few years ago, at the age of 24, Brooklyn-born Danny Hoch got the kind of phone call most struggling actors dream of. It was his agent, telling him that the people from “Seinfeld” had called: they wanted Hoch to get on a plane the next morning to tape a guest-starring role on the hit television series.

The thing of it is, Hoch — a mesmerizing and chameleonic stage performer-writer who exploded onto the New York theater scene at age 21 with his Obie-winning one-man show, “Some People” — is decidedly not most young actors. From the very beginning of his career, one got the sense that Hoch wasn’t going to sell his soul to TV anytime in the future. A raucous delight in (and a deep and abiding respect for) non-white urban culture are hallmarks of his work. So is an uncompromising political sensibility, apparently immune to the Faustian bargains of showbiz.

For the Seinfeld episode, Hoch was to play “the pool guy,” a comically annoying attendant who wanted to befriend Jerry. The character’s name — Ramon — made Hoch wary that the producers were after some sort of buffoonish Latino stereotype. They assured him that wasn’t the case (he could even change the name if he wanted), so the next day he found himself sitting at a table with Jerry, Elaine and the gang for a Seinfeld read-through.

Despite previous assurances, the Ramon character was to be exactly what Hoch dreaded. He refused to play it that way, infuriating the cast and producers. Hoch left the show — and the city — on the next available plane. Last March, at the height of the national Seinfeld mania, a piece by Hoch on that experience appeared in Harper’s magazine. It was received by many as a bracing (and hilarious) antidote to the bloated and treacly press coverage the series was getting for its swan song season. Now titled “Danny’s trip to L.A.,” it has worked its way into his new one-man stage show, “Jails, Hospitals & Hip Hop,” which opens at the Actors’ Gang for a 24-performance run through Dec. 13.

Almost all of the characters Hoch inhabits in “Jails” are beautifully realized, startlingly authentic portraits of the kinds of lives we rarely see onstage. The Seinfeld story is the only one in which he steps out of character and speaks to the audience as himself. “That piece does get a lot of attention,” Hoch told The Journal in a recent interview. “After all, it’s sort of the gossipy part of the show, in a way… After the story came out, people were actually in pain about it. For some people, it was like I had committed treason.”

Hoch’s talents may not be suited for the mainstream, formulaic landscape of prime-time television, but they make for electrifying theater. With just a few spare props, a gift for self-transformation and an empathy that is beyond his years, Hoch brings to life an entire rainbow of memorable characters, which range from a white Montana teen-aged boy who manufactures a fantasy alter-ego for himself as a black rap star named Flip Dog, to an embittered corrections officer squirming in a therapist’s office.

To get a rough idea of Hoch’s range and power onstage, picture the sharp, satirical talents and stage presence of Eric Bogosian (to whom Hoch has often been compared). Add to that the morphing skills and political sensibilities of Anna Deveare Smith. Throw in the physical expressiveness and good humor of Lily Tomlin, the searing honesty of Lenny Bruce and the rubbery, expressive face of a young Ed Wynn, and you begin to get the picture.

While Hoch’s boyhood in Brooklyn and Queens included requisite gigs at Hebrew school and Sunday school that culminated in a multicultural, hip-hop bar mitzvah celebration (“my friends and I were break dancing at shul,” he recalls), it was also characterized by an easy familiarity with the hodgepodge of cultures and dialects that surrounded him. As a result, Hoch has a well-developed sense of place that informs his choices. So far, critically acclaimed HBO specials, Obie awards and movie deals have done nothing to diminish it.

Because Hoch attended New York’s High School for the Performing Arts, “The idea of success was either Broadway, or L.A. So right away, success inherently meant leaving your community. It also means getting a role in a Broadway show that has nothing really to do with the people of New York City, shown to people who aren’t from New York City… What I didn’t see onstage were the kind of people I saw in my own life every day. In the media, they were considered to be on the margins, but not in my neighborhood. You know, I don’t come from a place where 10 Jews sit around a table, deciding about a Latino character. I come from a place where it’s five Latinos, five blacks and one Jew. That’s me.”

“Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop,” directed by Jo Bonney, runs Wed. – Sun. at 8 p.m. at the Actors’ Gang, 6209 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Tickets: $25, $10 students, are available through the Center Theatre Group box office at the Ahmanson Theatre, or by calling (213) 628-2772. Tickets are also available on-line at www.TaperAhmanson.com

The Anti-Seinfeld Comes to L.A. Read More »

How Do We Egage Teens?

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

There are more than 30,000 Jewish teen-agers in Los Angeles — how do we engage them?

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago while visiting the Bern-ard Milken Jewish Community Campus in West Hills. The occasion was a happy one, the ground-breaking for a new youth and sports complex at the Jewish Community Center on that site. What really struck me was the enormous potential for our Federation programs to reach out beyond the traditional young users of our communal services and actively engage as many Jewish teens who live in greater Los Angeles as possible.

Among the dozens of programs and services located at the Milken campus is the JCC’s Teen Services unit. Its highly specific mandate is to reach Jewish high school youth, and its goal is quite simple: begin to Jewishly engage a group of youngsters whose options for leisure time are endless and whose future Jewish identities are being formed. These are kids who could easily drift out of the Jewish community or worse, never really involve themselves at all.

Browsing through the JCC’s Teen Services newsletter, you begin to get a sense of how complex it is to reach an age group whose members are still searching for an identity. Since one size does not fit all, the efforts to reach teens must be multifaceted and creative. This is where the Teen Services unit comes in. They are the glue that cements diverse initiatives citywide. Working together with representatives of a range of other Jewish youth organizations and involving those groups from the synagogues and Zionist movements, they are using a wide range of approaches, including educational programming, cultural activities and social-action opportunities to reach our youth. Teens can help feed the hungry at SOVA, help build a Habitat for Humanity or assist someone with AIDS through Project Chicken Soup. These projects reach the young communal activist with a message of tikkun olam.

But that might not be enough. So how about outreaching to Jewish kids in public and non-Jewish private schools? That’s where the majority of Jewish teens are found. Almost 500 Jewish teens from 18 public and private schools, including Fairfax, Van Nuys, Santa Monica and Granada Hills, meet weekly to hear speakers, celebrate Jewish holidays, practice community awareness, have fun and hang out. With collaborative efforts from BBYO, United Syn-agogue Youth of the Conservative movement, the North American Federation of Temple Youth of the Reform move-ment and the National Council of Synagogue Youth of the Modern Orthodox movement, our communal efforts are maximized to reach more teens. For many, these initiatives are their only contact with Jewish communal life, so it takes on a special importance.

So while some teens are engaged by entering a Jewish creative writing contest or participating in a weekend retreat program of the Bureau of Jewish Education, others are attracted by taking a course in CPR or learning about Jews in film. The list is almost endless. With the new technology of the Internet, we have another way to reach teens.

But what really turns on a Jewish teen? How about speaking to their needs? Since so many teens in high school are actively thinking about college, what about a program to expose them to college life? We have it. Together with the Los Angeles Hillel Council, the JCC conducts a program to explore colleges in our own backyard. The teens might visit a campus, sleep in a dorm, and learn about Jewish college life at USC or UCLA.

Since not every teen wants to stay in Los Angeles, why not help them think about attending college elsewhere? We do it. By offering a program to visit campuses in Arizona, Northern California or even Boston, we reach teens by addressing their needs.

Additionally, the annual Hillel FACETS Conference, which assists local teens in decisions about college, drew more than 500 teens and their parents to this year’s event at UCLA.

The Jewish Federation, with the support of the United Jewish Fund through its constituent agencies and lots of associated groups, is engaged in fashioning a vision for a Jewish community of the future. What we see has great hope and potential, if we can continue to secure the financial and human resources to accomplish our communal goals.

John R. Fishel is executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

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Hasta la Vista, Yentl

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Old Stories /

Goodbye, Columbus.

And goodbye Portnoy, Tevye and Yentl, too.

A glance back at the films of 1998 reveal Jewish characters who break the mold, overturn the stereotype, and stretch the image of Jews on-screen.

Instead of bubbes, hausfraus and pickle men, there were Jewish junkies, gangsters and wild women in the quirky arena of independent film. The striking roles drew striking actors: Ben Stiller was a Jewish heroin addict and TV writer in “Permanent Midnight”; Renee Zellweger played a sexually frustrated Chassid in “A Price Above Rubies”; Ally Sheedy portrayed a tormented artist and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor in “High Art; John Turturro starred as the Holocaust author Primo Levi in “The Truce”; and Minnie Driver was a Sephardic Jew and gothic heroine in the 19th-century drama, “The Governess.”

Forget the traditional movie images of Jewish urban or suburban life. “The Cruise” is a documentary about an eccentric, homeless New York tour guide, “Speed” Levitch; “Safe Men” spotlights some bumbling Jewish gangsters; and Peter Berg’s debut film, “Very Bad Things,” reveals some nice Jewish boys who do some not-so-nice things in Las Vegas and beyond.

Most mind-bending of all is Darren Aronofsky’s debut feature, “Pi,” a Jewish sci-fi flick about a paranoid mathematics genius who is pursued by shadowy Wall Street figures and Chassidic Kabbalists.

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan has a theory about the range of Jewish outsiders who are protagonists these days. “The popular culture seems to be pushing everything toward the extremes, and we’re seeing that reflected in the movies, especially in independent film,” he says.

The Jewish films of 1998 are mostly the work of young filmmakers, in their 20s and 30s, who are making first or second features, capitalizing on multicultural chic to express who they are. Nowhere was the trend more apparent than in the work of women directors, who mined their pasts to create bold heroines struggling with issues of Jewish identity.

In Brit Sandra Goldbacher’s “The Governess,” a Sephardic orphan disguises herself as a Gentile in 1840s England to find work in the larger world. Feeling as if a Star of David is emblazoned on her forehead, she journeys to a remote manor house and begins a torrid affair with the master.

Tamara Jenkins creates a very different, iconoclastic Jewish heroine in “Slums of Beverly Hills,” her semi-autobiographical tale of a female Portnoy, whose adolescent angst is exacerbated by the fact that she’s poor in the quintessentially wealthy Jewish suburb.

Filmmakers such as Jenkins and Goldbacher “feel more emboldened to deal with Jewish issues than in the past,” says Neal Gabler, author of “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood.” “It’s part of a continuing trend of ethnic awareness. Artists are more comfortable asserting their ethnicity.”

If 1998 was the year of the bold Jewish heroine, it was also the year of the standout Holocaust-themed film. Besides “The Truce,” there was the poignant “Life is Beautiful,” Roberto Benigni’s Cannes-winning, Chaplinesque tragicomedy about a sweet, sad man who protects his son in a concentration camp. The liberation documentary, “The Long Way Home,” won the Academy Award. And Nazis and neo-Nazis were the focus of Bryan Singer’s “Apt Pupil” and Tony Kaye’s “American History X,” starring Edward Norton.

In 1998, we also had plenty of Woody Allen, not only in Barbara Kopple’s documentary, “Wild Man Blues,” which follows the reclusive director around Europe with his paramour, Soon-Yi, and the upcoming Allen feature, “Celebrity.” The animated DreamWorks film, “Antz,” stars Woody’s voice as the rebellious, Central Park worker ant Z, who tells his analyst it’s tough to be the middle child in a family of 5 million.

For Leonard Maltin, the film critic for “Entertainment Tonight,” the proliferation of Jewish characters is a positive thing. “It asserts that we exist,” he says, “and that we are part of the fabric of American life.”

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