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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

January 14, 1999

Rebel with Another Cause

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories /

Think Jean-Claude van Itallie, and you think, “icon of the 1960s.”

He is a legendary figure in the downtown New York theater scene and the author of “American Hurrah,” considered to be a watershed political play of the Vietnam War era.

Of late, the 62-year-old playwright has also become an actor and the author of his first one-man show, “War, Sex & Dreams.” It is the first time van Itallie has specifically written about the Holocaust, though the Shoah permeates much of his work.

You’ll find it in “the violence, the paranoia, the explosive breaking of the fourth wall,” says the artist, who has penned more than 30 plays and translations, including acclaimed versions of Chekhov’s major plays.

In “War, Sex & Dreams,” which opens on Jan. 21 at Highways in Santa Monica, van Itallie recalls how he was awakened in the middle of the night upon the German invasion of Brussels two weeks before his fourth birthday. A coat was hastily thrown over his pajamas, and he was bundled into the family car, which sped off for the coast, with his mother at the wheel.

Meanwhile, van Itallie’s father, who was in the Belgian army, escaped by swimming out to the British ships at Dunkirk. The family reunited in France, then fled from Spain to Portugal to the United States.

As a result of the Holocaust, van Itallie says, his parents craved safety and protection. The family moved to Great Neck, N.Y., “which was something like Disneyland: manicured, clean, careful,” says van Itallie, who attended an Episcopalian Sunday school.

Ultimately, he rebelled against his parents’ fear and paranoia: While they craved respectability, he determined to live beyond the fringe of the mainstream. After graduating from Harvard, he moved to Greenwich Village, where he became an experimental playwright and, eventually, a seminal figure of the American avant-garde. He lived an openly gay lifestyle and practiced Tibetan Buddhism.

Van Itallie began improvising “War, Sex & Dreams” about two years ago, around the time of his father’s death. In a way, he says, the piece is another rebellion, “against the childhood denial of my Jewishness and the horrors of the Holocaust.”

“As a survivor, I am the only one left in my family to tell the tale, and, as such, I have an obligation to tell it,” he says.

“War, Sex & Dreams” runs from Jan. 21 through 30 at Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. For tickets, call (323) 660-TKTS.

Rebel with Another Cause Read More »

Providing Lip Service

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

Several years ago, Yvette Lowenthal’s friend, ICM agent Doug Zandoren, thought her low rasp would make her a good candidate for radio spots. He was right. Since then, the twentysomething Lowenthal has been working nonstop, providing lip service on high-profile campaigns, which include Nestle, Clothestime and Ford.

Lowenthal, who is also pursuing on-camera acting jobs under the pseudonym Yvette Helene, was raised in Miami Beach and spent a good portion of her early years visiting her grandmother in Paraguay’s Jewish community.

Starting on Jan. 16, Lowenthal can be heard as Chelsea, the party-girl pal of Batman’s alter ego in “Batman Beyond,” the latest animated incarnation of the Dark Knight. Debuting on The Kids’ WB, the series re-imagines the superhero as a teen-ager.

Lowenthal recently spoke with Up Front from her new home in Marina del Rey, which she shares with her boyfriend, entertainment manager Martin Berneman.

Honorable Mensch-tion: “My boyfriend, Marty, is my nice Jewish mensch — everything my grandma wanted me to have and more. She’s not rolling in her grave.”

Shab-Bat Girl: “I grew up going to temple every Friday in Paraguay, and we’d have Shabbat dinner. Now that I have my home with Marty, on Friday nights now, I want to have dinner. Martin was brought up [observant], so that’s something I want to keep in my life.”

Most annoying voice: Harvey Feirstein or Gilbert Gottfried? “Definitely Gilbert. Apparently that’s not his real voice. He puts it on, and I just want to turn it off. At least with Harvey, you can laugh at it.” — Michael Aushenker, Community Editor

Providing Lip Service Read More »

Complaining the Jewish Way

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Torah /

Schwartz, a wealthy Jew, took ill in Boston. The medics rushed him to the best hospital, Mass General, where he received VIP treatment. But, after one week, he requested to be transferred to Beth Israel, a much smaller and less prestigious hospital.

At Beth Israel, an intern gathered the courage to ask what went wrong at Mass General. When Schwartz replied that nothing was wrong, that everything was fantastic, the bewildered intern demanded, “Then why did you transfer to Beth Israel?”

“Because,” answered Schwartz, “here I can complain.”

Complaining seems to be endemic to the Jewish people, a trait going back to our earliest roots. At the end of last week’s Torah portion and at the beginning of this week’s reading, we are confronted with people constantly complaining. Instead of being grateful for what Moses and Aaron were trying to do, the Israelites accuse the two of prejudicing Pharaoh against them, and of inciting the Egyptians to murder them (Exodus 5:21).

In many respects, we might consider the reaction of the Israelites and the frustration of Moses as expected and normal. These are typical human sentiments. We might ask, however, what was God’s response to this entire episode? What was God’s reaction to the complaints of the Jewish people?

In what appears to be a cryptic response, the Torah records, “God spoke to Moses and Aaron and commanded them, regarding the Children of Israel and regarding Pharaoh, King of Egypt, to take the Children of Israel out of the Land of Egypt” (6:13).

The classical biblical commentator Rashi asks, What did God command Moses and Aaron when it states, “And He commanded them regarding the Children of Israel”? Rashi answers, “He commanded Moses and Aaron to lead them calmly and to be patient with them.”

Even when the People of Israel are difficult, the Jewish leader can’t give up. The Midrash further explains that God told Moses and Aaron to ignore the complaints and, “command them to prepare the wooden boards for the building of the Tabernacle.” The Jewish leader must never lose focus that his job is to lead and not to become frustrated. A Jewish leader must build the infra-structure of the Jewish community no matter what the people say.

It always amazes me that when I return from a trip to Israel, the ubiquitous question is, “So how bad is it?” We expect to hear that Jews are fighting one another, and we assume that the media’s portrayal of doom is correct. But the truth is different. Certainly, Israel has its problems, but everywhere one travels, unparalleled building is occurring.

On a recent trip to Israel, I found what the papers don’t report. I went to the Golan and heard the nonreligious leaders of Kazrin report that both the religious and nonreligious work in harmony. In Migdal HaEmek, I heard the nonreligious mayor of the city praise the city’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Grossman, as a man of vision, whom everyone loves. I visited a religious Moshav in the Galilee and listened to the leader describe how all of the settlements in the area work together, religious and nonreligious.

Certainly, we have mastered the art of complaining. But we must also know how to highlight the wonderful accomplishments of our people. Like Moses and Aaron, modern Jewish leaders must learn to ignore complaints and concentrate instead on encouraging the building of our people.

Rabbi Elazar R. Muskin is rabbi of Young Israel of Century City.

Complaining the Jewish Way Read More »

Like Blood for Words

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

“He who publicly shames his neighbor is as though he shed blood.”

— Talmud Baba Mezia 58b

Americans have been discussing the moral issues of the Starr Report in terms of Christian values. From the perspective of Judaism, however, the terms of the discussion change. Unfortunately, even few Jews are aware that Judaism teaches a different set of moral principles.

According to classical Jewish law, President Clinton did not commit adultery; adultery is defined as a married man having intercourse with a married woman, and Monica Lewinsky is single. At worst, President Clinton is guilty of the common sin of onanism, a sin that probably afflicts the consciences of most Jewish men at one time or another.

While most of our moral debate focuses on the actions of President Clinton, the worst sin, from the perspective of Jewish law, is the public humiliation of the president undertaken by Kenneth W. Starr with the cooperation of the House Judiciary Committee. According to the Talmud, humiliating a human being in public is tantamount to murder, and, like murder, is a sin that can never be forgiven. Repentance is not possible for Starr, because it must be preceded by reparation. Neither murder nor the destruction of a person’s reputation can ever be restored, so the sinner can never receive forgiveness.

Seen in Talmudic perspective, the Starr Report, with its salacious and often irrelevant sexual details from Monica Lewinsky’s testimony, constitutes assassination. For the members of the U.S. Congress to make public a report that humiliates the president, his wife and his daughter makes them partners in this assassination.

From the perspective of Jewish history, we have to ask how Jews can condemn President Clinton’s behavior as immoral, when we exalt King David? Clearly, David’s affair with Batsheva was far more insidious — David had Batsheva’s husband, Uriah, murdered.

While David was condemned and punished, he was never thrown off the throne of Israel. On the contrary, he is exalted in our Jewish memory as the unifier of Israel, the builder of Jerusalem, the author of our psalms, the ancestor of the messiah. His wicked deed of murder was placed in perspective and the entirety of his life was judged without condemning him on the basis of one sin, as outrageous as it was. If Clinton should be asked to resign his office, then King David ought to be wiped from our memory.

Also troubling is the rush by some Jewish leaders, such as Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, to condemn the president, when they uttered not a peep concerning Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s admitted confession to adultery. When was Netanyahu ever condemned as unfit to hold office because of his affairs?

Jews like to say that Clinton has been one of the best friends Israel and the Jewish people have had in the presidency; what kind of integrity do we have if we abandon our friend when powerful people are trying to assassinate him?

Finally, certain members of Congress, including Rep. Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., have condemned Clinton’s efforts at self-defense as legal “hair-splitting,” as if that were beneath contempt. The term itself derives from age-old Christian polemics that Judaism is a legalistic system that fails to understand religious values of love and charity. Yet, unlike Christianity, Judaism rests on a system of law that demands and exalts hair-splitting, due process and minute precision in its judicial decision-making.

Just as we expect minute precision from our physicians and scientists, why not expect it from our religions? There is no shame in hair-splitting, despite the mockery and contempt in which it has been held for centuries by Christians. Exactitude is the most important feature of Jewish law. Without it, there can be no justice, and, without justice, there can be no viable society.

This country’s population contains a majority of Christians, but the often very different values and principles of other citizens — among them, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists — must also be heard. Christianity is but one of many systems of religious values, not the only one.

Susannah Heschel is a professor of religion at Dartmouth College.

Like Blood for Words Read More »

Anything but Old School

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

There are some pretty big indicators that Ohr Eliyahu Academy, one of the city’s youngest day schools, has secured a solid foothold in the Los Angeles Jewish educational landscape.

The elementary school recently purchased the 4.5-acre Culver City public-school campus it has occupied for four years, putting a $500,000 down payment on the $1.4 million property. That didn’t come easily for a school that just last year barely met payroll.

Graduates of the 15-year-old school are beginning to filter into the city’s high schools, bolstering Ohr Eliyahu’s reputation for academic rigor and a value-oriented curriculum.

For school administrators, however, success is measured in smaller steps. For example, the school has added a second first-grade class this year, boasts Malca Schwarzmer, Jewish studies principal. And, she adds, the drama, arts and gymnastics programs have blossomed, the Sunday-morning parenting classes have attracted dozens of parents from outside the school, and the music department hopes to get keyboards soon.

Ohr Eliyahu’s mission to weigh every nuance of every program, to tailor each aspect of the curriculum to all 160 students’ specific needs — from Tanach to tumbling to Twain — has helped make it one of the most eclectic schools in town. It also may be one of the reasons the school has been slow to make it onto the roster of established Orthodox day schools in Los Angeles, despite the fact that it has won several educational awards in both Jewish and secular areas.

“It takes awhile for people to understand the school and to take it seriously. People like to put a school into a box, and we have defied that,” says Rabbi Shlomo Goldberg, the school’s principal.

On the surface, the school appears to fall within the ultra-Orthodox realm, with long skirts and black hats prevailing among teachers and many parents, and most graduates attending Bais Yaakov or right-wing boy’s yeshiva programs.

But just beyond the veil of rigid traditionalism, their hovers an artsy, touchy-feely, New Age psychology that touches all of the school’s programs. Creativity and the arts hold an important place not only in classes for those subjects but in all lesson plans. It is not uncommon, for instance, for students to act out their interpretation of a Bible portion, or for a math class to include some hands-on construction project.

“If you just create an atmosphere allowing ideas to percolate through, every child knows, ‘I can contribute, I am important here,'” Schwarzmer says.

The fact that secular subjects hold as important a place as Jewish studies is another indication that this is no ordinary ultra-Orthodox school, where subjects such as literature and history might be treated as necessary annoyances.

Add that to the fact that all Judaic classes are taught exclusively in Hebrew from first grade on, and that the State of Israel is valued as an important part of Jewish identity, and you have the makings of a school that eludes established categories.

School administrators and parents are happy to occupy their post in Jewish no-man’s land. Even the location is off the beaten path. The sprawling, verdant campus that Ohr Eliyahu has occupied since it moved from its native Venice four years ago is perched comfortably in Culver City’s scenic Blair Hills area. Just off La Cienega Boulevard, the school is accessible to, but not part of, Los Angeles’ Orthodox centers of Fairfax, Pico-Robertson and the Valley.

For Goldberg, creating a model rather than following one keeps the school on its toes; it challenges not only current educational trends but the very notion of schools.

“All schools are by definition imperfect. If kids were supposed to be educated in schools, Moshe would have built one. It took us 2,000 years to decline to the point where kids go to school with a bunch of other kids rather than having individual teachers,” says Goldberg, who will cap enrollment at 250 to keep the school from becoming a “factory.”

Ohr Eliyahu’s philosophy of individualized attention is most easily demonstrated at the extremes. At one end of the spectrum is the enrichment program, in which gifted students are pulled from class for a few hours a week. At the other end is the inclusion program. Ohr Eliyahu employs a specialist and several specially trained classroom aides to help pupils with physical and mental disabilities be part of a regular class.

Average students as well are afforded special attention, with teachers and aides constantly challenging themselves to identify and react to the students’ strengths and weaknesses.

What comes out of this mix is an uncommonly satisfied parent body. Many mothers and fathers have acquired a starry-eyed loyalty; they sound as if they are reading from a brochure when they describe school.

Schwarzmer says the parents are reacting to what they hear from their children.

“Kids here actually like to go to school,” she says. “We actually manage to get across to children that learning is fun.”

For Goldberg, having a parent and student body so invested in the school is what makes the place thrive.

“We don’t say you have to live in a particular neighborhood, daven in a particular shul, wear a particular yarmulke,” Goldberg says. ” You just have to love Torah and want to grow, and want to be a stakeholder here.”

Ohr Eliyahu’s Sunday-morning program of gymnastics and music for kids, and Torah and parenting classes for adults is open to the public. Please call (310) 559-3330 for more information.

Anything but Old School Read More »

Northridge Renewal

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, San Fernando Valley /

Over at Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge, they’ve planted a small garden. It’s just a few flowers now.
Adjacent is a patio that will one day hold benches, a place where Hebrew-school students can come
study or where people can take a break from services and sit in the sun.

Rabbi Steven Tucker calls it the “victory garden.” It’s the temple’s symbol of rebirth, and the one reminder
of that day in January five years ago when the earth violently shook.

Rumbling through the north San Fernando Valley at 4:10 a.m., the Jan. 17 temblor left 57 people dead,
hundreds injured, thousands without their homes, and most Southern Californians without a sense of
security.

The Jewish community was hit hard, too. Costs of property damage to communal institutions (as reported
in The Jewish Journal just days after the earthquake) were estimated at between $15 million and $20
million by John Fishel, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Educational institutions in particular suffered substantial losses. At the University of Judaism, costs to
repair collapsed walkways and major interior damage soared to $1 million. Damage at Brandeis-Bardin
Institute in Simi Valley was so severe, repairs weren’t completed until 1997.

While Ramat Zion, nearby Ahavat Shalom and Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School, the three Jewish
institutions nearest the epicenter, were spared significant structural damage, the quake nevertheless
exacted a heavy toll.

“We didn’t have that much physical damage, just some plate-glass windows and some chandeliers. Still, if
the chandeliers had come down when our seniors were to meet just a few hours later, I hate to think of
what would have happened,” Tucker said.

“The biggest hit we took was in membership — people who had to move out of the area after the
earthquake. Combined with the recession taking place at that time, we probably lost over a quarter of our
membership.”

Currently, Ramat Zion has 450 member families — a precipitous drop from the temple’s heyday in the
mid-1970s, when there were more than 700. Still, Tucker is confident that the congregation will grow into
the next decade.

“Conventional wisdom said we wouldn’t see young people moving into this area. But we have a burgeoning
Hebrew school, a growing preschool, and I’m doing baby namings all of the time. So they have to be
coming from somewhere,” Tucker said, adding that many young families have taken advantage of the
depreciated values of homes in the area. “The area seems to have stabilized — physically, spiritually and
perhaps even seismologically.

“It’s kind of like this house down the block from ours,” said Tucker, who lives just a few blocks from the
temple. “For years after the earthquake, it sat there, still taped off, with the chimney in pieces on the
ground. I found the sight of it really depressing.

“Finally, somebody bought it and started fixing it up. When I saw that chimney cleared away, that was
the symbol, like the flowers growing in the temple garden. That was how I knew we were recovered.”

Meanwhile, Ahavat Shalom, has also managed to recover from the disaster, which took the lives of two
elderly congregants, David and Cecilia Pressman, who lived in the Northridge Meadows Apartments and
left more than 60 of its families with red-tagged homes.

“We’ve affected the necessary repairs through our insurance and the generosity of the Jewish Federation,
the Union of American Hebrew Congregations [the umbrella organization of the Reform movement] and the
continued support of our members,” said Rabbi Jerald Brown, the congregation’s spiritual leader. “It’s been
a tough go, but we’re finally at a point where the financial uncertainties the earthquake created have
been resolved.”

Brown said that the congregation has managed to remain stable and even grow modestly, from 675
families at the time of the earthquake to a current membership of 700.

“If anything, the earthquake reordered the priorities of a great many people for whom it was a wake-up
call to the importance of Jewish community and worship,” he said. “I needn’t remind you that many people
here suffered their own damages, yet they were willing to put that aside to keep the temple going.”

Among the ways the congregation pulled together: Support groups led by trained facilitators were created
to help members “work through” the trauma; one member, an insurance broker, held a workshop on dealing
with insurance companies and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); and those not
hard-hit in the disaster set up special education funds so that members hurt financially by the earthquake
could continue to send their children to Hebrew school.

“While there will always be some who react to the loss of material things in proportion to the investment
they’ve made in those things, there are many others who look around and say, ‘Well, we’re here and our
loved ones are, so let’s see what we can do to help.'” Brown said.

Northridge Renewal Read More »

Which Side Are You On?

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories /

Is Mike Davis right about Los Angeles? And if so, what does it mean for our increasingly conservative Jewish community? That was the subtext of my meeting with Davis last Sunday at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Davis’ most recent book, “Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster,” was on the Los Angeles Times best-seller list for nearly four months. Its local popularity is unsettling to some, given Davis’ dire review of the region’s history — filled with fire, flood, earthquake, riot, self-doubt and anxiety. The winner of the coveted MacArthur “genius” award (worth $315,000), Davis has been under attack in cover stories in the Times, L.A. Weekly and New Times much of the past month for his message and his research methods.

Davis’ major theme, updated from his acclaimed “City of Quartz,” is that critical decisions have been made, including permitted building in fire zones in Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains, which put the whole political and economic structure of the region at risk. Davis’ critics, including conservative boosters, find his criticism unnecessarily harsh and even dangerous. To them, the seven thin years since the Rodney King trial are behind us. Los Angeles is in recovery now.

But Davis argues, not so fast. The current economic recovery, he believes, is only a superficial gloss of protection on the environmental and social problems coming our way. There will be a fire next time as well as a cycle of flood and earthquake. These disasters, based on bad land use and building policies, he says, are ultimately paid for by Los Angeles’ poor, since federal disaster relief is now a budget item: the guns of fire and flood insurance are played off against the butter of inner-city welfare. Since we in Los Angeles refuse to learn our natural and political history, we’re doomed to more disasters in the years ahead, and we’ll get what we deserve.

Given the storm circulating around him, Davis in person is soft-spoken and mild-mannered. He is, at 53, every inch the unreconstructed former Teamster who drove an 18-wheeler before starting UCLA at age 28. He’s got a sense of humor, conceding that if readers didn’t get the “positive” message of his book, it was probably his own fault. “I love it here too,” he told the young, multiethnic Skirball crowd. “Sometimes, I wake up and look at the mountains and say, ‘Davis are you crazy?'”

But he’s not crazy about at least one thing: the need to build political coalitions if we are to grow together as a region. Davis loves the multiethnic experiment of Los Angeles, especially the Boyle Heights area. “You should do a program on ‘When We All Lived Together,'” he told the Skirball’s Amina Sanchez before our program began. He hates suburbanization because, among other things, it pulls people apart.

Despite Davis’ reputation as a latter-day Jeremiah, the heart of his work is not moral but political: Demographic and ethnic divisions have plagued the region since the planting of the first palm tree. First, it was the Eastside Chandlers vs. the Westside ethnic groups, notably blacks and Jews; today, it is Valley secessionists vs. the city.

But he is not without hope. “There’s a new progressive movement growing, starting with a revived labor resurgence,” he told the audience. This progressivism is based on environmental and economic issues, especially providing a livable wage for those at the bottom.

Can the Jewish community, which has moved west, north and right during the Pete Wilson years, be a part of that progressive coalition?

I spoke this week with leaders of two traditionally progressive Jewish organizations: Rick Chertoff of the Jewish Labor Committee and Carol Levy, executive director of the local office of the American Jewish Congress.

Chertoff and Levy each told me that Davis was right: that slowly, there are signs that Jews, one by one, are finding a way back, a meaningful way to be progressive, without denying changed economic circumstance. For example: In November, 63 percent of Jewish voters were against Proposition 226, which would have killed unions by barring use of dues for political issues. “We have a bifurcation of interests,” Chertoff told me. “But most of us still are for the right of workers to organize.”

In June, the JLC, backed by a committee of 22 rabbis, helped keep the Summit Rodeo Hotel in Beverly Hills as a union shop, on behalf of housekeepers, wait staff, cooks and parking attendants. Both the JLC and AJCongress are part of a coalition that achieved passage of Los Angeles’ living-wage ordinance, impacting 6,000 workers.

“As labor revives, Jews will not be able to rely on nostalgia any more, on the union past of Grandpa and Aunt Sadie,” says Levy. “They’re going to have to revisit how they feel about labor.”

Now here comes a surprise: Mike Davis himself thinks Jews are with him for the long haul. After invoking the long history of shared Jewish and Latino experiences in the garment industry, he e-mailed me this: “I am absolutely confident that the Jewish community will continue to play the same outstanding role in the progressive politics of the future as it has in its past.” Amazingly, the professional doomsayer is, on this one issue, an optimist.

Marlene Adler Marks is senior columnist at The Jewish Journal.

Her e-mail address is wmnsvoice@aol.comHer book, “A Woman’s Voice” is available through Amazon.com.

Which Side Are You On? Read More »

School’s Out — Forever?

Leave a Comment / Community, Old Stories /

At a time when many Jewish day schools in the area are bursting at the seams and new ones move closer to opening their doors, Temple Isaiah Day School is making plans to go out of business.

The formal decision about the fate of the school has just been handed down by the Reform congregation’s board of directors, who concluded that their membership can no longer afford to underwrite the school’s operations. According to the timetable laid down by the board, the school will cease to exist at the end of June.

Temple Isaiah, a K-through-6 school founded a decade ago, has always struggled in its effort to build a student population. While Westside day schools at Temple Emanuel, Beth Am, and Sinai Temple each attract more than 300 students, Isaiah has not had the same success; its student body currently numbers 76, down from 80 a year ago.

Concerned observers have long noted that graduates of Isaiah’s popular preschool tend not to feed into the day school. In fact, in recent years, Isaiah’s preschool parents have largely reversed the familiar trend of preferring a private education for their children.

Susie Leonard, who heads the preschool, confirms that among 60 children who moved on to kindergarten last year, only 25 opted for private schools of any sort. Of these 25, a mere four entered Jewish day schools. Two of the graduates would probably have joined a sibling at Isaiah’s day school, but were apparently scared off by the school’s enrollment woes.

Isaiah’s decision to end its day school does not sit well with parents. They have nothing but praise for Director Sari Goodman and for a school they see as exemplifying the best in Jewish family values. Many are also angry at what they regard as the temple’s insensitivity; they believe that the letter they received in December, warning of a possible closure, did not give them time to take constructive action.

A parent active in the movement to keep the school open argues that Temple Isaiah has never made the strong commitment needed to shore up the school’s finances. He questions the dedication of the congregants to the school’s existence — “the school and the congregation are pretty well divorced” — and cites the lack of money and personnel for recruitment efforts as a reason the school has floundered.

Parents plan to attend this week’s temple board meeting en masse, bearing their own proposals for making the school viable. Among their ideas is a scheme to affiliate with other congregations that have preschools, in hopes of incorporating them into a feeder system for Temple Isaiah Day School.

Isaiah’s senior rabbi, Robert Gan, disputes the parents’ contention that the school has been underfunded from the start. He insists that there has always been “a heroic and enormous commitment on the part of the temple to sustain this school.” But the consistently low enrollment figures, coupled with the fact that fully 40 percent of the school’s students attend on scholarship, have pushed the temple into the reluctant decision to pull the plug.

Gan argues that parents have long known about the school’s precarious situation, and that the letters sent in December were a responsible way to warn them to pursue other alternatives for next fall.

Countering the accusation that Temple Isaiah devalues Jewish education, Gan points to a flourishing religious school, with more than 400 children enrolled. He also mentions a new family life center, now on the drawing board, that will serve the educational needs of congregants of all ages.

School’s Out — Forever? Read More »

The Producer

Leave a Comment / Film, Old Stories /

There isn’t much Irwin Winkler doesn’t know about making movies, which is maybe why, unlike a lot of the young hotshots who’ve been in the business five seconds, his favorite subject is not his own genius.

Yet the Jan. 15 opening of “At First Sight,” which he directed and stars Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino, marks Winkler’s 30th year as one of the top filmmakers in the business.

Some of his greatest successes have been as a producer. The Winkler “brand” has so far accounted for 12 Academy Awards from 45 nominations, including a dozen for best picture. His blockbuster “Rocky” won for best picture in 1976. “Raging Bull,” “The Right Stuff” and “Goodfellas” show up high on most critics’ all-time-best-movies lists. And “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They,” his devastating look at desperation in the Depression as seen through a grueling dance marathon, garnered nine Oscar nominations by itself.

Into his 60s, Winkler decided to try his hand at directing. With the blacklist drama “Guilty by Suspicion,” the downbeat “Night and the City,” and the Nazi war criminal drama “Music Box,” Winkler’s directing efforts further enhanced his reputation as a filmmaker whose love is for the good story rather than the effects-packed blockbuster; he’d prefer to tackle darker, often introspective and controversial stories.

Winkler’s movies, whether as producer or director, always set out to challenge, but as a producer/director, he always keeps one eye on the budget. The producer in him loathes the current vogue for mega-budgets.

“It’s not just aggravating; it’s going to hurt the business a lot,” he says. “I can see spending a lot of money if you need special effects or you want to make ‘Ronin’ [the l998 John Frankenhemier epic] and you’ve got cars racing through the streets of France. That’s going to cost money and time to do. But when you have a love story and it’s two people talking in a room and you end up spending 120 days shooting and multimillions…I can’t see, frankly, how they can spend so much money on a picture like ‘Meet Joe Black.’ There isn’t anything that would justify it. It’s bad for the business, for filmmakers and bad for the studios because it means they’ll continue to do movies that don’t offer any real challenges to either audiences or the filmmakers.”

He likes to tell the story of making “Rocky,” a film no studio would make with the unknown Sylvester Stallone as writer and star. Winkler and his then-partner, Bob Chartoff, had a clause in their contract that stipulated they could make anything they wanted, provided the budget was no more than $1.5 million. So they guaranteed to make “Rocky” for that Scrooge-like figure. To finance the picture, the two men mortgaged their own houses.

Winkler had long been acquainted with the ignoble side of entertainment. The product of a traditional Jewish home on Coney Island and the son of a businessman and a housewife, his first job in “show business” was pulling dodgem cars apart when they got stuck.

He attended NYU at night so that he could work during the day. After he graduated, Winkler took the traditional first step toward a successful entertainment career — he joined the William Morris Manhattan office mail room in l955, working two nights a week.

“David Geffen came after me. Bernie Brillstein and Jerry Weintraub were there at the same time.”

The rest of the time, he was a “clacker” leading the laughter and applause on the “Walter Winchell” and the “Buddy Hackett” live shows.

But his real entree into the business was as a manager. “We represented Joni Mitchell, Crosby Stills and Nash, and a beautiful British actress named Julie Christie,” he said. “The then-president of MGM, Robert O’Brien, had been asking us to go out to Hollywood to produce films for him. They wanted new, young blood in movies. So I brought him a project called ‘Double Trouble’ as a vehicle for Julie.”

In typical Hollywood fashion, the studio heads loved the script but wanted it for their star — a young man recently finished with his Army service, Elvis Presley.

No problem. “We rewrote it for Elvis,” says Winkler. “I didn’t know much about making films, but I watched and I learned.”

The Winkler-Chartoff team went on to produce provocative movies, such as “They Shoot Horses,” the jazz-era “Round Midnight,” “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” “Up the Sandbox,” “The Gambler,” “Comes a Horseman” and “True Confessions.” “Point Blank,” shot on Alcatraz, introduced director John Boorman to American audiences and starred Lee Marvin in one of his most interesting roles. “The Strawberry Statement” was based on an article in New York Magazine about campus unrest.

Along the way, Winkler developed a close relationship with two young Italian Americans, among the most gifted men in the business — director Martin Scorsese and actor De Niro.

“I met Martin at Lincoln Center after a screening of ‘Mean Streets.’ It led to ‘New York, New York.'”

With De Niro, he made a slew of films, including “Raging Bull” and “True Confessions.”

“To me, he’s one of the greatest actors of all time,” says Winkler. “He has an incredible intelligence about character, but, beyond that, he also works so hard on it. On “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,” he was an unknown actor. We were paying him, I think, about a thousand a week. He came to me and said he wanted to go to Italy to research the character. I told him we didn’t have the budget to send him anywhere. And he said, ‘No. I’m going to do it on my own.’

“He had no money, but he comes back in a couple of weeks with all the wardrobe he would need and all his props. That’s a commitment you don’t get from anybody else.”

On “Raging Bull,” Winkler said that he tried to persuade De Niro to wear prosthetics for the “fat” Jake La Motta.

“I told him I thought gaining and losing all that weight would be dangerous. He told me: ‘You don’t understand. If I don’t do that, I won’t walk the same way. I’m going to have to gain the weight so I’ll feel heavy.’ He goes beyond what any other actor will do.”

The same could be said for Winkler, the only producer to have three movies on the American Film Institute’s top-100 list. Married 40 years to the same woman, he could spend his twilight years traveling between his home in Aspen, Colo., and his beloved France, where he is a Commander Des Arts et Lettres. Instead, he is planning a bunch of new pictures.

He is currently casting “The Lush Life,” a story he will produce about the friendship between jazz greats Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington. Then there’s a movie about the Vietnam War, for which Paul Atannasio (“Homicide: Life on the Street”) is currently finishing the script.

Winkler would love to get a musical about the life of George Gershwin off the ground, but admits that it’s been in gestation for 18 years. But if anyone can get it done, Winkler’s the one.

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The Circuit

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If the multitude of Jewish events are any indication, the holidays hit hard this season. To paraphrase Adam Sandler’s “Chanukah Song,” here’s a list of organizations that are Jewish, just like you and me…

Various divisions of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles celebrated with a slew of functions. The Federation’s Ben Gurion Society held a private cocktail reception at Christie’s.

The Skirball Cultural Center was the spot for the ACCESS Chanukah party, where scores of singles scored latkes and libations.

The Real Estate and Construction Division hosted a “McLaughlin Group”-style debate of industry analysts, moderated by George Smith, on the very CBS soundstage that is home (fittingly enough) to “The Price is Right.” Event chair Michael Brody called the evening “a look at the state of real estate, where it’s been and where’s it’s going. “

The ramifications of Asia’s economic crisis on the United States was the topic of Laura D’Andrea Tyson’s address to the Fashion Industries Division crowd at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. One of President Clinton’s top economic advisors, Tyson traced the economic virus from its beginnings in Thailand and then reassured the handwringers and worrywarts in the audience that, while the country may be in for a slowdown, America should weather the storm without spiraling into deep recession.

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