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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

January 28, 1999

Inside Woody Allen’s TV Past

Leave a Comment / Hollywood Jew, Old Stories /

Before films such as “Radio Days,” Woody Allen had his television days. And, for the next three months, fans from “the earlier, funnier Woody” camp will find plenty of artillery for their cause at the Museum of Television and Radio, where “Woody Allen’s Television Days” is screening a two-part retrospective of the filmmaker’s work as a stand-up comedian and television writer.

Part 1 kicks off with comedy he created for Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows,” followed by Allen’s 1960s “Tonight Show” and “Jack Paar Program” appearances. Next month, Part 2 of the series will showcase his 1967 performances on “The Dean Martin Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show,” as well as a rare interview on Dick Cavett’s show, where Allen discusses an encounter with Groucho Marx, his nightclub days, and idol Bob Hope.

The cornerstone of the first 90-minute anthology is the 1967 episode of “The Kraft Music Hall” variety series that Allen guest-hosted, shown in its entirety. The television special includes a hallucinogenic tête-à-tête with arch-conservative William F. Buckley Jr., in which the liberal Allen faces Buckley and tells him, “I’d like to see you become president for a year — it would cure this country of conservatism for a long time.” During the face-off, when an audience member asks Allen if Israel should give back the land they took from the Arabs, Allen quips: “No. They should sell it back.” The show also includes a variety of entertaining skits — including one in which Allen portrays a spoiled Shirley Temple-esque child actor named Baby Bobby Dimples — and musical performances by Aretha Franklin and Liza Minnelli.

Allen’s wit is in top form throughout the Museum of Television and Radio’s tribute. Many of his monologues are peppered with punch lines derived from Judaism, including references to interfaith marriages, Hollywood and kashrut. While tracing his family tree in one riff, Allen describes his ancestor who accepted the Ten Commandments from God to hand to Moses: “He said, ‘Here, Moses — take two tablets and call me in the morning.’ Moses laughed so hard, he could hardly smite him.”

While visiting the museum, be sure to catch the companion exhibit, “Al Hirschfeld Radio and Television Drawings,” a display of the master cartoonist’s original pen-and-ink illustrations.

Part 1 of “Woody Allen’s Television Days” continues through Feb. 18. Part 2 runs from Feb. 19 to Mar. 21. For more information, call Museum of Television and Radio at (310) 786-1000.

Inside Woody Allen’s TV Past Read More »

Torah, Technology and Tolerance

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories /

David Wilstein is among the breed of men who built and shaped the postwar Jewish community in Los Angeles. He migrated from the East Coast as a young man, made a great deal of money, and then poured much of his energy and business savvy into the welfare of the community as well as into the strengthening of Israel.

Last Sunday, 400 friends and colleagues gathered in Beverly Hills to laud the vision and philanthropy of David and Susan Wilstein. In turn, Wilstein conferred an award on the evening’s other honoree, media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who responded with one of the more philo-Semitic speeches in recent memory.

Beneficiary of the black-tie event was the Jerusalem College of Technology, one of Israel’s lesser-known but most pragmatic academic institutions.

Founded 30 years ago, JCT currently turns some 800 students into high-tech computer engineers, applied scientists, and managers. The college’s graduates have helped transform Israel into a Middle East Silicon Valley; they serve in the armed forces; and they are integrating young Russian and Ethiopian immigrants into mainstream society.

As an integral part of their curriculum, students receive a strong religious education. After all, JCT’s motto is “Torah, Technology, Tolerance.”

This approach appealed immediately to Wilstein, who first visited the campus nine years ago and who went on to become regional chair of JCT’s American support organization.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in civil and structural engineering from his hometown school, the University of Pittsburgh, Wilstein headed for Los Angeles. In short order, he met his future wife and landed a job with the state Division of Highways.

“I was involved in building the Pasadena and Hollywood freeways and the four-level downtown interchange,” he said during an interview in his spacious Century City penthouse office.

The work was challenging, but so was his small paycheck. So he decided to get a contractor’s license and go into business for himself. Wilstein, who says, “I like to think ahead,” built the first condominiums in Beverly Hills and “almost had to give them away — people didn’t understand the concept.”

Over the years, he also built the first private medical center and hospital in the West as well as the first high-rise building in the Los Feliz area, battling neighboring homeowners all the way up to the Supreme Court.

In 1968, he founded the Realtech Group, a consortium of companies and partnerships that provides a full spectrum of real estate services, and focuses on the development of commercial office buildings. Some recent projects include the Maple Plaza in Beverly Hills and the World Savings Center in Brentwood.

With his business secure, Wilstein became more involved in community service, particularly with Israel Bonds, the University of Judaism, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and the Jewish Federation’s United Jewish Fund — as campaign chair.

He remains active in the UJF’s major gifts division. “Each year, I take 50 to 75 cards [of large donors] and close [the gift commitments] myself,” he said.

He also established the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies as a bicoastal think tank, whose main activities are now centered in Boston.

In the early 1980s, he began investing in Israeli high-tech and biotech companies — then considered speculative ventures — as well as real estate in Tel Aviv. He also founded “The Nation,” a short-lived English-language daily in Israel.

In recent years, Wilstein, who defines his religious orientation as “Conservadox” and belongs to the traditional Congregation Mogen David, has become “fascinated” by Torah studies and the spiritual aspects of Judaism.

“I go to Israel two to three times a year to study at Aish HaTorah,” he said. “They teach me about Torah, and I teach them a little about business.”

When in Los Angeles, he continues his studies with local Aish HaTorah rabbis and at the University of Judaism.

Prominent in his office is a treadmill, on which the 71-year-old Wilstein exercises daily while working the phone or reading at the same time.

Wilstein and his wife are currently spearheading a $5 million campaign to erect a new school of engineering on the JCT campus, which will bear their names.

Another contribution has been the establishment of the JCT Wilstein Award for Achievements in Technology, which was conferred, for the first time, on Murdoch at last Sunday’s dinner.

Murdoch is the controversial chairman of The News Corp., which controls a vast international media and communications empire, as well as the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Torah, Technology and Tolerance Read More »

USC & HUC: A Winning Partnership

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

In the annals of party-going, the dinner hosted by USC President Steven Sample and his wife, Kathryn, at their impressive San Marino estate home last week, ranked right up near the top.

The food and drinks were excellent, the speeches short and few, and the general bonhomie so animated that Sample, citing a high noise level as a sure indicator of a party’s success, was reassured that his 160 guests were enjoying themselves.

The occasion marked the 30th anniversary of the partnership between USC and the neighboring Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. As is customary at such celebrations, both partners viewed with pride the accomplishments of the past and promised even greater things in the years ahead.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, president of the four-campus HUC.

Even now, some 600 USC undergraduates, many non-Jewish, are taking Jewish studies courses through HUC, Sample noted, and the two institutions grant joint master’s degrees in social work, gerontology, public administration and communications. Upcoming is a joint graduate program in business administration for future Jewish communal workers.

“No other seminary or research university can boast such an intimate relationship as between USC and HUC,” Sample said.

Lest East Coast critics dissent, Zimmerman added that even the relationship between New York’s Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary “barely begins to touch the vision” of the Los Angeles partnership.

Partially due to the two institutions, both speakers foresaw an increasing influence of Western Jewry on the American Jewish scene. USC has just opened its new Institute for the Study of Jews in American Life, and Zimmerman said that he looked forward to the ordination of Reform rabbis on the local HUC campus. — Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

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Prime-Time Rabbi

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories /

As part of the edgy juggling-magic-performance act The Mums, back in the 1980s, Albie Selznick ate razor blades, threw knives and produced doves from thin air while juggling torches. He took the head off of a pigeon (only an illusion), then put the head back on. He performed for Barbra Streisand, Marvin Davis and Andy Warhol.

On TV these days, Selznick isn’t materializing on stilts in Warhol’s apartment. Instead, he’s portraying a TV character that, some would say, seems just as unlikely to make prime time.

Selznick, 40, is playing a hip, menchy rabbi on NBC’s “Suddenly Susan” (Mondays at 8 p.m.) — perhaps the only rabbi to ever appear as a recurring character on a network sitcom. He’s good news for those who have decried “Bridget Loves Bernie,” “thirtysomething’s” Hope and Faith Steadman and all the other TV intermarriages.

Selznick plays hubby to Vicki (Kathy Griffin), Brooke Shields’ strident, carrot-topped, assimilated-Jewish magazine co-worker. He may be the best catch since the Pickle Man in “Crossing Delancey.” Rabbi Ben is patient when Vicki accidentally drives a tractor into Lebanon during the couple’s stint on a kibbutz. He’s understanding when she flushes a brisket down the synagogue toilet, which overflows and forces the shul to hold its B’nai B’rith bingo night during a 1960s rave at the magazine.

Selznick, a cousin of the late movie mogul David O. Selznick, grew up assimilated and was never bar mitzvahed. “Suddenly Susan” co-star Judd Nelson has helped him pronounce Hebrew and Yiddish words on camera, he says.

The “Suddenly Susan” role, Selznick insists, is helping to connect him to his Jewish roots; he has even been auditioning for roles in Jewish-themed plays.

Magic, not Judaism, became Selznick’s religion, after his psychoanalyst father died days before the boy’s ninth birthday. “When a parent is not there to give you attention, you have to get it from everyone else,” says the actor, who, by age 16, was performing his magic act at concerts for The Tubes.

Selznick, who obliges when a reporter asks him to make a biscotti disappear, says “Suddenly Susan” is his big TV break. Shields suggested him for the role last year, probably out of guilt, he quips. Several years ago, while the two attended dance class together in Los Angeles, she once politely declined to go out with him.

Since his first “Suddenly Susan” episode last year, Selznick has received lots of fan mail, from rabbis to non-Jews.

Griffin’s brash Vicki is perhaps more controversial, but Selznick doesn’t think of her character as a Jewish stereotype. “Kathy isn’t Jewish, and she is that way in real life,” he says of the stand-up comedienne. “She’s like a female Don Rickles.” — Naomi Pfefferman, Entertainment Editor

Prime-Time Rabbi Read More »

Gordis, Alexander Leave UJ for Posts in Israel

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Old Stories /

Dr. Robert Wexler, president of the University of Judaism, has good reason to believe that the spirit of Zionism is alive at the institution.

Recently, two prominent school administrators, Dr. Hanan Alexander, vice president of academic affairs, and Rabbi Daniel Gordis, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, announced that they are leaving their posts to assume comparable positions in Israel.

Alexander will become a professor of education at the University of Haifa, where he has previously taught while on sabbatical. Gordis will direct the Mandel Foundation’s Jerusalem Fellows program, which examines Jewish education and public policy as to ensure Jewish continuity both in Israel and the Diaspora. Gordis and his wife and three children are currently in Jerusalem, where he’s on sabbatical at the Mandel Foundation. Both UJ leaders will begin their new positions in the fall of 1999.

Wexler’s search for their successors has already begun.

Alexander and Gordis long have been principal architects of the UJ’s academic and religious design. As the school’s chief academic officer, Alexander, who began his career there in 1983 as a junior faculty member in education, has advanced UJ’s academic reputation and standing in the community by broadening its curriculum and scope.

“Since Alexander had such a defining influence on the curriculum and academic character of the UJ, he will be greatly missed,” said Richard Scaffidi, dean of admissions and financial aid. “Still, I think we can look at this change as an opportunity to take stock and restructure academic programs and build upon his fine work.”

Gordis, an educator and administrator at the UJ for 13 years, is best known for launching the 4-year-old Ziegler School of Rabbinical Studies, the only Conservative seminary on the West Coast. Author of “God Was Not in the Fire,” a book that responds to the apathy toward Judaism of assimilated Jews, Gordis has shaped the spiritual direction of Ziegler, aiming to teach rabbis-to-be how to energize, enrich and add meaning to Jewish life in America.

Gordis’ resignation has aroused a wide range of emotions from Ziegler students, who looked to the dean as a guiding spirit and personal mentor. Gordis, who hails from a line of prominent Conservative rabbis, has not only influenced Ziegler’s vision and curriculum but has worked to secure the school’s reputation as a sturdy breeding ground for future Jewish leaders. Gordis believes that the school will continue to strive and excel despite his move.

“I will watch its progress with a small amount of pride and a tremendous amount of joy,” Gordis told the rabbinical students at an informal address last week.

The future dean may affect the religious orientation and philosophy of Ziegler. The seminary will continue its commitment to Conservative Judaism, said Gordis, but which shade of the movement may depend on his replacement.

“In the meantime,” wrote Wexler, in a letter to the UJ staff that announced Gordis’ resignation, “I am considering a new policy for the administrators at the UJ: No more sabbatical leaves in Israel! It’s just too dangerous.”

Gordis, Alexander Leave UJ for Posts in Israel Read More »

Complaining the Jewish Way

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Old Stories /

Who are these men perpetually hovering outside the doors of the yeshiva? Who are these children, this gaggle of goslings, and these women, seemingly dutiful and unfazed as they stroll toward their place of prayer? Who are they?

Sometimes, when the light on the corner of La Brea Avenue is red, I stop long enough for us to gaze at each other through my car’s tinted window. I wonder if they wonder who I am in my black, velvet kippah. Are they used to my kind, or does it strike them as odd that I drive on Shabbos but wear the same team hat? Do they dismiss me as I often do them — as an anomaly, a mystery, an example of an era that is only remotely Jewish.

Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg, an Orthodox rabbi with a doctorate from Harvard, once said, jokingly, that Jews choose their denomination of Judaism based on the one they hate the least. To which a rabbi friend of mine replied, “I don’t care what movement you’re a part of as long as you’re ashamed of it!” The simple truth is that there has never been a movement in Judaism without its own inherent strengths and weaknesses. Any choice might seem odd or mistaken to those who do not make the same choice or even to those who do.

Three thousand years ago, you could choose to become a Nazarite, not cut your hair or shave, live in a cave and refrain from wine. You could be born into a family that destined you for the priesthood or slavery. You could even choose to remain a slave when your master was prepared to set you free. Jacob was a scholar, his brother, Esau, a hunter. Moses married out of the faith and was the greatest Jewish leader of all time. In one of the Torah’s chapters, Pinchas, a religious zealot, winds up murdering a fellow Jew. The Maccabees did the same thing.

Centuries after the Torah was written, the Talmudic schools of Hillel and Shammai disagreed on almost every point of Jewish law. In the Middle Ages, Maimonides’ books were burned for his radical departure from “traditional” Jewish beliefs. Now, for many Orthodox Jews, his views define “normative” Judaism. More than three centuries ago, Chassidim arose as a reaction against the hyper-legalism and severe rigidity of the Mitnagdim in Eastern Europe. Today, there are Chassidim in Brooklyn because they follow a different rebbe.

There is so much disagreement in the Reform rabbinate about certain issues that they cannot even be brought to the floor at our conventions. My Uncle Mort, who davens with the Lubavitchers, told me that he was offended by the guitar-playing rabbis at my wedding. I told him that King David played the harp. He said that he was still offended.

Speaking of music, there’s a curious thing about the musical poem in this week’s Torah portion. Our ancestors sang this poem after successfully escaping Pharaoh by crossing the Sea of Reeds. The fact that we chant it this week from the Torah gives this Shabbat the special name “Shabbat Shira,” “The Sabbath of Song.” Here’s the curious part: Although people sing it together, the song is written in the first person — many voices, all proclaiming, “I.” That is, after all, what music is about, right? Many different notes played together to form a more complex and richer whole. Could it be that’s what Judaism is about too?

Consider this beautiful story about the famous Chassid Reb Mendel of Kotsk. When he was 13 years old, his father (who was opposed to Chassidism) rebuked Mendel for forsaking the old ways. Mendel then quoted one seemingly ordinary verse in the “Song at the Sea” from this week’s Torah portion. The verse simply proclaims: “This is my God — I honor Him.” It was the Torah’s way of telling Mendel, and Mendel’s way of telling his father, that he had to find his own path to God and Judaism.

Mendel was right. Whether we like it or not, each Jew has the freedom to find God in his or her own way. We play our note on whatever instrument and in whatever key we choose. There will always be schisms and uncomfortable, curious stares at red lights on La Brea. Yes, we’re both on our way to shul, but I don’t want to pray in theirs, and they don’t want to pray in mine. Sure, we read from the same Torah, but we understand it in totally different ways. No, we can’t all get along — never have and never will. So what?

Let’s wise up as Mendel’s father should have, and embrace every “I” in our song, every voice singing out to God in notes sharp and flat, harmonious and discordant. Somehow together, we manage to make a glorious sound.

Rabbi Steven Z. Leder is a rabbi at Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

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Backing Up Their Claims

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories /

In a precedent-setting decision, a Los Angeles judge ruled on Monday that European companies can be sued in California courts for nonpayment of life insurance policies stemming from the Holocaust era.

The specific case involves a $135 million suit against the giant Generali Insurance Company (Assicurazioni Generali) of Trieste, Italy, but may be applicable to other European insurers and to more than 6,000 Holocaust survivors living in California.

“Let this landmark ruling be the shot heard around the world that it will not be business as usual for insurance companies accused of stonewalling Nazi victims,” said attorney Lisa Stern.

She is a member of the Stern family of Los Angeles, which filed the $135 million suit a year ago on behalf of family members in this city, New York and Miami, as well as in Israel and England.

All are descendants of Moshe “Mor” Stern, a wealthy wine and spirits producer in prewar Hungary, who had six sons and a daughter. Between 1929 and 1939, he took out large insurance policies through the Prague office of Generali.

Moshe Stern, his wife and three of his sons perished in Auschwitz. When a surviving son tried to initiate a claim with Generali in June 1945, he was brusquely turned away. The family testified that Generali had stonewalled all requests since that time.

In her ruling, Superior Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper rejected Generali’s assertion that the company was not subject to the jurisdiction of a California court in a matter originating in a foreign country.

Cooper noted that a Generali-owned subsidiary does substantial business in California. She also cited the Holocaust Victims Insurance Act, introduced by state Assemblyman Wally Knox, D-Los Angeles, and passed by the California legislature last year, which specifically authorized state courts to deal with Stern-type cases.

Indicating the significance of the lawsuit, officials of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, including JCRC Executive Director Michael Hirschfeld and Arthur Stern (no relation to Lisa), chair of the Federation’s Holocaust Subcommittee, appeared in court to support the Stern case. In addition, California Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush dispatched a private lawyer to file a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the plaintiffs.

A trial date in the case is to be set on March 25.

William M. Shernoff, the lead attorney for the Stern family, said: “It is now apparent that California will lead the way in getting justice for Holocaust survivors in their insurance cases. This case could be tried before a jury as early as this summer.”

Generali said it will appeal the judge’s ruling.

“I am beside myself with happiness,” attorney Lisa Stern said. “It’s the ultimate thrill of victory.”

To survivors and their kin, she said, the fight is about more than money: “The survivors I talk to don’t care so much about the money that they may get as that they do not want those [insurance] companies to have the money they looted from the families who suffered so much.”

Backing Up Their Claims Read More »

The Ghosts of ‘Riga’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Old Stories /

While writing an aria based on a speech by Joseph Goebbels, for his 1991 opera, “The Ghosts of Versailles,” William M. Hoffman was visited by ghosts of his murdered family.

“I started to wonder what I would be doing if I were at that moment in Auschwitz,” says the award-winning playwright, the son of Holocaust refugees. “I became aware that I might have died in a death factory or in Latvia, along with scores of other members of my family.”

Hoffman would awaken, crying and sweating from nightmares. Whenever his lover touched him, he felt as if he were a corpse. He recalled long-repressed memories from childhood, recollections of his mother whispering and sobbing about her dead relatives.

The feelings colored Hoffman’s days and repeatedly ruined his relationships until he began writing “Riga,” now a world première presented by the Venture West Theatre Company at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater. The play “worked an exorcism,” he says.

In the love story of two men, one African-American, one Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, both protagonists are struggling to come to terms with their childhoods and to cope with racism and homophobia.

Hoffman has a caveat for anyone thinking of seeing the show: The caustically funny piece is meant to shock. The relationship between the gay lovers is sexually explicit; hatemongers spew racist epithets; and there is an outrageous parody of the notorious anti-Semitic tract “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

There are also vivid details of genocide, taken from the Hoffman family experience. A baby is smashed bloody; a grandmother and aunt are shot into mass graves.

“But the play is not a memorial to my family,” the stocky, redheaded playwright says. “I wasn’t interested in ‘Yizkor.’ I wanted to make people recognize how much hate there is in the world today.”

W

hen Hoffman’s parents learned about the Latvian genocide during World War II, both suffered nervous breakdowns. Three-year-old Hoffman and his brother were whisked away to a foster home, where they remained for a year and a half. “It was jarring,” Hoffman, 59, says, wiping a tear from his eye. “I didn’t know how to speak English, because my parents had raised me in Yiddish, Russian and German. Whenever my mother visited me, I used to cry and cry.”

One day, after the war, a strange woman visited his mother and urgently spoke with her in Latvian. The small boy listened at the keyhole. “I think she described the murder of my family,” Hoffman says. “After that, my mother spoke incoherently, and she did not get out of bed. She was never the same…. I had to raise myself.”

When Hoffman began writing plays for companies such as the Circle Repertory in New York in the 1960s, he avoided autobiographical subjects because he “was not ready to deal with the Holocaust.”

The Shoah nevertheless colored his worldview. When the AIDS epidemic struck, Hoffman was not overcome. “For me, all the death was normal,” says the writer, who penned one of the first plays about AIDS, “As Is,” in 1985. The landmark drama, directed by “Riga” director Marshall W. Mason, earned Hoffman an Obie, a Drama Desk Prize and a Tony Award nomination.

Several years later, while the internationally acclaimed “Ghosts of Versailles” was playing to sold-out houses at the Metropolitan Opera, Hoffman began researching “Riga.” He studied “Mein Kampf” and the speeches of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan and purchased the hate library of a deceased American Nazi leader. He attended the trial of white supremacists who had murdered Denver radio host Alan Berg, posing as a neo-Nazi. And, in 1994, he traveled to Latvia, where he visited the Nazi killing fields and his mother’s old apartment in Liepaja.

The flat was decrepit, he recalls, and the resident, an elderly Russian woman, asked him where the Jews had hidden all their gold. Hoffman captures the moment in “Riga,” a play he describes as a form of “cultural terrorism.”

Though producers begged him to “tone down” the “Protocols of Zion” sequence, Hoffman decided to “make it worse.” “People don’t realize that ‘Protocols’ is the second-best selling book in the world, after the Bible,” he says. “Jews need to hear that.”

“Riga” plays through Feb. 27. For tickets, call (323) 660-TKTS.

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Debating the Future

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories /

The rampant factionalism and firecracker unpredictability that marks Israeli politics these days came visiting Los Angeles last weekend.

More than 300 people left their cozy Sunday morning behind to participate in the all-day conference, “Israel: 1999 and Beyond,” sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ Jewish Community Relations Committee along with the Jewish Community Foundation. Although aimed at the twenty- and thirtysomething crowd, the conference attracted a wide range of people, from college students to senior citizens. Wider still was the range of topics and diverse viewpoints explored, from Orthodox hawks to Peace Now doves.

The event got off to a rousing start with a panel discussion that featured Judith Miller of The New York Times, Jonathan Rosenblum of the Jerusalem Post, Stuart Schoffman of the Jerusalem Report, Ha’aretz’s David Makovsky, and Rabbi Yedidya Atlas, senior correspondent for Israel National Radio and former consultant on Diaspora affairs for the chief rabbinate of Israel.

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Is Cloning Good?

Leave a Comment / Old Stories /

Looking for a scenario that’s chock full of ethical problems? Imagine this: Alexander Schwartz, a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, is severely ill and depressed and has asked his doctor to terminate his life. Schwartz’s wife wants to genetically alter an embryo the couple implanted in a surrogate mother so that the child will have brown eyes and not suffer her husband’s disease and depression. She also wants to clone her brilliant husband.

Panelists at a Jan. 13 discussion on Jewish medical ethics, hosted by the American Jewish Committee, wrestled with the multiple dilemmas presented by Schwartz’s imaginary death.

Dr. Irving Lebovics, chief of staff of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s dental division, said that there was no support in halachic liturgy to justify active euthanasia, and the other panelists agreed.

But the legal interpretation of genetic engineering is more problematic. When viewed from an Orthodox perspective, cloning is “the single-most uncharted area of moral and ethical law,” Rabbi Aron Tendler of Shaarey Zedek Congregation said. Cloning may be legally permissible, but Tendler questioned its moral implications. “God made us human, with limitations. We have to disengage our emotions and desires and engage in the intellectual process of determining exactly what God wants from us.”

Rabbi Levi Meier, the chaplain at Cedars-Sinai, maintained that genetic engineering to cure an illness is “100 percent OK and mandated” by halachic law. But the law prohibits genetic alteration to give a baby brown eyes or for other “non-health” reasons. And cloning an individual, argued Levi Meier, defies the Torah’s requirement that a child be born with a mother, father and the presence of God. — Rebecca Kuzins, Contributing Writer

Is Cloning Good?

Many of the medical profession’s greatest Jewish minds are scheduled to convene at the 10th annual International Conference on Jewish Medical Ethics, which will take place at the Park Plaza Hotel, a stone’s throw from San Francisco International Airport.

Hosted by the Institute for Jewish Medical Ethics of the Hebrew Academy of San Francisco Physicians, the Presidents’ Day Weekend event, which will run from Friday, Feb. 12 – Monday, Feb. 15, will be jointly sponsored by the Stanford University School of Medicine and Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, in association with National Council of Young Israel. The weekend symposium will honor Lord Immanuel Jakobovits — the chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth of Nations who is known in the Jewish medical community as “the father of modern Jewish medical ethics.” Among the conference lecturers scheduled to appear: 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner Roald Hoffman; Harvard Medical School Prof. Carol Nadelson; and AIPAC President Lionel A. Kaplan.

For further information, call (800) 258-4427, e-mail olorin@sirius.com, or access the Institute’s web page at http://www.ijme.org. — Michael Aushenker, Community Editor

Is Cloning Good? Read More »