February 17, 2000

Hanging On

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Old Stories / Naomi Pfefferman

Delia Ephron knows a thing or two about sibling rivalry. She didn’t start writing until she was around 30, she says, because that was big sister Nora’s turf.

Nora, of course, is Nora Ephron, the author of the smart New York comedy “When Harry Met Sally…” and the director of the hit films “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.”

“The family legacy was a bit daunting,” admits Delia, the second of four sisters whose screenwriter parents wrote “Desk Set,” “Carousel” and “What Price Glory?” “One of the ways I differentiated myself was to deny, for a time, what I was obviously destined to be.”

At least she started writing in her late 20’s. Little sister Amy waited until her 30’s to claim the family craft and another sister, Hallie, a computer executive, began writing in her 40’s and only recently sold her first novel. “I was quite stunned when she called me and said she wanted to be a writer,” says Delia, 55, during a telephone interview from her New York home. “She’d obviously avoided it, too.”

Actually it was Nora who encouraged Delia to become a free-lance writer in the 1970s and who introduced her to Hollywood in the early ’90s. Nora was working on “This is My Life,” her directorial debut, and knew she needed Delia’s help on the screenplay about sisters growing up in a dysfunctional showbusiness family.

The Ephrons have since collaborated on “Mixed Nuts,” “Michael” and “You’ve Got Mail,” which Delia co-wrote and executive produced; and “Sleepless in Seattle,” which she associate produced.

Delia concedes that she is best known for her work on films that are essentially Nora’s projects; when Nora directs, Nora is the boss. That is why Delia is thrilled about the Ephrons’ latest endeavor, “Hanging Up,” a film that gives Delia, the middle sister, her due.

Hanging On Read More »

Nation/World Briefs

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Old Stories / Jewish Journal

When Roberto Benigni won the grand prize at Cannes for his Holocaust tragicomedy, “Life is Beautiful,” he rushed to the stage and kissed the feet of juror Martin Scorsese.

The Italian comedian couldn’t resist playing the clown, either, when his Holocaust fable recently screened for 320 Los Angeles high school students at the Museum of Tolerance.

He grinned maniacally as the teens applauded and cheered his movie. He clowned around with his microphone. When someone asked if he liked Buster Keaton, he rolled his eyes and shouted, “mama mia!”

But Benigni showed a serious side, too. He thanked the students, who gushed about his movie, in which he portrays a charming buffoon who invents a game to protect his 5-year-old son from the horrors of the Holocaust.

Benigni said that he got the idea for the film when he decided to place a clown in the most extreme of situations: a concentration camp. The idea scared him, he confided. His friends warned him that he risked alienating his comedy fans. And Benigni was terrified that his antics would offend Holocaust survivors. To avoid doing so, he sent all the drafts of his script to members of the Milan Jewish community.

When one student asked Benigni about his 5-year-old co-star, Giorgio Cantarini, the director said that the boy caught his eye when he showed up for the audition, without his mother, wearing an enormous overcoat. “He looked like a little clown,” Benigni said.

Cantarini did not know how to read, so he had to learn all his lines by heart. One of his first questions to Benigni was, “What does the word ‘Jewish’ mean?” He had never heard the word before.

When another student asked Benigni how he liked Los Angeles, the director flashed an especially large smile. “Being a director in L.A.,” he said, “is like being a Christian in the Vatican!”– Naomi Pfefferman, Entertainment Editor

Nation/World Briefs Read More »

Will the Real Kabbalah Please Stand Up?

Leave a Comment / Old Stories / Tom Tugend

The tradition of Jewish mysticism seems to have recently made a jump from the cryptic pages of the Zohar to the creepy pages of the National Enquirer, leaving many Jews asking just what is the authentic tradition of Jewish mysticism.

Hillel at UCLA, in conjunction with UCLA Extension, is addressing that question in a four-session series entitled, “Kabbalah Goes Mainstream: The Current Fascination with Jewish Mysticism.”

“On the one hand, the pursuit of Kabbalah accompanies the search for spirituality, the seeking of more intimate religious and communal ties and an interest in a deeper understanding of the self,” says Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of UCLA Hillel.

“On the other hand, there is a sense that this whole enterprise reflects a commercialization, a cheapening of the spiritual substance of Jewish life, an attempt by hucksters to sell a product and manipulate the public,” says Seidler-Feller.

At the same time, he says, the interest is healthy for a Jewish community that has been too quick to dismiss Kabbalah as non-essential to meaningful Jewish observance.

“There were rabbis throughout history who felt you couldn’t be a religious Jew without Kabbalah,” Seidler-Feller notes. “The Jewish community has to get over its know-nothingism, its sense of intimidation. By doing so they grant the control of the Kabbalah to the marginal forces.”

Seidler-Feller says the blend of the academic, popular, spiritual and psychological dimensions represented in the series should appeal to a wide range of the community.

The classes will feature a world-class roster of experts on Kabbalah and Messianism, as well as an impressive showing of scholars and rabbis from the entire range of local institutions.

Hebrew University professor Moshe Idel, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Kabbalah and the Israel Prize laureate of 1999, who is a visiting professor at UCLA this quarter, will lead off the series Feb. 23 with “Kabbalah Today: On the Emergence of Magic and Practical Kabbalah in Contemporary Jewish Life.” He will be joined on the panel by professor Jody Myers, coordinator of California State University, Northridge’s Jewish Studies Program; and Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple.

Richard Popkin, an internationally renowned expert on Messianism and skepticism, will join Rabbi Seidler-Feller and Rabbi Yitzchok Alderstein, director of educational outreach at the Simon Weisenthal Center, on March 1 for “Moshiach Now: A Dialogue on Contemporary Jewish Messianic Thought.”

On March 15, Rabbi Abner Weiss of Beth Jacob Congregation and psychologists Doreen Seidler-Feller and J. Marvin Spiegelman will address “Kabbalah and Psychology: Using Spiritual Insights for Growth and Healing.”

The series wraps up March 29 with “Healing Hands, Healing Minds: Meditation, Spirituality and the Mind-Body Connection,” featuring Rabbi Mordecai Finley of Ohr HaTorah, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man of Metivta, Rabbi Deborah Orenstein of Makom Ohr Shalom, and Katherine Brown-Saltzman of the UCLA Medical Center.

All classes are at UCLA Hillel, 900 Hilgard Ave., 7:30-9:45 p.m. Fees are $50 for the entire series (non-credit), $105 (credit). Single admission fee at the door is $18. For more information call UCLA Hillel at (310) 208-3081 or UCLA Extension at (310) 825-0500.

By Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

Will the Real Kabbalah Please Stand Up? Read More »

School Daze

Leave a Comment / Old Stories / Jewish Journal

One of every five American Jewish schoolchildren is now enrolled in an all-day Jewish parochial school, according to a comprehensive “census” of Jewish day schools released last month by a family foundation in New York.

The enrollment figures — 184,333 students total, up a brisk 15 percent in the last decade — are being hailed far and wide as evidence that American Jewry has finally taken day schools to heart. Spurred by “frightening statistics” of intermarriage, Jewish leaders have seized on day schools “as a centerpiece of the communal strategy to promote Jewish identity and ensure Jewish continuity,” census author Marvin Schick reports approvingly. The Avi Chai Foundation, a major force in the campaign, sponsored the census to help move things forward.

The actual numbers, awkwardly enough, suggest they’re all barking up the wrong tree.

Examined up close, what the census shows is not a day-school system reaching out to growing numbers of uncommitted Jews. No, the great majority of day schools are more like fortresses, where the most committed Jews wall themselves off from the society around — including most of their fellow Jews. Barely two-fifths of all day schools even try enrolling less-committed Jews. The numbers they reach are tiny, virtually meaningless in relation to the overall Jewish population.

In plain numbers, the census shows that about 75 percent of all day-school students, some 138,000, come from Orthodox families. The remaining 25 percent, about 47,000 students, come from non-Orthodox homes. Except for a small fraction crossing over in each direction, the two groups attend separate schools. Most Orthodox schools are effectively closed to non-Orthodox students.

Put differently, virtually all school-age Orthodox Jewish children in America attend day schools, but barely 5 percent of non-Orthodox Jewish children do. And that 5 percent appears in the main to represent the most Jewishly committed fraction of non-Orthodox families.

Youngsters from marginally affiliated homes, who might be seen as benefiting from the schools’ outreach potential — as opposed to those enrolled because of already-strong family commitments — number at most 15,000 to 20,000. That’s 1.5 to 2 percent of the total school-age Jewish population.

That’s the situation at the end of a decade of unprecedented growth in day-school enrollment and new school construction, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. It’s not pretty.

Schick, the author, is a respected educational consultant and lay president of New York’s oldest day school, the Rabbi Jacob Joseph Schools. He compiled the census by contacting schools directly and requesting enrollment information for ages four and up. All told, 676 schools were contacted. Schick says cooperation was “100 percent.” Allowing for a handful of schools that may have gone unnoticed, it appears his figures present a nearly precise count, not an estimate, of the day-school population.

“They were very scrupulous in hunting down schools no one was aware of,” says Leora Isaacs, research director of the mainstream Jewish Education Service of North America. “And they were appropriately cautious in interpreting the numbers that were given to them.”

One of the census’ biggest shocks is its depiction of Orthodox Jewry. For one thing, they’re much more numerous than commonly thought. The 1990 National Jewish Population Survey reported Orthodox Jews to be 6 percent of the total Jewish population, some 330,000 souls. But the 138,000 Orthodox schoolchildren in the census point to a much bigger population. After factoring in statistics on family size provided by the schools, Schick estimates 500,000 to 550,000. That’s 8 to 10 percent of the overall Jewish community. The Orthodox proportion of the school-age Jewish population is 14 percent, thanks to higher birthrates.

More startling, the census indicates only one-third of Orthodox students are enrolled in Modern or “Centrist” Orthodox schools — those that encourage college education and, in Schick’s words, “evince a more positive attitude toward Israel.” (Modern Orthodox schools, unlike Centrist, are coeducational.)

The other two-thirds of the Orthodox student population — some 92,000, fully half the total day-school population — are enrolled in Chassidic and “yeshiva-world” (“black-hat” or ultra-Orthodox, but not Chassidic) institutions. These are schools where secular studies are downplayed and Judaic studies are commonly taught in Yiddish. They also report averages of seven children per family.

The biggest and most insular Chassidic stream, the militantly anti-Zionist Satmar sect, accounts for just over 17,000 students, or 9 percent of the total day-school population. That’s roughly the same size as the nationwide Solomon Schechter school system of Conservative Judaism.

The bottom line is sobering. For all the talk of day schools as a leading weapon in fighting assimilation, they’re hardly even present on the battlefield. Right now they serve almost exclusively to educate children least at risk of assimilation. The vast population of at-risk Jewish youth — three-quarters of a million children from moderately affiliated families — isn’t enrolled and won’t be anytime soon.

What would it take to bring day schooling to the mainstream? It’s hard to imagine. Even a modest doubling of non-Orthodox enrollment, to 10 percent, would require billions of dollars to build new classrooms, endow scholarships and train new teachers — assuming teachers could be found at current salary levels. Few knowledgeable observers believe sums like that are remotely available.

More important, the day-school mystique overlooks a crucial fact about intermarriage. Several studies in recent years have shown convincingly that Jewish marriage patterns follow adolescent experience. More than anything, the studies show, whom Jews marry depends on whom they date. Jewish experiences during high school — Hebrew High, youth groups, summer camp, Israel trips — are actually more effective in deterring intermarriage than a day school education ending with 8th grade. And nearly all non-Orthodox day-schooling ends then.

Building new Jewish day-high schools would help. It’s a pipe-dream, though. Non-Orthodox high schools currently have a combined enrollment of 2,200 nationwide. That’s less than 1 percent of all non-Orthodox teens. Boosting it to 10 percent would cost at least $2 billion just for construction.

By contrast, the Zionist youth group Young Judaea currently reaches 12,000 youngsters a year at a cost of $20 million. It surveyed its alumni last year and found their intermarriage rate was just 5 percent.

Day schools aren’t the same as summer trips, of course. They create an informed, educated Jewish population, steeped in the tradition in a way that youth groups can’t match.

But that’s a different discussion. You can’t scare Jews with ignorance.

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

For more on the day school census, click here.

School Daze Read More »

The Big Leagues

Leave a Comment / Old Stories / Jewish Journal

Israel Bonds: They’re not just for bar and bat mitzvahs anymore.

That’s the message the State of Israel Bonds organization wants to get across in announcing its new floating rate offerings. Rather than being seen as a quasi-charity and feel-good gift for 13-year-olds, the organization wants to be considered a legitimate investment option.

It hopes to do that by adding the London Interbank Offer Rate (LIBOR) to its notes and offerings. LIBOR is a floating interest rate based on the average daily lending rates offered by several London banks. It’s considered a more international benchmark that takes global economics into account.

“It’s significant because, to this day, some people view Israel Bonds as a less-than-veritable investment, mostly because of a lack of knowledge of the bonds,” said a spokesman for Israel Bonds, adding that the addition of the LIBOR benchmark is “just another step” toward Israel Bonds being considered “a bona-fide investment option.”

The LIBOR-based instruments “will provide investment options that could better reflect the environment of the global market,” Gideon Patt, Bonds president and CEO, said in a statement.

Israel bonds are securities issued by the State of Israel to help build the country’s economy and infrastructure. Proceeds go to Israel’s treasury for general use. Historically, Israel Bond funds have been earmarked for projects such as highways and bridges. Current projects being used by Bonds money, a spokesman said, include water desalination and high-speed train projects.

“When you invest in Israel, you invest in the Jewish family business,” he said.

Still, they could make a respectable bar or bat mitzvah gift.

For more information, call the Contact Development Corp. for Israel at 1-800-229-9650, or go to www.israelbonds.com

This story was contributed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The Big Leagues Read More »

The Way(s) We Vote Now

Leave a Comment / Old Stories, Politics / Jewish Journal

When Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently addressed an influential Jewish group in the East, he told them, in answer to a question about Jonathan Pollard, that he felt the man had betrayed his country and he, McCain, was not in favor of releasing him from prison.

You might think this would function as a sure turn-off. But The Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations — the group that had met with McCain — was apparently not dismayed by McCain’s strong statement. He was very candid and straight with us; that seemed to be the approving consensus that emerged from the closed meeting.

Do we read this as downplaying the Jewish factor? Or maybe the correct interpretation is that most American Jews are divided on Pollard and do not see him as a top priority issue. In which case candor would receive high marks.

The factors that determine the way we Jews vote — indeed, that determine the way everyone votes — are complex and multiple. Sometimes we are influenced by a spouse’s party preference; sometimes by a father’s. I once made a documentary film in which most people we interviewed at random indicated they voted the same way as their father. Not parent; father.

Sometimes we simply go along with friends and neighbors, and what might be called our social set. In the summer community where we lived when I was a boy, the whole town seemed to consist entirely of Republicans. There were relatively few Jews. I remember my mother complaining during the presidential conventions that she received poor service at the market, indeed was ignored, because the merchants thought she was a Democrat. Actually, that year my father voted Republican.

And of course sometimes we favor a candidate or a party because we are members of a particular special interest group. That is, we are pro-choice or pro-life and that registers high on our list of issues; or are emotionally for or against gun control. Or we are active union members; or business and industry executives; school teachers or realtors; members of the Christian Right, angry at media and loose morals; or Jews with strong feelings about Israel and the Mideast.

In short, we all vote as Americans, and register our preferences in terms of what we think is best for the nation. And we also all make (presidential) choices in terms of what I would call our different identities — professional, sexual, religious, to cite only three.

The “new conservative” writer, Irving Kristol (Jewish, Republican and smart), once remarked that Jews had much in common with the Republican party in terms of social class, but were still voting as Democrats. Actually, he said Jewish class interests — in terms of income, education, and residence — suggested we should be aligned with the Republicans, but we tended to vote with the Puerto Ricans. Why is this?

Is it the presence of history and memory? In the 1920s under a Republican president and congress, the U.S. passed a most restrictive immigration law, essentially barring Eastern European Jews, among others, from entering the U.S. Many had already migrated here starting in 1890, only to be followed by succeeding generations until 1924. It was considered common knowledge that Republicans of the day often held anti-ethnic views. That meant negative feelings about Jews, Italians and Irish. Though, to be fair, so did many Democrats. But the Republicans were associated with the moneyed classes, the Democrats with the urban workers. And we definitely were counted among the latter.

Is it the memory of FDR? The myths portray him as the friend and benefactor of the common man, the underdog, the have-nots. That’s where many of us were lodged in the 1930s and early ’40s

Or does it come down to issues? That is, regardless of class interests, Jews often vote from the heart instead of the head, registering support for ideas and policies that resonate deeply, no matter the particularities of our education, income and residence — at least on the presidential level.

Republicans may take comfort this time around. All the political analysts have been quick to inform us that in this election voters are looking at the candidate’s character, not his political proclamations. Character, of course, changes the game. It suggests, too, why some of the primaries — South Carolina, for instance and California, too — are being determined by crossover voting. The slogan this year appears to be: “It’s not the issues, stupid. It’s the man.”

How will this affect the behavior of Jewish voters? Like most of the pundits, I’ll tell you after the March 7 California primary. — Gene Lichtenstein

The Way(s) We Vote Now Read More »

The Forest That Haunts Austrian Politics

Leave a Comment / Old Stories / Richard Z. Chesnoff

If you were concerned about the inclusion of an extreme right-wing party in the new Austrian government, try this one on for size. While Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider has been busily trying to waltz away from previous statements praising parts of Austria’s Nazi past — and has even spoken of the need to make amends for what was stolen from Austria’s Jews — the fact is that his own personal fortune, and much of the financing of his racist party, is based on profits from a prime timber forest in southern Austria that Haider’s family coerced out of a Jewish family during the Nazi reign of terror.

The lush Baerental (Valley of the Bears) forest extends over more than 4,000 acres in southern Austria. Originally the property of an Italian Jew named Giorgio Roifer, it was grabbed by Haider’s great, great uncle, Joseph Webhofer, a leading Austrian Nazi, shortly after the Nazis took control of Austria during the Anschluss of 1938. The Nuremberg Racial Laws, which were as warmly welcomed by many Austrians as the Nazis were, forbade Jews from owning property in the extended Reich. Land, homes, art and anything else of value was simply “Aryanized.”

The Roifers were Italian — ostensibly allies of the Third Reich. While their land could not be expropriated in 1938, they were forced to sell the forest for a pittance in a murky and certainly immoral deal involving blocked bank accounts and scandalous arm-twisting. Even that amount was denied them and kept in Nazi banks. The Roifers fled to Palestine — and their descendants have been seeking compensation ever since. In 1954, Roifer’s widow, Mathilde, did receive what is now worth about $120,000. Austrian press reports say the forest is worth about $16 million today.

Haider himself was “given” the forest by his great uncle, Wilhelm Webhofer, in 1986. The Freedom Party fuhrer insists to this day that his family obtained it legally, and once even claimed that the Roifers “must have done well” in the deal, because it was brokered by “the Jew Loew from Villach.” The fact was, reports Peter Green of the International Herald Tribune, that Loew was a Catholic — and the Roifers certainly didn’t do well.

Roifers’ 73-year-old granddaughter, Naomi Merhav, a retired Israeli museum director, now insists that the 1938 so- called sale was “invalid.” Haider, she says, should either pay a reasonable sum, or return the forest to her family. “Haider got rich selling my family’s wood, and he is in power now with the help of my money,” she recently told an interviewer.

Haider, whose party is racist and harshly anti-immigrant, once praised Hitler’s labor policies and referred to SS veterans as “decent people.” In recent weeks, he has been trying desperately to disassociate himself from those statements. Unfortunately, many of his neo-Nazi followers don’t. Part of his new pitch has been to urge that Austria take “pertinent measures” in cases where Austria “inflicted great injustice on our Jewish fellow citizens or wiped out their families.” Thus far, there have been no signs that that includes either the Roifers or the Forest of the Valley of the Bears.

Austria, which has traditionally tried to perpetuate a myth that it was a victim of Nazism, not an active collaborator, has one of the worst restitution records of any country in Europe. While Germany has largely settled claims for property stolen from its Jews, Austria has returned only a tiny part of the art, books, land, bank accounts and other assets stolen by Austrian Nazis. Sixty-five thousand Austrian Jews died in the Nazi Holocaust. About 21,000 Austrian Holocaust survivors still live around the world. And there are literally tens of thousands of outstanding claims for confiscated property that is now in the hands of either the Austrian state or Austrian citizens — such as Haider.

Richard Z. Chesnoff is senior correspondent of US News & World Report and the author of the critically acclaimed “Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe Plundered the Jews & Committed the Greatest Theft in History” (Doubleday). He is in Los Angeles this week to address the annual Women’s Campaign luncheon of the Jewish Federation at the Beverly Wilshire on February 16.

The Forest That Haunts Austrian Politics Read More »

Aviv Geffen

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Music, Old Stories / Naomi Pfefferman

On a starry night in November 1995, tragedy transformed rock star Aviv Geffen into an Israeli Gen-X icon.

The scene was a jubilant peace rally in the main square in Tel Aviv, where the Israeli musician was performing his ballad, “I Cry for You,” in front of a cheering throng of 300,000. After the thunderous applause had died down, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin hugged Geffen backstage, kissed him on the cheek, wished him shalom.

The musician was the last person ever to embrace the prime minister. Minutes later, gunshots rang out in the square, only yards from where Geffen stood. “I smelled the pistol,” Geffen said, during an interview with the Journal. Suddenly, the then-22-year-old singer found himself to be the national peace symbol for Israel’s youth, his song an unofficial national anthem.

It was an unexpected new role for a musician who was previously known as the bad boy of Israeli rock n’ roll. Geffen, now 26, performed wearing lipstick and mascara, and was reviled by the establishment for composing songs that trashed Israel’s most revered institutions.

The son of esteemed Israeli poet Yehonatan Geffen, and the nephew of Moshe Dayan and President Ezer Weizman, he had always been a rebel. In his teens, he was expelled from high school for scribbling subversive poetry on the walls; by 18, he had composed the first of eight best-selling albums, his moody, melodic songs dissing the military and advocating the rights of women, homosexuals and animals.

His biting lyrics, spray painted by fans all over Tel Aviv, made Geffen myriad enemies. The last time he visited Jerusalem without bodyguards, he was surrounded by an angry mob and had to be rescued by the police. Fanatics carved threats into his apartment door, such as “We’re going to slash your throat”; the death threats continue today.

Yet since Rabin’s murder, Geffen insists, he is mellower, gentler. His songs are less political, more intimate. “In Israel, we have so much pressure, it’s no use throwing oil into the fire,” he says.

Aviv Geffen will perform for the first time in Los Angeles Feb. 23, 8:30 p.m. during a solo acoustic concert in English and Hebrew at the El Rey Theater, 5515 Wilshire Blvd. For tickets, $30, call (310) 273-2824.

Aviv Geffen Read More »

Stars, Bars and the Jewish Vote

Who’s Backing Whom?

Leave a Comment / California, Old Stories, Politics / Tom Tugend

Thursday, Feb. 10 was a cold and rainy day in Los Angeles, but that didn’t deter political junkies of the Democratic persuasion.

About 300 supporters of Bill Bradley crowded into the University Synagogue to welcome their man and cheer his demand for strict gun controls.

That evening, some 750 fans of Vice President Al Gore, predominantly women, gathered at the Beverly Hills home of Richard and Daphna Ziman and dined in a large tent erected on the backyard tennis courts. They also contributed to their candidate’s campaign — “twice as much as expected,” said Ziman; $200,000 reported the Los Angeles Times.

As the March 7 primaries draw near, Jewish voters are raising their voices, and money, for their favorite contenders. In a limited and unscientific survey of the usual suspects — Jewish leaders with political interest and financial clout — some trends were discernible.

In the Democratic race, the Jewish establishment weighed in heavily for Gore, leaving Bradley with a smaller and less prominent core of supporters.

On the Republican side, a highly charged cadre is going all-out for Sen. John McCain, leaving Gov. George W. Bush with some Jewish grassroots support, but no discernible backing by any community leader.

Among the Gore partisans, a frequent theme was sounded by longtime AIPAC leader Larry Weinberg, and his wife Barbara, a former Jewish Federation president.

“Going back for decades, Al Gore has been there for us whenever we needed him,” said Larry Weinberg. “In the Senate, he became an informed, active leader on issues affecting Israel, and he has been a warm and caring friend.”

Bradley, observed Weinberg, “had also a good voting record when he was in the Senate, but he wasn’t a leader.”

One of Gore’s oldest and closest friends in Los Angeles is former Congressman Mel Levine. “I’ve watched Gore closely for many years and he has compiled a stellar record, especially on Israel and Middle East peace issues,” he said.

Levine thinks that Bradley is somewhat disingenuous in positioning himself to the liberal left of Gore. “During his years in the Senate, he defined himself as a centrist Democrat,” said Levine.

Veteran presidential advisor Edward Sanders is not actively campaigning this year but is voting for Gore as the best candidate to oppose the Republican standard bearer.

Howard Welinsky, head of Democrats for Israel, said he and the majority of his group are backing Gore, but there is a sizable faction supporting Bradley, particularly in Congressman Henry Waxman’s 29th district.

In the local Bradley campaign, the most prominent activist is Bruce Corwin, chairman of the Metropolitan Theatres Corp. He hosted a “primarily Jewish” fundraiser for Bradley some months ago, which netted $100,000.

“I’ve known Bill Bradley for 25 years and I speak to him frequently,” said Corwin. “He is an extraordinary man, who gets away from the people in the Beltway and can see the big picture.”

Corwin mentioned two other high-profile Bradley supporters in the Jewish community, but one did not wish to be identified and the other did not respond to phone calls.

However, Ralph Fertig, who organized the Bradley meeting at the University Synagogue as chairman of its social justice committee, believes that Bradley supporters make up in enthusiasm what they might lack in financial muscle.

Among his fellow activists, Fertig named TV producer Lila Garrett and philanthropists Ted and Rita Williams.

Enthusiasm is also the hallmark of McCain supporters on the Republican side. Noticeable is Rosalie Zalis, who brings the same unflagging zeal to the McCain campaign that she did to former Gov. Pete Wilson’s administration during her many years as senior advisor.

McCain activists are preparing for a big general-fundraiser for their man on Feb. 25, whose host committee includes such Jewish figures as attorney Marvin Jubas, real estate developer Jerry Epstein, investor Peter Lowy, and veteran Republican pillar Nettie Becker.

Recent recruits to the cause, said Zalis, include novelists Faye and Jonathan Kellerman.

No one is more fervent in his support for McCain than Marvin Jubas.

“I have known the senator for many years. No one in this town is more aware of his integrity and character than I,” said Jubas. “Nobody is more pro-Israel than the senator and those of us associated with AIPAC know that if we really need someone, we turn to John.”

Becker acknowledged that “I don’t go along with [McCain] not being pro-choice,” but that’s outweighed by “his willingness to speak his mind and his wonderful support for Israel.”

Apparently McCain’s public stand last month opposing the release of Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned for spying for Israel, has not hurt his standing among his Jewish supporters.

A fairly diligent search by The Jewish Journal failed to turn up the name of any well-known community leader supporting Bush.

One likely factor is that the governor is paying for the “sins” of his father.

“When President Bush first ran in 1992, I’d say 40 to 50 percent of Hillcrest Country Club members supported him,” said veteran Republican stalwart Marshall Ezralow, who is now backing McCain.

Ezralow said he became disenchanted with the elder Bush by his on- again, off-again support of Israel; the perceived anti-Israel policy of his Secretary of State, James Baker; and Bush’s flirtation with the Christian right.

This does not mean that the younger Bush is without Jewish support on the grassroots level.

The Jewish Journal spoke to a number of volunteer workers for Bush, who praised their candidate but generally emphasized that their support was not motivated by “Jewish” interests but by a patriotic concern for America’s well-being.

Dentist Joel Strom, who serves as the state chairman for Bush volunteers, believes that the governor’s election “offers the best opportunity for those who want to change the political landscape and consider themselves compassionate conservatives.”

Connie Friedman, a human resources consultant who heads Bush volunteers in the Valley-centered 24th Congressional district, feels that “Bush is the right guy to lead this country.”

Friedman said she liked Bush’s pro-Israel stance, but that she wasn’t voting primarily voting as a Jew. “Of course, we don’t want an anti-Semite in the White House, but we’re voting as Americans first,” she said.

Other Jewish regional or district chairs of volunteer committees for Bush include Steve Kass, Phil Kurzner, Michael Schneider, Phyllis Cheng, Noel Anenberg and Sue Schreiber, according to Strom.

Also active for Bush is Century City attorney Donald Etra, who said he has been a personal friend of Bush for decades.

“I trust the man,” said Etra. “He has an outstanding record in Texas for handling race relations, much better than we have done in California. He’ll be very good for the country.”

Two high-profile and usually vocal community leaders preferred not to state their preferences on the record, for understandable reasons.

Entertainment lawyer Bruce Ramer said that given his position as national president of the American Jewish Committee, it would violate AJC’s policy if he took a political stand.

A similar restriction was cited by veteran Republican leader Osias (Ozzie) Goren, pointing to his non-partisan post as chairman of the Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation.

Who’s Backing Whom? Read More »

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

Jewish Journal

Hanging On

Nation/World Briefs

Will the Real Kabbalah Please Stand Up?

School Daze

The Big Leagues

The Way(s) We Vote Now

The Forest That Haunts Austrian Politics

Aviv Geffen

Stars, Bars and the Jewish Vote

Who’s Backing Whom?

Jewish Journal