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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

December 7, 2000

Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Intermarriage

The most recognized Jewish statistic in America, 52 percent intermarriage, has naturally turned into a reality with its own life and now, as Steve Cohen documented, has entered the canon of accepted Jewish attitudes (“Changing Attitudes,” Nov. 24).

Unfortunately, the source of this Jewish folk belief is a survey sample which could fit into a modest wedding hall, approximately 160 households who themselves were married between 1985 and 1990. If one would follow these happy couples, of the intermarried ones, at least half are likely divorced within 2 years. So, conservatively, the effective intermarriage rate is closer to 26 percent, if not less. That is why the 1990 National Jewish Population survey found that only 28 percent of born Jews are married to non-Jews (this includes born Jews who converted out of Judaism and were married to non-Jews).

In Los Angeles in 1979, the proportion of intermarried couples among all married couples with a Jewish partner was 20 percent, and 18 years later in 1997 it increased to only 23 percent. A 3 percent increase in intermarriage over 18 years means that, at least in Los Angeles, it may take us another 174 years to get to the magic 52 percent intermarried. As The Jewish Journal’s cover has pointed out, at least we’re mentally prepared for it.

Pini Herman, Ph.D.,Phillips and Herman Demographic Research

Intermarriage may very well be “no big deal,” but to those of us for whom Judaism is a vital, vibrant, integral part of our lives, intermarriage is still a very big deal.

A generation of Jews shipped their kids off to Hebrew school, dragged them to synagogue twice a year, lit a menorah and called that Judaism. Now, when faced with the fact that Judaism means nothing to their children except a bagel and lox on Sundays, they have no choice but to accept intermarriage. They created the climate for it.

Being a Jew in the 21st century is not easy. It requires commitment, vigilance, discipline and a strong belief that thousands of years of history, ethics, culture, religion and a covenant with G-d are important.

I believe unwaveringly that Jews should marry Jews. Not because there is anything wrong with non-Jews, or that we are better, but because Judaism will not survive otherwise. And that is a “big deal” to me.

Name withheld by request

We cannot hypocritically tell our children that all people are the children of God, but that we must interact only with “our own kind.” This is what the Reform idea of outreach is all about. Unless we wish to initiate an American version of the European shtetl, we must come to grips with this reality. If we cannot prevent our children from dating or marrying outside of Judaism, at least we can try to bring others into the fold. Barring this, we should at least be able to keep contact with our children so that we can enlighten our grandchildren as to our culture. The alternative is to alienate our children and future grandchildren. If this should occur, we would be bringing about our own destruction, perhaps in a more definite manner than any degree of intermarriage could accomplish.

Elliott M. Brumer , via e-mail

The Jewish Journal seems to think that intermarriage is not that big of a deal. To me, it is the greatest sin a Jew can do. When a man marries a non-Jewish woman, he stops the lineage of the Jewish nation right then and there. But the fault lies not with The Jewish Journal, media, synagogues, etc. It is the fault of the Jewish day schools for not accepting every Jewish child that comes to them for a Jewish education.Schools deny a child the right to have a strong Jewish identity when they deny that child a Jewish education. Wake up, Jewish day schools. Stop expecting children to be perfect and demanding that parents pay more money than they can afford.

Judy Blum Moadeb , via e-mail

Electoral College

James D. Besser, citing “some top Jewish thinkers,” arrives at the most illogical conclusion (“Is the Electoral College Good for Jews?” Nov. 24). He correctly points out that the Electoral College gives disproportionately strong power to the least populated states and that the Jews are still concentrated in the largest population centers. That means that the Electoral College guarantees that the balance of power is unfairly skewed in favor of the white Christian majority that dominates the least populated states.

Therefore, the most populated states and their largest population centers (New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami) would gain much more clout if the Electoral College were abolished completely, not the other way around as Besser, employing the most twisted logic imaginable, is trying to suggest. Eliminating the Electoral College would clearly be highly beneficial for the Jews and many other minorities because it would finally give equal weight to every vote regardless of a voter’s place of residence.

Mark Kashper, Sherman Oaks

Visit Israel

I’ve lived in Israel for over 35 years, and have seen and been part of every conceivable crisis this country has had to offer.

We are fighting the world media and a downside economy, and losing. We are struggling to make peace with our neighbors and we are losing. While our citizens and leaders are divided on how to live with our neighbors, we all agree that we need to see some friendly faces visiting this country. Tourism has dropped to nothing. Hotels are closing up and businesses are going bankrupt. It’s for these reasons that you must encourage your community to support Israel with a visit.

Jerome Stevenson, Israel

THE JEWISH JOURNAL welcomes letters from all readers. Letters should be no more than 250 words and we reserve the right to edit for space.Standard letters must include a signature, valid address and phone number.E-mail must contain a valid mailing address and phone number and should be senttoletters@jewishjournal.comPseudonyms and initials will not be used, but names will be withheld on request.Unsolicited manuscripts and other materials should include a self-addressed, stamped envelope inorder to be returned.

Letters Read More »

Marital Strife

Leave a Comment / Torah /

Every marriage has painful moments. Even the most loving marriages
do. This fact of life is confirmed by the opening of chapter 30.

There is only one marriage in the entirety of the Bible that is explicitly
described as being based on romantic love. This is the marriage of Jacob and
Rachel. Upon first sight of Rachel, Jacob is inspired to single-handedly
roll the capstone off the mouth of the well, so that he can provide water
for her flock. After that, he kisses her, and cries (what a real man!).

Jacob loved Rachel — so says Genesis 29:18. He loved her so much that the
seven years of labor he endured in order to win her hand “seemed to him but
a few days in his love for her.” But even such a marriage, the Torah
purposefully reveals, has its share of conflict and pain.

By the beginning of chapter 30, Rachel’s sister Leah has already borne four
children to Jacob, while Rachel has borne none. Anguished, pained and
tormented by the fear that Jacob would stop loving her (or worse), Rachel
finally cries out, “Give me children, Jacob. If not, I die.” To our alarm,
Jacob does not respond with the words of soothing reassurance that we would
anticipate. He responds instead with anger. “Do you think I am God?,” he
fires back. “It is God who has denied you fertility.”

We, the readers, are left to feel Rachel’s searing pain, as her beloved’s
words enter her heart as daggers. She had cried out for his love. She
received his wrath.

The Midrash imagines God’s reaction to Jacob’s words. “Thus you speak to the
oppressed?!” In a word, God is shocked.

Jacob was not a bad husband. He was a good husband. His love and concern for
Rachel persisted throughout their life together, and he never fully
recovered from the profound grief he felt at her untimely death. But this
was a bad moment — a really bad moment in a good marriage. But “come and
learn” from it, the Torah says. Ask and think.

Perhaps Jacob, though he chose to suffer in silence, was just as
worried and just as frustrated as Rachel. And the effect of her scream was
to release all the tension that until now he had kept penned up inside
himself. Or perhaps, after having actually worked not seven, but 14 years to
secure her hand, he was enraged by Rachel’s implicit threat to somehow bring
about her own death were she not to conceive. These explanations or others
we could imagine, can all open new windows of self-awareness for us. For
each of us has become inappropriately angry at a loved one.

And if we were to take just one step back from the details of Jacob and
Rachel’s particular situation, and try to extract a broader teaching from
it, that teaching would go to the core of what entering the covenant of
marriage means. The great Talmudic sage Rav, perhaps inspired by this story,
taught that the central mitzvah of marriage is that most famous of
mitzvot, the one that reads, “Love your friend as yourself.”

Rav understood that sometimes we forget why we got married to begin with.
There are times at which we mistakenly think that we got married primarily
in order to receive. Before marriage we had felt incomplete. We had
unsatisfied emotional needs. But now, we have someone who makes that all
better, who gives us what we lacked. Rav reminds us of our error. We did not
marry primarily in order to receive, but primarily in order to give. It was
the giving that generated the love. And in marrying the person who we loved
giving to, we acquired the best realistic chance we’d ever have to actually,
literally fulfill that mitzvah — to truly love someone else as ourselves.
When Rachel cried out in distress and despair, Jacob needed to be a giver.
He needed to be a lover. He needed to see it as the moment for which he had
married Rachel to begin with. It was the moment that he could give her what
no one else on earth could the reassurance that he loved her still and
forever. From his misstep, first Rav, and then we, are enlightened.

Every marriage has painful moments. The Torah wants us to know this. And
through giving we have more power than we think to ease the pain of those
moments. And the Torah wants us to know that too.

Yosef Kanefsky is rabbi of B’nai David Judea in Los Angeles.

Marital Strife Read More »

Soldiers and Students

Leave a Comment / Community /

Noam Zissman, 21, a convoy commander from Ra’anana, and Moran Kalinsky, 20, a deputy company commander from Holon, sit in their Israeli officers’ uniforms at Johnny Rockets on Melrose. They have just arrived in Los Angeles after more than a week of nonstop travel across the U.S., and they won’t even have time to order a plate of fries before they have to rush across town.

Moran and Noam are booked solid as speakers for Achva, a program sponsored by the Israeli consulate’s Office of Academic Affairs that each year brings two IDF officers to speak to Americans about life in Israel. The speakers for Achva (Hebrew for “brotherhood”) generally meet with university students, as the closeness in age of the Israeli soldiers and American students reinforces both similarities and differences. Given the violence in Israel, interest in this year’s program is especially high..

Zissman has firsthand experience with that violence. A member of the elite Givati Brigade, he led a demolition unit stationed in Netzarim, in the Gaza Strip, which was the first Israeli unit to come under fire in the current fighting. One of the men under Zissman’s command, David Biri, was killed in the ambush. Zissman was shot in the leg. When he speaks to American students, he tells them, “the media doesn’t always show the right picture. So much [is] ‘the brutal Israelis.’ I tell them when, under what circumstances, we open fire.”

Kalinsky agrees that the Achva program helps to correct misunderstandings. “A lot of questions to me have been about the thing going on in Israel, about the politics,” she says. “I don’t think in last year’s program they dealt with that. It’s very important, but not the first goal of this program. I want to tell people about life in Israel. Most people are very sympathetic to us; Jewish and not Jewish, they understand the media doesn’t show the right picture.”

Before they head off to UCLA, the Achva soldiers note how important American support is to their work. “I knew, but didn’t know how much, the Jews here are organized to support Israel,” says Kalinsky. Zissman adds, “As a soldier, the e-mail, the letters, the packages we receive, they mean a lot to us.”

Soldiers and Students Read More »

Help Wanted

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

American Jews are letting down Israel in the short run by staying away during the current unrest, says a top Progressive rabbi, and in the long run by not fighting harder for religious pluralism in the Jewish state.

“Many of you are showing your solidarity, but many others are canceling trips because they — or their children — worry about matters of physical safety,” Rabbi Uri Regev said during a recent three-week speaking tour of the United States and Canada.

“What kind of message does this send to us?” he asked. “Are we crazy to live in Israel? And why do devout Christians keep coming?”

Regev, a Tel Aviv-born rabbi and lawyer, is used to confrontational questions as executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the social justice arm of the Movement for Progressive (Reform) Judaism in Israel.

Some 50 speeches in nine American and Canadian cities did not diminish his intensity during an interview or his concern for Diaspora support in his fight against the “unholy alliance of religion and state” in Israel.Where is the Jewish outrage and grass-roots support, he asks, when Israel’s Orthodox establishment refuses to recognize Jews by choice, even when they are converted by modern Orthodox rabbis in America? Or when hundreds of thousands of Russian immigrants, whose right to leave the Soviet Union was championed by American Jewry, cannot get married in Israel?

However, Regev, a vigorous 49-year old advocate with a salt-and- pepper beard, didn’t come to America just to ask rhetorical questions.

One purpose was to recruit American lawyers for his newly formed Attorneys for Religious Freedom in Israel.

He visualizes the group as a kind of brain trust, bringing the rich experience of American civil rights and church-state litigation to bear on IRAC’s battles for religious pluralism in Israeli courts.

He cited one past instance, following the opening of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College campus in Jerusalem. The Religious Affairs Ministry denied HUC the educational subsidies given to yeshivot on the grounds that its student body consisted of both men and women.

IRAC took the case to court, and, drawing largely on the arguments used by American lawyers in their battles against the “separate but equal” doctrine, won its case.

Regev said he was encouraged by his meetings with American lawyers during his tour, including a well-attended session at the Harvard Club in Boston, and the response by attorneys, ranging in their religious outlooks from Reconstructionist to centrist Orthodox.

One of the American lawyers who has signed on is Lawrence Schulner of Camarillo. “Our group, which includes lawyers, legal scholars, jurists and judges, can be a valuable resource, because almost any kind of imaginable discrimination case has been litigated and adjudicated in American courts,” Schulner said.”Israel may not be able to completely separate religion and state, but there should at least be equality for all religions, including all streams of Judaism,” he added.

Regev is upbeat about the Reform movement’s progress in Israel, citing the presence of 25 congregations, 15 nursery schools, two major educational centers, and increasing impact on the curricula of public schools. The flagship synagogue, Beit Daniel in Tel Aviv, receives support from The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles under its Los Angeles-Tel Aviv Partnership program.

Regev himself discovered Reform Judaism in Los Angeles, of all places. “I grew up in a secular family in Tel Aviv and never knew that there was any other option than Orthodoxy,” he recalled.

“In 1967, when I was 16, I came to southern California as an exchange student for six months. I stayed at the home of Selma Schneider and her late husband Al, and went with them to Temple Solael in Canoga Park. I attended Camp Swig. It was all an eye-opening experience.”

Help Wanted Read More »

‘They’ve Got Their Heads In The Sand

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

“You can’t afford to sign up to a peace agreement that is all one-sided, meaning Israel takes all the risks,” observed retired U.S. Admiral Leon A. Edney to small groups of Jewish leaders in Beverly Hills last week. “We need to find a way to live in peace with the Arab world, but it’s not done with appeasement.”

Edney, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, argued that Israel and the United States must assess security risks carefully. “There is some sort of disconnect between [Palestinian Authority President Yasser] Arafat saying he wants peace, and his actions. It’s hard to tell what Mr. Arafat’s motivations are, but it’s hard to convince me his heart is in the right place after he released 25 of world’s worst terrorists from jail.”
Edney’s whirlwind visit was sponsored by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which brings together political and military leaders with Jewish community leaders to discuss Mideast events.

Edney met with select groups at several locations, putting forth the possibility that terrorism would increase both inside the United States and Israel.

“People aren’t thinking about security,” warned Edney, who served as a military officer for more than 37 years. “They’ve got their heads in the sand.”

Events such as the recent attack on the USS Cole and the bombing at the World Trade Center point to the dangers of violent Islamic radicalism in an era of rapid technological change, Edney said.

Edney also emphasized that Israel’s proximity to its enemies makes it extremely vulnerable.
“If Israel today could deal with her foreign policy with the absolute assurance that any missile, ballistic or cruise, that was set towards her, with any weapon, which could be nuclear, chemical, or biological, could be shot down that would increase her security immensely. She can’t do that now, but the Arrow system can do that better than any other system.”

Edney also touched upon the war being fought in the press.

“Terrorists blow up a bus because they know it will get a strong reaction, and the press will portray that strong reaction as Israel being the bully and the aggressor,” continued Edney. “It’s a totally false picture.”

While critical of the press in general for not applying standards of truthfulness, Edney singled out National Public Radio’s coverage of events as particularly biased. “NPR sometimes acts like an arm of the Palestinian Authority,” he said.

Edney’s visit is part of a major push by JINSA to raise its public profile. The organization recently placed ads in The New York Times and USA Today condemning the Palestinian Authority’s promotion of violence. The ads were signed by 44 retired military leaders and also ran in Israel’s major newspapers.
Edney is on JINSA’s advisory board of directors.

“The choices are limited, but Arafat and Hamas are not the only alternatives that Israel has,” concluded Edney.

‘They’ve Got Their Heads In The Sand Read More »

Jew-mo!

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

Woody Allen once said the shortest book ever written was the one on Jewish athletes. Well, here is the shortest chapter in that book: Since May 1987, Argentinean native Imach Marcello Solomon (a k a Hoshitango) has been wrestling his way up in the competitive sumo leagues in Japan.

Currently ranked eighth in the Juryo division, the 35-year-old, 368-pounder is the only Jewish sumo wrestler in the world. Wrestling out of the Michinoku-beya sumo house in Chiba, Japan, Hoshitago is among 26 other men in his division, vying for a spot in one of the upper four divisions. Hoshitango’s overall record as of July 2000 is 357 wins, 314 losses.

Receiving a base salary of 773,000 Yen ($7,000) and a virtually uncountable amount of perks, bonuses and endless amounts of food, he remains, like most athletes, very well paid.

Jew-mo! Read More »

Divine Fight

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

When Benjamin Andron, a second-degree black belt, bows in at the beginning of the martial arts class he teaches, he always keeps his eyes raised.

This subtle variation on the traditional Chinese and Japanese lowering of the eyes acknowledges that respect for God is supreme above all else.

It is one of several differences in approach that makes Tora Dojo a distinctly Jewish discipline.
Founded about 35 years ago by Yeshiva University professor Haim I. Sober, Tora Dojo takes the philosophy and structure of the martial arts and places it in a Jewish framework.

Andron, whose father, Michael, was the first Tora Dojo black belt and mother, Lillian, was the first female black belt, for the first time brings this discipline to Los Angeles, with classes taught at a Westside congregation.

Tora Dojo — Tora is the Japanese word for tiger — focuses and channels a person’s energy to help him or her achieve the centeredness that is necessary to handle blows, both internal and external, as they come in, Andron says.

“The moves are combative by nature. But while we might be fighting anti-Semitism or an enemy, we are also fighting the things that are holding us back, the veils that hide the divine spark within us,” says Andron, a 24-year-old who moved to L.A. from Florida to get into the movie business, possibly choreographing fight scenes.

Thus, when Andron begins his class, the rooting, or guided meditation, is grounded in kabbalistic methods.
That kind of concentration can be an asset not only when doing battle. Andron, who is modern Orthodox, says it helps him achieve a higher level of kavanah, concentration, during his daily prayers.

And always there is the knowledge that the discipline, founded in the post-Holocaust era, can make the Jewish people stronger.

“It may be difficult for Jews to stand tall and try to be an example for other nations to follow, with all the things that keep pushing us down,” Andron says. “The martial arts helps us fight from a centered position so we don’t get knocked over.”

Benjamin Andron teaches Tora Dojo classes Monday and Thursday evenings at B’nai David-Judea Congregation, 8906 W. Pico Blvd. Children’s classes (ages 7-11) 6-7 p.m., adults 7-9 p.m.

Michael Andron, one of only two seventh-degree black belts in Tora Dojo, will be holding an exhibition in forms, weapons, breaking and meditation Thursday, Dec. 14, 8 p.m., at B’nai David-Judea.

For information, call (310) 788-0045 or e-mail heng-chi-neng@mindspring.com,
www.kodesh.org.

Divine Fight Read More »

Searching Jewish L.A.

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

The Jewish Journal web site at www.jewishjournal.com now features a search engine that allows users to find articles that have appeared in past issues of the newspaper. The engine, pictured at right, can search by author, keyword, date or title.

To access the engine, click on the words “Search Our Site” as they appear on our homepage. Then, simply enter a search term, click enter, then click on the result. The full text of the article will appear, often along with the photo that accompanied the story in print.

The engine will search issues from 1998 to the present, as well as some from 1997. We are working to create an online library of every issue from the Journal’s inception, in 1985. Our goal is to make our search engine the most complete online database for Los Angeles Jewish community news and archival information.

Log on: it’s free, it’s fast, and it’s for you.

Searching Jewish L.A. Read More »

The Internet: Superhighway or Dating Tool?

Leave a Comment / Singles /

It used to be that you had to take a guy’s word for it. Now, all you need is a good search engine.

Among the Internet’s many uses, following your stocks, ordering books, doing research, you can also find out if that guy you met at a party last night really does direct the show “Felicity.”

That’s how it started for me, how the Information Superhighway became a dating tool. I just had to check one little fact that seemed fishy. The next thing I knew, I was reading reviews of this guy’s short film (excellent, I might add), learning where he went to school and that he did, indeed, direct episodic television.

I didn’t stop there. At the time, I was working at a job that subscribed to the Cadillac of search engines, a little slice of digital paradise called Lexis-Nexis. This is perhaps the most advanced search engine available, used by lawyers and reporters and boasting news stories from every source, large and small. It also tells you whether someone is involved in legal cases, owns property, holds licenses and just about everything else short of blood type.

That’s how I found out there was something fishy about my guy. From the looks of things, he seemed to co-own property. With his wife.

“Are you, by any chance, married?” I asked.

“Well, kind of,” he replied. And I was kind of out of there as fast as you can say, “Sorry, pal, I have the Internet and I know how to use it.”

Once I got a taste of the power of research, I couldn’t stop myself.

The next guy I dated was all over the Internet. I thought I hit pay dirt when I found a story from his college newspaper. He’d returned to give a speech about a famous playwright for whom he’d worked. That’s when I realized I could use the Internet to become his dream girl.

I found a way to mention that playwright in an e-mail, to drop other little facts, to make it seem, miraculously, that his soulmate had materialized.

I must say I felt like I had something of an unfair advantage, like I was peeking at his cards, sprinting on steroids, boxing with rocks in my gloves. Not that winning someone over is a competitive sport, but I felt like I was cheating, and that tends to take the fun out of any victory.

Ironically, it’s a lot like my diary from the past two years is readily available to anyone with a computer and a modicum of curiosity.

One guy I went out with did a little search and before long, he was sitting down to read about 200 articles I’d written. That man had a lot of free time. Before I even knew him, he had read obituaries I wrote for a newspaper when I was 19. He knew about my crazy family, ghetto neighborhood, dateless New Year’s Eves, desire for a cat and worst of all, the trail of broken relationships I’ve left in my wake. Just a few years ago, a guy would have to be a serious psycho to head on down to the library and start working those user-unfriendly microfiche for information; now, it seems almost remiss if he hasn’t at least Yahoo-d his way through a couple of my columns.

It’s a conundrum. I don’t want a guy to know everything about me when it’s too soon for him to see the warts, but I appreciate when someone cares enough to snoop the very best.

Obviously, I’m not the only Nosy Nellie on the Internet. I’ve gotten dozens of Spam e-mails selling me snoop software.

“Ready to know? Get the software that was banned in 50 states! Why? Because these secrets were never intended to reach your eyes … Get the facts on anyone!” said one ad.

These services offer to “find out secrets about your relatives, friends, enemies and everyone else!” Perhaps spam e-mailers get paid by the exclamation point.

Nothing quells anxiety like research. I can’t get enough of it. Before buying my car, I read all I could on the reliability of the Ford Taurus. Before buying my laptop, I pored over computer magazines. Why wouldn’t one put equal effort where one’s safety or at least dignity is at stake? The problem here is that my computer crashes constantly and my Taurus just went in for a $600 rehab. It seems that while research is satisfying, there are some things you just have to test drive.

The Internet: Superhighway or Dating Tool? Read More »

Edifice Rex

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

The official dedication of the Jewish Federation headquarters at 6505 Wilshire Blvd. this weekend marks a new era in the history of Jewish Los Angeles.

The structure near Wilshire’s intersection with San Vicente Boulevard is stunning. From a distance it appears as a gleaming tower of cool, aqua-colored glass. Up close, it greets drivers and pedestrians with a grove of mature olive trees and a facade of Jerusalem stone. The trees in their heavy planters are, of course, an ideal security barrier, but they are also inviting, symbolic, perfect.

There is every reason to be proud of this place, created on the frame of the old 6505, which was damaged by the Northridge earthquake. Of course 6505 will stand as the new headquarters of the Jewish Federation, but is this, then, the headquarters of Jewish L.A.?

The answer is, positively, unequivocally, maybe. Perhaps. It depends.

Inside the Federation’s Goldsmith Center, as 6505 has been renamed, you get a feeling the architects struggled to combine 21st century design with traditional notions of communal space, and they succeeded. Walk in, and you feel welcome, secure and impressed.

To your left is the Slavin Children’s Library, a nice message there. To your right is the Zimmer Children’s Discovery Place, a 10,000-square-foot state-of-the-art children’s museum that will serve as an ideal introduction for all children to the values of Jewish life and community. The Zimmer will open officially in February, but a walk-through in the company of museum founder and director Esther Netter brings it to life. The tens of thousands of children expected to visit the Zimmer will begin to understand not just what a community is, but how it is built and maintained.

The floors above the Zimmer will house the work spaces of the Jewish Federation staff and those of many of its affiliated agencies. (Full disclosure: the Federation is this paper’s largest client. The Journal is independently incorporated and managed, and our offices are, as they have always been, deep in the vibrant heart of Koreatown.) These areas are nice, but hardly exciting. It’s here that much of the heavy lifting of community building gets done. The Federation is the central planning, coordinating and fundraising body for 18 local and international agencies that provide humanitarian programs to Jews and non-Jews: food, clothes and legal services for the poor; job training and immigrant resettlement, relief services, child care, literacy and other programs. This is important labor, and it costs money. The Federation and its fundraising arm, the United Jewish Fund, are the second largest fundraising endeavor in Los Angeles, after the United Way. Raising money at that level is a corporate undertaking, and its headquarters need to reflect that.

A relative handful of men and women contributed the more than $20 million dollars necessary to renovate 6505. Some people have complained that the funds would be better spent elsewhere. The answer to these critics is simple: Don’t worry, there’s plenty more money out there. This is a very wealthy community whose capacity to fund worthy causes has yet to be really tapped. The Skirball Cultural Center, the Wiesenthal Center, the University of Judaism, Milken Community High School of Stephen S. Wise Temple, the Irmas Campus of Wilshire Boulevard Temple are just a few examples of entire campuses — and in some cases whole institutions — that came into being when people with a vision encountered people with deep concern — and the kind of checkbook that turns dreams into reality.

The 1994 earthquake that damaged 6505 also served as a reminder that a building, no matter how grand, can offer only the illusion of shelter and stability. Whether the Goldsmith Building will be the headquarters of the Jewish L.A. of the future depends on what vision emanates from within its striking exterior. The headquarters of L.A. Jewry will in the end be known by the good it does for others and the message its leaders articulate for the next generation.

Edifice Rex Read More »