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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

February 15, 2001

In Community We Trust

Leave a Comment / Finance /

Alex Mylyavsky had been in Los Angeles for three months as a refugee from Kiev, Ukraine. He was looking for a job, but it was a vicious cycle: he couldn’t get a job without experience, but how could he get experience without a job? His heavy Russian accent worked against him, and he had no contacts in the business world. In addition, Mylyavsky knew he needed further education to advance.

For Mylyavsky, help arrived in the form of loans from the Jewish Free Loan Association of Los Angeles (JFLA). Founded as the Hebrew Free Loan in 1904 by 10 local businessmen, the nonsectarian, nonprofit organization was based on the biblical imperative of interest-free lending to those in need: “If you lend money to My people, to the poor with you, you shall not be to them as a creditor” (Exodus 22:24). Although the nature of “need” has changed over the years, the concept behind JFLA remains the same.

“The Torah [exhorts] us to perform acts of lovingkindness,” said Evelyn Schecter, JFLA’s director of development. “Interest-free loans allow an individual to be independent and not have to receive charity. These are human beings who need help, and if they have the courage to walk through that door, we’re going to do whatever we can to get them the help they need.”

The actual process of obtaining a loan through JFLA is simple. It begins with an initial intake call to explain the purpose of the loan, the amount and other details. Next is a visit to JFLA’s offices to fill out paperwork and meet with a loan analyst. Some loans are restricted, while others serve a broad-based population — emergency loans of $1,500 to $2,000 are available to anyone, but student or adoption loans are available only to the Jewish community. All loans require one or two co-signers, with a portion of the principal to be paid back on a monthly basis. If the required criteria are met, the applicant may receive a loan within a week, sometimes sooner. The success of the program is borne out by a default rate of less than 1 percent.

Mylyavsky was lucky. Encouraged by his mentor and new employer, attorney Alan Rosen, Mylyavsky decided to enroll in a dual master’s program at Hebrew Union College’s School of Jewish Communal Service and USC’s School of Public Administration. His dream was to work with and for people and to learn more about what it meant to be a Jew.

The next step was securing a loan. Without one, graduate school was out of the question. Rosen agreed to co-sign the loan, and Mylyavsky met with Mark Meltzer, CEO and executive director of JFLA.

Mylyavsky said Meltzer played a key role in his loan saga. “It’s not only help to get a loan, it’s helping the individual to get financial stability, helping for this individual to be recognized by others by achieving successes,” he said. “In turn, by paying back the loan, this individual is making it possible for others who come later to receive a loan.”

“What we have at JFLA is a recycling of dollars,” Meltzer said. “The donors like it; the borrowers like it. The money is not lost in one gift; it keeps rotating around.”

After receiving his dual master’s in 1992, Mylyavsky worked with a company focused on international business. But in 1997, a friend approached him with an idea for a new business venture: state-sponsored adult day care. He knew by reading the brochure that this program was his dream come true: to give people the opportunity to be less isolated, to assist in the health of the elderly and to bring the immigrant community together.

The costs for this kind of program were enormous. For Mylyavsky to find the proper building and bring it up to code, not to mention hiring a large staff and providing transportation, would cost a fortune. But Mylyavsky didn’t hesitate to call JFLA.

In 1999, he received $20,000 — the largest amount for a business loan — to be paid off in monthly installments of $400 over 50 months. In June 1999, the building, newly renovated by Mylyavsky and his partners, was licensed by the state. By July, Universal Adult Day Health Care was open for business. The center was the first of its kind in the area, serving the immigrant populations of Marina del Rey, Santa Monica and Culver City.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I could have made it without JFLA,” Mylyavsky said, shaking his head. “In my case, without financial assistance, it was a ‘mission impossible.’ With JFLA, the mission became possible.”

For Ella Mirmova, also fromKiev, education wasn’t the issue. Few people could make clothes the way Mirmova could, but women from Beverly Hills didn’t like to travel to Hollywood, where she worked. The money she made from her home-based alteration business barely covered her expenses, and she had a mother and a young daughter to support. She worked as hard as she could, but it was never enough to move her business to where the customers were.

After four long years of working out of her home, a friend told Mirmova about JFLA’s business loans. The idea appealed to Mirmova; she would never take charity, but a loan was different.

“I was so sure I could do my business,” Mirmova recalled. “If I was not sure, I would never have tried to make a loan. I am a very responsible person. I had no other choice. I had no husband. I was a single mother. I did what I had to do.”

Mirmova was startled by JFLA’s quick response when it agreed to loan her $12,000.

Mirmova benefited from a concept called donor-directed loans that began in the early 1990s, part of an effort by Meltzer and his board of directors to modernize the agency. Instead of giving money generically, donors could choose programs that excited them or that they wished to create.

“What began to emerge was different donors who had specific interests,” Meltzer explained. “People like Newton Becker, who set up the Becker graduate student loan fund; the Baran family established the Baran small business loan fund because they were given a loan when their family first came here; David and Sylvia Weisz started the Entrepreneurial Loan Fund for young people who wanted to go into business with only an idea.” (See sidebar at left for list of donor-directed programs.)

The success of donor-directed funds during the past 10 years is reflected in the devoted core of supporters the organization enjoys. In addition, JFLA is a beneficiary of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the United Way, and various government grants. In 1999, public support and revenues amounted to $1.5 million dollars. Adding to that, recycled money — “accounts receivable” — coming back to the agency brought the total amount of loans going out into the community to $3.5 million out of total assets of $5 million, covering 1,200 loans that year. Today, JFLA’s assets stand at more than $7 million.

The history of Jewish Los Angeles unfolds in the minutes of the Hebrew Free Loan. In 1904, Eastern European Jews needed a jump-start on their new lives; loans were given for a sewing machine, a horse and cart, a paper route. By 1929, the organization was booming — loans had increased to a whopping $150 each. But by 1932, overwhelmed by the Depression, the agency had to whittle back loans to $75 for “those in dire need.”

In 1948, after years of takeover threats by larger social service agencies, the Hebrew Free Loan merged with the Jewish Loan and Housing Association to become the JFLA. Today, with a full-time staff of eight, the agency is considered one of the smallest Jewish social service agencies in town. In terms of scope,however, it’s one of the biggest: In its 97-year history, JFLA has reached out to more than 300,000 individuals and families.

Except for the amount, Mirmova’s loan was not so different from the first loans that came out of the Hebrew Free Loan at the beginning of the 20th century.

Mirmova put the money to work immediately, renting space in Beverly Hills, purchasing professional sewing machines, irons, hangers and equipment for steaming.

“I opened my business in a store with wide-open windows,” Mirmova said proudly. “Everyone from the street could see me work. The people started to come.”

As Mirmova is the first to point out, it wasn’t the windows that made her business successful. She has a talent for fitting few in the profession can match.

“I am the fitter here,” Mirmova said, putting the finishing touches on a vintage gown. “I work to make any figure better-looking. There’s no school for what I do — only emotion. I just feel it.”

Since Mirmova received her loan six years ago, she has paid it off, adding small donations to help others when she can. Her business, Modern Alterations in Beverly Hills, has grown tenfold. On any given day, her phone rings off the hook, and three to eight seamstresses work like whirling dervishes to fulfill a bursting schedule of alterations.

“JFLA gave me the chance, and I used this chance the best I could,” Mirmova said. “I will appreciate this for the rest of my life.”

If you had told Neal and Jennifer Geller eight years ago that they would be the first family to apply to the JFLA’s Lerner Family Adoption Loan program — started in 1997 to assist couples who wish to adopt or undergo fertility treatments — they would have looked at you as if you were a little crazy. It never crossed their minds that they would need help when it came to having children.

The Gellers, who married in 1993, were part of that privileged class of individuals who believed that by working hard and applying themselves, they could accomplish anything they set out to do. But they were left feeling frustrated and powerless after spending thousands on fertility treatments after they were unable to conceive. “All I wanted was to be a mom,” Jennifer said. “Was that too much to ask?”

After thousands of dollars out of pocket and two years of nonstop doctor’s appointments and treatments, the Gellers were emotionally and financially spent. They stopped the infertility roller coaster and decided to adopt.

“I felt better after making the decision. Now I had a purpose, a goal,” Jennifer said. “I’m a very goal-oriented person.”

The Gellers had started the process of adopting internationally when an adoption facilitator called them from New Mexico.

“I know you’re waiting for Romania,” the facilitator said, “but a young birth mother came to see me, and I have a really good feeling about her. Do you want me to submit your résumé?” (In private adoptions, birth mothers will read over several résumés to choose the parents.)

One morning the Gellers received a phone call from the facilitator saying she had someone who wanted to talk to them. Both Gellers sat at the speakerphone and listened while a squeaky young voice came over the receiver, “Hi,” she said. “Will you be the parents of my baby?” They didn’t hesitate: “Yes,” they both sobbed.

The Gellers were ecstatic, calling relatives and friends to tell them that they were going to be parents. But they would need money — and a lot of it — almost immediately. A typical domestic adoption through an agency or lawyer can cost between $15,000 and $20,000.

Jennifer called the National Adoption Agency in Washington, who referred them to a woman in Northern California. This woman had grants for adoptions, but only for Northern Californians. Then the woman asked if they were Jewish. She knew an agency in Los Angeles that gave loans to people for adoption.

The next day the Gellers called JFLA. Schecter was enthusiastic, and “the ball rolled.”

“It happened so fast we couldn’t believe it,” Jennifer said. “No doubt, if it wasn’t for JFLA, we would have had to take a second [mortgage] on our house.”

“It wasn’t like a bank,” Neal recalled. “They trusted us; here was somebody who cared.”

Six months after they brought their son Adam home from the hospital, Schecter invited them to the annual JFLA fundraiser dinner to talk about their experience. Admiring donors held baby Adam, who slept through the speeches like a perfect little gentleman. Since then, 14 other adoptions have taken place, including one by a gay couple, plus two in-vitro fertilizations, aided by JFLA’s adoption loan program.

“Before, I was outside the club,” Jennifer said. “Now, I feel like a mom. We worship the ground Adam walks on. We wanted him so much!”

The Gellers are up for another first with the agency. If a private adoption comes through, they will be the first couple to apply to JFLA for a second adoption loan.

“What is need?” Meltzer asked, responding to a common misperception that Jewish people don’t need financial aid. “People come in with a need. It could be an Orthodox couple making good money but they have six children and one of them needs braces. … They wouldn’t be able to get help from any other source. Or a child with potential wants to go to a private college, but his parents are already paying for two other children. They may be well off but can’t afford the $35,000 a year for tuition. Why shouldn’t that child realize his potential?”

“We fool ourselves into thinking Jews today don’t need money,” Schecter added. “There is always the working poor, struggling from paycheck to paycheck, especially among the immigrant populations. By offering loans without interest, individuals maintain their dignity. They repay their loans, and they have accomplished something, and we have accomplished something.”

Reflecting on this accomplishment, Schecter displayed a stack of thank-you letters the organization receives yearly for their services. Some are typed, but a majority are written on special stationery in meticulous handwriting.

“Without JFLA, I have no idea how I would have gotten through all the hardships I’ve faced in the last two years,” one loan recipient confided. “Thank you for being there to catch me when I fell.”

JFLA Loans

The JFLA administers a growing number of donor-directed loan funds. Four officers handle these loans: Danielle Walsmith, undergraduate and graduate student loans and Israel experience; Evelyn Schecter, camp loans, adoption, and women and children in crisis; Sion Abrams, emergency loans; and Mark Meltzer, business loans.

Max Anna Baran Small Business Loan Fund

Weisz Family Entrepreneurial Loan fund

Sylvia David I.A. Fine Business Fund

Edward Meltzer Student Loan Fund for Undergraduate Students

Newton D. Rochelle F. Becker Graduate Student Loan Fund

Morris Doberne Campership Experience Loan Fund

Women Children in Crisis Loan fund

Lerner Family Adoption Assistance Fund

Kopelove Family Short-Term Home Healthcare Loan Fund

Iranian Emigre Loan Fund

Soviet Emigre Loan Fund

Rosslyn Katherine Gaines Loan Fund for Hearing ;Impaired Students

Newton D. Rochelle F. Becker Israel Experience Loan Fund

James Spada Loan fund for Persons with AIDS

ORT Student Loan Fund

Autistic Developmentally Disabled Childrens Loan Fund

The Jewish Free Loan Association is located in the Jewish Federation Building at 6505 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 715, Los Angeles, CA 90048. For more information on obtaining a loan, call (323) 761-8830 or (818) 464-3331.

In Community We Trust Read More »

Shining Examples

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A physician might be queen of the operating room, or a lawyer king of the courtroom, but put them up on a bimah, and without some serious background, they’ll feel fumbling, foreign and clueless.

And if that’s the case, chances are they’ll avoid feeling stupid by avoiding the bimah, or the synagogue, altogether.

The Board of Rabbis of Southern California and a coalition of synagogues and community organizations have just received a $50,000 grant to help remedy that through an adult education program called Lomed L.A.

"Many people stay away from synagogues or are less involved because they don’t have the basic vocabulary of Jewish life," said Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis. "The goal of this program is to instill within adult Jews basic Jewish literacy."

Lomed L.A. involves synagogues of all denominations, the L.A. campus of Hebrew Union College, and The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and its Council on Jewish Life, all under the leadership of the Board of Rabbis, also a Federation agency. The program will train knowledgeable lay leaders to teach classes or tutor on practical subjects, such as how to follow along for Friday night services, how to chant the Torah portion or how to lead an entire service. Classes, set to start next fall, will be held six nights a week all over the city.

"I can’t think of anything more important to do as a community," Diamond said. "One of the greatest precepts we have is the mitzvah of talmud Torah — continuous Jewish learning."

Participating synagogues include Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Valley Beth Shalom, Adat Ari El, Beth Jacob Congregation, B’nai David-Judea, Kehillat Ma’arav, Congregation Ner Tamid of the South Bay, Kehillat Israel, Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, Sinai Temple, Stephen S. Wise Temple, Temple Aliyah, Temple Beth Am and Temple Judea.

Lomed L.A. is one component of Kochav: The L.A. Jewish Living Network, the program that received the grant from Synagogue Transformation and Renewal (STAR).

The other component is No’am, roughly translated as serenity, a networking and idea-sharing consortium which will allow synagogue leaders to share creative and successful approaches to spirituality, healing, prayers and celebration. Still in the early stages of formation, No’am may include a resource directory, retreats and seminars for rabbis.

"There are some incredibly cutting-edge projects going on in L.A., and we want to begin sharing that with each other and other people," Diamond said. The Board of Rabbis will work with Jewish Family Services on No’am, and Diamond hopes it will encourage synagogues to "take a holistic approach to Jewish life."

Kochav, Hebrew for star, is one of 25 new efforts to benefit from STAR, a new $18-million philanthropy that hopes to help synagogues reach — and positively impact — more American Jews.

STAR is allocating a total of $565,750 this year, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. All the grant recipients must raise matching funds, and all the programs funded are collaborative efforts among more than one stream of Judaism.

The philanthropy, one of several new initiatives focusing on synagogue transformation, was founded in December 1999 by mega-donors Charles Schusterman, Michael Steinhardt and Edgar Bronfman.

Although Schusterman died in late December and the organization has not yet found an executive director, STAR is nonetheless moving forward with the projects it announced at a special gathering in September.

Metivta: A Center for Contemplative Judaism, based in West L.A., received a $10,000 grant to expand its Spirituality Institute. The institute will now offer to lay people what it has already offered to rabbis worldwide: a venue for understanding and following their own spiritual paths, which they can then pursue in their own synagogues.

"Metivta is all about not only encouraging people to discover and deepen their own spiritual practice but about trying to make the Jewish world have more open arms to people who are out there trying to follow spiritual practices," said Judith Gordon, Metivta’s executive director.

The STAR grant will allow Metivta to develop a program for lay leaders from Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills and Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades. A group of about 30 will meet for seminars and discussion about once a month.

"Hopefully these participants will be able to be agents of change within their own synagogues and provide a setting that will make spiritual practice easier for other congregants," Gordon said, adding that the Institute is eager to enroll other synagogues in the program.

Along with participating in both Kochav and the Spirituality Institute, Kehillat Israel, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Pacific Palisades, received a $10,000 grant to explore the possibility of creating JewishAliveandAmerican.com, a virtual synagogue capable of embracing individuals at all stages of Jewish learning through creative uses of emerging technologies.

In addition to awarding grants, STAR also is meeting with leaders of the religious movements to determine whether their synagogues need consultants to help them improve, and if so, how best to train them.

STAR is also bringing together a group of 25 rabbis to design something called Star Tech, Internet-based professional development courses for rabbis.

So far 170 rabbis have expressed interest in participating, said Sanford Cardin, executive director of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

For both the consultants and the Internet project, STAR will work closely with the religious movements and not compete with services they already offer, Cardin said.

That approach may in part be an effort to overcome some bad feelings that surfaced at STAR’s summit for a hand-picked group of 150 Jewish leaders, when Steinhardt ruffled feathers with a declaration that the Reform and Conservative movements were "accidents of history."

At that event several rabbis and communal professionals privately bristled at the philanthropists’ blunt criticisms of synagogues but nonetheless expressed hope that the new initiative would draw needed attention and funds to congregational life.

At the time, several critics questioned whether STAR’s grants would draw many proposals, since it allowed only a month for applicants to put such proposals together, required that all projects involve more than one stream of Judaism and obligated them to pull together matching funds in five weeks.

The matching fund requirement is to ensure that the projects have local support, Cardin said.

In the end, with 140 proposals requesting almost $7 million, STAR appears to have suffered no shortage of interest.

Some grantees said STAR’s requirement that different organizations collaborate on projects has already spurred them to develop better relationships with other organizations.

STAR is a remedy for the fact that "in the synagogue world, we don’t generally think about what’s going on in the next community," Diamond said. STAR has "helped us think outside the box" and "given us added incentive to think this way," he added.

Other beneficiaries in the recent round of grants are:

The SAGE Leadership Institute in Boston, a multisynagogue effort to provide a yearlong educational and leadership training for Jews in their 20’s;

Lilmode V’Laasote, a communal learning cooperative in which newly ordained Orthodox rabbis conduct workshops and serve as educational resources to the Jewish community of Boca Raton, Fla.; and

Panim Online, a demonstration project in Seattle to create customized Web sites for four synagogues, train congregational staff to maintain and market their sites and launch at least three mini-courses on the Internet.

Shining Examples Read More »

When Violence Hits Home

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The Jewish community in the West Valley and surrounding areas was rocked Feb. 5 by the murder of William and Bertha Lasky, former members of Temple Solael. The elderly couple died in their West Hills home from cuts and stab wounds, victims of an unknown intruder.

According to Detective David Lambkin of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), firefighters responded to a call from a monitored fire alarm system in the house and found the bodies in the master bedroom and several areas of the house set ablaze. The time of the couple’s death and other details of the crime have not been released, and autopsy results have been sealed pending further investigation. Lambkin said that police have established that Bertha went shopping on Sunday and that family members had been in contact with her in the early afternoon.

Lambkin said the motive for the killings is still unknown.

“We have no evidence at this point that it was a follow-home [murder],” the detective said. “They didn’t drive a Lexus or Mercedes like you expect to find in a follow-home, but we have not ruled it out. Right now, without any witnesses we’re processing the forensic evidence and following up on anyone connected with the family who might be able to identify a suspect.”

The Lasky family declined to speak to The Journal, but sources at Temple Solael confirmed the couple had been early members of the congregation. According to reports in the Los Angeles Times and Daily News, William, 76, a retired cable company executive, and Bertha, 73, a docent at the Getty Center Museum, were longtime residents of the area and had just returned from a cruise.

Although the Laskys’ murder was unusual for their quiet West Valley neighborhood, more than 7,000 people were victims of violent crime in the Valley just in the past year, according to the LAPD. Counseling victims of violent crime is crucial to recovery, said Sally Weber, director of Jewish community programs for Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles (JFS).

“Research shows that people who participate in crisis counseling within the first six months of a trauma fare much better than people who don’t,” Weber said.

Weber said a number of JFS staff workers have been trained to do crisis intervention for both natural disasters and human-generated trauma and have handled cases from the shootings at the North Valley Jewish Community Centers to bank robbery victims. Counselors meet with victims as well as families and co-workers in order to help them process their reactions and return to a normal degree of function.

“There are a very normal set of reactions to trauma that, while people are experiencing them, can make you feel pretty crazy,” Weber said. “Common reactions include a profound sense that the world is completely out of control and that there is nothing you can do to protect yourself or your loved ones; flashbacks, which can be very intense, and a fear of being out in similar places or exposed to similar dangers. It can also affect relationships with family members and friends who did not experience the crime. People are often very supportive in the beginning, but then they don’t understand why [the victim’s reaction] is going on so long. That’s why outside help is so important.”

Weber said counseling is especially critical for crime victims who have experienced other crimes in the past, for example survivors of the Holocaust.

“The problem with trauma is it rips the scab off previous traumas,” she said.

In addition to the JFS, Weber said she often refers crime victims to Compassionate Friends, a support group for the families of those who have lost a child, or the Victim-Witness Assistance Program, a division of the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office that provides comprehensive services to victims and witnesses of crime, including counseling referrals and help for victims to collect court-ordered restitution from perpetrators.

For many Jewish families, who tend to live in more affluent areas of the Valley, crimes like the Lasky murder are so rare that safety is taken for granted. Lambkin warns that this can be a serious mistake.

“It’s unfortunate, but at this point we’re telling people to be cautious of any strange vehicles or persons in neighborhood,” Lambkin said. “Do not open the door for anyone unless you know who they are. Also, be aware of who is around you when you are out and about. I know it’s hard in this day and age because people are so preoccupied or talking on their cell phones, but you really need to be observant.”

Police are asking anyone with information about the murder of William and Bertha Lasky to contact Detective David Lambkin or Detective Tim Marcia at (213) 485-2921.

If you or anyone you know has been the victim of crime and needs help, please contact one of the following agencies:

Jewish Family Services (323) 761-8800

Victim-Witness Assistance Program of the L.A. City Attorney (213) 485-6976

Compassionate Friends (877) 969-0010

When Violence Hits Home Read More »

Scott Svonkin: Pulling Together

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To find out where Scott Svonkin gets his Jewish commitment, you needn’t search beyond his own parents.

"When I was in the third grade," he recalled, "my mother once made potato latkes for Chanukah. She didn’t make it for just my class, she made thousands of them for the entire school."

Even at that early age, Svonkin realized what a grand gesture this was. His mother not only made the few Jewish kids at his school feel included but promoted some Jewish enlightenment among the children of other cultures.

In fact, it was growing up in a multiethnic neighborhood in Monterey Park, as well as in a large family that included an adopted sister of Latino origin, that drove home the importance of being able to work with other communities. This lesson has carried him far in his municipal politics career, which has included stints working in Mayor Tom Bradley’s office and with Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, daughter of L.A.’s first Latino politician, Rep. Edward R. Roybal. Svonkin, 35, was recently appointed chief of staff for 42nd Assembly District Rep. Paul Koretz.

Svonkin started his political career as an adolescent, with his heavy involvement in his Alhambra temple’s chapter of United Synagogue Youth. Since those days, he has spent as much time devoted to Jewish organizations as he has to public office. As a result, he has a very opinionated view on where young adults stand in today’s Jewish community.

"We’re judged by how much money we can give, not what kind of ideas we have," Svonkin said. "Many Jewish organizations don’t make it clear that it’s not about money. They are not meeting their core needs."

Svonkin believes that these organizations need to ensure that every event they mount has a pronounced Jewish component, or else, he said, "There’s no difference between, say, an ACCESS, and what non-Jewish youth organizations do."

Svonkin has participated on a couple of United Jewish Committee-sponsored Washington conferences. He observed that despite positive aspects, such as networking opportunities, they provided "little preparation beforehand and no real follow-up."

"The Federation does a great job cultivating donors," Svonkin added. "If only they could invest that same energy in cultivating young leaders."

Svonkin thinks that organizations should eschew some of the fundraiser parties and cocktails in favor of some real hands-on programs that speak to a young person’s chief concerns: establishing career and personal life. He envisions a mentoring program where an established donor or staff member would possibly meet with a prospective young leader once a month, "giving advice, making a phone call on someone’s behalf. Let them into the leadership posts and let them make decisions."

"The Federation has contacts in every industry," Svonkin said. "They should get donors to mentor people. Sure, not all of them would have the time, but I think a lot of them would do it."

Involvement is the key, Svonkin believes. "I gave the most to the Federation when I was most involved," he said. "I think that’s how most people are involved. Especially a young professional with limited financial resources."

As the newly installed public policy chairman of B’nai B’rith Southern California, Svonkin has undertaken the challenge of helping an organization with a solid past — which includes spawning the Anti-Defamation League, the Hillel system, and City of Hope — overcome a shaky future. As with many Jewish organizations, young membership at B’nai B’rith has eroded over the years. Svonkin, along with a core group of young peers, hopes "to help rejuvenate the organization for the next decade. I think we can turn things around."

Svonkin, through his B’nai B’rith efforts, wants to address important issues faced by the Jewish community in an honest way.

One person Svonkin looks up to is Earl Grantiz, the man who appointed him to the Valley Jewish Community Relations Committee role he held from 1997-99. Grantiz, now president of Jewish Home for the Aging, worked hard to involve rival agencies and organizations.

Svonkin himself is embarking on the next chapter in his life as his activity beyond his job, his B’nai B’rith work, and the occasional workshop he teaches at Valley College take a back seat to fatherhood. Svonkin and wife Jennifer Shapiro — they married in 1999 after Svonkin’s dramatic proposal via a Sunset Boulevard billboard — just welcomed their first child, Rose Alise.

Svonkin has achieved his professional and personal goals. But though his ties with the Jewish community are strong, he wants to remain accessible and help inspire and motivate others.

"The reality is just as we have a limited number of donor dollars, we have a limited number of leaders," Svonkin said. "We need to pull together."

Scott Svonkin: Pulling Together Read More »

Slackers No More

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What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy? The answer to the old joke — "I don’t know and I don’t care" — has often been used to define young Americans of the past decade. It was tres en vogue to depict the rising generation of 20- and 30-somethings as disconnected, disillusioned and disenfranchised.

Today young Jewish professionals often are diagnosed with that same detached attitude toward their faith and their connection to Jewish culture. So goes the stereotype, along with the concern for the future of the Jewish community.

Yet on closer examination, it is evident that a growing number of young Jews are committed to preserving links with their heritage and with each other. The Journal recently spoke with several of these individuals to find out not only how they remain connected to their Jewish roots, but why.

Hailing from a cross-section of the community’s diverse subcultures, these individuals may not be the most powerful or influential young Jews in L.A., but they may be among the most important. They comprise the builders of L.A.’s future Jewish community, using their abilities to participate rather than complain, to take good ideas and turn them into great actions. They have distilled and implemented Jewish values to help improve the world around them and around us. Ultimately, it boils down to the two sentiments absent from their philosophical lexicons: "I don’t know" and "I don’t care."

Lee Broekman: Activist and Dignitary

The most rewarding aspect of her public service has been the ability to make things happen, said Lee Broekman, the field deputy in Los Angeles Councilman Michael Feuer’s office. She recently helped coordinate the project to create a playground at Griffith Park for children with disabilities, the first of its kind on the West Coast. "The kids were so thrilled," she said, recalling the grand opening of the park.

Feuer told The Journal that Broekman is exceptional. "I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with an array of outstanding young people in my career, but Lee certainly stands out as someone whose future has no bounds," Feuer said. "Lee wants to connect her academic training and her deep concern for people. For her, politics is something that has a reason. I see her with the potential to be a leader far beyond our city."

It’s hard to believe that the Israeli-born activist is only 24 years old, given her deliriously dense résumé. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Judaism’s (UJ) College of Arts and Sciences in 1998, receiving UJ’s Academic Excellence Award, and delivered the commencement speech on the topic of Jewish leadership.

Her push toward public life came in college, when she was galvanized by the impact made by her school newspaper, Catalyst. She became the paper’s junior-class representative, then editor-in-chief. "People weren’t just complaining but posing solutions to the issues they were not satisfied with," she recalled. Right after college, Broekman married schoolmate Jeremy Broekman (now director of the UJ’s Alumni Affairs).

After graduation, Broekman accepted a fellowship with the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs. As a Coro Fellow, she immersed herself in the world of public policy.

At Coro, Broekman found herself surrounded by people "like me — idealistic, if not to change the world, to change their world. I went from thinking everyone’s apathetic to everyone’s involved," she said.

Within a year, she interned at the California Employment Development Department, the Federal National Mortgage Association, the L.A. County Federation of Labor, the AFL-CIO, L.A. Department of Water & Power, L.A. Urban Funders, the Department of Health Services, Los Angeles Unified School District and KCET’s "Life & Times."

Broekman got into local politics in 1999, working on election campaigns such as Phil Angelides’ bid for state treasurer and for County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. But it was her college experience as resident adviser that led her into her present position in Feuer’s office. "It prepared me for dealing with quality of life issues. Here it’s on a grander scale," she said.

Broekman continues to give back to the institutions that shaped her world view. She serves as a member of Coro’s Alumni Association Board of Directors and at the UJ, she sits on the Alumni Steering Committee, lectures on journalism and is the Catalyst’s faculty advisor. She also joined the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Young Leaders Committee after working with the ADL’s Salvin Leadership Development Institute, for which she has spoken on everything from hate crimes to Mideast affairs.

"A lot of my other friends are not as participatory," Broekman observed. "I used to get discouraged about it, but I understand that not everyone has the desire to be involved. I don’t think it’s that they necessarily don’t care about the world around them. Some are not intellectually stimulated enough to do something about it," she said.

Broekman’s philosophy is simple: "To educate others, you first must educate yourself. That’s what I feel right now — that I’m laying the groundwork to inform people on issues of local, national, and international concern."

Come June, Broekman will serve as ambassador of goodwill in the Netherlands. As a Rotary Foundation ambassadorial scholar, Broekman will pursue graduate coursework in international relations and political economy at the University of Amsterdam. She will lecture on American policy to Dutch audiences and, in turn, will report on Holland upon her return to the U.S.

Born in Ramat Gan, Broekman spent her first decade in Israel before she moved to California in 1986. She grew up in the Valley in "a pretty traditional" Yemenite Moroccan family, she said, adding that both sets of grandparents were "very Orthodox."

It was while working on her graduation commencement address that Broekman contemplated the meaning of Jewish leadership. "I take my values, both cultural and traditional, and bring them into the world at large," she said. "I wasn’t necessarily going to be a leader in the Jewish community, but a Jewish leader nevertheless. I cannot divorce the two. It’s so part of who I am."

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The Mayoral Debates, Take 40

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We’ve elected an “Education President.” Now, get ready to choose the “Education Mayor.”

That seemed to be the prospect facing a packed chapel of some 300 souls braving one of the winter’s worst storms this week to attend Debate No. 40-something by five of the city’s six leading mayoral candidates. Here at the Westside campus of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, voters found themselves treated to an amusing spectacle as each mayoral wannabe declared improved education as his single highest priority.

Never mind, as moderator Val Zavala of KCET’s “Life & Times Tonight” correctly observed, that this was not a run for the school board and that the mayor of Los Angeles has about as much direct jurisdiction over the school system as the current governor of Texas.

I am, admittedly, a newcomer to the ongoing debates between the hopefuls. Up front, what immediately struck me as odd among the strong Jewish and Latino candidates was the apparent absence of any overt ethnic or religious divisions that exist within the city. In fact, there was more chemistry between some of the Latino and Jewish candidates than among the Jewsih candidates themselves. (State Controller Kathleen Connell, also a candidate, was unable to attend due to the weather).

That’s not to say there were no subtle protestations of Jewish identity, fealty or affiliation. Former State Assembly speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who isn’t Jewish, indicated that he enjoyed a certain facility with Yiddish — or enough, anyway, to know when his fellow candidates were having him on. Nor was he loath, on repeated occasions, to laud the efforts of a former Jewish public school teacher, or to extol those halcyon days of his childhood, when Jews, blacks and Latinos broke bread while working on Boyle Heights coops.

Businessman Steve Soboroff may have trumped him on this count, although opinion was divided on whether he managed this by impugning the light rail nexus running through the Orthodox community along Chandler Boulevard in North Hollywood or by letting folks know that he was married in Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

Once the matter of bona fides had been settled, it once more became apparent, as Rabbi Harvey Fields declared in his introduction, that this year’s run of candidates was probably of the finest fettle in city history. Whoever wins, he said, “this city will have a superb mayor.”

Rep. Xavier Becerra presented well as a soft-spoken young husband and father who, when not walking two of his three children to their neighborhood school — how he does this from Washington I’m still not clear — displayed a propensity for scoring bucks in the nation’s capital. For Becerra, whose parents immigrated from Mexico, it’s payback time — payback for a city he says gave him and his parents the chance to work hard, educate their children and take their places as productive members of their community. I found his quiet self-effacement quite the antidote to Villaraigosa, who though slick, charming and eager, proved a tad too quick on the “I” word — as in “I did this and I did that” — for my own comfort.

Looking a tad tired and perhaps even distracted, L.A. City Attorney James K. Hahn nevertheless mustered sufficient energy to recall his early days as a surfer which, he indicated, afforded him with the requisite concern for imperiled wetlands and other at-risk segments of the environment. Still a favorite in this race, Hahn professed his continued predilection for extreme sports, though now it manifests as boxing bouts with the purveyors of guns and tobacco. Hahn declared that if elected, he will put sufficient after-school programs in place to keep enough kids off the streets. He will do this to make room, presumably, for the thousand new cops he said he intends to hire.

Soboroff offered up an “I love this city and I want this job” as if it were ample, indeed, self-evident reason for running? — I could occasionally close my eyes and picture Soboroff in denim overalls, a Mr. Fix-it eager to show the unwashed pols of City Hall how to run the city efficiently without running up the budget.

A self-proclaimed pragmatist, Soboroff projects a certain bulldozer-in-button-down quality. He was certainly the only candidate to offer quick answers to pressing problems. The city, he said, is like the newspaper dispenser that grabbed his son’s quarters at LAX the other day. When something doesn’t work, he says, “you kick it.”

On the other end of the spectrum — or at least two seats down — sat L.A. City Councilman Joel Wachs, who did not seem like the kind of guy who goes around kicking newspaper boxes. This is not to say he lacks passion — if anything, he may be the most deeply impassioned of the candidates. His speeches start slowly, but even with 90 seconds at his disposal he can work himself into an impressive froth, railing over the misguided values and priorities that result in misspent money and misused public goodwill.

Having read about some of the personal animus in the relations of some of the candidates, I was heartened, for the most part, by the civil, even warm tenor of their interactions. It was neat, for instance, to see Villaraigosa and Wachs confer and fuss in one corner, while Soboroff and Wachs kept the long knives sheathed even as they dared each other to a public swap of respective real estate contributors.

Of course, a total of 80 planned appearances is quite a stretch for any dog-and-pony show, never mind a round-robin debate. Halfway through their debate schedule, the candidates still find much to bicker about, even as they all seem to agree on such big-ticket priorities as opposing secessionist tendencies (however justified) and preserving the police department while the chief struggles to implement consent decree reforms.

Heady stuff, and none of it likely to get tired in the time remaining before the April election and June runoff. Whoever wins, moreover, we’ll be left with some primo candidates for the next LAUSD elections.

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Circuit

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The Wizard of “Oz” Honored

Okay, eggheads, Contemporary Comedy 101 is in session. Pop quiz: Who’s the funniest comedian to have appeared on HBO — Dennis Miller or Bill Maher? If your answer to this trick question was Home Box Office CEO Jeff Bewkes, proceed to the head of the class.

Bewkes, an HBO heavyweight since 1979, helped turn cable into blue-chip television with Emmy-sweeping programs such as “The Sopranos,” “Sex and the City” and “Oz.” Accepting his Sherrill C. Corwin Human Relations Award from the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Bewkes, of Danish origin, had guests coughing up their salmon soufflés with laughter. Bewkes’s speech — a facetious recollection of his childhood as a disadvantaged non-Jew struggling to break into Hollywood — outshined the aforementioned comedians, who were both in attendance to honor the HBO exec so crucial to their careers.

After remarks by National AJC President Bruce Ramer; local AJC President Richard Volpert; Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, Western Regional director; and an introduction by CNN Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield, Bewkes began, “When I was very young, I told my parents that I wanted to be in the entertainment industry. That’s when they sat me down and broke it to me that we were not Jewish.”

But Bewkes caught on fast: “By the time I was 12, I was sending back soup in restaurants.”

Throughout his speech, Bewkes milked laughs from this premise, before appreciatively accepting his award. Offstage, talent at the Regent Beverly Wilshire gala included “Matrix” star Laurence Fishburne and Don Cheadle, featured in “Traffic”

My Sunday Walk

Woke up Sunday morning and thought I’d stroll over to Beth Jacob Congregation, where the Orthodox Union was holding a Israel solidarity gathering.

En route to the temple I saw people planting trees along Pico Boulevard as part of a Tu B’Shevat project co-sponsored by TreePeople, ACCESS and B’nai David-Judea Congregation. One participant reported that 55 trees had been planted by midday, and more were on the way.

Rally for Israel

Despite weather wobbling on the brink of a rainstorm, the lot next to Beth Jacob was filled with supporters to hear Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center rally support for Israel. (See Jewish Journal 2/2/01 for a powerful opinion piece by Dr. Larry Eisenberg, “Together for Israel” announcing the event). Hier railed against media hypocrisy, particularly the press’s frequent allusions to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s alleged war crimes in Lebanon while failing to invoke Yasser Arafat’s outrageous, well-documented record of terrorism.

“There is a word for this,” cried Hier. “Hypocrisy!”

In closing, Hier said, “Thank God we have an Israel, and let us never take her for granted.”

A young man followed, reading the names of Jewish victims of Middle East violence since October. In retrospect, the weather was appropriately somber.

Israeli Consul General Yuval Rotem, Congressman Henry Waxman, and mayoral candidate Steven Soboroff also took to the stage; and Cantor Avshalom Katz led the crowd in singing. Spotted among the largely Orthodox crowd: Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles President John Fishel and local filmmaker David Notowitz.

My Sunday Drive

Drove down Olympic to the Westside Jewish Community Center (WJCC) on Sunday afternoon, where a community-wide reception was being held for architect Michael Lehrer, chosen to redesign the timeworn WJCC campus (Lehrer’s firm, Lehrer and Associates, recently worked on Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach). Lehrer and his colleagues were on hand to discuss the long-simmering renovation of the WJCC. Head of Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles Lee Smith, WJCC Director Michelle Labgold and WJCC Board President Paula Pearlman spoke about the fundraising drive, which will push to raise the readjusted goal figure of $7 million (up from the original $4 million estimate). In the center of the auditorium, Lehrer led about 50 people in attendance (including WJCC members and board members) through a model of the present building, explaining some “notions” he is kicking around, including tentative plans to restore the center’s dormant cafe and elevator shaft, utilize the roof space and the alleyway, create office terraces, and refresh the landscaping. An architectural blueprint hung on the wall envisioning an addition that has been dubbed “the black box” — the S. Mark Taper Foundation Center for Creative Arts. Parking accessibility and security were prime concerns on the minds of both Lehrer and JCC members, which included Charlie Mesnick, the center’s first director.

The master planning phase of the renovation is projected to end in three months. At that point, pending continued architectural exploration of the present building and city approvals, design of the new center may take anywhere from six months to a year.

“For us, this is a distinguished commission,” said Lehrer, who will conduct a March 25 community workshop to help coordinate efforts with WJCC members.

A Shoe Business for Show Business

Celebrities can now sleep at night knowing that their favorite Manhattan-based shoe designer, Stuart Weitzman, has opened up shop in their own backyard — at the Rodeo Collection.

Plenty of chic Weitzman wear was on display at his Beverly Hills opening, where a proud Weitzman was all smiles, in the company of wife Jane Weitzman and 20-something daughters Elizabeth and Rachael. Creativity evidently runs in the Weitzman family. Elizabeth writes movie reviews for Marie Claire. And Rachael, under the name Rachael Sage, has performed folk pop alongside Suzanne Vega and Chrissie Hynde on the Lilith Fair tour. Her new album, “Painting of a Painting,” hits stores March 20. She told us her mother is her great Jewish role model, and “Better From Mars,” a song about the Middle East, resulted from an AIPAC function her mother took her to.

At the opening, the Weitzmans were greeted by Hillel Silverman, New York rabbi and father of actor Jonathan Silverman.

Randy Fuhrman’s Creative Concept special event planners scored big with an epic cake shaped like a giant red pump.

“You know what this cake is made of?” Weitzman quizzed the Circuit with a smirk. “Tirami-shoe!”

Until Trent Lott takes over the role of Mr. Big on “Sex and the City,” I am…

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Afterlife Rabbi

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When Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz delivered a sermon about survival of the soul to a group of rabbis in Los Angeles in 1996, a charged discussion followed, and an Orthodox rabbi remarked that he had never before heard rabbis publicly discuss the supernatural.

Bring up a topic like the afterlife or reincarnation, and many Jews become uneasy or dismissive or just think these matters are not very Jewish. Even those very interested don’t talk much about these concepts outside of intimate circles.

A 46-year-old self-described mainstream rabbi who leads a Conservative congregation in Orange County, Spitz takes literally the words of Rabbi Yaakov from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): “The world is like a passageway before the world to come.”

As a congregational rabbi, Spitz is around death and dying more than most people. In fact, Spitz postponed a press interview at the very last minute when he was called to the hospital room of a dying congregant. The man died before he arrived, but the rabbi was able to comfort the family as he reassured them that his soul would survive, that death was a door to another realm.

“Does the Soul Survive?” grew out of that 1996 sermon on the subject of immortality of the soul, which took place after a series of unrelated events inspired him to reexamine his own skepticism. “Once I became more curious about survival of the soul,” he writes, “the stories of others continued to come to me as if drawn by a magnet.” But he notes that for him, the belief in the survival of the soul now feels almost like second nature, like “something that’s been part of me rather than something novel.”

The son of Holocaust survivors, Spitz grew up hearing stories about pious relatives he never met. His mother, the daughter of a Chassidic family, spoke of being in this world “only for a visit”; she regularly had conversations with God as she drove to work.

Whenever he speaks about the book and autographs copies, Spitz reports that every other person he encounters has a personal story to relate, and he understands that they feel affirmed in being able to reveal their experiences to a rabbi. He sees patterns in the stories, is sometimes wary but always respectful.

“All in all,” he says, “I do believe.”

His own pastoral work has evolved as he has shifted away from being a skeptic. Now, when he counsels families facing end-of-life decisions, he emphasizes the soul as well as Jewish law and ethics. He also encourages living this life with greater gratitude, generosity and responsibility, in view of an afterlife.

Spitz is now writing a sequel, addressing a key question raised in this book, about how people can live their lives now so as to cultivate their souls before departing to the next realm.

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Books: Beyond Mortality

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“Does the Soul Survive? A Jewish Journey to Belief in Afterlife, Past Lives & Living with Purpose”
By Rabbi Elie Kaplan Spitz
Jewish Lights Publishing, $21.95

For those who struggle with the concept of God, the primary issue is God’s existence. Once established, one’s belief in the divine informs other areas, such as the afterlife, reincarnation and resurrection. Those important, speculative themes are where Rabbi Elie Spitz’s book “Does The Soul Survive?” begins. Written in a style that is both informative and mainstream, Spitz’s debut is well worth reading.

The book begins with the author’s own admission to being skeptical of documented reports of near-death experiences (NDEs), past-life regressions, mediums and the like. A lawyer by training and an ordained Conservative rabbi by calling, Spitz likens himself to a juror in a courtroom listening to the evidence being presented, evidence gathered largely from his congregants’ own anecdotal experiences. As the material unfolds, the case mounts. Turning the pages, Spitz shares his unease, his amazement and ultimately his conclusion, or as he refers to it, “from denial to acceptance.” The whole time, he shares his personal journey, one that leads him to a significant theological reevaluation, conveyed openly and honestly in the first person.

While Spitz’s voice is heard throughout the book, the material is presented in a way that a reader can explore a given idea or concept in greater depth, due largely to the end notes, which are extensive and most helpful, as are the appendix and the bibliography.

Any rabbi would be the first to admit that helping someone search for deeper meaning and purpose in life is exceedingly difficult. If that were not difficult enough, the challenge is compounded further by the fact that we will all die. To that end, this book can provide much needed comfort, hope and inspiration.

Believing there is something beyond our existence on earth is spiritually pleasing. While we are made in God’s image, a basic Jewish belief is that our behavior can alter our lives after death. If we all shared the same destiny after death, God’s universal moral standard would be severely compromised. To think that a truly decent person has the same fate as an evil one is morally problematic.

In fairness, Spitz does not suggest that struggling to find meaning in NDEs, or undergoing hypnosis so as to engage in a past-life regression, or visiting a medium is for the purpose of providing comfort to those who are bereaved. Admittedly, that may be the byproduct of such effort, but it is not its primary function. Most importantly, the book addresses the hard basic question: Are our souls eternal?

To answer that question, Spitz relies heavily on the research done by psychiatrist Brian Weiss. Spitz quotes extensively from Weiss and refers to Weiss’ book “Many Lives, Many Masters” as the seminal text that helped him through his initial skepticism. Spitz uses his rabbinic knowledge, thoughtfully bringing pertinent Jewish sources to the subject. The Torah gives only cryptic references to the afterlife, largely because it developed out of an Egyptian civilization that both worshiped and glorified the dead. From a literary standpoint, the Torah is as much a polemic, reacting to its indigenous surroundings, as it is a proactive, independent moral code.

But we Jews, no matter our affiliation, are not biblical Jews. We are heirs to the rabbinic tradition, and it there that Spitz helps us understand what positions the rabbis held regarding afterlife, reincarnation, resurrection, and so on. Take, for example, the use of mediums. Most informed Jews would assume our tradition absolutely forbids them. After all, the Torah explicitly states: “There shall not be found among you … a consulter with familiar spirits … or a necromancer” (Deut. 18:10-11). By incorporating quotes from the Bible, kabbalistic and legal opinion, along with Chassidic stories, Spitz shows how Judaism validates their use if they are not manipulated to foretell the future or as an idolatrous act.

What is most agreeable about “Does the Soul Survive?” is the author’s perspective. At last, persuaded by the evidence, the verdict is in: the soul survives, it is eternal. Lest you think, however, you can now add past-life encounters to genetics and environment as rationalization or justification for one’s behavior, think again. As a responsible and committed spokesman for Judaism, Spitz sums up his feelings best when he writes, “Our challenge is to live now in simplicity, with gratitude to God, and with a willingness to act generously and responsibly. … Our past has meaning and our future has relevance only if we live with awareness and compassion in the present moment.”

Often most meaningful is the process or stages that lead one through life. With wisdom and perspective gained, the journey can be more important than the sought-after goal. While it is human to speculate on what happens to us upon our demise and to grapple with what occurred prior to our birth, we must remember that life lived here and now is the blessing of our being. To his great credit, Spitz reminds us of that, all the while challenging us to think about issues that otherwise we might not have thought tenable.

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Strange Attraction

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Actress Marcia Gay Harden is a Texan, non-Jewish and the daughter of a U.S. Navy captain who regularly moved his family around the world. So she has had to do her homework, she says, to portray the tough-yet-vulnerable Jewish characters that have won her wide acclaim.

Harden studied 1920s anti-Semitism to play Verna, the two-timing Jewish moll to Irish mobsters in the Coen brothers’ stylized gangster film "Miller’s Crossing." She read up on the laws of shiva to portray Norma Berman, the eccentric daughter of a Jewish widow in Beeban Kidron’s "Used People." She learned a thing or two about psychology to become the Jewish shrink Susan Silverman in A&E’s "Small Vices." And she perused biographies to prepare for the role that just gleaned her a supporting actress nomination: the Jewish American painter Lee Krasner, the long-suffering wife of Abstract Expressionist giant Jackson Pollock (Ed Harris) in the biopic "Pollock."

"Lee and Jackson were the proverbial case of opposites attracting," Harden said during a Journal interview at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles.

Verbal, matter-of-fact Krasner (1908-1984) was the daughter of Orthodox Jewish Russian immigrants, raised in Brooklyn and the tenements of the Lower East Side. Like many Jews of her generation, she rejected the old ways to become an American, specifically a New York Jewish intellectual committed to everything radical and modern. Pollock (1912-1956), conversely, was a taciturn, troubled young man from Wyoming: alcoholic, manic-depressive, prone to frightening rages and swaggering boasts.

They met when Krasner saw his work in a 1941 exhibition, charged up the stairs of his Greenwich Village apartment building and knocked on his door.

"The fact that Lee was Jewish was part of the draw for Jackson," said actor-director-producer Harris, who bears an eerie resemblance to Pollock and is an Oscar nominee for best actor. "He found that exotic, provocative and mysterious."

Harden ("Space Cowboys," "Meet Joe Black") regards Krasner as provocative. "She was a woman who broke all the rules," says the actress, who earned a Tony nomination for playing a valium-addicted housewife in "Angels in America." "She was a Jewish woman making her way in a world of WASPy, macho artists. She was not a virgin when she married Pollock, which was unusual at the time. She was smart, tenacious, a survivor. I identify with her struggle, her desire to find her own voice."

For Harden, that struggle began in childhood, when she strove to upstage her sisters as the third of five children growing up in Japan, Germany, Greece, California and Maryland.

A Greek-language production of "Medea" at the Parthenon inspired her to become a performer, though the New York theater scene proved less than welcoming. Harden subsisted on a series of menial jobs and was once left with only $1 to survive the weekend. A casting director handed her a plastic surgeon’s business card and said, "You have what I call the flaring-nostril look, and unless you get it fixed, you will never work." One winter morning, Harden was so distraught that a homeless person comforted her on the street.

Her big break came after she enrolled in the graduate theater program at New York University, when she was cast as "Lucy, the Fat Pig" in a zany production of "The Comedy of Errors." All she did was oink and jiggle her huge, padded bum and her beanbag breasts, which were the object of several sight gags. But that was enough to catch the eye of Joel and Ethan Coen’s casting director, who was looking for an actress to play the Jewish vamp, Verna, in "Miller’s Crossing."

Before long, the starving artist, dolled up in smoky dark make-up, was sitting across the table from the Coens, salivating over a Lucullan smorgasborg of pastries and cold cuts. Fortunately, the assertive Verna took over: "I just grabbed a cookie, lit up a cigarette and did the audition," she said. "I was uncharacteristically aggressive, which must have been the character speaking."

The Coens had just one question for the actress: "Is it a problem for you playing a Jewish character?" "I shook my head, ‘No," and that was exactly the answer they needed," Harden said.

Nevertheless, she felt she needed to educate herself by reading about the kind of anti-Semitism her character would have faced during the Prohibition era. "I wanted to understand what made Verna feel like an outcast at the time, which informed all of her choices," Harden said.

To prepare for "Pollock," the actress studied painting ("I suck," she said), listened to audio tapes of Krasner and interviewed her surviving friends and relatives. "Her nephew told me, ‘If you want to play Lee Krasner, start screaming from the minute you walk into the door until the minute you leave,’" Harden said.

In fact, Krasner focused much of her creative energy on keeping Pollock together and furthering his career. But by 1956, the tension in their marriage had escalated; Pollock often stormed off to a tavern or to the arms of his mistress. Their rows became so violent that Harden braced herself to receive an anti-Semitic slur in the film’s most explosive scene.

"I debated a lot as to whether to leave that in the movie," Harris confided to a Journal reporter. "But to me, it was symbolic of just how low the relationship had deteriorated and of the despair and anger Pollock was feeling about himself. He wasn’t anti-Semitic, but the slur was just the most heinous, ugly thing he could think of to say."

Harris helped Harden understand why Krasner put her own career on hold to nurture an abusive husband: "Lee realized this man had the potential to create art that she loved," he told The Journal. "But she also had her own problems as a woman. Her relationships with her brother and a previous lover were quite masochistic. Her brother would degrade her and talk down to her, and she followed him around like a puppy dog."

It wasn’t until after Pollock’s 1956 death in a car wreck that Krasner began one of the most productive periods of her career, Harden noted. Her impressive body of work was showcased in a 1999 retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, but the actress was glad she saw the exhibit after she had completed "Pollock." "The work in the show was confident and big and bold, and that is not the person Krasner was while Pollock was alive," she explained. "My Lee Krasner was much more insecure. The woman who could create those big, bold paintings hadn’t come into being yet."

"Pollock" opens today in Los Angeles.

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