fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

April 19, 2001

Torah Truths

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Judaism /

Defending a rabbi in the 21 century for saying the Exodus story isn’t factual is like defending him for saying the earth isn’t flat. It’s neither new nor shocking to most of us that the earth is round or that the Torah isn’t a history book dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. Spinoza questioned the Divine authorship of Torah 350 years ago. For 150 years or more, Reform rabbis, and more recently Conservative rabbis, have decided to call it like we (and every non-Orthodox Jewish scholar I am aware of) see it when it comes to the veracity of Torah. True, most Reform rabbis have rejected a literal understanding of Torah out loud and most Conservative rabbis have done it in a whisper; but believe me, you could fit every non-Orthodox rabbi in the world who believes the Torah is entirely factual on the head of a pin and still have plenty of room left over.

Not long ago, in the midst of a rainstorm snuggled beneath the comforter at bedtime, I told the story of Noah and the flood to my red-haired, blue-eyed, freckle-faced daughter Hannah. Toward the end, she looked at me said; “You don’t think Noah really got all those animals on a boat do you Daddy?” At that moment I had a choice to either be an apologist for the text or to help Hannah understand the distinction between facts and truths.

“Hannah, there are things called facts and things called truths and they are not the same. I don’t believe the facts of the story about Noah or the facts in most of the other stories in the Torah, but that’s not what Torah is about. Torah is about truths. Is it a fact that Noah got all those animals on the ark? Of course not. But it’s true that we are responsible for the creatures on this planet — the destiny of creation is in our hands. That’s what the story is about — a truth, not a set of facts.”

I could have simply told Hannah “Of course Noah got all those animals on the ark. If it’s in the Torah it’s a fact?” It might even have worked, for a while. But a literal interpretation of Torah would set her up sooner or later for a terrible fall. Sooner or later Hannah would learn that the Torah says slavery is acceptable, rebellious children and homosexuals should be stoned to death, the sick shunned and placed outside the camp, concubinage embraced and more. Without the latitude to understand these things metaphorically or at least as human conceptions in and of a certain time, Hannah would be morally bound to reject Torah and therefore Judaism. Worse still, Hannah would be justified in asking me if the God of the Torah is good and powerful enough to split the sea and rescue our ancestors why didn’t God save her best friend’s mommy from cancer? Were I a fundamentalist Jew sticking to the facts of suffering as Torah portrays them I would have to tell Hannah that yes, God is good, but her friend’s mommy must have sinned and therefore deserves what’s coming to her and so does everyone else to whom sorrow comes.

Sure, subjectivity, myth and interpretation are dangerous because they open the door to putting all of Torah and all of Judaism up for grabs. But a fundamentalist reading of Torah is even more dangerous for if fundamentalism is the only way it is a way most Jews will rightfully reject.

To those who say, “How dare we question the veracity of the Exodus story, especially on Passover?” I say, how dare we not question it, especially on a holiday devoted to questions? How dare we not search for meaning that runs deeper than the mere facts of how many crossed over what to get to where? It is the truths of the Exodus story, not its facts, which are essential to Passover and it is the truths in Torah, not its facts, which are essential to being a Jew.

There’s a story about a man who was on his hands and knees searching beneath a street lamp for his car keys. “Where do you last remember having them?” asks a passerby, hoping to help.

“Back there in the alley,”

“So why are you looking under the street lamp?” the bystander wants to know.

“Because the light’s better here,” answered the searcher.

Truth is rarely discovered where it’s easiest to find. I admire any rabbi willing to leads us in the right direction.

A Message From David Wolpe

It’s a well-known fact that millions of Jews have doubts about the literal veracity of Bible stories.
On April 8, 9 and 15, I gave a series of sermons that emphasized the following point: faith is independent of doubt. I wanted the millions of doubting Jews to know that they can still be faithful Jews and live a life of meaning and mitzvahs.

If scholarly books are written that question the literal veracity of the Bible stories, it does not help our credibility to pretend that they don’t exist. By discussing these books we maintain the Jewish tradition of sustaining faith by seeking truth.

Ignoring the books, on the other hand, conveys a message of fear: we are afraid that science will shake our faith. I don’t believe it should, and that is why I spoke out.

This has always been the official position of the Conservative movement, and I believe it is an important message that can help millions of doubting Jews stay connected to their faith. If you would like cassette tapes of my talks, please contact my office at (310) 481-3318.

Torah Truths Read More »

Was FDR to Blame?

Leave a Comment / Other Voices /

Scholars will doubtless continue to debate Franklin Roosevelt’s actions — and inaction — regarding the Holocaust. What did he know? When did he know it? Didn’t he care, or did he really believe that the best and quickest way to help the Jews was, as he repeatedly argued, to win the war?

Sidney Zion is no scholar. To say of Roosevelt that he was actually a "co-conspirator in the murder of the Jews " is to stretch the RICO act beyond imagination. A co-conspirator presumably knows the intent of the conspiracy and shares in that intent. For so serious an indictment, Zion provides not a scintilla of evidence. He would have us believe that Roosevelt "blocked every effort to rescue Europe’s Jewry," yet the only overt act of which he accuses Roosevelt is his refusal to permit the refugees aboard the St. Louis to enter America — this in 1939, before there was any evidence that genocide was Hitler’s plan. (In fact, as far as the evidence goes, there was not yet a plan for genocide.) In retrospect, we can understand the gravity of the St. Louis episode; imagine what Hitler learned from it. But then everything is more clear in retrospect than in prospect. Before there was the Holocaust, a holocaust was unthinkable. (Even now, it is scarcely imaginable.)

What, then, can Zion have had in mind? Is his animus toward the New Deal, or toward Stephen S. Wise, so profound as to warrant his bloated language regarding Roosevelt’s role in the Holocaust? Or is his entire screed an effort to set up his last sentences, where he has it that it was Ben Hecht who "got FDR to create the War Refugee Board?" Ben Hecht has long been a darling of the right, the more so of those who shared Menachem Begin’s views on how to craft a Jewish state in Palestine rather than David Ben-Gurion’s. But the War Refugee Board, created only in January 1944, was principally the product of Henry Morgenthau Jr.’s intervention. Morgenthau, then secretary of the Treasury, belatedly was made aware of the perfidy of the State Department, and especially of the assistant secretary of state, Breckenridge Long. It was Long, plainly an anti-Semite, who blocked every effort to help in the rescue of Europe’s Jews. In this ongoing effort, he was well-aided by the British, whose official policy noted with concern "the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews" as proposed by the rescue plans. On Dec. 20, 1943, Morgenthau ordered the preparation of a background paper that would detail State’s behavior with respect to the Jews. On Jan. 16, 1944, he met with the president and presented him with the paper; on Jan. 22, the president established the War Refugee Board.

Could Roosevelt have done more? Of course. Could he have acted earlier? Surely. Was he a "co-conspirator?" There is no evidence whatever to support this claim. In interpreting history, one is generally best advised to seek the simplest explanation that fits the known facts. Given the unprecedented enormity of what was happening to the Jews, given the attitudes of our closest allies, the British, given the subversion by the State Department of even modest rescue plans, given very considerable anti-Semitism in this country, and given the entirely plausible argument that winning the war quickly would put an end to the genocide, it is difficult in the extreme — nay, more than difficult, downright noxious — to suggest that Roosevelt was actively complicit in the slaughter.

Whatever Zion’s motives, his problem, it seems to me, is that he sees no ground between those he defines as "Roosevelt apologists," historians and others who claim there was nothing more Roosevelt could have done, and his own dramatically different view. But the obvious middle ground is that Roosevelt, like every president before and after, was imperfect. He did not know everything we know, his plate was full, and so forth. Our contemporary judgment issues more in sorrow that in outrage. And Sidney Zion might also want to consider this: Absent Roosevelt, would America have entered the war at all?

Was FDR to Blame? Read More »

FDR’s Holocaust of Inaction

Leave a Comment / Other Voices /

FDR died on April 12, 1945. I was 11 years old and heard the news on the radio in the bird store, where I was buying seed for my little canary.

I ran home to tell Grandma. She broke into tears. “What will happen to the Jews?” she said.

They were dead, the Six Million, but the war in Europe wasn’t over and we didn’t know. When the truth came out a few months later, the story was that “nobody knew.”

It took about 20 years before we began to know that Roosevelt knew everything from day one about Hitler’s extermination of the Jews of Europe — and did nothing to stop it.

Now the documentation is at hand: not only did FDR know, he was a co-conspirator in the murder of the Jews. I believe it’s the duty of both Jews and gentiles to bring Roosevelt’s role in the Holocaust to the fore, to the knowledge of the world.

The Jews of America, during those horrific years of the extermination, turned their faces away from truth and delivered their votes and their love to FDR.

The Jewish establishment, led by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, was in thrall to Roosevelt, who continually warned them that if they made a fuss over the murders of their people, they would encourage anti-Semitism in America.

They thus picked up FDR’s mantra — the only way to save the Jews was to win the war.

We won the war, and the Jews were dead. But this lie remains the line of the Roosevelt apologists, led by Arthur Schlesinger, FDR’s chief historian. Schlesinger and his acolytes dismiss the idea that Roosevelt could have saved Jews; they say that nothing could have been done.

The first answer is this: If you never tried, how do you know? Of course, it’s worse than that. Not only did FDR refuse to try, he blocked every effort to rescue Europe’s Jewry.

Roosevelt, in 1939, turned back the St. Louis from our shores, sending the Jews aboard the ship back to almost certain death in Germany. This cold-blooded rejection, on the eve of World War II, set the pattern for FDR’s policy that eventually locked the Six Million into Hitler’s ovens.

Once the Germans saw that America didn’t give a damn, they understood that the Jews were the world’s garbage.

Roosevelt knew in 1941 of the Final Solution. He kept this to himself. When Rabbi Wise was informed by the Jewish underground, Roosevelt told him to keep quiet.

In November 1942, the State Department “unleashed” Wise, allowing him to say that 2 million Jews had been killed in Europe. This story appeared in a few paragraphs in The New York Times on page 10, surrounded by ads for Thanksgiving turkeys.

Imagine if FDR had delivered this news in a press conference or in one of his famous fireside chats? The world press would have made it page one. Hitler would have known we were serious.

But the message then — and throughout the war — was that the Jews of Europe were expendable. Save them and where will they go? Better to let them die than let them come to America or, God forbid, Palestine, where Arab oil meant more than those unwanted Jews.

Ben Hecht, the great Hollywood screenwriter, refused to buy this decision. He led a group called the Emergency Committee to Save the Jews of Europe. He ran ads in the newspapers; he called Roosevelt “the humanitarian who snubbed a massacre.”

In 1944, Hecht and his committee got FDR to create the War Refugee Board. It saved 250,000 Jews. Roosevelt was running for a fourth term then. If he had done this earlier, millions of Jews could have lived.

On the anniversary of FDR’s death, I think of those dead Jews and of my bubbe, who cried the day I told her that he was gone.

FDR’s Holocaust of Inaction Read More »

A ‘New Germany’

Leave a Comment / Travel /

Jewish leaders in the United States and in Israel are encouraging an openness to what they describe as a “new Germany,” a place they say is truly atoning for its past. At the very least, they argue, it deserves the support of the American Jewish community because of its strong support of Israel and its embrace of Jewish immigrants who are streaming in at the rate of 10,000 per year.

This year marks the opening of a major Holocaust memorial in Berlin and a surge of travel to Germany by a half-dozen American Jewish groups venturing over a threshold that had seemed forbidden for decades.

The groups going to Germany include some of the most powerful in the United States. The North American Boards of Rabbis held its annual conference there this year, as did the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, both for the first time.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice president for the Conference of Presidents, said he was pleasantly surprised at the Germany he encountered, a place where there are visible shows of contrition for the past, whether on TV, in school or in public memorials.

United Jewish Communities (UJC) is preparing a second mission to the country in October, anticipating that some 150 major donors will jump at the opportunity to meet German officials, connect with the world’s fastest-growing Jewish community and learn about the German-Israel alliance.

Mission co-chair Steve Selig, past president of Atlanta’s Jewish Federation and chairman of the human services and social policy section of UJC, said he goes with definite emotional baggage.

“When I see an elderly person driving a taxi cab, I’m going to wonder what they did in their earlier life,” Selig said. “But I’m going to try and go with an open mind and an open heart.”

Advising Caution

Other Jewish groups are also going. San Francisco’s Jewish Federation sponsored a mission to Germany this month, and next month a group of 15 graduate students from Brandeis University will experience living in Germany for 10 days, courtesy of the German government.

“The trip isn’t designed to open minds, but certain myths do fall away once you’re exposed to a living reality,” said Brandeis professor Eugene Sheppard, one of two faculty members who’ll accompany the students.

A colleague, Jonathan Sarna, chairman of the university’s Near Eastern and Judaic studies department, added that the trip also isn’t designed to whitewash the past “but to help people understand that 50 years later there’s a very different Germany than the one they read about in the ’30s and ’40s.”

Germany’s Jewish population now numbers about 100,000, two-thirds of them Russians who are taking advantage of economic incentives offered by the German government. Immigration to Germany is restricted to ethnic Germans and Jews, who are entitled to subsidies, language training and other social benefits.

Rebuilding internally and through tourism is fine, as long as Jews remain vigilant, said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, an organization dedicated to teaching the Holocaust and fighting on behalf of victims of racism, terrorism, genocide and anti-Semitism.

Israel is dependent on Germany as a trading partner and is its only champion in the European Union. American Jews, Hier said, need to be the voice that reminds Germany of its responsibility to world Jewry and to Israel “so that Germany doesn’t become one of the other European countries that can turn on a dime. The greatest thing Americans can do is make sure that Israel remains a free, strong Jewish state.”

But Hier worries about frequent right-wing and neo-Nazi incidents in Germany. And he is cynical about Germany’s attempts to memorialize the Holocaust. The United States built a major museum in Washington and cities throughout the country have opened their own permanent exhibits, whereas Germany’s new Holocaust memorial will be a static monument that can be apprehended only through the eyes, he said.

“I don’t doubt it’ll be very impressive,” Hier said, “but that’s not the way you educate a younger generation, by taking them to a place of silence and telling them to look at stones. What can one learn from the Washington Monument or Lincoln Memorial? I don’t think we get the essence of their lives through the memorials.”

Inside View

Having lived and worked in Stuttgart for nearly a year, Cyril Benitah isn’t quite sure what to think. The 30-year-old engineer moved from metro Detroit to Germany to continue working for DaimlerChrysler.

“On the outside, it seems to be open and friendly, but I’ve got some anxiety about letting anyone know about my background,” he said.

While they were sitting in a cafe one afternoon, an American friend who has lived in Germany for nearly 20 years as an army officer blurted out that hatred for Jews is still alive and well in Germany, an unbidden remark that threw Benitah off balance.

Of course, anti-Semitism is alive in Germany, a fact that even Berlin-based Eugene DuBow, senior advisor with the American Jewish Committee, concedes.

“I’m old enough to have lived through the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel,” said DuBow, 68. “I dealt with my prejudices by meeting people, many of whom were horrified by what went on in their country, what their parents and grandparents had done or not done. After a while, you find out that people are just people. Is there anti-Semitism there? Yes, but there are good people, too.”

A ‘New Germany’ Read More »

Jews, Food and Holiness

Leave a Comment / Torah /

I suppose it would be nearly impossible to go through an entire week of Passover for Reconstructionist and Reform Jews, not to mention eight days for the rest of you, without the profound experience in practically every pore of your body that Jewish identity is inextricably bound up with food.

As a rabbi, naturally I have heard all the jokes about Jews and food and the negative characterization of minimalist Jewish identity referred to as "gastronomic Judaism." But this past week of Passover, coupled with this week’s Torah portion, has reminded me that when it comes to Jews and food, it’s really no laughing matter.

When Antiochus, the Syrian-Greek antagonist of the Chanukah story, wanted to dramatize his disdain for Judaism and Jewish civilization and his insistence on the rejection of Jewish law

and custom, he did so by bringing swine into the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem.

Sixteen hundred years later, when the grand inquisitors of the Spanish Inquisition wanted to test the Christian loyalty of their recent converts from Judaism (after which they often would kill them anyway), the very first test of authentic Jewish rejection would be to watch them eat swine. Four hundred years after that, when the Nazis would recreate the horrors of the Inquisition with a thousand times the evil, they would force-feed pork to rabbis for sport before cutting off their beards and then shooting them.

Yes, food and Jews have gone together at least for the past 3,000 years, ever since this week’s Torah portion detailed the do’s and don’ts of biblical dietary laws and laid down for all time the famous restrictions on what Jews can and can’t eat if they want to be true to the biblical mitzvot.

Earlier this week, I was sitting with a girl who will soon celebrate her bat mitzvah. As we spoke about this week’s portion, she told me that her family isn’t kosher, and she hasn’t grown up keeping Jewish dietary laws. And then she told me in the most matter-of-fact way possible, as if it were so obvious and self-evident that it was almost not worth mentioning, "Of course we don’t eat bread during Passover, and our form of kosher is not to eat food that we know came from places were workers are oppressed."

Judaism and food — a contemporary reinvention of food as a vehicle for holiness in everyday life. What is now called "eco-kosher" represents what Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan would have called "transvaluing," the powerful notion in this week’s portion that the food we eat provides a daily opportunity to experience the holiness inherent in our relationship with sustenance.

Just as every time we bless food before we eat, it transforms the very act of eating into a moment of encountering the sacred, each time we make conscious choices of what we eat based on Jewish values, we elevate food and the act of eating to the level of holiness.

Many of my friends have chosen to become vegetarians as an organic form of keeping kosher. Others stop eating meat as a way of giving kavod (respect) to the earth itself. Others do so because they recognize that if we took 25 percent of the grain used to feed animals intended for slaughter and redirect it to people, we would be able to feed the entire world with ease.

Any of these choices can be made as a way to reflect the sacredness with which the Torah bids us approach food and sustenance in this week’s portion. Some of us will choose to follow the laws of kashrut as they are written in the Torah. Others follow the later rabbinic interpretations of the biblical laws. Still others see ourselves as partners in the evolution of Jewish civilization and make dietary choices designed to sanctify our lives and the spiritual consciousness with which we eat every day.

Jews, Food and Holiness Read More »

Bum Knees

Leave a Comment / Singles /

The reason I am limping is because of a small man named Shen Hsu. That’s not entirely accurate. I went to see Hsu because I was limping. He performed a variety of ancient Chinese medical practices on me, including acupuncture and a form of massage that could easily be mistaken for torture. I’m still limping. Now I’m limping a little differently, on what used to be my good side.

I am told, but have no way of verifying, that in ancient China, people only paid their doctors when they were in good health. I suggested this to Hsu and he threatened to repeat the therapy for free. I wrote the check. (When I mentioned this payment plan to my therapist, he shuddered in horror at the very thought of it and said, "So tell me again about your mother.")

The real reason I am limping is because I "got up funny." There are only a few kinds of injuries available to men over 40: getting up funny, sitting down funny, sleeping funny, and the catch-all, doing something funny. What happened? I don’t know. I did something funny. I have a friend who hurt himself hiking. Hiking! That’s walking up a hill. That’s so pathetic, it’s funny. Welcome to my world.

I long for a sports injury or a war wound. I wish I could say that I’m limping because of what I did on the court or the field. I wish I’d twisted something in a game. No such luck. I just Got Up Funny and now everything hurts. At least I wish I were limping with dignity. I’m going to have to start lying about it. I’ll bet Hemingway never did something funny.

When I turned 40, I reluctantly accepted the fact that with each passing day I was getting closer to 60 and further from 20. That, sadly, will never change, but I had no idea how quickly I would join the ranks of the elderly. I can’t hum the tune to any of the songs in the Top 10. I can’t eat raw onions anymore, and I’m cutting down on spicy foods. I’m going to get my cholesterol checked. The end is near. You think I’m kidding? I’m now older than the oldest active professional athlete. I’m older than the guys they call the "Ageless Wonder." If life begins at 40, you can have it.

I don’t look like a kid anymore, despite all that boyish charm to which I am desperately clinging. The other night at dinner with my friend Blair Sabol, I complained about a lingering hip injury for which I was getting deep fascia therapy. Blair said, "You know, at your age," and then the rest of it just sort of faded into the background.

At my age! I have never been "at my age." If anything, I’ve always been at an awkward age. Or maybe it was just a phase I was going through. I am not — repeat, not — at my age. How could I be at my age and have nothing to show for it? No millions in the bank, no Best Original Screenplay Oscar, no doting wife, no adorable tots. I have nothing to wear.

I get no satisfaction from the fact that everyone I know who’s at my age has something wrong with him. Nothing life-threatening, but some nagging little injury, some ache or pain that requires chiropractic work, physical therapy, or a knee brace. My blood is now 22 percent Advil.

The signs have been there all along, but I didn’t want to look. I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I’ve started making all kinds of ridiculous rules: Never drink from a glass in a club. Never eat in a restaurant with neon lights inside. Never go out with a girl who’s got worse skin than yours. (That one, at least, makes sense.) As I get older, it seems there are more things I won’t do. New experiences are getting harder to come by, and almost anything exciting that I try for the first time at my age is likely to end up with me hurting myself. Worse, I find myself agreeing more and more with my father. I can tell you, for a fact, that he ain’t getting any hipper.

And so it has already begun, the long, slow march to the grave. Sadly, longevity runs in my family, which means I’ve got another 50 or 60 more years of this indignity to look forward to, the niggling injuries, the creeping infirmity, the costly, time-consuming rehabilitation therapies. I may not be getting any younger, but I think it’ll be okay, as long as I keep getting older.

Bum Knees Read More »

A Message From David Wolpe

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

It’s a well-known fact that millions of Jews have doubts about the literal veracity of Bible stories.
On April 8, 9 and 15, I gave a series of sermons that emphasized the following point: faith is independent of doubt. I wanted the millions of doubting Jews to know that they can still be faithful Jews and live a life of meaning and mitzvahs.

If scholarly books are written that question the literal veracity of the Bible stories, it does not help our credibility to pretend that they don’t exist. By discussing these books we maintain the Jewish tradition of sustaining faith by seeking truth.

Ignoring the books, on the other hand, conveys a message of fear: we are afraid that science will shake our faith. I don’t believe it should, and that is why I spoke out.

This has always been the official position of the Conservative movement, and I believe it is an important message that can help millions of doubting Jews stay connected to their faith. If you would like cassette tapes of my talks, please contact my office at (310) 481-3318.

A Message From David Wolpe Read More »

Palestinians Escalate Conflict

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

The Palestinian intifada, which began as a civil uprising against the Israeli occupation, is rapidly becoming a low-intensity war between armed forces. And the low intensity is getting higher and higher by the day.

The conflict escalated on Monday night when Palestinian gunmen lobbed five 82mm mortars from the Gaza Strip into the Israeli desert town of Sderot, 4 kilometers north of the border. Although no one was hurt, Israel retaliated with tank, helicopter and naval shelling of Palestinian police and other security bases. One policeman was killed and 36 other Palestinians wounded.

For the first time, ground forces entered areas under exclusive Palestinian control, cutting the 365-square-kilometer strip into three zones, each isolated from the other to prevent the movement of weapons. The army sealed all routes in and out of the strip, including the land crossing into Egypt and the Gaza airport.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s spokesman, Ra’anan Gissin, told me, "We had to act like this because using mortar fire on a town was a grave escalation for the purpose of killing innocent civilians. They fired at 6:30 in the evening, when the streets are full of people doing their shopping or going home from work. If one of the mortars had hit the town center, we would have had dozens of casualties. And we know for sure that these attacks are directed by the Palestinian security forces."

The home-made mortars fired on Sderot are seen by Israelis as crossing a red line. Mortars have been deployed against Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and against the border kibbutz of Nahal Oz, but the 18,000 residents of Sderot thought they were safely out of the battle zone. Sharon’s sheep ranch is barely 8 kilometers further north.

Although the mortars are a short-range weapon, Israelis fear that the Palestinians will feel free to extend the war to other population centers using more ambitious arms.

Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo accused Israel of perpetrating a massacre. "This is the harshest attack we have borne since 1967," he said. "We shall go back to the United Nations Security Council and demand that they dispatch an international force." Israel has consistently refused to accept such a force, and the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution to deploy international monitors.

Israeli commentators saw the escalation as an expression of Palestinian frustration that the intifada is earning them no dividends. "They are frustrated at the poise displayed by the Israeli public," Sever Plotzker wrote in Yediot Aharonot. "Frustrated at the harsh criticism voiced by the Arab world about the intifada in its latest stages. Frustrated at the cold shoulder the new American administration has turned to Yasser Arafat. Frustrated at the slow but clear change in European public opinion, from understanding Palestinian violence to rejecting it. Frustrated at the economic deterioration, the civil unrest and the social destitution."

Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, claimed responsibility for the mortars, but Israeli spokesmen accused Arafat’s myriad security services of transforming themselves into "terrorist organizations." Earlier this week, the Palestinian Authority reinforced Israeli suspicions of collusion by releasing Mohammed Deif, the most-wanted Hamas terrorist, from preventive detention.

Israeli troops pulled out of Palestinian territory barely 24 hours after they entered. This followed American condemnation of the incursion as "excessive and disproportionate," though Israeli officials insisted that they left because their mission was completed. Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said during a visit to Sderot: "I hope that this was a one-time event and the Palestinian leadership understood the message."

As with the air strike on a Syrian radar station in Lebanon on Monday, the Israeli advance into Gaza was a carefully calibrated operation. Sharon’s team does not want to provoke the Arab states into a wider conflagration, nor does it want to alienate world opinion, just when it seems to be turning against Arafat. Israel did, however, leave its new roadblocks in place. Gaza remains divided.

The Israeli tanks and armored personnel carriers deliberately did not enter populated areas. They attacked Palestinian police stations and uprooted orchards which provided cover for the mortars. "We have no quarrel with the Palestinian population," Ben-Eliezer said. "We have a quarrel with the Palestinian leadership, which is leading matters on the road to chaos."

At the same time, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres informed his Syrian counterpart, Farouk Ashara, that Israel was not seeking escalation in Lebanon. In a message relayed via the Russian Foreign Minister, Igor Ivanov, he said it was a signal to the Syrians that they had to restrain Hezbollah. Ashara, who was visiting Moscow, relayed back that Syria too was not interested in escalating the conflict, though he defined Hezbollah operations in the disputed Sheba Farm as "legitimate."

Palestinians Escalate Conflict Read More »

Head Trip

Leave a Comment / Womans Voice /

Jim Wayne has cut my hair for more than 20 years. He created first the wedge look and now the clipped curly style of my professional photos. He cut my hair after my husband’s funeral and let my hair grow long when I began dating. He set my daughter’s French twist for her bat mitzvah and did a blunt cut for her high school senior prom. Once, in a fit of creativity, he chopped my locks to within an inch and dyed what was left purple. Curly or wavy, tinted or natural, we’ve been through it all. But though Jim and I go back a long way, nothing prepared either of us for the day last week when he took an electric shaver and buzzed me bald.

"You have a great-shaped head," he said. "You’ll be fine."

His voice was a low growl, the way men sound when they are swallowing tears. The timbre reminded me of how my surgeon, C. Gordon Frank, sounded when he was getting ready to take out part of my lung.

"You’re tough," Frank told me. "You’ll be fine."

Jim sat me in Nicole’s manicurist corner with the curtains drawn. We gossiped about politics, culture and everyone we all know. As I heard the sound of the shaver, I held on tight and reached for a prayer.

"Thank you, God, for allowing me to reach this season."

I felt insane. Why was I saying "Shehecheyanu," the prayer of survival, in the midst of chemotherapy? First, I couldn’t think of anything else. But also because it was the right thing to do.

I had been losing my hair all week, beginning day 12 after chemo. My parents, visiting for Passover, were thrilled to see me looking normal and healthy, and I was happy to comply. Cancer is a disease as much about appearance as reality. We won’t know how the tumor cells are doing until the next CT scan. But we all know that a woman with her own curly hair is doing well.

By the end of their stay, I was leaking hair all over my pillow. I wore my wig for my folks, so they wouldn’t go into shock the next time.

"You look cute," my father said. "You’ll do fine."

But as Jim’s razor made its way up and down my scalp, I felt quite other than fine. I felt militantly grateful. And powerfully confused. Grateful to science for getting me to Taxol, the chemotherapy of choice for lung cancer.

But confused: The whole world would look at me, a bald woman with a fringe of black hair, and say "Oh my God, Marlene has cancer." I wanted them to say, "Oh, thank God, Marlene’s in treatment for her cancer." If I weren’t in chemo, then surely I would keep my hair and everyone might be relieved. And just as surely, I would die.

Coincidentally, I had forgotten to bring my wig to Jim’s. I left his Beverly Hills salon and drove immediately to a feminist seder at Kehillat Israel. I walked into the synagogue social hall, late and tall. Immediately there were 150 people eyeing my new naked do. I felt strong and sexy, like in the ’60s when I went out without a bra. And just as saggy when the night was through.

The next day I wore my wig. It is blonde, elegant and organized in a City Councilwoman Laura Chick way, which my curly hair has never been. There was nothing to explain. No politics of uplift. No one asked how I was, because with a wig, I look fine.

Here is my dilemma: I can present myself to the world bald, brave and true — and scare people away. Or I can wear the wig, attractive and false, and get the comfort from others that I need to survive.

Judaism has two words for female beauty, reflecting the public and private spheres of life: they are yofi and chen.

Yofi is conventional, physical beauty, the kind that attracts men and women to each other at the currently popular Speed Dating extravaganzas. Would I wear my baseball cap or go bald to a Speed Dating session? Probably not. Would I wear the turquoise turban that makes me look like my Aunt Anna? Only on the 10th date, if then.

Chen is the more difficult, intimate beauty. It means finding favor. Chen is inner light, truthful self-acceptance, and it is rare indeed.

Maybe the answer for the wig vs. bald conundrum is that there are no set answers. Like cancer, I deal with it one day at a time, one situation on its own terms.

One might hope that my closest friends would find my bare skull attractive. They saw me through my surgery. They sit with me in my chemo. They understand my doctors. They say "Shehecheyanu" with each victory. They know the chen in me.

But if we are going to the theater, they’d probably say, "Yofi. Live a little. Wear the wig."

Head Trip Read More »

Your Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Jewish Tax

I noted a great disconnect between the editorial (“The Jewish Tax,” April 13) and the cover story on the Skirball Museum (“Skirball at Five,” April 13). The editorial correctly noted the high financial burden borne by Jewish families paying for day school and camps. The article urged creative steps to help ease this burden including “massively funded regional endowments.”

The $45 million Cotsen Auditorium is about to be supplemented by the $34 million Winnick Heritage Hall that will help “teach children about the immigrant experience.” Almost all of this no doubt has been funded by money from members of the Jewish community.

A $79 million endowment could generate close to $5 million annually in scholarships for Jewish camps and day schools without even touching the principal. The scholarships could be provided each year in perpetuity. Add to that the amount the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance will be spending on a new campus in Israel, and you see the high cost of certain decisions.

In order to solve the important questions addressed in the editorial, the Jewish community needs to ask hard questions about how its priorities are reflected in its expenditures.

Lawrence Weinman, Los Angeles

Thanks to Rob Eshman for his valuable and insightful editorial. Every day — not just April 15 — parents and grandparents are confronted with the cost of “doing Jewish.” As a community, we have no idea of the number of families lost to our future because of financial costs.

The communal sophistication Eshman describes is an important template for discussion. As one with deep concerns and commitment to a Jewish future, I would like to join others to continue this discussion and, perhaps, work on solutions.

Esther Lerner Brenner

Strasser and Smith

As one of your appreciative yet grammatically challenged readers, I would like to lend my support to Teresa Strasser for the refreshingly conversational, intimate tone of her writing (“Grammar Police,” April 13). I find her essays to be insightful, entertaining and particularly risk-taking in the way she exposes her personal life and vulnerabilities.

Those who incessantly criticize her can choose to not read her column and put their spare time and energy toward a worth cause, such as fighting hate crime. Better yet, with their fine grasp of the English language, tutoring school children or volunteering for a literacy program would be a productive alternative.

Carol Schneider, Los Angeles

Considering Los Angeles is teeming with brilliant talent in all of the arts, it’s frankly shocking that you can do no better than hiring the likes of Teresa Strasser and J.D. Smith. Neither imbue their writing with anything remotely spiritual, let alone Jewish.

Elements of Judaism, whether religious or spiritual, should be integral elements in a column by, for and about Jewish singles. Instead, Strasser uses the column as an outlet for her uninspired free-associative styled blatherings about secular insights that only she finds insightful. Smith uses the column as a stage for his archaic, passe, “self-hating Jew” stories about both his and his friends’ pathetic accounts of their situations with women.

Considering that Marlene Adler Marks writes about things worth reading, weaves Jewish threads into her column and always writes in an engaging style, I know that The Jewish Journal is capable of finding good writers.

Morley Beth Sobo, Los Angeles

Death Penalty

It is encouraging that with the understandable exception of Buford Furrow’s victims at the North Valley Jewish Community Center and the family of Joseph Ileto, the man Furrow killed, everyone in your story expressed satisfaction that justice had been served by sentencing Furrow to life in prison rather than the death penalty (“Furrow Sentenced,” March 30).

This is in keeping with Jewish tradition. Talmudic rabbinical interpretations for the last 1,800 years have essentially eliminated capital punishment by requiring two witnesses to testify not only that they personally witnessed the crime but that they warned the perpetrator beforehand that he would be executed, that he acknowledged the warning and proceeded in spite of it.

Consequently, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations of the Reform movement have since 1959 opposed the death penalty. Last June, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations endorsed the national call for a moratorium on capital punishment initiated in 1997 by the American Bar Association.

As national standards of decency evolve in the direction of joining all other civilized countries that have abolished capital punishment, it is fitting and proper that the Jewish community acknowledges that it is wrong to kill to show that killing is wrong.

Stephen F. Rohde, Secretary Progressive Jewish Alliance

Your Letters Read More »