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Jewish Journal

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April 4, 2002

Still Kicking

Leave a Comment / Community, Culture /

Residents and staff of the Jewish Home for the Aging (JHA) gathered March 26 at Eisenberg Village on Victory Boulevard to celebrate the institution’s 90th anniversary. About two dozen residents participated in blowing out the 10 candles (one for each decade and one for good luck) on the massive birthday cake.

The decorous moment was not without humor. As one bright-eyed resident in her 80s hovered nearby, a staff member asked if she wanted to move closer to watch her friends blow out the candles.

"Oh, yes," she replied. "I want to make sure they don’t spit on the cake!"

The JHA was first created in 1912 when the Jewish community of Boyle Heights obtained a small cottage to enable elderly Jews from the county "poor farm" to observe a traditional, kosher seder. According to a JHA press release, the original JHA was so tiny that the first board of directors had to ask residents to wait outside while they held their meetings.

The JHA’s current San Fernando Valley facilities include two campuses in Reseda that house more than 750 people and offer a continuum of care ranging from independent-living assistance to skilled nursing for the ill and severely disabled. In April, the JHA will open their long-awaited, state-of-the-art Alzheimer’s care and research center, part of a $72 million campaign to expand and upgrade the JHA to meet the Jewish community’s growing demand for senior housing.

Molly Forrest, the JHA’s chief executive officer, said she looks forward to helping the institution continue meeting the Jewish community’s needs.

"Our goal for the future is to make the Home more accessible to the community, both by simply having more beds available and by expanding to the Westside," she said.

Residents expressed a variety of reasons for why they selected the JHA as the place to spend their golden years.

Zola Zevit, 84, and her husband David, 90, said they chose the JHA because it allowed them to remain together — an important factor when you’ve been married 62 years.

"I also like that it has religion the way we like it, like the way we were at home," Zola Zevit said.

In addition to helping residents celebrate all the Jewish holidays, the JHA offers kosher meals and employs a rabbi on each campus to conduct services and provide spiritual counseling.

Ellis Simon, one of the youngest residents at age 78, ran the JHA’s thrift store in Reseda from 1984 to 1991.

Simon came to the JHA two years ago, following the death of his wife. "I sat in my house for two years watching television," he recalled. "One day I said, ‘That’s enough of this.’"

"Next to heaven, this is the greatest place in the world," said Simon, who participates in the institution’s choir and is putting together a JHA production of "Fiddler on the Roof." "You make a lot of good friends here, and if you stay active, it makes it that much better a place."

Still Kicking Read More »

Federations Answer the Call

Leave a Comment / Israel /

In a campaign reminiscent of one undertaken during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel’s survival was at stake, the North American federation system is hoping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for Israel in the coming months.

Robert Schrayer, chair of the United Jewish Appeal Federation Campaign of the United Jewish Communities (UJC), said the situation in Israel now “may be even more drastic than things were in 1973.”

“It’s different because it’s a different kind of conflict, but just as serious, if not more so,” he said.

The UJC’s board of trustees is expected to vote Sunday to approve an emergency campaign for various needs as Israel engages in its war against terrorism. The funds are expected to aid victims of terrorism, rebuild infrastructure damaged in terrorist attacks, and support crisis management and other social services. Most of the UJC’s existing $42.5 million campaign for Argentine Jews will be folded into the new campaign, dubbed Israel Emergency Campaign, with most of the money going to resettle Jews who immigrate to Israel as a result of Argentina’s economic crisis.

The campaign will officially be launched with a special leadership mission to Israel leaving Monday. Another UJC mission will be leaving for Argentina at the same time.

The new campaign, unanimously approved by the UJC’s top leadership, comes on the heels of a relentless spate of suicide bombings and in the midst of a major Israeli military initiative to root out Palestinian terrorists.

Officials say the Israel Emergency Campaign will be larger, more centralized and more forceful than UJC efforts on Israel’s behalf that started earlier in the 18-month-old intifada.

The previous effort, called Israel Now, has raised $90 million since September, with each federation deciding independently whether to do extra fund raising for Israel and how to allocate it.

UJC leaders are in ongoing meetings with officials at the Jewish Agency for Israel, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Israel’s Ministry of Finance to determine how the new dollars will be allocated, Hoffman said.

However, while national leaders are forcefully pushing for full participation and a centralized allocations approach, it is not yet clear whether every federation will agree to participate.

In recent years, issues of “fair share” — or how much each federation is obligated to contribute for national and international needs — have been a major sticking point in the functioning of the UJC, which is an umbrella for more than 189 Jewish federations.

Hoffman said he does not expect federations to object to participating in the campaign. He also said he thinks their fundraising goals will likely be exceeded.

As for collective decisions about how to spend the emergency money raised, Hoffman said, “At the end of the day, every community is always entitled to decide how it wishes to allocate funds, but we’re going to give them some very compelling options.”

In addition to fundraising, the campaign will also includes efforts to mobilize American Jews to advocate on behalf of Israel. Several major federations, including ones in Washington, New York, Boston and Los Angeles, have already intensified their fundraising efforts for Israel in the past few days.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is calling for Jewish unity in Israel’s struggle against terror. In a conference call with Diaspora leaders on Monday, Sharon said the "unity of the Jewish people" is Israel’s "primary strategic asset."

"Each and every Jew" is "now required to make a supreme effort to contradict the claims made by those who question our right to the land of Israel," he said.

"In these times, we need you more than ever. We need you to express your public support for Israel," he said.

"Join us here, demonstrate your love and support," he told those on the call, which was sponsored by the United Jewish Communities, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Jewish Agency for Israel and Keren Hayesod.

"This struggle is going to be long, difficult and complex," he said. "It requires unity, determination and faith in the justice of our cause. — Rachel Pomerance, Jewish Telgraphic Agency

Federations Answer the Call Read More »

Can Israel Afford to Eliminate Arafat?

Leave a Comment / Israel, Opinion /

So it has come to this. The once and future president of Palestine, father of his people, so-called architect of their national rebirth, is hunkered down around a sputtering candle as his enemies’ jets pound the walls of his compound and grenades explode in his courtyard.

The scene is eerily reminiscent of another that took place exactly 20 years ago in Arafat’s headquarters in Beirut. There the Israelis relentlessly shelled him in his lair before American intervention allowed him a face-saving departure to Tunis. Perhaps others will remember Chilean President Salvadore Allende’s defiance of his own troops as they attacked the Presidential Palace in Santiago in 1973. There, too, the besieged president vowed to die a martyr’s death and fulfilled his promise.

But this new round of events, which has been accompanied by the gravest toll of civilian casualties in Israel’s history, offers to close a door on a situation Israelis have endured for far too long. Burdened with the intrigues of this murderer and terrorist for 40 years, it must now make a crucial final accounting: Is Arafat worth more to them dead or alive?

Killing the leader of any people is certainly not a matter to take lightly. But in Arafat’s case, the balance sheet should make the answer quite clear. By not condemning Palestinian terror atrocities and failing to crack down on the terrorist activities of his own brigades, Arafat gives those groups his sanction. His tepid denunciations aside, it is clear that his implicit avowals of support for ‘martyrs’ have led to an escalation that he no longer can control. His relevance in stemming the violence is therefore minimal, but his continued operation, as a symbol of revolt and a figurehead to incendiaries, threatens Israeli life and thereby imperils the stability of the region.

It is argued, conversely, that only Arafat has the ability to rein in terror. But anyone watching interviews of the Palestinian leader in recent months could comfortably conclude that Arafat refuses to rein in terror, not because it threatens his political leverage, but because he is temperamentally incapable of making the psychological shift in order to do so. This has been starkly demonstrated in recent days by a profound display of self-delusion, wherein he and his cohorts appear convinced that the campaign of suicide terror has given them an advantage over the Israelis, whose surrender may be just days away. The same kind of delusion gripped the Palestinian leader in Beirut when he faced catastrophe. His tack then was simply to declare victory, then flee to fight another day. The same latitude should never be given him again.

Another argument is that Arafat’s death risks the outbreak of a regional war. Such speculation has no basis in reality. As the Arab League Summit in Beirut convincingly demonstrated, Arafat is completely isolated. Prevented from addressing the Summit by even the Arabs themselves, he has, in reality, few sympathetic ears in that milieu. No Arab leader will shed tears for the end of this chronic schemer. Singed by his treachery and duplicity over the decades, Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are loath to aid the Palestinian leader, nor are they in any condition, either diplomatically or militarily, to receive the brunt of an Israeli assault — an event that would certainly occur to Syria if it allows Hezbollah to resume an assault on Israel from southern Lebanon.

Finally, there will be no international operation against Israel mimicking the one in Kosovo in 1999. This has been Yasser Arafat’s final card, a desperate gamble on international sanction and concerted military invasion to prevent what he has preposterously labeled a genocide. But even with the Europeans’ fierce denunciations there is no indication of a willingness of any nation to go to battle for Arafat or his corrupt regime. If the world is at war with the terrorist networks, which Western country will risk the ire of the United States to defend a man for whom terrorism is a raison d’etre?

No one in either Israel or the United States, the only two countries who now really count in this conflict, should be fooled into believing that a surviving Arafat will suddenly see the light and seek a peaceful accommodation with Israel. His death may well turn him into a martyr, but isn’t a dead martyr more acceptable than a live terrorist from whom proponents of civil violence worldwide gain inspiration and moral support?

Given these circumstances, the appropriate analogy is therefore not to Allende in 1973 or Beirut in 1982. Instead, its parallel is Berlin of 1945, when another menace to world peace and an inveterate slaughterer of Jews faced annihilation. With this in mind, the true question is not whether Israel can afford to eliminate Arafat. It is whether it can afford not to.

Can Israel Afford to Eliminate Arafat? Read More »

A Marshall Plan for Palestine

Leave a Comment / Israel, Opinion, Worldwide /

The rapid downward spiral of events in Israel and the Occupied Territories produces yet more death, destruction and despair. Both sides seethe with rage at the other, oblivious to the parallel courses that their respective national movements have taken — and hence incapable of the slightest empathy for the other.

We have entered a most precarious state in the century-old conflict between Jews and Arabs. It is a tribal blood feud in which "normal" considerations like physical safety and economic sustenance are altogether forgotten.

It would be easy to say that the culpable party is the Palestinian side, which encourages and then celebrates the gruesome ritual of the suicide bomber. Its leadership has repeatedly failed to forge a more effective and humane path of national liberation. Moreover, the rampant corruption of the Palestinian Authority does little to lift the average family in the West Bank and Gaza out of abject poverty.

And yet, we cannot forget that the profound desperation of the Palestinians is a byproduct of Israel’s 35-year occupation. Occupation has deprived Palestinians of their basic right to human dignity — and along with that, of a viable economic infrastructure, a stable civil society, and a reliable leadership that will take years to build.

One of the consequences is that the creation of a Palestinian state alone will not solve the problem. Needless to say, we seem lights years away from that point. Gen. Anthony Zinni cannot even broker a cease-fire, no less bring the warring parties together to discuss broader political issues.

If and when they do return to the negotiating table, the Camp David points formulated by Bill Clinton — Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, creation of a Palestinian state, East Jerusalem as its capital, shared control over the Temple Mount, etc. — will be necessary but not sufficient conditions for a definitive settlement. What will also be required will be a massive infusion of aid, investment, and expert advice to the fledgling Palestinian entity. Only such a massive package can exert a transformative effect on Palestinian society. If Palestinians see no hope for a better future, even in their own state, they will have little incentive to abandon present tactics. Conversely, if they see the prospect of refugee camps being transformed into bustling urban centers, they might be prepared to eschew the path of armed struggle they have chosen.

Admittedly, this idea is a bit fantastical. Neither side is ready for compromise at this moment. The two aging leaders, Sharon and Arafat, are reprising their tragic dance from Beirut 20 years ago, but now with deadlier results. And President Bush remains as hesitant as ever to invest American diplomatic or financial capital in the resolution of foreign conflict.

Yet the present moment demands boldness, foresight, and perhaps a glance back at the past. Fifty-five years ago, Secretary of State George Marshall declared, "Europe’s requirements are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character." The ensuing American commitment to rebuild wartorn Europe offers a model for a political and economic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians — that is, a Marshall, or perhaps Powell, Plan for Palestine.

This Plan can and will not work if it is the result of solitary American investment. Rather, it requires an activist American diplomatic effort to enlist the European Union and the Arab League, fresh from its historic endorsement of the Saudi peace initiative, to a multibillion dollar plan for the reconstruction of Palestine. Of course, the Israelis must also commit their own political and economic resources to the undertaking. And the Palestinian leadership will need not only to eschew the path of terrorism, but agree to overhaul its corrupt bureaucracy.

The logic of this plan rests on the sad fact that the two parties are incapable at present of extricating themselves from their conflict. Outside intervention is urgently needed. Sporadic or short-term mediation designed to achieve a temporary cease-fire or an interim political agreement no longer suffices. Rather, a sustained and substantial commitment by the international community, led by the United States, is the order of the day.

The stakes could not be higher. In the absence of a major international effort, Israelis and Palestinians stand to shed much more blood. And their war could degenerate into a broader regional conflict that threatens the stability of the entire world. Before we reach that point, let us agitate for a comprehensive solution that provides a conclusive exit from the current tragedy.

A Marshall Plan for Palestine Read More »

Options

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman /

We have all stopped saying things can’t get any worse. Of course they can. April 9 is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. One of the abiding lessons of the Nazi genocide is that before it happened, few people ever imagined such things were possible. If our imagination failed us before September 1939, or September 2001, it must not do so now:

Imagine Palestinian suicide bombers, sufficiently outraged that Israeli weaponry often bears made-in-America labels, detonating themselves in the malls and cafes of our neighborhoods.

Imagine, 50 years after the Holocaust, a widespread renewal of attacks on Jews and synagogues in Europe and the United States.

Imagine Saddam Hussein, in his last bid to become Salah el-Din, unleashing nuclear or chemical weapons on Tel Aviv or Tarzana. Genocide, even if it is suicidal genocide, is not beyond a man who gassed and slaughtered 100,000 Kurds.

Imagine an all-out war brought on by the intransigence and vanity of one man, Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat — hated by Arab leaders as much as by Israelis. And imagine that after the death and destruction of that war, Israelis and Palestinians having to return to face the same hard negotiating choices they faced before.

"We will not surrender," Ziad Amer, a leader of the Al Aksa Martyr’s Brigade, said in a phone interview with The Los Angeles Times last week. "We will fight until victory or death." The bravado was telling: most revolutionary movements see death as a way toward victory. But in Arafat’s culture of needless sacrifice, death and victory are interchangeable. Arafat would have every last 16-year-old Palestinian blow himself or herself up before risking his own neck by doing the one thing he still has the power to do: act like a political leader.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s strategy, on the other hand, might actually win Israel a short-term victory over death. The arrest of hundreds of suspected terrorists has no doubt already saved lives. But the accepted wisdom is that there are many more terrorists where those came from. Palestinians have nothing to lose while the violence is crippling Israel. If this is a war, an Israeli friend of mine pointed out, why are the young American Jews from around the world not flying in, as they did in 1967 and many did in 1973, to help out any way they can? The answer, of course, is that the Palestinians have moved the front in this war to the places those young American Jews hang out.

Shortly after Sept. 11, the Defense Department called together a group of Hollywood screenwriters and asked them to come up with scenarios for future terror attacks. I don’t know what they dreamed up, but I am sure, reading of the savagery of the Passover Massacre and the Matza restaurant attack in Haifa, they may have felt their imaginations had failed them.

We can imagine a thousand ways things can get worse, but only a few ways they can begin to get better:

1. An international peacekeeping force directed and led by America, whose goal is to enforce a cease-fire so that both sides will restart dialogue. On the plus side, this puts America in a leadership position, where it can be seen as an honest broker by Israel and the Muslim world. The downside is of course, the chance that escalating violence will expose peacekeeping troops to the growing list of victims.

2. A unilateral separation, in which Israel pulls back to defensible borders, dismantling whatever Jewish settlements are necessary, and allowing the Palestinians to organize their state. The goal here is for the two sides to begin negotiating whenever they’re ready. A majority of Israelis — 77 percent, according to a recent poll conducted by the Ma’ariv newspaper — actually support this idea, as do most of Israel’s ex-generals. Those who oppose it, such as Sharon and Shimon Peres, say it is impractical and rewards terrorism. Besides, what fence will be high enough to keep out missiles and mortars?

3. Israel achieves its goals in the current campaign, secures a period of quiet, and returns to negotiations. Who knows? Maybe once Israeli tanks pull out of Palestinian towns, Arafat will emerge from his sealed room and declare victory just as terror-fatigue sets in among his people. Seeing no other way out, both men will agree to restart negotiations. Analysts believe this last option will be a nonstarter without sustained pressure and involvement from high-level administration officials. Others believe the world has already been down that road, and it has led us all to here.

4. A regional war leads to an Israeli invasion that changes the balance of power and the lead actors. This idea, which may or may not include Arafat’s exile or death, seems to be a popular idea with some Israeli diplomats. But when asked, "Then what?" they shrug. In any case, this conflict has become about boys and girls with backpacks, not men with missiles, and it is hard to see how Israel’s military superiority will ever change that.

Israel is in a short-term war in search of a long-term solution. We need to support her in both.

Options Read More »

Yom HaShoah

Leave a Comment / Kids & Teens /

In parshat Shemini, this week’s portion, a very sad thing happens. The two older sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, die. No one is quite sure why God chooses to kill them. The only clue the Torah gives us is that they have brought “strange fire” before God. Even though we never really get an answer, the Torah is very clear on something else: Aaron’s grief. His grief silences him.

This coming Tuesday, we will observe Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day. No one will ever know why 11 million victims, among them, 6 million Jews, were sent to their death by Hitler. But we will continue to grieve for them. We will observe moments of silence, and we will allow their memory to move us to be better friends, better sons and daughters, better Jews.

The Holocaust is a sad subject, but we cannot close our eyes to it.

Yom HaShoah Read More »

Your Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Opinion /

Exodus Debate

Recently, rabbis representing major movements in Judaism debated the origins of the Bible, commonly called the Torah (“Who Wrote the Torah?” March 29).

Some rabbis claimed that man had written the Bible or perhaps several authors contributed to the Five Books of Moses. Others went so far as saying that the Bible is not the initial truth. They had problems with the flood, the ark and the story.

Statements such as these insult many religious people — Jews and Christians alike. It is with great regret that a debate of such massive spiritual destruction is being highlighted as an authentic and sincere search for truth. Nothing can be further than the truth.

Miracles do happen and people make note of them by inscribing them in books, which are transmitted from generation to generation. Belief in miracles is the cornerstone of all religions. This recent symposium is a depravity and an insult to religious people.

As my grandfather said, “We Jews don’t believe in miracles, we just count on them.” Miracles are not debated, they are celebrated.

Rabbi Eli Hecht, Vice President Rabbinical Alliance of America

Emerson and NPR

The letter from Bruce Drake, vice president of news for NPR (“Steve Emerson,” March 29), is once again emblematic of its disingenuous slant to how they’re suppressing any serious discussion of the threat of militant Islam throughout the world and especially on American soil. Steve Emerson was in fact aired for some 60 seconds as part of a much broader story. However, his airing is in response to the pressure NPR is feeling from certain sponsors about their obvious biases and the Emerson issue, and is nothing more than a knee-jerk response so that they can now say they’re not blackballing Emerson.

Jeff Berg, San Clemente Volunteers for Israel

In the Jewish Journal’s cover story (“Ten Things You Can Do For Israel,” March 15), the number one item was: Visit Israel.

Volunteers For Israel (VFI), a non-partisan, non-profit organization is uniquely positioned to achieve this end. VFI encourages world Jewry to help Israel on a very practical level. Since 1982, Sar-El, our program sponsor in Israel, has arranged for over 40,000 volunteers to participate. For a period of two or three weeks, they work on maintenance bases, hospitals, archeological digs, performing community service where the need exists, alongside the men and women of the Israel Defense Force. During this time, lectures, field trips and cultural programs are presented to enhance the experience. Basically a volunteer pays for transportation to Israel and is fed, clothed and housed while on the program. Our presence affirms our love and support of Israel during this time of turmoil and violence.

The volunteers range in age from 18 to 65. Good health and a sincere desire to help Israel are the criteria. For more information please call (310) 470-1316.

Louis Goldowitz, Regional Representative Volunteers for Israel

Chabad of the Marina

Rabbi Shmulik Naparstek has managed to enlighten and bring together a community of Jewish people in Marina del Rey (“Rabbi vs. Rabbi,” March 22). There is no doubt in mind that whatever donations have been given over the years (including the original grants of $15,000 to start the Chabad in the Marina) were given to this particular man to bring his particular quality of work to the community. He is a man who personifies the ethics of our original religious teachers. Support him.

Nancy Ann Rubin and Serafino and Milo Sini, Marina del Rey

As a secular Jew and a feminist, I spent three decades not knowing a single Orthodox Jew on a personal level. Like many other people from Israel, I lived with an invisible barrier separating “them” from “us.”

Than I met Rabbi Naparstek and his wife, Leah, and my perspective changed and my heart opened with a renewed sense of jewishness.

This beautiful effort and work converted this radical feminist –who refused to step into an Orthodox synagogue — into a happy member of the Chabad community.

If more rabbis were able to create a community in the same way Naparstek does, there would not be such a divide between the Orthodox community and the rest of the Jewish population.

Sharone R. Levinson, Los Angeles

As a member of the Chabad Marina community, I witness the selfless dedication of Rabbi Shmulik Naparstek and his staff at Chabad of the Marina on a daily basis. What shocks me is that there is no credible system of checks and balances within Chabad to mediate disputes that arise between a “Chabad head of state” and local Chabad rabbis.

Rabbi Yakov Shallman, Marina del Rey

Hadassah Conference

Thank you for assigning Carin Davis to Hadassah Southern California Northern Area’s Women’s Community Conference on March 10 (“Mind, Body and Soul,” March 8).

She certainly got to the pulse of the event, and also to the essence of Hadassah Southern California.

The event was a tremendous success. We feel that at least 14 people were same-day walk-up attendees thanks to the coverage of the conference by The Jewish Journal. Because the article attracted non-Hadassah members, we were able to add 17 new members to our roster on the day of the event.

Coverage by The Jewish Journal is very important to all of the Jewish organizations and I appreciate your recognition of the excellence and uniqueness of our event. Thanks for your help.

Elissa Berzon Managing Director, Hadassah Southern California Northern Area Resource Center

Valley Secession

Wendy Madnick’s article, (“Valley Secession: Better for Jews?” March 29) once again states the importance of Los Angeles staying “One City L.A.” Thank you for your well researched, excellent reporting.

As Jews, we must also recognize the importance of Jewish organizations not becoming platforms for Valley secession. Breaking up the Jewish community is disastrous and does not serve any purpose.

Carole Wade , Century City

Federation vs. JCCs

How sad it is that our Jewish community is so divided! That the Jewish Federation Council (JFC) and the Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles (JCCGLA) cannot function in harmony is an utter shame on their respective leaderships. Have they forgotten the only reason for their existence is to serve? What folly for the JCCGLA to say “we’re going to be a winner agency.” There are no “winners.” The community suffers and loses in this internecine warfare. The primary role of the JFC is to fund the agencies that serve, and the primary role of the JCCGLA is to serve the community effectively. Unless this is done in harmony, the entire community suffers. Let us put aside our differences and focus on our respective responsibilities to keep the basic fabric of our community intact. It’s not too late … let’s do it now.

Herman Gillman Director Emeritus Jewish Federation Council Southern Region

Chaim Weizman, Director Emeritus Valley Cities JCC Los Angeles

Conflict in Israel

Israel is now our front line of defense against terrorism. If we want to stop the next Sept. 11 before it begins, the Bush administration must send a new message to the Yasser Arafats, Osama bin Ladens, and Saddam Husseins of the world — by showing uncompromising moral support for Israel’s right to freedom and self-defense, and by demanding justice for Arafat. We should not have a double standard — bin Laden and Arafat are the same, and justice requires they be treated the same.

America must make war, not peace, in its war against terrorism.

Dr. Yaron Brook, Executive Director Ayn Rand Institute, Marina del Rey

Correction

In last week’s Circuit item on a dinner honoring the late Bruce Hochman, a copy editing error grossly changed the meaning of a sentence. The sentence should have read: “Bruce Hochman was a man of principle: committed to justice, constant, consistent — he touched many thousands of lives in a very positive way,” Gore said.

We regret the error.

Your Letters Read More »

Being Jan Murray

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment /

The first time I saw Jan Murray perform was on my TV in 1964. I was in pajamas, with my two sisters in Detroit, and on comes their favorite morning game show, "Treasure Hunt." This tall, suave gentleman is the host, and he has a great wit and raspy New York inflection that glues us to our set for years.

The first time I saw Jan Murray perform live was in the 1990s, at Morey Amsterdam’s funeral. Milton Berle, Rose Marie, Steve Allen, Red Buttons and so many others make it the funniest memorial I’ve ever attended.

When Jan took the bimah, he told the packed University Synagogue sanctuary how Morey was "the most cheerful, optimistic man" he’d ever known. There’s a definition of Jewish humor I like: "Laughter with sadness in the eye." And I remember thinking, Jan Murray has that look.

So now I get to meet him, because my friend Irving Brecher is his pal at Hillcrest Country Club. Irving wrote Marx Brothers movies and MGM musicals in the so-called Golden Age, and plays low-stakes gin rummy with the other octogenarians in the Hillcrest card room. But Jan used to play a lot of golf there, so he’d rather talk on the sunny deck facing the fairways. He’s not as tall as I recall from TV. I mention this, and how I much he touched me at Morey Amsterdam’s memorial.

"When Morey was dying he was the size of a cufflink," Jan says, tugging up the sleeves of his sweater to settle in. "We shrink when we get older, ya know." Right away, funny. And that great voice. Men like Jan Murray and Irving Brecher carry a deep, haimish wonderfulness inside their wit and style. I wonder, do the thousands of Jewish comedy writers and comics in this town appreciate the experience our tribal elders can convey? In a place like New York, you might see a Freddy Roman or Nipsey Russell crossing 57th Street, but it’s not like that here. When Irv invites me to the Friars Club or Label’s Table on Pico, I feel it is my one shot to sit among the "greatest generation." Of tummlers, anyway.

"Tummler was just a name people gave," Murray corrects me. "Nobody said, ‘Here’s a tummler.’"

Jan tummeled at dozens of Catskills resorts, starting in the 1930s. He made "top banana" at 19. A tummler, he informs me, is the guy who tries to be funny all day, not just on the stage at night.

"In the morning, the fat ladies in the exercise room," explains Jan. "I’d pass by and do shtick."

I ask him, "Wasn’t being this jester-Jew-roving thing 24-7 exhausting?"

"What are you, nuts?" Jan fires back. I get a look like I’m a contestant on his "Dollar a Second" quiz show who just missed the easiest question since 1953. "You get exhausted when you’re 80," he schools me. "Until I was 80, I wasn’t exhausted. There’s no medicine like being on stage hearing people laugh."

Now 85, the charming stand-up spins his gravel-timbred tales while sitting down, going on about everything from what’s in the comedian’s artistry to what’s in a name.

"My first job was at the Bronx Opera House," he recalls. "They were looking for a stooge for a singer. I was 16. When I got there, the agent said, "Awright, what’s yer name?" I said, "Murray Janowski." He says, "Murray Janowski? What the hell kinda name is that for an actor?" He says, "Look kid, let me give you advice: Get an easy name. If you’re good, they’re leaving the theater, have an easy name for them to remember. Otherwise, who the hell’s gonna remember Janowski?’"

As a kid in the East Bronx, Jan loved the 25 cent vaudeville shows his mother took him to see at Loew’s Boulevard Theater. Then his mother grew too ill to make the matinees.

"I used to come back, stand at the foot of her bed, and describe the whole show," Jan says gently. "The tricks the opening juggler act did, the female performer and what she wore and what she sang. But when it came to the comedian, I knew his whole goddamn act."

Jan likes to say he started off with "an audience of one." By 18, he was playing the Melody Club in Union City, N.J., packing them in for a year straight, seven nights a week. Commuting two hours by subway and train, Murray made $50 a week. Eventually, headlining vaudeville houses and in Las Vegas in the 1940s and 1950s, Jan was tapped by a "CBS somebody" to become the first comic emcee of a TV game show.

He hosted and owned shows in the quiz game for 17 years, but Murray would rather talk about his 18 years as the master of ceremonies for the annual Chabad Telethon.

"They didn’t know what a telethon was!" Jan kids the Lubavitchers. "I had to show ’em how to put it on. But anything Jewish, I never turn down."

Still, he was wary at first. "I thought, who’s gonna watch this? There will be 10 people from Fairfax Avenue tuned in. We’ll take in a dollar thirty. A guy with a beard and a yarmulke? Then the phones started ringing. And they never stopped. It was sensational! And it gets wilder every year."

Tummeling for eight hours, he says, he discovered a "Yiddish pride," and although it wasn’t planned as a yearly event, the Chabad Telethon dances the Yiddishkeit fantastic today. "And you should see the building we put up," Murray kvels, referring to the Chabad headquarters in Westwood. "Gorgeous!"

"Of all the comedians I’ve known," Brecher says, "Jan is the most gentle and sincere. His family is wonderful, and he had a seder that was a hot ticket in this town." Thirty-two people per night, the first night for Jan and Toni, his wife of 52 years, and their family. The second for the funnymen and theirs. Imagine Buddy Hackett repeating the 10 plagues. Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Shecky Greene and George Burns after four cups of wine. "I led a serious seder," Jan insists. "Then, after dinner we’d tummel ’til 3, 4 in the morning."

"Who shall bring redemption if not the jesters?" is a line I read in the Talmud. OK, I got it from the "Simpsons" episode where Jackie Mason played a rabbi, Krusty the Clown’s father. But I like to believe it’s true. And Mason did win an Emmy.

When Jan Murray began suffering from asthma, he retired at the age of 82. "For about 20 minutes out there, I was great," he explains. "And then I start gulping for breath, and I didn’t feel people should spend money. I started to time my material around my breath, instead of the art. So I hung it up. I did it 66 years. That’s long enough, isn’t it?" (By way of comparison, Phyllis Diller retired at 84, after doing comedy for 45 years.)

When I ask what’s next then, Jan, who still does benefits and roasts, of course, looks at me like what am I, nuts?

"Now?" he replies. "Now I’m a Jew who walks around and kvetches."

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Celebrating Length of Days

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Fifteen years ago, in the city with the second-largest Jewish population in the world, the idea of a Jewish hospice service lived and died. The truth was that the Los Angeles Jewish community was not ready to support a spiritual service for the dying.

Rabbis Carla Howard and Sheldon Pennes, founders of the recently created Jewish Hospice Project, Los Angeles, think they know why.

The idea of hospice "is not very Jewish," Howard saidwhile sitting in the Skirball cafeteria after a day of teaching at Milken Community High School. "It’s giving up the fight; the commandment is to embrace life, so the misconception is that if you choose hospice, then you’re giving up on life."

"It’s not a sexy topic," said Pennes, rabbi of Montebello’s Temple B’nai Emet, "People don’t like to talk about it. Lots of money [from the Jewish community] goes into medical research … but research will not help those people who are dying, afraid and alone, every day."

In the past, hospice defined a safe house where pilgrims and the homeless were offered lodging, usually by a religious order. Today, we know of hospice as a place where terminally ill patients with less than six months to live go to end their days. Treatment is palliative, focusing on pain management rather than cures, and often includes spiritual counseling in preparation for death. The idea is to treat death with dignity, surrounding the patient with family and friends rather than machines.

Though support for hospice is apparent in the general public these days, the Los Angeles Jewish community must rely on other services, such as Trinity Care Hospice, a wing of Catholic Healthcare West, which serves Jewish Home for the Aging, rather than any Jewish hospice. (The Home recently released plans to open a 16-patient hospice, available to the communty, when their new facilities open at the beginning of May.) Until recently, even Cedars-Sinai had only a per-diem rabbi on call to serve Jewish clientele.

A year ago at a Purim carnival, Howard and Pennes began to talk about the need for a Jewish hospice in Los Angeles. For 11 years, Howard had studied Jewish healing and spirituality, and had served as associate rabbi for one year at Metivta, A Center for Contemplative Judaism. Pennes works as chaplain at Trinity Care Hospice, witnessing daily the need for Jewish spiritual end-of-life care. They both decided to go for it, despite the challenges they knew lay ahead.

"What bothered me the most," Pennes said, "was all the money … after a person dies, but there’s a lack of money for end-of-life care."

He cites the disparity in fees: a pulpit rabbi gets $350 for a funeral; a rabbi who visits the sick at a hospice gets $20 an hour. "There was nothing really there for those who needed this care," he lamented.

"The most important thing that we want to teach people is that to choose hospice is to choose life," Howard said. "When my pain is managed, then I can get down to the work of living. I get to say the things that I never said, make the connections to the relationships that are there, as opposed to getting the cure here, trying medical advances there. It’s how to live with dying."

Not every dying patient is ready to receive spiritual care, Howard acknowledged. She found that people very much die as they live: on their own terms.

"I was called to a woman [in hospice] whose body looked like she should have given up the ghost a long time before, but she was hanging on. She made no mention of death. We just had a nice conversation, weekly, for three months," Howard said. "Then one day a hospice nurse was changing her wound and I asked the patient if there was anything she wanted to say. ‘What will it be like at the end?’ she asked the nurse. I facilitated the conversation, and once the nurse explained what it would be like, the woman got down to the business of tying up relationships … and died a few weeks later."

Howard and Pennes have many similar stories of people, affiliated and nonaffiliated, who want a deeper connection toward the end. "There aren’t many of us around trained to do hospice work," Pennes said. "People think pulpit rabbis can do this kind of work, but they are already so stressed to the limit, they can’t give the time that hospice visits demand. Hospice care requires being with the family for months and intensive time at the end. So, basically, the work is not getting done."

Both Howard and Pennes base their work on bikkur cholim, God’s commandment to visit the sick. No person’s final journey should be alone, they believe. What they propose, and are doing on a limited basis now, is training medical care professionals and rabbinical students in the art of hospice.

"I teach people how to be present with people who are sick, how not to fill the space but make the space," Howard explained. "Jewish tradition teaches us that the divine presence hovers over the bed of a sick person. Our job is to reflect that divine presence [back to the person] and to help the patient, if they can, come to that spiritual experience.

"Each death is as unique as each person’s fingerprint. I walk in with a sense of awe and humility…. If I’m mindful of the situation and present, then God’s presence will do the healing," she said.

So far, Howard and Pennes have been struggling with "initial growing pains" (i.e., the difficulty of raising money in the Jewish community). They’ve had wonderful moral support, they say, and they’re most proud of the fact that they have an advisory board of rabbis from every denomination who unanimously support the need for a Jewish hospice. But funds are still lacking.

"We’ve raised a small amount of money for our nonprofit papers, applied for some grants and hired a grant writer," Pennes said. "We need $350,000 for the initial year, and then an additional $100,000 to $200,000 over the next couple years to pay for hospice chaplains, design curriculum and training, and outreach in the Jewish community."

Howard and Pennes, who also teaches at Milken Community High School,hold various other jobs as well. They would devote themselves full time to the Jewish Hospice Project, if they could. Through outreach and word-of-mouth, they hope to find the person who can help them put Jewish Hospice Project, Los Angeles, on the map. The work, they believe, may be the most important work a person can ever do.

"The dying process strips away every identity you have as a person, everything you know and hold, and what you are left with is your deepest self," Howard said, as she rose to go, late for a visit with a sick patient. "The divine presence will help the patient be in touch with their deepest self if we the visitor, we the rabbi … reflect back to the patient in hospice, and hold the space for them. They will do the work."

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Getting the Word Out

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment /

Man Ray was Jewish.

Yes, the famous surrealist, who — with conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, the dada of Dada — pushed the boundaries of imagery through his experimental photographs and paintings, was born Emmanuel Radnitzky. Of course, painter Marc Chagall was Jewish, but did you know that the revered impressionist Camille Pissarro was, too? Or abstract portraitist Amedeo Modigliani?

The Commission for the Dissemination of Jewish History wants you to know all of this. Through columns placed in advertising space of various Jewish newspapers nationwide, including this one, the commission is on a mission to empower Jews by cultivating cultural pride.

The Jewish list game is as old as the Torah, possibly older. No doubt every Jewish household has partaken in identifying their famous Hebrew-origined brethren. Adam Sandler recorded two versions of “The Hanukah Song,” rhyming famous Jewish celebrities. Even Howard Stern occasionally tests the IQ of porn stars and dwarfs with a round of “Who Is the Jew?,” where contestants must discern which celebrities are Jewish.

In a culture that has endured millennia of illogical persecution, perhaps it makes Jews feel good to know that — contrary to anti-Semitic rhetoric and despite our relatively small numbers — we are contributing greatly to the advancement of pop culture, world culture, science, medicine and history.

Fine artists aren’t the only Jews profiled in these columns, which feature enlightening factoids about famous Jewish scientists (Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Sigmund Freud and Jonas Salk), authors (Boris Pasternak, Saul Bellow), playwrights (Arthur Miller, Neil Simon), politicians (Benjamin Disraeli, Leon Blum), classical musicians (Felix Mendelssohn, Gustav Mahler), patrons of the arts (Joseph Pulitzer, Solomon Guggenheim), Hollywood moguls (David O. Selznick, Otto Preminger), and actors (Sarah Bernhardt — not to be confused with actress Sandra Bernhard, who is also Jewish).

Just as important to the Commission are the Jews who aren’t exactly household names.

“Little is recorded of the gallantry and sacrifice of Jewish Americans in our military since the nation’s founding,” opens a column slugged “They Served With Courage.” Such figures, synopsized at the commission’s Web site, include Sir John Monash, supreme commander of Australia’s WWI European forces; Captain Alexandre Marcquefoy, personally presented with a Legion of Honor by Napoleon; and Uriah Levy, who, at the outset of the War of 1812, helmed the warship Argus, which sank or captured 22 British vessels (the very battle that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen “The Star Spangled Banner”). Levy, the first Jew to attain the rank of commodore, later preserved Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, which he bequeathed to the United States as a national monument.

The commission and the columns were developed by the late Walter Field in the mid-1990s when he himself was in his mid-90s.

“My father had a concept that Judaism would primarily be sustained beyond the religious aspects of it by making young people proud to be Jewish,” said Irwin Field, who co-chairs the Commission with his sister, Harriet Siden.

“The purpose of these articles is to extol a sense of pride, not just in adult readers but younger readers who may not have a historical perspective of what Jews did and accomplished,” said Saul Stadtmauer, who, based on his co-authoring of the 1995 book “Jewish Contributions to the American Way of Life” with Asher B. Etkas, was hired by Walter Field to write the columns.

Walter Field, who manufactured paint and wrote poetry, was based in Detroit. Although Irwin Field has moved to Los Angeles (he is a board member of The Journal), Siden and their mother, Lea, still reside in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

In a period of 18 months, Stadtmauer scribed 80 installments, based on Walter’s research, that originally ran in the Detroit Jewish News. The columns were illustrated by Thomas Carren, an old friend of Stadtmauer’s whom the writer jokingly dubbed “an honorary Jew” since Carren is married to a Jewish woman.

Stadtmauer, who lives in New York City, never actually met Walter Field in person while crafting the columns. Nevertheless, he developed a strong sense of who Walter Field was.

“He was very vital, a powerful personality,” Stadtmauer said. “He was a driving force in the commission as well as a founding father in the Detroit Jewish News. It says something about Walter that he launched this in his 90s. That’s been true for a lifetime. He was always alive, always receptive to ideas.”

After Walter Field died in 1999, at the age of 98, Irwin Field became financially involved and began rerunning the columns in the Detroit Jewish News. He also placed them in ad spaces inside the Atlanta Jewish Times, Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, The Forward in New York and The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. The commission’s accompanying Web site also has attracted responses

“I used to get e-mail from all over the world, not just Jewish people,” Siden said. “It reaches a lot of people. In some ways, it’s a little too limited just for Jewish people, but my father was so intent on showing the world on what we’ve given them.”

Eddie Cress of Sylmar reads the columns each week. He particularly enjoyed a recent installment featuring actor Paul Muni.

“They’re tremendous,” said Cress, 62, of the educational pieces. “I think today’s youth needs to take a look at their history and see what made the theater great.”

“It was a labor of love,” Stadtmauer said. “I’m proud to be associated with the project and the Fields.”

According to Stadtmauer, “a point that Walter made very strongly was that he declined any references to the Holocaust and the adversities and prejudices over the centuries. These did not appear in any of our columns. His feeling was that we should be positive and refer to Jewish achievement.”

For information on the Commission for the Dissemination of Jewish History, visit www.dorledor.org .

Getting the Word Out Read More »