October 17, 2002

Jewish Legislators Back Iraq Resolution

Leave a Comment / Politics / Wendy J. Madnick

Stop Saddam Hussein now, before it’s too late. That is the message elected officials, ranging from local members of Congress to President George W. Bush, worked to get across to the Americans these past few weeks.

"We have to confront him sooner or later," Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills) told The Journal. "Even though it is risky and we are worried about all the things that could go wrong, it is less risky, less costly and less dangerous to do it now than it would be later, both for our military and for the Iraqi people."

It is a position shared by many in Congress. Despite fierce debate in the House and the Senate, both houses last week passed a joint resolution giving Bush the authority to use military force, if necessary, to compel Iraq to destroy its biological and chemical weapons and disband its nuclear weapons program.

Support for the measure was mixed among California representatives and senators, but strong among the state’s Jewish elected officials. Sen. Diane Feinstein was vocal about what she deemed Bush’s politicizing of the Iraq issue this summer, but the Democrat surprised many by voting to support the president. Of the Jewish congressional representatives from California, only Sen. Barbara Boxer voted against the measure, saying she disagreed with the premise of the resolution.

"If our founders wanted the president, any president, to have the power to go to war, they would have said so," Boxer, a Democrat, told the Senate. "How can I vote to take our country to war alone, which is the authority the president wants, without allies and without the facts I need to fulfill my responsibilities to the people of California?"

But, as evidenced by the vote, the majority of congressmembers believe that there is enough information to justify extreme measures against Iraq. In terms of building worldwide support for an invasion, many representatives expressed their hope that a show of unity will force the United Nations to back the United States.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who had voted to oppose Operation Desert Storm, supported the resolution. "Despite my misgivings about the president’s approach," he said in a speech to the House, "I believe it’s essential that Congress send the strongest bipartisan signal of unity possible so the U.N. will act…. In a post-Sept. 11 world, it is important we speak with one voice and send one message — particularly when the lives of our men and women in the armed forces are at stake."

Unlike Waxman, Berman had no misgivings and has considered the Iraqi leader a threat to both the United States and the world for 20 years. A member of the House International Relations Committee since 1983, Berman said the roots of the present situation lay in the Iraq policies of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.

He said the policies of Reagan and the elder Bush "were to ignore Saddam’s repression and his support of terrorism, and [instead] subsidize his government through agricultural credits, and supply him with military equipment throughout the 1980s, out of a terrible, misplaced belief that he was a moderate Arab leader."

Berman said his criticism of U.S. policy to support Iraq — because it opposed our other enemy, Iran — was largely ignored by Reagan and the elder Bush, but that the present administration is on the right track.

"I don’t like having to take preemptive action by military force, but there are times when this is necessary," Berman said, pointing out that it is getting more difficult to obtain accurate intelligence reports from the region. "Saddam’s capacity to hide what he is doing is greater than our capacity to find out what he is doing."

"We do know, if he were to get nuclear weapons, he would have the capacity to deter us in the Middle East," Berman said. "The other countries and leaders in that region would fall in line with his policies, because they would be scared of the consequences if they did not. Knowing what his capabilities are, and what his history is, anyone would understand why we are contemplating this very grave decision."

Other local representatives agreed with Berman’s assessment of the situation, but they voiced their concerns regarding a military invasion and its effects up until the Oct. 10 vote.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice) backed the joint resolution only after changes were made to ensure an attack would not dilute resources from the nation’s war against Al Qaeda. A ranking member of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, Harman said she still believes "we are paying inadequate attention to the war on terror."

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who like Berman is a member of the International Relations Committee, drafted legislation prior to the vote that would have given Iraq until Oct. 31 to comply with a complete inspection and would have prevented the president from using military force until that date. The measure failed to win committee approval. Sherman still believes weapons inspections could prevent war, but is prepared to support an invasion if it is necessary.

"No solution is perfect," Sherman said. "Even if Iraq does have a regime change, whatever secrets Saddam has, he’s going to give to the worst scoundrels on the planet."

"I put forward my draft as an illustration of what we should be doing," he continued. "But when it failed and the choice was to do nothing or to give the president a blank check, I voted to give the president a blank check."

Sherman, who also serves on the Middle East subcommittee, said that the United States will need to examine how an invasion of Iraq would affect Israel, and take steps to ensure the country’s safety. He believes Israel will support the United States in its endeavors.

In speaking with Israeli officials, Sherman said, "those concerned with Israel’s security believe that any action against Iraq is in the interest of Israeli security. They understand there could be Israeli casualties if war occurs, but they also understand that if Saddam Hussein is allowed to develop nuclear weapons, the threat to Israel is overwhelming."

One benefit of achieving a regime change in Iraq would be its impact on the war on terrorism, congressmembers said. Although direct links to Al Qaeda have been scant, Saddam has made no secret of his longtime support for terrorism, particularly against Israel, from ordering the assassination in 1982 of Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov to his current financial support for Hamas.

Even more than international terrorism is the terror perpetrated on citizens of his own country, legislators said, including using chemical weapons in attacks on the Kurds, one of which wiped out a town of 5,000 civilians.

"If it is done right, we can be the liberators of the Iraqi people and not the enemy of the Arab world," Berman said. "But that will take very wise and carefully planned policies."

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Arquette Reconnects

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film / Naomi Pfefferman

A sad-eyed man wearing a three-piece herringbone suit is struggling to describe his feelings about Auschwitz and Primo Levi’s Holocaust poetry.

Except for the goatee and the moussed hair, there’s no clue this is David Arquette — the youngest of acting siblings Rosanna, Patricia, Richmond and Alexis — renowned for playing doofuses like the cop, Dewey, in the “Scream” trilogy (and for an off-screen wardrobe that rivals Liberace’s).

He said he’s wearing the herringbone to match the somber tone of his new movie, “The Grey Zone,” which is as antithetical to his pop-culture image as the suit. The actor is startlingly heartbreaking as Hoffman, the most fragile and guilt-ridden of a squad of Sonderkommandos at Birkenau.

Of his unorthodox casting choice, director Tim Blake Nelson said, “I’ve always felt David’s comedy is based on shame. The comic tension in his work is about his characters trying to be something they’re not, so they’re ashamed of who they actually are. And Hoffman is a character full of shame.”

During a Journal interview, Arquette — born on a Virginia Buddhist commune to a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father — described childhood auditions where “I’d embarrass myself and get rejected and cry.” He said his family celebrated both Passover and Ramadan after his father converted to Islam.

Arquette’s maternal grandfather, a Polish Holocaust refugee, lived with the family until his death in the 1980s. “I regret so much that I didn’t ask him more about his past,” said the actor, who instead immersed himself in graffiti art and the Fairfax High drama program.

Eventually Arquette, 31, built his reputation with goofy turns, such as the AT&T commercials in which he behaved, according to Entertainment Weekly, “like a Ritalin-starved child.”

He married his “Scream” co-star Courtney Cox — but grief accompanied his success. Five years ago, his mother, Mardi (nee Brenda Nowak), an acting coach and family therapist, succumbed to breast cancer. His 65-year-old father, Lewis, died while Arquette was shooting the campy 2002 arachnid flick, “Eight-Legged Freaks.”

With his parents gone — and many of his family questions still unanswered — Arquette was drawn to “The Grey Zone” to connect to his Jewish roots. As research, he said he visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where the piles of victims’ shoes “suggested the visual horror Hoffman would have seen every day.” He attended a “Sonderkommando training camp,” where the actors learned “to handle the big pokers and pliers used to turn the bodies in the ovens.”

On the first day of shooting, he said, he lifted a naked extra painted to look like a corpse, when “suddenly, I felt I was looking at my mother. She had my mother’s body, which I knew because when my mother was sick, we’d help change her, and her head was shaved, just as my mother was bald from her chemotherapy. It was just a glimpse of the shock the Sonderkommandos must have felt when they recognized someone they knew.”

The raw experience has shaped his Jewish identity. “It’s given me pride in my heritage, and respect for the suffering the Jewish people have endured,” he said.

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Shades of ‘Grey’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film / Naomi Pfefferman

Before Tim Blake Nelson wrote and directed his controversial Holocaust drama, "The Grey Zone," he set out to create a play about his family’s escape from Nazi Germany just before Kristallnacht.

"But it just felt like the same old survivor’s tale," the erudite director said during an interview at the Mondrian Hotel. "And with all the extraordinary work that’s been done on the Holocaust, I felt I’d better not go there, unless I could say something new."

He found it upon reading Primo Levi’s essay, "The Grey Zone," about the Sonderkommandos — Jews who ushered prisoners into the changing rooms, hosed blood and feces from the gas chambers and shuttled corpses into the ovens. Aiding the death machine bought them extra months of life with unheard of privileges, including permission to scavenge the food and belongings of the dead.

Nelson — who likes to describe himself as "a Jew from Tulsa" — said he grew up attending synagogue and Hebrew school, but had never heard of the Sonderkommandos. "I couldn’t have contrived a more extreme moral dilemma," he said. "As an able-bodied Jewish man in my 30s, I realized I could have been faced with their impossible choice, had I been swept into a cattle car in 1944."

Nelson, who attended Brown University and Juilliard, went on to write and direct an Obie-winning 1996 play, and a brutally realistic new film that follows Birkenau Sonderkommandos as they plot a rebellion and discover a girl still alive in the gas chamber. Loosely based on real events, the edgy drama — starring Harvey Keitel and David Arquette (see sidebar) depicts the squad’s grisly work in meticulous detail, including the repainting of soiled gas chamber walls and the handling of bodies with specially designed pokers.

Without the sentimentality of Holocaust films such as "Life Is Beautiful" or "Schindler’s List," Variety reports that the movie "may well evoke the mechanized horror … of the Nazi death camps more vividly than any fictional film to date."

Nelson explained that his goal was "to break many of the conventions of the Holocaust film. The Jews in this movie don’t pray or cower. They are crass and profane. They treat bodies like bolts of fabric. They seem to be working in a factory, which is what they had to do to survive."

Nelson, the son and grandson of survivors, said ethical concerns were paramount in his childhood home. His mother, Ruth, who heads Tulsa’s housing authority, served as president of charities such as Planned Parenthood.

"My grandfather often told me that I shouldn’t be alive, and my mother, in particular, spent her life ‘earning’ her right to be alive by improving conditions for others," the director said.

Nelson also hoped to make a difference by acting in weighty films, but was relegated to comic roles because of his appearance (he is 5 feet 6 inches tall and, in his words, "odd looking.") Although he turned heads with hilarious roles such as Delmar, a dimwit hillbilly in "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" he began writing and directing his own work (including the 1997 parable, "Eye of God") to tackle serious issues.

To research "The Grey Zone," he read at least 7,000 pages of material, including Sonderkommando diaries found buried at Birkenau and the memoir of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish pathologist who was at Aushewitz, portrayed in the film by Keitel. On location in the village of Giten, Bulgaria, Nelson supervised construction of an almost life-sized crematorium based on Nazi blueprints.

The hyper-realistic set fueled the performances: "It was enough to literally make you sick," said Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino, who plays a member of the camp underground. "It was so oppressive, that it was the only time in my life I felt I did almost no acting."

Like many of the other actors, Sorvino — who ate 600 calories a day for weeks to appear emaciated — agreed to minimal pay because of her personal connection to the material. "I’ve been obsessed with the Holocaust from the time I was 10, and I read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ and our German housekeeper told me to stop crying because it was all a lie," she said. "After that I had nightmares about being hunted by Nazis, which recurred after making the film."

Despite the best efforts of the cast and crew, the movie has already received criticism. Nelson said several viewers have objected to his depiction of Holocaust victims as less than angelic.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Museum of Tolerance said he declined to screen the film, because its graphic sequences would "upset our survivor constituency."

Perhaps the staunchest critic of all — at least initially — was Dario Gabbai of Los Angeles, who worked at Birkenau’s crematorium as the camp was "processing" 24,000 corpses in 24 hours. After his first viewing of the film, he complained about details such as the lavish feasting of the Sonderkommandos, which was not his experience.

But Gabbai — who changed his mind after spending hours with Nelson — cried during the premiere last month at a benefit for the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. "Since seeing the movie, I am dreaming again about the flames and the bodies," he said. "But it is a story that needs to be told."

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A Solid Gold Artist

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Michael Aushenker

Not long ago, Jeffrey Gold disappeared from Los Angeles’ art scene.”I just buried myself in my work,” said the 45-year-old artist. “I didn’t let people see the work. I was kind of struggling.”

The impressive results of his 2000-2002 artistic hibernation will show at Forum Gallery beginning Oct. 18.

Gold is preoccupied with the human figure. Yet unlike many artists, his work eschews irony. Gold paints what he sees and relishes.

“I paint from my own personal experiences,” said Gold, whose works also feature friends, lovers and family, even if those moments are personal and painful.

Gold experienced emotional turmoil as a child when his parents divorced. The son of an observant Russian-Polish mother and a secular English-Romanian father, Gold and his two sisters grew up in the Miracle Mile district.

“We were very kosher.” Gold said. “Following the divorce, my dad gave us bacon. When we first tasted bacon, we wanted to kill my mother!”

After Beverly Hills High School, Gold attended Art Center College of Design, where he clashed with the commercial art curriculum.

“I wound up teaching myself how to paint,” said Gold, who vowed to return one day to the college and share his experience. That circle closes in November, when he will teach advanced painting at his alma mater.

Gold wasn’t always a figurative painter. He began as a photo-realist, depicting toys, Archie Comics and Red Hots. His joy came in capturing the plasticity and color of kitschy objects.

“It was almost a challenge,” he said, “to see if I could put them down on canvas as they were.”

The novelty wore off after a 1989 exhibit by Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum that changed Gold’s artistic life. From Nerdrum’s figurative paintings, Gold derived “such an emotional impact that kind of jolted me into realizing that I was happier painting figures than painting toys.”

At the end of the day, what you see is what you get in Gold’s work — albeit filtered through the artist’s emotional state.

“I paint from my life,” Gold said. “If I paint a lot of tulips, it’s because I love tulips.”

“Jeffrey Gold: Recent Paintings” runs from Oct. 18-Nov. 16 at the Forum Gallery, 8069 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. Opening reception is Oct. 18, 6-10 p.m. For information, call (323) 655-1550.

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Idaho Remembers Anne

Leave a Comment / Travel, United States / Tom Tugend

Not long ago, the mention of Idaho conjured up images of neo-Nazis of the Aryan Nations goose-stepping at their forest redoubt in this Northwestern state.

But now, Idaho will draw some more welcome attention as the home of the Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial and Park, in the heart of Boise, the state capital.

The park’s dedication in August drew thousands, affirming Idaho’s commitment to tolerance, civil rights and rejection of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, who until recently marred the state’s reputation.

The 30,000 square-foot park, on the banks of the Boise River, includes a life-size bronze statue of Anne Frank, peering through an "attic" window, two reflecting ponds, three waterfalls, reading circles, children’s plaza and an amphitheater.

Engraved on tablets of Idaho sandstone and travertine are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and 60 quotes from such figures as Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr., Chief Joseph and Confucius, ending with the quote from Anne Frank’s famous diary, "If God lets me live … I shall not remain insignificant. I shall work in the world and for mankind."

More than 3,000 individuals and businesses contributed toward the $1.5 million cost of the project, including students from 40 Idaho schools who staged plays, washed cars, sold candy and friendship-grams and collected pennies for the $40,000 statue of Anne Frank by Massachusetts sculptor Greg Stone.

More than 250,000 visitors, including 25,000 school children, are expected at the memorial annually, according to Les Bock, executive director of the Idaho Human Rights Education Center, who spearheaded the project.

These are huge figures for a state with a total population of less than 1.3 million. The miniscule Jewish community of about 1,000 makes up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the state’s total and supports one synagogue, Ahavath Beth Israel in Boise.

The origin of the memorial park dates back to 1995, when an Anne Frank exhibit went on display in Boise. It attracted 45,000 visitors, at that time about 5 percent of the state’s population.

Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and Boise Mayor Brent Coles formally dedicated the memorial on Aug. 16, while New York actress Aysan Celik read excerpts from Anne Frank’s diary.

Some of the thinking that went into creation of the memorial is discussed in an informational bulletin.

"Why, in Idaho, do we work so passionately on this endeavor?" it asks, and responds, "Some may say to offset the vocal hate groups who tarnish the reputation of our state; others may say to build a lasting legacy for generations to come; and still others may say it’s simply the right thing to do."

But why name the memorial for Anne Frank? The answer is that "Anne Frank’s story teaches us about human rights in a way that everyone can understand. From her tragic experiences, we can learn how human rights issues affect us all and how to safeguard against similar human rights tragedies."

For more information, visit www.idaho-humanrights.org/anne.htm.

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Amsterdam’s Split Personality

Leave a Comment / Travel / Anthea Gerrie

Anne Frank’s house, a fabulous 17th century synagogue and an excellent heritage museum give Amsterdam special appeal for Jewish visitors. But they are all sites whose very existence reflect the city’s incurable split personality, making for a sightseeing experience that constantly provides food for thought.

Jews were victims of Amsterdam’s schizophrenia from the mid-1600s, when they first came from Portugal disguised as Catholic converts, to the mid-1900s, when the horror of the Holocaust provoked serious atonement for a level of duplicity that helped the community to virtual annihilation 60 years ago.

At first, Jews were tolerated yet barred from all but the brokers’, printers’ and surgeons’ guilds and were later emancipated by Napoleon, only to be left to a terrible fate under the Nazis. It is surprising, given how little help was given to the few wartime survivors, that a modern community exists at all.

Yet, this beautiful city has done more than any in Europe to acknowledge the contribution of its late, great Jewish citizens.

Amsterdam has much else to recommend it — beautiful canals, buzzy cafes, world-class art and architecture and eclectic shopping — plus discomfiting contrasts that give it a certain edge. Elegant canalside neighborhoods sit only minutes away from a raucous Red Light District, while a rip-off taxi-driver element preys on tourists who shun the fast and frequent trams.

However, for those sufficiently fit to get around by tram, boat and on foot, dodging the bicycles, Amsterdam makes for a rewarding weekend. The city looks utterly unique, thanks to its legacy of distinctive 17th century buildings, and also feels unique, thanks to the cultural sea change of the hippie era in which it remains charmingly stuck. There’s a hallucination round every corner, whether it’s a five-story gingerbread house leaning at a precarious 20-degree angle into the canal, or a rescue barge fishing drowned bicycles out of the water by the truckload — not to mention those ladies of the night in their neon-framed windows.

Anne Frank’s house, the saddest canalside mansion of all, is the first place of pilgrimage for virtually all cultural tourists. Despite the queues and the controversy (some feel it whitewashes wartime facts), it is impossible not to be moved by the sight of her bare room decorated with pictures from the cinema magazines smuggled in every week, not to mention the original diary pages in which she recorded every agony of her interrupted adolescence and longing for a future in which it would be OK to be Jewish.

Far less well-known than the diary, but an equally powerful testament of a young girl in the wrong place at the wrong time, are the 769 vivid comic-strip tableaus by Charlotte Salomon, who also died in the camps. Salomon was a Berliner, but her illustrated autobiography is a jewel in the crown of Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum, which attempts to explore all Jewish identity — as well as the sad tale of the Dutch experience — within a complex of 17th and 18th century shuls.

You don’t, however, need to enter a museum to trace the history of Amsterdam’s community, thanks to an excellent self-guided walking tour around the old Jewish quarter, whose most poignant site is the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a music-hall grotesquely turned into a Jewish theater by the Nazis and shortly thereafter a collection point for Amsterdam’s Jews sent from bound for death in the camps.

Almost equally chilling to behold is the handsome canalside Jewish Council building, whose members so efficiently carried out the orders of their new Nazi masters in the vain hope of not making things worse. Like the Amsterdammers at large who went on strike to protest the occupation long after the event, they realized the truth too late. It is a wonder that the magnificent Portuguese synagogue completed in 1675 survived the war, unlike its community, and that it continues to open for services today without the benefit of electric light. one of the most breathtaking aspects of a Shabbat visit is to experiencing davening by candlelight, but a visit is possible at any time without special arrangement.

Across the road lies Waterlooplein, a big waterside market square once the main trading venue for Jewish peddlers barred from owning shops, now a Mecca of ’70s-style tat. Nearby — and thus perfectly placed for touring Amsterdam’s Jewish sites, as well as the canal belt, which is a living legacy to the city’s golden age — is the Hotel de l’Europe, one of Amsterdam’s three five-star deluxe hotels and by far the most conveniently situated. Worth the price for its luxury as well as location, it is just a couple of doors down from the city’s best cafe, Cafe de Jaren, a brilliant waterside rendezvous for anything from a late breakfast to a late drink. Less posh than the l’Europe, but very acceptable, is the Hotel Estherea, offering a canalside view of Amsterdam life. There is a Waterlooplein stop for the excellent Museum Boat that goes one step further than other canal cruises by linking all sites of interest, including Anne Frank’s House and the Jewish Museum, and permits a start-stop cruise as often as you want within the scope of a day ticket.

A large part of the day will doubtless be spent on land, in the art gallery belt at the southern end of town, where the Rembrandts, Vermeers and still-life masters of the Rijksmusum compete with the Van Goghs at the modern museum dedicated to the work of the mad Vincent — including several incarnations of his sunflower paintings.

Next door, the Stedilijk Museum promises world-class modern art, but out of season it displays disappointingly few of its Mondrians, Maleviches and other Post-Impressionists. Before leaving the museum belt, do wander down to the lively Leidseplein, which, although rather gaudy, is distinguished by the turn-of-the-century Cafe Americain, another Amsterdam institution. Each city center meeting point seems to have its signature cafe. In the Leidestraat shopping area, it’s the top floor of Metz, Amsterdam’s answer to Harvey Nichols, with a fantastic view of canalside rooftops, while on Spui Square, aficionados divide themselves between the Dante and the Luxembourg. Negotiating Amsterdam life depends on knowing the difference between a grand cafe (all the aforementioned — large and glamorous), a brown cafe (smaller and more traditional) and a coffee shop — which legally dispenses cannabis, with or without a shot of caffeine. Scary as they sound, these law-abiding establishments are safe, no one pushes customers to smoke, and the odd one, like the Jolly Joker, where a tiny hive of left-wing Jewish intellectual debate on the Nieuwmarkt, is an absolute gem. This former brown cafe, with its fabulous art nouveau light fittings, serves the best cappuccino in town against a suitably laid-back musical backdrop — everything from the Mamas and the Papas to modern Chill. Traditionalists may prefer the equally exquisite and tiny Papenisland, Amsterdam’s oldest brown cafe, named for the secret tunnel under the canal that Catholics used to reach their clandestine church in the days when their own religion was outlawed.

Visiting this fantastically lit watering hole for a nightcap would be reason enough to head for Jordaan, Amsterdam’s loveliest and also funkiest residential neighborhood, but although the nearby Brauwersgracht canal and its elegant homes and bridges are enchanting by night, its shops are equally worth a poke around during the day. A good bistro hereabouts is Lorrainen, but the gastronomic gem likely to be of greatest interest to Jewish visitors is the delightfully decorated Lucius fish restaurant, back in the town center on Spuistraat.

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Parshat Lech-Lecha

Leave a Comment / Kids & Teens / Abby Gilad

This portion starts a new chapter in the history of the Jews. Many unfortunate things have happened in the first 2,000 years since the creation of the world: Adam and Eve are exiled from Eden, Cain kills Abel and a flood destroys the world. Now,God decides to begin again. Abraham and Sarah are the couple he chooses to help bring forth Godly spirit into the world. This time God will succeed.

It is often hard to work on a project, only to realize that it has gone in an entirely wrong direction — a drawing, a homework essay. Sometime, we try to work out the kinks and that makes it even worse. Although it is hard to give up on a work in progress, sometimes it is easier to throw the whole thing out and begin again. And if God did it, you can, too!

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The Circuit

Leave a Comment / Circuit / Michael Aushenker

Rah Rah Riordan!

American Jewish Community (AJC) honored children’s rights activist Nancy Daly Riordan with its Human Relations Award at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills. (From left) L.A. Chapter President Peter Weil; honoree Nancy Daly Riordan; AJC Western Regional Director Rabbi Gary Greenebaum; emcee Bill Rosendahl; and keynote speaker Marian Wright Edelman.

Solidarity Rallies

Women In Solidarity, an amalgam of representatives from various Jewish women’s organizations, held its election priming event “Political Hotline: California to Jerusalem” at Stephen S. Wise Temple. Presenters included Women’s Alliance Vice President Elaine Robinson and Special Assistant to Gov. Gray Davis Teri Smooke. Jewish News Editor Phil Blazer moderated the event.

Mission In Action

Friends of Sheba Medical Center held a reception for Sinai Temple’s Mission of Mercy group, which recently completed a mission to Israel. Rabbi Jacob Pressman, Marjorie Pressman, and Sinai’s Rabbi David Wolpe were among the speakers at the Four Seasons Hotel reception.

Center Celebration

Hillel Council At UCLA celebrated the opening of its Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, where “Bonanza” creator David Dortort and his wife Rose; community activist Janice Kamenir-Reznik; and Hillel supporter Helene Spiegel were honored.

Shalom, Sarit!

B’nai B’rith Shalom Unit will welcome newly-elected president Sarit Finkelstein-Boim (pictured) and its incoming board at its annual dinner-dance, to be held on Nov. 16. Singer Pini Cohen and L.A. Shir Choir will entertain. Consul General of Israel Yuval Rotem will serve as honorary committee chair.

B’nai B’rith Shalom Unit has donated an ambulance to Israel Magen David Adom an Ambulance, and will forward funds raised at this event to Israeli charities. For more information, call (310) 471-8545.

A Cool Honoree

Actor/director/producer Henry Winkler, best known as “The Fonz” from “Happy Days,” received the Spirit of Hope Award at the Skirball Cultural Center from New Directions for Youth, a nonprofit that has provided services and programs for at-risk youth and their families for more than a quarter century.

Guthman The Guardian

Rabbi Sidney Guthman received the Guardian of Israel Award at the Jewish National Fund’s Long Beach dinner.

Ivory Tickler

Concert pianist Hershey Felder performed at a benefit for the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony at University Synagogue in Brentwood.

World News

The Children of the World choir, led by founder Marrina Waks, performed at the Hollywood Film Festival on Oct. 7, where DreamWorks mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg was honored. Fellow DreamWorks mogul/director Steven Spielberg and actor Billy Crystal were among the presenters.

Join The Club

The 1939 Club — including Shoah Survivors of Orange County and Long Beach — will celebrate their 50th anniversary at a Beverly Hills Hotel gala honoring the club’s past presidents. Osi Sladek and the Reuben Berci Orchestra will provide the entertainment. For more information, call (310) 276-5401.

A Big Happy-ning

Happy Hats For Kids, a nonprofit headed by founder Sheri Schrier that brings good cheer to children hospitalized with cancer, AIDS and other devastating illnesses, will be forming a new South Bay fundraising auxiliary. A meeting will be held on Oct. 28 at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call (310) 326-8409.

Community-Minded Couple

Solomon and Mahlagha Rastegar will be honored at Western Region of The Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs 2002 Herman Braunstein Red Yarmulke Humanitarian Award, to be held at Sinai Temple. John Fishel, president of Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, will present the award. Singer Pini Cohen will entertain. Net proceeds will go to Magen David Adom Israel Ambulance and Emergency Relief Fund.

Actor Voight Walks

Jon Voight, who won the Oscar for “Coming Home,” has a coming “home” event of his own — The Jewish Home for the Aging (JHA), that is. Voight is the honorary chair of JHA’s Third Annual Walk of Angels 5 K Walk/Run, which will be held on Dec. 8 at the Jewish Home’s Eisenberg Campus in Reseda. For information, call the Walk of Angeles hotline: (818) 774-3100.

A Growing Collection

James Snyder, the Anne and Jerome Fisher director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, announced recent gifts from Los Angeles supporters who are joining forces during these challenging times in Israel to support the museum through the West Coast branch of the American Friends of the Israel Museum.

Leading the list of major donations by individual supporters is a gift of $1.5 million from Herta and Paul Amir of Beverly Hills, for the renewal of the Shrine of the Book, the D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Center for Biblical Manuscripts, which was constructed in 1965 on the museum’s campus to house its world-renowned holdings of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Alice and Nahum Lainer of Beverly Hills, have contributed a gift of $1,000,000, to be paid in annual contributions of $100,000, to support the museum’s unrestricted operations. Both the Amirs and the Lainers are longtime friends of the Israel Museum.

An early work by the American artist Frank Stella, completed in 1969, has been donated to the Museum by the family of the late Los Angeles collectors Luella and Samuel Maslon.

Founded in 1965, the Israel Museum houses encyclopedic collections ranging from pre-history through contemporary art, including the most extensive holdings of biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world, among them the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Don’t Fight This Power

Professional Organization of Women in Entertainment Reaching UP (POWER UP) will honor Jerry Offsay, president of programming for Showtime Networks Inc., and singer/songwriter Melissa Etheridge at its second annual Power Premiere. The gala event will be held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. For information, call (310) 271-4708; visit www.power-up.net.

Board Room

Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation has announced that it has recently completed a strategic planning process that resulted in the adoption of a new mission for the organization and the expansion of its board of directors with five prominent Southern Californians. Building on the extraordinary accomplishment of collecting almost 52,000 videotaped testimonies, the foundation has now broadened its international efforts and is focusing on the educational use of the testimonies. The foundation has restructured its governance to match this new goal.

Since Steven Spielberg established Survivors of the Shoah in 1994, the foundation has videotaped the testimonies of more than 50,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses in 57 countries in 32 languages. Today, the Shoah Foundation’s mission is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry — and the suffering they cause — through the educational use of the Foundation’s visual history testimonies. Susan Crown, board chair, announced that prominent Southern California community and business leaders Gerald Breslauer, Skip Paul, Bruce Ramer, Mickey Rutman and Severin Wunderman have been named to the board of directors.

Breslauer and Rutman co-founded Breslauer and Rutman, LLC, an L.A.-based business management firm that specializes in the financial affairs of individuals in the entertainment industry. Bruce Ramer has been a partner for over 40 years at Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown, a Beverly Hills-based law firm has served on the boards of the American Jewish Committee. Paul is chairman of the board of the IFILM Network and has served as president of MCA Enterprises. Wunderman is an art collector, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor from Belgium.

A Shoah Support

Prominent attorney Arthur Barens and his wife, Maxine, graciously hosted an educational evening on behalf of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation at their Beverly Hills home, where more than 80 guests gathered in the Barens’ garden for a thought-provoking discussion with Shoah Foundation President and CEO Douglas Greenberg, and Renee Firestone, educator and Holocaust survivor.

Brothers Day

Jewish Big Brothers (JBB) kicked off its sixth year of sports mentoring with Sports Buddies 2002 – 2003 at Camp Max Straus in Glendale. Olympic Gold Medallist and Sports Buddies spokesperson Mitch Gaylord appeared. The nonsectarian event is funded by the Amy Phillips Charitable Foundation.

May The ORT Be With You!

While visiting Toronto, actor James Earl Jones broke the news to the Toronto Sun that he will be back in “Star Wars: Episode III” (due 2005) to voice Darth Vader, the character he originated in the original “Star Wars” trilogy. The reason for Jones’ Canadian sojourn? — he was honored on Oct. 2 by ORT Toronto.

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Tolkin vs. Prager

One would expect Michael Tolkin’s counterpoint (“Prager’s Tactics Are Lacking,” Oct. 11) would be a response to Dennis Prager’s question as to the silence of Hollywood when it comes to Israel (“Hollywood’s Silence on Israel,” Oct. 11). Instead of responding to this fundamental and painfully true question as to why the Jewish Hollywood elite has remained silent, Tolkin uses his response to verbally attack one of Israel’s strongest and most outspoken friends.

Is Tolkin aware of the numerous awards and honors bestowed upon Prager for his staunch support of Israel? Is Tolkin aware that Prager broadcasted his radio show from Jerusalem for 10 days this past April? Is Tolkin aware that Prager’s son studied in Israel last year? Is Tolkin aware that Prager has lectured throughout the country, to Jewish and Christian audiences, on the moral importance of demonstrating support for Israel in this time of crisis? Is Tolkin aware that Prager does not “drive Jews away,” rather he has inspired countless Jews to take their Judaism seriously and return to Jewish tradition?

Certainly The Jewish Journal could have found a more proper, respectful and sensible “Counterpoint” to respond to the credible issues raised by Prager, rather than publishing an article that calls Prager, and all of us in the United States that stand in support of Israel during this time of crisis, “cousins of the rich leaders of Hamas who strap the bombs on the children of the poor.” Shame on you, Tolkin.

Rabbi Moshe D. Bryski Executive Director Conejo Jewish Academy

Michael Tolkin’s gratuitously cruel attack is misinformed. First, Dennis Prager does not argue from a right-wing perspective — he has often admitted being just as wrong as the left in promoting the Oslo Peace process, which has led to such horror in the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Second, Prager did not say artists were the progenitors of the death camps. He said that Hollywood activists have not been speaking out against terrorism directed against democratic Israel.

Third, who is Tolkin to speak for all artists? Maybe he puts artists on a pedestal. I consider some of them honorable, some not. Some are liberal, some not. Tolkin seems to assign artists a group-think, and that only he speaks their language.

Fourth, the personal attack on Dennis regarding his family is below the belt. It is also wrong; his son lived in Israel during much of the recent terrorism.

Fifth, Prager and what Tolkin admiringly calls “right-wingers,” do not call for harsh treatment of Arabs. I hear them wishing to liberate Arabs from their dictators.

Tolkin owes apologies for presenting the worst of his conflicted, alienated Jewish self.

Larry Greenfield, Los Angeles

Michael Tolkin responds: In my response to Dennis Prager’s attack, I kicked below the belt. I’ve been told that Prager did have family in Israel during dangerous times. This was stupid of me, because it could have been easily checked, and as always, one’s point is best made sticking only to the text.

NPR and CAMERA

I had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Dvorkin personally many months ago when I called his office to express concern about a report I found particularly unbalanced (“CAMERA Is Out of Focus,” Oct. 4). Dvorkin informed me that he had listened to this report personally and that he did not believe the report to be biased. Therefore, he went on, the bias must be mine. It is this kind of arrogance and failure to examine critically that is so frustrating. NPR has received many respectful, thoughtful and reasonable criticisms, yet I have seen no improvement in balanced reporting, including in its recent seven-part series on the history of the Middle East conflict.

Tracy Kedar, West Hills

I am glad that CAMERA is there to hold their feet to the fire and keep in check the distortions spread by NPR. I hope and pray that no Jewish money will go to support NPR.

Avi Zirler, La Canada

The Silencing of the Left?

I respectfully disagree with Rabbi Gary Greenebaum’s comment about questioning the legitimacy of the peace camp’s position or seeing it as a naïve point of view (“The Silencing of the Left?” Sept. 27). The main goal of the peace camp is to eliminate the major obstacle that is preventing the peace process from moving forward, which is the continued existence and expansion of the settlement movement in the occupied territories.

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that Israelis themselves have grown more dovish on this issue since the start of the current Intifada, with 60 percent more expressing a willingness to evacuate settlements in the context of a peace agreement. It is neither illegitimate nor naïve for the American peace camp to continue to draw attention to this position. Rather, our challenge is finding a way to translate public backing on specific peace-related issues into broader political support — a difficult goal, but one that we will continue to pursue.

Richard Gunther , Los Angeles

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