December 5, 2002

Menorah Lights Our Way

Leave a Comment / Orange County, Personals / Marisa N. Pickar

For three years, I lived in an apartment in Jerusalem next
to a bus stop. The rhythm of my life quickly adapted to the bus schedule. Just by looking out my bedroom window, I knew
exactly when to leave the house in order to catch the bus.

When I returned to California, I assumed my life’s
association with buses would end. But this was not to be. I live in a
neighborhood where buses abound. And they’re just as loud as those of Jerusalem.
But the associations couldn’t be more different.

In Israel, a bus represented a possible tomb. Each passenger
a could-be suicide bomber. Taking the bus becomes a statement — a statement of
defiance in the face of unrelenting terrorism and the constant threat of death.

I had friends who stopped taking the bus in favor of taxis.
Or if they saw someone who looked suspicious board the bus, they jumped off and
waited for the next to come along. Here, boarding a bus means getting to where
you need to go.

While the buses are different, so is the experience of
Chanukah. Growing up, my family always lit a single menorah in an interior room
of the house. In Israel, I learned the menorah is supposed to be placed near a
window looking out onto the street to publicize the holiday, and each member of
the household should light his own.

I quickly grew to love this enhanced way of honoring events
that happened some 2,000 years ago.

We all know the story of Chanukah. The Greeks occupied the land
of Israel and commandeered our Holy Temple. They outlawed many of our
religious practices and defiled the Temple. Then a group of Jews known as the
Maccabees rebelled, drove the Greeks out and reclaimed the Temple. Topping off
the victory, a flask of oil meant to last just one day, miraculously burned for
eight.

But the battle of Greek vs. Jew ran much deeper than a mere
physical occupation of our land. It was the battle of the two great forces —
spirituality vs. physicality.

Greek culture placed beauty and intellect above spirituality
and religion. It honored and revered all that the physical world represented.
In their aspiration for aesthetic idealism, however, the Greeks denied the
transcendence of the human spirit and rejected any notion of metaphysical
reality.

Thus it should not surprise us that the Greeks fought so
desperately to uproot Torah, the spiritual compass for morality and
spirituality.

Judaism teaches that the potential for human greatness is
achieved not through the ascendancy of the physical, but by subjugation of the
physical to the spiritual. We strive to break through the bounds of physical
limitation and aspire for a higher reality, one that lies beyond materialism,
beyond superficiality.

The Greeks enjoyed a high measure of success in “converting”
Jews who succumbed to the attractions of Greek secular life. These Jews, known
as Hellenists, thrived in the cultural ambivalence offered by the Greeks to
such an extent, that Jewish tradition was on the verge of disintegration.

The Jewish people had survived attempts by the Babylonians
and the Persians to destroy them physically and spiritually, but never before
had a movement from within sought to redefine the beliefs and practices that
had shaped the Jewish national character since the time of Abraham.

Ultimately, the Macabbees routed the Greeks, the Temple was
rededicated, the oil miraculously burned for eight days and the Hellenists were
discredited. And just who were these victorious Macabbees? None other than the
Cohanim, or the priests, of the nation.

On Chanukah, therefore, we celebrate the victory of
traditional Jewish culture over both the external forces that strove to
overturn it, and the forces within that wished to dilute it.

Today we find ourselves in much the same shoes, but in an
even more complicated mixture. Ideological sects lay claim to spiritual
authenticity, separatist movements labor to set themselves apart and
multiculturists demand a coming together. Terrorism, ethnic cleansing and hate
crimes prod us to wonder if we may not be better off abandoning our culture and
religion.

Had the ancient Greeks not sensed their beliefs were
threatened by Jewish monotheism, they would not have fought so desperately to
crush Judaism. Had the Hellenist Jews felt more secure in the traditions of
their ancestors, they would never have contemplated compromising their heritage
by pursuing Greek culture with such fervor.

The one who knows what he believes and why is both immune to
the attraction of foreign culture and tolerant of sincere alien belief. He will
be neither bullied nor seduced by the philosophies of others, because he is
secure in his own. He will be able to live in harmony with others and work
together for the common welfare without sacrificing his ideals or compromising
his values.

One of the timeless lessons of Chanukah is that the light
endures. For more than 2,000 years, the lights of Chanukah have burned as a
symbol of spiritual wisdom. And it is the menorah that represents the way the
soul finds its expression in this world. No matter how much darkness surrounds
us, we still light the menorah, because we know who we are and who we can be.

This year, proudly place your menorah in a spot where the
outside world can gaze in and see your spiritual light illuminate the darkness.
Because sometimes a bus ride isn’t just a bus ride. Â

Marisa N. Pickar is a freelance journalist living in Laguna Woods.

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Access to Academia

Leave a Comment / Community / Julie Gruenbaum Fax

If you’ve ever been curious about "Hierarchy and Transcendence in Gersonides’ Theory of Knowing" or "Mnemonic Characteristics and the Oral Transmission of Aggadic Tradition," you’re about to get your chance to wade through these weighty issues with leading academics, when 1,000 members of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) descend on Los Angeles for the organization’s 34th annual conference Dec. 15-17 at the Century Plaza Hotel.

Although some of the planned sessions may be at the ivory tower level, others are relevant to the average Jew. The conference will offer a critical, scholarly perspective on issues Jews deal with every day, with topics such as "Food, Gender, Sex and Jewish Identity," "Jewish Studies and Online Learning," "Revisioning the Jewish Mother" and the "Social Network of Jewish Teens."

The newly released National Jewish Population Survey 2000-2001 will be presented and analyzed, as will Jewish communal issues in post-apartheid South Africa. On the occasion of Hadassah’s 90th anniversary, scholars have prepared analyses of the women’s Zionist organization’s contribution to U.S. and Israeli Jewry. Issues such as pluralism, feminism and gay Jewish studies are also on the extensive program.

The image and influence of Jews in Hollywood and on Broadway is also on the sessions list, including analyses of Barry Levinson’s ("Avalon") films and Wendy Wasserstein’s Jewish women. Novelist and screenwriter Michael Tolkin will deliver a keynote address on "Making Jewish Culture: Tales of a Hollywood Jew."

Conference organizers said the focus on Hollywood is more than a bid to play to the locals.

"Jewish scholarship used to be very closely defined and limited to certain disciplines, but now it’s been extended to the social sciences and the arts, and when it comes to the arts, there is something to be said for the movie industry," said AJS Executive Director Aaron Katchen. "It’s really a question of the changing nature of what constitutes Jewish studies from a scholarly standpoint."

With yet another nod to Los Angeles, which will host the conference for the first time, several sessions are dedicated to West Coast and Los Angeles Jewry, including "The Mariachi-Klezmer Connection: Examining Jewish Identity Through the Lens of Latino-Jewish Relations in Los Angeles" and "Jewish Civil Rights Activists in Los Angeles."

Sinai Temple’s Friday Night Live and Adat Ari El’s One Shabbat Morning will be among the programs analyzed in "Intimacy, Memory and Ideology at Generation X Seeker Services."

Discussing the fact that some of the conference sessions are directly relevant to day-to-day Jewish life, while others are more specialized, Katchen said the general public should pay attention to what’s going on in academia. He said it provides academic respectability and gives the Jewish community an awareness of what is going on. A good portion of today’s adult Jewish educators are Jewish studies professors, he noted, and college students are having formative experiences in the lecture hall.

"Jewish kids who go to college — and most of them do — for the most part take one or more Jewish studies courses, and it provides an intellectual framework on which future Jewish consciousness is based," Katchen said.

Robert Alter, professor of comparative literature at UC Berkeley, will discuss "Deuteronomy and the Invention of Collective Memory" in a free session open to the public on Monday, Dec. 16, at 7:45 p.m. at the hotel. It will be followed by a concert, "Hillulim ‘To the Glory of God’: Songs from the Sephardic Tradition," with Rabbi Haïm Louk and his Orchestra.

The conference is open to the public.$135 (general),
$100 (Jewish educators and rabbis). The Century Plaza Hotel and Spa, 2025 Avenue
of the Stars, Los Angeles. For more information, go to www.brandeis.edu/ajs or call (781) 736-2981.

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Blacks, Jews Unite for ‘Sheba’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Beverly Gray

In 1939, as a child of 3, Sonia Levitin fled Hitler’s Germany with her family. The first friend she made in the United States was a small African American girl. Nearly 50 years later, as a well-established writer of young adult fiction, Levitin won the National Jewish Book Award for “The Return” (Atheneum, 1987). This historical novel focuses on the plight of Ethiopian Jews, who consider themselves descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In tracing their perilous journey from Africa to Israel via Operation Moses in 1984, Levitin combined her long-standing interest in African culture with her own childhood memories of leaving her homeland behind.

Now “The Return” is becoming a musical play, thanks to an unusual collaboration between Jews and prominent members of the African American arts scene. “Children of Sheba” will receive its first partial staging at the Museum of Tolerance on Tuesday evening, Dec. 10. Playwright Myla Lichtman-Fields supplied the show’s book and serves as Levitin’s co-lyricist. Hollywood composer William Anderson wrote the musical score. The director and choreographer for “Children of Sheba” is the legendary Donald McKayle, who staged such Broadway musical hits as “Raisin” and “Sophisticated Ladies,” and today heads the dance department at UC Irvine. Leading the primarily African American cast is actress-singer Jonelle Allen, known for her role as Grace on the ’90s drama series, “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”

Though McKayle, who is married to an Israeli, has some knowledge of Jewish life, the young black cast members have had to learn such basics as how to bless Shabbat candles and recite the “Shema.” At the end of a prayer, one actor expressed with surprise: “You guys say ‘Amen,’ too!” But Levitin is delighted that her performers “are so full of life and energy.” She added, “What all my work has been about is trying to build bridges. [This project] really forges a link between black and white people, and between Jews and non-Jews.”

For information about the Dec. 10 presentation of "Children of Sheba" at the Museum of Tolerance, Simon Wiesenthal Plaza, 9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 772-2452.

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Shtetl Rock ‘n’ Roll

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Sonia Pilcer

Much to the chagrin of cultural nationalists in places such as France, no culture seems immune to the seductive rhythms of American pop and rock. Fed by a steady diet of American TV and movies, young musicians from places as disparate as Zimbabwe, Paraguay, New Zealand, Mynamar and Egypt have learned to combine their indigenous folk music with U.S.-born-and-bred rock — making for a kind of transglobal, world-beat music with a heavy blues and R&B influence.

It has taken a while, but Yiddish music has finally caught up with the rest of the world in swinging to the rock ‘n’ roll beat. While Yiddish popular music was dealt a near-death blow by the Holocaust, it has been undergoing a fertile revival for the past 20 years.

While much of that revival has focused on picking up where the music left off in 1945, driven in large part by nostalgia for a lost world, the cutting edge of Yiddish song is advancing the music through the natural evolution that would have occurred had there not been a violent break in the chain in the mid-20th century.

The latest and one of the greatest examples of this can be found on "Goyrl: Destiny," the new recording by singer Wolf Krakowski. The follow-up to "Transmigrations: Gilgul," Krakowski’s new recording posits him as a kind of Yiddish Willie Nelson, singing a mix of Yiddish folk, theater and art songs in roots-rock arrangements worthy of the Byrds and the Band — the latter, like Krakowski, a group of players originally hailing for the most part from Toronto.

Born in a displaced persons camp in Austria, son of Polish-Jewish survivors, long-haired, black-leather-jacketed, poet, vagabond and itinerant musician, Krakowski is the Jewish bad boy, the one who turned his back on college, hit the road with his guitar, hopped rides on trains and worked at odd jobs.

His mentor was the late Mississippi bluesman Big Joe Williams, with whom he used to room. Yet Krakowski now performs the music beloved of the generation that perished during the war. He sings Yiddish songs with a deep tenderness, respect and knowledge of what happened to the people of his mama loshen (mother tongue) — all with a driving blues rhythm. Think "Fiddler on the Roof" laced with Bob Dylan.

Krakowski isn’t the only musician of his generation finding common ground between Yiddish and rock ‘n’ roll. Bands at the cutting-edge of the klezmer revival, such as the Klezmatics, Brave Old World and Klezperanto, have noticed how naturally the Ashkenazic modes blend with a funky beat.

Groups, such as Mikveh, Pharaoh’s Daughter and Golem, and singers, including Adrienne Cooper, Michael Alpert, Judy Bressler and David Wall, are finding correspondences between Joni Mitchell and Molly Picon, Paul Simon and Moishe Oysher.

Krakowski, however, is the first to give voice fully to the songs of Itzik Manger, Shmerke Kaczerginski, Sholom Secunda and Mordkhe Gebirtig in the style of contemporaries such as Tom Waits, Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen.

When Klezmatics trumpeter and all-around Yiddish music maven Frank London first heard Krakowski’s music on "Gilgul," he thought it was what Jewish music would have sounded like had the Holocaust never happened. So he signed on as producer for "Goyrl" and gave the singer’s second album — which includes instrumental help from Bob Dylan keyboardist Brian Mitchell and saxophonist Charles Neville of the famed New Orleans group, the Neville Brothers — a more refined, spare sound. It emphasized Krakowski’s timeless baritone, the haunting melodies and the heartbeat rhythms.

The core musicians in Krakowski’s band are neighbors from the rural Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts that Krakowski now calls home. Bassist Ray Mason, drummer Bob Grant and Jim Armenti — who handles duty on guitar, mandolin, violin, bouzouki and saxophone — can often be found together playing as the Lonesome Brothers in area bars and honky-tonks. That experience pervades the sound of "Goyrl," and is no doubt partly responsible for the authenticity of Krakowski’s unique, electric shtetl-rock.

Kicking off "Goyrl" is "Tate-Mame" ("Father and Mother") by Benzion Witler, a Polish singer, actor and songwriter who died in 1961. The song begins with luminous guitar licks.

The lyrics are darkly existential: "Our lives are only empty dreams/Mindlessly rushing by/We ask time, allow a little happiness/It vanishes at the doorstep."

"Not all Yiddish music was frailikh, cheerful," Krakowski said from his Northampton home, which he shares with his wife, Yiddish scholar and singer Paula Parsky, known as Fraidy Katz. "There’s an expectation that I’ll be a frailikhmeister."

"In the minds of most people," he said, "Jewish music is klezmer. I like it, but that’s not my music. Sometimes I think my dead relatives, who were so brutally silenced, are channeling through me. Singing in Yiddish is how I touch them."

Krakowski introduces the dark, the sexual and the ironic in traditional Yiddish songs by Oysher, folksongs such as "Khvel Shoyn Mer Nisht Ganvenen" ("No More Will I Steal"), and the sophisticated music of conservatory-trained Emil Gorovets, whose "Tife Griber, Royter Laym" ("Deep Pits, Red Clay") is propelled by a syncopated reggae beat. Manger’s "Mit Farmakhte Oygn" ("With Eyes Closed") is drenched in pedal steel guitar, and Abraham Levin’s "A Shod Dayne Trern" ("A Waste of Your Tears") finds common ground between tango and surf-rock.

Krakowski’s vocals are tinged with pain and compassion born of witnessing firsthand the suffering of his survivor relatives. He sings "Hundert" ("One Hundred"), a counting song by an anonymous concentration camp inmate, accompanied only by a ghostly tsimbl. Krakowski also breathes new life into the familiar Joan Baez hit, "Donna, Donna," which began life as a Yiddish song with lyrics by Aaron Zeitlin and music by Secunda. Krakowski’s version restores the song’s horror at the slaughter of the innocent goat.

Even the seemingly easygoing, breezy, country twang of Witler’s "Lomir Trakhtn Nor Fun Haynt" ("Let’s Just Think About Today"), sung as a George Jones and Tammy Wynette-style duet by Krakowski and his wife, is belied by lyrics that in translation ask, "Who knows? Will a time come, and the two of us will be separated, and never see each other again?"

Both of Krakowski’s CDs are issued as part of John Zorn’s aptly titled "Radical Jewish Culture" series on Zorn’s label, Tzadik. Though Krakowski’s music celebrates Yiddish language and culture, it is most likely to be found on the world music charts.

"It’s a thrill to see yourself on record charts with Bob Marley, Femi Kuti and the Gypsy Kings," Krakowski said. And even more, he added, to hear his reggae-filled version of the traditional folk song, "Shabes, Shabes," being played on a Berlin radio station while he was visiting Germany in 1997.

His last CD, "Transmigrations," was nominated the Record of the Year for 2001 by the German magazine Folker."It’s a good thing I have a capacity for irony," he said. "Because singing in Yiddish is my personal, ongoing epithet to Hitler."

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The Gold Standard

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Naomi Pfefferman

In his dressing room on the set of NBC’s “In-Laws,” Elon Gold rolls his eyes at a gag gift that sits like an eyesore on a coffee table. It’s a cartoon-like clock, so over-the-top it looks straight out of Looney Tunes. “My co-star, Dennis Farina, got me this ugly thing because I was maybe 10 minutes late to work,” the boyish actor-comedian gripes.

As if on cue, the dressing room door flies open to reveal a scowling Farina, who portrays Gold’s tyrannical father-in-law. “Dennis is always razzing me,” says Gold, who plays a beleaguered Jewish culinary student forced to live with his in-laws. “He just never stops.”

If life imitates art backstage, the sitcom is a case of art imitating life. Gold, 32, really did move in with his wife’s parents — including his gruff father-in-law, Paul — after his son was born and a couple of his sitcom projects tanked two years ago. Though he maintains an apartment in Los Angeles, he and his wife, Sacha, still sleep on her parents’ fold-out couch when they return home to New York, their primary residence. There, Gold — who was perhaps the first observant Jew to star in his own sitcom, WB’s short-lived “You’re the One” — reverted to his role of intimidated son-in-law. “I try to make Sacha’s dad laugh and win his approval, but it always backfires and I get into trouble,” he said.

The same thing happened when Gold and Farina playfight between takes. On a recent morning, a crew member asked the comedian to “act faster” so the staff can break for lunch. “I wish he would act better,” said Farina, who’s played memorable heavies in films such as “Get Shorty.”

Gold’s real-life father-in law bears an uncanny resemblance to Farina: “He’s big and strong, with a handshake that can break bones,” the comic said. “And he has this tough-guy voice, exactly like Dennis.”

Just don’t suggest that “In-Laws” is a rip-off of the Ben Stiller-Robert De Niro film, “Meet the Parents.” “It’s based on my life,” Gold said. “It’s my desire to expose my father-in-law and to exact comic revenge.”

Before there was the father-in-law, there was the wife-to-be. Gold met tall, blond Sacha at a sweet-sixteen party thrown by a fellow Westchester Day School yeshiva alumnus the day before Gold’s 16th birthday in 1986. The budding comedian chatted her up for three hours and amused her with his impressions of celebrities such as Howie Mandel. “After the party, I turned to my friend, Leon Lowenstein, and said, ‘I’m going to marry that girl,'” he said.

Easier said than done. Sacha refused to date him for six months, and Gold, the son of a public school administrator, felt out of place during his first visit to her lavish Scarsdale, N.Y., home. “I couldn’t ignore the fact that there were five Mercedes in the driveway,” he wryly recalls. “And the reception from her father was icy. Sacha had previously been dating this Harvard freshman, so it was like, ‘Who’s this high school schmo from the Bronx?'”

Paul, who owns upscale clothing stores, threw Gold out of the house late one snowy night when Gold’s ride home was 10 minutes late picking him up. “He didn’t think any man was good enough for his daughter,” the comic said. “He didn’t want any guy to take his baby away.” Gold said Paul only reluctantly attended his 1994 wedding to Sacha and remained dubious about Gold’s career, even after the actor landed sketch show gigs on MTV and ABC. He softened, however, when Gold was invited to do his Howard Stern impression on the shock-jock’s show, with Sacha in tow. Paul, a Stern fan, was thrilled: “He was like, ‘Wow, my daughter just got asked her cup size by Howard Stern. Elon must be going places.'”

By the time the comic moved in with his wife’s parents in 2000, his father-in-law had become a fan. But he still made ridiculous demands, such as the time he ordered Gold to feign illness so he could talk his way out of a traffic ticket. “In-Laws” was born when the comedian’s manager heard all the father-in-law stories and suggested Gold incorporate them into his stand-up comedy routine.

Gold may be the latest comic to turn his act into a sitcom (think Ray Romano and “Everybody Loves Raymond”), but his Jewish observance makes him a bit of an anomaly in Hollywood. He arranged for “In-Laws” to tape on Tuesdays, rather than on Friday nights, so he can get home in time for Shabbat. During lunch breaks, he avoids the crafts service table and instead has a crew member bring him kosher tuna with avocado on whole wheat.

During a Journal interview, an electric menorah, a surprise gift from the crew, twinkled in a corner of his dressing room. Actress Jean Smart, who plays Gold’s TV mother-in-law, breezed in to give him his Chanukah present, a dark blue corduroy apron decorated with Stars of David. “It’s so you should look good while cooking,” she said.

Arranging for Jewish content onscreen proved harder. While it was understood that Gold’s character, Matt Landis, would be culturally Jewish, the comic argued for months with executives who decreed his TV wife must be Christian. The mixed marriage was a sore spot for Gold, who had received flack for playing an intermarried man on “You’re the One” in 1998. “I promised that on my next sitcom, I would marry a Jew,” said the comic, who was ultimately overruled by “In-Laws” executives. But he says they’ve agreed to a compromise: On the show’s Passover episode, his fictional mother-in-law will discover she’s Jewish, which will mean his TV wife is, too. “We can get some great comedy out of that,” Gold said. “I can just see Dennis’ character fuming that he’s ‘a minority in [his] own frickin’ house.'”

In real-life, Gold’s father-in-law is not fuming over the sitcom. “He feels like he’s a celebrity because of the show,” the comic said. “So now I’m off the hook; I never get into trouble anymore. Whenever he starts to get mad at me, he’ll stop himself and go, ‘Hey, you should put that in the show.'”

For financial reasons, Gold said he’ll have to keep living with the in-laws until he learns the sitcom has been picked up for a second season. But Farina has a different idea.

“You’re not moving out of there until season five,” he said. “We need the material.”

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‘Dybbuk’ Nohs It

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Michael Aushenker

As far as Jewish plays go, "The Dybbuk" is a classic to those in the know or, perhaps more appropriately, those in the Noh — the dramatic Japanese theatrical style.

A new interpretation of "The Dybbuk" is coming to town. The play, directed by Tel Aviv University professor Zvika Serper and co-adapted by UCLA Japanese theater expert professor Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei, features Israeli actors from Tel Aviv University.

The Los Angeles showing of "The Dybbuk," a high-quality video presentation of the June 2002 Israeli production, will be accompanied by panel discussions by the talent involved when it comes to UCLA on Dec. 8 and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Dec. 15. The program is being sponsored by the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, The Jewish Federation’s Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership, the UCLA theater department, Tel Aviv University and LACMA.

Two years ago, Serper, an Israeli actor-director who spent nine years working professionally in Japan, conceived the idea of staging a Japanese-influenced re-telling of S. Ansky’s seminal Yiddish work. The play is about unattainable love and features restless, avenging ghosts and an exorcism performed by holy leaders.

Serper turned to UCLA’s Sorgenfrei, who is well-versed in the genre of fusion theater, which combines contemporary works with the classical forms of Japanese theater: Noh, Kyogen and Kabuki. Both Noh and Kyogen date back to the 14th century and employ masks.

The Buddhist-influenced Noh style tends to be more religious, aristocratic and austere, with stories revolving around a dead person’s reconnection with the living world to resolve issues in order to transcend to the next realm.

Kyogen is more satirical in nature, commenting on human existence with tales rooted in everyday life that often comes across as Noh parody.

The stylized Kabuki, which originated in the 17th century, does not involve masks but employs elaborate makeup to unspool its dramas of the merchant class. The stories tend to be more worldly and contemporary, featuring bandits and prostitutes battling with feudal lords.

While the Serper-Sorgenfrei presentation finds its inspiration in the Noh style, "we’re not trying to make it look like a Japanese play," Sorgenfrei said of their "Dybbuk" version, which uses "the aesthetic principles — stylized speeches. It’s very visual, very musical."

"We were approached by Tel Aviv University in the beginning, most specifically about the composition of the music," said John Rauch, director of the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, which commissioned Haifa-born Dr. Ofer Ben-Amots to spend two months in Israel working on the music. Ben-Amots currently is head of the composition department at Colorado College.

"We’re looking to make this work accessible to younger people," Rauch explained. "We don’t want to see too many white hairs sitting in the audience."

Jean Friedman, chair of Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership Culture Committee, believes that such an artistic endeavor "allows them to see another face of Israel." She saw the new version of the "Dybbuk" while in Tel Aviv, and Friedman said it squashed any reservations she brought to the show.

"I thought we would lose the ‘Dybbuk’ effect by making it Japanese," Friedman said, "but in fact, it became much more Jewish. Serper incorporated passages from the Bible. It’s very, very imaginative."

Sorgenfrei’s obsession with Japanese theater dates back to her days at Pomona College in Claremont.

"I had a wonderful, inspirational teacher named Leonard Pronko," she recalled. "He was the first foreigner ever to study as an acting student at the national training institute for Kabuki in Japan."

Years later, an interest in Japanese theater ensured that Sorgenfrei and Serper would cross paths.

"We’ve known each other for many, many years, and we’ve always wanted to work together," said Sorgenfrei, who reconnected with Serper at a 1998 Munich conference on Japanese theater.

According to Sorgenfrei, "The Dybbuk" is ready-made for the fusion theater arena.

"There are themes of the eternity of the soul, the spirituality of the power of love, tradition, a Romeo and Juliet searching for the impossible against all odds," she said. "When I tell the story of ‘The Dybbuk’ to my Japanese friends, they go, ‘Oh, isn’t that a Japanese story?’"

“The Dybbuk” will screen on Dec. 8 at UCLA’s Macgowan Hall Little Theater in Westwood. For information, call (310) 206-6853.

A screening and discussion of “The Dybbuk” will take place as part of the “Symposium on Japanese Tradition and Fusion: The Arts of Noh and Kyogen Theater” on Dec. 15 at LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. Free. Reservations required.

E-mail sylviacardenas@lacma.org .

For information on the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity, call (323) 658-5824.

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A Miracle Behind Bars

Leave a Comment / Personals / Harry Langsam

Dark clouds covered the European skies, threatening the children of Israel in the fall of 1939. The Nazis had tightened their grip over Eastern Europe and, as it often happens, nature acted with unfriendliness toward the oppressed. A cold winter came upon us — the refugees — after the traumatic and dreadful fall, when the German occupation began.

Jewish refugees who barely escaped with their lives from the Nazi savage were not met with open arms by the Soviet authorities. The Soviets had recently invaded the eastern part of Poland. They turned every public building into a temporary prison where the refugees from the Nazis were incarcerated under the suspicion that there might be German spies among the wretched.

My older brother, Simcha, and I were lucky to be imprisoned in a real prison, the infamous "Brigidkes," in Lwow. This was a prison where political prisoners were kept during the reign of the Polish fascist regime till the outbreak of the Second World War. Fifty-eight people were deposited in one cell that could hardly hold 25. The majority of the prisoners were Jews who were detained during the crossing of the San River, which became the newly established border between the Soviets and Germany.

We suffered horribly, morally and physically. The Soviets stripped us naked while searching our belongings and confiscated every valuable item, including items that were close to our souls. They confiscated all our prayer books, prayer shawls and tefillin. This painful situation added to our depressive mood when our thoughts were with our beloved ones. The only happy moments that we were blessed with were the times we spent donning the tefillin one man had successfully managed to smuggle into the cell. The pleasure lasted only a minute or two because everyone was eager to partake in the mitzvah of donning tefillin daily. Most of the refugees were religious people, and it was very hard for everyone to digest the non-kosher food that we were served. There were a few holdouts that survived on bread and water only.

There was among us one unique personality. His name was Reb Shmuel Nachum Emmer, a pious, Chasidic person. He was not an ordinary person; he was an angel sent from heaven. He supported us spiritually, and consoled us not to despair, assuring us that our suffering was only temporary. His love for a fellow Jew was immeasurable. He never became angry with people who were not observant. He suffered for all of us, but he did not show it outwardly. On the contrary, whenever he talked someone into reciting a blessing over food, or not to smoke on the Sabbath, it made him the happiest man in the cell.

When Chanukah was upon us, suddenly, Reb Shmuel’s face dropped and became filled with sadness.

"How in the world are we going to fulfill the mitzvah of lighting Chanukah candles?" he lamented.

We all felt his pain but could not help him. We found no words to cheer him up. Unless another miracle occurred, people thought to themselves, what chance did we have to observe Chanukah in a Soviet jailhouse?

On the first night of Chanukah we recited the evening prayers in a depressed mood. Everyone was heartbroken, Reb Shmuel more than anyone else. After the sound of the whistle was heard that signaled to us that it was time to lie down on our uncomfortable beds, the lights in our cell were left burning, as it was customary around the world that in every prison the lights never go out.

Around midnight the lights did go out. A power failure occurred in the entire prison compound. Soon after, the guard ran from cell to cell distributing candles so that the prisoners should not be in the dark. When the guard opened our cell door, with a box of candles in his hands, someone sneaked behind his back and pulled the bottom flap of the box open and the candles spilled all over the floor. Needless to say, the guard never collected all the spilled candles. As soon as the guard left, we quietly gathered in a corner, and Reb Shmuel, with a radiant face, lit the first Chanukah candle with great devotion. We quietly sang Chanukah songs, and the stronger believers were convinced that it was a divine act, that a real miracle had occurred.

We managed to light a small candle each night during the eight days of the Festival of Lights. Believe it or not, in a certain way, we had a happy Chanukah.

Sadly, Reb Shmuel did not survive the harshness of the Soviet labor camps. However, he did leave a legacy, namely, a prayer book handwritten on small pieces of paper in the Zhitomir prison, which remains in the hands of my brother, Simcha. Reb Shmuel had a remarkable memory, and remembered all prayers by heart. The prayer book went through many searches and was never discovered. It is a work of art, which my brother cherishes to this day.

Harry Langsam is an 81-year-old writer living in Los Angeles.

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Kenya Blast Expands War Against West

Leave a Comment / Opinion / Einat Kessler

On Nov. 28, as nearly everyone now knows, two missiles were fired at an Israeli commercial airliner taking off from Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya.

The missiles narrowly missed the plane, and the aircraft continued safely to Israel.

Shortly after this failed attack, a vehicle laden with 440 pounds of explosives was detonated in the Israeli-owned Paradise Mombasa Hotel, a popular resort among Israeli tourists. Three Israelis were killed: a 60-year-old tour guide and 12- and 13-year-old brothers celebrating a bar mitzvah with their parents. Ten Kenyans also died in the explosion, and 34 people were injured.

The attacks occurred at a time when many Israeli tourists travel to enjoy themselves on the Indian Ocean beach for the Chanukah vacation.

The hotel was partially destroyed by the initial explosion and partially by the fire that consumed the reception area and most of the lobby.

Upon receiving the news about the attacks, the Israeli Embassy in Kenya went to work immediately. The ambassador, who was in Uganda, cut short his trip and arrived in Mombassa in the early evening to coordinate the rescue operation. The administration officer contacted Dr. David Silverstine, a cardiologist by profession and the personal physician of Kenya’s president. They rushed to Mombasa on the first available flight.

The Nairobi Hebrew Congregation, a small social community of about 300 Jews and Israelis, organized themselves quickly to assist in every way possible, just as they had after the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy. A response team of nurses and businessmen, headed by Dr. Vera Somen, congregation chair, was the first group to go out.

The injured Israelis were evacuated to three hospitals in the city, and by the time the team got there, they had all been admitted. The administration officer and Silverstine went to the hospitals to check on the patients and assess their conditions.

That night, 250 medical specialists, soldiers, security men, police forensic technicians and others arrived in Mombasa aboard six Israeli air force planes. Under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem and the Israeli air force, they began the evacuation of all the injured, survivors and other Israelis who wanted to leave on air force C-130 cargo planes.

Some Muslim leaders in Kenya condemned the attacks, insisting that if the perpetrators were indeed Muslim, they had disobeyed the Koran by murdering innocents. Others, however, intimated that Israel is to blame for both bombings (Mombasa and the U.S. Embassy). The familiar and flawed logic was that Israel’s activities in the territories have been the primary cause of Palestinian suffering, and have thus produced terrorism.

The rapid mobilization and response of the Israeli and Jewish community, rescue teams and government workers is representative of the reaction to catastrophe among Israeli and Jewish communities worldwide. Surrounded by hostile neighbors at home and scapegoated abroad, these are skills that, sadly, we have had a lot of opportunity to hone.

The regularity and ferocity of attacks against Israel — both at home and abroad — might lead one to the incorrect conclusion that Israel is the cause of the murderous violence against it, or that, indeed, these attacks have something in particular to do with Israel.

Make no mistake. The terrorism in Mombasa signaled not the export of the Palestinian conflict, but the deepening of the war on the West. It was caused not by suffering or economic desperation or occupation, but by ideological extremism and religious hatred — things that bear no correlation to one’s economic or social status.

As one local journalist pointed out, "Kenya has had its share of suffering, poverty, AIDS and tribal clashes, but we don’t blame or bomb anyone."

The United Nation’s own data bear this out. A quick comparison between the United Nation’s list of the 49 Least Developed Countries and the U.S. State Department’s 61 designated terrorist organizations and groups show an overlap of only 25 percent: 37 of the 49 poorest and most desperate countries on earth are terror-free, and half of the rest suffer from nonideological terrorism (as an internal political weapon).

Terrorism will only truly be defeated when governments and people alike stop the blame game, and take more interest in the development of their own cultures, economies and polities than in the destruction of everyone else’s. The attacks in Mombasa unnecessarily took the lives of both Kenyans and Israelis, but those acts just strengthened the resolve of both nations to fight terrorism and not allow it to destroy all that we hold dear, and which has been so hard won.

Einat Kessler is the deputy head of mission at the Israeli Embassy in Nairobi.

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Go My People, Go Now!

One American Muslim

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman / Rob Eshman

Tashbih Sayyed told me he has cried three times in his adult life: once when his father died, once when his mother died and once when he had to sell his house.

Sayyed was born in India in 1941 into a Shiite Muslim family. After the 1948 partition, his family, feeling persecuted by the Hindu majority, fled to newly created Pakistan. There, Sayyed received his master’s degree in political science, and started his career as a journalist. He eventually became the founding director of Pakistan television’s current affairs programming, the Don Hewitt of Karachi. But his liberal views put him in conflict with the Zia al-Haq regime, and Sayyed immigrated to the United States in 1981.

He worked as a translator and ghost writer for several years, and eventually saved enough money to realize one of his American dreams: he and his wife, Fatima, bought a large five-bedroom house in Laguna Hills.

Sayyed founded his own paper, Pakistan Today, in 1991. The paper survived on donations from fellow Muslims, newsstand sales and advertising. The Sayyeds produced it from a room in their house, using stringers in South Asia, wire services, local columnists and writers. At the paper’s peak, about five years ago, Sayyed said he printed 30,000 copies and broke even on a weekly budget of about $10,000.

Then Sayyed began to, as he put it, "veer from the right path." He wrote an editorial condemning "anti-Zionist governments" for having a hand in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 87 people. He published quotes from Jewish communal leaders like Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "My dream was to provide a platform to the Islamic community for other opinions," he said. He printed Op-Ed pieces by pro-Israel columnists.

And he didn’t stop there. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) published two handbooks, one by a Jewish scholar explaining Judaism for Muslims, one by a Muslim scholar, Dr. Khalid Duran, explicating Islam for Jews. "Children of Abraham: An Introduction to Islam" outraged Muslim groups for taking a critical look at current Islamic practices. Sayyed ran two quarter-page AJC ads for the book in Pakistan Today. "It was part of my mission to establish that the other version can be presented to the Muslim community," he said.

Sayyed also went on CBS’s "48 Hours" and told correspondent Bob Simon that Arab threats against terrorism expert Steven Emerson were real and credible. The mainstream Arab community reviles Emerson, author of "American Jihad" (Free Press, 2002). The backlash was immediate. "Brother," Sayyed said one Arab leader told him, "now you are HIV positive."

Within a month, Pakistan Today’s advertising revenue fell from $4,000 per week to $350 (the sole remaining advertisers are two Hindu store owners). Muslim-owned stores stopped carrying his paper. Sayyed said he received "veiled physical threats." His contributors threatened to stop payments unless he ran a full-page apology — on the front page. When he refused, the money dried up.

Faced with $3,200 in weekly bills he could no longer pay, Sayyed had to decide whether to close the paper, or sell his house. "My wife understood," he said. He dabbed at tears in his eyes. "I apologize. It broke me."

The Sayyeds now produce Pakistan Today out of a small, rented house in Fontana. He still struggles to pay the printer and wire service bills, and his circulation has dropped to 4,000. (U.S. Census Bureau figures put California’s Pakistani population at 20,093, though Pakistanis I spoke to believe there are tens of thousands more). Pakistan Link, the largest national Pakistan weekly, publishes 25,000 copies per week.

Sayyed acknowledges that in pushing unpopular opinions he has created — surprise — an unpopular paper. Others in the Muslim community say he is simply too far outside the pale to make a difference. "Our goal is to build bridges of understanding," Akhtar Faruqui, editor of the Irvine-based Pakistan Link told me. Faruqui’s editorials have spoken approvingly of Seeds of Peace, a program that promotes Palestinian and Israeli coexistence. Faruqui, whose paper does reflect many moderate and liberal ideas, said he received no negative response for supporting Seeds of Peace, but he said he wouldn’t publish some of the opinions found in Pakistan Today, such as Op-Ed pieces critical of the Saudi royal family. "We try to promote understanding," Faruqui said. "We don’t go to extremes. That would be too extreme."

Publishing such pieces has pushed Sayyed to the fringes of the local Muslim community, said Salam al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. "Every religion has its extremist fringe," Marayati said. "We believe mainstream moderates represent the mainstream of the faith. The extremist fringe has been given way too much public attention by people whose political purpose it serves."

Marayati said that several years ago, Aslam al-Abdullah, editor of the local Muslim magazine, The Minaret, shaved his beard to protest the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban. For that he received threats and negative letters. "Everybody goes through this," Marayati said, "for some it’s more of a story." Sayyed accused Marayati of being a Muslim extremist in Western clothes.

Sayyed’s story has prompted some Los Angeles Jewish donors to send some money his way. Their involvement comes at a time when Western observers, from the State Department to New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, have come to realize that Islamic extremists — the popular term is Islamists — can only be defeated by Islamic moderates. Look to Iran, wrote Friedman in his Wednesday column, where the success of moderate Muslims in defeating Islamism could prevent a war between Islam and Western civilization.

Sayyed sees himself as a solider on the side of moderation, and his Jewish supporters agree. "We have to support the voices like his," one donor, who requested anonymity, told me.

Consequently, Muslims accuse Sayyed of selling out to the Jews. Sayyed laughed off the charges. "I said if I were open for sale, why wouldn’t I be for sale to the Saudis?" he said. "A friend came to me and said, ‘Who’s supporting you?’ I said, ‘Americans.’"

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