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Jewish Journal

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January 2, 2003

Joining ‘Gangs’ to Work With the Best

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

When the now-legendary film director Martin Scorsese first discovered Herbert Asbury’s book, "Gangs of New York," in 1970 and decided to make it into a film, Rick Schwartz was a 2-year-old growing up in a modern Orthodox home in Teaneck, N.J.

It took three decades for Scorsese to complete his dream — the much-anticipated epic film just earned five 2003 Golden Globe Award nominations — and it was helped along by hundreds of people. One key figure was Schwartz, the self-effacing vice president of production for Miramax Films, who served as co-executive producer on the movie.

During several recent interviews, Schwartz, 34, who now lives in Englewood, N.J., spoke about the "incredible opportunity" of spending much of the last three years working closely with Scorsese and actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis and Cameron Diaz on the film, an almost three-hour depiction of the brutal and bruising life in Lower Manhattan during the Civil War period, little explored in American movies.

"We all knew that we would never have another experience like this," Schwartz said, given the size, complexity and talent of the assembled cast.

He has some trouble defining just what his job as a producer entails but noted that it is mostly about "problem solving," serving as a buffer between the studio and the creative people, dealing with every aspect of making a film and "a million logistical problems along the way."

Whatever those problems are normally, they surely were multiplied in making "Gangs of New York." In the world of Hollywood hype, the film is known as much for the off-screen monumental struggles between Scorsese and Miramax founder and co-chairman Harvey Weinstein over artistic issues and budget — it took 137 days to shoot, was in post-production for 18 months and cost about $100 million — as it is for its content.

Not given to gossip, Schwartz diplomatically noted that there were "creative tensions and heavy moments" between Scorsese and Weinstein, both of whom he describes as men of great passion, commitment and intellect.

On one level, "Gangs" is the story of a young man (DiCaprio), who as a child witnessed his father’s death in a major gang war between Irish immigrants in the Five Points section of New York and the nativists who resented the newcomers. Years later, the young man returns to the neighborhood to seek revenge against the powerful leader (Day-Lewis) who killed his father.

But the film is also the story of prejudice, class and race in this country, set against the backdrop of the Civil War. The story culminates in the 1863 Draft Riots, the deadliest urban uprising in U.S. history.

For those who don’t mind the sight of gore and blood — there are no gun battles but just about every other form of brutal mayhem is vividly depicted — the story is compelling and the visual impact stunning in its scope and authenticity. Scorsese, celebrated almost as much for his perfectionism as his talent, recreated 1860s New York on the outskirts of Rome, building more than a mile of city life, as well as two huge ships for several harbor scenes.

All of this made life both incredibly difficult and exciting for Schwartz, who was on the scene throughout the shoot, as well as for the post-production process, editing the film down to its final length and getting to see the genius of Scorsese’s filmmaking up close.

He is indebted to Weinstein (the subject of yet another major profile in the Dec. 16 New Yorker, depicted, again, as a highly talented man given to bouts of abusive behavior and deep insecurity), who hired him after the briefest of interviews more than six years ago.

"By the time I met Harvey, I had spent hours with people at Miramax telling me how tough he was, and I was terrified," Schwartz recalled recently while waiting to fly with Weinstein on a private jet to Los Angeles. "They marched me in, the room was small, there were other people there, Harvey was on the phone and he cupped his hand over the phone and asked me why I wanted to be in the movie business."

Schwartz said he was tempted to just say he was delivering pizza and flee. He doesn’t recall his response to the question, but they spoke briefly about family life — "Harvey was trying to find out what kind of a person I was" — and he was hired on the spot.

Schwartz spent the next two-and-a-half years as an assistant to Weinstein and was at his beck and call at all times, attending meetings and flying around the world. Along the way, he worked on various films in a variety of capacities. Then one day (in 2000), Weinstein casually informed him that he had been promoted to associate producer and was to leave for London the next day to work with director Kenneth Branagh on "Love’s Labour Lost."

When he arrived, Schwartz recalled, he told Branagh he had no idea what to do but said if Branagh was patient with him, he’d be willing to learn and help. It must have worked, because Schwartz became increasingly trusted by Weinstein and went on to serve as executive in charge of production for Giuseppe Tornatore’s "Malena" and "Birthday Girl," the Nicole Kidman film, and executive producer of "The Others," also starring Kidman, before and during "Gangs."

"Rick is modest about his talents, but he is especially appreciated for his ability to develop relationships and maintain his composure in challenging moments," said Matthew Hiltzik, Miramax’s senior vice president for corporate communications.

The two men have become good friends. "We come from the same place, literally and figuratively," said Hiltzik, who also grew up in Teaneck and is an observant Jew.

Schwartz said that while the rest of his family is "quite Orthodox, I am still finding my way, but I no longer take my Jewish education for granted." He graduated from the Moriah day school in Englewood and Frisch yeshiva high school in Paramus, N.J., and said he increasingly appreciates the rootedness his traditional Jewish lifestyle gives him.

"I operate in two worlds," he said, "and while Hollywood is filled with Jews, many of them are nominally Jewish. Hollywood is all about fantasy, and it’s very seductive, and I see peers who get lost, searching for something to ground them, whether it’s Buddhism or Scientology or something else."

"So there is an immense benefit for me to come off of Tom Cruise’s private jet and feel very anchored," he said, referring to his family (he and his wife, Heidi, have two young daughters) and the Englewood Jewish community where they live. He attends Ahvas Torah, a modern Orthodox synagogue there, and his oldest daughter attends kindergarten at Moriah, where her father started out.

"It’s exciting," Schwartz said of his professional life, "but literally, you have to know where you come from."

Reprinted from The Jewish Week.

Gary Rosenblatt, editor and publisher of The New York Jewish Week, can be
reached by e-mail at Gary@Jewishweek.org.

Joining ‘Gangs’ to Work With the Best Read More »

Artist’s Works From Death Camp Live On

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Worldwide /

The final portrait that Friedl Dicker-Brandeis drew was of a child’s face. The portrait is clean and white, and the face has an enigmatic expression of purity, innocence and stark intelligence.

What makes the child’s portrait haunting is that it was drawn in 1944 in Terezin, where children who entered the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia were shown hanging bodies as a warning, faced death by disease and starvation and were often shipped off to the gas chambers to "alleviate" the crowded conditions.

The child in the portrait seems unsullied by the wretchedness of life in Terezin, and the portrait appears to testify to Dicker-Brandeis’ conception of a purer world or the way the world was meant to be.

Dicker-Brandeis was a prolific Bauhaus artist, who taught art to the children of Terezin. Her art and the art produced by the children in the camp under her tutelage is the subject of a new exhibition at the Simon Weisenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance.

Titled "Freidl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin: An Exhibition of Art and Hope," the exhibition is a Dicker-Brandeis retrospective, with artwork displayed from all the periods of her life, including the anti-Fascist photo montages she plastered all over Vienna in 1931 and the vibrantly colorful Kandinsky-like paintings that she did while studying at the Bauhaus in 1923.

The exhibition also displays the stackable chairs Dicker-Brandeis designed, toys she built for children and her architectural plans for the Maria Monstessori kindergarten. The collection shows a woman who was at once practical but whimsical, aggressively political but also soft and gentle.

The art, most of which was in very poor condition, was collected from 24 lenders, many of whom had been friends with Dicker-Brandeis and received the works from her as gifts.

"Her father said to her, ‘Until you become a good artist, you can’t use good paper,’" said Regina Seidman Miller, project director at the museum. "I think she felt guilty that her art was never deserving of good paper. Unfortunately, she used the worst paper always — it is a miracle her art survived. We had to restore everything."

Freidl Dicker was born in Vienna in 1898 and became interested in art at an early age. At 21, she started studying art at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, which was then a revolutionary new school of art and design. She was so advanced that after her first year, she was asked to be a teacher there, and she taught alongside great 20th century artists and architects such as Kandinsky, Klee and Walter Gropius.

In 1923, she moved to Vienna, and in 1931, she joined the Communist Party there to protest against the growing fascist movement. In 1936, she married Pavel Brandeis, and in 1938 they moved to Hronov, a town northeast of Prague, where she started teaching art to children from local Jewish families.

In 1942, the couple was sent to Terezin, a "model" camp that the Germans set up for privileged Jews, where they were allowed to paint, play sports and produce operas and plays. The Germans used the camp as a ruse to try to convince the International Red Cross that Jews were treated benevolently under the Third Reich.

However, the majority of Terezin’s Jews were transported to Auschwitz, and most of them died there. On Oct. 6, 1944, Dicker-Brandeis was sent to Auschwitz, and on Oct. 9 she was killed in the gas chamber.

But her art survived — in Terezin she hid it between planks of wood — and so did the love that she transmitted to her students there. Dicker-Brandeis was aware of the hopelessness of her surroundings, but it was not something she dwelled on.

"She wasn’t good in a saint-like way," said Miller. "She never told children that everything was going to be OK. What she said was, ‘If you have one day, then you have to live it. And while we are here, we have to do the best that we can.’ So it was a way that they were allowed to be sad and afraid, but they could express it through art."

Dicker-Brandeis had her charges in Terezin draw self-portraits. She was always careful to have them sign their work, so that they could develop self-esteem and retain their identities beyond the numbers that had been assigned to them when they entered the camp. Instead of drawing images of the death and destruction, the children drew flowers and pictures of their friends, among other things.

"Instead of food, she would ask her friends to send her paint," said Ela Weisberger, 71, one of Dicker-Brandeis’ students in Terezin, in a phone interview from New York. "She used the wrapping paper when people were getting packages, and from that we were drawing our paintings."

"Some of the paintings or collages were done on forms from the offices that were in the garbage. She was using every little thing that you could make out of it something," Weisberger said. "You look at her paintings, her beautiful colors, and you feel life in them. I think that she would have been the artist of the century if she would have survived."

Artist’s Works From Death Camp Live On Read More »

Hidden Sensuality

Leave a Comment / Personal Voice, United States /

Earlier this month, visitors to the Grand Hyatt in New York City might have spotted an unusually stern warning sign on one wall: “The hair of a woman is considered ervah.” Lewd, shameful, naked, unchaste. This inscription, from the Babylonian Talmud, was part of a photographic exhibit by the artist Na’ama Batya Lewin, on display on the occasion of the fourth international conference of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA), Nov. 9-11.

In characteristic Talmudic dialectic, Lewin’s exhibit presented an alternative interpretation of the ancient verse, summed up in the exhibit’s title, “Ervah: Hidden Sensuality.” The photographs show Lewin visiting modern and ultra-orthodox communities around New York in all manner of head coverings: synthetic wigs, hats riding on top of wigs, schpitzlim (knit caps covered with twisted twine), even a long, luscious red sheitel (a wig) dramatically different from her own.

The JOFA conference brought together some 700 women and 300 men for a weekend of religious activism and scholarly lectures on the question of tzeniut, a mix of modesty and dignity, and other aspects of communal life, all gathered under the rubric “Discovering/Uncovering/Recovering Women in Judaism.” The group, most of whose members identify as modern Orthodox, pursues small victories — mother’s names on tombstones, bat mitzvahs for girls, more equitable synagogue seating plans — while also pressing for a feminist reworking of the entire 3,000-year-old patriarchy that is Orthodox Judaism.

Emotions were noticeably more raw at last year’s conference, where one speaker broke down in tears over whether she should encourage her daughter to wear tzizit (traditional fringed ritual garments reserved for men and boys). This time, participants made bolder assertions: “Just do it, and the rabbis will follow,” one woman said. Indeed, conference-goers heard talks by several prominent men — rabbis and scholars — who’ve found imaginative legal precedent in the Talmudic and rabbinic texts for still-controversial practices, like women’s prayer groups and mixed-gender public prayer.

But many men have not followed. Consider the comments of a highly regarded doctor and father of five daughters who attended the conference with his wife. “Look, let’s face it, women are a complete distraction in shul,” he said to me.

“What are you going to do, lay someone on the bimah?” his wife shot back, referring to the platform at the front of the synagogue. “Control yourself, like at work.”

He responded, “I can get a lot of work done while looking down a women’s shirt. Davening [praying] is different.”

Dr. Tova Hartman-Halbertal, a lecturer at Hebrew University’s School of Education and author of “Appropriately Subversive: Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions” (Harvard University Press, 2003), is one woman who is trying to make things even more different. She’s one of the founders of Shira Hadasha, a new, inclusive Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem where women have leadership roles in services, which begin only after 10 women, in addition to the traditional 10 men, have gathered.

The most dramatic moment of the conference came during Hartman-Halbertal’s hour-long talk, which challenged one of the biggest sources of Orthodoxy’s neofeminist pride: the modesty of women. Rather than offering an alternative to secular Western culture’s objectification of women, she said, Orthodox practices effectively “cover women with spiritual and psychic anxiety not their own.”

She told the story of a young male teacher at an Orthodox girls’ high school who placed a bowl of buttery rugelach on the table before the evening lesson. At the end of the lesson, he said dramatically, “Remember how distracted you were by those rugelach? That is exactly how I feel when you do not dress tzanua.”

This parable — likening girls to pastry — caused a commotion, as whispered conversations erupted across the room. At the end of her talk, part of the audience gave Hartman-Halbertal a standing ovation.

I approached Rabbi Daniel Sperber, the head of Judaic schools of higher learning and professor of Talmudic research at Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University, who is sympathetic to fuller participation of women in ritual life. “She used big words,” he said, a bit cagily. “When you exaggerate so much, you produce a caricature and it begins to sound like demagoguery.” But judging from the hallway talk, many listeners understood Hartman-Halbertal’s point: Much of tzeniut, as it is currently practiced, is a recapitulation of the same hypersexualization of both men and women, at the expense of their human dignity, that Orthodoxy condemns in mainstream culture.

So why do feminist Orthodox women — and men — endure the pain and stay in the fold? The answer may lie as much in fundamental identity as in the richness of communal life and religious belief itself. For JOFA, change is difficult but possible; in fact, adaptability may be the secret strength that has preserved tradition for thousands of years.

“I come to this from a place of choice,” said Cherie Koller-Fox, a Conservative rabbi from Boston who supports JOFA. “I am not so angry. Besides, no one ever called me a rugelach.”


Tamar Miller is former executive director of the Institute for Social and Economic Policy at Harvard University.

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Argentina

Leave a Comment / Finance, Opinion, Worldwide /

To visit Argentina today is to see with your own eyes the tragedy these people are facing.

Imagine living in a country where you experience the following:

You have worked hard for years, and every month you add to your savings in a dollar account held at a major international bank (i.e. Citibank or equal). You placed your savings in this dollar account to be safe from currency fluctuations that are so frequent in South American countries. One day, you get a letter from your bank saying that your account has been changed from a dollar account to a peso account — transferred without your permission. You are outraged because you understand that last year the peso was equal to the dollar i.e. one peso equaling $1, yet today, it takes nearly four pesos to equal $1, thus your lifetime savings account has taken a huge hit. Later, another letter arrives that says you can only withdraw a limited amount per month from this peso account.

You appeal to the bank and hear, "Sorry, but this is government policy." You go to the politicians and hear, "Sorry, economic conditions demanded this action." There is such political turmoil that their congress didn’t meet for five straight weeks due to lack of a quorum and four presidents resigned within two weeks. You go to the courts with your dollar agreement in hand and get a total runaround. The net effect is countrywide anger.

Many banks in Buenos Aires have their first two-floor exteriors covered with plywood to ward off flying bricks and other evidence of the seething public rage. The Argentine government owes $135 billion to the IMF and the world bank, with little chance of ever repaying this staggering amount. In addition, over the past 45 years, 15 of the 19 agreements with the IMF have been broken, and thus, Argentina has zero credibility for further borrowings.

The net effect of this economic and political chaos has been the destruction of the middle-class. The official unemployment rate is 21 percent, but the unofficial estimate is 35 percent. Of the 200,000 Jews in the country, 80 percent are small businessmen or professionals and their lives have been devastated. An estimated 40,000 Jews are living below the poverty line and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) is serving more than 30,000. The JDC reported that last year 1,000 Jews left for Israel, and this year the number is approaching 6,000, with three times that number seeking refuge wherever in the world they gain admittance.

Heart-wrenching stories are heard everywhere. Rosa and Bernardo are in their 60s, came originally from Eastern Europe and have lived in Buenos Aires for 30 years. Bernardo has a heart problem, cannot walk and requires Rosa’s full-time attention. They were evicted from their residence, unable to pay their rent. JDC pays their rooming-house rent and Rosa comes to the JDC soup kitchen every day and takes the lunch, offered by JDC, to her husband. Bernardo is too ill to emigrate, so they just exist — day by day.

Enrique is a lawyer who came to Buenos Aires in 1940. His wife recently died and his youngest child has Down syndrome and can’t walk. The economic crisis in the past two years forced him to layoff all his employees and he ultimately had to close his practice. He still has to support his youngest daughter, and his friends do what they can to help him with expenses. He has been coming to the soup kitchen for a regular hot lunch paid by JDC, but he refused to have his picture taken — feeling so ashamed of his situation.

Melina Fiszerman is fortunate. She has a secure, responsible position with the JDC in Buenos Aires and is getting an advanced degree in economics. Yet, Melina, 25, is also threatened by the personal and political anguish surrounding her. Argentina is a dangerous place and she lives with the risks of random kidnappings on major streets and frequent, violent civil unrest. When we visited her in November, I asked her why she stays in Argentina.

She responded, "This is my country and my people. I love this country. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, and this is my home. I am optimistic about the future."

How can Melina be optimistic surrounded by such chaos? She is young, which helps. But much more than her youth is her knowledge and belief in the historic ability of Jews to survive. As American Jews living in our blessed country, it is our privilege and responsibility to help people like Melina and those thousands of Jews in Argentina who are living such painful, difficult lives. We cannot change the politics or economics of Argentina. But we can help by sending our dollars for Argentine relief.


Richard S. Gunther is on the board of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

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Happy Minyan Hits a Sour Note

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

I am sorry. Davening just isn’t what it use to be.

This past Shabbat, I wandered into a well-respected, modern Orthodox institution for Shabbat morning services. Because it was late, I wandered into a small room where the so called "happy minyan" was in progress. I was greeted warmly and invited in.

For the uninitiated, the happy minyan is a fairly recent American phenomenon, in which the melodies of Reb Shlomo Carlbach of blessed memory are infused into the davening.

Well, it used to be true that the melodies were infused into the davening. Now the davening is virtually one long Reb Shlomo-fest.

I realize that happy minyanim are found among all denominations that have adopted the practice to meet each group’s particular needs. My issue is with the way these minyanim are held in Orthodox synagogues.

We have a concept related to tefilah (prayer) called nusach. This word has been roughly translated as rite, such as the Sephardic rite, the Ashkenazic rite, etc.

Nusach involves the particular order of the prayers, as well as the way in which prayers vary by punctuation, phrasing and melodic pattern. By melodic pattern, think of something similar to a blues pattern.

A typical 12-bar blues progression allows the musician playing the melodic lead to dissect the notes that make up the chords. Nusach acts pretty much the same way.

Those leading the prayer service create intricate combinations of notes within the patterns or modes of the nusach but are bound by the chords that make up these patterns. In addition, certain prayers are open to innovation outside the nusach.

For example, there is a long-standing tradition of making the El Adon prayer in the Sabbath morning services a kind of dealer’s choice. There are also places where innovation is limited or prohibited outright. In the Ashkenazic rite, for example, the "Kaddish" said before the Shabbat Musaf prayer is a melodic constant.

Unfortunately, the man leading this happy minyan prayer service apparently had no real concept of nusach. In addition, he mispronounced many of the words. Clearly he was warm and engaging, but that does not in and of itself qualify someone for leading congregational prayer.

Just one week earlier, I was in another local modern Orthodox synagogue, where a guest of some musical renown was invited to lead the congregation in prayers. He, too, did not know the nusach and believed that spirited and catchy melodies were a fair substitute for proper davening.

I was privileged to know Reb Shlomo Carlbach, although I will not say I was close to him. (I wasn’t at Woodstock either.) I brought groceries for his mother of blessed memory and ate at his table while 2-year-old Neshomole was munching on cucumber salad. I tuned his guitars at a concert on the beach at Bat Yom in the summer of 1971.

This much I know: Reb Shlomo knew how to daven He knew the nusach and respected it!

Innovation serves a wonderful place in Jewish life. That being said, we cannot play fast and loose with the tradition.

Picasso’s abstract art was respected precisely because he had the technical skill of a classically trained artist. He did not paint abstract images because he didn’t know how to paint realistic ones.

Before those leading prayers innovate, they should understand the rules of nusach. They should have the skill and, yes, the humility to realize that the clapping and the warmth and spontaneity you can set your watch by must take a back seat to the integrity of public prayer.

I would love to hear the rabbis of these synagogues address the question of Jewish law and respect for nusach. It can be argued that a discernible unity in selected parts of the prayer service gives us a spiritual continuity we so desperately need in these difficult times. Our enemies are, after all, pretty good at prayer.

This does not detract from the sincerity and the warmth of the people I met in the happy minyan.


Rafael Guber is founder of the Sepia Guild and a featured expert on the PBS series “Ancestors.”

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Jews Stick to Their Turf

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Philosopher Martin Buber once wrote that Jews had a "vocation of uniqueness."

However much Jews may differ around the world, for most of their history, and in most places, they have always been somewhat apart from others in their attitudes, how they live and cope with changing conditions.

The most recent census data and a largely unreleased 1997 survey of roughly 2,000 L.A. Jewish households show that this is still the case, perhaps most particularly here in Los Angeles. By its nature, Los Angeles is a cauldron of ethnic change — a city increasingly Latin and Asian, with a high degree of racial intermixing. It is a city of protean geography that sprawls like a European nation state across a vast territory.

Conventional wisdom holds that the well-heeled population is spearheading this out-migration and that this sprawling out is continuing, particularly among the better-heeled population. By rights, Jews should be joining them; they are considerably wealthier, better educated and more likely to be homeowners than most Angelenos.

Yet, unlike most white Angelenos, or middle-class minorities, for that matter, Jews are sticking to their turf, not only in Los Angeles but in other key urban centers. Today’s Jewish population in L.A. County, unlike the white population, which dropped by over a million, actually grew slightly from 503,000 to around 520,000.

"Jews are more likely to move or stay in urban areas in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston, "suggests demographer Bruce Phillips, who conducted the surveys. "Jews don’t seem to be following the dispersion pattern of whites. They seem to have urban values and stay in the core community."

Phillips, in fact, suggests that Jews in Los Angeles are even more urban-centric than their counterparts elsewhere. The reasons for this may vary. For one thing, Los Angeles has many areas — such as the San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles — that are urban places but still offer what in the East may be considered a "suburban" quality of life. Brentwood or even Encino, let’s face it, offer more comforts than say Brooklyn or even Chicago’s Near Northside.

Perhaps most surprising, according to Phillips, there has not been a massive shift, as many have expected, of Jews to places like Orange County and the Conejo Valley. Sure, the populations have expanded there, but for the most part, the largest concentrations of Jews today are where they were a decade or two ago: in the Pico-Robertson area, the Westside and, largest of all, the San Fernando Valley, even though the populations of outlying areas in growing the percentage of the urban population has remained constant.

"Los Angeles is becoming the Jewish neighborhood of Southern California," Phillips said. "Jews in Los Angeles," he added, are usually "more Jewish," than those who move to the Inland Empire, Orange County or Ventura County. They tend to be less intermarried and more of their friends are Jewish.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that L.A. Jewry is going back to the old days of the Boyle Heights shtetl. The dispersion and integration that took place in the ’50s to the Westside and the Valley, Phillips suggested, is not being reversed. But the post-1970 geographical patterns seem to be solidifying. Today, more than 40 percent of Jewish households in Los Angeles are in the Valley while one-third are on the Westside. The Valley continues to register the biggest gains, while the population in the central city continues to shrink.

Culturally, think of it as three levels of Yiddishkayt. In the most heavily Jewish areas — Encino, Beverly Hills, Fairfax, Pico-Robertson — its heavy-duty ethnic identity. The percentage of households with mostly Jewish friends rises more than 60 percent while intermarriage stays at roughly 20 percent. The levels of temple affiliation are also the highest in these precincts.

In more mixed, but still Jewish areas like Valley Village, where I live, around 50 percent say most of their closest friends are Jewish, while half are intermarried. It’s not a guilded ghetto, but ethnicity has not been twinkie-ized.

In the High Desert, the Inland Empire, the Bay Cities and San Pedro, that’s where you have true melting pot Jews. As few as one in five has mostly Jewish friends and lower levels of affiliation are the norm. The intermarriage rate often reaches over 65 to 70 percent. Jews, on the whole, are simply less Jewish on the periphery, Phillips suggested.

But it is not just the geographic imperative that’s in play here. Other forces are at work. For one thing, the community, after becoming more native-born for generations, is once again becoming more dominated by people from elsewhere. According to Phillips, for example, roughly one in five L.A. Jews was born abroad, with the largest groupings from the former Soviet Union, Iran and Israel. When their children are added, some 45 percent of L.A. Jews have at least one foreign-born parent.

The immigrant influence is likely one force clearly changing L.A. Jewish culture. Many children of Israeli and Iranian Jews, for example, learn Hebrew, Farsi and Sephardic traditions that were relatively rare here a decade ago but are becoming part of Jewish life.

"They are really changing Los Angeles," suggested Steve Gold, a professor of sociology at the Michigan State University who has studied Israeli and Russian immigrants in Los Angeles extensively. "People of our generation [third generation, native born] don’t open up delis, run day-care systems, teach at day schools. They [the immigrants] are setting the cultural pattern."

But it’s not just language and tradition that’s changing, Gold said. Russians, Israelis and Iranians also have a vastly different political orientation than native-born Jews. "They are anti-communist and conservative," Gold said. "They don’t have the liberal traditions we have."

If this is true, they may well be contributing to another, much discussed possible movement of Jews toward more conservative politics. The survey conducted by Phillips, for example, found that Jews over 60 were dyed-in-the-wool Democrats — some 75 percent. But less than half of those under 40 shared that generally liberal party. Republicans, as rare among older Jews as elephants on Fairfax — roughly 6 percent — registered a respectable 25 percent among the under-40 crowd.

What do all these fascinating findings suggest about the future of L.A. Jews? Perhaps several things — an increasing influence of immigrants and their children and a generally more conservative political tone. But one thing is certain: Jews in Los Angeles will remain a unique population, and, most important of all, they are also likely to remain.


Joel Kotkin is a senior fellow with the Davenport Institute for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and the Milken Institute. He is currently writing a book on the history of cities for The Modern Library.

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7 Days In Arts

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks /

Saturday

Big into cantorial music? Is this ever your weekend! Head over to the Pasadena Jewish Temple & Center’s (PTJC) “Cantors in Concert.” (No worries, they’ve probably cleared out all of the Rose Parade mess by now.) Or, for you West Valley-ites, wait till tomorrow and swing by Valley Circle Boulevard (aka Synagogue Row) for The Cantor’s Assembly Western Region’s “Kol Libeinu: The Voice of the Heart” at Temple Aliyah. They’re two variations on a theme, with both concerts featuring cantors Henry Rosenblum, Yonah Kliger, Eva Robbins and Judy Sofer, as well as the PJTC Chamber Choir.

8 p.m. $36-$108. Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, (626)798-1161 or www.pjtc.net.

7 p.m. $10-$20. Temple Aliyah, (818) 346-3545.

Sunday

PJTC’s got it goin’ on this weekend. Today, it’s the cheapest ticket to the homeland you’ll find. (Good news for those of us whose checkbooks are still recovering from Chanukah.) Actually, it’s a lecture/workshop on the “Music, Poetry and Dance of Modern Israel.” So you can take in some Israeli culture without spending a lot of dough. (And speaking of dough, bagel breakfast is also included.)

10 a.m. $5. 1434 N. Altadena Drive, Pasadena. R.S.V.P., (626) 798-1161.

Monday

The guy’s worked with everyone from Tom Waits to Norah Jones to Willie Nelson as part of Tin Hat Trio. But this time, musician Rob Burger is going it alone with his debut solo album “Lost Photograph.” Well, almost alone. He does get some accompaniment from bassist Greg Cohen and percussionist Kenny Wollesen on the CD that’s been described as “part klez-soul, part tango groove, part film-music.” The fact that he can play instruments as varied as the accordion, the glockenspiel and the claviola makes us all the more curious to check out this new release.

$15. www.tzadik.com.

Tuesday

Tu B’What? Tu B’Shevat, silly. And if you or your kids aren’t familiar with this holiday, today’s the perfect day to learn. Los Angeles Intercommunity Kollel sponsors “Shalom Time” at Borders in Westwood. The monthly story time features interactive activities including songs, finger plays, puppetry and stories. January’s theme is “Tu B’Shevat: Jewish Arbor Day.” Here’s a hint: It’s all about the trees, people.

1360 Westwood Blvd., Westwood. (310) 441-5024.

Wednesday

Happy Birthday, Elvis! Turns out there are two extraordinary lives to celebrate today. The University of Judaism’s Department of Continuing Education presents “About Anne: A Diary in Dance,” a drama inspired by the diary of Anne Frank. Choreographer Laura Gorenstein Miller and the Helios Dance Theater have been praised by the Los Angeles Times and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Our suggestion: Take in the show today, then head home for some fried peanut butter ‘n ‘nanner sammiches.

2 p.m. (Also plays Jan. 9, 11 and 12. Times vary.) $30-$35. 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel Air. (310) 440-1547.

Thursday

Non-Jewish playwright John O’Keefe’s bold choice to write about the Holocaust seems to have paid off. “Times Like These” tells the story of a famous Jewish actress banned from the stage in Nazi Germany, and how she prevails with the help of her actor-husband. The play’s first run just ended in November. This weekend, it reopens at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble. You can catch a preview tonight.

8 p.m. Runs through Feb. 23. $15 (previews), $20.50-$30 (general). Discounts available. 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 477-2055.

Friday

She’s funny, she’s female, she’s Rita Rudner. The Jewish comedienne takes the stage tonight only at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. If anyone’s ever sent you one of those “fabulous female”-type e-mails, chances are you’ve read some of Rita’s lines. She thinks Judge Judy should be president and Barbie should be fattened-up. A stand-up gal, indeed.

8 p.m. $40-$50. 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. (800) 300-4345.

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The Sabra Seduction

Leave a Comment / Singles /

It was an offer I could refuse — but only for a short time. Yaniv was his name, and his sweet entreaty epitomized the dating habits of the macho, cocky Israeli man (can you say caveman with a cell phone and Chanel sunglasses?). He cunningly wanted to prepare hot cocoa for me in his apartment.

Actually, in his room.

More accurately, on his bed.

I declined, but was coaxed into this little setup before the week was out.

As an Israeli whose life was split between Israel and America in the familial and environmental sense, I have the pleasure of viewing both worlds as a foreigner and native. When it comes to Israeli men vs. American men, I am a big advocate of my Mediterranean-blooded counterparts.

Israeli men seem to have confidence imbedded in their DNA. Maybe it’s from the army, or perhaps it’s the carpe diem syndrome. Maybe it’s outright self-destructiveness. Either way, Israeli guys know how to approach a woman and make her feel like God has descended upon her.

I attribute this approach to an unfair advantage Israeli men have over their American counterparts when it comes to courting Israeli women (can you really call hot cocoa on his bed courting?). Let’s face it, when people have the same life experiences — dealing with an aggressive public, terror attacks, army service, chocolate milk in a plastic bag — they can more easily relate to one another. So Israeli men already have a pretty good idea of the background of their potential prey.

This knowledge inevitably detracts from the taunting image of the unapproachable, mysterious woman on a pedestal, at least somewhat, and results in a boosted sense of chutzpah.

But Israeli men’s confidence is a quality that proves enticing to at least some of those being pursued. If you believe in yourself, others will believe in you — if by nothing more than mere trickery. Every woman loves a man who knows what he’s doing, and Israeli men, even if they don’t know what they’re doing, will never admit it. They approach a woman like they approach the toilet — with conviction and purpose. Women, even new age feminists, can appreciate this quality.

Yet the Israeli brand of macho can sometimes go overboard. Sometimes, and quite often, the Israeli man is considered too cocky and overconfident, an incorrigible flirt and womanizer. Israeli men offer deals — “You come here and I will pamper you with chocolate.” It seems archaic, even primitive, but that kind of confidence can really melt away at a woman’s reserves.

Confidence, unfortunately, is not a word I would use to describe American men. Their approach is subtle; they are over-intellectualized and fearful of trespassing on the female sense of liberty. They want to make a woman feel as an equal. If I wanted to feel like an equal, I would date women.

The beauty in a female-male relationship is that your femininity or masculinity is enhanced by the mere presence of something so different than yourself. American men seem to have forgotten this, and with it their manliness has atrophied.

I like American men because they are the product of an over-analytical society, and sometimes this comes in handy. They are willing to change their opinions. Nothing is ever black and white. They don’t eat meat. They are sensitive to racial equality. They cook and clean.

Yaniv is a carnivorous lug who can’t get enough of his Iraqi mother’s cooking. To him, everything is simpler than how I make it seem. He turns my poetry into prose.

Me: “I feel like I am floating off the air with no one to help me come down.”

Him: “You’re just lonely.”

Me: “I had this image of pierced holes in my back.”

Him: “You were just scared.”

When he brings down my elaborate metaphors to three-word sentences, everything seems clarified. He is almost always right.

To American women, Israeli men are gruff, too adventurous and too set in their ways to accommodate those who don’t know how to not take them seriously. Israeli women, on the other hand, know how to manage.

Israeli women are a breed of their own, too. Strongminded, highly opinionated, no BS and, for the most part, pragmatic. I have an Israeli friend who is dating an American man and her chief complaint is, almost always, “He’s not hard enough.” I translate that on several levels — emotionally, intellectually and, well….

Ultimately, it’s more a matter of personality than anything else. A relationship with either an American or an Israeli both require the common denominator that unites us all and transcends any national barriers — love.

As for Yaniv, the big lug has become quite a sweet guy, no doubt because of my good influences and perhaps his “Americanization.” And by the way, he’s graduated from hot cocoa to latte.

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Moses: No Orator

Leave a Comment / Torah /

The art of public speaking is a special gift. In the anthology "Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History" (Norton & Co., 1997), New York Times columnist William Safire collects 200 of history’s outstanding instances of oratorical eloquence.

He divides this compendium of great speeches by categories, including Memorials and Patriotic Speeches; War and Revolution Speeches; Tributes and Eulogies; Sermons; Inspirational Speeches; and Speeches of Social Responsibility. Among the outstanding public addresses are Abraham Lincoln’s "Gettysburg Address," Martin Luther King’s "I Have A Dream" speech and John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address.

Leafing through the pages of this remarkable anthology is like taking a trip through some of history’s greatest moments. You meet firsthand, in their own words, some of history’s greatest and most influential leaders. Remarkably, there is one well-known leader in history whose name does not grace even one page of Safire’s 950-page anthology. He was a prince of Egypt in his youth, a prophet who came to know God "face to face," a leader who brought his people from slavery to freedom and a lawgiver who taught his people God’s word. His name was Moses, and despite his having five of the most famous books in world history named after him, he is somehow not a part of Safire’s collection of famous orators.

Please don’t get me wrong: it’s not that Safire has some sort of bias against Moses. While preparing his anthology, I am sure that Safire leafed through the pages of "The Five Books of Moses," searching for that "knockout sermon" which Moses must have delivered at some point in his illustrious career as a leader. But Safire was probably stricken by Moses’ own words to God in response to God’s instructions to, "Tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to let the Israelites depart from the land." Moses reminds God: "How will Pharaoh listen to me, given that I am a man of impeded speech?"

This response was Moses’ reinforcement of what he told God during his very first encounter with the Divine at the burning bush: "I beg you, O God, I am not a man of words. I have never been a man of words, not in the past, or even now that You have spoken to me. I find it difficult to speak and find the right language." I imagine that out of respect to Moses’ own opinion about his oratory skills, Safire decided to leave him out of his collection of great orators.

Not only is Moses left out of Safire’s book, but he would probably be left out of most synagogue’s adult education speaker’s series. "We want dynamic speakers who will inspire us with their powerful delivery" is the motto that most adult education committees use as their guidelines in selecting speakers.

Ironically, the man who is known as Moshe Rabbeinu, (Moses our Rabbi), would probably be rejected by many synagogue rabbinic search committees on the grounds that he lacks the oratory skills necessary to inspire the congregation. Just picture the scenario in the boardroom: "I don’t care if this guy is Moses! He’s not a good speaker."

Our fascination with brilliant orators often clouds our ability to listen to their message. I have often told my own congregants that I am much more flattered by someone who tells me how offended he or she was by the message of my sermon than by a passive listener who congratulates me on a "strong delivery."

The election of Moses, speech impediment and all, to the most challenging leadership role in Jewish history calls upon us to ponder the messages of our leaders beyond the arenas of public speech. Moses’ call to Pharaoh was not "Lend Me Your Ears," but "listen to my message." Moses’ call to his own people was "Lend Me Your Souls."

There is another powerful message in the election of a leader who lacks the gift of "persuasion through speech." With Moses as our leader, we are asked to consider the inner character and soul of the individual who guides our lives. In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamliel teaches that, "It is not words that are essential, but deeds." President Theodore Roosevelt was apt to say "Speak softly, but carry a big stick." Moses is a leader who will best be remembered for what he did, not for what he said. Leading the Israelites from bondage to freedom, dealing with the challenges of building a new community, and teaching his people to live in God’s image are all achievements which extend far beyond the magic of one brilliant sermon.

How was Moses able to achieve all of this while lacking a powerful delivery of words? Because he possessed one character trait for which he will always stand head and shoulders above most other leaders in world history, including the majority of those found in Safire’s collection: humility. "Moses was very humble," says the Torah, "more so than any man on the face of the earth." This is something for all leaders to ponder beyond their "next great sermon."

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From L.A. to Tel Aviv —

Leave a Comment / California, Philanthropy /

An Israeli girl and a Los Angeles girl celebrate their bat mitzvahs together in Tel Aviv. Two Holocaust survivors from the same European town rediscover each other during an intercontinental videoconference call. Financial experts from Los Angeles assist their Tel Aviv counterparts to float Israel’s first municipal bond issue. A Tel Aviv fusion theater production of “The Dybbuk” as a Japanese Noh play debuts in Los Angeles. Israeli and Los Angeles experts start cleaning up Tel Aviv’s polluted HaYarkon River.

The scope and effect of projects in Israel funded by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles have always been broad. But the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership, with its specialization in hands-on, people-to-people programming seeks to transcend mere philanthropy in order to change the attitudes of Jews in both cities and create a mutual stake in each other’s Jewish life.

Most Federation philanthropic money raised for Israel in Los Angeles is still entrusted to the Jewish Agency for disbursement, while some of it goes directly to fund specific pluralism and security-related Jews in Crisis projects in Israel (see sidebars). Programs undertaken through the partnership program, however, are different — partly staffed from Los Angeles, planned and managed jointly with personnel in Tel Aviv and often including exchanges of staff and students.

The result, say organizers, participants and even occasional Federation critics, is a remarkably successful program that may change the nature of Israel-Diaspora relations — for the better.

History

The partnership, with its education, health, human services, culture and economic projects, harks back to Project Renewal, a 1980s Jewish Agency program for funding urban renewal projects in selected Israeli neighborhoods. Under Project Renewal, the Israeli government provided infrastructure and housing, while Diaspora communities underwrote such capital projects as community and child-development centers.

Even then, North American federations, including Los Angeles, began to insist that social renewal was a necessary part of urban renewal. They also demanded oversight of social projects and the inclusion of local residents in decision-making and managing.

Los Angeles’ renewal projects thus included drug rehabilitation, as well as community centers in a poor Jerusalem area neighborhood; big brother-sister and tutoring projects, rebuilding of an ancient Roman amphitheater in the development town of Beit Shean, and clinics and school projects in Ajami-Lev Jaffa, a mixed Arab-Jewish area in Tel Aviv.

While meeting some of Israel’s needs, Project Renewal partly failed to satisfy Los Angeles planners’ and contributors’ growing preference for more directed giving and hands-on programming. “It was a colonial, lady bountiful approach, recalled Dr. Gerry Bubis, a Federation veteran.

In the mid-1990s, as the renewal projects were being absorbed by local Israeli municipalities, the Los Angeles Federation established a think tank, composed of both Federation personnel and Los Angeles immigrants in Israel, to consider how to use the skills and creativity of the Los Angeles community for future projects in the Jewish State. The old philanthropic model — “build us a park or a hospital and we’ll run it” — no longer seemed quite right.

When in 1998, Israel’s 50th anniversary year, the Jewish Agency announced its Partnership 2000 program, an umbrella under which Diaspora communities were called on to fund regional development projects in Israel, Los Angeles said yes — but no. The Federation insisted on being twinned not with a development town but with Tel Aviv, a metropolis whose sophistication and skills would match its own city.

And if the mercantile and cultural capital of the Pacific Coast was going to collaborate with the most sophisticated city in Israel, it wanted to do it partly on its own terms, establishing a peer relationship that would include professional, institutional and personal interactions and joint programming in the areas of the Federation’s priorities and expertise, especially education and social services. Cultural affairs and economic initiatives were added to the partnership later.

The idea was to affect the culture of both Jewish Los Angeles and Tel Aviv, to make the buzzwords “Israel-Diaspora relations” refer to something real.

The Jewish Agency objected to the loss of control over funds flowing through its pipeline, but The Federation persevered. After then-mayor of Tel Aviv Roni Milo appointed a committee to work with Los Angeles, the agency eventually gave its blessing.

From the first, the partnership’s steering committee of 15 lay and professional leaders from each side confronted significant differences in cultural expectations, organizational needs, basic assumptions and personal styles. The Tel Aviv people, explained Bubis, who currently serves on two partnership committees, were civil servants, unaware of the committee-consensus model by which The Federation makes decisions, while the Los Angeles contingent, as volunteers and professionals working for private agencies, had no idea how the Tel Aviv municipality operated.

One key element determined at those first meetings, at the insistence of Los Angeles, was that the partnership should include a Jewish-Israel component. Part of Los Angeles’ aim was “to make a relationship that would strengthen Jewish identity in both communities,” recalled Fredi Rembaum, who, as The Federation’s director of Israel-overseas relations for eight years, was instrumental in developing programming for the partnership.

The curriculum was designed to make Israel a more defined part of Jewish identity for Jewish students in Los Angeles, while being Jewish would be a component of Israeli identity for the Tel Aviv participants.

Semiannual steering committee meetings, alternating between Los Angeles and Tel Aviv, as well as a communications network that includes videoconferencing and visits to each other’s communities continue to guide the partnership, whose main component areas are described below.

Education

Education, with many projects planned and run through the Bureau of Jewish Education in Los Angeles, is the oldest and most developed component of the partnership. The most visible and probably the most successful of the partnership projects — what Ed Robbins, an initiator of the partnership, calls education’s flagship — is the twinning of 12 schools in Los Angeles with schools in Tel Aviv for programs that include organized, ongoing communication and student exchanges.

The twinned schools include many day schools in the Los Angeles area, as well as the public Calabasas High School, whose student population is two-thirds Jewish. At Calabasas, the focus is not on Jewish peoplehood but on Israel’s relationship to the United States.

Student exchanges have slowed because of the security situation in Israel, but joint programming in the schools continues to address the subject of Israel-Diaspora relations and Jewish identity. Los Angeles day school teachers continue to meet with their peers in Israel to develop joint curriculum.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli schools, backing away from the classic Zionist view that the Diaspora exists to provide money and immigrants for Israel, have been extremely eager to pursue the twinning relationship. In fact, Marty Karp, who directs The Federation’s Israel office, suggested this may be the first time that pedagogical issues relating to Jewish peoplehood are being worked out between a Diaspora and an Israeli community.

A related project that predated the school twinning, Distant Friends, began with a film in which Los Angeles high school students discuss Jewish life in their city and their own sense of Jewish identity. The film, with an accompanying curriculum on U.S. Jewish life and Israel-Diaspora relations, has been used in approximately 70 Tel Aviv high schools. The project is currently being turned around — a film about Tel Aviv students and their lives as Israelis and Jews will be included in the curriculum of Los Angeles Jewish schools.

In Tel Aviv, a high school forum brings 40 students from 12 Tel Aviv schools together weekly to discuss issues of Jewish identity and Israeli-Diaspora relationships. The program will be broadened with a counterpart group established in Los Angeles, leading to exchanges and communication between the groups.

In addition, the partnership sends shlichim (student ambassadors — most of them young men and women just past their army service) to be counselors at Los Angeles Jewish summer camps.

The work-study Teach and Study Program (TASP) offers university graduates the opportunity to teach English for two years in Tel Aviv schools, while earning a master’s degree from Tel Aviv University in teaching language, especially English as a second language. Each of the 14 current TASP interns — their numbers down from 27 last year due to the security situation — is responsible for the English-language development of a group of 15 Israeli children.

A joint UCLA-Tel Aviv University course in Jewish studies brings students together through videoconferencing.

Health and Human Services

The partnership’s health and human services committee brought together Los Angeles’ Jewish Family Service and Tel Aviv’s Department of Human Services to jointly identify target areas for social welfare projects, particularly family violence, emergency personnel management and services for seniors and Holocaust survivors. The collaboration has allowed professionals in both cities to learn and adapt models from the each other’s care and delivery systems.

Cafe Europa, a social and support program for Holocaust survivors developed in Los Angeles, has been adopted and adapted by Tel Aviv, where an average of 150 survivors now are drawn weekly to two sites for socializing and programs. The project also includes videoconferencing between survivors in both cities.

In one of the most moving moments of the partnership connection, two Holocaust survivors — one in Los Angeles and the other in Tel Aviv — both from the same town in Eastern Europe discovered each other during a group videoconference.

Another import from Los Angeles is the Wellness Community, which offers support groups, lectures, social and health-enhancing events to hundreds of cancer patients and their families in the Tel Aviv area. Using a Los Angeles model, a Wellness Community hospice has been established in Tel Aviv.

The Zug or Peret Marriage Project, based on the Making Marriage Work course at Los Angeles’ University of Judaism, has been set up in Tel Aviv.

The Sandwich Generation Women, offering support and empowerment for midlife women, now reaches approximately 3,000 in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area.

The Beit Alochem center in Tel Aviv runs extensive social, cultural and psychological programming for disabled war veterans. It has now been expanded to include terror victims.

The Yad al Hadofek (friends to the elderly and homebound) program, modeled after a similar program run by Jewish Family Service, develops a cadre of volunteers who maintain regular contact with the elderly and homebound.

The Life Stories project uses tape, film and writing to document individual, family, neighborhood and community stories and trains individuals to handle the information gathering. The curriculum was developed in Tel Aviv and will soon be transferred for use in Los Angeles.

The Family Friends projects encourages senior citizen volunteers to adopt families with a disabled child. Other projects target domestic violence and violence against people with disabilities through educational programs in Tel Aviv workplaces.

Culture

As a center for the performing arts, Los Angeles has mounted a wide range of cultural collaborations and exchanges of artists with Tel Aviv, including performance projects and discussions in schools in both cities. The Inbal Ethnic Theater and Los Angeles’ Keshet Haim dance group collaborated on a project, as did the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony and the Tel Aviv University School of Music, among others.

The production of S. Ansky’s “The Dybbuk” in Japanese Noh style, featuring Tel Aviv actors, was directed by a Tel Aviv University professor, adapted by an expert on Japanese theater at UCLA, staged in Tel Aviv and then imported on video for showing in Los Angeles.

Curators from museums in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty and the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, have been linked for joint programming and institutional exchanges.

A master class workshop in filmmaking, staffed from Los Angeles and presented at Tel Aviv University, has also brought some young Tel Aviv filmmakers to Los Angeles on internships in the film industry (see page 12).

Economic Initiatives

Economic initiatives, the most recent addition to the partnership, includes many projects that are still in the evaluation and planning stage that is expected to continue through 2003.

However, one project already under way, using financial expertise developed in Los Angeles, is helping Tel Aviv float the first municipal bond offering in Israel. The money will be used to create underground parking to relieve the city’s clogged thoroughfares.

Another ongoing project is a collaboration between businesspeople and environmentalists to clean up Tel Aviv’s badly polluted HaYarkon River.

A third large enterprise now being studied involves neighborhood revitalization in the Jaffa flea market area. Based on the model used in Los Angeles after the riots in the early 1990s, the Tel Aviv Genesis projects would combine urban investment and real estate development with community organizing, social welfare programs and small-business development.

About $1 million now flows from The Federation into the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership, double the amount allocated in partnership’s first full year in 1998. The Federation anticipates increasing partnership allocations, however, the amount has not been revealed.

The partnership allocations comprise about 10 percent of The Federation’s funds earmarked for overseas use. Although there is perennial tension between overseas needs and local Jewish needs, no complaints have arisen about the allocations to the partnership. In fact, as Rembaum put it, a subsidiary goal of the partnership is to “blur the line” between support for Israel and support for the local community by doing both at the same time.

Has the Partnership Worked?

Federation personnel involved in the partnership seem convinced that it has been a great success. “Everyone is delighted where we’ve got to,” Federation President John Fishel proclaimed after an eight-hour steering committee evaluation meeting in Tel Aviv in October.

Yes, there are problems, Fishel acknowledged, naming “a certain fragmentation,” — too many small programs not connected to the mainstream partnership relationship. But even these, he insisted, putting a positive spin on it, merely indicate “opportunities for greater synergy.”

Lois Weinsaft, The Federation’s vice president for international planning, echoed Fishel, explaining that the partnership expects to “move away from smaller programs in order to concentrate money, energy and impact.”

On-the-ground appraisals from partnership personnel range from the evaluation by David Gill, the partnership’s Los Angeles chairman, that “everything worked” to first partnership chairman Herb Glazer’s acknowledgement, leavened with high grades overall, that some projects — he named several performance exchanges — simply “flopped.”

Meanwhile, even such critics of Federation programs and priorities as demographer Pini Herman voiced no criticism of the partnership in general. However, he did say that The Federation remains out of touch with local needs, while funding programs like the partnership, which provide overseas junkets for Federation executives and managers.

But Herman’s is a lone voice. Bubis, the founding director of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Relgion’s School of Jewish Communal Service and a Federation veteran who has sometimes voiced criticism of Federation programming, called the partnership “nothing short of spectacular — the leveraging of a relatively small amount of money for a remarkable payoff.”

In Tel Aviv, Los Angeles’ contribution has been warmly praised by Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai. “I’ve seen how much it contributes to the city, how much impact it has,” Huldai said, naming summer camps, day-care centers, projects for the elderly. “We feel we have partners.”

The fact is that the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership is young and still developing. It may simply be too soon to know what works well or what the long-range effects of partnership will be. One major success, observers said, is not programmatic but the promotion of volunteerism and layperson involvement on the Tel Aviv side.

As for the success of the specific programs, themselves, most have not yet been officially evaluated — a deficiency that The Federation is aware needs to be remedied — and many programs will require long-range follow-up to determine their effect on individuals and the two communities.

Meanwhile, Fishel is full of ideas for future partnering: extended-day kindergartens in Tel Aviv, a Tel Aviv spinoff of Los Angeles’ Mommy and Me programs; sending graduate business students to Tel Aviv to help on economic projects; broadening the school exchanges and finding ways for engaging youth groups on both sides; increasing the scope of joint curriculums, and consulting with other federations to learn what they are doing in their partnerships.

Partnership is “infinite in its possibilities,” Fishel enthused. “The more you’re working together, the more opportunities for collaboration.”

With the sense of connection to Israel decreasing measurably in the U.S. Jewish community, the collaborative framework appears to offer a possibility for reconnection, as people on both sides go beyond philanthropy to work together on Jewish issues and communal problems.

David Margolis, who lives in a small village in the
Judean hills, can be reached through his Web site, www.davidmargolis.com .

Federation Directs Funds Overseas

Currently, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles allocates about $11.5 million of the approximately $40 million it collects annually to overseas projects. Most of the overseas funds — some $9.5 million — are funneled through the United Jewish Communities, the umbrella group of North American federations, which divides the money between the Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee on a 3-1 ratio.

Directed funds for "pluralism" programs amount to about $425,000. Funds for Jews in Crisis projects, which were raised in a separate one-time campaign, are funneled to projects in Israel without any administrative or fundraising costs deducted, a Federation spokesman said.

The Los Angeles-Tel Aviv Partnership — allocations for which have doubled since its first budget year in 1998 — currently receives about $900,000 with an additional $300,000 earmarked for joint projects in Israel that are outside its formal structure. Another $100,000 goes to the partnership for administrative and programming needs from the Jewish Agency and the Los Angeles Jewish Community Foundation, respectively.

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