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Jewish Journal

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April 3, 2003

School Provides anAntidote to Grief

Leave a Comment / Orange County, Philanthropy /

Even 56 years later, Irving Gelman recalls precisely the day of his U.S. arrival and exactly the contents of his pockets: April 19, 1947, and $5.60.

The date marked a miraculous fresh start for a man whose generosity would later ignite dramatic changes within Orange County’s Jewish community.

For years the scenes preceding that day summoned nightmares too painful and horrible to talk about: Gelman and his wife, Rochelle, a pair of love-struck, unmarried teenagers in 1941, managed to escape mass executions that claimed their extended families and half of Ukraine’s Jewish population of 1.5 million people.

Their hiding place was a dirt hole inside a peasant farmer’s barn shared with Gelman’s parents and sister. Bone chilling in winter and asphyxiating in summer, their 14 months in a solitary hell was perpetually dark and oxygen-deprived but never discovered. Twice a day, the trapdoor would open, and the farm couple would dispense boiled potatoes and black bread, which enabled them to survive.

The 1941 German invasion of the former Soviet Union is seen by many Holocaust scholars as the first implementation of “the final solution.”

“This is the first place where Jews are being killed for being Jews,” said Peter Blake, senior historian of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

To ensure that those who died from his hometown of Hosht are not forgotten, last summer the Gelmans, Irving, 79, and Rochelle, 78, returned to western Ukraine. They dedicated a privately funded Holocaust monument cut from local stone that is the only visible sign of where 18,000 people were slaughtered.

While memorials have been erected elsewhere in Ukraine, Gelman grieved that nothing marked the Hosht killing ground, now dappled by forest. He bought the land. A fence will be erected soon and a groundskeeper hired to maintain the site as a graveyard.

“I felt a moral obligation,” said Gelman, who recited “Kaddish,” the prayer for the dead. About 45 descendants of other Hosht survivors, now living in Israel, joined them. So did Nina, the 55-year-old daughter of the farmers who hid the Gelmans, but is still fearful about revealing her surname. The Gelmans have sent her money monthly for several years.

“In my conscience, I gave my respect to my townspeople,” Gelman said.

Following their grown children to California, the Gelmans liquidated a successful sportswear business 18 years ago and relocated from New Jersey to Irvine. For a second time, the couple was pushed to a psychological precipice, this time by the death of their 38-year-old daughter, Naomi Gelman Weiss, who died from a brain tumor and breast cancer in 1989.

“It finished us off,” Gelman said. “I figured I had had enough, if that’s how I was being treated by God.”

Serendipitously, Gelman answered a plea from a struggling Jewish day school in Anaheim. It would prove a satisfying antidote for a grieving father.

The subject was already dear to Gelman, because he had provided support and financial aid to two other Jewish schools in New Jersey. For his help, though, Gelman demanded the school move to a central location, change its name and disaffiliate with any single Jewish movement.

“They had no choice,” he said.

In 1997, 37 students started at the school he named Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School, then housed at what is currently the Jewish Federation campus in Costa Mesa. Even as school enrollment was soaring, Gelman was scrambling to bankroll a more suitable campus.

He turned to the local Jewish Federation, which agreed to mail a solicitation for the school to the 14,000 on its mailing list. He netted $1,431.

He turned to East Coast friends and raised $3 million in three months. Gelman and an anonymous donor cobbled together $18 million for the initial building, now an elementary school, helped by a 10-acre contribution of land from Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli.

In the fall of 1997, Tarbut opened at its present Irvine location with 326 students. A separate high school opened last fall. The combined enrollment now exceeds 500.

The school is the nucleus of what is envisioned as the community’s Jewish campus. Fundraising is continuing for the final piece, a large community building to house Jewish agencies. Named as a memorial to his daughter, Tarbut, which means culture, is a link to its founder’s past. As youth, both the Gelmans attended Tarbut schools that flourished throughout Europe.

Students take to Gelman, who lives three miles from the campus and is a frequent visitor. Short and round, he still speaks with a European accent. Students call him “poppa.”

“Tarbut was my baby,” said Gelman, who stuck to his vision for a school, despite opposing arguments over funding an athletic facility from former Federation executives. “You need to build a community; that won’t come from a gym,” he said.

Like a proud parent, Gelman can tick off Tarbut’s attributes, such as offering seven levels of Hebrew. But the school has yet to crack the code on retaining elementary students, a problem facing many Jewish high schools. Some claim the school does too little to promote community service by students; others gripe over its admission policy.

Even so, Gelman realizes the school’s longevity is tied to the financial support of the local Jewish community. And he is troubled by what he sees as the area’s skewed priorities: self-indulgence ahead of charity. The area’s economic affluence and insularity shows up in the community’s status-conscious materialism, Gelman said. “The level of giving here is disgraceful,” he said.

But he is optimistic that the school will be supported by the community.

“This school’s made a change for the entire Orange County,” Gelman said. “It’s creating a center of Jewish culture; it’s the nucleus of a Jewish neighborhood.”

School Provides anAntidote to Grief Read More »

Snooze-Proof Seder

Leave a Comment / Celebrations/Simchas, Orange County /

Guests at one of Heidi Kahn’s Passover potlucks stepped into a desert oasis. That year, her Irvine tract home was transformed with a Bedouin makeover achieved by suspending a tent inside. Another year, guests, who always contribute to the feast, were also asked to bring household goods and were put to work assembling care packages for Jews trying to flee the former Soviet Union.

Typically, the amphibian plague, one of many inflicted on ancient Egypt in the biblical story of Exodus, gets a star turn at Kahn’s seder. Plastic frogs croak unexpectedly at arriving guests, who can fold origami frogs while waiting for latecomers. Some guests even don frog masks.

“When you’ve sat through a lifetime of tedious seders and create your own tedious seders, and then go to Heidi’s place and play, no seder will ever compare,” said friend and past guest, Gail Shendelman, of Irvine. “I’m spoiled for life.”

Throwing over typical seder conventions for a sensory and culture-rich affair leaves some of Kahn’s guests infused with Jewish pride and others spiritually reconnected. Nobody goes away dreading Passover.

“It’s like a giant party and teaching experience,” said Kahn, mentor teacher at Irvine’s University Synagogue and a preschool program at the Jewish Community Center of Orange County in Costa Mesa.

“She likes to take a multisensory approach,” said Nancy Kouraklis, another University teacher, who says Kahn’s classroom invariably includes objects to smell and touch, music and ingenious projects.

Her seder is equally marked with myriad novel details that evoke the holiday’s symbolism and origin.

“It’s so creative. It’s like a Broadway production,” said Ilene S. Mountain, a two-time Kahn seder guest.

The first act typically involves children retelling the Passover story. As preschoolers, Kahn’s own girls, Marlee, now 11, and Jordana, 9, romped as the Egyptian princesses who cradled baby Moses. In later years, as Kahn would narrate, every invited child would display a scene they had been preassigned to depict artistically.

This year’s theme wasn’t clear yet. “It depends on the crowd. I’m not ready to commit,” she said.

A native of South Africa, Passover is Kahn’s favorite holiday. She overfills her home with as many as 40 visitors, which always include her parents and siblings. “I don’t want to say no to anyone,” she said.

Kahn can spend four days on meticulous preparations, such as the rose petal bed that cushions a huge, water-filled glass bowl that elegantly elevates hand-washing with nature’s perfume.

The seder’s second act around the dining room table typically lasts 90 minutes and is directed by Kahn, who calls on guests to participate in turn. “There’s not a boring moment in the whole thing,” Mountain said.

Each chair is equipped with a personalized seder pack of props, such as hammers to represent tools of enslavement, and “A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah” by David Dishon and Noam Zion (Shalom Hartman Institute, 1997). Selected guests receive special props, such as a shower of styrofoam that substitutes for a plague of hail or Pharaoh’s crown.

Also at Kahn’s instruction, guests have laden the table with nondairy, vegetarian concoctions because of family food allergies. The menu always includes traditional Passover foods, but with a twist: charoset, for instance, is flavored with Egyptian or Yemenite spices.

Unlike most seders, where guests ignore hunger pangs while the haggadah unfolds, Kahn encourages noshers throughout to fortify themselves.

“The dress code is you have to be able to dance and eat excessively,” she said.

Playing guitar or pounding drums, her brother, Brian Sepel, interrupts the reading for traditional songs such “Dayenu,” or atypical ones such as “There’s No Seder Like My Seder,” sung to the show tune “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

Some guests are wary of letting their hair down. Intuitively, Kahn intercedes.

“I get embarrassed to read aloud,” Mountain said. “Before I even said anything, she says to me, ‘Don’t worry. I have just one paragraph for you to read.'”

One exotic Sephardic ritual stands out for many guests. Kahn ordered everyone from his or her seat to march in a circular procession. She handed each a sheaf of green onions, which to were to use as faux whips on the backs of their neighbors.

“It was kind of silly and juvenile,” Shendelman said. “It took many of us out of our comfort zone. But it did have a different meaning. She taught me a lesson in what it felt like to be a slave and told what to do.”

In the final act, the search for the afikomen (the hidden matzah ), is a treasure hunt that requires clues for its solution. Every child receives a prize.

Kahn’s extravaganza does have its downside.

“You’ll never be able to go to another seder again.” said Mountain. Any other, she said, “is a big snooze.”

Snooze-Proof Seder Read More »

Backlash Threat

Leave a Comment / Orange County /

As some 20 teens beat 18-year-old Rashid Alam with golf clubs and baseball bats in Yorba Linda on Feb. 22, they allegedly yelled “White Power!” The attack, which Alam’s friends said was unprovoked, left the recent high school graduate hospitalized with a fractured jaw and broken bones in his face.

Unable to speak because his jaw is wired shut, friends and family despair that he might have suffered permanent brain damage from the 65 blows he endured.

Police call the attack a hate crime, but have said that it began as a face-off between two rival groups that had fought in the past. Others said it was fueled solely by ethnic hatred.

Ahmed Alam, publisher of the Arab World newspaper in Anaheim, said his son’s beating underscored the vulnerability now felt by many Arab Americans.

“After Sept. 11, the average American thinks we’re all the same, all like Saddam,” said Alam, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from Lebanon in 1971. “They don’t know the difference between an Iraqi, a Lebanese and a Syrian.”

As war with Iraq continues, both the Arab American and Jewish communities must brace themselves for a possible backlash.As the body bags mount and U.S. forces get bogged down in the desert, extremists might vent their rage by beating or even murdering Arab Americans, as they did after Sept. 11.

Similarly, hate mongers, who have long painted Jews as communists, money-grubbing internationalists and peddlers of Hollywood immorality, might soon brand them as fifth columnists more loyal to Israel than to the United States. Rep. James P. Moran’s (D-Va.) recent speech to an anti-war group, accusing the Jewish community of pushing the United States into an ill-advised conflict, is but the most recent example of this blame-the-Jews mentality, experts said. Moran has since apologized.

With Arab Americans and Jews both under siege, these minority groups appear to be developing a measure of empathy, if not sympathy, for one another. Views on the Middle East still divide them and hard-liners on both sides continue to spew out invective, but voices of reason appear to be cutting through the shouts.

In the aftermath of Rashid Alam’s brutal beating, several rabbis contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations to express their outrage at the crime, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the group’s Southern California chapter.

Rabbi Allen Krause of Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo is among those who stood alongside the council. Krause, who has participated in several local interfaith events with Muslims and Christians, said he has long preached tolerance from his Orange County pulpit. The rabbi thinks that Jews, themselves victims of discrimination, should become more vocal in supporting American Muslims.

“The Torah doesn’t say Jews were made in God’s image. It says all humans were made in God’s image,” he said. “We are our brothers’ keeper.”

That’s not to suggest that relations between Arab Americans and Jewish groups have warmed considerably since the second intifada broke out in Israel more than two years ago. They have not. But the chill that plagued them seems to have begun to thaw ever so slightly.

“We oppose any kind of anti-Semitism,” said Jean Abinader, managing director of the Arab American Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group. “One, we’re Semites. Two, any kind of bigotry against somebody because of their religion or ethnicity is an act against humanity.”

Even before a single shot was fired in Iraq, hate crimes committed against people, institutions and businesses identified with the Islamic faith have skyrocketed, with 414 now under investigation by the FBI.

Already, some Muslims have grown fearful about speaking Arabic in public. Others have “Americanized” their children’s names to Sam from Osama or to Mo from Mohammed, said Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“There’s a lot of anxiety and worry,” he said. “Now, it’s almost commonplace these days for Muslims to be subjected to verbal abuse, especially men with the beards and women in head scarves.”

Some Arab American leaders have criticized the Bush administration for helping to create a hostile environment. They are especially angry that federal agents have imprisoned, without formal charges, scores of Muslims initially suspected of terrorist activities but later deported for minor visa infractions.

Activists complain of discrimination against Arab Americans on domestic airlines, with several dark-skinned passengers being asked to leave planes without cause. The groups also grouse about right-wing Christian evangelicals demonizing Islam.

A growing number of American Jews also are under attack. Hate crimes against Jews, both nationally and locally, jumped significantly last year, according to a report soon to be released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “I’m worried about people targeting synagogues and having hateful feelings about Jews,” said Amanda Susskind, the ADL’s regional director in Los Angeles.

As delicate as the situation is for Jews, it is arguably worse for American Arabs.

In a reflection of their potentially dire situation, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller recently met with leaders of national Arab American, Muslim and Sikh organizations. (Sikhs are neither Arab nor Muslim. But Sikh men wear turbans and have been attacked by extremists who mistake them for Middle Easterners.) Among other issues, they spoke about possible vigilante attacks against the groups and the need to continue working with the FBI.

Against this backdrop, the ADL has forcefully condemned violence against American Muslims, especially since Sept. 11. The human rights advocacy group will “continue to be outspoken on the issue,” national spokesman Todd Gutnick said. “We think attacks against Muslim Americans is wrong and un-American.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he detects no hostility toward Arab Americans. If extremists begin to harass them, though, the center will “publicly urge people to focus on the enemies of the United States and not on innocent Muslims living in America.”

On the eve of war, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo joined Hier, Cardinal Roger Mahoney and other religious and community leaders at the Museum of Tolerance to oppose hate crimes and discrimination. Delgadillo said his office would prosecute all perpetrators of such acts to the fullest extent of the law, adding that some good might emerge from these uncertain times. “I’m hopeful that all of L.A.’s diverse communities can unite and rise to the occasion.”

Backlash Threat Read More »

Seder Yummies From Chicken to Chocolate

Leave a Comment / Food, Kosher Eats /

Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday, and although cooking for Passover requires a lot of preparation, I look forward to it each year. It is a time when our family and close friends join together to share thoughts and exchange ideas as we participate in the seder.

I have a regular routine that begins my preparation for the Passover holiday. The first thing I do is check last year’s guest list with my husband, so we won’t leave anyone out, and then we add friends who will be alone during the holiday. Next, I review my files that are filled with Passover recipes and select the dishes I want to prepare for our seders.

Over the years we have added Passover food traditions from other cultures that are different then what we normally serve, and they have become an important part of our seder menu.

In the past we traditionally dipped sliced spring onions in salt water as the first vegetable of the season, and now we also serve steamed new potatoes dipped in salt.

The children love the idea of including scallions, a symbolic food that the Sephardic Jews use during their seder. They represent the whips used to beat the Jews when they were slaves in Egypt. The children reenact this event during the seder by going around the table and gently hitting the participants with the raw scallions.

The charoset, bitter herbs and matzah are part of the Passover meal, and during our Seder we taste several types of charoset from around the world. Each guest is served a plate with six different charoset and we identify the country that each represents. Oh yes, the next day I roll the leftover charoset into balls and dip them in chocolate to serve as a special treat during the remaining days of Passover.

Dinner usually begins with homemade gefilte fish, but this year I plan on making a Gefilte Fish Terrine.

It is not as time-consuming to make, and the taste is the same. It is baked the oven, in a mold, and does not require poaching in a fish stock.

This is followed by an intensely flavored chicken soup with matzah balls, and it is the one dish I cannot change because it is everyone’s favorite.

Roast turkey is the main course, as well as chicken breasts that are filled with Grandma Molly’s Vegetable Stuffing, rolled and baked. The combination of sautéed vegetables, matzah meal and sweet raisins is delicious, and I always double the recipe, and bake the remainder of the stuffing in a casserole, because there is never enough to satisfy everyone. The glazed apple slices are easy to make and are a perfect accompaniment to serve with the chicken and turkey.

Dinner is always served buffet style and everyone helps themselves to their favorite Passover dishes.

For dessert, the table is set with an assortment of sponge cakes, cookies and chocolate-covered nuts and fruit. The walnut torte sponge cake looks extra-special by simply layering it with a preserve filling and then spooning a chocolate glaze on top.

Wine is an important part of the seder. In the past, sweet Concord grape wine was always served during Passover, but today dry Passover wines have gained in popularity, and the availability, and varieties are remarkable. These wines come from California, France, Italy and Israel, and, at our seder, we provide both sweet and dry wines, as well as grape juice, to satisfy everyone’s taste.

Rolled Chicken Breasts with Grandma Molly’s Passover

Vegetable Stuffing (pictured above)

Grandma Molly’s Vegetable Stuffing

8 chicken breasts (4 whole,

boned and cut in half)

1/4 cup oil

1 onion, thinly sliced

3 carrots, thinly sliced

1 cup chicken stock

1/4 cup dry white wine

Prepare Grandma Molly’s Vegetable Stuffing and cool.

Place a chicken breast, skin side down, on a sheet of wax paper, cover with another sheet of wax paper and using a mallet or tenderizer, gently pound the breast until desired thickness.

Spoon stuffing in the center and roll up the chicken breast, encasing the stuffing and tie with string. Repeat with remaining chicken breasts.

Line a baking pan with foil, brush with oil and arrange onions and carrots on top. Place stuffed chicken breasts on top, brush with oil and season with salt and pepper.

Add stock and wine and bake at 375 F for 20 minutes, increase the heat to 425 F, and bake about five minutes more, or until chicken is tender and crisp. Transfer to a cutting board and slice on the bias.

To serve, arrange sliced chicken breasts on plates and spoon any juices from pan that remain.

Serves 8.

Grandma Molly’s Passover

Vegetable Stuffing

1/2 cup raisins, plumped in 1 cup Passover Concord grape wine

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

4 stalks celery, finely diced

6 medium carrots, peeled and grated

1 parsnip, peeled and grated

2 medium zucchini, unpeeled

and grated

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley

2-3 tablespoons matzah meal

2-3 tablespoons matzah cake meal

2-3 tablespoons Passover cereal

or potato starch

1/4 cup dry red wine

Salt and freshly ground black

pepper to taste

In a large, heavy skillet, heat the oil and sauté the onions and garlic until soft, about three minutes. Add the celery, carrots, parsnip, and zucchini, and toss well. Cook for five minutes until the vegetables begin to soften. Drain the raisins and add them to the vegetables with the parsley. Stir in 1 tablespoon each of the matzah meal, matzah cake meal and potato starch. Add the red wine and mix well. Stir in the remaining dry ingredients, a little at a time, until the stuffing is moist and soft but firm in texture. Season with salt and pepper. Cool.

Makes about 12 cups.

Chocolate Farfel-Pecan Clusters

16 ounces Passover semi-sweet chocolate

1 1/2 cups toasted matzah farfel

1 cup toasted, chopped pecans

In the top of a double boiler over simmering water or in a microwave, melt the chocolate. Pour the melted chocolate into a large bowl. Add the matzah farfel and pecans and mix thoroughly.

Spoon this mixture onto a waxed paper-lined baking sheet or ruffled paper candy cups. Refrigerate until set.

To serve: peel the clusters off the waxed paper and place on a platter or serve in candy cups, along with Passover sponge cakes and cookies. Makes about 30 to 40 clusters

Seder Yummies From Chicken to Chocolate Read More »

Helluva Ball Club

Leave a Comment / Community /

First in war. First in peace. Last in the American League. —
Legendary pundit remark about the old Washington Senators (later the Texas
Rangers, formerly owned by President Bush).

There is something about baseball, war and
commanders-in-chief that eternally binds us to our national pastime. Presidents
want the baseball teams to play, and the fans want to take their minds off of
wars, economic problems and domestic troubles. So it’s a win-win situation.

Such is baseball, where hope springs eternal. It is FDR
throwing out one of his 11 first pitches on opening day during the Great
Depression and later during World War II. A confident JFK in 1963 — just six
months after the Cuban Missile Crisis and seven months before his assassination
— is seen smiling in a famous photo tossing out the first pitch in Washington.

No matter how intense world affairs are, there is something
comforting and consistent about baseball, and it even gives the president a
moment of relief from pressing issues.

For this die-hard Angels fan, 2002 helped me through a most
difficult period in my own life. The Angels captured their first World Series
title. I could now fully understand why even presidents have found it so
necessary to take a moment to enjoy this relaxing, yet emotion-filled sport.

I have followed the Angels since they were known as the Los
Angeles Angels and played in Dodger Stadium. There are not too many of us who
have rooted for President Richard Nixon’s favorite team.

Even fewer Jews — and they love their baseball anywhere,
anytime — dared trek to the then very WASPish and John Birch Society Orange
County in the early years to see the Angels. The team moved to Anaheim (a city
named by a German Jewish landowner in honor of a burg in his native country) in
1966, when the trees were orange, the people white and Disneyland was the
greatest place on Earth.

The only angels Jews have faith in are Michael, Gabriel,
Raphael and Uriel from our bedtime prayers. From the perspective of the Jewish
baseball fan, his or her loyalty has mostly belonged to the Dodgers.

Arguably, they have traditionally been Jewish America’s
team. When they played in Brooklyn, they had more than a million Jews pulling
for them.

They appealed to the Jews’ love of the underdog and
seemingly had the only fans to yell with joy about the arrival of the first
black major league player — Jackie Robinson — who made his debut significantly
on Passover Eve 1947, the festival of freedom from bondage.

A decade later and a transfer to Los Angeles, along comes a
shy, soft-spoken lefty named Sandy Koufax. He was a representative of
everything a Jewish fan most admired. He was handsome with his pronounced left
dimple, intelligent, tall and a mensch on and off the field.

 A proud Jew, Koufax wouldn’t pitch in the first game of the
World Series in 1965 because it fell on Yom Kippur. He made up for his
adherence to a higher calling in synagogue by pitching brilliantly on just two
days’ rest between starts to give the Dodgers the championship.

Then the unthinkable happened. Koufax broke his covenant
with the Dodgers in February over an untrue gossip item that appeared in a New
York newspaper that happens to also be owned by the same company that controls
the Dodgers. That piece angered Koufax, not to mention his legion of loyal
fans.

So what are Jewish fans to do about the divorce between
Koufax and the Dodgers? Short of a Shawn Green 50-homer season, fans might want
to look down I-5 and take a serious look at my Angels.

It may seem like eating brisket on white bread, but there
are a lot of hidden Jewish Angel connections both now and in their virtually
unknown past.

The media played up the fact that the Angels are playing for
the “Singing Cowboy in the Sky,” the late Gene Autry, their longtime owner who
could never quite bring the team to the pennant.

That was until a new owner came in 1999 from the Magic
Kingdom. Michael D. Eisner, chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Co., who grew
up in Manhattan rooting for the Yankees, bought the Angels. He completely
overhauled the team like the prince in the “Beauty and the Beast.” This team is
a Walt Disney production all the way.

Last year’s team included two Jewish players — pitchers Al
Levine and Scott Schoeneweis. To give you an idea of how significant a
milestone this is, most teams don’t have even one Jewish player. The most Jews
a team has ever had on its roster at one time was four (the Los Angeles Dodgers
once had three — Sandy Koufax and the brothers Larry and Norm Sherry from
1959-62).

If Major League Baseball had been more willing to just say
no to then-Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley in 1960, a group of high-profile
Jewish investors — not Autry — would have been the original owners of the
Angels. Angel fans would probably not have had to wait so long for a pennant.

Here’s the inside story: In 1960, Hank Greenberg, another
prominent Jewish baseball star from an earlier era, put a syndicate together to
establish and purchase a Los Angeles-based American League expansion team.
O’Malley, the Dodgers’ owner, feared Greenberg and didn’t want an American
League team in Los Angeles at all.

Greenberg would have put together a ball club that would
seriously compete against the Dodgers in a short time on both the playing field
and at the box office, and O’Malley knew it. As an executive, Greenberg helped
bring a world championship to Cleveland in 1948 and a pennant to the Chicago
White Sox in 1959.

From 1958-60, O’Malley’s Dodgers were broadcast on Gene
Autry’s radio station, 710 AM, but O’Malley complained he couldn’t hear the
games from his Los Angeles-area mountaintop home.

That ended O’Malley’s and Autry’s radio partnership but not
their “friendship.” O’Malley quietly arranged with the lords of baseball to transfer
the ownership option of the nascent Angels to an owner that couldn’t win. Thus,
Greenberg was “traded” for Autry.

The Angels would never seriously compete against O’Malley’s
Dodgers.

So, as it says in Ecclesiastes, “futility of futilities.”
Years of near misses, last-place finishes, murders, suicides, sudden deaths of
players and guns in the clubhouse between feuding teammates became the norm.

While I am not suggesting that Jewish fans change their
allegiance (I like the Dodgers, too), people should realize that Autry’s Angels
actually had more Jewish players and executives in their history, even though
it didn’t help:

\n

Helluva Ball Club Read More »

East Meets West

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

About six months ago, Gregory Rodriguez, a contributingeditor to the Los Angeles Times opinion section, phoned his friend, Rabbi GaryGreenebaum, West Coast regional director of the American Jewish Committee (AJCommittee). Rodriguez had attended events purported to promote intellectualfellowship among diverse Angelenos, but had found them not-so-diverse. “There’sa lot of lip service paid to crossing barriers in this city, but manygatherings are organized around political or ethnic lines,” Rodriguez said.

To mix things up a bit, the two friends went on to launch aprogram, co-presented by the Los Angeles Public Library. The series, Zócalo,which means “public square” in Spanish, will gather Eastsiders and Westsidersfor private discussions and public lectures on crucial civic issues. It kicksoff at the downtown Central Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium on April 9 at 7p.m., when the Economist’s Washington correspondent Adrian Wooldridge,co-author of “The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea,” willdescribe his take on the corporation as “an engine that can work for the publicgood as well as ill,” Greenebaum said.

Four more speakers through July will include the preeminentAfrican American essayist Debra Dickerson and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, theOscar-nominated director of “Amores Perros.”

The series joins a burgeoning trend of L.A. programs devotedto the intellectual life, from Lunchtime Art Talks at the UCLA Hammer Museum tothe literary salon Beyond Baroque.

“But we don’t want to be labeled a salon,” Rodriguez said.”We want to create a nonpartisan, multiethnic place in a city that has fewneutral, welcoming places.”

Like Zócalo, its conveners represent East and West LosAngeles. Rodriguez, 36, is a Mexican American who lives in a Northeastneighborhood, Hermon, near Highland Park. Greenebaum, who is in his 50s,promotes intergroup relations through the regional office of the AJCommittee,located in West L.A. The two men met when Rodriguez interviewed Greenebaum fora piece that touched on Latino-Jewish relations several years ago.

They’re hoping Zócalo — sponsored by groups as varied as TheJewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and Citibank — will introduce Angelenoswho wouldn’t normally meet. “A group devoted to fostering fellowship and newideas will be a powerful contribution to the new L.A.,” Rodriguez said. 

For information about Zócalo events, which will be broadcastover KPCC 89.3 FM, call (213) 228-7025.

East Meets West Read More »

Singer Packs Seniors With Old School Hits

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Music /

Thousands of screaming girls. Packed nightclubs. Love-crazy
fans. Ron Gartner has seen it all.

That is, on television, of course.

In real life, Gartner is an up-and-coming singer who, while
not exactly drawing the sorts of crowds that come to Eminem shows, is packing
the social halls of senior centers across the nation singing the tunes of Frank
Sinatra, Tony Bennett and other big-band and Motown standards. His fans may be
closer in age to Bob Hope than Britney Spears, but Gartner is quickly becoming
the newest big thing in the senior-home entertainment circuit.

Originally a denizen of what he calls the shmatte business —
the garment industry — Gartner, 58, is building a second career by singing
big-band favorites in nursing homes, senior centers and gated retirement
communities all over the country. Now, on the eve of the release of his first
CD, “Someone Like You,” Gartner is bringing his show to Southern California for
two performances, on April 10 at Leisure World, a gated community in Laguna
Woods, and on April 13 at the Indian Ridge Country Club in Palm Desert, where
Gartner is playing the Desert Cancer Fund Dinner Dance.

“I am as close to Las Vegas as a lot of these seniors are
going to get,” said Gartner, who croons the oldies solo, along with backup
music recorded on a state-of-the-art, karaoke-style machine and sound system he
brings with him to performances. “I really give them a hell of a show for an
hour.”

Gartner’s debonair performance includes the hip-swinging tunes
of the likes of Sinatra, Perry Como and Steve Lawrence. Though not all audience
members are actually able to swing their hips — real or plastic — seniors are
flocking to Gartner’s lounge-style act, if advance bookings are any indication.

Gartner launched his new career about two and a half years
ago, when his wife, Fran Heller, told him she was tired of following him to
piano bars late at night to hear him indulge a hobby she knew was close to his
heart but far from his livelihood. At the time, Gartner was working full time
in the textile business at a company he owned called BiCoastal Textiles. Until
then, the only time his garment-industry work enabled him to use his voice was
when he did a few radio spots for the Fabric Warehouse, a chain of retail stores
in Los Angeles owned by Gartner and his father.

“Ronnie’s been singing for a long time,” Heller said. “He
had his own band in college, and over the years he would go to karaoke bars and
piano bars.”

When his wife stopped going with him to the piano bars,
Gartner knew he had to find another outlet for his singing. He offered his
services free of charge to a ballroom dance class at a senior center in
Flushing, Queens, and within weeks he was getting inquiries from senior centers
all over the New York area. He began charging $50 to $75 for his gigs, and
within months, the combination of word-of-mouth promotion and his wife’s
advertising savvy — she’s an executive at the Young & Rubicam advertising
agency — propelled him into the top tier of the senior entertainment circuit.

“It was almost beshert,” Gartner said. “I offered to do the
ballroom dance class at the senior center in Flushing. I got a standing
ovation. Then they said they have monthly birthday parties, and I said I’d
perform for that.”

It wasn’t long before Gartner moved up from senior centers
to assisted-living and independent-living residences. Now he’s making his
entrée into gated communities, the holy grail of the Borscht Belt, as Gartner
sees it.

The son of a Holocaust survivor and Jewish boy from the
Bronx, Gartner got his start in synagogue choirs in his native Los Angeles. One
of his first paid gigs was at a Jewish cemetery, where he was part of a choir
singing at an annual memorial service.Â

“My Hebrew school teachers were foaming at the mouth for me
to be a cantor, but it just wasn’t for me,” he said. Gartner gave up synagogue
songs after his bar mitzvah, and by the time he graduated from Fairfax High in
1962, a singing career was looking less and less likely. “I was going to be the
first white recording artist for Motown, and when that didn’t happen, my dad
had always been in the fabric business, so I went with that.”

He moved to New York from Los Angeles about eight years ago,
met his wife through matchmaker-to-the-rich Janis Spindel, and grew
increasingly restive in textiles. Now that he’s playing two to three shows a
week at $1,500 a pop, fabrics have taken a back seat to Gartner’s singing
career. The Friars Club has taken an interest in Gartner, and the fledgling
musician is trying to break into easy-listening radio stations. But his
favorite audiences, he says, are Jewish ones.

“I really love performing for a Jewish crowd, because it
gives me a chance to be a little looser,” he said, peppering his conversation
with Henny Youngman-style one-liners. “I’ll throw Yiddishisms into my show. I
never want to forget my roots.”

For more information about the Desert Cancer Fund Dinner
Dance, call (760) 773-6554, 8 a.m.-12 p.m. Â

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From Blaxploitation to ‘Booth’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

On Nov. 15, 2002, filmmaker Larry Cohen should have been atthe multiplex, gauging opening day reaction to the film he wrote, “PhoneBooth,” about a man who must outwit a sniper while trapped in the eponymoustelephonic cabin. But the Washington Sniper changed all that.

No, Cohen was not the target of a hit. But his movie was,last October, when 20th Century Fox postponed the release because of thesnipers (who were ultimately apprehended after killing 10 people and criticallywounding three).

“Phone Booth,” directed by Joel Schumacher and starringcurrent “it boy” Colin Farrell, opens in theaters April 4. 

On this sunny day, Cohen, 64, was bathing in the sunshinethat filled his elegant, 1920s-era home; he was ready to discuss an eclecticcareer, which includes significant contributions to “blaxploitation”(1971-1974) — the urban crime flicks featuring African American actorsdisenfranchised from mainstream Hollywood. This short-lived, but influential,wave was popular and controversial because of violent, racially charged andpolitically incorrect depictions of police, politicians, pimps and drug lords.Blaxploitation recently made a kitschy comeback in rap, the 2000 “Shaft”remake, and last summer’s “Goldmember: Austin Powers III” and “Undercover Brother.”

Long before Quentin Tarantino revived blaxploitation in the1990s, Cohen was the only white — and Jewish — writer-director creating thesource material. During blaxploitation’s starburst, Cohen made the 1973 hit”Black Caesar,” starring Fred Williamson — a seminal work championed in PublicEnemy’s 1989 rap anthem “Burn, Hollywood, Burn!”

Perhaps Cohen’s “in” to this insular trend came from hisfamily’s roots in Harlem, where “Black Caesar” took place. Cohen’s mother livedon 125th Street. His father, of German Jewish descent, was a landlord, andCohen’s grandfather ran a furnishings store.

Cohen grew up in Washington Heights, where he was barmitzvahed despite a secular upbringing and attended George Washington HighSchool, from which legendary independent film director Sam Fuller was expelled.

Cohen’s current home, which he shares with wife Cynthia, waspurchased from Fuller and originally owned by William Randolph Hearst.

Cohen has Sammy Davis Jr. to thank for his footnote intoblack film history. Davis hired Cohen to create a vehicle for the Rat Packer.

Cohen was offered $10,000 to write a gangster picture in the”Little Caesar” vein. Then Davis experienced IRS problems. Cohen was stuck withhis treatment.

But American International head Samuel Arkoff approachedCohen after “Super Fly” and “Shaft” hit big.

“I had that treatment in my car,” Cohen said. “We made thedeal in 20 minutes.”

Cohen hired James Brown to score his second film. “Hereinvented himself as a result of ‘Black Caesar’ into the Godfather of Soul,” he said.

“Black Caesar’s” success caught Cohen by surprise. “Therewere lines around the block in New York … in February!” he said. 

Cohen has garnered praise from his blaxploitation peersbecause he never glamorized criminals.

He added, in a scene where honking taxi cabs leap onto thesidewalk, “those are real pedestrians running out of the way. We said, ‘Let’sjust do it.’ New Yorkers are good at getting out of the way of traffic.”

Cohen pushed the guerrilla filmmaking to absurd heights inthe sequel, “Hell Up in Harlem,” where an improvised fight scene had actorsbrawling throughout LAX, up the baggage carousel ramp, and out onto the tarmacamid taxiing 747s. Incredibly, airport security never intervened.

“Today we’d be shot or arrested or both,” Cohen said.

As fodder for potboilers, Cohen is not through withtelecommunication. David Ellis is directing his latest script,  “Cellular.”

Among the DVDs on Cohen’s shelf sits “Reservoir Dogs.”Compared to “Black Caesar,” some might consider Tarantino’s moviespseudo-blaxploitation. But not Cohen, who admires his work.

“Quentin told me he went to Baldwin Hills to see ‘OriginalGangstas’ on opening day,” Cohen said. “I asked him, ‘Why’d you go all the wayout there to see it?’ He said, ‘I wanted to see it with the audience it wasintended for.'”

“Phone Booth” opens in theaters April 4.  

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Seeking Redemption

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

In college, I tutored in a maximum-security prison for kids
who had committed violent crimes. I met a 17-year-old boy there who
had killed a 16-year-old boy earlier that year. He had been
tried as an adult and sentenced to life. Though we were only together for a
couple sessions, he left an impression that to this day still haunts me.

He kept a cracked, yellowed newspaper photo of his victim in
his pocket. And he would constantly pull it out, unfold it, gaze at it, then
put it back in — only to remove it again and stare at it some more.

The sentencing judge not only made the boy finger his
victim’s personal effects, he also made him wear the dead boy’s clothes. The
boy told me he even had to put his victim’s jacket, and it made him feel
“spooked.” “Like I didn’t know that this kid was, like, a human being or
something,” the boy said. It was the judge, in fact, who told him to keep the
boy’s photo.

But the judge never told him he had to look at it forever.

And yet he couldn’t let it go. It was as if by staring at
this two-dimensional image he was trying to reconstruct some three-dimensional
persona. As if a kind of understanding would emerge, a way of grappling with
the magnitude of his actions.

It was this relationship — these two boys, total strangers
now bound forever by one horrible deed — that was the initial inspiration for
“Levity.”

In researching the movie, I spent time with a lot of people
who had committed murder when they were kids. I met some through youth groups,
others through church and community programs. Some I interviewed extensively,
others I just followed around for a while. They were all different ages, yet
each had in common that he was trying to come to terms with the consequences of
what he’d done. Some (those who believed in God) were trying on a spiritual
level, others (those who didn’t) on a secular level. For all of them it was a
kind of obsession.

The other thing they had in common was a sense of futility.
At the end of the day, none actually thought he could ever make up for his mistakes.

When I sat down to write the script, I called a friend,
Naomi Levy, who was a rabbi at a Conservative temple in Venice. I told her I
wanted to tell a story that questions whether any number of so-called “good”
acts can outweigh one very bad one. And I told her I want the central character
to not believe in God. (It seemed to me that if he believed in God, there would
be more of a proscribed path for him to follow, and that was too easy.) I asked
her what my protagonist might have read that would underscore his belief that
he would never be redeemed.

Naomi pointed me to Maimonides, a 12th-century Talmudic
scholar who wrote about the five steps one must follow to achieve redemption.
The last three involve making right with your neighbor, making right with God
and being in the same place and behaving differently.

“Levity’s” central character, Manual Jordan, knows he can’t
return the dead boy like a stolen chicken. And he doesn’t believe in God. And
since he is convinced that time makes certain one is never in the same place
twice, Manual knows there’s no hope for him.

But Manual has a conscience, and he’s obsessed with trying
to salvage some version of a life. And even though he knows his is perhaps a
lost cause, he desperately wants his somewhat hesitant presence on the planet
to not be wasted. So he bumbles and stumbles, disconnected from the flow, never
really knowing where he’s going, yet somehow guided by what may be seen as his
best intentions.

So often I think we feel our behavior as individuals doesn’t
have any effect; that what we do doesn’t really matter. “Levity” looks at how,
to the contrary, the world around us can actually hinge on our individual
actions. What we do can have direct, instantly determinable consequences, or
our words and actions can ripple away behind us, in subtle ways we never know
and could certainly never predict.

For instance: the boy who started this whole thing off. At
18 — just two weeks after we met — he was transferred to a state penitentiary.
I never heard from him again. My guess is he’s still there. And he’d certainly
have no recollection of our time together — I was one of dozens of tutors. So
there’s no way he could possibly imagine how our brief conversation had any
effect on anything. Most likely, he was just trying to get out of talking about
math and English.

But, looking back, if I follow the steps that lead to this
very moment, right now, as I sit at this table writing this piece, I arrive at
that image of that nearly 18-year-old staring at that photograph of that
eternally 16-year-old.

And I think about how those two boys — completely unknowingly
— changed my life. Â


Ed Solomon makes his feature directing debut with “Levity,” which he also wrote. The film opens April 4 in Los Angeles and New York.

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Elli and Dinah

Leave a Comment / Personals /

Rabbi Elli and Dinah Horovitz z”l, Murdered by Palestinian
Terrorists, Sabbath Eve, March 7, 2003.

Like most people these days, I keep close tabs on the news.
On Friday morning, March 7, when I read on the Internet that a couple was
murdered in Kiryat

Arba, my ears perked up because my cousins live there.

But so do about 7,500 other people. We were out all Saturday
afternoon, and came home for a short time before setting out for an evening
concert. But before leaving I had to check the news once again. There it stared
me in the face. The murdered couple was identified. I screamed for my husband.
“Look, it’s my [dad’s] cousin Leah’s son, Elli [Elnatan], and his wife, Dinah
[Debbie]. They murdered my cousin.”

I was reminded that the Horovitzes are not the first people
in our family to have been murdered in Hebron. In 1929, my great-aunt Chancha’s
husband was murdered in the Hebron riots of that era in which the Arabs
decimated the Jewish community.

We are an international family. Like many other Jewish
families, we are everywhere — Israel, the United States, Europe, Australia,
South America. We have such a cohesive bond that in spite of the fact that we
represent a variety of political beliefs and religious backgrounds within
Judaism, there is a commonality that binds the family together. That glue is
our strong belief in the destiny of the Jewish people and to our irrevocable
attachment to the land of Israel. So our family is like a microcosm of the
Jewish people.

Rabbi Elli Horovitz was a man of peace, a man of great
erudition in Jewish learning, but also a person with a ready smile and a beauty
of spirit who loved nature and music. He and Dinah, beloved by their hundreds
and hundreds of students, were cut down at the height of their flowering.
Thousands attended their funeral. He lived for a period of time with his aunt
on Kibbutz Hulata, a nonreligious kibbutz in the north of Israel, where he came
to understand Jews whose religious outlook was different from his, and he
learned to love nature, grow fruit and cultivate a generosity of spirit.
Subsequently, he chose to live in Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron, not out of
political conviction, but because Hebron was one of the oldest Jewish areas,
the place that drew him spiritually and religiously. The flora and fauna of the
area also possessed him. Just hours before he died, he and his wife hiked out
to the hills near Hebron to enjoy the beautiful wildflowers in bloom.

I have been consumed these past few weeks by this latest
horrific tragedy, communicating with relatives and friends all over the world,
researching Internet stories about my cousin’s life and death, and just
thinking. I have started a file of the letters I have received from people on
several continents who have been touched by this tragedy. As shocking as the
story is — the devout couple murdered in cold blood at Sabbath dinner by Arab
terrorists posing as Jews dressed in religious garb — people have emphasized
one distinctive theme in their notes of condolence to me. They confess that
they are angered even more acutely when they find out that the murdered persons
were connected to a friend or relative of theirs — however distant.

Suddenly, I felt the closeness of a family originally called
Zines and sensed the unity of all these relatives in diverse parts of the
world. I circled these cousins around me, and then I reached out to friends who
were similarly moved, ultimately to all other Jews. In the final analysis, we
Jews are all reminded about connections — how we are connected to our friends
and relatives dispersed all over, and how we are connected to the center of our
ancient world in Israel.

One note of condolence said: “The Middle East conflict is a
horrible abstraction until someone is murdered who has a direct connection with
whom we know at home. I sympathize with your loss, and understand the pain that
you and your family endure. I also understand that it resonates with the larger
pain of the Jewish predicament in the Middle East.”

Another: “I was so sad to hear of this tragedy, but now that
it seems so close to home, it really tears my heart apart. Please, give your
family my love, and tell them that many people in the Diaspora cry and pray for
them.”

My family tree named Zines, to which Rabbi Elli Horovitz and
Dinah belonged, starts, as far as we know, with an ancestor named “Dina” (not
related to Dinah Horovitz) who lived in Safed in Israel in the mid-1700s. We
don’t know how much further back our roots go in the land of Israel, but with
the cruel murder of cousins Elli and Dinah merely for their devotion to their
Jewish roots, it surely goes back to Father Abraham and Mother Sarah. Â


Gerry Segal Teitelbaum is the founder and president of the Los Angeles Judaica Collectors Club. She is currently working on articles for the Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly and Midstream magazine.

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