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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

April 24, 2003

Silence on Tolerance Issue Stirs Concern

Leave a Comment / United States, Worldwide /

Jewish leaders were uncharacteristically silent last week as Islamic groups raged against a Department of Defense decision to allow a notorious Islam basher to deliver a Good Friday sermon at the Pentagon.

Part of that silence was an accident of timing: the controversy erupted at the start of the Passover holiday, and many Jewish organizations were not fully operational. However, it also reflected a disturbing inconsistency in Jewish activism today.

Religious tolerance, traditionally a top priority for Jewish groups, seems to be not as much a priority when it comes to a growing, vocal and, according to some, increasingly radicalized Islamic community. In addition, evangelical Christian leaders who trash Islam apparently can be forgiven many sins just because they enthusiastically support Israel at a time when the Jewish State has precious few friends.

The issue came into sharp focus last week when the Defense Department invited the Rev. Franklin Graham to mark the religious holiday at the Pentagon.

Islamic groups quickly protested, and their reasons were compelling: Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and heir to his globe-spanning ministry, characterized Islam as an "evil religion" in the days after Sept. 11. At a time when Muslims feared a backlash because of the terror attacks and President Bush was trying to convince the Islamic world that his war on terror was not a war on their religion, Graham added that Islam is "wicked, violent and not of the same God."

However, the Pentagon held firm, and Graham, who now wants to send relief supplies to Baghdad and, presumably, Bible tracts, appeared as scheduled on Friday.

There was a peculiar silence from the Jewish groups that have been so prominent in the fight for religious freedom — and not just religious freedom for Jews. In part, that silence was a function of holiday schedules, but it also reflected a growing discomfort with the Muslim groups, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations, that were protesting Graham’s appearance.

Jewish groups have some good reasons to be wary of their Islamic counterparts, many of which have been too willing to support terrorism aimed at Jews and too unwilling to condemn the extremists in their own community. On campuses across the country, Islamic protests against Israel have veered off into outright anti-Semitism.

But that extremism does not justify condemnations of the entire religion, any more than the Christian religion should be condemned because of its sects that preach violent hatred of Jews.

There’s another factor in the Jewish silence that may be more important. Some of those who have been most vociferous in their denunciations of the Islamic religion are also newfound supporters of Israel.

At a time when mainline Christian churches have nothing but criticism for the Jewish State and nothing but sympathy for a Palestinian leadership that abandoned negotiations in favor of terrorism, the evangelicals have aligned themselves with the current Israeli government.

Among Jewish leaders, there may be an understandable unwillingness to criticize a group that has jumped to Israel’s defense at a time when the world has gone back to the favorite sport of reflexive Israel bashing.

Some of the Christians who have been most offensive in condemning Islam have also become Israel’s staunchest defenders. Consider the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who labeled the Prophet Mohammed a "terrorist" and defended a Southern Baptist leader who called the revered leader a "demon-possessed pedophile."

Falwell may be an ardent fan of the current Israeli government — he recently appeared at a big pro-Israel rally in Washington — but he is also the man who publicly proclaimed that the antichrist, a figure of towering evil in Christian Bible prophecy, must be Jewish. In other words, his love for Israel doesn’t mean he doesn’t sometimes say things that incite hostility against Jews.

To their credit, some Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, strongly criticized Falwell’s comments about Islam. However, when Graham was picked to speak at the Pentagon, there was nothing but silence.

So there are some questions to ponder:

  • Are Jewish leaders muting their criticism of the Islam bashers because these bigots have become important and influential supporters of Israel?

  • Should this support for an embattled Israel outweigh the traditional Jewish conviction that legitimizing religious bigotry against one minority threatens all minorities?

  • Is this the image that we want to present to the rest of the world — that Jews oppose religious intolerance but make exceptions for friends of Israel?

  • Do we really want the pro-Israel cause — a just cause — associated with the groups that leapt to Graham’s defense, such as the antihomosexual Traditional Values Coalition, which called the Graham critics the "anti-Christian crowd?"

Jewish and Islamic groups may be bitter adversaries over the Mideast mess, but that does not change the fact that they have some interests in common — starting with an interest in making sure religious intolerance is never tolerated.

Silence on Tolerance Issue Stirs Concern Read More »

Survivor Film Aims to Educate Students

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

As a child at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, Marion Blumenthal Lazan spent hours looking for four identical pebbles inside her shabby living quarters.

"I decided that if I were to find four pebbles of about the same shape and size, that the four members of my family would all survive," explained the Holocaust survivor in "Marion’s Triumph," a new documentary narrated by "Will & Grace’s" Debra Messing. "Somehow, this gave me something to hold onto, some distant hope."

According to Lazan, now a New Yorker, her story is one "that Anne Frank might have told had she lived." Her four family members did survive, although her father died shortly after being liberated.

John Chua, a Los Angeles filmmaker of Chinese descent, became inspired to create a Holocaust-related documentary in 1994, when students at Castlemont High School in Oakland were reportedly laughing and heckling during a screening of "Schindler’s List."

"It came to me that students should be watching an actual testimony and archival footage," Chua said. "Most Holocaust documentaries are not geared at the understanding level of middle school kids. They don’t give the background and what the kids felt like."

In his research, Chua found Lazan’s young adult novel, co-authored by Lila Perl, "Four Perfect Pebbles" (William Morrow, 1996). The filmmaker contacted the survivor and filmed some of her nationwide speaking engagements at middle schools and high schools.

Adding archival footage and interviews, Chua created an age-appropriate documentary, which is currently making its way into classrooms around the nation.

Like other Holocaust survivors, Lazan is adamant that her story be passed on to future generations.

"The students that hear me today will have to be witnesses, and I ask them to please share my story or any other Holocaust stories," Lazan said. "They’ll be the only ones left to tell the story when [I’m] gone, and it’s a story that needs to be told."

To order a VHS tape copy of "Marion’s Triumph," call Liz at Seventh Art Releasing, (323) 845-1455.

Survivor Film Aims to Educate Students Read More »

Lawyer Takes on Looted Art, Austria

Leave a Comment / California, United States /

In one of the most complex legal battles in the annals of Holocaust restitution, centering on the return of art looted by the Nazis to their rightful owners, E. Randol Schoenberg is stationed on the front lines.

The stakes are enormous. In the biggest collective art theft of all time, Hitler’s minions seized up to 600,000 important works between 1933 and 1945, according to a recent report in The New York Times.

If one includes all art objects, books, Judaica, silver pieces and other valuables, the Nazis stole 10.7 million items in all of Europe, worth more than $37 billion today, the same article estimates.

A current case, which has drawn wide attention, pits Schoenberg against the government of Austria. There is some historic irony in the confrontation, since the 36-year old Brentwood lawyer is the grandson of the pathbreaking Austrian Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg, often dubbed "the father of modern music."

Schoenberg, the lawyer, represents Maria V. Altman, an 87-year-old resident of Cheviot Hills, who is seeking to recover six paintings by the early 20th century Viennese painter Gustav Klimt. The paintings, valued at $150 million, include a stunning portrait of her aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer.

The Austrian government, which holds the paintings, is contesting the claim. Last year, Schoenberg scored a major victory when an appeals court in San Francisco ruled that a foreign government could be held to answer in the United States for a Holocaust-based claim.

But the two-and-a-half year old case is far from over. The Austrian government is appealing the decision and, to Schoenberg’s dismay, the U.S. administration is backing the Austrians on the grounds that a sovereign foreign state is immune to lawsuits in American courts. The case might end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Last December, Schoenberg opened up another front by seeking to recover a $10 million Picasso oil painting for the Berkeley-based grandson of a Berlin woman who owned it before World War II.

The 1922 painting, "Femme en Blanc" ("Woman in White"), was "confiscated" by the Nazis in 1940. After the war, by a circuitous route via French and American art dealers, the Picasso eventually became the property of a Chicago art patron, who is fighting the grandson’s claim.

Besides these headline cases, Schoenberg has advised hundreds of Jewish families from Austria on their restitution rights, usually as a free service, but he earns his bread and butter through more mundane business litigation.

"It is enormously time-consuming to pursue the art recovery cases — I received my first call from Maria Altman in the Klimt case in 1998 — and enormously expensive, running into millions," said Schoenberg, sitting in his high-rise office on Wilshire Boulevard. "So you can only initiate an action if the paintings are immensely valuable. You’re not going to sue over a looted $50 mezuzah."

"Randy" Schoenberg has the rare distinction of being the grandson of two eminent 20th century composers, both of whom fled the Nazis and settled in Los Angeles.

On his mother’s side, his grandfather was Eric Zeisl, best known for his "Requiem Ebraico," composed in 1945 when he learned that his father had perished in a concentration camp. Zeisl also wrote music for a number of Hollywood movies.

But because Randy’s last name is Schoenberg, the young lawyer is most closely identified with his other grandfather, fervently admired, and sometimes damned, for his development of atonal music and the 12-tone technique.

Arnold Schoenberg, who spent the last 17 years of his life in Los Angeles and taught at UCLA and USC, was largely ignored by the classical music world in the 1930s and ’40s. But since his death in 1951, there has been a major rediscovery and appreciation of his works.

"I run into people who are ecstatic to meet Arnold’s grandson and who worship and love him," said the lawyer, who was born well after his grandfather’s death. "There are others who hate his music, but I doubt if they know all his works. He wrote so much, 15 hours worth if you play it all, there’s something a music lover is bound to like.

"It’s funny, people who would hesitate to give an opinion on paintings or literature will instantly pronounce judgment on a piece of music."

Arnold Schoenberg had a stormy relationship with his ancestral faith. As a young man, he converted to Lutheranism and then reconverted to Judaism in 1933, when Hitler came to power.

He predicted the Holocaust with prophetic clarity and eventually became a utopian Zionist, whose opera, "Moses und Aron," expressed his faith in his people’s destiny.

Randy Schoenberg himself grew up in a nonobservant environment, but since his marriage to Pamela, and the birth of their two young kids who attend Sinai Temple preschool, the family has established a kosher home.

"Being Jewish has played such a major part in the history of my family," mused Schoenberg, an ardent genealogy researcher. "I am deeply involved in our culture, history and philosophy and I try to incorporate them in my personal and professional lives."

Lawyer Takes on Looted Art, Austria Read More »

Bonded by Ghetto

Leave a Comment / California, United States /

Irene Gutovicz remembers the days when members of the local group of philanthropic Holocaust survivors, known as The Lodzer Organization of California, would donate a bowl of borscht or a plate of kugel.

"We started from nothing, having lunches. People would bring something," recalled Gutovicz, co-vice president of the group with Freda Bluman, and a Lodzer member for over 30 years. "This is how it started. Now it has become a bigger thing."

Now with 460 members, The Lodzer Organization last year donated $242,000 to a long and varied list of Israeli and Jewish American causes. They included Sheba Medical Center, Aish HaTorah Jerusalem, Magen David Adom, ORT, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Jewish National Fund, as well as a $64,000 ambulance to American Red Magen David for Israel (ARMDI).

This year, the nonprofit group plans to top itself by raising funds for its fifth state-of-the-art ARMDI ambulance — pricetag $80,000 — at events such as its upcoming May 17 Mother’s Day Dinner Dance Gala. Times have changed for the Lodzers.

Times have also changed since World War II, during which the Lodz ghetto in Poland — the experience that bonds many of the group’s members — became a tragic chapter in Jewish history.

Chartered in 1423, Lodz developed a Jewish presence around 1780. In 1939, the year that the Nazis invaded, Lodz was the second-largest city in Poland behind Warsaw and had the second largest Jewish population on the Continent — approximately 223,000.

When the Nazis attacked, Poles and Jews worked frantically to dig ditches to defend their city. But within a week, Lodz was occupied by the Germans, and four days after its occupation, Jews became routine targets for beatings, robberies and seizure of property.

Known as Lodzh in Yiddish and Lodsch in German, it was renamed by the Germans Litzmannstadt (Litzmann’s City) after the German general who died while attempting to conquer Lodz in World War I. It retained that name from 1939-1945.

The Jews — and, later, 5,000 Romanies — were consolidated in Lodz, which became the longest existing Polish ghetto, from 1940-1944. The Jews lived in crowded conditions — an average of 3.5 persons per room.

The ghetto was ordered closed and a fence surrounding the area was erected. Only eight months after the German invasion, on May 1, 1940, the Lodz ghetto was officially sealed.

To organize and implement Nazi policy in the ghetto, the Nazis appointed Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, a controversial figure in Holocaust history, as Judenälteste (elder of the Jews).

Short of the Nazi occupiers, Rumkowski became ruler of the Lodz ghetto, where the 62-year-old established factories utilizing the captives as a workforce. Adults worked in factories that produced everything from textiles to munitions, and young girls hand-stitched the emblems for the uniforms of German soldiers.

In exchange for these services, the Nazis delivered food to the ghetto, which Rumkowski and his officials distributed.

Throughout World War II, the Lodz Ghetto Jews suffered from hunger and disease. They also had to endure the harsh winter of 1941-42.

On Jan. 6, 1942, transportation of Lodz Jews to the Chelmno death camp began. At the camp, they were gassed in trucks with carbon monoxide. By the war’s end, Lodz Jews, including Rumkowski and his family, also were transported to Auschwitz.

Heinrich Himmler ordered the liquidation of Lodz on June 10, 1944, and by the time Soviet soldiers liberated the ghetto on Jan. 19, 1945, only 877 Jews remained.

One Lodz survivor, William Friedman, came to Los Angeles, where he formed The Lodzer Organization of California in 1959.

Not every member in The Lodzer Organization is from Lodz or even Poland. For example, Kal Berson, treasurer and past president of The Lodzer Organization of California and the club’s honorary life president — with fellow member Sam Miller — is Romanian.

The Bucharest-born Berson, who once ran The Sugar Bowl, a Van Nuys coffee shop, and Howdy on Eighth and Alvarado streets, did not experience the Lodz Ghetto firsthand. However, his wife of 37 years, Sonia, was born in a Lodz suburb and wound up in a Lodz Ghetto displaced persons camp, and The Lodzer Organization has become important to her on several levels.

She recalled with fondness "trips we took together to Israel as a group, where we visited the hospitals that we support in Israel."

"I don’t have any sisters or brothers left," continued Sonia Berson, who is in charge of The Lodzer Tribute Fund. "This organization is very important to us, because it’s like an extended family."

"We try to get together as often as possible," she said. "We go to each others’ simchas and funerals. In the organization, there are groups that are there for each other."

"Even though I was not from Lodz, they made me feel at home," said Gutovicz, who, reared along the Polish-Russian border, escaped to Russia during the Holocaust.

On May 17, The Lodzer Organization will honor Lodzer member and supporter Tema Cukier at its annual Mother’s Day Dinner Dance Gala. Born in Radom, Poland, Cukier married Abe Cukier in 1939. Both survived Auschwitz and Dachau and were reunited soon after the war.

In 1949, they moved to Los Angeles, where they had three children: Ron, Manny and Linda. Abe Cukier died in 1974 at the age of 55.

Lodzer President Harry Eisen, who until his recent retirement was California’s largest egg producer, is in his ninth term as the organization’s chief executive. He is assisted by vice presidents Bluman and Gutovicz in the organization’s activities.

Lodzer Organization activities — usually held at the Friar’s Club or Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel in Westwood — revolve around its board installation and fundraising functions around Purim, Mother’s Day and Chanukah. Its Man of the Year Dinner is also popular, as is the organization’s New Year’s event, which for five years has been co-sponsored by The "1939" Club in recent years (both survivor organizations have 200 members in common).

The Lodzer Organization also holds occasional meetings at the Palm Terrace on Fairfax Avenue. In addition, it has designated a Sunshine Committee, headed by Margy Becker, to distribute flowers to members celebrating simchas or who are ill.

"They’re a fine organization, and they do a wonderful thing in regard to charitable giving, especially to the State of Israel," said William Elperin, president of The "1939" Club, another local survivors’ group.

For Kal Berson, The Lodzer Organization’s main mission has always been a simple one: making the most out of making mitzvahs.

"We come together, we have a good time, we see what’s going on in the world and we help," he explained.

For Sonia Berson, what resonates most with her is a feeling that you can’t buy with money.

"You feel like you belong."

The Lodzer Organization of California will hold its Mother’s Day Dinner Dance Gala at the Friar’s Club, Beverly Hills. For information, call Sonia Berson, (310) 276-0421, or Frances Kovall, (310) 278-0474.

Bonded by Ghetto Read More »

Bush Names Friend to Museum Council

Leave a Comment / Other Voices /

Century City lawyer Donald Etra has been appointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council by President Bush, a close friend since their undergraduate days at Yale.

Etra is joining the governing body of the Holocaust Memorial Museum as the Washington landmark celebrates the 10th anniversary of its founding. During the past decade, there have been approximately 19 million museum visitors, of whom 13.8 million were non-Jewish.

In a sense, Etra’s appointment marks a generational change. "We are the first generation that didn’t see what happened during the Holocaust," said the 55-year-old attorney.

A native of Manhattan, Etra came to Los Angeles as assistant U.S. attorney in 1978. He has been in private practice since 1981, primarily in criminal defense and occasional civil litigation. Among his clients have been actors Eddie Murphy and Fran Drescher.

Etra first met the Bush at Yale, when they attended some of the same classes and shared the same dormitory. According to press reports, they both belonged to Skull and Bones, but in keeping with the secretive rules of the society, Etra declined comment.

Though close friends for more than 30 years, the two men are on different sides of the political fence.

"I am a liberal Democrat," Etra said. "When the president and I talk politics, we disagree, but we both agree on Israel."

Bush and his wife, Laura, attended the Etras’ wedding at Shaarei Tefila, an Orthodox congregation, in 1985, and the Etras have reciprocated with visits to Texas and the White House.

The nuptials were one major payoff for Etra’s Jewish activism. He met his wife-to-be, Paula, on a Jewish Federation mission for singles to Israel.

"There were 21 singles on that trip, and 10 ended up marrying each other," recalled Etra.

He has been involved in Federation activities since as former chairman of its Legal Division, member of the planning and allocation committee and vice chairman of the United Jewish Fund. Etra currently is a member of the Jewish Community Relations Committee and has also served as chairman of the regional Jewish National Fund chapter.

During the coming weeks and months, the Holocaust Memorial Museum will mark its 10th year with special exhibits commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s and with the first display in the United States of Anne Frank’s writings.

Bush Names Friend to Museum Council Read More »

Humanist Approach a Must in Medicine

Leave a Comment / Health, United States /

Medical practitioners today are faced with onerous economics and an increasingly depersonalized and technically complex health-care system. This reality presents serious challenges to practicing humanistic medicine. It is therefore especially important now to value and re-emphasize the intrinsic connection between compassion and competence in the practice of good medicine.

In the early 1980s, I began to notice that my students seemed to be more engaged in science and technology than taking care of people. Why? Did medical students begin school with idealism, altruism, compassion and empathy, only to have it depleted during their educational experiences? Or, was the medical admission process simply selecting less-humanistic applicants?

Research examining the attitudes of 3,500 entering medical students from across the nation concluded that most were indeed empathetic and humanistic when they began their studies. Clearly, some time during medical school and the end of the residency experience, many caring young doctors change. Why do some students maintain a humanistic orientation while others lose it?

How can we teach medical students a more humane approach to medicine and promote a medical system that fosters relationship-centered care? Nearly 15 years ago, colleagues at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, philanthropists and community leaders co-founded a public charity, the Arnold P. Gold Foundation, to create opportunities for meaningful ritual, recognition, role modeling and research, as well as national conferences, curricular change and building "caring hospital communities." These programmatic themes (the four Rs and three Cs) are customized for the four populations we serve: medical students, medical school faculty, hospital residents and the public.

Ritual and tradition are central to Judaism and to the work of the foundation. We encourage medical students to make a psychological contract — to incorporate compassion as part of their professional responsibilities through the public recitation of a professional oath. Foundation programs such as the White Coat Ceremony, a rite of passage for entering medical students, and the Student Clinician’s Ceremony, for third-year students beginning their relationships with patients, provide an opportunity for reflection and a renewed commitment to humanistic values.

The Hippocratic Oath, written 2,500 years ago, has been a keystone for physicians throughout history. Its admonition to "do no harm," treat patients with respect and to "lead lives of uprightness and honor" is taken seriously throughout Western medical education. Jewish tradition embraces these same ideas, as well as additional ethical and spiritual considerations. The Physician’s Oath and Prayer, attributed to Moses Maimonides, the 13th century physician and philosopher, articulates ancient Jewish values and goes beyond the Hippocratic Oath in delineating appropriate behavior and practice. In his prayer, Maimonides speaks about social justice in medicine: "May I never see in the patient anything but a fellow creature in pain," acknowledging the potential biases of wealth, power and personality as barriers to equal treatment for all patients. It is important that all practitioners develop both skills and values that reflect these oaths.

Medicine is an apprenticeship profession, where humanism can be taught and behaviors associated with humanism can be learned. Medical students are quick to adapt to formal curricular expectations; they also absorb the attitudes, habits and ethics found in the cultural environment. In other words, students of medicine at all levels imitate role models, adjust to the culture in which they work and adhere to the values expressed or demonstrated by their teachers and peers. Therefore, if we teach the role model humanism as "the best medicine," we will create more humane physicians. Such competent caring will increase trust, enhance the healing process and result in better patient outcomes.

A growing focus on physician professionalism has instigated a strengthened interest in humanism and its role within the definition of "the professional." This bodes well for greater pressure within the medical culture to include the art and "habit of humanism" in its formal and informal curricula, and in accreditation criteria and standards. If we are to be successful in challenging the negative pressures from commercial and legislative interests, we will need an educated and vocal public to partner with like-minded professionals. We invite you to join us in this struggle to re-emphasize humanistic medicine.

In sum, what is the role of a physician? A humanistic physician demonstrates concern and respect for the values, autonomy and cultural and ethnic background of others, and provides skilled, compassionate and empathic help to someone with a problem or need.

Reprinted from the Journal Sh’ma, a service of Jewish Family & Life!


Dr. Arnold P. Gold is professor of clinical neurology and clinical pediatrics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Humanist Approach a Must in Medicine Read More »

Health Care Requires Resuscitation

Leave a Comment / Health, United States /

Eric Moore is frustrated. Within weeks after losing his computer consulting job, the 30-year-old UCLA graduate collapsed from a pulmonary embolism. He has since recovered, but faces a $14,000 hospital bill.

Dr. Alexandra Levine is frustrated. The head of the USC-Norris Cancer Center faces numerous barriers to providing the care she’d like to provide to her patients. One patient required a medication that could be taken at home via injection. Since Medicare doesn’t cover prescription drugs, but will pay if the drug is administered in the hospital, Levine’s 91-year-old patient was forced to make a thrice-weekly trek from the Valley to the center, and each time the tab to Medicare was twice as high as it would have been had the medication been taken at home.

Luis Jiminez is frustrated. The 29-year-old entrepreneur started an online marketing and Web business, which now boasts a staff of 11. But he can’t afford to provide health insurance for his employees.

"We have a continuing crisis in this country of millions of Americans without health insurance, and that’s just plain wrong," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), who will speak Friday, April 25 at Leo Baeck Temple as part of a series on health care.

In 2001, approximately 41 million Americans — more than 14 percent of the nation’s population — went without health insurance for the entire year, and another 20 to 30 million lacked coverage for part of the year. With health care premiums increasing at about 11 percent a year, big companies are paying a smaller percentage of those premiums, and small businesses are finding they can no longer afford to provide health care at all. These factors, combined with job layoffs resulting from a weakened economy, have left a growing number of people without health insurance.

Meanwhile, health care costs are skyrocketing. In 2000, $1.3 trillion was spent on health care in the United States, a 7 percent increase from the prior year.

According to Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C., the average family spends four times as much on health care today as it did in 1980.

"This country has yet to make a decision that every man, woman and child has a human right — a civil right — to health care," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, speaking at Leo Baeck Temple last month. While implementing such a decision "may be complicated and expensive," he said, "it’s not as expensive as not doing it — not as expensive financially and not as expensive morally."

Because those without coverage tend to postpone seeing a doctor, preventable conditions become severe illnesses, needlessly harming patients and unnecessarily driving up health care costs. The uninsured also tend to use emergency rooms as their only source for medical treatment, limiting the ability of those facilities to provide more urgent care. And while many believe the majority of uninsured are unemployed, 80 percent of the uninsured come from working families.

In Los Angeles County, one out of every three residents lacks health insurance. More than 80,000 of the uninsured are children. Budget shortfalls spur continued cuts to county health services. Twelve public care centers and four school-based clinics have closed since June 2002, and High Desert Medical Center in Lancaster and Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center in Downey are currently targeted for closure. These closures put an added burden on remaining facilities, raising the troubling specter that crucial services will be unavailable when we most need them.

"Whether you live in Bel Air or in Torrance or in Pomona … you have a stake in providing health care to the maximum number of people," Yaroslavsky said. Otherwise, he said, you had better hope "that a mother who has a kid with an ear ache doesn’t come to the ER … and gobble up space … while your heart attack is going on."

For those who consider the predominantly poor, immigrant patients who use county facilities somehow less deserving of care, USC’s Levine had sharp words.

"Who we see at this hospital is you — your mothers, your grandmothers, your great-grandmothers. All of us were immigrants in this country…. And what do these people do? They train every physician in the U.S. Did I learn how to do a spinal tap on you? No I did not. I learned on someone in the county hospital…. We owe them because of our roots and because of what they do for all of us on a daily basis."

As for the national picture, "reform must become a reality because we have no other choice," Saperstein said. "The question no longer is whether there will be health care reform, but what form these changes will take."

A number of proposals are on the table nationally and on the state level. Some aim to expand availability of health care coverage by pooling individuals or small employer groups into large groups. Others seek to expand Medicare, Medicaid and/or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Still others propose use of tax credits to help families purchase insurance or tax incentives to encourage employer-sponsored plans and benefits.

Waxman is particularly critical of the Bush administration’s approach to health care.

"The Bush administration is trying to undermine the programs we’ve got, and nowhere is this more obvious than Medicare. They refuse to add a meaningful prescription drug benefit to traditional Medicare…. Instead, they want to use a drug benefit … to force people into private insurance plans or HMOs, where they won’t have guaranteed benefits or assurance that they can see their own doctors."

Saperstein and Yaroslavsky say the way to get effective legislation passed is to make sure lawmakers know health care is a priority for voters. Politicians need to hear from their constituents about this issue, and to know that it drives contributions and votes.

"We have got to raise the political stakes nationally to make provision of health care a priority," Saperstein said.

Rep. Henry Waxman will speak about "The National Crisis in Health Care," on Friday, April 25, at Leo Baeck Temple, 1300 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. Services begin at 8 p.m. For more information, call (310) 476-2861.

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Doctor Helps Kids Deal With Diabetes

Leave a Comment / Health, Kids & Teens /

Ask just about any of Dr. Francine Kaufman’s pediatric patients about her and the superlatives will start to fly.

“Fran is one of the busiest people I know … yet she’s still able to find time for me and make me feel like the only child in the hospital,” said 15-year-old Katie Zucker.

Chris Paonessa, 14, calls Kaufman his “mentor and role model.”

“She’s not just my doctor, she’s my friend,” noted college student Lupe Pena, a patient of Kaufman’s for 15 years.

The compliments come despite the fact that Kaufman, a pediatric endocrinologist and the head of the Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, is often the person who delivers the devastating news to children that they have diabetes. It is Kaufman who orchestrates their transition from having a carefree childhood to one dramatically altered by the constant need to monitor diet, measure blood sugar and administer insulin.

If there’s such thing as a typical doctor, Kaufman surely doesn’t fit the mold. First, as Zucker noted, “She’s the only doctor we know who comes to work in stilettos and a miniskirt.”

While doctors are cautioned not to get too involved with their patients, Kaufman has invited several of them to stay at her home for periods ranging from days to years. One became a member of the family, whom Kaufman refers to as her “near son.” Another currently lives with the Kaufmans during the week while attending college.

Kaufman’s quest to eradicate diabetes extends beyond her direct work with pediatric patients. Among other things, she is a professor of pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, the president of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and lead researcher on two National Institutes of Health (NIH) diabetes studies. That’s in addition to being the wife of a Cedars-Sinai pediatrician and mother of two grown sons.

Kaufman was honored by the ADA as their 2003 Woman of Valor at a tribute dinner on Feb. 6. Along with physicians nationwide, she is alarmed at the increasing number of children diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, which used to be known as adult-onset diabetes.

“Twenty-five percent of new onset diabetes in children is Type 2,” Kaufman noted.

This increase is tied to the rise in childhood obesity, now considered an epidemic, and Kaufman is concerned about the poor eating habits and lack of physical exercise among school-age children.

“We’re seeing too many kids who are gaining too much weight,” she said.

To address this problem, Kaufman chaired the Los Angeles County Task Force on Children and Youth Physical Fitness, which recommended policies to support physical activity and healthy eating among children. She was one of the driving forces behind the Los Angeles Unified School District’s policy to prohibit soft-drink sales at middle and high schools starting January of next year (they are already banned in elementary schools).

At Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, her team is involved in NIH multicenter studies to see how lifestyle modifications can impact children with Type 2 diabetes, and whether diabetes can be prevented in the relatives of those with the disease.

She has collaborated on diabetes initiatives with Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson, who flew in from Washington, D.C., to present Kaufman’s Woman of Valor Award. Saluting her work nationally and in such locations as Israel, Ecuador and Mongolia, Thompson said Kaufman has “the courage and the drive to make a difference in the lives of millions, not just here but around the world.”

When Kaufman sees a need, she fills it. One of the biggest challenges for diabetics is keeping the level of their blood sugar stable, especially at night. Kaufman came up with the idea of using uncooked cornstarch to formulate a patented food bar that reduces the incidence of hypoglycemia by promoting gradual and consistent absorption of glucose. For some patients, it has eliminated the need to wake up during the night to snack or test their blood sugar.

To help children understand the nature of diabetes, Kaufman helped develop a CD-ROM game called Life Adventure Series. And when she noticed that patients were having difficulty calculating the dosage of insulin they needed, she designed a simple slide card that matches blood sugar numbers and corresponding insulin dosages.

With all her roles and accomplishments, Kaufman’s direct impact on her patients is perhaps the most dramatic.

As Paonessa, who has successfully completed a marathon said, “She made me believe that everything is possible, even with diabetes.”

The Life Adventure Series: Diabetes CD-ROM is available
free of charge to children with diabetes and their parents. For information,
visit www.starbright.org/projects/diabetes/order.html

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Bringing Caring and God to the Sick

Leave a Comment / Health /

"So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom…." (Psalm 90:12)

Truth be told, there are no "soft issues" in medical ethics, unless by "soft" we mean the human issues, the matters of the spirit that so influence people’s capacity to heal and even (as research seems to be showing more and more) their ability to be cured. "Soft" is the "how" dimension of medical ethics, a critical complement to the "what" decisions that are often its salient province or overriding focus.

Perhaps the best place to start is to ask, "What are the psychosocial needs of people going through serious medical experiences?"

Let it first be acknowledged that the needs of these people are not unlike everyone else’s — just, perhaps, more so. People who are suffering, or struggling, or facing mortality — and those who care for them — need what we all need, if more urgently, boldly, unavoidably.

These universal needs include: a restoration of connection, a new relatedness — to a sense of self, the community, creation, God, the big picture; transcendence, growth, meaning, affirmation of their total identity (including but not limited to their diagnosis, condition or illness), an expanded sense of hope and possibility; re-empowerment, striking a balance of dependence and independence, taking charge and letting go; tools to integrate major losses or fundamental life-disruptions into their life-narrative.

Jews who are suffering, and those who care for them, similarly need and deserve resources of guidance, strength, insight, comfort, solace and hope — and, for centuries, have looked to Jewish tradition and the Jewish community for these resources. In diverse host cultures and civilizations, Jews developed a very strong tradition of bikur cholim (reaching out to those who are ill and those who care for them). This mitzvah was understood as a basic and far-reaching commandment that requires and enables us to emulate God’s own care and concern, indeed, to partner with God in making that care and concern manifest and tangible. Bikur cholim was highly developed through our treasured, evolving corpus of both narrative and legal texts.

"The essential feature of the mitzvah of visiting the sick is to pay attention to the needs of patients, to see to what is necessary to be done for their benefit, and to give them the pleasure of one’s company. It is also to customary to pray for mercy on their behalf." (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 193:3).

What a cogent summary of what folks need. Practical and individualized help, social and interpersonal connection and intercession/dialogue with God in echoing or amplifying the patients’ needs, wishes and prayers.

The good news is that these efforts, at least in my experience, are on the rebound in our community. More and more synagogues, Jewish community centers, day schools, healing programs, family service agencies, and other Jewish organizations are developing or revitalizing bikur cholim efforts, sometimes called G’mach for gimilut hasidim (deeds of loving kindness or caring committees). More than 200 bikur cholim organizers and volunteers, from more than 75 different sites in all corners of the Jewish community, took part in the November 2002 15th annual Bikur Cholim Conference in New York City. Jewish chaplaincy, long the terribly underfunded and neglected professional field in our community, is experiencing a growth in recognition, support and status. Rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators are devoting more time in training and continuing education to expand their skills and enhance their effectiveness in reaching out to the ill and their families and professional caregivers. And materials that help Jews hope and cope are multiplying.

Yet, so much remains to be done. We live in a society that desperately seeks not only to avoid disease and pain at all costs but also to deny vulnerability, aging, disability and mortality — and the Jewish community is not immune from these biases. Though it is somewhat more comfortable than it was in recent decades to utter the "c" word — cancer — Jews, like everyone else, recoil from serious illness, and we need to strategize how to restore illness and death to their natural and important place in our lives.

There are many ways to bring about the reintegration of illness and death into communal life. School curricula, youth group projects, film series, concerts, art exhibits, public programs where people tell their stories, rabbinic sermons and bulletin pieces can all work to undo the denial of suffering and death and enable Jews of all ages, backgrounds and affiliations to share the vulnerability and burdens of disease and disability. In these and other ways, we can reach for a time when Jews will feel freer to let others know of their challenges, more secure in asking for help and less constrained in offering it.

Complementing these educational and cultural innovations and communal change ought to be substantial advocacy efforts that work for a more humane and holistic approach to pain, suffering and healing. Convention resolutions are fine, but we must do more to "walk the walk." Synagogues, schools, service agencies and JCCs must join in challenging the current health-care systems that render so many suffering people alone, confused and despairing. Practical efforts directed at changing legislation, policies, and managed-care companies must go hand in hand with the one-on-one, direct support and service provision.

Our generation, as those before and after us, will be judged by how we listen and attend to those who are sick and vulnerable and to those who care for them. In the end, there is actually no "them"; there is only "us."

Reprinted from the Journal Sh’ma, a service of Jewish Family & Life!


Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, a certified social worker, is rabbinic director at the National Center for Jewish Healing/Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services in New York.

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New Chance to Build Israel-Iraq Ties

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

As the United States begins rebuilding Iraq, pro-Israel activists are watching closely, seeing an opportunity for the Jewish state to improve ties with another Arab neighbor.

Much of that hope has been placed in the hands of Ahmed Chalabi, a leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) opposition group, who has forged strong ties with the White House and the Pentagon in recent years — and has built a strong following in the American Jewish community.

"There’s no track record of anyone else in Iraqi leadership having a relationship with the Jewish community," said Tom Neumann, executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).

Chalabi’s group has been assigned to help U.S. troops impose order in Baghdad — a sign, some argue, that the INC is favored to play a large role in any interim government the United States forms in Iraq. However, the INC is not universally liked within the Bush administration. Reports stress that the State Department and the CIA are concerned about the INC’s lack of popular support in Iraq.

The Jewish Institute and other Jewish organizations met with Chalabi and other INC leaders last fall, part of the Jewish community’s effort to strengthen Israel’s relations with the Arab world. While the Bush administration was preparing at the time to overthrow the regime in Baghdad, both the INC and Jewish groups said they had something to gain from a strong bond.

The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein’s regime.

"Because Saddam was so anti-Israel, the hope is that all of Saddam’s policies will be revisited, including his relationship with Israel and the United States," Neumann said. "There’s no reason for the Iraqi people to have a problem with Israel."

The INC’s relationship with JINSA also is significant because Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who has been assigned to lead the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, has traveled with JINSA and supported the organization’s agenda.

While JINSA has had a relationship with Chalabi for 10 years, according to Neumann, other Jewish groups are supporting him publicly for the first time. Yet some observers worry that a public relationship could work against the interests of Jewish groups and the Iraqi opposition.

Michael Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute, said Jewish groups might run into problems by working only with Chalabi and Entifadh Qanbar, director of the INC’s Washington office, because the organization does not have strong support in Iraq, where there are numerous opposition groups.

Perceived Jewish support for Chalabi could "drive a wedge between Chalabi and other forces in the Iraqi opposition," said Amitay, whose father, Morris Amitay, is vice chairman of JINSA’s board of directors. Calling the Jewish approach "shortsighted," Michael Amitay said it would be "much more helpful if Jewish groups reached out to other groups, such as the Kurds," as well.

Qanbar disputed that claim. He said Jewish groups have been among the first to form an alliance with the INC, because they realize support for the organization is growing within the Bush administration.

"Jewish groups have a strong understanding of American politics," he said. "It’s an indication that there is a new phase of policy."

Some also worry that Chalabi’s good words won’t translate into a pro-Israel foreign policy. Pressure to garner support from inside Iraq and the rest of the Arab world could force the INC to abandon its pro-Israel position.

In addition, the Bush administration’s appointment of a military leader and encouragement of a dissident group with ties to Israel has played into conspiracy theories in the Arab world that the United States went to war in Iraq for Israel’s benefit — perhaps constraining the next Iraqi government’s latitude to approach Israel.

"It’s far too early to even speculate where any of them will be and what their positions will be," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "It never works out the way people think it is going to work out."

The INC was founded shortly after the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, combining several smaller opposition forces within Iraq. It is based in Salahuddin in northern Iraq and has its external base in London. The group operates a newspaper, television station, regional offices and a center for humanitarian relief.

The United States has given the INC more than $26 million during the past three years. American aid to the group was suspended in January, because of INC’s alleged mismanagement of funds, but was resumed a month later.

Qanbar said he believes good relations with Israel are possible under a new regime, because Saddam was the one who had a problem with Israel, not the Iraqi people.

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