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December 23, 2004

Meet the Fockers

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

 

If the religion of Ben Stiller’s character, Gaylord “Greg” Focker (pronounced Faw-ker), was hinted at in the movie, “Meet the Parents,” there’s no escaping it in its sequel, “Meet the Fockers,” in theaters this week.

The first time around, audiences rooted for Greg, as he tried to find common ground with his WASPY soon-to-be in-laws, Dina and Jack Byrnes, played by Blythe Danner and Robert DeNiro. Now all that’s left is for the in-laws to meet each other.

This time, we’re on Focker turf, at the tiki-style abode of Greg’s parents, Roz (Barbra Streisand) and Bernie (Dustin Hoffman), in Coconut Grove, Fla.

The loud, affectionate, occasionally crude, left-wing bohemian Fockers are essentially the polar opposites of the Byrneses. And so the fun begins, as Greg tries to convince his future father-in-law that his family won’t be a “chink in the chain” of his lineage.

“If you really boil it down, it’s sort of the difference between cats and dogs,” producer Jane Rosenthal said, “The Byrneses have Jinx the cat, who’s back, and the Fockers have Moses, their dog. So it’s cat people vs. dog people, really.”

Moses the dog is just one of many Jewish nods in the film. There are Yiddishisms like bubbeleh, meshuggeneh and Rozaleh.

There is Bernie’s greeting to his son when he first arrives: “You look like a young, Jewish Marlon Brando.”

There is Roz’s classic greeting as she hugs Greg: “Honey, you feel thin. Have you been eating?”

And then there’s the incident with the foreskin….

Of course, in the tradition of “Meet the Parents,” chaos ensues when these two families get together.

Even if the plot does feel forced at times, for those who subscribe to the belief that other people’s pain is funny, “Fockers” has a good chance of amusing.

“Meet the Fockers” opens Dec. 22.

 

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Can One Imagine Another Herzl Arising?

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

 

The funeral took place in Vienna on July 7, 1904. The stunning announcement had come on the 4th: Theodore Herzl, dead at age 44.

Here is Stefan Zweig’s description of the day:

“A strange day it was, a day in July, unforgettable to all who were there to see it. Because suddenly at every railroad station in the city, with every train, night and day, from every country and corner of the world, masses of people kept arriving, Western and Eastern Jews, Russian and Turkish Jews, from every province and every little town they kept streaming in, the shock of the news still marking their faces.” — Quoted by Ernst Pawel in his “The Labyrinth of Exile, a Life of Theodor Herzl,” (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1989).

The news, presumably, had traveled by telegraph, and the people, of course, by carriage and by train. No television, no jet planes. What accounts for the numbers — and for the passion, for the “weeping, howling, screaming” at graveside, for “a kind of elemental and ecstatic mourning such as [Zweig had] never seen before or since at a funeral?”

It is now more than a century since Der Judenstaat [The Jewish State], Herzl’s signature document, was published, more than a century since he convened the first World Zionist Congress. Jewish leaders, worldwide, meet a dozen times a year in far-flung cities, speak weekly by telephone, fax each other documents daily and e-mail one another hourly; the secular media, including television, report in considerable detail on matters of Jewish interest.

Yet for all the revolution in travel and communications, it is simply impossible to imagine the death of any Jew, even if caused by an assassin’s bullet and not, as in Herzl’s case, by a heart attack, exciting the response that Herzl’s death occasioned.

One explanation: The sheer misery of Jewish life in 1894, when Der Judenstaat was published, and the elegant and simple prescription for the repair of that misery that Herzl proposed have no contemporary analogues. We were a desperate and rudderless people then, and Herzl, protected from self-doubt both by his personality and by his ignorance of the details of Jewish life, offered himself as our engine and our rudder.

But today, no matter our condition, the very ease of both travel and communication also insures, as Andy Warhol taught us, that fame is ephemeral; the speed and facility with which words, images and people move ensure both early celebrity and early contempt.

Then there is the explanation specific to Herzl: “Theodore Herzl, a Memorial” was published in 1929, on the 25th anniversary of Herzl’s death; it was edited by Meyer Weisgal, later to become president of the Weizmann Institute of Science (and also to play the part of David Ben-Gurion in the film, “Exodus,” in return for a gift of $1 million to the Weizmann Institute).

The book is mainly a compilation of tributes to Herzl; the array of contributors is stunning, including inter alia Chaim Weizmann, Martin Buber, Georges Clemenceau, Stephen S. Wise, Max Brod, Israel Zangwill, Abba Hillel Silver, Ludwig Lewisohn, Mordecai Kaplan and Simon Dubnow.

Almost invariably, the contributors who knew Herzl personally find reason to remark on his ignorance of the Jews, of their culture and of their yearnings. Weizmann describes him as “a leader who knew not of the people he was destined” to lead; Menachem Ussishkin, a Zionist long before Herzl appeared on the Zionist scene, goes farther still, describing his reaction to his first meeting with Herzl:

“He has one great defect, which, however, will prove very useful under present conditions: He knows absolutely nothing about the Jews, and therefore believes that Zionism is confronted by external obstacles only, and by no internal ones. His eyes must not be opened — then his faith in our cause will be great.”

What a rich observation. And what a sad commentary on the Jews, for whom not only Ussishkin but many of the early Zionist activists had a curious mixture of sympathy and contempt. But if their familiarity bred contempt, then, apparently, Herzl’s ignorance enabled obsession.

Herzl was the first president of the World Zionist Congress. Who sits in his chair today? Most of us do not know, nor is there any special reason we should.

Today, it is the functionaries of our communities who take on the principal responsibility for Jewish destiny; in the most unlikely event that any of these should present himself as a hero, seek to grab hold of history as Herzl did, he (or, too rarely, she) would be dismissed as suffering from grandiosity.

Herzl, no stranger to grandiosity, managed in the eight short years of his meteoric career as a Jewish leader to transform Jewish life and Jewish fortune. Man and message were the same, perfectly matched to the needs of the times. It was in so many ways a simpler world back then, although it did not seem so at the time.

One cannot imagine a Herzl-like meteor today, nor the message that could overcome all the unremitting noise, penetrate the cynicism that announces itself as sophistication.

Then again, before Herzl, who imagined Herzl?

Leonard Fein is the author of “Against the Dying of the Light: A Parent’s Story of Love, Loss, and Hope” (Jewish Lights)

 

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Making 2005 a Year of Peace in Israel

Leave a Comment / Israel, Worldwide /

 

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon predicts 2005 will be the year of peace — and Israelis, Palestinians and key members of the international community are taking steps to make it happen.

In a keynote speech last week at the Herzliya Conference on Israel’s National Security, Sharon declared that “2005 will be the year of great opportunity,” with “a chance for an historic breakthrough in our relations with the Palestinians, a breakthrough we have been waiting for years.”

Sharon’s upbeat tone reflected a contagious optimism that has all the key players focused on an ambitious peacemaking timetable: establishment of a broad-based Israeli government in December; Palestinian Authority presidential elections in January; an international conference in London in February; Israeli “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank in the summer; negotiations based on the “road map” peace plan leading to a Palestinian mini-state by early 2006; and then final peace negotiations between Israel and the provisional Palestinian government.

To help the Palestinians hold free and independent elections, Israel intends to limit military operations, pull the army out of Palestinian towns and cities and dismantle roadblocks.

The initial decision was to withdraw from urban areas 24 hours before the Jan. 9 balloting and return 24 hours later. But Israeli defense officials now say they’re considering staying out for longer if the new P.A. leadership shows that it’s willing and able to curb terrorism.

Israeli intelligence analysts say they expect PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas, the front-runner for P.A. president, to take on the terrorists in a way he did not as prime minister last year under Yasser Arafat, whose death Nov. 11 opened the way for diplomatic progress.

If Abbas does succeed in creating a more stable order, Israel will be able to coordinate much of the disengagement plan with him. Even if not, Sharon says he is determined to carry out the withdrawal to the letter and on schedule.

Sharon sees disengagement as the main engine for change in 2005, and says that while he is prepared to be open-minded on the amount of coordination with the Palestinians and other players, he is determined to stick to the timetable.

To ensure that the international community sees in the Israeli pullout an end to the occupation of Gaza, Deputy Attorney General Shavit Matias has recommended that the Israel Defense Forces withdraw from all Gaza territory, including the perilous Philadelphia route along the border with Egypt. That will mean entrusting Egypt with the task of stopping arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip after Israel withdraws. Israel apparently also has become more open to the idea of an international presence in Gaza.

The National Security Council, which is putting the final touches on the disengagement details, sees two distinct stages in the plan: Israeli withdrawal, in which Israel is the main player; followed by utilization of the pullout to improve the quality of Palestinian life and create conditions for negotiations based on the road map.

This is where the British-initiated international conference comes in. The idea is for the Americans, Europeans and possibly other international players — but not the Israelis — to meet quietly with the new Palestinian leaders in London in February to assess how the international community can help them institute the security, governmental and economic reforms they pledged under the road map.

On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was due to arrive in Israel to discuss the conference’s terms of reference. His goal is to help bridge the crucial transition from disengagement to road map-based peace talks.

Indeed, for 2005 to become the year of peace, the road map will have to take off. A lot will depend on how Israel interprets Palestinian compliance with its demands for far-reaching democratic reforms and an end to terrorism.

European diplomats say they fear Israel will demand Palestinian democratization as an excuse to hold up the process. For their part, Israeli officials say that dumping the road map and trying to tackle final-status issues such as borders, Jerusalem and refugees prematurely — as the Palestinians and some Europeans have demanded — is a recipe for disaster.

Several months ago, according to Israeli officials, European decision-makers assumed John Kerry would win the U.S. presidential election and would be less committed than President Bush to the strict sequence of reciprocal steps the road map demands of Israel and the Palestinians. After Bush’s re-election and Arafat’s death, however, the Europeans apparently are ready to give the road-map formula another chance.

If successful, that formula will lead to an end to the terrorist war, further Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian ministate. Only then would negotiations on permanent peace issues — including final borders, Jerusalem and refugees — take place.

If the two sides can make that kind of progress, 2005 indeed will be crowned as the year of peace. Despite the optimism, however, that’s still a big if.

Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report.

 

Making 2005 a Year of Peace in Israel Read More »

FBI Delay Raises AIPAC Case Issues

Leave a Comment / AIPAC, United States, Worldwide /

 

The FBI’s investigation of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) did not go into high gear until more than a year after the Pentagon’s top Iran analyst allegedly passed foreign policy strategy information to two AIPAC officials.

The investigation only intensified in July 2004, when the FBI allegedly directed the same Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin, to conduct a sting operation against AIPAC officials, providing them with purportedly classified information to pass on to Israel, according to sources close to the investigation. A month later, the FBI raided AIPAC offices, confiscating files from two senior staffers.

On Dec. 1, the FBI returned to the headquarters of the pro-Israel lobby, searching staffers’ offices. The FBI also issued subpoenas to four AIPAC staffers to appear before a grand jury at the end of this month.

Most accounts of the AIPAC investigation have focused on a Franklin lunch with Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s director of foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, an Iran specialist. It has been learned, that the meeting occurred on June 26, 2003, at the Tivoli restaurant in Arlington, Va.

The chronology is important, say several sources with direct access to the prosecution’s case, because it suggests that that meeting produced insufficient grounds for the FBI to pursue a case against AIPAC.

“We always wondered why there had been no contact by the FBI from June 2003 to August 2004,” when AIPAC’s headquarters were raided, said a source familiar with the government’s investigation. “That’s more than a year.”

“It never made sense, if this violation” that is alleged to have taken place at the Tivoli lunch “was so serious,” the source said.

Instead, the AIPAC probe appears to have intensified only after the FBI monitored a call between Franklin and reporters at CBS News in May 2004, in which he allegedly disclosed information about aggressive Iranian policy in Iraq. One of those reporters was Adam Ciralsky, a former attorney at the Central Intelligence Agency who sued the CIA after he quit in 1999 on the grounds that he was harassed for his Jewish roots and connection to Israel.

After the call in May, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, headed by David Szady, who also supervised the alleged campaign against Ciralsky, confronted Franklin, according to sources familiar with the case. Threatened with charges of espionage and decades of imprisonment, Franklin was deployed to set up a sting against AIPAC, the sources say.

According to sources, he was also involved in initiating contact with some neoconservative defense experts, several of them Jewish, who supported Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi, the president of the Iraqi National Congress, had deep ties to Bush administration officials. Chalabi’s political adviser, a non-Jewish American, was also targeted, according to sources.

Chalabi is at the vortex of a Pentagon-intelligence community squabble over pre- and post-war policy in Iraq.

AIPAC had been under intense scrutiny by the FBI throughout early 2003, but the law enforcement officials had seen nothing to justify prosecutorial action, sources said.

At the Tivoli restaurant lunch with AIPAC, Franklin allegedly verbally mentioned information from a classified Pentagon policy paper purportedly written by defense expert Michael Rubin while Rubin was still at the Pentagon. But Franklin did not actually pass along the document, according to multiple sources familiar with the document and the prosecution’s case. Rubin is now at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

The Pentagon policy paper reportedly proposed an American strategy to destabilize Iran in the face of its growing nuclear potential, according to the sources.

The Tivoli lunch didn’t trigger an immediate prosecution: No document was passed, sources say, and while the verbal information allegedly was drawn from a Pentagon document that did enjoy a low-security classification — as do many such planning debate documents in Washington — much of its content already had been aired in the media.

AIPAC steadfastly has denied that it violated any laws, and insists it is the victim of a witch-hunt.

Franklin refused to speak about the matter.

Franklin had been under increased scrutiny since disclosure of a secret meeting in December 2001 with former Iranian spy and arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar that some in the Washington establishment claimed was unauthorized. Ghorbanifar was on a CIA “burn list” of individuals who could not be contacted, according to informed intelligence community sources.

Franklin didn’t know it, but the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division was monitoring his May 2004 phone conversation with the CBS reporters, including Ciralsky. In the conversation with CBS, Franklin’s remarks reportedly revealed sensitive intelligence intercepts, potentially compromising sources and methods of intelligence gathering, according to some sources aware of the call. Others aware of the call say the FBI would be hard-pressed to prove Franklin’s comments actually breached national security.

Friends and colleagues describe Franklin as a dedicated public servant deeply concerned about growing Iranian influence in Iraq.

“He ran off at the mouth and hated the intelligence community for what he saw as recklessness,” one colleague said. “He was willing to take matters into his own hands for what he saw as the good of the nation.”

Another who knows him added, “Franklin spoke to CBS reporters in an effort to ring an alarm” about White House indifference to a looming threat, “but it was clearly wrong if it involved classified information.”

Shortly after the CBS call, agents from Szady’s FBI Counterintelligence Division confronted Franklin, sources say. During this time, Franklin was not represented by an attorney, and the government placed him on unpaid leave. Franklin, who is the sole breadwinner for five children and a wheelchair-bound wife, was terrified by the threats, according to multiple sources familiar with his situation.

Szady’s FBI Counterintelligence Division then devised a strategy to use Franklin as a plant to set up AIPAC, according to sources.

FBI officials refused to discuss the matter.

The FBI sting, first reported by Janine Zacharia in The Jerusalem Post, allegedly directed Franklin to offer AIPAC officials supposedly urgent classified information about Iranian plans to kidnap and murder Israelis operating in northern Iraq. Whether the information was manufactured or accurate is not clear.

The exact date and location of the sting, which came in the form of a meeting, have not previously been disclosed, but according to sources with access to prosecution information, it took place on July 21, 2004, at a suburban Virginia mall.

Believing they had a life-or-death situation on their hands, AIPAC officials reportedly contacted the Israeli Embassy, thereby prompting action by the FBI Counterintelligence Division.

AIPAC officials declined all comment on the July meeting.

However, one source familiar with access to the prosecution’s case against AIPAC asked, “If the June 2003 incident was strong enough to prosecute, why did the government need Franklin to perpetrate a sting more than a year later? Answer: The first encounter did not amount to anything. The FBI needed more.”

Among those Franklin was directed to call as part of an alleged series of sting operations was Francis Brooke, Chalabi’s political adviser in Washington. Brooke said he turned aside Franklin’s request for information on the code-breaking information Chalabi is accused of providing to Iran, telling him “it is all horse dung.”

During June, July and August, Franklin, still apparently being directed by the FBI, made a series of calls to prominent personalities — conversations that have been labeled by the recipients as “weird,” “curious” and “totally out of keeping for Larry.” At least some of these calls were at the behest of Szady’s counterintelligence unit, according to several sources, but it is not known which.

Around late June 2004, Franklin called Richard Perle, an American Enterprise Institute defense policy strategist and a key planner of the 2003 Iraq War, according to several sources familiar with the call. Perle is former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and a close associate of Paul Wolfowitz, the undersecretary of defense.

Perle was just dashing out the door and readying for summer travel and did not enter the call into his telephone logs, the sources say. But he felt the call was “weird” and took no action, according to one source.

Perle declined to comment on the call.

In August 2004, Franklin also called Ciralsky, who by this time had moved to NBC News, where he was covering security developments in Iran, sources said. Franklin apparently tried to set up a meeting with Ciralsky, but no such meeting ever occurred, according to sources familiar with the call.

Ciralsky declined all comment.

By the end of August, Franklin had been assigned a court-appointed attorney whose name was sealed under court order, according to sources familiar with Justice Department filings in the case. That attorney advised Franklin to sign what sources familiar with the case termed “a really terrible plea agreement” that would have subjected him to a very long prison term under the most severe espionage laws.

In September, a friend referred Franklin to renowned Washington defense attorney Plato Cacheris. In the past, Cacheris has represented accused spies and even Monica Lewinsky. Franklin fired his court-appointed attorney and Cacheris began representing him pro bono.

Meanwhile, on Aug. 27, 2004, the FBI Counterintelligence Division raided AIPAC. The raid and the information about a Pentagon “mole” working with AIPAC were immediately leaked to CBS.

Lesley Stahl led with the story on the network’s evening news. On its Web site, CBS headlined, “The FBI believes it has ‘solid’ evidence that the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified materials that include secret White House policy deliberations on Iran.” A picture of the FBI’s Szady was prominently displayed next to the headline.

FBI investigators again searched AIPAC’s headquarters on Dec. 1. The FBI also issued subpoenas to four AIPAC staffers to appear before a grand jury. Prosecutors aimed to have the grand jury hearings by the end of December, but sources close to the investigation said Wednesday that no date has been set yet.

The four are Howard Kohr, the group’s executive director; Richard Fishman, managing director; Renee Rothstein, communications director, and Raphael Danziger, research director.

FBI officials refused to discuss the search and subpoenas. Szady, who has been decorated twice by the CIA for distinguished service, answered one critic by writing, “I am not at liberty to comment on pending investigations.”

An FBI source with knowledge of Szady’s investigation bristled at the intense media coverage of the Counterintelligence Division’s tactic. Said the source: “We are just following the evidence and seeing where it leads.”

Meanwhile, four congressional Democrats have asked the Bush administration to brief Congress on the FBI probe. In a letter last week to President Bush, U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) said that with the case intensifying, Bush should clear up concerns about the probe’s integrity.

Citing reports about the alleged AIPAC sting and leaks to the media, the letter said, “Mr. President, an honorable organization is on the line, as are the reputations of dignified individuals, and Congress has yet to hear from you or your administration on this issue, despite previous requests.”

Franklin, meanwhile, is working menial outdoor labor jobs to support his family and remains uncertain where the case against him is going. Said one source who knows him: “He is literally shaking. He has been destroyed.”

Award-winning New York Times best-selling investigative author and reporter Edwin Black has covered allegations of Israeli spying in the United States since the Jonathan Pollard case. Black’s current best-seller is “Banking on Baghdad”(Wiley), which chronicles 7,000 years of Iraqi history.

 

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Awards Appreciate the Unappreciated

Leave a Comment / Education /

 

Sitting in a roomful of teachers and the people who love them in a Bel Air hotel on a recent Thursday afternoon, you could almost forget that Jewish educators are inexcusably underappreciated, underhonored and underpaid.

The Jewish Educator Awards luncheon, hosted by award sponsors the Milken Family Foundation (MFF) and the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE) of Greater Los Angeles, is a yearly fest of pride, love and admiration for the wide swath of Jews who belong to Los Angeles’ day school world.

Beyond being a chance to recognize five outstanding educators, the day is, at heart, a wider celebration of Jewish education and those who dedicate their lives to it, from the Mormon math teacher at the Orthodox boys school who pronounced “Yeshiva Gedolah” like an Eastern European zayde, to the principal of a Reform day school that has doubled in size under her leadership over the last decade.

“If we are going to assure a quality education for our children, it is absolutely essential that we have quality educators in the classrooms,” said MFF executive vice president Richard Sandler. “Thank you for doing all you do for the next generation.”

That thank you is backed up by a $10,000 purse, no small change for a teacher at a Jewish school (though not quite as much as the $25,000 award that goes to the 100 winners a year of MFF’s National Educators Award, not restricted to Jewish day schools. But no one else is doling out such nice gifts to Jewish teachers, so whose complaining?).

The goal of the awards is not only to appreciate the specific recipients — 75 teachers and administrators have been recognized since the award’s inception in 1990 — but to enhance the status of the profession in general. By giving teachers incentive and appreciation, and by showing the wider community that Jewish educators are not taken for granted, MFF has handed the profession a classy and dignified opportunity to pat itself on the back.

MFF does its best to make a production of the whole thing.

Leaders from across the spectrum of Los Angeles Jewry were at the luncheon, including Federation President John Fishel and other federation officials. Leonard Nimoy, who hosts a radio series for Milken’s Jewish Music Archive, was present to honor Eileen Horowitz of Temple Israel of Hollywood, where he is also a member. Former Rams lineman/pop singer Rosie Greer, a MFF trustee, sat at the table with Nimoy.

But the festivities began long before the luncheon.

Over two days in October and November, members of the BJE and MFF appeared at school-wide assemblies to surprise the five educators — Publishers Clearing House style — with notification of the award.

A video, followed by a slide show narrated by Sandler, brought those days to life for the 275 people — from black-hatted rabbis to women in kippot — at the Luxe Summit Hotel Bel-Air in early December.

Rabbi Mordechai Dubin, described as the “soul of Maimonides Academy,” led the school in song and dance minutes before he was tapped as the award winner, with the children screeching and cheering in his honor.

Rick Hepworth worked for 25 years to build up the secular studies at Yeshiva Gedolah, and the emotion and disbelief showed through the deep blush, set off by his yellow hair, as he became the school’s first MFF Jewish Educator Award recipient.

Horowitz, head of school at Temple Israel of Hollywood Day School, quipped at the luncheon that her dad always wanted her to be a famous actress, and there she was that day accepting an award on a Hollywood stage — a bimah to be precise.

Hugs from teachers and students alike awaited Pamela Kleinman, a fifth-grade teacher at Heschel West, when she was told of the award at an outdoor assembly, where American and Israeli flags flapped in the cold morning wind coming of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Inez Tiger, a life-skills facilitator and middle school counselor at Pressman Academy who has helped dozens of pre-adolescents learn to deal with emotions, could not stop her own tears when the award was given to her.

The element of surprise found its way into the Luxe Summit as well, when Lowell Milken, chairman and co-founder of MFF, made an unwitting Gil Graff, executive director of the BJE, the first ever recipient of an honorary Jewish Educator Award for his years of service to the Los Angeles community.

“If you combined the wisdom of Solomon, and the patience of Job and the teaching of Hillel, you might very well end up with Dr. Gil Graff,” Milken said, noting that under Graff’s tenure not only the number of students, but the quality of the education, had risen dramatically.

True to form, a shocked but composed Graff was able to present off the top of his head a perfectly crafted d’var Torah, replete with quotes from that week’s Torah portion, to express his gratitude for the surprise presentation.

That Graff, whose educational, academic and personal credentials stand out in the world of Jewish professionals, was honored on this day honoring Jewish education itself was only appropriate.

“I can’t imagine any audience to better appreciate the brilliance of this educator who has devoted his life to the academic, moral and spiritual enrichment and growth of our children,” Milken said.

He knew he was talking to an audience that gets it, because they do it, and today, at least, that was worthy of recognition.

 

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Charities Seek Ties to MTV Generation

Leave a Comment / Community, Philanthropy /

 

Jewish charities, already having a hard time because of intermarriage, assimilation and growing competition from non-Jewish nonprofits, face what could be their biggest challenge yet: finding a way to appeal to legions of young Jews who stand to inherit billions over the next 20 years, but whose Jewish identities are generally weaker than that of their parents.

If Jewish federations and agencies fail to forge a close relationship with this highly independent generation of Jews, Jewish charities, experts say, might struggle greatly in years to come. That could mean less money to combat Jewish poverty, bury indigent Jews or provide food and shelter for the elderly and infirm at Jewish nursing homes.

To prevent that nightmare scenario from materializing, federations and Jewish institutions around the country have taken aggressive steps to reach the elusive under-45 set. Whether those efforts can succeed remains to be seen.

Locally, the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF) earlier this year inaugurated a program that brought together Los Angeles teenagers and schooled them in principles of Jewish philanthropy.

Over two months, eight girls and six boys — all nominated by affluent JCF donors, including family members — learned about the Jewish concepts of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and g’milut chasadim (acts of lovingkindness). They gained exposure to several local Jewish and non-Jewish charities, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Bureau of Jewish Education and the Puente Learning Center in East Los Angeles, which offers computer and literacy programs for the Latino community.

The young students, after making on-site visits and presenting their findings to one another, then voted on how to divvy up the $10,000 the foundation had given them to donate to their favorite causes. So how did the young Jewish philanthropists-in-training decide to spend the money?

Two non-Jewish organizations, the Los Angeles Free Clinic and PATH (People Assisting the Homeless), topped their list. At the behest of JCF executives, group members later added Vista Del Mar Child and Family Care Services, a Jewish organization.

“I thought it was a little ironic that we were doing this for the Jewish Community Foundation and we picked two non-Jewish organizations,” said Scott Cutrow, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at Crossroads who participated in and said he benefited from the JCF youth program. “I don’t think that was the ultimate goal of the people who set it up.”

Ironic? Yes. Surprising? No.

Unlike past generations, young Jews consider themselves “much more American than Jewish,” said Gerald Bubis, a former board member at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and founding director of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion School of Jewish Communal Service. Whereas Jews 50 years ago gave largely to Jewish organizations, especially federations, younger Jews are now just as likely to give to such universal causes as the environment, universities or the arts, he said.

Jewish affairs expert Gary Tobin said he found that development unsurprising. The president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco said that only about one-quarter of American Jews belong to synagogues, with lower participation rates among the young.

The MTV Generation largely stays away from temples and other Jewish institutions, Tobin said, because many of those organizations lack warmth, a sense of community and a welcoming spirit. As a result, young Jews are failing to build the communal bonds that could one day lead them to contribute their inherited or earned wealth to Jewish causes.

“A lot of Jewish institutional life is not very interesting,” Tobin said. “If it’s a turnoff for a 70-year-old and for a 50-year-old, it sure as hell isn’t going to turn on a 25-year-old.”

Another turnoff is the heavy-handed approach Jewish institutions sometimes take toward young and other donors, said Mark Charendoff, president of the Jewish Funders Network in New York. Some federations and other Jewish organizations, he said, have an arrogant, expectant attitude and treat donors like money machines who deserve little gratitude or explanation about how their gifts will be spent.

That approach might have worked in the past but not with young donors, who demand a more personalized approach to giving, Charendoff said. Simply put: They want direct control over how their dollars are spent and are willing to bypass federations altogether to ensure that happens.

To that end, an enormous network of family foundations have sprung up over the past seven years, from about 2,500 to 8,000 today, he said. Those foundations fund a variety of causes, ranging from AIDS research to the environment, and have siphoned money away from federations and other traditional Jewish charities, Charendoff said.

The United Jewish Communities (UJC), the umbrella organization for the nation’s federations, has seen donations stagnate in recent years. In 2003, volunteers raised $827.5 million, about $500,000 less than in 2000.

Partly to reverse that trend, federations around the country have made building bridges to young Jews a major priority.

“We have an absolute obligation to reach down to that younger generation to make sure they’re not only involved but engaged and excited in ways that will encourage them to lead the community,” said Gail Hyman, UJC senior vice president of communications.

In that vein, about 40 federations have created “Blue Knot” affinity groups over the past couple years that cater to mostly young, high-tech workers, she said. The Las Vegas Federation recently held a Vodka Latka Chanukah celebration that attracted 200 hip revelers.

(Interestingly, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the sponsor of the original Vodka Latka, has stopped holding the party, even though the most recent one in 2002 attracted about 1,000 young Jews. Craig Prizant, the Los Angeles Federation’s executive vice president of resource development, said Vodka Latka demanded too much staff time and was too big to expose revelers to The Federation’s important work.)

The Los Angeles Federation, which eliminated its money-losing young leadership initiative a couple years ago, has replaced it with a Young Leadership Division that combines Jewish education and fun. At monthly meetings, young Jews attend movie screenings, meet for java at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf or gather for Shabbat dinners, where, in addition to socializing, they learn about The Federation and Jewish values, Prizant said. He estimated that the revamped leadership program has added an extra $750,000 to The Federation’s coffers.

In recent years, the organization also helped create the Los Angeles Venture Philanthropy Fund (LA-JVPF), a self-funded group of youngish entrepreneurs and professionals that has raised and awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars to nonprofits that benefit Jews. Several LA-JVPF participants have become first-time Federation donors.

Other local Jewish agencies have begun emphasizing the need to recruit young Jews.

In October, the Jewish Free Loan Association (JFLA) created a 14-member young professionals advisory group to raise awareness about the organization’s mission and to develop the next generation of leaders and donors, said Danielle Walsmith, JFLA’s director of communications. At present, most JFLA donors are 55 or older, she added.

The Zimmer Children’s Museum has recently reconfigured its board to include more young members, executive director Esther Netter said, adding that she thought Jewish institutions should make an effort to educate very young Jews about the importance of giving to Jewish causes.

That appears to be happening, said Ann Cohen, a business consultant who has worked with UJC and other Jewish organizations. The rise in attendance at Jewish day schools over the past decade should inculcate those youngsters with Jewish values and an understanding of tzedakah (charitable giving), she said. That could translate into more money flowing to Jewish institutions in the future.

JCF’s Marvin Schotland said he remains optimistic about his and other Jewish organizations abilities to eventually win over younger Jews (see page 13). Even though the group of students participating in the Foundation’s pilot program favored non-Jewish charities over Jewish ones, Schotland said time is on JCF’s side.

“We’re building a relationship with them,” he said. “Fifteen or 20 years from now, some of them are going to be back here, and we’ll have credibility with them. We’ll also have some idea what [causes] they’re interested in and be able to bring them something in the Jewish community consistent with their interests.”

“We have a very long view,” Schotland added.

Q & A With Marvin Schotland


by Marc Ballon, Senior Writer

The Jewish Community Foundation turns 50 this year. Under the direction of Marvin Schotland, president and chief executive officer, the charitable gift-planning and grant-making organization has grown into the 10th-largest Los Angeles foundation, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. During Schotland’s 15-year tenure, the foundation’s assets under management have mushroomed to nearly $500 million from $90 million.

Since 1989, the foundation and its donors have allocated more than $420 million to a host of local Jewish organizations, including the Jewish Community Centers, Zimmer Children’s Museum and the Koreh L.A. literacy program.

Jewish Journal: How did you boost the foundation’s assets by so much?

Marvin Schotland: I think growth is a result of greater awareness of the role the foundation plays in the community. Uniformly, the foundation is seen as outstanding professionally, and that has given our donors an increased confidence level in us.

Second, there’s been a diversification of membership on the board of trustees. Its more representative of the Jewish community, both in terms of its male/female makeup and the religious, political and age groups. Our board members help disparate parts of the community better understand our charitable gift-planning role and our grant-making process.

JJ: With so many Jewish family foundations sprouting up, why should a philanthropist give to the foundation instead of creating his or her own?

MS: If you have $500 million, is it in your best interest to establish a fund with us? Probably not. You can hire your own staff to help you make decisions. But if you have $100,000 to $50 million, I think we can help you out. We know the community intimately and have the broad and deep professional expertise to strategically and effectively guide philanthropists in planning their charitable giving.

JJ: What percentage of your assets do you distribute annually? Some in the community have complained that the foundation could be more generous.

MS: The foundation has adopted a 5 percent spending rate for its permanent endowment funds that support the community. That allows us to continue growing our permanent funds without risking the capital that’s been entrusted to us by the community. If we had a much higher payout rate, we’d have to invest our money in much riskier securities, which we don’t want to do. That’s a conservative philosophy, but we’re an organization that takes a long view, which I think is prudent.

JJ: Why hasn’t the foundation given more to the Jewish Community Centers (JCC)? Given your assets, the foundation could easily afford to save the foundering centers.

MS: We have given to JCCs over the years in many different ways. When they were viable and healthy, we funded all sorts of programs [including] an early childhood education and family center in the early ’90s in the [now shuttered] Conejo Valley. We’ve always been a funder of programmatic initiatives of the JCC and, in certain cases, capital initiatives, like the $2 million we gave to the [Bernard] Milken Jewish Community Campus, which houses the New JCC at Milken.

But when the centers began imploding, we didn’t have enough resources to bail them out. The reality of it was that, as we understood the situation from all the information we had, the issues were not only economic issues but issues of management and broad-based community support. We very quietly talked to donors who had funds with us, and they weren’t interested, because they didn’t think the JCC problems were purely economic. Our dollars will be better served being spent on new programmatic initiatives and on those centers that survive, once the dust settles.

JJ: What are you most proud of during your tenure?

MS: I think we’ve been a wonderful agent for seeding new and emerging projects in the community.

For instance, our early support of Beit T’Shuvah, an agency that helps Jewish individuals with addictions, helped it get off the ground in 1987. Today, it has grown into a successful, independent agency that serves more than 2,500 people a year

The Zimmer Children’s Museum was established in 1992, thanks to seed funding from the foundation. We were also a seeding agent for Koreh L.A., which got its start in 1999 from a modest grant from us and has gone on to be a very, successful literacy program.

We provided substantial seed money to create the College Campus Initiative, a multiyear initiative begun in 2000 to engage local college students more actively in Jewish life. I’m also proud about the establishment of our Family Foundation Center in 2001, which helps donors and funders engage in their philanthropy in a more effective way.

JJ: How much longer do you plan to remain on the job?

MS: I’m hoping to be here until I retire. I’m 58 and not interested in retiring any time soon. I love what I do.

For more information about the Jewish Community Foundation, call (323) 761-8700 or visit www.jewishfoundationla.org.

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Lighten Up on Christmas and Christians

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Judaism, Opinion, United States /

 

Even in relatively tolerant and officially secular America, Jews long have had to do a dance around the holidays of the majority population. There’s a national party going on and, let’s face it, we are not invited.

The issue then is how to deal with it. There seems to be three basic responses.

One, give in “to the spirit,” even if that means elevating Chanukah into an ersatz version of Christmas, with excessive gift-giving and demands for equal time with the bigger holiday.

Two, rail against the persuasiveness of the holiday and of Christianity in our core culture. For some, that means waging a kind of secularist jihad to remove all spiritual aspects from the season.

Third, just keep a respectful distance and let the Christians enjoy their holiday to the fullest including allowing trees, mangers and reindeer in the parks. Use the time to reconfirm to yourself and, more importantly, your children our status as proud and very separate minority.

In some ways, the first approach seems akin to giving in to the majority faith. We boost Chanukah, a relatively minor holiday, into megastatus and turn our children into Yuletide wannabes. Let’s face it, most of our kids don’t need more excuses for presents.

More serious, and immediately damaging, is the opposite tendency, which amounts to driving religious Christmas out of the public sphere. This is something not exclusively supported by Jews, but it’s no big secret that Jews are prominent in many of the organizations — like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — that spearhead the anti-Christmas secular jihad.

To a large extent, this approach seeks to eliminate everything that is Christian about Christmas from the public sphere — from trees, green lights and mangers to the singing of Christmas carols. It reached the point of ludicrous when our former, illustrious governor, Gray Davis always craven in the service of his heavily Jewish donors, renamed the state Christmas Tree into a Holiday Tree.

This kind of idiocy, which was reversed this year by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, comes out of a mistaken belief that to ensure a secular state, we need to eliminate any hint of Christian belief from the public sphere. In the words of Amanda Susskind, regional director of the ADL, furious efforts must be made to maintain “a wall of separation between the pubic realm and religious tradition.

In theory, this is a fine idea. I certainly would not like to see public school students forced to sing Christmas carols or listen to a Billy Graham lecture. Yet Susskind is talking about circumscribing all manner of spiritually tainted behavior. They have even issued a somewhat silly pronunciamento called, “The December Dilemma, ” to supply guidelines so schools don’t dip their toes into even vaguely religious waters at this time of year.

Behind these efforts lies what I suspect is a more elaborate agenda. Susskind, for example, expresses “sympathy” for the French government’s decision to ban crosses, head scarves and yarmulkes from public schools. She isn’t ready to take this on in America, but more zealous secularists, like the ACLU, might be sorely tempted.

Such efforts, in my mind, turn the state from neutral toward religion to advocate for what may be called the secularist faith. Instead of admitting that religious ideas, primarily derived from Jewish and Christian roots, stand at the root of our constitutional republic, the ADL and the even more secularist ACLU seem to see any acknowledgement of religion — from the singing of “Jingle Bells” at schools to discussions of the religious roots of Christmas — as a grave threat to civil liberties.

Perhaps, the most egregious local example of this can be seen in the ACLU’s so far successful attempt, with full backing from the ADL, to get the Board of Supervisors to excise the mission cross from the Los Angeles County Seal. This effort grew out of the notion that having a cross on the seal for the past half century represented, in the ADL’s words, and affront to the “diversity of the people of the community.” Zev Yaroslavsky, easily the most influential Jewish politician in the county even called the cross a “symbol that divides us.”

David Hernandez, one of the leaders of a broad-based effort to overturn the country’s decision, considers this decision an example of legislative arrogance. It was taken without considering the idea that many church-going Christians, as well as Hispanics proud of their historic role in the City of Angeles, might object to having their heritage expunged from the seal.

After all, Catholic missionaries built the first schools, brought medicine and many other elements of European civilization (not all positive, to be sure) to this part of the word. Reducing the mission symbol to a kind of jumped-up Taco Bell is not only an affront to L.A.’s Hispanic Catholic heritage but to the critical role faith has played in the evolution of the city since then.

Nor can anyone but a total paranoid compare people like Hernandez to the kind of bigoted Christians who have tormented us in the past.

“People are surprised I am not a Bible-Belt, right wing Christian fanatic,” explains the middle-of-the-road Republican insurance adjuster from Valley Village, who is a member of such dangerous groups as the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley, the North Hollywood Neighborhood Council and the Executives support group for the Jewish Homes fro the Aging.

This guy is about as close to Father Coughlin as, well, Kris Kringle.

Rather than wage silly battles with such well-meaning people over Christmas carols, of a mission cross, Jews need to lighten up. Christmas and traditional Christianity today simply do no represent serious threats to the existence of Jews in the contemporary world; outside of the Islamicists, our mortal enemies and those of Israel, can more likely be found among the most hip, pro-Palestinian Churches, some of which back a boycott of Israel, as well as among the longtime anti-Zionists in the secular intellectual left.

In 2004, we have more to fear from Micheal Moore and the archbishop of Canterbury than we do from Graham and ex-urban megachurches. It’s long since time to admit that the political and social landscape has changed greatly from the time our grandparents fled the czarist shtetl.

Finally, we should also recognize that the attempt to drive all religious thought (except perhaps pagan ideas) from the schools also represents a threat to the intelligent understanding of our republic. The founding fathers, many themselves steeped in the traditions of the Torah, would have found it ludicrous that our kids are expected to learn about the roots of American republicanism without some notion of the role played by basic Jewish, as well as Christian, moral principles.

For these reasons, learning about our faith, along with Muslims, Buddhist and Christian traditions, should not be verboten within public education. Indeed, the study of history has convinced me that you can’t understand the past, and how we got to be who we are, without a full comprehension of the religious past.

By removing religion from the public realm entirely, evicting the ecclesiastical role from our histories, plays and pageants, we essentially end up embracing in its place another theology, one that sees human history in exclusively economic class or biological terms.

Given these realties, it’s time for Jews to realize that traditional Christianity — and its symbols — represent less a threat than an important potential ally. By showing respect, and keeping our distance at this time of year, we can build on this historically miraculous development, instead of creating the basis for yet another season of discord.

 

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‘Heaven’s’ Mysterious Spirits

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Television /

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin has done his part to keep the Jewish people, well, literate, by publishing such erudite tomes as “Biblical Literacy” (William Morrow, 1997) and “Jewish Literacy” (William Morrow, 1991). But it seems he also wants to keep us amused on airplanes, which is why he moonlights as a mystery novelist. He recently published his fourth mystery, “Heaven’s Witness” (The Toby Press), a page-turning whodunit about a creepy serial killer who has a thing for young, pretty girls stuck on Los Angeles canyon roads.

On the killer’s trail is psychoanalyst Jordan Geller, who is drawn into the case after a woman he hypnotizes assumes the identity of one of the murder victims — who was killed several years before the woman’s birth. The book, which Telushkin co-wrote with Allen Estrin, is peppered with talmudic and biblical axioms, and raises some lofty questions about the nature of the afterlife and what happens to us after we die.

Telushkin said that he was inspired to write the book, which CBS plans to bring to the small screen in fall 2005, after he conducted a hypnotic regression with a friend of his who went back to a life in the year 1853.

“She spoke in 19th century American English using odd terminology,” said Telushkin, who has also been the spiritual leader of the Synagogue for the Performing Arts since 1993. “When I asked her if she was married, she complained ‘that the men here are so refractory.’ She used names of relatively obscure 19th century figures, who, after months of research, I was able to trace.”

Telushkin said that he is “open” to the idea of reincarnation, and that writing mysteries does have religious implications.

“The genre of mysteries, like the world of religion, still insists that there is a right and wrong, that not everything is relative,” he said. “You might be able to explain the reason why somebody has committed a crime, but, still, it is imperative to the genre that the person is caught, and that justice should prevail.”

For more information on “Heaven’s Witness,” visit www.heavenswitness.com.

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7 Days in the Arts

Leave a Comment / Calendar, Entertainment, Picks and Clicks /

SATURDAY

Chinese restaurants and movie theaters notwithstanding, lonely Jews on Christmas have a new place at which to convene. The Skirball Cultural Center is open and mostly free to the public today. See the “Time/Space, Gravity and Light,” “Celestial Nights,” and “Visions and Values…” exhibitions, watch a screening of “Back to the Future” at and take part in a drop-in art workshops free of charge. The “Einstein” exhibit is not free.

Noon-5 p.m. Movie screening at 1:30 p.m. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 440-4500.

SUNDAY

It’s a family kind of weekend. Spend today at the Getty’s “Close to Home: An American Album” exhibit, which celebrates the family photograph. Some 200 black-and-white and color images taken from 1930 through the mid-1960s, by amateur photographers, as well as by professionals like Thomas Eakins and Alfred Steiglitz, are included in the show. From birthday parties to family vacations to pictures of people with their prized possessions, these pictures strike a familiar chord as we consider our own family portraits.

MONDAY

Another klezmer CD? Why not, especially when it’s as good as “Actions Speak Louder Than Words”? The instrumental CD by Klezmer Juice offers new takes on traditional melodies like “Zemer Atik” and “Donna Donna.” The group also recently caught the attention of New Line Cinema, which cast them as on-camera performers in the upcoming film “The Wedding Crashers,” starring Owen Wilson, Vince Vaughn and Christopher Walken. Their version of “Hava Nagila” will be featured on the soundtrack.

TUESDAY

Film director Pierre Sauvage comes to the New JCC at Milken this evening for a discussion following the screening of his 1989 film, “Weapons of the Spirit.” The last in the JCC’s “Between Worlds” series featuring Holocaust-related films, this movie tells the story of an entire French village of Righteous Gentiles who saved the lives of some 5,000 Jews.

7-9 p.m. Free. 22622 Vanowen St., West Hills. (818) 464-3300.

WEDNESDAY

Put idle hands to work today with producer Ellen R. Margulies’ new DVD, “The Art of Knitting.” According to the producers, this is the first DVD of its kind, despite the huge knitting trend that has swept the country. You’ll learn everything from knitting and purling to color theory and how to start your own knitting circle in this first of four volumes.

$19.95. www.theartofknitting.com

THURSDAY

Fahey/Klein Gallery offers the public the rare opportunity to see privately owned works by renowned artists like Diane Arbus, David Hockney, Man Ray and Robert Mapplethorpe in its latest exhibition, aptly titled, “Photographs From Private Collections.” Catch them before they retreat behind closed doors again on Jan. 29.

148 N. La Brea Ave., Los Angeles. (323) 934-2250.

FRIDAY

Say “Sholom” to 2004 with the Santa Monica Playhouse’s one-night, two-show reprise of “Author! Author! An Evening With Sholom Aleichem.” Backstage West has hailed the musical comedy, based on the Yiddish author’s letters and stories. Included in the price of admission to both shows this evening are buffet supper, champagne, favors, hats, New Year’s surprises and an after-party with the cast.

$35 (6 p.m.), $45 (9:30 p.m.). 1211 Fourth St., Santa Monica. R.S.V.P., (310) 394-9779, ext. 1.

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A fashion ‘do’

Leave a Comment / California, Cover Story /

 

Somehow within the creaking behemoth of the California garment industry, facing fierce competition from across the Pacific Rim, a Montreal-born, Jewish businessman with a handlebar mustache is expecting $150 million in 2004 sales.

Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel, is successfully selling a back-to-basics, trendy, sexy and socially conscious corporate image. His stores, now in many major U.S. cities, are modern and sleek.

The clothes are all made in Los Angeles, there are no labels on them and they’re touted as “sweatshop free.” In the fashion business, that’s a stark contrast to the stereotypical logo-heavy giant corporations paying 10 cents-per-hour to workers across the Pacific.

Trends in apparel production are extremely important. Fashion is a $24.3 billion industry in California, and some of its larger corporations are intimately linked to Jewish philanthropic causes. Jewish involvement in the business nationwide stretches back 100 years, when European immigrants struggled to lift their families into the middle class.

“Overall, the fashion industry donates approximately $2 million to The Jewish Federation each year,” said Kelly Baxter Menachemson, director of the Fashion Industries Division of The Federation. Menachemson said that there are fewer of these donors than there once were, but they are each very committed and generous.

Today, a combination of free trade, higher workplace standards and anti-sweatshop lawsuits are combining to reshape the way the apparel business is run, and Los Angeles’ huge garment industry is at the flashpoint.

On Jan. 1, 2005, the 1974 Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA) will expire. Quotas governing the amount of apparel legally imported into the United States from any single country will be lifted in accordance with a World Trade Organization agreement. That means any U.S. company with the desire to move its production to a foreign country will be able to do so.

The biggest worry is that China, with its combination of super-low-wage workers and a good shipping infrastructure, will increase its dominance over the world textile market, squeezing out more expensive or less competitive labor markets.

Cristina Vazquez, regional manager for the UNITE union, which represents garment workers, says the good apparel industry jobs are already gone. She blames an increasing atmosphere of free trade, starting in the 1970s and culminating in the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and now the MFA expiration.

For Vazquez, the MFA was a last line of defense. “A lot of contractors are going to close, because it’s going to be hard for them to compete,” Vazquez said, adding that many garment workers are looking for ways to get out of the industry.

The numbers bear that out. According to the archives of the California Employment Development Department, there were 111,900 apparel workers in 1997 in Los Angeles County. In 2002 there were 89,300.

Despite this fashion maelstrom, American Apparel is growing rapidly under a new model. It defines a niche buyer, rather than bombarding the entire market with a well-known brand name at rock-bottom prices, where the Chinese advantage is strongest.

“Everybody’s frightened of the quotas coming down, but I really don’t think it’s going to affect our guys at all,” said Frances Harder, executive director of Fashion Business Inc. (FBI).

The nonprofit FBI helps creative young designers develop their start-up businesses.

“They’re not going to try to compete with who’s manufacturing in China,” she pointed out.

Harder says start-up fashion designers’ clothes are trendy, niche specific and subject to quick changes stylistically. Having a local production base is crucial to that approach.

American Apparel markets simple, sleek lines with solid colors; high quality fabrics, and a tight fit to young, urban buyers. Other companies following Charney’s example could have different niches, so long as they maintain the idea of intimately knowing what their target market wants.

Charney’s colorful history, gossiped about in publications worldwide, seems to have led him to this business revelation. He was born in Montreal in 1969 and was already making deals and hustling merchandise in his teens. At Tufts University near Boston, he sold T-shirts out of his dorm.

Charney came to Los Angeles in 1997 with plenty of deal-making street smarts — most importantly, how to sell a product and how treating workers well makes for an efficient team. He’s likened his shop in Los Angeles to a kibbutz.

Harder recognizes Charney’s business as a great example for her startups. “I think what American Apparel does is serve the need,” she said. “He does everything to serve either the people who buy from him or the people who work for him.”

And when it comes to the workers, Charney’s no-sweatshop policy proves that manufacturers in the United States don’t need to try to match wages with countries like China and Indonesia. American Apparel manages to earn impressive profits while paying workers a living wage of $13 per hour on average.

Charney said staying local is not an anomaly, noting the costs of going offshore — including transportation, supervision and quality-control tasks — are all going up. A quick look at the backlog at the Port of Los Angeles supports that hypothesis.

But even if American Apparel’s clothes do end up costing a few dollars more than foreign-made brands, its hip marketing campaign (think saturated-color photos of angsty, attractive models) and its quality products have made up for it.

“I think you can remove duty and taxes and have a complete environment of free trade, and there’s still going to be an apparel business that’s here,” Charney said. “[The MFA issue] is a lot of hype. The main thing is to get behind the businesses that are doing well here and help them to expand.”

“If somebody wants something that’s new and hot, they’re going to spend the money on it,” Harder agreed. That keeps the local manufacturers in business, MFA or no MFA.

And Harder said Los Angeles is at the center of global fashion trends right now.

“I just got back from Europe,” she said, “and it’s the first time I’ve never bought anything over there.”

But according to Charney, the banks and the city make it very difficult for young fashion start-ups, the kind most likely to use local labor, to get off the ground. California has generous, albeit recently reformed, worker’s compensation entitlements. Financing can be extremely hard to secure.

Costs abound for the small apparel company. Stan Levy, founding member of Bet Tzedek Legal Services and chairman of the Labor and Public Affairs Committee of the California Fashion Association, an industry group, said staying in the United States means abiding by a host of rules that don’t exist in countries such as China.

“There are companies [in the United States] spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per year on having monitoring officers trying to ensure that their working conditions are kosher, in effect,” Levy said.

Lawsuits against apparel manufacturers, such as a recent battle between Bet Tzedek and Wet Seal over back wages, are scaring other clothing makers into spending large sums to make sure it doesn’t happen to them.

Charney said American Apparel is by no means the only one taking care of its workers and being responsible: “There are hundreds of companies that do.”

But without the proper support to offset their costs, Charney fears there will be less space and capital available for start-ups, and that will be the real fashion bogeyman. “We should be cultivating a kind of incubation environment where small companies can get started and get rolling,” he stressed.

Those start-ups could be future fashion-industry donors to Jewish philanthropic causes. The Federation’s Menachemson confirmed that as current industry donors near retirement, “there are many young designers today who happen to be Jewish, so in 20 years the industry may look entirely different again.”

But whether free trade or a tough regulatory environment is to blame, there is no question that the Fashion District in Los Angeles is already shrinking.

Developer Mark Weinstein’s Santee Court housing and retail project takes up an entire city block on the northern edge of the Fashion District.

“A small part of it is fashion showroom, but 90 percent is condos, housing and retail mixed-use projects,” he said. “What we’re doing is not dependent on the Fashion District.”

Weinstein said the Fashion District is simply changing. “We’re already losing a lot of manufacturing, but there are better areas for them to do that in Los Angeles,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein’s housing developments are upscale, including trendy lofts and for-sale condos. He targets lawyers, graduate students, East Coast residents looking for a second urban apartment and entertainment executives. Weinstein saids 75 percent of the units are already leased, with the first stage of construction barely complete.

Rents for all units are not available, but the lowest cost publicly listed on Santee Court’s Web site is $1,440 a month for 690 square feet. Garment workers, even those who are decently paid, could have a very hard time affording the housing.

Still, Weinstein dedicated 33 of his currently available apartments to low-income housing, which means he reduces a unit he could rent for $1,500 per month to $492 without public subsidy.

“Others aren’t doing that,” he said.

But none of the condos going on sale in 2005 and 2006 will be so accommodating. “We’d lose way too much money,” Weinstein said.

In the Fashion District today, demographics and manufacturing trends seem to be changing faster than the skirt styles in the boutiques. Will local designers succeed? Will the MFA issue change the business? Will housing and retail take over manufacturing?

We’ll have to wait for the spring fashion season to find out.

Both Sides Point Finger of Blame

The argument about whether free trade or excessive regulation is causing the shrinkage of Los Angeles’ fashion industry is part of a long-running debate between the UNITE union and manufacturers.

The Jewish community, torn between ownership stakes in apparel corporations on one hand and strong alignments with labor on the other, seems stuck somewhere in between.

From the union’s perspective, the workers bear the burden of free trade, while the rich get richer.

“It’s going to get worse for the workers,” said UNITE’s Cristina Vazquez. “Local contractors are always lowering their price, trying to get the work from the manufacturers. The workers pay the consequences at the end.”

Vazquez conceded that some manufacturers will want to keep local cut-and-sew shops open to ride quick-changing trends, but she said there are few who are actually proud of making a product in the the United States.

As a result, the union’s mission of late has been to try to educate consumers about how to buy clothes responsibly, including lists of union shops, so those workers that remain in the industry can earn a decent living. Groups like the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) broadcast that message to the Jewish community.

PJA’s publication, No Shvitz (no sweat in Yiddish), calls itself the “one-stop guide to fighting sweatshops,” educating the reader on the history of Jewish sweatshop work and the struggle of the thousands of minority workers who work in them today. PJA recently worked with UNITE to win passage of a Los Angeles ordinance banning the city from buying sweatshop-made uniforms for its employees.

But on the question of scaring away business, there are some within the fashion industry who say that the union is actually crippling what it claims to protect.

“The union doesn’t even have any [cut-and-sew] membership in L.A.,” said an industry insider who asked to remain anonymous.

Indeed, Vazquez noted that most of the L.A.-area workers she represents now distribute clothes instead of making them. UNITE has not been able to run a successful unionized business in Los Angeles. Its only L.A.-area clothing manufacturer and retailer, SweatX, is closed.

“They’re just targeting local manufacturers,” said the industry source, who complained that UNITE will not support manufacturers unless they have unionized workforces, regardless of how well they treat their workers.

A search on UNITE’s Web page illustrates the point. It promotes shopping at union manufacturers in Illinois, Pennsylvania and even Rhode Island, but apparently no union manufacturing is being done in Los Angeles.

That conflict puts the union somewhat at odds with the small- to medium-sized manufacturers who’ve chosen to buck the offshore trend and stay fashionable in Los Angeles — II

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