February 17, 2005

Salami Shortage No Baloney

Leave a Comment / Up Front / Jewish Journal

Five hunks of Hebrew National salami lie side by side in a glass display case at Ben’s Kosher Delicatessen in midtown Manhattan. When compared with the crispy corn dogs and enormous latkes, they don’t look like much. But the takeout counter guy is relieved he has any salami to sell at all.

For the last several months, a shortage of Hebrew National products has hit kosher restaurants and food distributors across North America, forcing some to fill the gap with other meat products — ones that don’t “answer to a higher authority,” as the Hebrew National famous advertisement put it.

The shortage comes at what should be a time of celebration, as Hebrew National, which was founded on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, celebrates its 100th birthday.

“At this point, we’ve been working very hard to increase production,” said Julie DeYoung, a spokeswoman for ConAgra Foods Inc., the Omaha-based food giant that bought Hebrew National in 1993. They just built a new manufacturing facility in Quincy, Mich. She said shortages on some of the most popular products — hot dogs and lunchmeats like turkey and salami — would continue for some time.

Hebrew National has seen “several-digit growth” in demand for its hot dogs in recent years, DeYoung said.

Demand is strongest on the East Coast, she said, though it is picking up on the West Coast. And, as super-retailers like Costco begin stocking Hebrew National products, DeYoung said, the company is becoming, as its name suggests, national.

Overall, kosher products have experienced growing popularity in recent years, fueled, in part, by the belief that kosher products are healthier. Also, other groups like to eat kosher products, such as Muslims who buy kosher for the meat, or lactose-intolerants who purchase pareve products.

But for the man behind the counter at Ben’s, the reasons for Hebrew National’s success are much simpler.

“You can’t beat their hot dogs,” he said. — Chanan Tigay, Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Super Sunday Calls Raise $4.6 Million

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Philanthropy / David Finnigan

Frank Ponder put in a long, fruitful day at the Feb. 13 Super Sunday annual fundraising campaign, helping gather the phone-driven dollars that became part of more than $4.6 million pledged that day for The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

Last year, the Federation raised about $4.5 million at Super Sunday 2004, about $800,000 more than 2003’s Super Sunday success. The money will fund agencies such as Jewish Family Service and Jewish Vocational Service, as these two critical-needs agencies join other non-profits in bracing for state and federal cutbacks.

“My goal is just to see if I can make about 100 calls,” said Ponder, 62, describing what turned out to be an easily achieved objective in the large phone bank room at The Federation’s headquarters. “I’ll take a dollar, anything. The hardest part is the noise in the room, but it also provides the energy.”

A Beverly Hills household’s polite brush-off was a request to call at year’s end, but minutes earlier, a Westside doctor and his wife pledged another $1,000, as they did a year ago.

Ponder’s Super Sunday was like that: a little donor gold struck here, an answering machine encounter there. But throughout five hours he maintained his drive to plow through the stack of salmon and yellow sheets containing donor data. Reaching a criminal defense lawyer known for her Court TV analysis during the O.J. Simpson trial brought a $500 pledge.

“People give every conceivable reason not to give,” said Ponder, prior to calling a reliable donor, a retiree who lives in a swank area of Wilshire Boulevard.

“Can we raise that to $1,500?” Ponder asked.

With his pencil marking a form-of-payment box, Ponder clicked off that under-a-minute call and said, “You just took $1,500 out of someone’s pocket, and they want to get off the phone as fast as possible.”

Ponder has spent two decades participating in Super Sundays. Great Southern California weather and answering machines are his enemies. His allies are an old-pro demeanor and the phone bank room’s camaraderie.

L.A. Federation staffers this year decided against Super Sunday T-shirts and instead donated several thousand dollars of planned T-shirt production money to Asian tsunami relief efforts.

Celebrities and politicians visited the main Super Sunday phone room, with prominent names also popping by the event’s Valley Alliance phone room in West Hills. The smaller South Bay Council phone bank volunteers worked in Torrance.

The Los Angeles mayoral candidates each made a cameo appearance at Wilshire Boulevard headquarters, along with other politicians. Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti’s phone pitch perseverance specifically impressed Ponder, whose seat was across from where the politicians each took a stab at phone pitching.

“Voicemail, voicemail, voicemail,” Garcetti exclaimed after another fruitless call, with Ponder nodding approvingly at his efforts.

“He’s been here longer than any other politico,” said Ponder, a retired retailer, who looked over at the young councilman and said, “Your father used to be a customer of mine.”

“Oh really?” said Garcetti, the son of former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti and a grandson of Federation pioneer Harry Roth.

“I used to run Bel Air Camera,” said Ponder, as Garcetti’s phone luck turned and he began getting real voices instead of answering machines.

The councilman’s personalized donor pitch included the phrase, “You probably know my grandfather, Harry Roth.”

By early evening on Super Sunday, a doctor took over Ponder’s spot, and other phones were taken over by members of the Federation’s Young Leadership and Women’s Campaign divisions.

“I’ve heard every make and model of answering machine,” said Dr. Jeffrey Hirsch, a Beverly Hills internist and the husband of Sinai Temple’s Rabbi Sherre Hirsch. He admitted to some culture shock due to growing up in a much smaller Jewish community in Baton Rouge, La.

“In L.A., a $3,000 giver just gets a phone call on Super Sunday,” he said. “A $3,000 giver in Baton Rouge is like, ‘God, we need that person.'”

Seated next to Hirsch was Diana Fiedotin, a fellow Jewish Southerner and Brown University alumnus who now handles West Coast development for The Federation-supported American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The college pals recognized the donor card of a 40ish doctor.

“He was at my birthday party,” Fiedotin said.

Beverly Hills real estate financier Eric Erenstoft kept his headset filled with call after call, his scribbled list of $1,000-$1,500 pledges becoming a testament to how he used his salesman’s energies as a closer to The Federation’s benefit.

“I’m closing!” Erenstoft said, finishing another call.

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MATCH Puts Giving in Students’ Hands

Leave a Comment / Community, Judaism, Kids & Teens, Philanthropy / Karen Alexander

Learning about the importance of giving tzedakah is a basic tenet of any Jewish education.

But p>

“It’s not just about giving away money,” said Emanuel’s Rabbi Laura Geller. “It’s about teaching young people how to be responsible Jews when it comes to giving tzedakah. It’s not something you should do instinctively. You have to do it thoughtfully.”

The program, now in its second year, is called MATCH — short for Money and Teenagers Creating Hope. It started with an anonymous gift to the Temple Emanuel Endowment of $125,000, which the congregation was obliged to match. MATCH students use the interest earned from those funds to make philanthropic donations to a variety of organizations of their own choosing.

“They model what it means to be grown-up Jews,” Geller said. “Many of the kids in our synagogue are children of privilege, and some of them will have the opportunity to manage their own family foundations some day. All of the children in this program are learning about what it means to be a thoughtful philanthropist.”

Last year, the students, who range from eighth to 12th grade, gave away $5,000. This year, the program is divided by age into two distinct boards with 36 students currently participating. Having raised all the necessary matching funds, Temple Emanuel can now provide each group with $5,000 to give away.

Over three sessions last year, the students analyzed Jewish texts about tzedakah, heard from local philanthropists and engaged in heated discussions about where the money should go. They also learned practical skills, such as how to read an organization’s 990 tax form and how to use various Web sites to research charities on the Internet.

“I would wager that most people who give charity don’t have a clue about that,” Geller said.

Ultimately, the young participants decided to give $750 to the Make a Wish Foundation, $1,000 to AIDS Health Care, $1,000 to Camp Harmony and $1,000 to Friends of Israel’s Disabled Veterans.

One requirement of the original endowment gift is that 25 percent of the money the students donated should be directed to a project within the temple itself. Geller said she was particularly touched by the teenagers’ discussion of where those funds should go, and by their conclusion last spring to return that portion of the money — $1,250 — to the temple’s endowment for use by future generations.

“One kid said, ‘Our grandparents made sure there was an endowment for us. We need to make sure that it’s there for our grandchildren,'” Geller recalled. “It’s interesting to see what areas the kids feel are important for Jewish organizations to be funding, how they think Jews ought to be giving their money.”

Justine Roach, a 16-year-old from West Los Angeles, is participating in the program at Temple Emanuel for the second year. Last year, she headed the team that investigated inner-city youth, which ended up supporting Camp Harmony.

“It felt so good and empowering, especially being a teenager and getting to make these kinds of decisions,” Roach said. “I gained responsibilities and it felt really nice. I think we’re about the right age to be making these types of decisions. In the future I’m going to be dealing with these issues, too.”

In addition to the practical experience MATCH provides, Geller said it has been a wonderful way to keep teenagers engaged in the life of the congregation after their bar and bat mitzvahs.

Geller said she had been thinking about creating such a program for a long time, and when a donor approached her looking for a program to fund, she jumped at the chance.

“This is a game that you can play — simulating a family foundation and asking kids to decide where they would give the money,” Geller said. “I had done that in confirmation classes and it always worked really well because it gave the kids the chance to think about something real, and I thought wow, what if we could really do it?”

Now it is not a simulation game, it’s the real thing. And students are even more engaged, Geller said. “It is a lot of money to them. None of them gives away $5,000 a year on their own, and they have the sense of working together and giving away a lot more money. It was very exhilarating to sit with the 10th-12th-graders this year, and to hear them wrestle with what it means to be a responsible citizen in this world.”

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Keeping My Hair Under Wraps

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Film, Opinion, Personals, Womans Voice / Judy Gruen

Recently, I found myself spellbound while watching “Girl With a Pearl Earring.” This film, based on the excellent Tracy Chevalier novel, is a fictional account of the history behind Vermeer’s famous painting of the same name.

The novel revolves around a servant girl, Grete, who became a secret assistant to the painter in his studio. In one scene, Vermeer accidentally glimpses Grete with her hair uncovered. The moment is electric. Grete, like all women of her social station, covered her hair at all times. It was as if Vermeer had caught her unclothed.

It was odd to feel such a kinship with a fictional character, and one who lived in the 17th century at that. But, like Grete, I also keep my hair covered in front of all but family members.

Over the years, I have begun to feel that my hair is a very private part of me. Revealing it has become an almost intimate act.

I never expected to feel this way. Years ago, I wrestled with the idea of living an Orthodox life. It was the most defining and difficult spiritual struggle of my life, and one that was not made quickly. While I was captivated with the timeless truths of the Torah, I insisted that I could never fulfill the mitzvah of covering my hair after I married.

The Torah considers a woman’s hair part of her crowning beauty. Covering it after marriage symbolizes not only the woman’s modesty but also her exclusive relationship with her husband.

For a long time I considered this idea to be repressive and anti-feminist, and could not make peace with it. But I had a problem: In my new circle of Orthodox acquaintances I kept meeting Orthodox married women, bewigged or wearing scarves or hats, who failed to match my unflattering stereotype of the Jewish Stepford wife. These women were intelligent, highly educated and lively. Almost none had grown up Orthodox, so I couldn’t claim they were covering up their locks by rote. Nearly all were baalei teshuva, or returnees to the faith, and they had chosen this spiritually rich lifestyle despite myriad available choices.

Even after I married and adhered to most Orthodox standards, I did not cover my hair. I wanted to want to do it, but I couldn’t bring myself to take on this monumental obligation. I attended lectures about hair covering, but left depressed because I had not found the beauty or inspiration I had sought. What did everyone else see in this that I could not see?

However, I no longer viewed the idea of hair covering as repressive, since Jewish men, both single and married, also wear garments that remind them of their unique obligations as Jews: the kippah on their heads and the four-cornered tzitzit under their shirts. I had learned enough by then to understand that these guidelines were designed to help us incorporate spiritual awareness into the physical aspects of our lives, including how we dress.

Eventually, I began covering my hair to set a good example for my sons.

After all, how could I expect them to make blessings before and after eating, wear their little kippot and perform other mitzvot, when I failed to uphold such an obvious one?

Still, it remained a struggle. I vainly missed compliments about my hair’s beauty. I missed feeling the wind in my hair. Still searching for meaning behind the practice, I continued to drill friends about their feelings about it. When one friend said that covering her hair made her feel special, like royalty, something finally clicked. Jews are supposed to be God’s chosen people and should dress the part. Stylish, modest clothing and head coverings did the trick for her. I liked this idea of hair covering making me special.

These days, when women and girls bare so much skin in public, I know that my manner of dress makes me something of an oddity. Looking at me in my long skirt, mid-sleeve blouse, and hat or beret on my head, many can instantly identify me as an Orthodox Jew.

I like being marked this way. I appreciate how the Torah has taught me to resist the ordinary and the faddish in an effort to become exemplary. My modest attire and hair covering remind me that I must always separate the private from the public. My body, including my hair, is private. I’ve also been heartened by the book, “Hide & Seek,” an anthology of essays about hair covering, edited by Lynne Schreiber (Urim Publications, 2003). The writers in this book are an eclectic group of Jewish women — not all of them Orthodox — who came to the decision to cover their hair in many ways, some of them unexpected and dramatic. Reading these women’s stories, including their struggles with a mitzvah that they find both important yet difficult, I realized I had more company than I would have expected.

When Vermeer saw Grete’s beautiful, naked locks, it added a level of intimacy to their relationship. It took me years to realize this, but eventually, I found that reserving my hair only for the closest of family members — and especially for my husband — has done the same for me, too.

Judy Gruen is a columnist for Religion News Service and an award-winning author of two humor books. Read more of her columns at www.judygruen.com.

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It’s Time to Return to Our Mission

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Opinion / David Klinghoffer

Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was the most important American religious event of the past year. For Christians, its effects were quite positive, as viewers already committed to belief in Jesus were roused to renew their faith through the heartrending story of the Crucifixion.

For America’s Jewish community, the effects of the film can also be positive, if we draw the right retrospective lessons not from the movie itself but from the controversy that still surrounds it.

This time a year ago, more than a month before its release, “The Passion” was drawing tremendous hostility from Jewish leaders. Though Anti-Defamation League (ADL) national director Abraham Foxman has denied that his group predicted pogroms, in fact, the ADL harped on supposed parallels between Gibson’s movie and medieval Passion plays. The latter led to mass violence against Jews, so the obvious implication was that the former could also.

In an article in The New Republic — Jewish-owned and edited — a Jewish professor of religious studies, Paula Fredriksen, in all earnestness stated not as speculation but as a certainty that when the film appeared in countries like Poland, Spain, France and Russia, savagery would erupt: “When violence breaks out, Mel Gibson will have a much higher authority than professors and bishops to answer to.”

Of course none of this happened — despite the fact that, thanks to the widely publicized attacks spearheaded by the ADL, many more people saw Gibson’s “Passion” than would otherwise have done so.

What was expected to bring on this tsunami of Jew-hatred, not least from the same evangelical Christians who are among the State of Israel’s most ardent supporters?

As the Christian Bible tells the story and as Gibson does, the Jewish leadership of Jesus’ time handed him over to the Romans for crucifixion. This happens to be approximately the version of history given in the Talmud and by the past millennium’s greatest Jewish sage, Maimonides. I say “approximately” because, in truth, Jewish tradition ascribes full responsibility for Jesus’ death to certain Jews of the time. If Gibson is an anti-Semite, so is Maimonides.

Apart from exonerating Gibson, the lessons to be drawn from the “Passion” imbroglio have to do with the tactics our community has come to favor in fighting supposed anti-Semitism. There is indeed anti-Semitism out there to be fought, almost exclusively in the Arab world. But sadly, our Jewish culture places tremendous emphasis on sniffing out hostility to us where it barely exists, namely among Christians, and spends a fortune doing so.

If you doubt the prestige and authority we assign to groups like the Anti-Defamation League and its West Coast equivalent, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, just ask yourself who, on moral questions, is the American Jewish voice that gets more attention, that is treated with more grave, earnest seriousness than any other?

It belongs not to a rabbi or any other spiritual exemplar but to the ADL’s Foxman.

Don’t blame him. This well-meaning man is just doing his job, which is to raise the approximately $40 million budget that Jews yearly pour into the ADL. Anti-defamation groups stay in business by motivating us to donate. That requires continually proving the urgent relevance of what they do.

There is an automatic, built-in institutional motivation to sound the alarm at the slightest hint of anti-Semitism, and to keep the alarm screaming in newspapers and TV as long and as loud as possible.

The non-Jewish media are complicit in this. But so are we. By elevating anti-Semitism over virtually any other community concern — like education or spirituality, for example — we do ourselves more harm than good.

The risk of alienating Christian allies is not the most serious issue. Religious Christians love the Jewish state for much the same reason that religious Jews do. Both see Israel as occupying a special place in God’s regard, and both see it as playing an important future role in the world’s history.

Christian affection for Israel, and for Jews, is not going to go away anytime soon.

I worry more about the function God assigned to the Jewish people 3,000 years ago at Mount Sinai. There, He called us to be a “kingdom of priests” (Exodus 19:6), and many passages in the Hebrew prophets make clear what this should mean. We are called to function as ministers to the world, which is meant to be our congregation, teaching other peoples about God.

It is a pity that, in the eyes of our congregation, the most serious moral message we have to impart has nothing to do with the Torah or with God. It’s about a generalized paranoia, an ingrained habit of issuing mistaken alarms about phantom anti-Semitism, and then to deny we ever made a mistake.

The time has come to acknowledge our mistake, even to apologize — not to Gibson, but to God. Jews have a job in the world, which He gave us. We’re not doing it now, but if we opted to reconsider where our community spends its money, how we assign our priorities, we could get down to business.

This article originally appeared in The Jerusalem Post. The author’s new book, “Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History,” will be published in March.

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When Jews Wax Anti-Semitic

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Politics / Cathy Young

The expectation that a commentator’s views must be in lockstep with his or her ethnic, religious or sexual identity is always distasteful — particularly when blacks, women, gays or Jews are labeled “self-hating” when they refuse to toe the perceived party line.

Then again, maybe the “self-hating” label is justified on occasion. That’s what I found myself thinking when I read a stunning recent commentary by author and pundit Eric Alterman on the British Muslim Council’s decision to boycott the ceremony commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The reason given for the boycott was that the commemoration of Nazi death camp victims did not include the Palestinian victims of Israeli “genocide.”

On his blog at msnbc.com, Alterman sneered at critics of the boycott.

“I’m a Jew, but I don’t expect Arabs to pay tribute to my people’s suffering while Jews, in the form of Israel and its supporters — and in this I include myself — are causing much of theirs,” he wrote, suggesting that one might as well expect gays to honor “the suffering of gay-bashing bigots.”

Alterman noted that “the Palestinians have also suffered because of the Holocaust. They lost their homeland as the world — in the form of the United Nations — reacted to European crimes by awarding half of Palestine to the Zionists…. To ask Arabs to participate in a ceremony that does not recognize their own suffering but implicitly endorses the view that caused their catastrophe is morally idiotic.”

One hardly knows where to begin. There is, for instance, the way Alterman not-so-deftly conflates Muslims with Arabs and Arabs with dispossessed Palestinians, and then declares Jews responsible for “much” of the suffering of Muslims everywhere. Not the brutal theocracies such as the Taliban, which have tried to impose a medieval form of Islam through terror; not the equally brutal secular dictators of the Arab world, such as Iraq’s now-deposed Saddam Hussein or the corrupt monarchies. No, it’s the Jews — all lumped together, including long-dead Holocaust victims.

By Alterman’s logic, every Muslim is justified in viewing every Jew as the enemy. Alterman frets that his words will be “twisted beyond recognition,” but it’s hard to see how they can be twisted into something more indecent than they already are. (While he counts himself among Israel’s supporters, he seems to regard the creation of Israel itself — not just the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — as an Arab “catastrophe.”)

Call it self-hatred or something less psychoanalytic; the bottom line is that this is the kind of rhetoric that, coming from a non-Jew, would be clearly seen as anti-Semitic. This is not exclusively a phenomenon of the pro-Palestinian left. Ironically, in the same blog item, Alterman castigates a conservative Jewish commentator for giving aid and comfort to anti-Semitism — and, ironically, he’s right.

The commentator is Rabbi Daniel Lapin, head of a group called Toward Tradition, who has been in the forefront of the alliance between conservative Jews and the Christian right. Lapin recently unleashed a bizarre tirade in The Jewish Press against “the role that people with Jewish names play in the coarsening of our culture.”

His target is the movie, “Meet the Fockers,” in which Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand play a sex-obsessed Jewish couple, as well as radio sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer, “shock jock” Howard Stern and trashy daytime talk show host Jerry Springer.

Rather shockingly, Lapin quotes Adolf Hitler, who accused Jews of spreading “literary filth, artistic trash and theatrical idiocy” in pre-World War II Germany. His ostensible point is that the Jewish community should confront and criticize Jewish perpetrators of cultural degeneracy to avoid giving ammunition to Jew-haters. But he provides such ammunition himself, when he misleadingly singles out Jewish entertainers for blame — as if Jewish contributions to art and culture were limited to the “coarsening” kind.

Such tactics are not new for Lapin. During the controversy over Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” he wrote that it was hypocritical for Jewish groups to protest what many saw as the film’s anti-Semitic themes, given that Jewish Hollywood executives had been involved with allegedly anti-Christian fare such as the 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Never mind that “The Last Temptation” was directed and scripted by non-Jews.

We live in a time when anti-Semitic rhetoric is creeping into the respectable mainstream: on the left, in the form of Israel-bashing; on the right, in assertions that Christians own this country and should “take it back.” I’m not sure whether such rhetoric is any more reprehensible when it comes from Jews. But it is certainly no better.

Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine and a Boston Globe columnist.

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Why the Web Wins

Mayoral Magic

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman / Rob Eshman

At your next dinner party, here’s a surefire way to bring the sparkling conversation to a dead stop. In the midst of all the banter about the Oscars and Westside real estate prices and Michael Jackson, chime in with, “So, what do you think of the mayoral race?”

Go ahead. Ask it. Within five minutes, you’ll see tumbleweeds blowing through your living room.

There is a political junkie class in the city for whom the mayoral race has been the issue over the past few months. But beyond that group and their co-dependents in the media, the level of interest in who will be the next leader of the largest city in the most populous state in the world’s most powerful nation is close to nil.

“I don’t really care,” said a friend of mine tied in with the entertainment industry, “and I don’t know anyone who does.” He paused for a moment. “Why is that?”

The Los Angeles Times editorialized on this question a few weeks back, but the Times and the other media is part of the problem, with our largely predictable, dutiful and resolutely plain coverage. This is a race that has to be sold to voters — why it’s important, what’s at stake, who stands to win and lose –and most coverage doesn’t appeal beyond the public access news chat set.

Here at The Journal, we’ve run several insightful columns and had some solid initial coverage. But have we done enough to goose potential voters?

Many in the media blame the candidates themselves. All the candidates are Democrats, all are decent, safe men, nary a grandstander, bully or bigmouth among them. They have their 20-point traffic plans and 30-page crime plans, but they seem strangely detached from the here and now. They haven’t jumped on the volatile issues of the day — the shooting of 13-year-old Devon Brown by an LAPD officer after Williams stole a car, the closure of King/Drew Medical Center — and staked out a controversial or challenging position. Can you imagine a New York City’s mayoral race that doesn’t involve the words controversial, volatile or challenging?

The last multicandidate election to spark widespread interest in Los Angeles was the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. Even the local television news covered it. The Deaniacs, the Kerryites, the Clarkettes — people in this town were passionate, Brentwood was thick with fundraisers and policy papers on early childhood education and universal health care actually circulated alongside weekend grosses.

With only three weeks to go to Election Day, how can we recapture the kind of democratic magic that only Iraqi Shiites and Kurds have known since?

I have two strategies. To all in the entertainment industry who plunged headlong into the presidential primary but think civic politics is beneath you, I suggest thinking of the current field of five men as midseason replacements for last summer’s cast.

In the role of Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt, we have Mayor James Hahn. Quiet, no great shakes on the stump, but a solid vote getter with down-the-middle policies. Bernard Parks, city councilman and former police chief, is Connecticut’s Sen. Joe Lieberman. A bit dull on camera, but very engaging and direct in person, and no pushover to traditional Democratic interest groups. City Councilman Richard Alarcman is Howard Dean, the new Democratic Party Chair. He gets in some good zingers in the debates, maybe appears a bit too left for some, but in governing has been much more pragmatic. As Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, there’s his former Los Angeles campaign chair, City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa. The putative front-runner, the party pick, Villaraigosa has 1,000 times more charisma than Kerry but, well, they’ve both lost the big one once. That leaves Gen. Wesley Clark for former assembly speaker Bob Hertzberg — not a terrible fit. Both pragmatic Democrats with solid Republican affiliations, both a bit tentative about joining the race, though they each warmed up to the challenge after a while, though Hertzberg hugs more people in a day than Clark probably has all last year.

Does that help? The comparisons are crude, as many analogies — especially tongue-in-cheek ones — must be. But at least they help provide a hook for those who otherwise couldn’t tell Alarcman from the Alamo. Anyway, take heart, this time a Democrat will definitely win — how often can you say that these days?

As our columnist Raphael Sonenshein has pointed out, although Jews represent just 6 percent of the population, we make up 18 percent of the voters in municipal elections. The statistics are even more skewed for donations and activism among individual Jews. So although we might need less encouragement than other voters, the apathy is still there, and that’s a shame. Crime, traffic, failing schools, economic development, poor air and dirty water — these are issues that affect all of us every hour of every day. They are the stuff of City Hall, and who sits there does matter.

We’ve just completed the last of our in-house sit-downs with each of the major candidates, and we’ll publish the fruits of those interviews in our March 4 issue. (The election is March 8.)

In the meantime, take time to do your own research, seek out and get to know something about these men. Because whether Los Angeles thrives or declines depends in no small part on the person who leads it.

In his soon-to-be-published book, “The City: A Global History” (Random House), Journal columnist Joel Kotkin writes that the world’s great cities have survived marauders, sieges and all manners of disasters. For these cities, even utter destruction was not final. But what the citizens of every great city must have is a “peculiar and strong attachment, sentiments that separate one specific place from others.” In the end, Kotkin writes, cities are held together, “by a consciousness that unites their people in a shared identity.”

I myself am looking at these candidates to see who best engenders and conveys that sense of common purpose, of shared greatness. I want a mayor who stands for what Kotkin calls, “the powerful moral vision that holds cities together.”

If he also supports a subway to the Westside, that would be nice, too.

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You Are What You Wear

Leave a Comment / Torah / Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin

Have you ever read in an advertisement inviting you to buy an overpriced suit or necktie that “It’s true, clothes do make the man”?

Do clothes make the man or woman? On the one hand, we’d like to think that people aren’t affected by something as superficial as clothing. But on the other hand, it does make a big difference when people are appropriately dressed. For example, an undertaker must wear conservative clothing in order to achieve the desired effect. Can you imagine Chuckles, the Mortician Clown, bedecked in red nose and floppy shoes officiating at a funeral? He probably wouldn’t stay in business too long (although, this is California).

And today, even many public schools (yes, public schools) around the country have adopted school uniforms. I think it’s a great idea. For one thing, being the one in charge of waking up my children for school in the morning, I know what it’s like for my kids to first think about what they’re going to wear for the coming day, and then to begin the scavenger hunt of actually finding the blue sweatshirt that goes with the designer khaki pants. Life would be a lot easier if they knew every morning exactly what they were going to wear.

But there’s another reason why uniforms make sense, which relates back to Chuckles the Mortician. Clothes do affect us; not only the way others look at us, but also the way we feel about ourselves. I feel a big difference when I’m wearing a tie, rather than when I’m not wearing one. I just don’t feel official — or rabbinical — without a tie, and I believe it affects my ability to be rabbinical when I’m tie-less.

Our children’s attitudes are also affected greatly by their attire. When I see two kids wearing what passes for casual clothes these days — low-rider torn jeans (the ones that allow you to see the polka-dot boxers underneath) — my mind conjures the jargon of, “Yo! Wassup?” Whereas, when I see a young man with his white turtleneck speaking to a young lady wearing a plaid wool skirt, I imagine something like this:

“Hello, Priscilla, what did you think of our homework reading from Chaucer?”

“Oh, the pathos of it all was just so powerful.”

Children, too, will have different attitudes about themselves and their studies if they are surrounded by a somewhat more formal environment.

What does the Torah have to say about clothes? In the book of Exodus, we learn about the special priestly garments that all priests (Kohanim) are supposed to wear when working in the Temple. The Torah declares that these special clothes are to be for “honor and glory.” Among other things, these clothes include a special tunic, turban and breeches. A regular Kohen wears four special garments, and the high priest wears eight. If a Kohen attempts to bring an offering in the Temple without any one of his special garments, his service is rendered invalid. The commentaries offer several reasons for this.

First, a Kohen working in the Temple is a public servant, almost like a soldier or policeman, with a specific duty to perform. Just as a soldier must wear his uniform while on duty to make it “official,” so must the Kohen. Others explain that the priestly garments are a sign of royalty, since the Kohanim are of aristocratic stock. Others explain that clothes are what distinguish human beings from animals, and so the right clothes accentuate man’s ascendancy over the beast.

Still others explain that one’s attitude, one’s approach to the issue at hand, is deeply affected by what he or she is wearing. Before the Kohen can embark on the holiest of activities, his entire environment must be aligned with that mindset of holiness; hence, he needs clothing that is appropriate for this holy calling.

As a teacher and a parent, I know how much children are affected by their environments. Friends, parents and the media all weigh very heavily upon their development. But some of the smaller things that we take for granted also have profound effects. Clothing is one of those things, which is why, even though sometimes my children resent it, I am glad that their school has an official uniform.

On the other hand, low-rider jeans do look comfortable.

Rabbi Daniel N. Korobkin is spiritual leader of Kehillat Yavneh.

You Are What You Wear Read More »

Death Spotlights Old Circumcision Rite

Leave a Comment / Circumcision, Community, Health, Judaism, Kids & Teens, Opinion / Kelly Hartog

The death of one infant boy from herpes and the infection of two others has focused attention on an ancient practice that is still used in some ultra-Orthodox communities as they circumcise babies.

As New York City health officials continue to investigate whether Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer had infected the three boys, here in Los Angeles, while people have expressed shock at the story, they are even more surprised that the custom is still in practice at all.

Metzizah b’peh — loosely translated as oral suction — is the part of the circumcision ceremony where the mohel removes the blood from the baby’s member; these days the removal of the blood is usually done using a sterilized glass tube, instead of with the mouth, as the Talmud suggests.

While it’s not known whether Fischer carries the herpes virus, the city ordered him to stop performing metzizah b’peh by mouth and to use a sterile tube and wear surgical gloves when performing a circumcision.

But is anyone else practicing it?

Los Angeles rabbis and mohels say that the practice is not prevalent, confined primarily to Chasidic groups.

“Even within the Chasidic community the procedure is restricted to only parts of that community,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, director of Project Next Step at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “And in the non-Chasidic community, some of the most [Orthodox] conservative thinkers have gone on record as being opposed to the procedure.”

The demographic is so small, that there are no statistics available on exact numbers that still perform metzizah b’peh or even which Chasidic groups still practice it.

And it’s not a custom that’s about to gain popularity.

“I certainly don’t see it as becoming more prominent,” said Rabbi Daniel Korobkin of Kehillat Yavneh, who has been a licensed mohel for 15 years. Korobkin stressed that at this stage of the investigation, fears should be tempered.

While all those interviewed acknowledged the death of the baby as a terrible tragedy, none believed there should be any reason for people to panic.

“Most Jews aren’t Orthodox here,” said Samuel Kunin, a board-certified urologist who has been a mohel for 15 years catering to the non-Orthodox Los Angeles community. “I don’t think, in general, it’s going to affect many people. So far, nobody’s even questioned me about the issue.”

One of the most popular mohels in the community said he only had one person question him recently because of the case. “I’ve been doing this for over 25 years,” Rabbi Yehuda Lebovics said. He said that people trust him. “They know I’ve never had an infection of any kind, and that I clean my instruments, wear gloves and wash my hands.”

Korobkin added that while people are definitely aware of the current incident, he has not received any anxious phone calls from parents who have brit milah ceremonies approaching. That may have something to do with the fact that Korobkin has only performed metzizah b’peh on his own sons. “Because their immune systems are closer to mine, and both my wife and I knew we had no communicable diseases,” he explained. “But I would not take the risk for myself personally, because I wouldn’t want to contract or transmit a disease from or to a child.”

Korobkin also refuses to perform metzizah b’peh without the tube — even if parents ask.

“No matter how long a guy’s beard is or how pious a person is, you can still contract herpes or even HIV through a blood transfusion,” he said.

While he acknowledged the Talmud’s reasoning of metzizah b’peh at the time it was written was to prevent any unhealthy coagulation of the blood, today, he argued, using a device that ensures the mohel’s mouth doesn’t come into direct contact with the child is just as effective and acceptable.

“We know the practice is not based on anything in Jewish law, it’s something that is meta-halachic,” Korobkin said. “So the question is, can you really justify endangering a child’s health for something that only provides a nonhalachic benefit? And the logical conclusion is no. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Lebovics, who also only practices metzizah b’peh with a tube, agreed. “Since the spread of AIDS and herpes has also become more prevalent, it’s not good for either me or my patients. I stopped doing [metzizah b’peh] many many years ago.”

Korobkin also cited an article in the August 2004 edition of the journal Pediatrics, in which scientific medical studies proved that eight babies in Israel contracted the herpes simplex virus following ritual circumcision using metzizah b’peh.

“And the most important overriding principle for any mohel, the first directive we receive in our training, is that the child’s safety is paramount,” he said. “It comes before anything. If there’s even a question that there might be a problem, we always delay the brit.”

So why would anyone take the risk, however small, of performing metzizah b’peh?

“The Talmud also speaks of a mystical concept that is supposedly beneficial for the child when metzizah b’peh is performed,” Korobkin said.

That is apparently something that those who continue to practice metzizah b’peh are not willing to relinquish.

Both Korobkin and Adlerstein confessed to not knowing what the exact benefits were. However, according to Adlerstein, “some people see these nonhalachic sources as an integral part of the brit milah.”

He also pointed out that in particular branches of Chasidism “there is a tradition that believes every mitzvah operates on both the surface plane and the mystical plane. It all ties in to the greater rules about how God ordered the cosmos.”

Whatever the reasoning, people affiliated with the anti-circumcision movement used Internet blogs and chat rooms to spread the story when it initially broke in New York, and spread accusations that equated rabbis with pedophiles. However, none of those interviewed feared a major backlash against the community.

“Mohels view themselves as physicians,” Korobkin said.

As to the accusations of pedophilia, he said, “There’s nothing glamorous or sensual about a bloody infant phallus. Metzizah b’peh is both unprovocative and unsensual. It’s not a desirable thing to do by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who wants to take a stab at Orthodox practices doesn’t need to take this particular issue to do that.”

Kunin agreed, saying, “I think this is going to have a small effect, if any at all. And then only in the Orthodox community [where metzizah b’peh is practiced]. Anti-circumcision people have an amazing way of manipulating the media.”

Lebovics also felt the issue was being blown out of proportion, but conceded that “anything negative about something Jewish is not good for the Jewish people.”

If, however, the New York City Health Board discovers that the three babies did in fact contract herpes from Fischer, then, and only then, Korobkin said, “a stance should be taken by the rabbinical bodies; some kind of cautionary release, that every mohel should be regularly tested for communicable diseases, and that he should not be practicing metzizah b’peh. However, to say across the board it should not be performed, I don’t think that’s something that should be regulated, as long as the proper precautions are taken.”

Adlerstein added: “Most of those regulations are currently in practice, with mohels who do regularly check themselves. I believe that this issue will be and is already being addressed by groups that will protect the health of the babies.”

So far, he continued, there has been no causal link established in Fischer’s case. “There’s no smoking gun here.”

The real issue here, he said, “is the risks of the state intruding on important matters of personal choice, such as religious beliefs. Society has sort of gone on record as being reluctant to intrude on personal choice. And there are far greater health risks these days, including risks in pregnancy, or unprotected gay sex, that far outweigh metzizah b’peh that has been practiced for decades and decades.”

The Great Mohel Question

Choosing the person who will perform a surgical procedure on your 8-day-old son is not a decision that should be taken lightly.

While it may sound obvious, most mohels say, “Pick someone with whom you feel comfortable.”

And that tends to be the case, with many in the area finding their work via word of mouth. Usually they are approached by someone saying, “You did my friend’s, cousin’s, brother’s son’s brit, and we want you to do our son’s.”

Parents should feel comfortable enough around the mohel to ask any questions, no matter how silly they may seem.

Beyond that, there are several other considerations to take into account. First you must make the decision whether you want to use an Orthodox, Conservative or Reform mohel. If you want anesthesia to be used on your baby, you’ll need to find a mohel who is also a licensed medical practitioner. Mohelim who are not medical practitioners are not allowed to administer anesthesia, although many use creams that contain mild anesthetic properties.

Other issues that parents should take into consideration include the type of ceremony the mohel intends to perform, how many years’ experience he or she has and yes, how much they charge for their services.

Parents should also try to ask more technical questions regarding the actual procedure itself, including the sterilization of the mohel’s instruments and whether or not he or she uses surgical gloves.

Most importantly though, the brit milah is a major Jewish life-cycle event. It’s important that both you and the mohel are in sync with how the religious part of the ceremony and naming of the baby will be conducted. — KH

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