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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

July 28, 2005

Picking the Perfect Financial Planner

Leave a Comment / Culture, Education, Finance /

Pablo Picasso once quipped, “I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” And wouldn’t we all? To have money, and all the wondrous things that money can provide, without the hassles and headaches of tending to that money –it would seem almost, er, surreal. Yet if anyone could make Picasso’s dream come true, it would be a capable financial planner.

Suppose you determine that you need a financial planner, where in this great, big American landscape would you find a good one?

Ask yourself why

Financial planners — whose business cards may also say financial adviser, financial consultant or wealth manager — vary widely in their practices and expertise. Most, if not all, planners will manage or provide guidance on investments. Others may offer counsel on everything from how to balance a checkbook and reduce debt to how to lower taxes or set up an estate plan. Some will work with you for a day to help you get your fiscal affairs in order. Others prefer longer-term arrangements. Take a good look at your own strengths and weaknesses around money, and ask yourself where you most need a helping hand.

Gather names and brochures

Start by drafting a list of potential planners. Begin close to home. Ask family, friends and business colleagues for referrals. You can also contact either the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (www.napfa.org) or the Financial Planning Association (www.fpanet.org) for a referral to members in your area. Some people are OK working with a planner from afar, perhaps even in another state. Ask yourself as to how you would feel about that.

Look for experience and credentials

Just about anyone can call himself/herself a financial planner, and just about anyone does. That’s why other, more standard credentials are important. A business degree, such as an MBA, is a good thing. Some CPAs and attorneys specialize in financial planning. In addition, the designation CFP, which stands for certified financial planner, has become widely recognized as a mark of competency over the past several years. To attain the CFP, a planner must meet certain educational requirements, pass a fairly tough exam and then have a requisite amount of practical experience.

Toss the bad apples

Beyond having credentials, a financial planner (or his employer) should also be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Find out by asking to see a candidate’s ADV (adviser) form. Anyone who professionally gives investment advice is required to provide such a form. It will provide you with lots of interesting information about the planner and his practice, such as how long he’s been in business, how many clients he has, and how much money he manages. It will also tell you about any disciplinary history for unethical conduct. Check, too, with the local Better Business Bureau (www.bbb.org) and the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (www.cfp.net) to make sure the planner isn’t prone to lapses of good judgment.

Stroll into the office

After you’ve gathered a list of planners who look clean on paper, it’s time to meet face to face. Schedule an initial appointment. There should be no charge. Although you’re no expert in the field, you can still get a pretty good sense as to whether a planner knows his stuff. Ask what sets a planner apart from other planners. Ask for his philosophy on money and whether he/she has a clearly defined strategy for financial success. As for investing, ask how he/she does it, and whether his choices in investments are based on hunches or on academic research.

Check out the bill

Be clear about how, and how much, a planner will charge you. Some financial planners charge by the hour, some will charge you a percentage of your assets “under management” and others will make money off commissions from the products they sell you. Many planners who do not sell products or take commissions (fee-only planners) feel that they can be more objective in the advice they give you, and in the investments they suggest for you. Commissioned planners argue that any honest planner would never be swayed by commissions into making bad investment choices. Like astronomers and astrologers, the two groups sometimes seem to hate each other, but there’s no reason that you need to pick sides.

“You want someone who is honest and really knows what he or she is doing; that matters much more than how that person is paid,” said Helen Salazar-Realini, a certified financial planner.

Is there chemistry

Financial planning is very much unlike, say, auto mechanics. It can get awfully personal at times. A competent planner working on your long-term financial goals should be asking you questions about your retirement dreams, your health and, perhaps, even the quality of your marriage and your relationship with your children and grandchildren. (Well, do you want them in your will or not?) If you’re going to be working with a planner for a long time, the two of you should click.

Russell Wild is both a financial journalist and a fee-only investment adviser based in Allentown, Pa.

 

Picking the Perfect Financial Planner Read More »

Don’t Stress About Your Stock Portfolio

Leave a Comment / Culture, Family, Finance /

Back in the go-go years of the stock market, when it seemed that everyone was getting rich, a certain recently retired rabbi started buying shares in a handful of high-flying Internet stocks. The shares skyrocketed. The man bought more. Within no time, he became a millionaire many times over. Well, we don’t have to tell you what happened next. The bear market came, and stock selling for hundreds of dollars a share began selling for pennies.

“I had lost it all,” the rabbi said. “I went into depression. I even wondered if my life was worth living.”

Today, Rabbi Benjamin Blech, author of “Taking Stock: A Spiritual Guide to Rising Above Life’s Financial Ups and Downs” (AMACOM, 2003), wonders mostly how he ever got so frenzied about money — both its gain, and its loss. Of course, he is not alone. Perhaps you didn’t sink your nest egg into dot-com stocks, but chances are very good that money — or lack of it — sometimes throws you off kilter.

“Money is, without question, one of the biggest causes of anxiety and stress in our society,” said Dr. Robert Jaffe, a psychotherapist in Encino. “Fortunately, there are tools we can use to conquer that anxiety.”

Start with: What does money mean to you?

“Stress, of whatever kind, comes from fear. Stress over money is no exception. To deal effectively with that stress, you must know what it is you are truly afraid of,” Jaffe said. “For some of us, money represents security, so losing it would mean a loss of security. But for others, money may symbolize happiness, freedom or power.”

Question your core beliefs.

After you’ve made the connection between say, money and security, or money and happiness, ask yourself where that notion comes from.

“Many of our beliefs about money come from our parents,” Jaffe said. “Others come from the constant bombardment of advertising which says that our lives are somehow deficient, and that only by buying ‘stuff’ will we be fulfilled. But ‘stuff’ won’t ever fulfill you.”

In fact, a number of studies show that the rich — even those who own mansions, private jets and polo ponies — are, at best, only slightly happier than the rest of us.

“And many people with a lot of money are very unhappy,” Jaffe said.

Imagine the worst-case scenario.

Money can often tap into our fear of survival. But for most of us, even a sudden loss of most of our wealth — ouch! — would not jeopardize our survival.

“Try to picture a worst-case financial scenario, and be honest with yourself,” Jaffe said. “Say, for example, you were to lose your house. Could you still rent an apartment? OK, visualize yourself in that apartment. It’s not the end of the world. You’ll have less space, but you’ll also have less cleaning and straightening, and no lawn to mow, and no trash cans to blow away.”

Pinpoint the anxiety.

Brent Kessel, president of Abacus Wealth Partners, a fee-only financial planning firm in Pacific Palisades, is also an avid yoga practitioner. To combat money stress, Kessel suggests an exercise often used by yogis: “Sit quietly and ask yourself where in the body you are feeling the stress. Is it in your shoulders? Your gut? Is it a weighty kind of pain or a stabbing pain? Is it static or moving? There’s no answer in the observation,” Kessel said. “The answer is in the observation itself.” That may sound odd, he admits, but pinpointing the anxiety can often help control it.

Set the alarm clock.

“The very worst time to make a financial decision is when you are under financial stress,” Kessel said. “You may make a bad decision, which will then inevitably lead to more stress.”

He suggests that if you are feeling anxiety-ridden about money, put off all big decision making until tomorrow. If the decision can’t wait until then, at least wait five minutes. Set an alarm clock. Use the time to roll through the exercises above.

Value yourself for what you are.

“One day, back when my portfolio was a crazy obsession, my wife asked me why I was calling my broker so often. I told her that I wanted to know what I was worth. Right there, I had a revelation,” said Blech, the former dot-com millionaire. “I repeated those words to myself: ‘to know what I was worth.’ Ridiculous! I’m a rabbi, a parent, a teacher, a mate and lots of other things. I’m worth much more than my portfolio, regardless of its size…. And that’s true for every one of us.”

Russell Wild is both a financial journalist and a fee-only investment adviser based in Allentown, Pa.

 

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L.A. Shoah Survivor, Liberator to Reunite

Leave a Comment / Community, Family, Old Stories, Power, Seniors /

After 60 years and 10 days, Samuel Goetz finally found the GI who liberated him on May 6, 1945.

On that sunny spring day in Austria, Goetz was a 16-year-old survivor of three Nazi camps, weighing less than 80 pounds. Robert Persinger, a Midwest farm boy, was a 21-year- old sergeant in the 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Group. He commanded the lead tank that broke down the gates of the Ebensee concentration camp.

Their fleeting encounter — they never even exchanged names — is engraved in the memory of Goetz, and, 60 years later, he discovered that it also left an indelible impression for Persinger. The two men, who finally reconnected by phone, have made plans to meet in person this fall, when the ex-sergeant will be honored by a Los Angeles group of Holocaust survivors.

This is how the lives of the Jewish boy from Tarnow, Poland, and of the soldier from Wever, Iowa, intersected in the last days of the war in Europe.

“I had been eating charcoal for nourishment for the last few days when on Sunday, May 6, I left Block No. 6 and made my way to the main gate at Ebensee,” recalled Dr. Sam Goetz, 77, now a faculty member at the Southern California School of Optometry.

“I crossed the dreaded roll call square, whose eerie silence, normally punctuated by the SS men’s screams, seemed unnatural,” Goetz continues. “Suddenly, my eyes registered the unbelievable sight of a tank moving up the road.

“The gate opened and a man in an olive brown uniform emerged from the tank. As hollow-cheeked figures kissed his hands and swept him off his feet, I saw a large white star on the tank. At that moment, after five years in the ghetto, as forced laborer and as concentration camp prisoner, I became a free man.”

The soldier in the olive brown uniform was Persinger; his memory of the scene is just as clear.

“As we approached on the gravel road to the camp, we saw masses of human beings that appeared almost as ghosts standing in mud and filth up to their ankles behind the high wire fence,” he said. “None of us had ever seem human beings in this terrible situation before. We started to toss rations and energy bars to them until our supply was depleted.

“The stench of the dead bodies was almost unbearable,” he added. “We went to the crematorium, where there were stacks of bodies piled like cordwood. If you weren’t sick by now, you would be before you left. At the same time, you wanted to cry.

“We had seen terrible sights in combat across Europe, but it was beyond anyone’s imagination,” he added.

Persinger and his crew started confiscating food supplies and large kettles in the nearby village, using their tank guns as persuaders, and made a rich thick soup for the starving camp inmates.

After liberation, Goetz worked for four years in a displaced persons camp in Italy, where he met his future wife, Gertrude.

After finally receiving a visa to enter the United States, Goetz resumed the education cut short at age 11 by the Nazi invasion of Poland. He eventually earned a doctorate degree in optometry from the UCLA School of Public Health.

He became a prominent spokesman for the survivor community, founded the UCLA Chair of Holocaust Studies, currently serves on the content committee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and has received numerous awards for contributions to humanitarian causes.

Goetz recaptured the story of his life in the terse, yet moving, autobiography, “I Never Saw My Face” (Rutledge Books)

But Goetz could never forget the youthful GI who symbolized the transition from slavery to freedom.

Goetz went to Washington to search through the databases of the National Archives and the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum for the name of the U.S. unit that had liberated Ebensee, a sub-camp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. But he couldn’t discover the soldier’s identity.

Then, in late April, a patient named Val Rodriquez came in for an appointment.

Rodriquez had served with the U.S. occupation army in Austria in 1946 and befriended some former Spanish prisoners at Ebensee and Mauthausen.

He told Goetz that one of the speakers at the annual memorial services at Ebensee would be the GI who had commanded the lead tank.

Goetz couldn’t go, but gave Rodriquez his business card to pass on.

Persinger, whose father lost the Iowa family farm during the Depression, worked after his Army discharge in rural Illinois as a truck driver and plant manager for a garment rental service.

Now 81 and retired, Persinger lives with his wife Arlene in Loves Park, Ill. He does volunteer work for his local museum, church and veterans organization.

On May 16, Persinger called Goetz. In October, they’ll meet face to face, when the farm boy from Iowa will be honored at the annual luncheon of the “1939” Club, said William Elperin, president of the Holocaust survivors group.

When Persinger arrived at Ebensee, the camp held some 18,000 prisoners, mostly Poles, Italians and Spaniards, besides 2,000 Jews.

“It never came to mind who they were,” Persinger said. “They were all just starving human beings.”

 

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Political Journal

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Elections, Israel, Politics, United States /

Expatriates’ Vote

It’s long been more socially acceptable for Jews to immigrate to Israel than to emigrate out of it. Some Israelis feel that they’re abandoning the project of the Jewish state, not doing their part, not facing the same risks as those they leave behind.

So it’s somewhat understandable that Israelis living abroad have never been able to vote in Israel’s elections, even though other democracies make such allowances for their citizens abroad.

However, attitudes are shifting both here and in Israel. Between 150,000 and 300,000 expatriate Israelis live in the Los Angeles area, and some of them are pushing for the right to cast absentee ballots in Israeli elections. The Council of Israeli Community L.A., a group that organizes local cultural and political events for Israelis, is stoking the debate.

Israel “deals with the question of its own existence on a daily basis,” said Moshe Salem, president of the Tarzana-based nonprofit. So it is “in the interest of [Israel] to grant the Diaspora Israelis the right to vote.” Israelis in America “have a vested interest.” They “want to know what’s happening.”

Israel maintains about 350,000 Israelis on its voter rolls who can’t cast ballots because they live abroad.

“Granting voting rights would unite them around Israel, and means they will influence [non-Israeli] Jews around them,” Salem said.

He’s discussed the matter with Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Los Angeles Consul General Ehud Danoch, Israeli Maj. Gen. Doron Almog and several members of the Knesset. Salem reported that all have supported the idea.

Bills expanding balloting to overseas Israelis have been raised and defeated in several recent Knesset terms. In January, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he supported the notion; he even appointed a high-level committee to examine the details, the Jerusalem Post reported.

But earlier this month, opposition emerged from left-leaning Israeli parties, which fear introducing hundreds of thousands of absentee Jewish voters who are generally perceived to be more hawkish. The measure was defeated in the Knesset 25-23. It’ll be at least six months before the Knesset can take up the matter again.

Supporters point out that a growing Arab population could eventually eclipse Jewish voters, and Israelis from abroad could act as a counterbalance. Besides, many expats have served in the Israeli Defense Forces, pay taxes to Israel and intend to return some day.

A compromise that would honor individual rights ought to be within reach, given that numerous democracies around the world have successfully preserved voting rights for their citizens abroad. But any policy that could alter the balance of power between left and right and between Jews and Israeli Arabs is destined to be contentious.

“Everybody will be tuning in,” said Salem, describing the benefits of Israelis voting worldwide. “In a way, you’re affecting the entire Jewry outside of Israel. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it is going to happen.”

Battling Over Message

The college campus has always been a central battleground for hearts and minds — and that includes education about Israel. In Washington, that battle is engulfing H.R. 509, legislation being supported by a range of groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress (AJCongress).

The bill would re-authorize decades-old grants that pay for foreign affairs education, while simultaneously creating a new advisory board to review the instructional content of programs receiving funds. The aim, at least among Jewish supporters, is to balance perceived anti-Israel bias with other perspectives.

“What we’re having now in the college campuses is basically professors using their desks as pulpits for political propaganda,” said Sarah Stern, director of the office of governmental and public affairs for the AJCongress. These academics, she said, are “looking basically at the entire world through the paradigm that America is a colonial hegemonic occupier, and Israel is the persona non grata of nations.”

The underlying argument is not new, as right-wing groups have railed for years about professors brainwashing students with leftist ideology. Common complaints feature professors (like Columbia’s Joseph Massad) supposedly berating a student about Israeli or Zionist “war crimes,” accounts that often turn out to be exaggerated or provoked.

Many professors and Muslim groups, including the Council on American Islamic Relations, vigorously oppose the proposed advisory board as undue interference in academic freedom, because although the board cannot hire or fire academics, its recommendations to the secretary of education would be influential.

Blurring Church-State Separation

A number of Jewish groups are lining up against an education-related measure that could allow the Bush administration to further blur the line of separation between church and state.

At issue is an amendment, HR 2123, which would allow faith-based groups to limit hires to people of their faith in federally funded Head Start programs. Head Start provides child care and education services to low-income families. Amendment supporters, most of them Republican, call the issue “charitable choice.”

Jewish groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, are vehemently opposed, saying that charitable choice deviously groups overtly sectarian churches and synagogues together with service providers like Jewish Family Service by classifying all of them as faith-based organizations.

“The rubric ‘faith-based’ is a ruse,” said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council. “They’re trying to use the term in order to get pervasively sectarian organizations into play.”

If the amendment passes, legislators who side with the Jewish groups might have to vote against the entire Head Start re-authorization, which means hurting the low-income families who benefit from the program.

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Gaza Settler Pullout Protest Draws 500

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Elections, Israel, Politics, Power, United States /

More than 500 demonstrators, mostly Orthodox Jews, gathered in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles last weekend to oppose Israel’s planned, upcoming pullout of settlers from Gaza.

The two-hour Sunday afternoon rally drew the largest gathering yet of several recent anti-pullout events in Los Angeles. It took place in the Miracle Mile District near the Beverly-La-Brea and Fairfax neighborhoods, and slowed traffic on Wilshire Boulevard.

So far, the Israeli government has successfully resisted attempts to derail the Gaza pullout, saying the withdrawal ultimately will enhance Israel’s security and increase the chance for peace with the Palestinians. With some of the 9,000 Gaza settlers refusing to leave, the Israeli government has mobilized thousands of police and soldiers for what is expected to be an emotionally draining, forced removal, scheduled to start in mid-August.

Experts say, and polls show, that a majority of Israelis and American Jews support the withdrawal, which would turn Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority. But opponents at Sunday’s rally were adamant that leaving Gaza is wrong.

“This is not Palestinian land,” said one of the speakers, Avi Davis of the group Israel-Christian Nexus, a Jewish outreach group to Christian Zionists.

Listening to Davis was attorney David Palace, 30, who attends Beverly-La Brea’s Congregation Levy Yitzchok.

“I came here to protest Jews being put in dangerous situations,” Palace said, as he held one of his four children.

His father, Moshe Palace, said the pullout would decrease the distance between terrorists and cities in Israel proper.

“We’re not talking about Orange County to Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s more like what Santa Monica is to downtown Los Angeles.”

The three generations of the Palace family reflected the consulate crowd’s demographics, which though broad in age range appeared almost exclusively Orthodox. Several Chabads and other Orthodox shuls in Beverly Hills, Hancock Park and Beverly-La Brea supported the quickly arranged protest, allowing flyers to be distributed to their congregants.

The rally focused on the Gaza community of Gush Katif, was organized and sponsored by SaveGushKatif.org, the brainchild of Beverlywood mortgage broker Jon Hambourger.

“We pulled a police permit in half an hour even though it usually takes a week.” Hambourger said. “A sound system costs $1,500. We got it for free. Everything fell into place.”

The consulate protest was blessed with lower-than-expected temperatures amidst the current heat wave. Stacks of free bottled water did not interest the crowd listening to speakers denounce Israel’s planned Aug. 16 pullout from Gush Katif and other Jewish settlement areas.

Along Wilshire Boulevard stood a line of teenage girls and young women holding placards toward the cars driving past them. Horns honked at signs bearing phrases in Hebrew such as, “Don’t give the Arabs our homes.” The loud line included two vanloads about 20 road-tripping Orthodox girls and women from New York and Toronto, who took a break from three weeks of sightseeing to join in.

“We stopped all our fun. We wanted to show our support,” said 22-year-old trip leader Bracha Krausz.

The July 24 date was picked for the prayer-and-protest rally because it was also the 17th of Tammuz, a fast day on the Hebrew calendar and the start of three weeks of mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem’s first and second temples. By emphasizing Gush Katif as a religious issue, organizers tapped into a broader sense of outrage in the Orthodox community.

The consulate protest’s turnout surpassed other recent, middle-of-the-week Gush Katif events in synagogues, which had been attracting no more than 250 people. These included a June 23 event at Beverly-La Brea’s Torah Ohr with Knesset Member Benny Elon. Six days later, a crowd of about 200 attended a Gush Katif “evening of solidarity” across the street at Congregation Shaarei Tefila.

“I tried to push it in my synagogue, said Shaarei Tefila’s Rabbi Nachum Kosofsky. “It just seemed like the people who were the most ideologically driven came. I wish it was different. Even people who are very pro-Israel, to them it’s a not a simple issue.”

A planned SaveGushKutif worldwide event on July 19 did not materialize in Los Angeles, though its cancellation partly fueled the quick creation that same week of the July 24 event.

Whatever the crowd size, the rhetoric at Gush Katif events ranges from somber to furious. During the question-and-answer session at the Torah Ohr event, one man said that Israeli Arabs were, “sucking the blood out of [Israel]…. These Arabs are basically Nazis…. One Arab less, one loaf of bread more!”

At the Shaarei Tefila event, Rabbi David Eliezrie of Yorba Linda focused on the internecine strife: “Jews fighting fellow Jews — the images of, God forbid, a civil war.”

Outside the consulate, a man gave a reporter a prayer asking God to “destroy our enemies completely and utterly wipe them off the face of the earth….”

But this sentiment appeared isolated as most in the crowd seemed more determined than vengeful.

Chavi Shagalov, a mother of four, said it is unwise to give away land.

“For years and years, the Jews have been chased by the Romans, the Greeks, or gone into exile while some stayed in the land,” said Shagalov, as her two toddlers swirled around her. “We live in exile and there’s no knowing what there’s going to be tomorrow.”

 

Gaza Settler Pullout Protest Draws 500 Read More »

What Is Greatness?

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Torah /

As I sit in the heartland of Israel, surrounded by simple and beautiful people, I am constantly amazed at the kindness, the goodness and the utter simplicity of the average Israeli Jew. It is hard to pinpoint why their lives seem to be so greatly enriched even as they struggle to eke out a simple subsistence living. I cannot help but to contemplate a definition of that greatness.

.

And yet, the great personal tragedy of Moshe is hard to miss — especially in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers). As the book commences, Moshe — an incredibly unlikely candidate — has already accomplished the impossible of bringing freedom to an entire nation, uniting them to receive the Torah, defending them in times of crisis and now safely perching them on edge of the land of Israel. Moshe can taste the ultimate fulfillment of his destiny as leader of the Jewish people.

One senses the pulsating excitement as Moshe invites his father-in-law, Yitro, to join him on this triumphant march toward the land of Israel. Nosim anachnu el hamakom. “We are traveling to the place. Come join us.” We, both the Children of Israel and myself are all entering the Promised Land. At this point one feels that nothing can stop the rendezvous with ultimate destiny.

Indeed, the rabbis in the midrash relate that had this march been successful, the Jews would never have experienced the bitter taste of exile. Moses’ entrance into the land of Israel would have ushered in the Messsianic Era, once and forever.

It was not to be. One sin creeps upon the next, and finally the sin of the spies seal the fate of the Children of Israel. A sense of hopelessness pervades and the Children of Israel display intermittent episodes of anger, resentment and even outright rebellion toward their great leader, Moshe. Shortly thereafter, Moshe loses his personal right of entry into the Land of Israel. As the people, so goes the leader.

Thus concludes the tragedy of Moshe, the singular personality who literally gives up his family life and merges his own personal identity with that of the Jewish people. He is denied the success he so passionately desired.

And yet, Moshe remains the greatest leader of the Jewish people. He was the vehicle for the Jew, and, ultimately, the world receiving the Torah. Indeed, Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) considers Moshe’s unique prophetic status as being one of the 13 primary principles of Jewish faith. So how do we reconcile the notion of the tragic Moshe with the great Moshe?

One of the more poignant moments of this incredibly tragic book of Bamidbar is the moment in our parsha, Matot, that God delivers to Moshe his final command: “Avenge the Midianites and then you shall return to your nation.”

Moshe’s death will follow shortly thereafter. It is thus only pragmatic that Moshe would delay the implementation of the command. Would Moshe not want another stab at overturning the Divine Will so perhaps he can enter his beloved Israel? Yet Moshe does not delay. Rather he submits to the Divine will. Perhaps it is this consistent and constant refrain that marks Moshe’s life that is the true definition of greatness.

I have often thought that one of the major values of Western society is the value of results, of tangible accomplishment. Bluntly, the bottom line is the bottom line.

“To the victor goes the spoils” is the modus operandi. In stark contrast, Judaism exalts the process, the struggle over the result. It is interesting to note that the very word Israel means to wrestle with God.

Most of the great Jews that I know toil in the cloak of anonymity — leading wholly ordinary lives laden with challenges and frustrations of normal human existence.

Their greatness lies in their ability to perceive the Divine in every situation and their desire to do what is right rather than what is purely pragmatic. As I reconnect with old friends who have made aliyah, I realize it was that very process that brought most of my Ivy League educated highly successful professionals to “give up” their cushy jobs for simpler jobs that produce far less cash and convenience but perhaps yields something even greater — greatness.

Asher Brander is the rabbi of Westwood Kehilla, founder of LINK (Los Angeles Intercommunity Kollel) and long-time teacher at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles High Schools.

 

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Goldberg’s List

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Opinion, Power, Rob Eshman /

Jewish Americans are only 2 percent of the nation’s population, but they are 25 percent of its problem.

That’s according to Bernard Goldberg, whose new, bestselling nonfiction book is called, “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America (and Al Franken is No. 37).”

The book offers one- and two-page mini-attacks on people who, Goldberg writes, “are not only screwing things up in this country, but who often are wildly succeeding by screwing things up.”

The way I see it, if Goldberg could take the time and trouble to list these people, the least that I, the Jewish journalist, could do is count the Jews among them.

I came up with 25.

So there are 25 American Jews who, in Goldberg’s words, produce “a slow poison running through the veins of this great country.”

The screed of this scribe has a history. Every couple of years, Goldberg releases a new book attacking liberals in America. His first was called, “Bias,” and it was a fun read, because the author had been a CBS News correspondent, and had scores to settle and grudges to nurse.

His second, “Arrogance,” I didn’t read — it was beneath me — and this new one continues the same general line: political, media and entertainment elites, spurred on by the liberal-educational complex, have debased and coarsened American culture.

The book is a bestseller — No. 2 on Amazon.com and climbing the New York Times list — and Goldberg is out flogging it everywhere. Droning on through droopy jowls, working himself up into a kind of lackadaisical outrage about Barbra Streisand and Howard Stern, Goldberg is the thinking man’s Deputy Dawg.

He wags a finger at radio pioneer Stern, though he is quick to say he opposes media censorship. His cover promises a full frontal attack on Franken, who took apart “Bias” for factual inaccuracy, but Goldberg doesn’t marshal anything more than a fictional conversation between himself and the Air America host.

His indictment of Michael Moore, who ranks No. 1 on the list, consists of a full-page photo of Moore and a single quote.

Most of the nonliberals who make the list — there are five — either broke the law or killed someone.

“The Unknown American Terrorist” is No. 23. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is No. 8.

Serious, thoughtful work this book is not.

So which Jews make the list?

Other than Franken, Streisand and Stern, there is billionaire Democrat George Soros; activist Laurie David; schlock hosts Jerry Springer and Maury Povich; professors Eric Foner, Jonathan Kozol, Peter Singer and Noam Chomsky; right-wing talk show host Michael Savage; director Oliver Stone; “Vagina Monologue” author Eve Ensler; Norman Mailer; feminists Gloria Steinem and Linda Hirshman; Nation writer Katha Pollitt; Interscope’s Ted Field; “Fear Factor” producer Matt Kunitz; New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, and columnist Krugman; Barbara Walters; NBC News president Neal Shapiro; and ABC News president David Westin.

Of course, Goldberg makes nothing of the fact that these people happen to be Jewish. It’s possible that no one but me will notice. It’s not like anyone can accuse a middle-aged author named Goldberg who lives in Miami of being an anti-Semite. You might even say it’s a good thing that someone can publish a best-selling diatribe listing more than two dozen Jews who are poisoning the American bloodstream and not one crackpot picks up on it.

Well, not quite.

Goldberg’s callings-out turn up quite frequently on the Web sites of white supremacists and anti-Semitic hate groups. Even nutjobs need validation, and who more authoritative than a man named Goldberg to assure the hatemongers that, yes, if the whole, anti-American entertainment and media elite seems Jewish, it’s because it is.

Take this from www.thepriceofliberty.org: “The Zionist domination of the media has been repeatedly proven, and this domination is evident in both the electronic and print media. The commonality of “news” reporting in all the news media, to include major leading newspapers and both network and cable TV journalism, was definitively exposed in Bernard Goldberg’s two best-selling books: ‘Bias’ and ‘Arrogance.'”

Just wait until they read the new book: It’s the same ideas with twice as many Jewish names.

Another web hate site, www.rense.com, either rips Goldberg off or just happened to arrive at a similar revelation: It lists the same Jewish media execs he does, like Shapiro and Westin.

Goldberg isn’t responsible for the delusions of others. But his list, which he calls, at the end of his book, “the fun part,” is not without its risks. A just-released study in Britain found anti-Semitic actions among the general population on the rise — some42 precent in 2004. In times of social upheaval and terror, people look to scapegoats, and simple-minded lists — especially ones weighted so heavily to one minority group — are ready-made red flags.

Some fun.

 

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Happy Birthday, Me!

Leave a Comment / Family, Opinion, Singles, Weddings /

In a few weeks I’ll turn 33 and, sadly, I realize I’m long past being anything “for my age.” I’m no longer cute for my age, talented for my age, a good reader for my age. All qualifications and special considerations have long passed. There’s nothing I can get away with now because, “After all, your honor, he’s only 33.”

I should know better by now. I’m mature, experienced, a grown-up.

You’d think that being so mature and grown up, I’d have a healthy attitude toward my birthday and the presents I may receive. You obviously don’t know me well.

So let’s talk about presents.

Turning 33 reminds me that I’m no closer to being married than I was when I was turning 32 (or 22 — or 12, for that matter). In lieu of working on myself and what I’m lacking personally, I’m focusing instead on what I’m lacking materially. It’s a great system.

My father asked me for a list of what I’d like from my family for my birthday this year. Though this isn’t as fun as letting them figure something out, I’ve learned my lesson from past birthdays: Gift-giving is not their forte.

One year, my father gave me a box of 500 very nice, custom-printed, raised-lettered business cards, printed on heavy ivory stock with my name, address and phone number. It would have been a lovely, lovely gift — had I not been 7 years old at the time. I don’t know what he thought I would do with them. (“Yes, please announce me to the queen. And fetch me a snifter of your finest chocolate milk.”) I did give some of them out to kids at school, which actually proved very helpful. Now the children knew where to come to beat me up before school started, in case they wanted to get an early jump on their day.

Most of the remaining cards went into plastic bins or fish bowls, trying to win a free lunch, dance lesson or Hawaiian vacation from a local merchant. None was ever randomly drawn. It wasn’t a total loss though; in fact the cards proved quite prophetic. I still have no job title or work address. Thanks, dad.

My sister wasn’t much better. One year, in a grab bag of other little gifts, she gave me a very nicely wrapped condom.

I’m going to give you, Dear Reader, a moment to let that sink in: Sister … condom. Greek tragedies have been written about less. If Freud were alive today, I believe he would say, “Eewwww!”

It’s customary, of course, to write a thank-you note when receiving such a personal gift, but telling my sister, “Thanks, I’ll think of you when I’m using it,” didn’t seem quite appropriate.

My therapy is ongoing and intensive, thanks for asking.

Of course, there’s a substantial likelihood that, as with most things, I’m overreacting.

I’m not a heartless idiot. I realize that nobody has to give me a gift. I get it: Material things don’t matter. I should be grateful that anybody thinks enough of me to buy me anything at all. It’s a blessing to have a family, to have such tiny problems, and besides, there are starving children in Africa who would love to have a condom or business cards.

Though misguided in their execution, I do try to remember that there had to be a loving intention behind these gifts. They weren’t thoughtless. Maybe my sister wanted me to be protected and safe and to know that she cares about my health and recognizes that I’m not a kid anymore. Maybe my father wanted to connect with me, see a glimpse of the junior businessman who might one day take over the company that he took over from his father. Those business cards, though impractical on one level, were the most practical on another: wallet-sized evidence that I am my father’s son, that I have an identity, his last name and a home.

And my grandmother, whom I love dearly, must have had good intentions when she gave me a Valentine’s gift one year. Blissfully unaware of what people who are not severely medicated actually wear in public, she gave me a T-shirt she had had custom-made at the mall. Decorated with red felt hearts ironed on all over, and in the middle, big felt block letters spelled, “I Love Keith!” Even if I had any self-love, I don’t think I’d announce it like this.

She tried to convince me that people would see it and think, “There’s a boy whose grandmother loves him.” I took a random survey of imaginary people and the overwhelming response actually was, “There’s a boy who lost a bet. Let’s go to the address on this business card and beat him up.”

J. Keith van Straaten is a writer and performer who currently hosts “What’s My Line? — Live on Stage” every Wednesday in Los Angeles. For more information, visit Happy Birthday, Me! Read More »

How Can Right, Left Each Be So Sure?

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Ed. Note: Former Jewish Journal Senior Writer David Margolis died July 17 at the age of 62 in Israel, where he had lived for the past 11 years. Most recently, Margolis wrote for The Jerusalem Report, where this column, one of his last, originally appeared.

Some months ago, at a kind of evening salon in a settlement just south of Jerusalem, I read a short story I’d written to a group of friends and acquaintances.

The story, called, “The Trapped Dog,” attempted to parse the complex and ambiguous relationship between residents of the small West Bank village where I live, about 40 minutes further south, and our nearest Arab neighbor, with whom the village has a fair amount of commerce.

I was proud of the story, which I thought caught the relationship accurately and subtly, giving correct weight to various currents of suspicion and friendship that — especially after four years of warfare between Palestinians and Israelis — characterize the association in both directions. My audience of about a dozen listened attentively, but to my shock, they turned out to be infuriated by the tale; apparently unanimously, they heard it as a left-wing tract overly sympathetic to the Arab — some of them because I did not question his right to own his piece of land and prosper on it.

Rather than the partly literary discussion I expected, the conversation devolved into a verbal assault in which I felt forced to defend my politics, not my story.

I felt shaken by this experience, since I liked all these people and knew them to be, in ordinary life, reasonable, sweet-tempered, concerned for others and generally nuanced in their responses to things, not (as they seemed that evening), incapable of rising above their fears or of knowing that not everything a character in a story says represents the author’s point of view.

Several weeks ago, as a gesture toward my continuing integration into Israeli life, I decided to have the story translated into Hebrew. The translator to whom I brought the English text gave me a second shock: After reading the story, she — a fiery leftist, it turned out, involved with organizations that fight for Palestinians against what she considers Israeli oppression — refused to take the job. She was infuriated and disgusted, she said, by the story’s horrifically right-wing point of view.

When I thought about it, I took this confluence of responses to “The Trapped Dog” as a kind of literary victory, one that reminded me of the poet Yeats’ remark, “If I would succeed, I must drive men mad.”

In my small way, I felt that I’d written something that engendered a bit of madness in people on both the left and right. Or, more likely, they were already nuts with politics to begin with. Still, I felt pleased to think that my story could make people of widely divergent views at least itchy and uncomfortable.

Their passionate intensity reminded me also of Yeats’ 1919 poem, “The Second Coming,” in which the poet envisions the post-World War world as a kind of negative second coming, an anti-apocalypse of destruction without redemption. There’s a hint of what Yeats calls the “rough beast” in political discourse in Israel now, with so much distrust and even hatred between political adversaries that an opposing opinion can seem not a nexus for discussion but another provocation.

My “victory” would not require driving my countrymen mad but just making a lot of them a lot less certain than they claim to be. How, in a forest as dark as the one in which Israelis and Palestinians have been lost together, can so many people insist that only one path — the one they’re on — leads to the light?

Reprinted with permission from The Jerusalem Report.

 

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There’s No Place for Ugly Words on Gaza

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

The withdrawal of Israeli settlements and settlers from the Gaza Strip will dominate the Jewish summer.

Now, you can think that’s a good idea or a bad one, be for it or against it. All that’s fine and in the best tradition of Judaism. What is not fine and what is desecrating Judaism is how some of those opposed to the disengagement are seeing it, what they are saying about it.

What we are seeing and hearing are allusions to the Nazis, to the Holocaust. Somehow, when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) compares treatment of soldiers at Guantanamo to the Nazis, Jews go nuts, find that outrageous.

And yet, too many Jews are using Nazi allusions, making Holocaust comparisons when describing the intention of the democratically elected government of Israel to do what it believes is in the best interest of the State of Israel — which is exactly what governments are elected to do.

It might be nice if all those Jewish right-wingers so desirous of seeing democracy come to Iraq would show some respect for democracy in Israel. But they do not. Even worse, much worse, they play the Nazi card in talking about the government of Israel.

It started when a large number of settlers in Gaza and the West Bank began wearing orange stars, reminiscent of the yellow stars the Nazis forced the Jews of Eastern Europe to wear during the Holocaust — orange stars being worn in the State of Israel to make a point about the action of the government of Israel.

Seeing Nazi behavior in the disengagement is not only as nuts as seeing anti-Semitism in the shuttle disasters, but is far more obscene, way beyond the pale.

The Holocaust is a sacred memory in the life of the Jewish people. Six million of our people, babies and grandfathers, whole families, whole towns were systematically murdered in the most barbaric of ways, in an atrocity unique in human history.

And so for Jews to wheel it out to make some political point about a political decision of an Israeli government is to act in as shameful a way as a Jew can act.

After a while, even the settlers recognized that, and so they stopped wearing the orange star. Which seemed to signal that they had learned something.

But evidently not. For just this past week, several Gaza settlers wrote their Israeli identification number on their arms in an attempt to evoke the memory of the tattoos the Nazis put on the arms of Jews in the concentration camps. How disgusting. What a desecration of the memory of the 6 million.

How can Jews in 2005, living in the State of Israel, dare to compare the decision by the Israeli government to leave Gaza to the decision by the Nazi government to identify every single Jew for the purpose of murdering every Jewish man, woman and child in Europe?

Nothing, nothing, shows how lost we are as a people, how far we have fallen, than this.

That so many Jews put on the orange star, while tattooing their arms is bad enough. Even worse is how many Jews, how many American Jews support that.

And how many American Jews are using ugly words? One press release that just crossed my desk comes from a group sponsoring a prayer vigil against the Gaza disengagement. Nothing wrong with that. What is wrong, what is disgraceful, is that in describing what they are opposing they say it is “Sharon’s edict of deporting Jews from Gaza.”

Edict. Deporting. Words that are loaded with the weight of Jewish history, Jewish suffering. Words that have no place in the debate over Gaza.

Sharon is not issuing an edict. He was elected by the people to be prime minister. He has put the Gaza issue to a vote several times before his Cabinet, and each time the Cabinet has authorized the pullout. He has then put the issue several times before Israel’s democratically elected parliament, the Knesset, and it, too, has voted for the pullout each and every time. This is a democratic decision made by a democratically elected government.

And no one is being deported. The government of Israel has made a decision as to what is in the best interest of the people and the State of Israel. A decision as to what would best ensure the security and improve the future of the state and people of Israel. And that decision involves having some people move.

That is no different than the concept of eminent domain in this country, where a city or state can require that the people of a neighborhood move so that an airport or a new highway or such can be built for the greater good of all.

While such decisions always involve some personal discomfort for some, they are routinely made. No one says those who had to move so that the new ballpark could be built were “deported.” And none of the settlers in Gaza are being deported.

The press release from this group also notes that “Jewish people have never been expelled from Israel since the modern state was created in 1948.”

Oh, where to begin. For starters — and this is also directed to those who mindlessly babble the mantra, “Jews do not evict Jews,” — ever hear of the evacuation of Sinai after the peace with Egypt?

But such ignorance pales in comparison with the ugliness of using the word “expelled.” And never mind, of course, that no one is being expelled from Israel. The use of such ignorant arguments, and of such inflammatory and despicable language, shows just how weak the case is of those who oppose the pullout.

The next month will be a key one in the life of the Jewish people and in the democracy of the State of Israel. Which is why pullout opponents must immediately stop using such symbols as stars and tattoos and such pornographic terms as edict and deportation and ghetto and expulsion when discussing the disengagement from Gaza.

And why senior rabbis in the State of Israel must immediately stop urging Israeli soldiers to disobey orders, and why they must immediately stop making speeches full of halachic references that strongly imply it would be a mitzvah to assassinate the prime minister of Israel.

Two things that have always been unifying forces for the Jewish people have been holding sacred the memory of the Holocaust and respecting the nonpolitical role of the Israeli army.

By doing what they are doing, saying what they are saying, too many opposed to the Gaza pullout are recklessly endangering those unifying values, and in so doing are endangering the Jewish people.

Joseph Aaron is the editor of the Chicago Jewish News.

 

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