fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

September 29, 2005

Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Heartless Rav

I support Rabbi David Wolpe’s position entirely (“We Must Condemn Heartless Bilge,” Sept. 16). Rav Ovadiah Yosef has made Israel look very bad. Why would a scholar of Israel speak such racism, a man of our ancient traditions who should have more respect for human suffering? All Jews of good faith owe it to the people of Louisiana to condemn Rav Ovadiah Yosef.

Erika Goodkin
Granada Hills

Thank You Hatzolah

As a volunteer with Hatzolah of Los Angeles, I was happy to see that the efforts of my colleagues, Rabbi Chaim Kolodny and Rabbi Tzemach Rosenfeld, were recognized (“Going in After Katrina,” Sept. 16). It is important to note that the dedication these individuals displayed is not uncommon among the volunteers of this wonderful organization. The more than 100 volunteers stand ready on a 24-hour basis to answer the call for help. Whether they get up in the middle of the night to assist a patient having chest pains or leaving their families on a moment’s notice to help search for a lost child, the dedication is absolute and highly professional. Thank you Kolodny and Rosenfeld for your efforts, you make us all proud.

Ari Stark
Los Angeles

Failing LAUSD

I must take issue with my friend Bob Hertzberg and his resistance to the November school bond measure for needed new schools in Los Angeles (“School Bond Measure Gets Failing Grade,” Sept. 16). He has created a straw man in depicting the current school construction as “warehouses.” In fact, LAUSD has made great progress in creating new schools that are outside the box, including small primary centers, and themed schools connected to important community institutions, whether the Science Center or Orthopedic Hospital.

Clearly, new buildings by themselves do not improve student performance. Sadly, just as these new schools are opening, state funding support for the basic education program remains grossly inadequate. In fact, LAUSD has been required to make nearly $1 billion in budget cuts in recent years. But we cannot get around the fact that new schools are a necessary — but not sufficient — response to the challenges of public education. New schools allow students to avoid long bus trips and return to their neighborhood school. New schools allow crowded year-round schools to return to a traditional schedule.

We should not force students and parents to remain out on the sidewalk at 6 a.m. waiting for the school bus to take them across town, because some of us would like to see a better design process or more collaboration with city government. We can, as Hertzberg hints, have both — new schools and a visionary approach to making schools the center of the community.

Mark Slavkin
Los Angeles

Editor’s note: The writer is a former LAUSD school board member.

Guns and Froman

Rabbi Ari Hier’s letter illustrated precisely the type of illogic that characterizes the arguments of the NRA and the gun lobby (“Letters,” Sept. 16). He begins his letter by stating that he learned that Israel was founded on God and guns. What the fact that Israel used guns to protect the newly declared state after it was invaded by Arab armies on all sides has to do with gun control in America is beyond me.

I also found amusing Hier’s noting an affiliation with the L.A. Sheriff’s office. Major police organizations have consistently lobbied against the NRA and in favor of gun control measures such as the Brady bill. Does Hier oppose the ban or assault weapons (like the M16 he carried in the Israeli army) or the strict registration of gun ownership and purchases? The NRA does. I would hope that in his time as an armory volunteer, Hier speaks to law enforcement officers about the advisability of easy accessibility to weapons by civilians vs. stricter controls. I am sure it would be an interesting discussion and learning experience for him. Few who I have ever spoken to think more guns in civilian hands is a good idea.

Marian Davis
Encino

Let me add my outrage about Sandra Froman (“She’s Armed and President,” Sept. 2). Is she such a hero that she has to have her picture on the front page of The Jewish Journal? She is setting a terrible example for our young Jewish women who are taught to abhor violence. Self-defense is one thing, but rifles are only for killing innocent animals, birds and sometimes even children. Do we have to accept all the bad qualities from our macho men? It makes me shudder.

What’s wrong with having a good, faithful watchdog to protect you? He would also prevent thieves and intruders from getting into your house and would offer companionship, in addition.

The NRA is a violent rightwing organization that we Jews should not join. You see in countries where there is strict gun control like England, France and even Japan there are far fewer murders than in the United States, where the old Wild West mentality still prevails.

Irene Joseph
Los Angeles

Forgo Yellow

I was petrified when I picked up the yellow-covered High Holidays issue of The Jewish Journal (Sept. 16). For us Jews yellow is a reminder of the Nazi period when Jews in the ghettos had to wear a yellow Mogen David.

The appropriate color is blue and white because this is the color of Jewish life.

Name withheld by request

Flawed David

Having just read Mihal Lemberger’s review of Robert Pinsky’s “The Life of David” one has to agree with the view that King David was a deeply flawed character (“David: Great Leader or Damaged Hero?” Sept. 23). The biblical sentiment that his throne “shall be established forever” does not imply an endorsement of David himself as a role model for a Messiah and in fact the prophet Nathan roundly condemns King David for his evil acts against God and tells him his descendants will suffer as a result of his murderous deeds. Having had Uriah killed so he could marry his wife, he also brought destruction on 70,000 Israelites through his misbehavior. Hardly an example for a future Messiah.

In fact in normative Judaism of biblical times messianism did not appear until the time of Daniel in the second century BCE, so King David cannot be the basis for a messianic figure for previous and present generations. Unfortunately for conventional scholarship there is no one else to look to.

When it comes to the descriptions of messiahs seen in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we perhaps see a clue to the real figures that originated messianic ideas in Judaism. Messiahs, because the Qumran-Essenes, the possessor/authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, wrote about two — and possibly three — messiahs. One royal, one priestly and one like Moses. The royal figure was certainly not King David and the priestly figure is not suggested in the Pentateuch or any succeeding Hebrew text. As professor Joseph Fitzmyer of the Catholic University Washington notes, “It is a surprise to see a priestly figure become part of the Qumran community’s messianic expectations, because there is little in the Hebrew Scriptures itself about a future priest.” He finds no reasonable explanation for this phenonomena.

Robert Feather
London

Cabs and Conscience

Helen Schary Motro, consumed with guilt because she refused to ride in a taxi with an Arab driver, reasons that she “too [is] a casualty of the occupation and the intifada it caused” and asks the driver’s pardon (“Never Been Mugged,” Sept. 23). If the intifada was caused by the “occupation,” I’d like Motro to explain the 1921 and 1929 and 1936-39 anti-Jewish riots by Arabs, their strenuous military and terrorist efforts to prevent Israel from being born and the continuous warfare since 1948 by regular Arab armies and Arab irregulars attempting to destroy the Jewish state.

Chaim Sisman
Los Angeles

Helen Schary Motro suffers from that typically Jewish affliction, cancer of the conscience. Like any cancer, it causes the affected organ to grow abnormally large, but increasingly interferes with its function until it becomes more of a danger than a faculty.

She is not “a casualty of the occupation,” but of the headhunters’ penchant for senseless and atrocious violence. This is directed at various “infidels” around the perimeter of the Muslim empire (Chechnya, Cyprus, Serbia, Nigeria, Sudan, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Lebanon), and at other Muslims (Algeria, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait, Kurdistan, Iran, Afghanistan).

Their terrorism against us predated our return to Samaria and Judea, and claimed Jewish victims in Israel even during the 19 years when not one Jew set foot in those provinces. It predated the founding of the state.

This intifada was planned when Arafat was offered more than he could have dreamt of, and saw the excuse for existence of his gang being removed. It started with the murder of a Jewish soldier, days before Sharon’s famous visit to the Temple Mount.

Louis Richter
Encino

Katrina Karma?

Is it but coincidence that following the U.S. pressuring of Israel to forcibly expel 10,000 of it’s citizens from the Gaza Strip, they had to forcibly evacuate, for the first time in U.S. history, their own citizens from New Orleans (“Getting Out Before Katrina Still Painful,” Sept. 16)?

But if that is not enough to show divine wrath, now the president’s home state is being targeted by one of the most intense hurricanes in recorded history!

Could this not be modern-day biblical plagues?

Josh Wander
White Oak, Pa.

 

Letters Read More »

A Picture of Hate

Leave a Comment / Personal Voice, Worldwide /

Quite possibly the curators missed it entirely. Or maybe they noticed it, and included it without comment as a quiet reminder that we, and they, are perhaps not entirely different after all.

I always try to go to Mass on the anniversary of my mother’s untimely death 26 long years ago. But this year I decided to do something different. I attended the “Liberation!” exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance — photos and objects and footage from the moments in the spring of 1945 when the doors of the Nazi concentration camps were thrown open to the world, and when those few remaining within were set free.

I was immediately drawn to a photograph of a couple dozen dazzling young Jewish women … in prison stripes, in Bergen-Belsen, liberated by the British on April 15. I did some quick arithmetic, and concluded that my mother had been a dazzling young Irish Catholic woman in Brooklyn on that day, busily tormenting the young Irish Catholic men of Brooklyn who hadn’t yet been sent off to war. Most of the young women in this photo, I suspected, had only been in the camps a short while — they looked too healthy, too well-fed, too unbowed to have been there very long. And all were flashing the most glorious, breathtaking, resplendent smiles — saved, miraculously, from certain and immediate doom. Now, suddenly, they had decades not hours of life ahead; their fates were so different from the unfortunate Anne Frank and her sister, Margot, murdered in this very charnel house only a few weeks earlier.

I poked around the exhibit, looking at letters home from liberators, a huge Nazi flag autographed by American soldiers, photos of Gens. Eisenhower and Bradley and Patton — all rather pale and sickly as they toured the Ohrdruf camp on April 12, 1945 (the day Franklin Roosevelt died).

I moved on to a set of nine pages from one soldier’s personal photo album, delicately laid out inside a glass case, taken by “a U.S. Army medical officer” at the Gusen and Ebensee camps. Somehow these seemed more real than the official historical photographs enlarged on the walls — pictures snapped by an ordinary GI with a cheap camera who happened to be in the presence of history.

The medical officer clearly had sympathy for victims of Nazi cruelty. “A very pathetic case,” he wrote. “A 24-year-old German lad [half-Jewish] died of tuberculosis.” “A previously wealthy Hungarian businessman — gone berserk in concentration camp.”

My eyes moved on to four U.S. soldiers posing side by side — hale, hearty, on the side of the righteous and embarked on the adventure of a lifetime.

Then, suddenly, I stopped. I wasn’t sure I had seen what I thought I had just seen. I rubbed my eyes. I looked again.

The medical officer’s caption read: “Abe — Myself — Nigger — Stanislaus.”

I peered more closely at the tiny snapshot. Indeed, the third soldier from the left did appear to be African American. An African American, apparently for the medical officer, with no name. An African American, apparently for the medical officer, who was not so much a man as a thing. An African American, apparently for the medical officer, whose primary characteristic was not his individual identity, but his racial origin.

Why could this man so plainly see the Nazis for what they were, yet so utterly miss the roots of the same attitudes in his own heart? How could he be so eager to remove the log from his brother’s eye, yet be so oblivious to the speck in his own eye? And shouldn’t this stunning incongruity cause us to ask ourselves whether we, in other times and other places, might find ourselves lured down a similar road?

The late American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan, posted to Moscow in 1944 and watching a long column of haggard, hungry and humiliated German POWs on forced march through Red Square, felt compassion for the young captives (likely destined to starve to death in Soviet camps) and observed that “they are no more responsible for the accident of birth that brought them to this place than are the young Russians who fight against them.”

What if I’d been born in Dresden in 1920, rather than in Detroit some decades later? By 1937 I would have been young, impressionable and desperate to prove my manhood. Hitler would have whispered to me that I was the vanguard of a master race. He would have implored me to eradicate the subhuman elements from our superior civilization. He would have demanded that the humiliations suffered by the fathers in 1918 now be avenged by the sons.

Would I have been able to view what was going on from the perspective of some detached, universal morality? Or would I instead have devoured the führer’s demagoguery, fallen under his spell … and found myself seven or eight years later sporting an SS Death’s Head insignia, and shoving a pregnant teenage Jewish girl that I myself had raped into a cage filled with ravenous dogs?

I’d very much like to believe that had I been born at that place at that time, I would have mustered the courage to at least ask some hard questions of Hitler’s foul henchmen before joining them on their one-way excursion to the gates of hell.

But I really don’t know.

Do you?

Tad Daley (tad@daleyplanet.org), issues director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), is now peace and disarmament fellow in the Los Angeles office of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nobel Laureate anti-nuclear organization.

 

A Picture of Hate Read More »

A Smile Can Be Key to Temple Security

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Opinion /

Will you feel safe going to synagogue this New Year?

The High Holidays bring a special dilemma to American congregations. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur attract more Jews to synagogue — and more attention to American Jews in general — than at any other time of year.

The very prominence of this intensive Jewish season raises significant security concerns for clergy and lay leaders responsible for the safety of their members and guests. Yet the New Year is the single best opportunity to engage and welcome both new and returning members of the congregation.

Can synagogues protect and serve?

For 10 years, Synagogue 2000, a transdenominational project to envision the synagogue of the 21st century, worked with some 100 synagogues across America to re-imagine congregations as sacred, welcoming communities. Beginning this year, Synagogue 3000, its successor, is making that vision of an open tent available to every Jewish spiritual community in the country.

But at a time when virtually all the synagogues in North America have had to install some level of security screening at their front doors, is this welcoming vision realistic, let alone responsible?

We believe that the creation of a welcoming ambience is not only responsible; it is the surest way to keep our communities safe. Remember the origin of the handshake: mutual prevention of violence. Two hands grasping one another cannot wield a sword or a rock.

The reality is that a truly inviting community can be a truly secure community. The question is: how to balance the imperative for hachnasat orchim, the welcoming of guests, with the imperative to protect against strangers who threaten to disrupt these Days of Awe?

These concerns are real. Here in Los Angeles, for example, recent threats against Jewish institutions have made synagogues into high-profile potential targets. The Anti-Defamation League’s September briefing for congregational leaders was at once sobering and reassuring. While we live in an uncertain environment, attendees were told, nevertheless we have the resources and the support to keep our communities as safe as possible.

Still, synagogue leaders were told, “Harden the target.”

So, we have erected guard houses, installed scanners and hired uniformed personnel to check our IDs, search our tallit bags and take our tickets. Running the gauntlet of security is not exactly the kind of “welcome” anyone has in mind.

The very barriers that guard our gates can discourage those taking new and tentative steps toward affiliated synagogue life. What good is praying for the gates of heaven to open, when the gates of the shul are shut?

Consider the steps that many police departments recommend to reduce institutional vulnerability: get involved in your surrounding community, get to know your neighbor and get to know your members. Would that most synagogues knew all of their members.

Let’s be honest. On the High Holidays, we see not only new faces, but also those of the many members who rarely come around during the rest of the year. Nevertheless, a synagogue that installs greeters just outside the security perimeter who offer a smile and a warm “Gut yontif” or “Happy New Year” can create an initial impression of welcome. A follow-up qualifying question to a newcomer can express genuine interest, such as, “Who recommended us to you?” or “What’s your favorite part of the New Year service?”

In Southern California, three of the five most recent hate crimes and terrorist incidents against Jews involved individuals with weapons searching for targets of opportunity. We learn from prison interviews with convicted perpetrators that a synagogue with people greeting one another at the front gate, on the front steps and at the front door is not a target of opportunity. A synagogue whose members care enough to greet one another is a synagogue whose members are its first and most important line of defense against the unusual, the people or vehicles that don’t look quite right, the potential threat.

Savvy synagogue leaders have turned this obstacle into an opportunity. The best congregations have trained their security personnel in the art of greeting. You don’t have to be fluent in Hebrew or even be Jewish to say, “Shanah tovah.” Others deploy volunteers to mitigate delays and other inconveniences caused by security checks.

On Rosh Hashanah 2001, just days after Sept. 11, the Synagogue 2000 team at Temple Israel of Hollywood knew that their congregants would be forced to wait on a sidewalk for up to 15 minutes to go through security screening. They organized a crew of volunteers to “work the line,” offering trays laden with apples and honey to welcome the people to their congregation. Other volunteers brought guitars to pass the time with song.

Ultimately, all members of a sacred community have the responsibility of creating a culture of welcome and safety. Whom does a visitor or a congregant meet when entering a synagogue? A parking attendant, a security person, the custodian, the gift shop volunteer, the front office receptionist, the staff secretaries, the kitchen crew, the caterer, the school office assistant, the religious school teachers, the executive director, the cantor, the rabbi — every one of these people represents the congregation. Every one has the potential to make each interaction with members and guests a positive experience — or not. Everyone must greet and guard.

Perhaps the best way to harden the target is to soften our hearts. All it takes is a smile and a handshake.

Ron Wolfson is president and Shawn Landres is director of research at Synagogue 3000 ( A Smile Can Be Key to Temple Security Read More »

We Must Heal Divide Over Life Views

Leave a Comment / Opinion, United States /

The first half of the 20th century saw Americans locked in a fierce ideological debate surrounding economic class and the distribution of wealth.

In the second half of the century, the cultural wars addressed issues of race and gender.

As we stand at the dawn of the 21st century, a perhaps even more fundamental issue divides the American body politic. From stem cells, abortion and human cloning to the Schiavo case and physician-assisted suicides, the question of life has become this generation’s great ideological battle ground.

Jewish tradition certainly sees life as a primary value. Rosh Hashanah is so significant in the Jewish calendar precisely because it celebrates the birth of the world. Life is God’s first gift to humanity.

The liturgy of the High Holidays constantly celebrates life, and as Rabbi Irving Greenberg has suggested, in the Torah reading for the first day of Rosh Hashanah, God tells Abraham that Divine service does not mean sacrificing human life for the Divine but rather living a life devoted to bringing the Divine into the world.

However, Judaism’s emphasis on life is matched by its emphasis on choice. Human freedom to choose is incorporated within Maimonides’ 13 primary theological principles. Maimonides in his Mishnah Torah (Laws of Repentance 2:1) suggests that the essence of repentance is rooted in choice.

“What is complete repentance?” he asks. “It is the case of someone who has the opportunity to commit a sin he or she has committed, and has the ability to commit it [again], and yet separates from it and does not commit it, because of having done repentance, not because of fear or because of lack of power … such a man is a master of complete repentance.”

Such a conception of law highlights the unique choice-centered nature of Jewish law and repentance.

But in today’s American society, the complementary qualities of life and choice have come to represent opposing worldviews. Both sides have taken absolute positions, demanding that human beings live either by the credo “the sanctity of life” or the motto “life without choice is not worth living.” So blinded are those who express such ideologies that in their talk radio extremes, they refer to the other position as the equivalent of communism or Nazism.

Both these noisy sides ignore the silent majority who stand in the very gray, murky and complex terrain called living. Those who stand in the world of the living realize each of us chooses life: “ubacharta b’achaim.”

Living means recognizing that though dogmatic, absolutist and all-encompassing worldviews might make for good media headlines, tenure at a university or electablity at the voting booth, they fail to make any sense in the real world. In the real world, people are not rational computers who make every decision based on a priori theoretical doctrines.

In some cases, we are more open to the pain and suffering of the present. In other cases, we feel more the weight of history and text.

Jewish tradition recognizes that each decision involving human life is a world unto itself. To be sure, the Jewish tradition is not unprincipled. It states unambiguously that never one, but a number of competing factors exist in every bioethical decision. It stands in opposition to both extremes of the debate and offers a sober worldview that gives dignity to the often conflicting rhythms of life.

While the tradition worries about partial-birth or late-term abortions, there are times that even under such circumstances the most stringent of rabbis would allow for terminating a pregnancy. Likewise, almost all rabbinic authorities acknowledge the importance of stem cell research, and while the vast majority of the tradition opposes physician-assisted suicide, much debate and legal room exists around the status of those who are brain dead.

These rulings might seem contradictory, but on closer examination, they give testimony to a theology not of life or choice per se, but rather a theology of the living. The word repentance, teshuvah, so commonly heard over the High Holidays, has many meanings. Among them is reconciliation.

As we sit and watch the political and religious absolutism infecting the American body politic threaten to irreversibly rend our national soul, we as Americans and Jews must become baalei teshuvah, masters of reconciliation. We need to help in healing and reconciling this divided country and remind our fellow citizens there is more to living than life or choice.

Rabbi Eliyahu Stern is scholar-in-residence at Park East Synagogue and is finishing a Ph.D. in Jewish studies at UC Berkeley.

 

We Must Heal Divide Over Life Views Read More »

Happy Non-Anniversary

Leave a Comment / Singles /

I know that I was angry at L. I remember feeling frustrated and sad, not so much over L., but about the life we had envisioned, that I had started to view as a reality. I found myself mourning the losses that never were — theoretical, suppositional losses — the honeymoon we would not spend in Jerusalem; the home we would not set up together; the children we would not have.

L. and I broke off our engagement last year, a month before our wedding date of June 20.

On the day our wedding was to have been, I was intensely aware of the time when we would have been standing under the chuppah, without seeing a clock or watch. My breath stopped, and I stood still, feeling the growing ache in my chest. I spent the day alone, and I cried. And I thought about cosmic meaning and why this was happening to me. And then everything was fine.

Sort of.

It was not a pleasant summer, but June 21 marked a new phase. Once the day of the non-wedding passed, I was able to move on.

It was a weird time. People didn’t know what to say. It was not a tragedy; it was not even heartbreaking like a divorce when children are involved. I recognized that. But it did suck.

“Better now than later,” people said.

Better still would have been before the invitations went out, guests made plane and hotel reservations and gifts were delivered. As L. was from Colorado but studying in New York, all the gifts had been delivered to my parents’ house in New York, and served as a reminder for weeks of what would not be — until everything could be sorted out. One of the hardest things was having to explain to each person why the gifts were being returned.

I immediately missed having someone in my life; I missed being a couple, interacting with others as a couple, a state I had graduated to after years of singlehood. I had been one of the elite, an engaged man, a living defiance of statistics and the fear of commitment. I missed L.’s smile, and the joy of giving to someone so fully and with such love. How could it have fallen apart so quickly, all in the span of a week?

Of course, hindsight is astounding in its clarity. I was so eager to marry that I made the mistake of getting engaged to the wrong woman. I remain thankful that the marriage did not go through, not because L. is a horrible person — on the contrary, she is sweet and lovely — but simply because we were wrong for each other.

I think I agree with what some rabbis say — that you could get married to 90 percent of the opposite sex and make it work … but why should you have to? Why not look for the 10 percent who are actually a good fit for you?

All the anger, sadness, frustration have long since dissipated. I can barely recall how excited I was on our first date, or the pain I felt when it was clear things would not work out. Instead, I remember all the wonderful friends — and people I had not been in touch with for years — who called to tell me of their own broken engagement stories.

A few months ago, I took apart the scrapbook I had made for L. as an engagement gift, and just this past week, as part of a cleaning spree, I threw out all the pictures I had of her. I don’t like throwing out pictures — something about seeing faces in a wastebasket is eerie — but I didn’t feel right holding onto them. It was the closing of a book, and having not read it for a while, it was slowly fading, the details becoming distant memory, the story a blend of the real and the imagined. June 20 came and went like a dream.

Michael Rose is a New York-based writer at work on his first novel. He can be reached at mcarose@gmail.com.

 

Happy Non-Anniversary Read More »

5766

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

A foursome was tramping the fairway toward the seventh hole at Hillcrest Country Club last Saturday when two coyotes appeared from out of the shrubs. The golfers were close enough to see that one animal was female and the other clearly male. That’s how close they were.

Every creature froze: the men gripping their seven irons; the coyotes watching, waiting for someone to do something stupid.

The thing about this encounter is that Hillcrest is about as urban as courses get. The wildlife corridor of the Santa Monica Mountains comes to a screeching halt at Sunset, five miles and who knows how many stoplights, intersections, animal control officers and speeding cars north. To the south are more homes, Interstate 10, more sprawl.

Hillcrest is a mid-city oasis. Acres of grass and trees and lawn sprinklers, with all the squirrels a wild dog could eat and the occasional Arnold Palmer left out on the patio to sip from. But I couldn’t imagine how any wild animal without wings could get there.

It turns out that in 2004 there were 1,100 coyote sightings in metropolitan Los Angeles and 955 for the Valley. There were 12 sightings in Beverly Hills — up from four the year before — and several on the UCLA campus. Amazing how much ground a creature can cover when it’s not stuck in Westside traffic.

There are a lot of places you can go –metaphorically — with these coyotes.

“The Sopranos” on HBO has developed a leitmotif out of wild things coming in and out of mob boss Tony’s life: a bear on the back lawn, waterfowl in the pool, a talking sea bass on his boat. Animals bring out the humanity in Tony, like for when he beat a guy senseless for sitting on a poodle.

You could also remark on how fitting it is that among the movers and shakers at Hillcrest, there are not a few who would meet their match in this animal.

“It’s not enough to be clever,” a wealthy and successful friend of mine tells me. “You also have to be lucky.”

Mark Twain called coyotes, “the most friendless of God’s creatures,” but clever and lucky works just as well.

And that’s the metaphor I’m sticking with here, on the eve of the New Year.

We learned four years ago, on Sept. 11, that the world is not a safe place. But evidently one lesson was not enough for it to sink in. If Sept. 11 showed that life can change in an instant, this entire year demonstrated that life’s very essence is unpredictable, ever-changing, unknowable.

Hurricanes, floods, terror attacks, terror threats — all around us we witnessed the ever-present danger and uncertainty that for most people, through most of human history, has defined human existence. Here today, wiped out tomorrow.

It took awhile, but the realization seems to have taken hold.

“I suppose after Sept. 11 some were a little Pollyanna-ish,” Fifth District Councilman Jack Weiss told me. “That is, some seemed to believe we could deal with this problem and it would go away. Some also believed that it couldn’t happen here again.”

If the raw fear has ebbed, the feeling of invincibility, of safety, has never fully returned.

Every year since Sept. 11, the High Holidays have brought heightened security concerns and more elaborate precautions, but this year even more so. An LAPD closed-door security briefing for synagogues at ths Simon Wiesenthal Center organized by Weiss’ office was better attended than in past years, and the questions were more direct, more palpably fearful.

Never in history have Jews been as economically, culturally and politically free and powerful. Yet our places of worship feel more vulnerable as ever. We have the freedom of prayer — behind security cameras and armed guards.

And just when we believe we have the hatches battened against man-made terror, here come the natural disasters to remind us that man plans and God laughs.

“Who shall live and who shall die?” we read in the High Holiday liturgy. “Who by fire? Who by water?”

We needn’t be resigned to our fates — or the fates others might wish upon us — but we may want to step back and acknowledge, for once, just how much of life is not ours to control. We can only do our best to protect ourselves and fulfill our promise, knowing all the while the hour is late, the future is uncertain and the coyote is at the door.

Happy New Year.

 

5766 Read More »

Life at a Standstill

Leave a Comment / Torah /

The recent tragic hurricanes in the South have been difficult to watch. One of the more difficult chapters of this saga was when the mayor of New Orleans, in his zeal to rebuild the city as quickly as possible, called upon the residents to return to certain sections of the city. But then Hurricane Rita came, and all the plans to rebuild were put on hold. With the new storm, all the dreams for a brighter future were quickly dashed and deflated, and the good citizens of New Orleans were only demoralized further.

This is a metaphor for life. Sometimes, especially after a major setback, we so desperately want to pick up the pieces and go on to the next episode, we fail to properly repair all the levees that broke and caused the tragedy in the first place. Unless we properly fortify and repair the breaches that caused failure, we are only setting ourselves up for further failure and disaster.

The parsha we read on the last Shabbat of the year is Nitzavim. It means “standing still.” It describes how Moses addressed the standing and attentive crowd of Jews who came to hear him and enter into a new covenant with God before entering the land of Israel.

By contrast, the very next parsha, the one we will read on the first Shabbat of the new Jewish year, is called Vayelech, which means “moving.” It describes how Moses took it upon himself to travel to all the Israelite camps, so that he could address them one more time before his death.

Life is filled with “standing still” and “moving.” The key is to know when to apply each one.

If we study the respective themes of Nitzavim and Vayelech, we find they are completely different. The main theme of Nitzavim is teshuvah, repentance: “And it shall be, that when all these things — the blessing and curse — befall you, then you will turn into your heart … and you will return to God and listen to His voice….”

By contrast, the theme of Vayelech is Moses giving charge to Joshua and the rest of Israel to “Hazak Ve’Ematz!” — “Be strong and courageous!” Go out and conquer Eretz Israel, carry the Torah scroll with you wherever you go. Write it and spread the word of Torah throughout Israel.

If we were to categorize these themes, we could say that Nitzavim is all about rectifying the bad, and that Vayelech is all about doing good in the world. Before we can be strong and courageous and conquer the brave new world, we must first rectify the flaws within ourselves through teshuvah. The only way to succeed in moving forward is to first make sure that the breaches have been repaired.

Man’s normal mode of operation is to get caught up in the daily routines of life. Most of us don’t leave ourselves any time in the day to make a heshbon hanefesh — a serious and honest reckoning of who we are and what we need to do in life to become more Godly. That’s why Moses said to the Jews, “Stand still!” — stop whatever you’re doing and think for a minute about the real purpose of life. This pause for reflection is a necessary component of teshuvah.

Only after we’ve properly stood still — Nitzavim — can we pick up and start

really moving — Vayelech — toward a productive end of being strong and courageous like Moses and conquering the world at our feet.

Before we rush into the New Year and the High Holidays, it’s a good idea to pause and take spiritual inventory of this past year. Let’s remember all that has befallen us, all the decisions we’ve made and the differences between where we were a year ago and where we are today. It’s hard work, because an honest assessment of our lives can be painful — the picture isn’t always pretty. But only after careful contemplation, will we be ready to move forward and tackle the new year and all its challenges.

Daniel Korobkin is rabbi of Kehillat Yavneh in Hancock Park, and is director of synagogue services for the West Coast Orthodox Union.

Life at a Standstill Read More »

What a Difference a Day Makes

Leave a Comment / Wandering Jew /

It’s the contrasts that make life interesting.

Last Friday, I was in the East Room of the White House, along with George,

Laura, Dick, Karl and Don.

For provincials outside the Beltway, that’s, of course, President Bush, the first lady, Vice President Cheney, political guru Rove and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.

The following day, not having to catch a flight back to Los Angeles until late afternoon, I was again at the White House, although this time separated by a police cordon. Passing in front and behind me were more than 100,000 citizens of all sizes, ages, colors and sexual orientations loudly expressing unkind opinions about the character, IQ, veracity and ancestry of my amiable hosts of the previous day.

The business of the previous day had been to applaud my fellow Californian, a Korean War vet named Tibor “Ted” Rubin. Our distinguished hosts presented him with the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award for intrepid gallantry in combat.

What gave the ceremony an extra fillip was that Rubin is a Holocaust survivor, an immigrant who was not even an American citizen when he put his life on the line for the United States. And because of a superior’s blatant anti-Semitism, it had taken the government close to 55 years to recognize Rubin’s extreme bravery, which included both audacity on the battlefield and surpassing humanity and resourcefulness in keeping fellow prisoners alive at a brutal POW camp.

Rubin was allowed by the White House to invite 200 guests, and I was among them. His saucy wit was not submerged by the occasion. One guest described his rich Hungarian accent, combined with his brash Jewish humor, as suggesting a cross between Zsa Zsa Gabor and Jackie Mason.

Also included were approximately 70 relatives of Rubin and his wife, Yvonne. There were son, Frank; daughter, Rosie; old Army buddies; various Jewish War Veterans honchos; two former doctors; rabbis; and four previous Medal of Honor recipients.

The White House itself, as a structure and symbol, was part of what made this event noteworthy. There were spit-and-polish men and women in full dress uniforms at every step, opening doors, helping the elderly up the steps and saluting.

Even so mundane a task as answering nature’s call has its thrills. To reach the men’s room you have to walk through the presidential library; while the women’s facilities are nestled behind a portrait gallery of the nation’s first ladies.

At the ceremony, Bush seemed relieved to deal with a noncontroversial, upbeat topic; Rove bobbed and chatted animatedly; and Cheney appeared glum, perhaps because he was going in for knee surgery the following day.

The three men disappeared immediately after the ceremony, presumably to bone up on hurricanes, but not Rumsfeld. He stayed for the reception and worked the room like a city councilman running for reelection. Smiling and nodding, he posed for pictures, signed autographs and showed one amateur photographer how to use his camera.

After drinks, petit fours and paper napkins bearing the presidential seal, a female Army captain collected the guests and put them on buses for the trip to the Pentagon and Rubin’s induction into the Hall of Heroes.

I wasn’t prepared for it, but the day’s most thrilling event lay just ahead. Our bus was preceded by two Pentagon police cars, flashing more lights than any July 4 fireworks, and magically Washington’s jammed traffic parted like the Red Sea. A rushing sense of absolute power gripped me as gawking tourists pointed at our windows in awe, and snarling motorists cursed us as we sailed through red-lighted intersections.

Regrettably, the police cars declined my offer to join me on my next 5 p.m. jaunt down the Santa Monica Freeway.

After Rubin’s induction into the Hall of Heroes, where his name was added to Medal of Honor recipients going back to the Civil War, the hospitable Pentagon laid on a handsome buffet.

The place was brimming with Army brass, none more pleasant than Maj. Elizabeth Robbins of the Army’s media relations office, a winsome young lady who greeted me with a hearty, “Gut Shabbes.”

The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Robbins is a West Point graduate and returned later to teach political science and media communications, while moonlighting as a volunteer Jewish lay leader.

Next day, the political coin flipped over.

From a staging area at the Ellipse, just south of the White House, a seemingly endless procession wound its way to protest the war in Iraq, in particular, and administration policies, in general. A well-attended synchronized march also took place in downtown Los Angeles, as well as in other major world cities.

The demonstrators marched and ambled 15 abreast, overflowing onto the sidewalks: the elderly and babes in arms, Vietnam War veterans and steel-drum bangers, sober-faced Midwesterners and nubile adolescents epithet-emblazoned T-shirts.

There were elaborate displays of huge peace doves, with white sheets as wings, and a 25-foot inflatable Bush doll with a Pinocchio nose, and signs with such slogans as “Drop Bush Not Bombs,” “Make Levees Not War,” “Visualize Compassionate Impeachment” and “Lobotomize Pat Robertson.”

A small contingent waved PLO flags, and a few others displayed signs proclaiming, “Stop Occupation of Iraq, Don’t Occupy Palestine” and “We Are All Palestinians.”

Standing next to me was a quiet black woman and an exuberant white woman who were holding up the sign: “Another Lesbian Couple with Kids for Peace.” They got lots of cheers and thumbs up from the passing parade.

Near the end walked a smiling, middle-age woman holding a small, hand-lettered placard with “Shalom[in Hebrew lettering] = Peace.”

This column, The Wandering Jew, is the inaugural entry for a new feature that will allow for a more personal take on events that occur mostly, but not exclusively, in greater Los Angeles. The column provides a space for pieces that are slightly too detached to be called first person, but not quite straight journalism either.

The column title is intentionally ironic, referring both to the plant of the same name and the old anti-Semitic fable of the Jew who is cursed with immortality to forever wander the earth and bear witness to — well, whatever. In this case, we lift the curse to offer a new perspective on the Jewish scene. Many contributions will come from our regular writers, but contributions are welcome.

What a Difference a Day Makes Read More »

Blaze Touches Off Tense Moments

Leave a Comment / Community /

Jeff and Liz Kramer and their three teenage sons could only watch and wait. The Sutton Valley residents paced the sidewalk in front of their home on Thursday morning, watching as the head of the Topanga Canyon Fire crept along a ridge less than 800 yards away, consuming brush and sending up billows of smoke.

“We’ve been up all night watching it,” Liz Kramer said. “It started here at about 1 a.m.”

As the Ventura County Sheriff’s fire support helicopters doused flames with water assaults, the Oak Park couple talked with neighbors about whether to evacuate.

“The firemen keep telling us we’re fine,” she said. “But our cars are loaded, and we’re ready to leave.”

While the Kramer home was spared and no other Jewish homes were known to have been lost, an iconic structure of Jewish Los Angeles was not so fortunate. In Simi Valley at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute, sparks fell and ignited a fire on the roof of the landmark House of the Book. The building’s interior was not apparently harmed. A detailed damage assessment is pending.

The Topanga Canyon Fire erupted in Chatsworth off of Topanga Canyon Boulevard at 1:50 p.m. on Wednesday, amid high temperatures and dry Santa Ana wind conditions. By Friday, it had grown to engulf about 21,000 acres and required a multiagency firefighting force of 3,000 from Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties.

Fire crews had the fire 20 percent contained by Friday morning, shortly before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger toured the affected area by air. The estimated cost of the fire currently stands at $2.8 million, with the cause of the blaze still under investigation.

Hundreds of families were evacuated from affected areas, which included Box Canyon, Lake Manor, Woolsey Canyon, Bell Canyon, West Hills, Hidden Hills, Mountain View Estates, Las Virgenes Canyon, Chesebro Canyon, Old Agoura, Agoura Hills and Oak Park. Among the evacuees from these upscale hillside communities was “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” Shelley Berman, who has lived in Bell Canyon since 1984.

Temple Aliyah President Marcy Howard told The Journal she evacuated her home in Mountain View, a gated community adjacent to Las Virgenes Canyon, at 4 a.m. Thursday.

“When they tell you you’re going, nothing counts but getting your kids, your dogs and yourself [out]. You don’t know if you have five hours or five minutes,” she said.

Howard met friends at the Calabasas Commons and then ended up at Jerry’s Deli in Woodland Hills, where she said many displaced Jewish West Valley residents were congregating early Thursday morning. Howard opted to spend Thursday night in a hotel, despite offers of shelter from numerous friends.

“Everyone has been so gracious and so lovely,” she said.

Around the Conejo and West Valley, synagogues reported a similar situation. “So far we have more people offering space than need it,” said Rabbi Ted Riter of Temple Adat Elohim of Thousand Oaks.

The Conejo and West San Fernando valleys have become a magnet for Jewish families in recent years, so there were bound to be scores of Jewish families affected by the evacuation orders, not to mention the choking haze that hung over the region.

“We left at 3 a.m. [Thursday morning] and went to my mother-in-law’s in Thousand Oaks,” said Loury Silverman, an Oak Park resident who had just finished davening Thursday morning at Chabad of Conejo.

At Brandeis-Bardin Institute, Executive Director Gary Brennglass had examined the House of the Book by Thursday afternoon. “The exterior is OK, but the roof was damaged,” he said. “We also lost a lot of vegetation. But thank God our other buildings and bunks weren’t lost.”

No synagogues were damaged, but area shuls removed their Torahs as a precaution.

In Old Agoura, the proposed future site of Heschel West day school was unsigned. That project has long been challenged by the Old Agoura Homeowners Association, partly over concerns that it might make a wildfire evacuation more difficult.

All told, the fire damaged three single-family homes and destroyed one building at the Rocketdyne facility between Chatsworth and Simi Valley.

Heschel West, at its temporary site in Agoura Hills, closed Thursday and Friday, as did the New Jewish Community Day School at Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills and schools throughout the Las Virgenes Unified School District. In the Las Virgenes Canyon area, Mestiva, an Orthodox boarding school closed on Friday.

Many synagogues also canceled Hebrew school classes, expecting to start again on Sunday or Monday, after the anticipated full containment of the fire over the weekend.

Jewish leaders exhorted community organizations to find out what people’s needs are in affected areas.

“We can make sure that synagogues that have been displaced because of the fire will have a space for High Holidays,” said Carol Koransky, executive director of The Valley Alliance.

Or Ami’s Rabbi Paul Kipness said his congregation usually meets at the Agoura Hills/Calabasas Community Center during the High Holidays. But with the center being used as a staging area for firefighter efforts, the synagogue’s High Holiday committee was already scouting out alternatives.

“They say it’ll be ours after Saturday, but who knows,” said Kipness, who has already rewritten his Rosh Hashanah morning sermon around the fire.

One group will need other quarters for sure. B’nai Horin of Simi Valley had scheduled High Holidays services at the House of the Book. The Brandeis-Bardin Institute hopes to house the group at a different meeting area on campus.

Many of the evacuated families have returned home, even as fire crews continue to keep an eye out for hot spots and areas where the fire could break through and threaten homes again.

The Rothsteins of Oak Park were among the families who had a close call. Sergiu Rothstein had left his home Thursday afternoon to get pizza for firefighters keeping watch over his neighborhood. A half hour later, flames blocked his return.

He stood on the center median of Thousand Oaks Boulevard in Oak Park, watching as fire lunged toward his hillside community only a few miles away.

“I was coming back, and the flames were shooting up 10 and 20 feet,” he said. “My family called me and said, “Don’t come back to the house.”

When reached by phone Friday morning, Rothstein said fire crews had saved his home.

“Everyone was wonderful,” he said.

Blaze Touches Off Tense Moments Read More »

The Circuit

Leave a Comment / Circuit /

Dual Appointments

It was a busy few days for attorney Andrew Friedman. L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed him fire commissioner and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors nominated Friedman to serve as commissioner of the L.A. County Judicial Procedures Commission.

In introducing the new commissioner, Villaraigosa said, “I am pleased to appoint attorney Andrew Friedman, a good friend of mine, to the Fire Commission.” Villaraigosa then noted that Friedman served the city of Los Angeles for many years, including as a member of the Los Angeles Charter Commission and has been active in numerous community organizations, including being president of Congregation Bais Naftoli.

Friedman, whose 85-year-old father is a Holocaust survivor and escaped from Hungarian communism in 1956, told the crowd, “During these times of international terrorism and natural disasters it is important that we have a strong Fire Department. I will work on the commission to make sure that all Angelenos are properly served.”

His other board, the L.A. County Judicial Procedures Commission is in charge of recommending changes in the judicial system that will result in a more efficient judicial administration. It works in cooperation with the courts and the California Judicial Council on issues of mutual interest.

Networking Women

Rina Bar-Tal, Israel Women’s Network (IWN) chair, and Avital Shachar, executive director of IWN, were back in Los Angeles recently sharing IWN accomplishments during the past year and discussing the challenges still ahead. Participants attended a reception and movie screening of “Two States of Mind.”

For more information on Israel Women’s Network, contact Rivka Dori at (818) 535-0533.

ACLU GARDEN PARTY

The weather cooperated Sunday afternoon, delivering a magnificent day for the ACLU’s annual garden party at the home of Betty and Stanley Sheinbaum in Brentwood. Almost 700 people turned out to participate in the festivities as the ACLU honored Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.); actress Alexandra Paul; Maria Elena Durazo; Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, Local 11, president, and, in memoriam, her husband, Miguel Contreras, for their work in social activism and preserving civil liberties.

Supporters and celebrities including Edward Asner and Mike Farrell turned out to nibble on stuffed grape leaves and other assorted goodies as they watched L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa present the award to Durazo and reaffirm his commitment to the ACLU.

“I am proud to have been a part of the ACLU; and I call upon all of you and your friends to be willing to stand up and continue the fight no matter what the consequences,” Villaraigosa said.

West Hollywood Mayor Abbe Land and husband, Martin, noted, “There has never been a more important time to support the ACLU and fight to protect civil liberties with a president and Congress trying to take them away from us.”

In her introduction of Villraigosa, Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California (ACLU/SC), said. “It is a true privilege to honor this year’s recipients. The ACLU/SC has always fought for the freedom to express one’s beliefs and bring issues of social disparity to the forefront of our awareness. Sen. Boxer, Alexandra Paul, Maria Elena Durazo and Miguel Contreras have all demonstrated an enormous commitment to stand up for what is right and we are proud to honor them.”

The ACLU/SC presented Birdie Reed with the Chapter Activist of the Year Award. Reed has been an ACLU/SC member since the 1960s and is currently the president of the Orange County chapter.

For information on the ACLU, call (213) 977-9500.

A Golden Volunteer

Nearly 400 community leaders, family members and friends attended a gala dinner on Sunday, Sept. 18, at the Beverly Hills Hotel honoring Ruth Shuken for her more than 50 years of volunteer service with Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services, one of the nation’s leading child welfare agencies.

Shuken, who celebrated her 95th birthday this past July 4, serves as chair of Vista’s Board of Ambassadors, and has been a member of the agency’s board of directors for more than 35 years — she is currently a vice chair of the board. She also serves on Vista’s Legislative Advocacy Committee and is a 40-plus year member of the Associates, the organization’s oldest support group, which sponsored the event.

The Look of Langer

Architect Naomi Langer was recently feted for her work on the new look of B’nai David-Judea Congregation. The award, which was given by Faith and Forum magazine and the Interfaith Forum on Religion, Art and Architecture, honors design achievements for new, renovated and restored religious buildings. B’nai David-Judea is unique in that it is housed in the building that was originally the art deco Stadium Theater built in 1931. A planned renovation was to provide equal access and safety for children in an inspirational ambience.

“The challenge entailed infusing life and spirituality into the sanctuary while respecting the historical building,” Langer said.

Renovations included: linking the spaces to a hydraulic elevator, adding accessible bathrooms to the lobby, which was extended, existing bathrooms, offices, banquet hall and lobby were refurbished.

The exterior was repainted a five-color palette and lined in Jerusalem stone. Exterior doors were retrofitted with translucent glass and windows were replaced. Original Art Deco details were maintained to maximize natural light. Langer said the design of the sanctuary involved three main components: introducing natural light, dividing the space into two equal parts according to Orthodox tradition and adding handicapped accessibility.

Geiderman Gives Back

Dr. Joel M. Geiderman, co-chair of the emergency department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, has been appointed by President Bush as vice chairman of the Holocaust Memorial Council, the governing body of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Geiderman has served as a council member since 2002, and was appointed to the museum’s executive committee in 2003.

“Dr. Geiderman’s appointment as vice chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council reflects his deep commitment as both a physician and son of a Holocaust survivor to the art and science of healing — a mission that both Cedars-Sinai and the Holocaust Memorial Museum share,” said Thomas M. Priselac, president and CEO of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

As the child of a Holocaust survivor, Geiderman decided early in life that he wanted to go into a profession where he could help people, and chose a career in medicine.

“I have said that the most formative experience in my life occurred during a period that spanned six to 12 years before I was born,” Geiderman said. “Ever since I became aware of and understood what happened during the Holocaust, I resolved that I needed to do something meaningful with my life.”

Book on Nimmer

David Nimmer, lawyer and long time Bureau of Jewish Education board member, was appointed the new chair of the the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles Sept. 15.

Serving of counsel to Irell & Manella LLP in Los Angeles, he was a visiting professor at UCLA Law School and distinguished scholar at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. He has published a series of articles on the subject of U.S. and international copyright.

HUC-JIR Happenings

Joshua Holo was recently appointed to the faculty of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) as the director of the Louchheim School of Judaic studies, collaborating with USC to coordinate the undergraduate Jewish Studies curriculum. He has also been appointed as associate professor of Jewish history and is currently working on his first book, “Byzantine Jewry in the Mediterranean Economy,” forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Sharon Gillerman is newly appointed director of Edgar F. Magnin School of Graduate Studies at HUC-JIR, where she also serves as associate professor of Jewish history. She received her doctorate in history from UCLA and wrote her dissertation on the crisis of the Jewish family during the Weimar Republic.

Her other research interests include gender and Jewish history, the history of the family, and the history of Berlin. She has published articles on the German Jewish family, German Jewish history, the History of Holocaust education, and Holocaust memorialization. She is currently completing a book titled, “Germans Into Jews: Remaking the Jewish Social Body in the Weimar Republic.” The professor has also taught at Brandeis University, UCLA, Harvard and the University of Hamburg.

Matt Albert was recently appointed regional director of admissions and recruitment at HUC-JIR. Albert received his doctorate from UCLA, a master’s in political science from Columbia University and a bachelor of arts in political science from UCSD. He spent nine years at Milken Community High School in, where he most recently served as assistant principal.

 

The Circuit Read More »