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Jewish Journal

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March 16, 2006

N for No-Nonsense Natalie

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Hollywood Jew /

Natalie Portman has probably populated more fanboy fantasies than anyone this side of Jessica Alba.

Besides presiding over the recent “Star Wars” films as Queen Amidala, she plays a bald, beautiful and badass revolutionary in “V For Vendetta,” opening March 17, the latest film from “Matrix” masterminds Andy and Larry Wachowski. As the missing link between the universes of George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers, Portman holds a unique place in geek-movie history

“Yes, they’re all somehow linked now,” she says. “It’s sort of hard to put a genre label on ‘V For Vendetta,’ but it fits in the action category with ‘Star Wars,’ even though it’s a little bit more provocative. But I will leave it to all the people who love to write essays about this kind of stuff to make ‘Matrix’ and ‘V’ connections and ‘Star Wars’ and ‘V’ connections. There’s certainly plenty to discuss.”

Portman professes much love for Lucas and the “Star Wars” experience, but she also insinuates that the trilogy provided her with a handy way of staying in movies while she was off attending Harvard University.

“I was in school during the year, and then on summer break I would do a

‘Star Wars,'” says the Jerusalem-born actress. “But I’m done with school, done with ‘Star Wars.’ I’ve graduated.”

“V For Vendetta” is a whopper of a graduation present. Adapted by the Wachowskis from a graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the movie is set in a future world squirming under the thumb of a totalitarian chancellor (John Hurt). Homosexuality is illegal; freedom of speech is a memory; and hope is in short supply.

One day, a mysterious figure appears, wearing a mask designed to look like Guy Fawkes, the 17th century Catholic revolutionary who tried to blow up British Parliament in 1605. Calling himself V (Hugo Weaving), the cape-wearing anti-hero is planning a series of terrorist attacks against the repressive British government. Portman plays Evey Hammond, a waif who becomes V’s protégé.

Making a $50 million movie with a terrorist as a hero is a bold movie in post-Sept. 11 America. Portman knew the film would spark controversy but found herself instantly drawn to its provocative, envelope-pushing subject matter.

“Being from Israel was one of the reasons that I wanted to do this movie, because terrorism and violence have been such a daily part of my thought process and conversation ever since I was young,” she says. “One of the books that I read to help me with this role was Menachim Begin’s book about his experiences in a Siberian prison. Eventually he came to lead Israel in the British occupation of Palestine. He was called a terrorist by many people. Israelis have been called terrorists all through history.”

“The movie asks important questions, like, ‘When, if ever, is violence justified?’ And ‘What is the threshold for how pressing a situation can be before we have to revolt?’ One of the great things about the movie is that it leaves those questions open for discussion,” she says.

Portman has always tried to pursue thought-provoking material. She played the title role in a Broadway production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” in 1997, embodied an American stripper living in London for “Closer” (earning a best supporting actress nomination in the process) and starred in the Israeli film “Free Zone,” which premiered at last year’s Cannes Film Fest.

The actress accepted the vanity-destroying role of Evey knowing that one of the requirements was an on-camera trip to the barber.

“It wasn’t traumatic because I was trying to focus on what my character was going through,” says Portman about getting a buzzcut. “We only had one shot to do it. I don’t really have any personal memories of the experience.”

Since shooting the film, Portman’s hair has grown out a few inches. For today’s interview, she’s wearing it spiky and punked-up. Dressed in jeans, an open sweater and the world’s tiniest ballet slippers, Portman looks a good deal younger than her 24 years.

As a former child star who made her film debut in the bullet ballet “The Professional,” Portman is used to suffering for her art, but she drew the line when it came to doing her own stunts. Claiming to be “not in great shape,” she allowed her “Vendetta” double to do all of the tough stuff.

“I would do the end of the stunt,” she says. “Someone else would fall out of the window, and then I would end up there on the ground. That’s movie magic.”

Not everything about “V” has been so easy. In fact, the film has been surrounded by controversy since production got underway last year. Real-life terrorism, the firing of a leading man and the airing of a famous filmmaker’s dirty laundry all figured into the long, arduous process of bringing the graphic novel to the screen.

Originally published in 1981, “V For Vendetta” was written as an indictment of Margaret Thatcher’s conservative politics. A few years later, the rights were scooped up by producer Joel Silver (“Lethal Weapon,” “The Matrix”) who approached the Wachowskis about penning an adaptation. When “The Matrix” trilogy started winding down, the brothers finally decided to revisit the risky material.

Instead of directing the film themselves, the brothers and Silver hired “The Matrix” second unit director James McTiegue to call “action” and “cut.”

The Wachowskis were apparently on the set nearly every single day, which inspired rumors that McTiegue was a mere figurehead and that the brothers were calling the shots themselves.

McTiegue insists that gossip was unfounded.

“The Wachowskis were the producers and they wrote the script,” he notes. “They were a great sounding board but they were the first to tell me that I could take or leave their suggestions.”

The production encountered another problem when the graphic novel’s writer Alan Moore requested that his name be taken off the final film. Stung by the poor adaptation of “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” Moore apparently made his decision without ever seeing a frame of “V For Vendetta.”

“I did call Alan and ask him not to have his name removed,” notes David Lloyd, who illustrated the graphic novel. “I wish he hadn’t done it. But he isn’t happy until the movie is a perfect reproduction. Alan has a clear viewpoint of what he represents as a person and an artist. My viewpoint is completely different. I think they’ve done a great job with the film.”

Yet another potentially disastrous turn of events unfolded when the original actor cast as V — “Rome’s” James Purefoy — was fired midway through the film and replaced by “The Matrix’s” Hugo Weaving. Purefoy apparently wasn’t a dynamic enough presence for the filmmakers. Even though Silver confirms that some of Purefoy’s scenes remain in the film, Weaving receives the sole screen credit and also provides V’s voice.

Portman was surprised when the change was made. She enjoyed working with both actors but saves most of her praise for Weaving.

“With an actor like Hugo, your job is so much easier because he has this incredible, very specific character that he creates just through his vocal and physical expressiveness,” she says. “Even though he was wearing a mask, I felt he was there with me all of the time.”

Originally scheduled to be released in November 2005 — to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day — the film was delayed after a July 2005 bombing in a British subway claimed the lives of 52 civilians. Portman believes the intermingling of reel and real events is indicative of just how much “V For Vendetta” has its finger on the pulse of the times.

“Obviously, when you see any act of violence anywhere with casualties, you’re always horrified,” she says of the London tragedy. “I’m optimistic to hope that this movie doesn’t present an exact vision of our future, but obviously there are many elements that resonate with historical events and current events.”

With its depiction of a repressive government without checks and balances, “V For Vendetta” can be read as a commentary on Bush’s America. Does Portman see any parallels?

“I think that there are many people who will take it that way,” she says. “But there are other people I know who are pro-Bush and they’ve seen this as an anti-fascism movie.”

A few weeks before the release of “V For Vendetta,” Rolling Stone magazine published an unflattering story about Larry Wachowski’s increasingly unusual behavior. Apparently, Wachowski left his wife, took up with a dominatrix named Mistress Strix and began cross-dressing. Wachowski, who never consents to interviews, has yet to respond to the claims.

McTiegue also refuses to comment on the chit-chat surrounding the brothers.

“I pay about as much attention to those stories as they deserve, which isn’t much,” McTiegue says. “I don’t comment on people’s personal lives.”

To hear Portman tell it, “V For Vendetta” dovetails nicely with her burgeoning interest in world affairs. Recently, the actress helped promote the efforts of FINCA, an organization devoted to helping establish banks for women in developing nations.

Visiting Uganda, Ecuador and Guatemala with the group has opened Portman’s eyes to the amount of work that needs to be down to help end global poverty.

“I definitely think that maybe someday I’ll be doing other things besides acting,” she says. “But until I do them, I’ve learned not to talk about it. I’ve been interviewed since I was 12 years old and I feel as if I’ve left a trail of unfulfilled dreams behind me.”

After finishing “V For Vendetta,” Portman “took a breather” by contributing supporting performances to Milos Forman’s costume drama “Goya’s Ghost” with Javier Bardem and the kiddie flick “Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium” with Dustin Hoffman.

“I’m just trying to do different things because I feel like if I can keep myself interested then there’s the hope of keeping an audience interested, too.” l

Amy Longsdorf is a freelance writer who can be reached at movieamy@aol.com.

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Sobol’s ‘iWitness’: Principled or Treasonous?

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

At the height of the intifada, in 2002, more than 600 Israeli pilots and soldiers, many in elite units, refused to serve in what they considered the occupied Palestinian territories.

These were not pacifists or conscientious objectors to war in any form. Many had fought in Israel’s past wars for survival, but they refused to bear arms in what they saw as an oppressive campaign.

In Israel, where service in the armed forces was long held sacrosanct, the stand of the new breed of “refuseniks” became a deeply divisive issue, triggering protests, counter-protests and threatening riots.

To Joshua Sobol, Israel’s foremost playwright and a former paratrooper, the situation was agonizing. But rather than write about it directly, Sobol began to think about a case he had read about a decade earlier and then put aside.

The central figure in the incident was Franz Jaegerstaetter, an Austrian farmer who, in 1943, at the height of World War II, refused to serve in the German army. He was tried by a court martial and executed at the age of 36.

In the play “iWitness,” opening April 19 at the Mark Taper Forum, in which all the characters are referred to by their first names, Franz is visited in his prison cell by family and friends the day before his execution.

His wife, boyhood pals, a former mistress, the jailer, a doctor, the prison chaplain, even one of the judges who sentenced him try to change Franz’s decision. He is promised assignment to a hospital unit where he won’t have to shoot at anybody, but he remains adamant. He will not wear a German uniform.

The heart of the play lies in Franz’s patient attempts to explain the underlying reasons for his stand to puzzled friends — jailers and judges alike — especially since he had already served an earlier term in the German army before the war.

When the play was first performed in Tel Aviv in 2002, it was met by near riots, according to press reports. A few critics tried to “manipulate” the theme, said Sobol, by charging him with writing a defense brief, by analogy, for the Israeli refuseniks.

Sobol denies the allegation.

“What I hoped to do was start a discussion about basic questions of principle,” he said in a phone call from Israel.

But principles are not absolute, neither in Germany nor in Israel. Just as one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter, so one man’s principle is another man’s treason.

So we asked Sobol, one of Israel’s most eloquent liberals, how he felt about the Israeli soldiers who refused to evacuate settlers from their Gaza Strip homes during the recent disengagement. The playwright evaded an answer, even as he acknowledged that there were no easy answers.

“A man, whether on the left or right, should not carry out an order against his conscience,” he said. “But there is a difference between legal and illegal orders, and it may be difficult to determine which is which. It depends on the specific situation.”

The play’s Franz, a small-town farmer, is an impressively eloquent exponent of his principles, frequently putting the judges and chaplain on the defensive. In one scene, he justifies his resistance by arguing that Hitler “has broken all the rules of humanity established over thousands of years … that whoever starts a war, breaks the rules. And when a leader allows himself to break the rules, it is the duty of every citizen to break the leader’s rules.”

In another scene, Franz turns on the prison chaplain, who argues for every German bystander who pretended not to know what was happening.

“You hear those trains passing by every night?” Franz asks. “You hear the human voices coming from the cattle cars? … Listen to the voices bursting out of the sealed boxcars. God is talking to you in those voices. He’s telling you, Father Tochmann, what you should do.”

Sobol declines a suggestion that he painted an intellectual patina on a simple man. Although no transcript of Franz’s trial has been found, Sobol has read his letters to his wife and was moved and impressed.

“Jaegerstaetter was a real roughneck in his youth, but when he married his wife, he became a deeply religious Catholic. During their honeymoon, they made a pilgrimage to Rome, and over time he became a self-taught philosopher.”

During the past 35 years, Sobol has written 50 plays and two novels; he teaches at two Israeli universities, and at age 66 he appears more productive than ever.

“I am a compulsive writer and always have two or three themes in my head which I want to develop,” he said.

Sobol frequently writes 10 hours at a stretch, fortified only by a cup of tea for breakfast. Last year, he completed two new plays, “Kol Nidrei” and “A Working Class Hero.” He is obsessed by the “existential dilemma” of “What is a Jew?” noting that “this question has influenced the whole body of my work, directly or indirectly.”

He has explored that theme most famously in two plays, “Ghetto,” which has been translated into 20 languages, and “The Soul of a Jew,” both of which were performed at the Mark Taper Forum in the 1980s.

Sobol is also an unsparing social critic of his country and his people, and to label him “controversial” is a gross understatement. Viewing his country at the present time, he is concerned less about threats from without than social dysfunction within, a subject at the center of “A Working Class Hero.”

“Our middle class has been degraded and is declining toward poverty,” he said. “More than 1.2 million people are living below the poverty line, including 700,000 children. We are creating a class of frustrated Israelis, and I am convinced that to reach a peaceful solution with the Palestinians, we must change the social and political situation inside Israel.”

The director and co-translator of “iWitness” is Barry Edelstein, tackling his first major West Coast production. A New Jersey native and former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Edelstein, 40, won honors and critical acclaim as the artistic director of the off-Broadway Classical Stage Company from 1998 to 2003.

Recognized particularly for his fresh staging of Shakespearean plays, he moved to Los Angeles two years ago, teaches Shakespearean acting at USC, and is finishing his first movie, “My Lunch with Larry.”

“I first read about ‘iWitness’ in an Israeli newspaper, was intrigued, and asked Sobol if he could send me his own English translation of the play,” Edelstein said.

The two men got together and collaborated on a more colloquial translation from Sobol’s original draft.

Still, we suggested to Edelstein, on a first, cold reading of the play’s script, some of the characters tend to sound more like talking ideological viewpoints than three-dimensional humans.

Edelstein responded that “good actors bring life and humanity to the written word, and we have very good actors. Franz is a fully realized character, though some of the other roles are not quite so nuanced. That’s by design, because they are viewed through Franz’s eyes.”

He made the further point that the Israeli theater in general, and Sobol in particular, are more in the European than the American mold, with the latter more likely to emphasize psychological complexities. Edelstein cited especially the influence of German playwright Bertoldt Brecht, “who was more interested in how something happens than why. He wanted the audience to take a step back, to view a play objectively rather than emotionally.”

Like Sobol, Edelstein was deeply impressed on reading Franz’s letters from the prison.

“The writing wasn’t great prose, but it was remarkably sophisticated and showed a real depth of thinking,” he said.

Anyhow, Edelstein asked, why shouldn’t a farmer be able to write with great conviction and clarity?

After all, “Shakespeare had little education, he was the son of a glovemaker, and he did some pretty good writing.”

The Mark Taper Forum will present “iWitness” from April 9 to May 21, with previews starting March 30. For ticket information, call (213) 628-2772 or visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

 

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This Week – Carnival Time

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

We arrived early for the Purim carnival last Sunday. The giant bounce house still lay in a wrinkled, uninflated wad on a corner of the parking lot. The only children around were, like our son, middle school volunteers, corralling the puppies for the puppy-petting booth, lining up bottles for the ring toss.

The temple brotherhood had sponsored a Red Cross Blood Drive van, so, with some time to kill, I signed up and sat in line.

A man from the temple stepped out of the donor van, rolling his sleeve back down over his arm.

“Remember,” he said, “When they ask you if you paid for sex in the past 12 months, ask them, ‘Does jewelry count?'”

Next to me, an elderly member of the Temple Brotherhood laughed, leaned over and offered his own topper, a kind of dirty-joke midrash. It involves a mother and her daughter and — it’s not for a family paper.

It was a cool, beautiful morning, and there I was on a sidewalk on La Cienega Boulevard, with a stranger telling me a foul, funny joke as if we’ve known each other all our lives. And I thought: I ought to go to shul more often.

When I do go, I’m always struck not by what happens in the sanctuary, but by the buzz of life and activity in the halls and lobbies and reception rooms.

On Purim, Temple Beth Am is a Brueghel painting come to life: Men, women and children in bright clothes, racing here and there, greeting each other, laughing, arguing, weeping in every corner of the frame.

No, it’s Brueghel plus a soundtrack. Man, it’s noisy. When it’s your kid beside you doing the yelling and tugging, you hardly notice. Now we buy our son and daughter a pack of tickets and they run off with friends. A new generation of 3-foot Esthers and 2-foot Mordecais are screaming for the mini-Ferris Wheel and squealing on the Whirl-a-Gig.

In another part of the carnival, I overhear a recently divorced man baring his soul to a friend, shedding tears on a stairwell. A single mom arranges a week’s worth of play dates for her son, so she can get in more overtime hours. Two friends trade news on a third friend’s cancer treatments. Their conversation quickly moves on to arranging meals and carpools for the ailing woman. Downstairs, in the deafening conviviality of the food room, a group of men discusses Hamas and the new school building project.

“Rabbi Malkus is in the dunk booth!” a day school father calls out to me. He gives it the import of a late-breaking news story and makes a beeline to take in the sight.

I saw the rabbi get dunked last year, as dozens of Pressman Academy students cheered. We’ve come a long way as a people, indeed, from Moses, to Hillel, to Maimonides, to Kook, to a rabbi in a skin-tight wet suit, shivering on a plank above some murky water. But the kids are having fun.

If “Crash,” this year’s Oscar winner for best picture, was about a Los Angeles where people needed to ram their cars together just to have human contact, the synagogue is the “anti-Crash.” It is the public square in the midst of the city; the village green in the midst of the country; the shtetl in the midst of the 21st century.

What confounded me at the carnival was how the vibrancy of synagogue playgrounds and pews — whether at Beth Am or Adat Ari El or Valley Beth Shalom or Sinai or dozens of other congregations in the region — contrasts with the portents of doom and gloom coming, as David Letterman might say, from the main office.

The Conservative movement is in a state of well-documented flux. Once America’s largest Jewish denomination, it has been superseded by the more liberal Reform movement. At the other end of the spectrum, the Orthodox movement has fewer adherents but a faster growth rate.

And although synagogues with successful day schools, like Beth Am, have many young families, the Conservative movement overall is aging faster than the others.

Conservative rabbis from around the world will meet next week in Mexico City at the Rabbinical Assembly convention to hash out future policy in the face of this numerical decline.

Many observers say the fall-off reflects a larger cultural shift. Conservative Judaism developed a century ago as a backlash against both Reform innovation and Orthodox stasis. It flourished in the postwar years, when all America wanted to have its change and retreat from it too.

But — so goes this analysis — in a polarized era of red versus blue states, secular versus religious, it’s not surprising that Judaism’s middle cannot hold. Conservative liturgy and law is too constricting for most Jews, too liberal for others. So the number of Jewish Goldilocks — for whom warm porridge is just right — is dwindling.

The problem with this explanation is that Conservative doctrine worked to keep many Goldilocks from getting any porridge, period. It excluded many of the Jews who would otherwise have been drawn to synagogue life. It was late in ordaining women, it is still dithering over ordaining gays — the issue will be a major source of contention in Mexico City — and it has been sluggish about welcoming and including converts and the spouses of intermarried Jews.

Without working to develop more welcoming standards, the Conservative movement will regain its primacy about when Dwight D. Eisenhower regains the presidency.

The impetus for its renewal, if it arrives at all, won’t likely come from seminarians and lawgivers, but from congregants and pulpit rabbis, camp counselors and school teachers. They’re the ones who understand that what a successful movement needs is less doctrine, and more dunk tanks.

 

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Spectator – Make Room for the Jammys

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

In response to the glaring absence of Jewish music from the Grammy Awards, the teen-themed JVibe has just released the results of its first “Jammys,” a set of Jewish music awards sponsored by the magazine and voted on by readers on the monthly’s Web site.

Not surprisingly, the Jammy for “outstanding male singer” went to Matisyahu, the black-clad reggae-spouting Lubavitcher whose CD, “Live at Stubbs'” has already sold more than 300,000 copies. His female counterpart was Rachel Stevens, the Brit-pop queen, formerly of S Club 7, whose latest solo effort, “Come and Get It” includes several UK hit singles. The Jammy for best Jewish group went to indie-rockers Guster (who also provided one of the leaders of the Chanukah-rocking LeeVees), while the best Jewish album nod went to “Agua Pa’la Gente,” the first full-length offering from the Hip-Hop Hoodios.

The Grammys have been given by the industry’s National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) for 48 years and include six awards in Christian music categories; the lack of a Jewish music category has engendered numerous petitions to the Academy’s Board of Trustees over the years. Most recently, JVibe organized an online petition that attracted almost 700 signatures.

“There are other forms of spiritual music that receive Grammy recognition, and there’s some really fantastic Jewish music being produced that our readers believe deserves recognition,” JVibe executive editor Joshua Eagle wrote in an e-mail interview last week. “We figured, fine, if NARAS doesn’t want to give excellent Jewish performers their due, it wouldn’t stop us.”

The magazine boasts a readership of more than 9,000, and although he did not have exact figures on the voting, Eagle wrote that he was “pleased with the amount of traffic the vote drove to our site during the voting months.”

Other awards in the inaugural Jammys went to Lenny Kravitz, who was recognized as “the best Jewish singer you wish would refer more to being Jewish,” Rick Recht for best camp music, and a lifetime achievement award to Bob Dylan. In addition, Recht won the “Isaiah,” given to the person who makes you want to go out and change the world,” for his peace song “Shalom B’Olam.”

Regardless of who his readers chose, Eagle promises as long as NARAS continues to ignore Jewish music, this year’s Jammys will not be the last. “Great Jewish music isn’t going away anytime soon,” he wrote, “and neither will this issue.”

 

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Studio Secured to Create Spiritual Art

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

On the small, darkened stage, a lone streetlight illuminates the façade of a front porch that, hours later, will serve as the set of Billy Crystal’s Long Island home in his one-man show “700 Sundays.”

But for now, the streetlamp throws a pale light out onto the empty Wilshire Theatre — an old-time art deco 1,900-seat venue in Beverly Hills with worn-down plush red seats, a fading red patterned carpet and walls painted a dark mahogany that obfuscates the intricate woodcut of the early 20th century, when the theater was built.

Soon, though, if all goes according to plan, the woodwork will be repainted, the stained glass cleaned and the seats refurbished to accommodate The Temple of the Arts, which recently acquired the venue in hopes of turning it into a full-service Jewish community performing arts center.

Reimagining the 24,000-square-foot property, which also includes a six-story office building and restaurant, is the vision of Rabbi David Baron, who views arts as means to a spiritual end.

“I am driven by an objective, a goal: to get more Jewish people who were disconnected to connect,” he said. “Kiruv, or return — whatever you [choose to] call it.”

His temple, he added, is an “exploration of Jewish mission through the arts.”

The $20 million project — which includes the purchase price as well as the renovations — also encompasses a state-of-the-art cinema and an after-school arts and religious program, with funds left over, Baron hopes, for an endowment. Think the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the half-block Jewish community center on the Upper West Side that hosts lectures, concerts, performances, a school and serves as a center for Jewish cultural life. Except that the Wilshire Theatre seats three times as many patrons and also will be the home for regular services for a 1,400-member congregation.

The Temple of the Arts, unaffiliated with an organized Jewish movement, is one of three congregations locally that bill themselves as arts and religious communities. The first Synagogue for the Performing Arts, started some 30 years ago, has 700 members, and holds a monthly service at the University of Judaism; its High Holiday services are led by scholar and author Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. Rabbi Jerry Cutler served at Performing Arts Temple for six years, and then started the Creative Arts Temple, which holds a monthly service at Temple Beth Am on La Cienega Boulevard. Baron headed the Performing Arts synagogue from 1985-1992 until he founded the Temple of the Arts (formerly Temple Shalom for the Arts). Baron’s temple, funded by donations and loans, is the only one of the three with its own permanent structure.

Baron incorporates drama, music, readings, paintings and speakers into different parts of the monthly and High Holiday services. The congregation’s own prayer book is illustrated with paintings by Chagall and Matisse and includes both traditional and nontraditional inspirational readings. Congregants stage skits, and singers and composers perform original or relevant pieces. During the last High Holiday Yizkor memorial service, there was a medley of “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “I Will Remember You.” Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) also spoke on the topic of forgiveness.

“These things touch people in ways that traditional services don’t,” Baron said.

If you were going to casting central for a rabbi to lead a Los Angeles arts temple, you’d probably choose the tanned Baron, who is in his 50s and has soft blue eyes and receding brown hair. He’s got the debonair looks of an aging Pierce Brosnan combined with a subtle missionary zeal that pays scant attention to naysayers.

Baron was raised in an Orthodox family on Long Island and had always planned to be a lawyer — even though he got smicha, or rabbinical ordination, from his grandfather in Jerusalem. But a friend asked him to take over a Conservative congregation in New Jersey, and he later accepted a posting in Miami.

When he first came to Los Angeles in 1980, he noticed that Jews were not connecting to services.

“A lot of Jewish people have minimal Jewish education. They suffered through their bar mitzvah and ran away,” he said. “I could just see how synagogues — except the Orthodox — are empty. Unless you do something special.”

Baron left the original Synagogue for the Performing Arts to, as he put it, “take it to the next level.”

The Temple of the Arts attracts a few thousand worshipers on the High Holidays, less at other times. Besides, the monthly service, Baron intends to offer a second, smaller monthly service on alternate weeks, led by a new assistant rabbi, Lynn Brody.

As a cultural center, planned projects include more shows like Crystal’s as well as community events, such as Sinai Temple’s 100-year anniversary party.

On March 17, the temple will host a pre-Passover gospel service, joined by Bishop Charles E. Blake, The Tova Marcos Singers and The Tabernacle Gospel Choir of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ. It will bring together Jews and African Americans to “rejoice in the shared heritage of freedom from slavery with songs of freedom and faith,” according to the program.

Baron said that a Beverly Hills/mid-Wilshire center focusing on the performing arts “complements” a Jewish cultural mix of venues that already includes the Skirball Cultural Center, the University of Judaism and others.

As Baron walks around the high-ceilinged lobby atrium, pointing out architectural beauties from the 1930s-era theater, it’s as if he can actually see the old glory days of star-studded Beverly Hills premieres — even as he envisions the future of a Jewish gathering place.

Baron hopes to close the synagogue for the summer and be ready for his own premiere by the High Holidays.

“People say I’m a dreamer, but that’s really why we’re here.”

Temple of the Arts will be holding its Gospel Service Friday, March 17 at 8 p.m. 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. For more information, call (323) 655-4900.

 

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