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September 28, 2006
Everyone’s Jewish — until proven otherwise
Strange doings in Virginia. George Allen, former governor, one-term senator, son of a famous football coach and in the midst of a heated battle for reelection, has just been outed as
a Jew.
An odd turn of events, given that his having Jewish origins has nothing to do with anything in the campaign, and that Allen himself was oblivious to the fact until his 83-year-old mother revealed to him last month the secret she had kept concealed for 60 years.
Apart from its political irrelevance, it seems improbable in the extreme that the cowboy-boots-wearing football scion of Southern manner and speech should turn out to be, at least by origins, a son of Israel.
For Allen, as he quipped to me, it’s the explanation for a lifelong affinity for Hebrew National hot dogs. For me, it is the ultimate confirmation of something I have been regaling friends with for 20 years and now, for the advancement of social science, feel compelled to publish.
Krauthammer’s Law: Everyone is Jewish until proven otherwise.
I’ve had a fairly good run with this one. First, it turns out that John Kerry — windsurfing, French-speaking, Beacon Hill aristocrat — had two Jewish grandparents. Then Hillary Clinton — methodical Methodist — unearths a Jewish stepgrandfather in time for her run as New York senator.
A less jaunty case was that of Madeleine Albright, three of whose Czech grandparents had perished in the Holocaust and who most improbably contended that she had no idea they were Jewish. To which we can add the leading French presidential contender (Nicolas Sarkozy), a former supreme allied commander of NATO (Wesley Clark) and Russia’s leading anti-Semite (Vladimir Zhirinovsky). One must have a sense of humor about these things. Even Fidel Castro claims he is from a family of Marranos.
For all its tongue-in-cheek irony, Krauthammer’s Law works because when I say “everyone,” I don’t mean everyone you know personally. Depending on the history and ethnicity of your neighborhood and social circles, there may be no one you know who is Jewish. But if “everyone” means anyone that you’ve heard of in public life, the law works for two reasons. Ever since the Jews were allowed out of the ghetto and into European society at the dawning of the Enlightenment, they have peopled the arts and sciences, politics and history in astonishing disproportion to their numbers.
There are 13 million Jews in the world, one-fifth of 1 percent of the world’s population. Yet 20 percent of Nobel Prize winners are Jewish, a staggering hundredfold surplus of renown and genius. This is similarly true for myriad other “everyones” — the household names in music, literature, mathematics, physics, finance, industry, design, comedy, film and, as the doors opened, even politics.
But it is not just Jewish excellence at work here. There is a dark side to these past centuries of Jewish emancipation and achievement — an unrelenting history of persecution. The result is the other, more somber and poignant reason for the Jewishness of public figures being discovered late and with surprise: concealment.
Look at the Albright case. Her distinguished father was Jewish, if tenuously so, until the Nazi invasion. He fled Czechoslovakia and, shortly thereafter, converted. Over the centuries, suffering — most especially, the Holocaust — has proved too much for many Jews. Many survivors simply resigned their commission.
For some, the break was defiant and theological: A God who could permit the Holocaust — ineffable be His reasons — had so breached the covenant that it was now forfeit. They were bound no longer to Him or His faith.
For others, the considerations were far more secular and practical. Why subject one’s children to the fear and suffering, the stigmatization and marginalization, the prospect of being hunted until death that being Jewish had brought to an entire civilization in Europe?
In fact, that was precisely the reason Etty Lumbroso, Allen’s mother, concealed her identity.
Brought up as a Jew in French Tunisia during World War II, she saw her father, Felix, imprisoned in a concentration camp. Coming to America was her one great chance to leave that forever behind, for her and for her future children. She married George Allen Sr., apparently never telling her husband’s family, her own children or anyone else of her Jewishness.
Such was Etty’s choice. Multiply the story in its thousand variations and you have Kerry and Clinton, Albright and Allen, a world of people with a whispered past. Allen’s mother tried desperately to bury it forever.
In response to published rumors, she finally confessed the truth to him, adding heartbreakingly, “Now you don’t love me anymore” — and then swore him to secrecy.
Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist. This article is reprinted with permission from the author. You can reach the author at letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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Jewish causes must compete to get big charitable gifts
Roland Stanton’s $100 million gift to Yeshiva University is the largest ever to a U.S. Jewish institution. Yet as Stanton himself said, “There are plenty of people who could do it.”
Our research shows he’s right: Dozens of Jewish philanthropists are capable of equaling Stanton’s gift.
So why don’t they? It’s not that wealthy Jews have no reputation for making large gifts to Jewish causes: Julius Rosenwald in his day invented modern Jewish philanthropy; Charles and Edgar Bronfman have built and continue to sustain the core elements of Jewish life around the world.
The question is not one of capacity; the question is whether the Jewish community can imagine and prepare for gifts of that size and scope.
Jews are among America’s elite in philanthropy today. They endow professorships, fund museums, build hospitals and science labs and set up foundations. Clearly, wealthy American Jews have no problem parting with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars at a time. b
But why not more to Jewish causes? Stanton is proof that we can succeed when we ask for big figures — $100 million or even $1 billion. Other Jewish organizations can set their sights as high as Yeshiva University or even higher.
Our annual research of megagifts — gifts above $1 million — turns up at least 50 people who could match or exceed Stanton’s generosity. These typically are wealthy Jewish business leaders who give only relatively modest gifts to Jewish causes. It’s tempting to write these people off as uncommitted Jews, but it would be wrong.
If Jewish causes want to receive megagifts, they have to prove themselves worthy. They have to compete on equal ground with the secular hospitals, symphonies, museums and universities, all of which court and inspire Jewish donors.
Richard Joel came to lead Yeshiva University three years ago; his vision has energized the place and clearly energized Stanton, who is chairman of its board. Stanton could have directed his gift anywhere, but this month he chose Yeshiva University. It means that he believes in something.
That’s the character of today’s new philanthropists. They typically are unimpressed by the donor recognition events of typical charities — the fancy dinners and building-naming ceremonies. They’re more hands-on and active in their philanthropy.
They want to give away their wealth during their lifetimes. Many of them are entrepreneurial in background and temperament; Bill Gates is their living embodiment. They will disburse their money with the same attention they paid to the building of their businesses.
The Jewish communal world not only should prepare for this shift in the philanthropic world, it should rejoice. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of wealthy Jews who have yet to become fully engaged in Jewish giving. There is an enormous opportunity to engage these Jewish givers.
Look at Birthright Israel. Sending thousands of young Jewish adults to Israel for free is expensive, but it has support from some of North America’s biggest Jewish philanthropists. Look at Nefesh B’Nefesh, a project that is helping thousands of people to make aliyah. And look at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s efforts to feed the hungry and poor.
Big ideas attract big donors. These are examples of what good, provocative ideas can do, and we need more of them.
Of course, the Jewish nonprofit world — the professionals who staff the organizations — also must be prepared to become more entrepreneurial. Most often, good philanthropists work hand-in-hand with good professionals.
Look at it this way: Today’s philanthropists think like investors, because that’s how they got wealthy. They want their money to achieve a return; they want results.
We should applaud philanthropists who choose to search for cures for deadly diseases, feed the hungry or educate America’s youth. At the same time, we need to develop and support ambitious initiatives that ensure a secure Jewish community, help grow the Jewish people around the world and take care of the Jewish poor and elderly.
Philanthropists then would feel that the Jewish community is worth both a mighty financial investment and the invaluable donation of their personal involvement.
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Roast for Richard; A Wish Is Granted; And the World Tastes Good; New Faces X 2
Roast for Richard
City of Hope honored civic leader and philanthropist Richard S. Ziman at a toast and roast Sept, 14. Ziman was presented with City of Hope’s Spirit of Life Award and President’s Award for his longstanding commitment to the advancement of science and the care of patients with cancer. The event raised $1.6 million for City of Hope’s groundbreaking cancer research and treatment programs.
A Wish Is Granted
 awardees at at ICRF’s annual Barbara S. Goodman Scientific Awards Evening in New York last week. Each obtained ICRF professorships, the highest designation, and is receiving a grant of $50,000 a year for seven years. Kenneth E. Goodman (above, left, with ICRF Los Angeles chapter chairman William L. Robbins>, ICRF trustee and chair of the evening established a $700,000 endowment fund at ICRF in memory of his wife, Barbara, to support pancreatic cancer research. Barbara Goodman passed away from pancreatic cancer in July 2002, at the age of 51. </p>
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Hathout hullabaloo; Jewish Republicans vs. Jewish Democrats once again; I bet you won’t print *this*
Dr. Maher Hathout
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First, kudos to Marc Ballon on his comprehensive and balanced coverage of the crisis surrounding the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission’s award to Dr. Maher Hathout (“Controversial Muslim Leader Gets Award,” Sept. 22).
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Second, I do not believe that Allyson Rowen Taylor’s comment should go unanswered within our community. Her suggestion that the commissioners feared riotous anti-Jewish violence from the Muslim community of Los Angeles insults not only to the thousands of God-fearing, peace-loving American Muslim citizens and immigrants with whom we American Jewish citizens and immigrants share our city and county, but also the commissioners themselves. Taylor owes all of her fellow Angelenos an apology for her (literally) incendiary remarks. (And for the record, the most recent public effigy was hung two weeks ago by non-Muslims in front of the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City as a provocative Sept. 11 memorial protest….)
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Shawn Landres
Los Angeles
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Hathout, seeing how a community was being divided by his nomination, could have scored points in stating that he wanted to work to build bridges, and that if this award was an impedance to this, he would rather walk away than take an award given on a decision of four yes votes to six abstains. What Hathout needs is a good reminder of King Solomon, and to understand the true meaning of “mensch.”
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Allyson Rowen Taylor
Associate Director
American Jewish Congress
Western Region
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Who Shall Die
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It is very easy to second guess a decision with your wonderful 20/20 hindsight (“And Who Shall Die,” Sept. 22). The fundamental question was and is: How long do we wait? This is a war. Wars are sloppy, mistakes are made, and when mistakes are made in war unfortunately people die. It’s a good thing you were not around during World War II.
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The war in Iraq may be a mistake, I don’t know. All I know is that this war will take a long time, and more troops (and civilians) will die. I am not ready to have the women in my family wear burkas, I am not ready to pay a tax to be a Jew, I am not ready to convert or die. Are you?
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Glenn Roeder
Los Angeles
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Before all those Jewish Republicans overwhelm your e-mailbox, I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your editorial this week. For some of our leaders the ability to admit they were/are wrong about anything is beyond them. You laid your apology out for all to see.I can’t say I marched protesting entry into the Iraq war, but my heart was there. Guns and violence as a way to resolve any problem are an anathema to me.
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Thanks for your words; they were so appropriate for the beginning of the new year.
Ann Reiss Lane
Co-founder
Women Against Gun Violence
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The suggestion of having rabbis read the names of the war dead at High Holiday services is absurd and obscene. There is already more political commentary from the pulpit than most people sign up for when they attend religious services.
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During World War II, would anyone have called for the reading of the 10,000 names of those who died storming the beaches of Normandy so that the extermination camps would be silenced? Or the names of the bombardiers and pilots who died firebombing the city of Dresden (or the names of the 35,000 “innocent” city inhabitants that were killed)? Or the names of those who died in the South Pacific to defeat Hirohito? Should we read the names of the thousands of Union soldiers who were killed at Gettysburg or Shiloh or Antietem so we could end the scourge of slavery?
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History teaches us that fascism and evil can only be ended through force, rather than reason. It also teaches us that we cannot endorse a war and then obscure the fact that we did so when the going gets rough. Leaders that endure the test of time — men like Lincoln, Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman — do not retreat because they cannot win every battle. They earn their legacies by enduring the difficult days, many times alone, with fortitude.
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Dr. Joel Geiderman
Beverly Hills
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I believe Rob Eshman directed his apology for “wasting good lives in a bad war” to the wrong community (“And Who Shall Die,” Sept. 22). Los Angeles’ Jews are the wrong audience for his war weary angst. He can even spare the families of fallen and wounded soldiers his pain as Cindy Sheehan can do that for him — and even cite Eshman as proof of why to blame the Jews as she is wont to do. It seems that Eshman, by his own confession, would not be able to protest in this case, could he?
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No, Eshman should save his self-flagellation for Iraq’s Kurdish community. Editor and Jewish Moral Conscience Eshman needs to prostrate himself before the first Iraqi Kurd to cross his path — nay, that he seeks and finds — and cry out his shame, anguish and grief that this hapless Kurd no longer faces annihilation at the hands of Saddam, that 3,000 (or more) Americans was just too great a price for us to pay even though the Kurds lost perhaps as many as 130,000, including to poison gas, at the hands of Saddam’s sadists.
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As for myself, I believe that even if Iraq falls apart, the Kurds will have gained their freedom, dignity and lives, and America an ally. As for the rest of that Arab Balkans, its denizens would eventually work out their hatreds on each other in their usual fashion. If I were to advise the administration of anything, it would be to broker a deal between the Turks and Kurds. That way, there might be an iron triangle — Turks, Kurds and Israelis — to resist the depravity of the rest of the region. I called for a breaking up that pest hole when we first went in so I do not feel quite as anguished as Eshman.
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Editor Eshman fails as historian, prognosticator and strategist. As a writer, he’s becoming increasingly unreadable and as the editor responsible for securing miserably effacing analyses such as Jack Miles’ “lead” piece when the last war first broke out, becoming less and less bearable. I remind The Journal’s readers that Miles’ described the kidnappings by Hezbollah at the Lebanon border as “arrests” — and that editor Eshman made this “analysis” that week’s cover piece….
Obituaries
Joanna Black died May 2 at 17. She is survived by her mother, Suzanne; sisters, Danielle and Rebecca; and many friends.
Feathers fly as fugitive fowl frustrates Pico-Robertson
For most of last week, a fugitive chicken mystified and delighted residentsof the traditionally Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood.
Rumors of its provenance flitted about for days, then came to perch on anespecially good story:
The chicken, according to neighborhood resident Rabbi Joel Rembaum, belongedto a local mashgiach, or kosher supervisor. Every year around Yom Kippur,the mashgiach, like many traditional Jews, buys a chicken in order toperform the ritual of kaparos, which means atonements. This year, it flewthe coop.
If true, that’s one smart chicken.
Early in the morning on the day before Yom Kippur, groups of Jews gather tohold squawking chickens by the feet and twirl them over their heads whilechanting a prayer. After the twirling, the chickens are ritually slaughteredand given to the poor.
The ritual dates back to the Middle Ages.
The idea was that since the Hebrew word for man (gever) and rooster were thesame, a man’s sins — and his punishments — could be symbolicallytransferred to the rooster, in the same way that during the times of theTemple, people brought animal sacrifices as penance for their sins.
Therefore, while slinging the chicken during kaparos, the person chants,”This is my exchange, this is my substitute, this is my atonement. Thischicken shall go to its death, and I shall proceed to a good, long life andpeace.”
For several reasons — not the least of which is its obvious cruelty — thecustom has fallen out of fashion. Some people perform kaparos by swinging abag of money over their head and then donate that money to charity.
The fugitive chicken — black and white with a rust-colored spot and abright red cockscomb — roams from lawn to sidewalk, from rooftop todriveway.
“I think one family is feeding it,” a resident said.
But the story of the chicken’s provenance proved as flighty as the chickenitself. Calls to local stores with and without mashgiach’s met with denials.
Speculation centered on Eilat Market, where giant Farsi-language postersadvertise for kaparos on behalf of Natan Eli Hebrew Academy. A marketemployee said all chickens were accounted for.
“Everyone has seen it,” a local rebbetzin said, “but no one knows who’s itis.”
In the meantime, local animal rights groups and vegetarian activists havegeared up an annual campaign to protest traditional kapparos rites. In apress release entitled, “Jewish chicken-killing ritual Kapparot is illegal,inhumane and unnecessary. It is animal cruelty,” the activists call for animmediate end to the practice. The press release citesJewish as well as other sources as opposing the ritual.
It quotes General Manager of LA Animal Services and ex-pastor Ed Boks asstating, “Some of our nation’s healthiest animal husbandry practices andlaws originated in the ancient traditions of the Torah. Nowhere is thepractice of Kapparot even mentioned in the Torah. It is a pagan traditionthat has been muddled into the religious practices of a small Jewish sect.Kapparot should have no place in the 21st Century Los Angeles community.”
Via the Internet, activists are circulating notice of a protest againstkapparot to be held Sunday, Oct. 1 in front of Ohel Moshe temple at 8644Pico Blvd from 10-12:30 p.m. “begging people not to kill the chickens.”
As for the fugitive chicken, as of press time, no one had claimed it, and noone had rescued it either — leaving the bird to fend for itself in a cityof speeding cars and hungry cats.
Now that’s a sin worth atoning for.
— Staff Report
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Defying Nazis? Sure! It’s all in a days work
Of all the books written on German militarism, “The Captain From Koepenick,” by German playwright Carl Zuckmayer, is not only one of the great all-time satires, but penetrates to the heart of the matter more pointedly than a dozen treatises.
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The play premiered in 1930 and immediately earned its author a place on the Nazis’ enemy list. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Zuckmayer was a marked man, more for his political views than for his mother’s descent from an assimilated Jewish family.
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The title character, Wilhelm Voigt, is a petty criminal who tries to go straight as a shoemaker after his release from prison. Every attempt to get a job is foiled by the German bureaucracy and by employers who will only hire men who show proof of army service.
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In desperation, the middle-aged Voigt buys a second-hand captain’s uniform from a pawnbroker, puts it on and, suddenly, every good German stands at attention and obeys his every command.Though the time and setting are pre-World War I, during the Kaiser’s reign, the mentality it skewers was sadly confirmed during the Nazi regime.
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After returning from wartime exile, Zuckmayer wrote the movie version, starring Heinz Ruehmann, the comic German everyman.
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Rarely shown in the West, the film is part of a 12-week retrospective of works by German director Helmut Kaeutner, now under way at the Goethe Institut in Los Angeles.
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Also part of the series is Kaeutner’s second major hit, “The Devil’s General,” starring the great German actor Curt Juergens. The 1955 movie was one of the first post-war attempts to examine the recent Nazi past. At its center is a popular World War II Luftwaffe general, torn between loyalty to his country and his disgust with the Nazi regime.
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Kaeutner wrote the 1929 screenplay for the classic “The Blue Angel,” starring Marlene Dietrich, and made his directorial debut in 1939 with the film, “Kitty and the World Conference.” It was immediately banned by propaganda minister Josef Goebbels for its allegedly pro-British attitude.
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Nevertheless, the director stayed active during World War II with pictures that largely ignored war and ideology, and he reached his artistic peak in the 1950s.
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Also scheduled are films dealing with the post-war East-West German divide, as well as a number of nonpolitical romance movies.
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Weekly screenings, through Nov. 28, start at 7 p.m. at the Goethe Institut, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., No. 100 “The Devil’s General” will be shown Oct. 5, and “The Captain From Koepenick” on Nov. 28. Admission is $5.
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