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December 7, 2006

Old Jewish Jokes

Leave a Comment / News, Tommywood /
Tom Teicholz tells
Jewish jokes

Let us quote from sacred text: the 2005 Emmy Award acceptance speech by “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart.

Spaketh Stewart:

“When I first said that I wanted us to put together a late-night comedy writing team that would only be 80 percent Ivy League-educated Jews, people thought I was crazy. They said you need 90, 95 percent. But we proved ’em wrong.”

Welcome to Jewish jokes in the 21st century. Not really a joke, more of an observation really — and the funny part is that the joke is about being a majority not a minority. The Stewart quote appears in the recently published 25th anniversary edition of “The Big Book of Jewish Humor,” edited by William Novak and Moshe Waldoks (HarperCollins). If you want to laugh, or know someone in need of a laugh, you would do well to order a copy — or a dozen — as “The Big Book” is destined to become a popular gift item for friends and relatives.

“The Big Book of Jewish Humor” is a treasury of recent comic quotes, classic Jewish jokes, and selections from great comic writers from Sholom Aleichem to Israel Zangwill, from Woody Allen to Allen Sherman, from Groucho Marx, S.J. Perelman and George Kaufman to Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Bernard Malamud, from Bruce Jay Freedman to Lenny Bruce, Leo Rosten and Sam Levenson. The margins are filled with commentary and more jokes from ancient to recent sources — calling to mind that tenth-century French wit Rashi’s claim that “all else is commentary.”

How can I squeeze into a few paragraphs all the jokes about Minsk, Pinsk and Chelm? All the tales that begin “Two Jews are on a train….” Perhaps I could just give the punchlines such as “You see, it’s already starting to work”; or “My dog is dead! I was bringing her to Israel to bury.” Or “Yossi put away your siddur, our prayers are answered”; or “Sadie, I’m beginning to think you’re bringing me bad luck.” My guess is that some you know, most you don’t.

In their very funny introduction to the new edition Novak and Waldoks discuss what has changed in the 25 years since their book was originally published (beyond the fact that Waldoks is now a rabbi, and Novak became, as I like to call him, “the king of the ghostwriters,” helping such diverse personalities as Tim Russert, Tip O’Neal, Lee Iacocca, Nancy Reagan, Rudy Giuliani and Magic Johnson become successful authors). One of the changes is that 25 years ago a few comics still told jokes.

“Remember jokes?” Novak and Waldoks ask. Blame it on George Carlin and Steve Martin, or Jerry Seinfeld and Steven Wright, but by the early 1980s comics had dispensed with the one-liners and stories that were the stock and trade of Borscht Belt, nightclub and television comics, and found a more conceptual, observational brand of humor that appealed to younger audiences. Comedy has never been the same.

But those jokes are missed, and not only by me. New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, in his recently published collection “Through the Children’s Gate” (Knopf), includes a chapter called “Purimspiel,” in which he waxes nostalgic about the comedians who populated “The Ed Sullivan Show” with their “bits” and narrates how in the course of writing a performance piece for a Purim party, his relationship to Jewish jokes rekindled his dormant Judaism and Jewish affiliation.

For me, it is not so much the comics of the Ed Sullivan era that I hanker for, as it is the old Jewish jokes that inspired them. In matters of jokes, as in much else, I remain old school (I’m the sort of person who reacted to the passing of Jerry Garcia by commenting, “What I miss is Pig Pen”).

Once upon a time, it seems to me, jokes were not the stuff of which to make a career from the Catskills or in Vegas or on television, but an oral tradition, an alternate education that occurred not just on holidays but at the dinner table or when a group of friends got together. Jokes were told and traded and found for all occasions and situations.

These jokes were spiked with wisdom. Some were self-mocking, others mocked the ruling order. At their best, they revealed a shimmer of truth and gave pleasure and comfort to teller and audience alike.

At one point last summer, in a wave of manic enthusiasm (and self-delusion), convinced that the fact that no one performed this material any more created a market opportunity, I took it upon myself to gather the greatest “Old Jewish Jokes” — thinking I might go so far as to actually revive the genre single-handedly by performing them myself.

My research uncovered a number of compilations, such as “Alan King’s Great Jewish Jokes Book” (Crown) and “101 Classic Jewish Jokes” by Robert Menchin (Mustang). I also found books that sought to explain Jewish jokes, such as Joseph Telushkin’s “Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About the Jews” (Harper Perennial) and Arthur Asa Berger’s “The Genius of the Jewish Joke” (Aronson). However, much to my disappointment, although there was quantity, many of the jokes were old saws that could apply to any ethnic group — they lacked that special quality to be found in the best old Jewish jokes.

The best collection I found was Henry Spalding’s “Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor” (Jonathan David). It was there that I found the oldest Jewish joke to my taste. It is long, and were I to tell it in person it would be longer still. But to serve up its essence, the story concerns Eleazar, a Jew in Roman times, 100 B.C.E., who finds himself before the gates of heaven, ready to meet his maker, when he is stopped by the patriarch Abraham, who tells him that to meet the Lord he must be worthy of the honor and must recount an instance of bravery.

Eleazar relates that once he found himself before the Roman emperor, and to his face he told him he was a camel’s behind, an oppressor of the Jews of Jerusalem and spat in his face.

Abraham is impressed: “When did that occur?” he asks.

Eleazar responds: “About 10 seconds ago.”

If that doesn’t make you smile, then I can’t help you. I would say that maybe you should see a psychiatrist, but in the course of my research I discovered that none other than Sigmund Freud was a great lover of Jewish jokes. Freud actually considered publishing a collection of his favorite Jewish jokes in the late 1880s, years before he published “The Interpretation of Dreams.”

Even after he achieved fame, he continued to consider the importance of Jewish jokes.

In 1905, the same year Freud published his book on the Dora case, and his landmark “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” he also published a volume titled, “Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious” (Norton).

Although a serious work, Freud did manage to work in some of his favorites, including jokes about schnorers (freeloaders), shadchens (matchmakers) and rival businessmen. One of the jokes that Freud rates as “excellent” is as follows, and I quote the good doctor:

“Two Jews meet in a railway carriage at a station in Galicia. ‘Where are you going?’ asks one. ‘To Cracow’ was the answer. ‘What a liar you are!’ broke out the other. ‘If you say you are going to Cracow, you want me to believe you are going to Lemberg. But I know you are going to Cracow. So why are you lying to me?'”

Freud’s interest in such jokes has itself been the subject of much interpretation. Elliott Orring in “The Jokes of Sigmund Freud” (University Press of Pennsylvania) makes a persuasive case that Freud’s own concerns about Jewish identity are intertwined in his interest in old Jewish jokes.

Which brings me back to why jokes disappeared. I was once derided in a national publication for daring to tell a George Jessel joke by a self-anointed “connoisseur of comedy.” (Apparently the barb still stings.) With 20/20 hindsight, I can see that, for a time, the comics of the Ed Sullivan era, the Henny Youngmans and George Jessels had become too embarrassing — too “ghetto” (in the original Italian sense).

It is also possible to argue that old Jewish jokes were the language of outsiders, a coping mechanism for a culture of potential victims. Michael Vex, in his excellent “Born to Kvetch” (Harper Perennial) makes the case for an attitude, a spirit that might no longer exist in a world where our children are happy all the time (i.e., they love school, they love after-school, they even love religious school).

Why would anyone growing up today suspect that someone who says they are going to Cracow is lying to them? (They would say: “Where’s Cracow?”)

At the same time, as Novak and Waldoks point out, while the comics became less directly Jewish in their material and how they told it, the popularity of such shows as “Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” are an indicator of just how suffused with Jewish humor American society has become.

Phil Rosenthal, the co-creator of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” in his charming and comic memoir, “You’re Lucky You’re Funny” (Viking), makes clear how having parents who survived the Holocaust is a sitcom (as if that wasn’t obvious). For Rosenthal, humor comes from the specific.

If you need further proof of what I like to call “the Bagelization of America,” let me give a literal example and remind you of a popular series of TV ads that appeared every few minutes on TVs all over the country (and still does) — for Jimmy Dean pork sausages on a bagel. Need I say more?

However, what goes around comes around. “The Big Book of Jewish Humor” has better jokes than any work I consulted, including Freud. However, as Novak and Waldoks make clear, if they were assembling a “Big Book of Jewish Humor” of the 21st century, they would include fewer texts from novels and more material from the Internet.

Today, old and new Jewish jokes are making their way around the World Wide Web, becoming once again evergreen. As anyone who finds themselves in front of a computer screen knows, retro or contemporary, old school or new, there is something of value in a joke — if only the ability to laugh.

Perhaps Novak and Waldoks’ 25th anniversary edition of “The Big Book of Jewish Humor” is the start of a Jewish joke revival. I hope so.

Maybe one day I’ll actually take the stage and utter those words made famous throughout history: “I’m available also for bar mitzvahs, weddings and social occasions. Order the veal.”

Tom Teicholz is a film producer in Los Angeles. Everywhere else, he’s an author and journalist who has written for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Interview and The Forward.

Tom Teicholz tells
Jewish jokes

Old Jewish Jokes Read More »

Attention, menschen! CAIR; Michael Richards; Shoah survivors

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

In 2005, The Journal profiled 10 “Mensches of the Year ” and it became one of our most popular and widely appreciated cover stories. We plan to make this an annual feature … and we’d love your help.If you know someone whose great work on behalf of others goes unsung, who doesn’t get paid for what he or she does (or doesn’t get paid near enough), whose life is the embodiment of the values of tzedakah — please pass their name and contact info to us with a very brief sentence or two describing why they should be featured as one of our 10 mensches of 2006.

Send your nominations to: letters@jewishjournal.com. Names must be received Dec. 15 in order to be considered.

CAIR

Your publication of the inflammatory rhetoric of CAIR-L.A.’s Executive Director Hussam Ayloush as if it were a reliable source of fact or reasonable opinion makes one question your editorial judgment (“Letters, Nov. 17).

It is very peculiar that Ayloush and his organization, who claim to promote “dialogue, mutual respect and trust and cooperation,” would resort to ad-hominem attacks against Steven Emerson, actually calling him “America’s most vicious Islamophobe.” Moreover, incitement and provocation are not constructive tactics. If CAIR is truly serious about promoting mutual understanding, Ayloush would not have written a letter that clearly defeats CAIR’s stated objectives. Furthermore, the letter serves as a form of psychological warfare, which attempts to erode the credibility, trust and reputation of Emerson with your readers and the general public.

Based on Ayloush’s unfair characterization of Emerson, it appears that he and CAIR have one primary objective, which is to discredit and silence anyone who dares to identify terrorists who happen to be connected to a radical Islamist network. This should be of great concern to the entire community, Christian, Muslim and Jewish alike.

Margo Itskowitch
Beverly Hills

The Survivors

“The Forgotten Survivors” (Nov. 24) raises some crucial issues for the Jewish community, which must decide if it will make a concerted effort to endow the last days of these victims of Nazism with a greater measure of dignity and peace.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) established the Holocaust Survivor Services program of the Jewish Family Service (JFS) of Los Angeles more than a decade ago. Last year, the Claims Conference allocated approximately $1.5 million to JFS, from various sources of Holocaust restitution funding. This financial support is absolutely critical to the work of JFS in assisting and supporting needy Jewish victims of Nazism.However, the Claims Conference needs partners in this endeavor. It is important for the larger Jewish community to recognize the need and to respond.

Hillary Kessler-Godin
Director of Communications
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany

Thank you for remembering “The Forgotten Survivors” in this week’s cover story. We at New Community Jewish High School (NCJHS) agree that it is our responsibility to offer support and companionship to impoverished Holocaust survivors, both locally and worldwide.

We have recently joined in a collaborative effort with a local organization called The Survivor Mitzvah Project, which sends money and letters to survivors living in Eastern Europe. This project is both educational and philanthropic, offering a unique exchange between the American Jewish community, and Jewish individuals living in their original Eastern European hometowns. Their stories give us singular insight into the vast changes of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before, during and after World War II.

Students in Russian and Yiddish classes at NCJHS are volunteering their time to translate letters to and from the survivors in Eastern Europe, enabling international Jewish friendships to form. We are incredibly proud of these young people and encourage the community to get involved with the Survivor Mitzvah Project, as well as the local organizations listed in the original article, through zzmail@sbcglobal.net or (800) 905-6160.Hannah Pollin
Yiddish Teacher
Lisa Ansell
Head of World Languages
New Community Jewish High School

I estimate that in Los Angeles 47 percent of Holocaust survivors, or more than 4,000 survivors, are currently living in poverty. During the past eight years, the L.A. community has experienced a significant increase in the proportion of Holocaust survivors in poverty from the 32 percent in poverty found in my 1997 research, that was cited in the cover story by The Jewish Federation, to 45 percent of L.A. holocaust survivors in poverty, as compared to 35 percent of Holocaust survivors in poverty nationally in 2005.

An additional $1,000 a year allocated to each impoverished Holocaust survivor in our community would cost $4 million, and during the next 10 years progressively less, as the median age of Holocaust survivors is 81. [For a Federation] that raises $55 million dollars a year and boasts more than $600 million in its Jewish Community Foundation, this would be a good initial gesture of concern for this regrettable situation where the most traumatized and weakest among us grow poorer as they grow older.

Pini Herman
Phillips & Herman
Demographic Research

Thank you for your Nov. 24 cover story “The Forgotten Survivors,” which recognized the vital work of Jewish Family Service (JFS) and others in assisting the aging and impoverished Holocaust survivors in our community.

We are deeply grateful to The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany for its generous and crucial support of our JFS/Holocaust Survivor Services program. In our last fiscal year, the Claims Conference provided $1.5 million to help us meet the needs of survivors living in Los Angeles. We are also appreciative of the ongoing support by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and The Morgan Aging with Dignity Fund that helps us maintain and sustain our work with survivors of the Holocaust.

We encourage the entire community to continue to support us in this important mission.

Attention, menschen! CAIR; Michael Richards; Shoah survivors Read More »

Milken School head gets the surprise of her life

Leave a Comment / Community, Education /

Rennie Wrubel had no reason to suspect.

The board members, the 800 students on bleachers, the officials from the Bureau of Jewish Education and private foundations — they had come to Milken Community High School to hear Gen. Shaul Mofaz, minster of transportation and deputy prime minister of the state of Israel.

Right?

Mofaz, as it turns out, was a decoy. The surprise honoree was Wrubel herself, who received the Milken Family Foundation’s Jewish Educator Award for her work as Milken’s head of school for the last 10 years.

“I just have one question,” a stunned but composed Wrubel asked when she was finally able to lift herself off her seat. “Is that really Mofaz?” (It was.)

The annual Jewish Educator Awards, with a $10,000 prize, is awarded in conjunction with the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE) to five Los Angeles day school teachers or administrators annually.

“I want to recognize and celebrate a person whose intelligence, whose leadership, whose commitment and compassion have made a profound difference in our community, a person who has positively impacted thousands of young people’s lives,” said Lowell Milken, chairman of the Milken Family Foundation, which gave the naming gift and maintains close ties to the high school.

As Milken stood at the dais to announce the award, Wrubel wondered why he was talking about appreciating excellence in education, when the assembly was about Israel. Colleagues whispered that perhaps the digression was to recognize the school as a whole, since Wrubel surmised that he couldn’t be presenting a Jewish Educator Award, because she would have been informed of that.

Then Milken asked for “the envelope.” The school orchestra went into a drum roll and an audible wave of anticipation passed among the students. When he announced that Dr. Rennie Wrubel was the recipient of a Jewish Educator Award, Wrubel slumped in her seat, open mouthed — and the gym exploded.

That kind of reaction, and its ripple effect through the wider community, is what Milken Foundation officials are going for with the dramatic presentation of the awards.

“The surprise element evolved as the best way to get everyone’s attention and to make it most memorable to the students and to other people in the room,” said Richard Sandler, executive vice president of the Milken Family Foundation. “We’re trying to get the community behind teaching, behind educators, and trying to get kids to understand that educators are recognized and appreciated and that kids should consider this as a profession.”

Sandler and a caravan of BJE and Milken Foundation officials presented the four other awards in one packed day in late October. Videos of those emotional assemblies will form the centerpiece of an awards luncheon in Bel Air on Dec. 14.

At Beth Hillel Day School in Valley Village, second- and third-grade teacher Beverly Yachzel received her award in an intimate gathering of the student body and teachers at the small school.

Tami Rosenfeld, a fourth-grade Hebrew and Judaic studies teacher at Pressman Academy in Los Angeles, didn’t know her family was hiding out in the back of the sanctuary for the occasion.

Rabbi Simcha Frankel, a teacher at Cheder Menachem Elementary School in Los Angeles, at first demurred from coming to the stage, but the cheering boys coaxed him up.
Bluma Drebin, Bible department chair and teacher of mathematics at the YULA girls’ high school, elicited whoops and hollers from the girls.

But even by the Milken Foundation’s standards, the ruse around Wrubel’s ceremony was unusual.

The elaborate scheming behind the assembly was the work of Metuka Benjamin, director of education at Stephen S. Wise Temple, the parent organization for Milken Community High School.

Benjamin arranged for Consul General Ehud Danoch to come to the school, under the pretense of recognizing the school’s ambitious new Tiferet Israel Program, where 40 tenth graders will go to Israel for four months this winter and spring.

Then, three days before the assembly, Benjamin got a call from Mofaz saying he would be in town.

She jumped at the chance, and pulled off the last-minute schedule change for Mofaz to speak to the students.

Mofaz and Danoch both addressed the students, congratulating them on their continued commitment to fostering the bond between Israeli and American teens.

For several years, Milken Community High School has participated in an exchange program with its sister school in Tel Aviv, sending delegations each year to live with families.
This year a larger delegation will live in dorms, continue their Milken education and learn Jewish history and heritage both in the classroom and on field trips to the places they learn about.

In 11th and 12th grade, the same group of students will continue to have special classes aimed at teaching them to be advocates for Israel, and they will become part of the Israeli Consulate’s speaker’s bureau.

The fact that the assembly honoring Wrubel ended up being so focused on Israel was appropriate, Rabbi Eli Herscher of Stephen S. Wise, said, since one of Wrubel’s strongest passions is for connecting the kids to Israel.

For information on the awards visit www.mff.org.

Milken School head gets the surprise of her life Read More »

Hitting the century mark doesn’t stop this translator

Leave a Comment / Community, Family, Seniors /

Most afternoons, you can find Eva Zeitlin Dobkin working. Undaunted by the 100-year marker she passed last month, she pulls her wheelchair up to the hospital bed in the room she shares at the Jewish Home for the Aging — her side is separated by a curtain — and spreads her work out over the lavender bedspread. While her roommate rests or watches television with the volume turned high, Dobkin spends a couple of hours editing “Burning Earth” (“Brenendike Erd” ), a historical novel she has translated from Yiddish to English.

She began working on the book in 1984, then had to put it aside to complete other translation projects.

Now, despite limits to her endurance, she is reviewing her final version for the fifth or sixth time, making corrections in longhand — she gave up the computer two years ago — and occasionally referring to a Yiddish-English dictionary to verify her word choice. The book, by Aaron Zeitlin, who may be a cousin, was written in 1934 and centers on a group of Zionists who spied for the British, prior to the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

This is the fourth or fifth book Dobkin has translated, in addition to innumerable articles, letters and personal memorabilia. Her best-known book is “Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II” by Hirsz Abramowicz, published in 1999.

Recently, Dobkin did take one afternoon off to celebrate her birthday — she was born on Nov. 20, 1906. Dressed in black slacks and a black sweater trimmed in white, her gray hair pulled neatly back, she sat in one of the home’s conference rooms at the head of a large table. Her son, Jack Forem, flanked her on one side, her youngest sister, Hannah Doberne, on the other. A cake, frosted in chocolate with brightly colored flowers, was set before her, as well as two balloon bouquets.

Friends joined her at the table. A second group, in chairs and wheelchairs, formed an outer circle. They clapped and occasionally sang along to “Bei Mir Bist Du Shein” (“To Me You Are Beautiful”), “Di Grine Kuzine” (“The Greenhorn Cousin”) and other Yiddish songs played by a pianist and violist. Staff members, most in red uniform smocks, clapped along.

“I regret that when you’re 100, I probably won’t be able to come to your simcha,” Dobkin, told her guests, including about 25 fellow residents at the Eisenberg campus, where she’s lived two years and is known as Eva Forem.

It was her day to shine, though, with 19 residents currently ranging in age from 100 to 108, centenarians are surprisingly common at the Jewish Home. Dobkin, however, is among the lucky ones, in that she is well and alert enough to be able to keep working.

Dobkin doesn’t play bingo, and she doesn’t own a television. She occasionally attends a lecture or musical event, but generally, when she isn’t working, she is reading, usually The Forward in Yiddish or English or The Jewish Journal. She reads without glasses, except for very small print.

She also spends about 45 minutes each afternoon discussing her work by telephone with her son, 62, who is a writer and lives in Yucca Valley, and who has been collaborating with her on the book’s final stages. Dobkin is hoping to find a publisher for it.

She has been translating Yiddish since 1932, when she was hired by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at $15 a week to work as a Yiddish and English typist. By the end of the first week, however, she was writing stories in Yiddish and English off the cable transmissions, eventually working her way up to $35. However, she left after two or three years to study for her teaching credential.

In 1936, she married Leon Forem, and in 1946 her son was born. She separated from her husband five months afterward and moved to Los Angeles in 1957, supporting herself by teaching public school from 1957 to 1972, mostly at Pacoima’s Telfair Avenue Elementary School.

Born in Waterbury, Conn., to parents who had just emigrated from Russia’s Mohilev Province, now Belarus, she was the oldest of seven children, and her youngest sister, 85, is her only surviving sibling. She grew up bilingual in Yiddish and English, and at age 3 she was taught by her father to write her name in Yiddish.

“There were Jewish periodicals coming into the house, and I would look at them whether I understood them or not,” she said.

Dobkin attended public school in Waterbury and later, after moving at age 16, in the Bronx. She also received a Jewish secular education, taught primarily in Yiddish, and considers herself not religious but “very Jewish.”

She often had to care for her younger siblings while her parents worked but nevertheless managed to acquire an A.B. in German, with a minor in English and education from Hunter College, as well as a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. The family was poor.

“We had nothing. Sometimes we didn’t have a quarter to put in the gas meter,” she said.

She attributes her success, and that of her siblings, to her parents’ emphasis on education and the availability of free schooling. Her longevity, she believes, is due to genetics.

“Pick the right parents and grandparents,” she advised, wryly. She won’t commit to a future translating project but is considering writing a family history.

“Have a few more birthdays,” her son said as the party wound down.

“I wouldn’t mind,” Dobkin retorted, “if they’re not any worse than this one.”

For more information, call (310) 456-2178

Hitting the century mark doesn’t stop this translator Read More »

Getting kicked out of shul

Leave a Comment / California, Judaism, Worldwide /

A few weeks before the High Holidays, Aaron Biston went to pray at Beth Jacob Congregation, a Modern Orthodox synagogue on Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

After services, during the Kiddush, Steven Weil, the congregation’s rabbi, came over to Biston and asked him to leave the synagogue because he had been banned from its premises several months prior.

Biston refused and demanded, in front of his 13-year-old daughter, to know why he should comply.

Biston said the rabbi replied by addressing the girl: “Your dad’s a thief, a crook, a bad man and a menace to the community.”

Biston then cursed out the rabbi.

What happened next is a matter of some dispute, but both parties agree that the rabbi publicly asked Biston to leave the synagogue and never return.

Biston is now threatening a lawsuit against the congregation unless, he said, he receives a public apology from the rabbi and is allowed to return to the synagogue. Weil has already sent a letter to Biston and his daughter, in which he apologized for his language but said he stands by his decision to ban Biston from the shul.

Biston’s public airing of his story and his threat to file suit have brought to light a number of complaints from others who also have been asked to leave Beth Jacob. They claim the rabbi is autocratic and mercurial and bars people who don’t fit his image of an appropriate congregant.

Weil is a charismatic and intense leader. He came to Beth Jacob from Detroit in 2000, and he can often be seen wearing the work boots and jeans of his upstate New York farming upbringing. He is known for innovative programming, including a cigar club where the rabbi and young men in the community smoke, drink and learn Torah, and the summer Kollel, a post-college learning program.

He spoke to The Journal in the company of synagogue president Dr. Steve Tabak and former synagogue president Marc Rohatiner. Together they openly discussed the half-dozen people who have been banned from their shul.

Although they did not divulge identities of the people they had banned in order to protect them and their accusers from public scrutiny, they painted a picture of individuals whom they believe pose a threat to Beth Jacob’s membership.

Among the stories was that of Biston, who was a defendant in a civil lawsuit over a real estate deal with another member of Beth Jacob that went sour. Court documents allege that Biston cultivated the deal on the shul’s grounds, although Biston claims to have known the man outside of the shul.

The other individuals include someone alleged to have sexually harassed a synagogue member, a man alleged to have behaved inappropriately with children, a woman alleged to have stalked a member with whom she believed she had a relationship and a man who, shortly before being asked to leave the shul, was convicted of pedophilia.

This ugly underside of synagogue life raises the question for all synagogues, not just Beth Jacob: What power does a rabbi or executive board have to deny entry to Jews?

The legal answer is straightforward: A synagogue is a private institution, and when it comes to membership — or in this case, entry, because most of the people asked to leave were not members — the synagogue is entitled to accommodate however it sees fit.

The religious answer is not quite as clear. According to halacha (Jewish law), one needs a beit din, a religious court, to put a person in herem — which means to excommunicate them, to cast them away from the community and isolate them.
But the old rules don’t really hold today, when there are many congregations from which to choose.

“Many times, throughout Jewish history, there were rabbis who placed people in herem,” said Rabbi Alan Kalinsky, West Coast director of the Orthodox Union. “In those days it was a major thing; today, they’d laugh and go to the next town.”

The Rabbinical Council of California (RCC), which runs the Orthodox religious court of California, said it does not get involved in private synagogue matters.
“The RCC is a council of rabbis, not a council of synagogues, per se, and doesn’t set synagogue policy,” said Rabbi Avrohom Union, the administrator for the RCC.

In any case, all the religious courts have refused to intervene in the Biston case. (Biston said he is taking his case to a New York beit din.)
The Orthodox Union, the governing organization for Orthodox shuls, holds that a rabbi has the authority to act independently.

“Each rabbi is the morah d’atra, the rabbinic halachic authority of his congregation — that’s why he was chosen,” Kalinsky said. “If the rabbi feels strongly about [someone], he will go to his board, which is responsible for the issues of governance in the synagogue, and they could enforce what they deem appropriate.”

Even if the question is neither legal nor halachic, it nevertheless remains one of ethics: If a synagogue is intended to be open to all Jews, how should leadership deal with characters they feel are unsavory or pose a threat to the community? What is the balance between freedom and security?

Synagogues everywhere always have grappled with the issue of security, but especially since the attacks of Sept. 11. With terrorism and anti-Semitic attacks on the rise internationally, most Jewish institutions have strengthened their security. For example, on the High Holidays this year, a month after the Jewish Federation offices in Seattle were attacked by a gunman, murdering one worker, most synagogues in Southern California increased the number of guards at their doors and carefully checked guest lists of people who had preregistered.

The price? Drop-ins, unaffiliated, undecided and last-minute shul-goers, were turned away. In addition, before the High Holidays, Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss met with neighborhood synagogues to discuss security issues and precautions.

But what of the insider whom synagogue leaders believe may pose a threat to synagogue members? In a climate of increasing vigilance against sexual predators, many religious leaders these days would rather err on the side of caution than take any potential risk.

Getting kicked out of shul Read More »

Holy Doubt

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Torah /

This week’s Torah portion contains a story that most of us skipped in Hebrew school — the story of Dina.

Dina goes out to “see the daughters of the land.”

Shechem,
the eponymous local prince, sees her, sleeps with her and vaye’aneha — sexually forces or humiliates her.

His soul clings to her, he loves her, and he speaks tenderly to her.

This begins a protracted negotiation, in which Jacob remains silent and his sons, Dina’s brothers, maintain their outrage.

Shechem invites Jacob and the brothers to name any amount for a bride price.

The brothers answer with guile, seeming to accept Shechem’s proposal with the proviso that he and all his male subjects undergo circumcision to become “one people” with the Israelites.

Three days after all the males of Shechem are circumcised, while they are still in pain, Simon and Levi, two of Dina’s full brothers, enter the city, confident. They kill all the men and remove Dina from the house.

Jacob’s sons appropriate the property of the slain and take the women captive. Jacob objects: “You have stirred up trouble …[with my neighbors] while I am few in number, so if they band together against me and attack me, I and my house will be destroyed.”

The sons answer: “Shall our sister be dealt with like a whore?”

The story raises many questions, particularly from Dina’s perspective.

Did she learn of her impending marriage? If so, from whom? What was it like for her in the three or four days after the rape and before the “rescue”?

How did she feel when her brothers stormed in, killing the men and taking the women who were to be her new family? Was this similar to the way she had been taken captive? What was she looking for when she “went out to see the daughters of the land”? Had she and the local women already forged the kind of friendship and alliance that the men were negotiating for?

Or could Dina have been a spy against the women? (“To see” and “to spy on” are the same verb in Hebrew.) Can we imagine her as a Mata Hari figure, conspiring with her brothers to conquer Shechem? Or did Dina’s soul cleave to Shechem’s as improbably and enduringly as his cleaved to hers?

The Torah focuses on the men’s motivations, yet these, too, are far from clear. Jacob’s political objection to his sons’ actions ignores the harm to Dina, the sons’ deception and violence, and the murder of innocents. Is Jacob cautiously protecting the clan after a traumatic loss, or has he ceded control and leadership? Is he indifferent to his daughter’s suffering, or so distraught that he becomes passive?

Are the brothers overzealous defenders of their sister’s honor (perhaps in response to Jacob’s passivity) and/or do they see an opportunity for a land grab?

On his deathbed, Jacob will condemn Simon and Levi’s excesses and bar the two tribes from owning land (Genesis 49:5-7). Is the crime that most troubles the brothers rape — or theft? The males of Dina’s family should have commanded a bride price for her in advance, and the brothers seem more interested in orchestrating revenge than in facilitating Dina’s release.

Is Shechem a rapist? It is certainly not typical of a rapist to love his victim, want to marry her, offer to pay any amount of money and undergo genital surgery to be with her. Shechem more than fulfills all the requirements later imposed on Israelites (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) who bed an unbetrothed girl without gaining permission first.

Perhaps Shechem, prince of the land, thought that Dina, visiting among the daughters of the land, was one of his subjects, and therefore legal and eligible to him.

Long before Anita Diamant’s “The Red Tent,” the ancient rabbis wondered if Dina chose — before or after the fact — to be with Shechem.

One midrash suggests that Dina was enticed by his uncircumcised body, and had to be removed from his house because she would not leave voluntarily.

Other midrashim don’t attribute sexual volition to Dina, but posit instead her extraordinary spiritual power: she would have caused Esau to repent had she been paired with him; she was Job’s second wife and healed him. Dina was indeed raped, but she inspired a rapist to repent immediately and completely.

The verb vaye’aneha — usually translated as “he raped her” — comes from the root ayin-nun-hey, which has two meanings: to answer or respond; or to force, afflict or humiliate, especially sexually.

Translating according to the first definition, it is possible to read vaye’aneha as parallel to vayidaber al lev hane’ara, he spoke to the girl tenderly (Genesis 34:2-3). This supports the interpretation that Shechem seduced Dina, rather than raped her. Similarly, it is possible to reverse the usual translation in 34:13: the brothers didn’t just answer Shechem with guile, they afflicted him with it.

It surprises me how confident people sometimes are about exactly what the Bible intends. What is meant, literally and in context, by “frontlets between your eyes” or “a man lying with a man as with a woman” or even “your neighbor?”

The Bible is laconic, allusive, ambiguous, layered.

It is not always clear to me, after years of study, which stories are cautionary tales and which are examples to be emulated.

Torah urges us: read again, review again, and don’t be so sure.

Approach with holy doubt, and humility.

Rabbi Debra Orenstein, editor of “Lifecycles 2: Jewish Women on Biblical Themes in Contemporary Life,” is spiritual leader of Makom Ohr Shalom in Tarzana. More of her writings can be found at makom.org.

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Fate of Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance rests with Israeli high court

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Fate of Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance Rests With Israeli High Court

Israel’s highest judicial and executive authorities both have weighed in on the protracted dispute surrounding construction of a $200 million Center of Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance in the heart of Jerusalem.The ambitious Simon Wiesenthal Center project, designed by famed Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry, has been stalled since February, when the Israeli Supreme Court issued an injunction halting any construction work. The court acted on a petition by two Palestinian groups, which asserted that the planned museum would sit atop an ancient and sacred Muslim cemetery.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s founding dean, and his lawyers in Jerusalem have argued that the site has been used as a parking lot and underground garage for decades and that Islamic courts had ruled that the onetime cemetery had thus lost its sacred character.

Hier said that he had offered a number of compromises to resolve the dispute, but that the Muslim plaintiffs were stalling and “trying to run out the clock.”

Attorney Durham Saif, representing the Palestinian side, said that in its most recent hearing in October, the court told the Wiesenthal Center to submit a redesign of the museum, so that construction would not damage the cemetery.

The next court hearing is scheduled Jan. 3, but in the meantime, Hier said, the delay has added more than $1 million to the cost of the project and has slowed down fundraising in the United States.

One bright spot for Hier was a rousing endorsement by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has been a strong supporter of the project since his days as mayor of Jerusalem. During a visit to the Wiesenthal Center last month, Olmert said that present Mideast tensions made the establishment of the museum more vital than ever.

“I knew from day one that what we really need in this part of the world is a concerted effort by a major organization that will be dedicated to one thing: to educate for human dignity, to educate for some kind of cooperation and understanding and compassion amongst all of us who are destined to share the Middle East,” Olmert said.

He added that “there is nothing that can stop the creation of the building and construction of this magnificent building, and I am impatiently looking forward to the inauguration and the completion of this world-class project in the city of Jerusalem.

— Tom Tugend, Contributing Editor

P.A. Prime Minister, Iranian President Meet, Vow to See Israel Eliminated

The Palestinian Authority prime minister and Iran’s president, in their first official meeting, vowed to see Israel eliminated. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, on his first foreign tour since his faction took power in March, met with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Qatar last weekend.

An Iranian news agency quoted Ahmadinejad, who has stepped up support for Hamas in a bid to offset a Western aid embargo on the Palestinian Authority, as saying that “there is no doubt the Palestinian nation and Muslims as a whole will emerge victorious.”

Ahmadinejad also predicted: “The continued commission of crimes by the Zionist regime will speed up the collapse of this fictitious regime.”

Haniyeh, whose Islamist faction is similarly sworn to the Jewish state’s destruction, thanked Ahmadinejad for Iran’s support.

“The Iranian nation’s brilliant stand in the rightful battles of the Palestinians encourages them and signifies their deep understanding of Islamic principles,” he was quoted as saying.

Israel Scales Back West Bank Actions

Israel ordered its forces to scale back operations in the West Bank. The order was given last weekend amid efforts by Israel and the Palestinian Authority to build on a truce declared last month in the Gaza Strip and which eventually may be extended to the West Bank.

While Israeli troops in the West Bank are continuing their arrest raids, 15 suspected terrorists were taken into custody Monday. Missions more likely to lead to violent confrontations are being limited. The army also is reviewing its tactic of besieging the homes of Palestinian terrorists until they surrender, because these tend to provoke gunfights.

However, military officials made clear that there would be no letup in operations against Palestinians believed to be about to carry out attacks against Israelis.

Israeli Official Favors Barghouti Release

An Israeli Cabinet minister said he would favor freeing Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti, 47, a Fatah lawmaker, was captured in the West Bank in 2002, tried and sentenced to five life prison terms for masterminding terrorist attacks that killed five people.

However, Israeli Environment Minister Gideon Ezra said Monday that releasing Barghouti, which successive Israeli governments have ruled out, would be worthwhile if it won the release of an Israeli soldier held captive in the Gaza Strip and led the Palestinian Authority to halt violence.

“Even the prime minister has talked about the need to release prisoners once Gilad Shalit is freed,” Ezra told Israel Radio, referring to the captured soldier. “It depends how big a deal we are talking about and what the other side promises in return.”

Barghouti is still popular and powerful behind bars, and some see him as a potential Palestinian leader who could undermine the rule of Hamas Islamists and broker a two-state peace deal with Israel.

Bolton Resigns U.N. Post

John Bolton, a staunch defender of Israel, resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The White House said Monday that Bolton would step down once his recess appointment ends.

President Bush had given Bolton the position in August 2005, but his nomination was blocked in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The appointment will expire by early January, though Bolton may step down earlier.

Most major U.S. Jewish groups broke with tradition to endorse Bolton, who, in addition to his support of Israel, is a strong opponent of Iran’s nuclear drive.

Venezuela’s Chavez Wins Re-Election

Hugo Chavez, who has been accused of encouraging anti-Semitism, was re-elected president of Venezuela. Chavez’s victory was announced late Sunday night. He won at least 61 percent of the vote to challenger Manuel Rosales’ 38 percent.

With his victory, Chavez gains another six years in power to pursue his Socialist-inspired policies.

In August, he drew fire for saying that Israelis “are doing what Hitler did against the Jews,” and that Israel is carrying out “a new Holocaust” against the Palestinians.

Critics have cited Chavez’s support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president who has denied the Holocaust and called for Israel’s destruction.

Briefs courtesy Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Depression grips Sderot as rockets continue to fall

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A warm, late-autumn sun spills over empty swing sets and slides. The children of this working-class border town have no time to play. Listening for alerts of falling rockets from Gaza, they scurry between home and school.

It’s a routine that has intensified in recent weeks, with the number of Qassam rockets fired toward Sderot increasing. Even in the days after a fragile cease-fire goes into effect, the unease continues.

“My kids won’t sleep upstairs anymore,” said Sigal Avitan, 38, who grew up here and cannot imagine leaving — not even after more than 1,100 rockets were shot at the area in a little over a year.

“Every night, I have to spread out blankets on the floor of the living room. My two oldest sleep there; my two youngest sleep in my bed,” she said. “This is no kind of life. This is not normal.

“This morning, my daughter said she did not want to go to school, and I told her, ‘But there is a cease-fire now.’ She replied, ‘Yesterday there was also a cease-fire, and a rocket fell while I was walking to school.'”

A sleepy town of low-rise buildings and eucalyptus tree-lined streets in southern Israel, Sderot is comprised of a hodgepodge of immigrant groups — extended Moroccan families that first settled here in the 1950s and more recent arrivals from Ethiopia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

The wave of Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel that began in 1990 more than doubled Sderot’s population to 24,000. Residents describe it as a close-knit community, where people look out for one another.

Sderot is one of Israel’s many development towns. The concept of establishing towns in the rural periphery was created soon after the state was established in 1948, part of a policy to settle areas sparsely populated by Jews.

With little infrastructure or industry, many development towns floundered economically. They are sometimes shown as dumping grounds for immigrants, usually among the weakest socioeconomic segments of Israeli society.

Sderot is far, by Israeli standards, from the country’s more prosperous center. But in the last six years, it has found itself unwittingly on one of the front lines of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Its location, about two miles from the Gaza border, has made Sderot an easy target for terrorists’ Qassam rockets. Before a surprise and partial truce went into effect about a week ago, fighting had escalated, especially in recent months, between the Israeli army and Palestinian terrorist groups. Two Sderot residents, both Russian-speaking immigrants, were killed in the past two weeks.

After Israel’s historic withdrawal from Gaza was completed in September 2005, the rocket fire that had been aimed mostly at Gaza Jewish settlements was turned to the next available target: Sderot and surrounding villages and farms. However, even in the five years before, rockets were launched sporadically at Sderot.

Residents say they’re frustrated by a feeling that they don’t matter to the government or the rest of the public. They feel stuck in a state of second-class citizenship, even as they put their lives on the line.

“Nation, be ashamed. You have forgotten us in this war,” reads a small, hand-printed sign taped to a pole along the roadside.

“This has become a depressed place,” said Hanan Klein, 24, who knows many people who have moved out of town recently. “Living here is like playing Russian roulette. You hear an alert, and the rocket will fall where it will.”

Business has plummeted at the hair salon where Klein works. Those with appointments cancel after a rocket scare. Others prefer to get haircuts and do errands outside of town.

Bloria Dadon, 55, owner of a small business in Sderot, wore a sign that read “Save Our City” at a demonstration by local businesspeople Monday.

“We want security and business; we don’t want pity or donations,” she said. “It’s been six years [of Qassams] and no prime minister has visited us even once.”

When Amir Peretz, a former Sderot mayor and hometown hero, took office as Israel’s defense minister, there were hopes he would at last champion the underdog town. But Peretz, a former trade union leader with scant military background, was criticized for his decisions in the Lebanon War this summer and has yet to recover politically.

Sderot residents support him as one of their own, but some wonder about his effectiveness.

Across a major road and open, yellowing fields lies Gaza. Beyond the border are the squat buildings of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, the towns from where the rockets are fired. It’s an area Israeli forces had retaken in the past five months prior to the cease-fire.

Longtime Sderot residents remember more peaceful days, when they shopped in those towns and enjoyed friendly relations with Gazan neighbors.

Sadia Cohen, 71, has been living in Sderot since he emigrated from Morocco in 1955. A retired electrician, he now does odd jobs at a local elementary school. Part of his work lately is to welcome the children to school in the mornings, hoping a smile and friendly question will help soothe them.

“We all just want to live,” he said of the people of Israel and Gaza. “But what happens? They shoot. We shoot. And we all sit in the middle and suffer.”

Meanwhile, Liron Maimoni, 24, steps out of a bridal salon onto an empty, dark street, her hair curled and her hands smoothing over a strapless dress of layered silk. She and her groom grew up in Sderot but did not consider celebrating here.

Instead, they ride in a ribbon-festooned car to their wedding — a safe distance outside of town.

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Debate on ‘minorities’ law worries Turkey’s Jews

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Jewish and Christian leaders were optimistic when the Turkish Parliament began debating a bill regulating minority foundations and organizations.

The draft version — part of a reform effort driven by Turkey’s bid for European Union membership — contained provisions making it easier for minority groups to operate and reacquire properties that had been confiscated by the state.

But after a heated debate on the measure, with many parliamentarians objecting to its liberal approach, the version that passed Parliament offered little improvement over the past. In any case, the bill was then vetoed by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who felt it gave minority foundations too much freedom.

The debate illustrates Turkey’s continuing struggle with the issue of its non-Muslim minorities. But since Turkey must harmonize its laws with the European Union’s if it hopes to gain admission to the 25-member union, the question of minority foundations and how to regulate them is certain to come up again, and could prove yet another sticking point in the currently troubled relations between Ankara and Brussels.

Turkey’s Jewish community, for example, has had 22 of its foundations — synagogues and other property in Istanbul and in parts of Turkey where Jews no longer live — taken away.

Like the old law, which was filled with bureaucratic hurdles and burdens, the proposed one would have forbidden minority communities from joining international organizations.

Now that Sezer, a staunch secularist who often is critical of E.U.-inspired legislation, has vetoed the new bill, it goes back to Parliament or must be shelved.
Still, most disturbing for some was the tone of the debate in Parliament, much of it centering on whether allowing minority groups greater rights would give foreign powers more influence in Turkey.

The legal thinking behind the proposal was the same as that behind the older, more restrictive version, said Ester Zonana, a lawyer who advises Turkey’s Jewish community — “approaching minority foundations with a lack of trust.”

For example, the law offered no way for minority groups to reclaim or seek restitution for the thousands of properties — schools, synagogues and churches, cemeteries and other real estate — confiscated by the state in recent decades.

When the question of property restitution came up, some parliamentarians asked whether allowing Turks of Greek origin to reclaim property could force Turkey to hand back Istanbul’s historic Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine church turned into a mosque by the Ottomans and then a state museum in 1935.

A member of the government even came to Parliament to report that Turkey holds documentation that proves the monument rightfully belongs to it.

“I was very angry during the debate,” said Mihail Vasiliadis, editor of Apoyevmatini, a daily Greek newspaper based in Istanbul. “They were not treating us as citizens. Why should I be treated differently than a Muslim?”

The government, which is led by the liberal Islamic Justice and Development Party, argued that reform is needed when it comes to how minority foundations are handled.

“We are a nation that believes everyone has rights,” Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin told Parliament.

Pope Benedict XVI’s four-day visit to Turkey last week shone a spotlight on the question of religious freedom in the country. Some 3,000 Orthodox Christians remain in Turkey, with another 70,000 Armenians and 25,000 Jews.

The pope offered his support for Christians in Turkey, whom he called “a small minority which faces many challenges and difficulties daily.” The pope’s visit also included a meeting with Turkey’s chief rabbi, Ishak Haleva, at the Vatican’s consulate in Istanbul.

Though they are guaranteed the same rights as Muslim citizens, Christians and Jews in Turkey long have complained about the legal hurdles they face.

The Orthodox patriarchate — which has been in Istanbul for 1,700 years, since the city was known as Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire — is the frequent target of nationalist protests. Grenades have been lobbed over its walls.

In recent decades the patriarchate has seen numerous properties, including schools and cemeteries, confiscated by the state. Its theological seminary was closed down in 1971 and has yet to be reopened, leaving the patriarchate unable to train clergy.

Ankara also refuses to recognize the patriarchate’s status as ecumenical, or global, saying it is responsible only for tending its dwindling flock in Turkey.

“Minority rights of non-Muslims is the issue that we have had the least progress on over the last six or seven years,” said Ioannis Grigoriadis, an assistant professor of political science at Isik University here. “It’s a common theme in all the” reports on Turkey’s E.U. membership bids.

“Other difficult issues have been dealt with more successfully, while with the issue of non-Muslim minorities that has not been the case,” he said.

Turkish historians trace suspicion of minority communities back to the tumultuous period after World War I, when Greece invaded the nascent Turkish state and other Western powers tried to carve up what remained of the decaying Ottoman Empire. At the time, the minorities were seen as being allied with the West.

In the early days of the Turkish republic, efforts were made to bring all religious foundations, Muslim and non-Muslim, under the government’s control, according to Elcin Macar, a professor at Istanbul’s Yildiz Technical University who specializes in minority issues.

But in the 1960s and ’70s, particularly as the Cyprus conflict became more tense, the Turkish government moved toward greater restrictions on non-Muslim communities, with Turkish courts issuing decisions that allowed for the large-scale confiscation of minority properties.

“I believe that these decisions were not made in harmony with the law,” Macar said. “They were discriminatory.”

Although he believes there has been some improvement in minority communities’ legal standing, Macar said the underlying suspicion of them continues.

“The minority is still seen as a dangerous thing for us,” he said.

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Skip into Mel Gibson’s ‘Apocalypto’ now!

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Face it, the previews for Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto” look pretty darn cool.

And there was nary a Jew in sight in Mexico before Cortez & Co. arrived., so I don’t think we have to worry about
anti-Semitism.

Of course, that could change if the movie sentimentalizes human sacrifice — and Jews take the politically incorrect tack of criticizing the right of indigenous peoples to rip-out still-beating hearts from the chests of virgins.

But there’s a bigger issue: Do we want to give our money to Mel? Remember how his “Passion” stirred our passions? How this past summer, he ranted about us “f—- — Jews,” that we “started all the wars in the world”? Sure, he apologized – belatedly, but the reaction of Barbara Walters, that icon of Jewish morality and daytime talk show host, was typical: “I don’t think I want to see any more Mel Gibson movies.”

Mel then begged, “There will be many in that [Jewish] community who will want nothing to do with me, and that would be understandable. But I pray that that door is not forever closed.”

Relax, Mel and Babs. The door is never closed — except maybe on a hit movie’s opening weekend. This revelation came to me a couple of years ago, when I watched “The Passion” — after buying a ticket to a different movie.

At the time, I wished I could say my strategy was heaven-sent to me in a dream — just like the dreams of those 17th- and 18th-century nuns Mel relied on for his “facts” about Jesus’ life, e.g., dark demons always hover around Jewish children. But my “skipping-in” (teen slang for the practice) to see “The Passion” was just the result of a last minute impulse to avoid funding anti-Semitism. The moral issues gnawed at me, though. I had paid to see “Miracle,” an inspiring movie about the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, but I watched “The Passion,” a religious splatter film. It seemed wrong. And I couldn’t look to history for answers, because this issue was possible only with the invention of the Cineplex.

But this past summer, I saw Mel’s drunken tirade as a definite sign that my skipping impulse was indeed a godsend — although Mel would probably think the devil made me do it.

In addition to the cosmic justice evaluation, being a lawyer I also felt compelled to analyze it from a legal perspective. Although I haven’t read any fine print on the back of the movie ticket, I think I might have breached my theater ticket contract. But whom did I damage? Mel got stiffed, but my ticket contract was only with the theater, so he has no claim against me.

The film crew and actors still received payment, and that’s good. Further, because the theater received the full ticket price, it has no damages, so it can’t sue me either.

Conclusion: If Mel has a complaint, he needs to take it up with the theater chain.
So God and the law are on my side. Is that cool — or what?

Of course I realize this type of astute legal analysis is what gives lawyers and Jews a bad name. And that’s the last thing I want to do. So, if Mel sues me, I will waive these defenses, confess judgment and pay him his cut of my $11 ticket. I may even tip the process server.

But with “Apocalypto” opening Friday, only a few months after his anti-Semitic tirade, what’s a Jew to do? Should Mel’s apologies get him a free pass? Maybe I’m just stiff-necked, but I don’t think he’s really sorry; I think he just wanted us to see “Apocalypto.” So we can see the movie, but we should send him the message that we’re still feeling hurt by using my proven Mel Movie Strategy.

If the Mel Movie Strategy succeeds for me, he will be out another $5 or so. If 1,000 people do it, he’ll be out a few grand. If hundreds of thousands succeed with it, he’ll be out about half-a-mil. But if 6 million Jews skip-in to see “Apocalypto,” Mel’s father will deny it ever happened, and Mel probably won’t believe it either.

On the other hand, if cineplex personnel catch you in the act, just explode in a fit of profanity. Slur and drool and scream at the usher, “You a Goy? F—in’ Goyim, they launched the Crusades and Inquisition, and hey, Santa Claus never brings me presents, that fat anti-Semitic slob….”

A few days later, apologize — in a press release.

Of course, if Mel wants to avoid this entire skipping problem, he should send Babs, me and every Member of the Tribe he can find complimentary tickets to see “Apocalypto.” ‘Tis the season, and it would be a real sign of goodwill. But if he wants nothing to do with us, that would be understandable.

We will find consolation in the fact that that door is almost never closed.

______________________________

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