After some relatively lean years, Hollywood’s Jewish talent — as well as Israel’s — made a solid showing as nominations for the 80th Academy Awards were announced at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday.
The biggest winners were brothers Ethan and Joel Coen, whose thriller “No Country for Old Men” earned seven nominations, while Daniel Day-Lewis, son of British Jewish actress Jill Balcon, qualified in the best actor category.
Israel’s “Beaufort,” by Joseph Cedar, a gritty movie about the end of the first Lebanon War, was one of five international finalists as best foreign language film.
It is the first time since 1984 that an Israeli picture (“Beyond the Walls”) has made the final cut in the category, though the Oscar itself has eluded the country’s film industry so far.
Day-Lewis earned his nomination for his role as a tough oil prospector in “There Will Be Blood.” The picture itself topped the field with eight nominations.
The Coen brothers won four personal nominations for best film, director, adapted screenplay and editing (the last under the odd pseudonym Roderick Jaynes), out of a total of seven noms for “No Country for Old Men.” Scott Rudin shared in the producing credit.
Jewish creativity was especially noticeable in “Achievement in Directing.” Besides the two Coens, nominations went to the multitalented Julian Schnabel for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and to Jason Reitman for “Juno.”
Competing with “Beaufort” for the Oscar is Austria’s “The Counterfeiters,” about a group of Jews culled from concentration camps by the Nazis during World War II to swamp the British and American economies with counterfeit currency.
Also in contention are Poland’s “Katyn,” which dramatizes the massacre of some 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets in 1940, as well as Kazakhstan’s “Mongol” and Russia’s “12.”
The songwriting team of Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz earned three out of the available five slots for their songs “So Close,” “That’s How You Know” and “Happy Working Song” for the Walt Disney film “Enchanted.”
British Jewish writer Ronald Harwood was nominated for his adapted screenplay for “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.”
Jewish names also popped up in a number of lesser categories.
Another Israeli film, “The Band’s Visit,” had been originally picked by the Israel Film Academy to represent the country for Oscar honors, but was disqualified by the American Academy because too much of the dialogue was in English.
The picture was subsequently entered by Sony Pictures, the distributor, in the general categories of best picture, director, screenplay, actor and actress, but predictably struck out.
The Academy Awards will be held Feb. 24, with producer Gil Cates and host Jon Stewart, both Jewish, at the helm.
However, due to the prolonged strike by the film and television writers, which Hollywood’s top actors are supporting, it is anybody’s guess whether the show will come off with the traditional glamour and razzle-dazzle.
Dr. Beth Y. Karlan is the director of the Cedars-Sinai Women’s Cancer Research Institute at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute. Her specialty is ovarian cancer, the deadliest of gynecologic cancers and one that is diagnosed in more than 22,000 women annually. As newly appointed editor-in-chief of Gynecologic Oncology, the medical journal of the Society for Gynecologic Oncology, Karlan will be in a unique position to help shape the direction of this field.
The Jewish Journal spoke with Karlan about the nature of ovarian cancer and its particular implications for Ashkenazi Jewish women.
Jewish Journal: What is most important to know about ovarian cancer? Dr. Beth Y. Karlan: First, it isn’t rare. Ovarian cancer affects one in 60 women in the U.S.
Second, it doesn’t have to be deadly. When it is diagnosed early, the five-year survival rate for ovarian cancer is over 90 percent. We can even preserve fertility for many of these women. The problem is that there aren’t effective means of early detection in asymptomatic women. Thus, most women are diagnosed with late-stage disease.
Third, we need to debunk the myth that ovarian cancer is a ‘silent disease.’ Women and even some doctors still believe that there are no symptoms, but that’s wrong. In over 95 percent of cases, there are vague, nonspecific symptoms, which are overlooked by both women and their doctors.
JJ: What are these symptoms? BK: They include abdominal bloating, pelvic and/or low back pain, early satiety or a feeling that you are getting full too quickly, and a change in the frequency or urgency of urination. Now these are very common complaints, and most often are due to many other causes. But when they occur together, are persistent and progress, day after day, then it’s time to call your doctor. Ovarian cancer isn’t silent. It whispers, and we need to learn to listen.
JJ: What should you do if you are experiencing these symptoms? BK: If they persist, you should talk with your doctor and ask about having a transvaginal ultrasound and a CA 125 blood test. These are not screening tests for asymptomatic women, but are helpful diagnostic tests in the face of symptoms.
JJ: What puts a woman at high risk of developing ovarian cancer? BK: The most common risk is age. The median age of diagnosis in the U.S. is 59. But the most significant risk factor is a family history of cancer. If you have a close relative with breast and/or ovarian cancer, you may be at a high risk of the disease.
Although ovarian cancer is a ‘female cancer,’ a woman is just as likely to inherit a risk of it from her father as she is from her mother. So it’s important to know about cancers in your paternal lineage as well as on your mother’s side. Another risk factor may be a personal history of cancer. If a woman has a previous history of breast cancer, she is also at higher risk of ovarian cancer. Lightning can strike twice.
JJ: Can you speak to the special concerns of Ashkenazi women? BK: As we understand genetics and family history, we know that mutations of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are associated with ovarian cancer — although these cases make up only 10 percent of all ovarian cancers. The frequency for carrying these mutated genes in the general population is one in 800. The frequency in the Ashkenazi population is around one in 40. That means 2.5 percent of the Jewish population carries this mutation.
For carriers, the chance of being diagnosed with cancer by age 70 approaches 85 percent for breast cancer, and is 40 percent to 60 percent for ovarian cancer. So for women with a family history, it’s appropriate to discuss testing with a genetic counselor and/or your physician.
JJ: What if you are found to have one of these genetic mutations? BK: Knowing that you have the gene empowers you with knowledge so as not to be victimized — there are courses of action you can take. You can be more vigilant with screening. Or you can reduce your risk surgically. In terms of screening, at this time, I recommend transvaginal ultrasound and a CA 125 test, as well as a rectal-vaginal pelvic exam, to be performed at least annually.
You can also participate in studies, like the ones we are doing at The Gilda Radner Hereditary Detection Program at Cedars. And you may want to discuss this with family members, as they may also be at increased risk.
JJ: How is ovarian cancer treated? BK: Treatment involves surgery and post-operative chemotherapy. Surgery is the cornerstone of treatment and should be performed by a specialist, a gynecologic oncologist. Chemotherapy has evolved over the last decade, and shows improvements in survival and quality of life, even with advanced-stage disease. The median survival time is more than five years, and I’m optimistic that it will be longer in the near future. Interestingly, women with a BRCA mutation who get ovarian cancer are more responsive to treatment and have even better survival rates. There are clinical trials of targeted therapies, and women can discuss eligibility and the pros and cons of participating in these trials with their doctors.
JJ: What are the promising directions in research? BK: Better screening and more targeted treatments. Researchers are working on blood tests, which can identify tumor markers and indicate early-stage ovarian cancer. And when we find it early, we can cure it. Also, there are molecularly targeted therapies that are showing a lot of promise. These new molecules specifically target the tumor cells and are less toxic and have fewer side effects.
While studying this Torah portion several years ago, I enjoyed one of those peculiar delights vouchsafed to those who learn to study great Jewish texts in the Hebrew original — the discovery a great mistranslation. The concept is “ein mukdam u’m’uchar ba’Torah” — usually mistranslated as “the Torah [often] is not written in chronological order,” or more literally, “there is no before and after in the Torah.”
The term is used when Torah scholars, in their careful analysis of passages from the Torah, see that certain events seem out of order. They often resolve this problem by teaching that the way the Torah presents a series of events or teachings is often by an inner logic other than chronological (for those of you who like non-linear thinking, this is a concept for you).
We see this concept of “no chronological order” displayed well in our parashah, Yitro. In Exodus 18, the b’nei Yisrael arrive at Har Sinai, and Moshe is greeted by his father-in-law, Yitro, the Midianite priest. Yitro blesses God for all good done for the people Israel; Yitro makes offerings to God, and Moshe, his brother Aharon and all the elders feast with Yitro (verses 18:1-12). Starting in verse 13, we see Yitro correcting Moshe for trying to judge all the people by himself, all day long, making known one by one “the statutes of God and God’s teachings.” Yitro has Moshe appoint a judiciary, saying that Moshe will impart “the statutes and the teachings … the path they should follow, the deeds they should do,” but that those whom Moshe will appoint will decide the lesser cases. The problem is, Moshe is adjudicating legal cases, making known the statutes and teachings of God in Exodus chapter 18, but the Ten Commandments aren’t given until Exodus chapter 20, and the main body of the laws of the Torah until after that.
Most traditional commentators agree that Exodus 18:12-27 is a narrative that actually took place where we see Exodus chapter 35 today — when Moshe came down from Mount Sinai with the second tablets. It is hard for the tradition to conceive of Moshe teaching law before the law was given — hence ” ein mukdam u’m’uchar ba’Torah.” But in today’s spoken Hebrew, the phrase would be understood as “there is nothing early or late in the Torah.” In other words, things happen right on time. So if things happen right on time, why does the Torah want us to know that Moshe was teaching law right before the Torah was given?
First of all, they had to know law already, and virtually all the Ten Commandments. We already know murder is wrong, because we know that Cain killing Abel was wrong. We already know you don’t steal, hence the protestations of Jacob’s brothers that they did not steal Joseph’s divining cup. We already know you don’t commit adultery — witness God’s displeasure when a Pharaoh in Genesis wants to sleep with Sarah. In short, the main contours of the law were already known — promulgated into the heart of every moral and rational human being.
Here is what was happening, in my mind. After the brutality of slavery — imagine the pent-up rage for justice, the need to settle scores, the rage to finally get your own. Imagine the moral chaos that was taking shape. One thing I have learned from counseling others is that wounded people wound people — and in some way, we are all wounded. What stops wounded people, who are only trying to get some justice in their lives, from clawing at others with whom they have conflict? Only the prior commitment to virtue, to principle, a commitment that overrides the wounds we suffer in life.
I imagine a crisis. I imagine Moshe suddenly discovering the pent-up moral rupture and the outpouring of people seeking redress. Moshe follows his father-in-law’s advice and appoints others to help him. And I imagine a tragedy that every counselor has seen — a person so hurt, or better put, a person so conscious of only their own hurt, that the law makes no difference to them. A commitment to virtue and principle becomes an obstruction, an abstraction, a mere impediment to saying or doing whatever they feel. “Teaching the path that they should follow” does little good.
When does transformation occur? I know from my own experience and from working with others that true transformation happens when a teaching becomes an epiphany, a light shining through from within. I can teach over and over again — “it doesn’t matter what the other person said; what matters is this: what kind of person do you want to be?” — and it will do no good until a person experiences a moment of enlightenment and knows what kind of person they want to become.
I imagine the people, people like us, not able to hear the teachings of Moshe and the judges he has appointed; I imagine a welling sea of moral chaos beginning to erupt into a storm (as it did in the story of Molten Calf, the story of the Spies, the story of Korach….) when God forces an epiphany through creating a Theophany — the Divine shining through. “The way in which we should go” is not advice we can accept or reject; it is a divine law that will guide us into our realization as human beings. The law becomes Revelation — the Divine yearning its way into our hearts.
Our work as Jews is to evoke that holy light that rests in Torah and coax it out into our lives, a light that can guide us to our fulfilled nature as human beings.
Rabbi Mordecai Finley is the spiritual leader of Ohr HaTorah Congregation, and provost and professor of mysticism and liturgy at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California campus.
Israelis are three times more likely to identify primarily as Jews than as Israelis, a poll found. According to a survey in Monday’s Yediot Achronot, 40 percent of Israelis said they identify “first and foremost” as Jews, while 13 percent identify primarily as Israelis. Most Israelis, 45 percent, identified primarily as human beings, with the rest undecided on how to identify themselves. The poll had 500 respondents and a 4.2 percent margin of error. It was not clear if the respondents represented a cross-section of Israel’s entire population, 20 percent of whom are Arabs, or just the Jewish majority.
Stars to Celebrate Israel’s Birthday
Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg are among Jewish celebrities expected to attend Israel’s 60th Independence Day events. The famed musical diva and Hollywood director are among those invited to a May 13 conference in Jerusalem being organized by Israeli President Shimon Peres in honor of the Jewish state’s 60th birthday, Ma’ariv reported Monday. Streisand will entertain by singing “Avinu Malkeinu,” a Peres favorite. Among foreign statesmen expected to attend the events are President Bush and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Canada Removes Israel, U.S. From Watch List
Canada removed Israel and the United States from a list of countries suspected of using torture. Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier said Saturday that an internal government torture watch list naming Israel and the United States had been amended to omit them. Bernier noted that Israel and the United States are among Canada’s “closest allies.” The watch list, which had been compiled as part of training for Canadian diplomats, was accidentally leaked to the press. It mentioned methods known widely as “torture light” — sleep deprivation, forced nudity, isolation and blindfolding. Human rights groups denounced Bernier’s turnabout, saying designation states that sanction torture should not depend on whether they are political allies. Israel and the United States admit that their security services use vigorous interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists but deny this amounts to torture.
Israeli Spy Satellite Launched
After months of delays, the TECSAR satellite was launched into space Monday from a site in India. The TECSAR features an all-weather, day-or-night radar imaging system that will significantly improve Israel’s ability to monitor Iran and other Middle East foes. Two Israeli-made Ofek satellites, with conventional optical camera, already are in orbit. Israel is among a handful of countries that manufactures and deploys its own satellites.
Olmert Praises Aid to Sderot
Aid extended to Sderot by the Israeli military has improved conditions for the rocket-rattled town, Ehud Olmert said. The Israeli prime minister, who made an unannounced visit to Sderot last Thursday after the military’s Southern Command was ordered to deploy personnel in the town to reinforce buildings against rocket salvos from the nearby Gaza Strip and help with routine affairs, said the measure has shown some success.
“I found a different atmosphere both in Sderot and its outlying communities. I found impressive determination, fortitude, fewer complaints but not less pain and concern, and great appreciation for the activity being carried on there,” Olmert told his Cabinet in broadcast remarks Sunday.
Last week saw a surge in rocket fire by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups as Israeli forces pressed attacks in Gaza. The Jewish Agency for Israel announced Sunday it has begun providing emergency relief grants of around $1,000 for Sderot residents who are injured, or whose homes are damaged, by rockets. A total of $300,000 was last month earmarked for Sderot out of the Jewish Agency’s Victims of Terror Fund, which is underwritten by the United Jewish Communities and Keren Hayesod.
Pope to Change Liturgy Offensive to Jews
Pope Benedict XVI reportedly has decided to change part of the Good Friday liturgy that is offensive to Jews. The decision was reported by Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican expert of the Italian daily “Il Giornale.” The change would affect the Missal of 1962, which the pope brought back into use. The prayer is not used in most churches, but certain congregations continue to use the old rite on Good Friday.
The prayer, which refers to the blindness of the Jews in refusing Jesus as the messiah, is part of a series of prayers for non-Christians. The prayer reads: “Let us pray also for the Jews that the Lord our God may take the veil from their hearts and that they also may acknowledge Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us pray: Almighty and everlasting God, you do not refuse your mercy even to the Jews; hear the prayers which we offer for the blindness of that people so that they may acknowledge the light of your truth, which is Christ, and be delivered from their darkness.”
A reference to “perfidious Jews” was dropped in 1959. When Pope Benedict brought back the prayer, the chief rabbis of Israel expressed concern, as did the ADL.
Digital technology will allow Holocaust survivors, researchers and others access to one of the largest troves of Nazi-era documents — but at a pen-and-paper pace.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum told survivors’ groups last week that searches of the digital version of the Bad Arolsen archives it had obtained would take six to eight weeks to fulfill.
“People understood the challenges,” said Jeanette Friedman, who represented the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants at a closed-door meeting Jan. 17 at the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.
The inquiry process, launched that day, will integrate the 46 million documents the Holocaust museum already possesses with more than 18 million documents made available by the International Tracing Service, the agency based in Bad Arolsen, Germany.
The availability of the archives ends a decade-long political and legal battle to open the Bad Arolsen archives, which houses information on the fates of about 17.5 million Jews and non-Jews. Most of the documents now available through the museum relate to incarceration, persecution and concentration camps.
Archivists ran a slide presentation showing how an index card in the files could help David Bayer, a survivor who volunteers at the museum, track his Auschwitz identification card and a census of the Jewish ghetto in his birthplace, Kozience, Poland. The census was the only extant record of his entire immediate family, some of whom perished.
More documents relating to slave labor and to postwar witness testimony are slated to be delivered by 2010.
The digital archives were released simultaneously last year to the 11 nations that control the tracing service. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, was the first to establish a request-processing service last week, although it will not have an online capability until next month.
Much of the material, delivered to the museums on hard drives packed into suitcases, is not yet digitally searchable; images of the documents and 50 million index cards that arrived between August and November of last year are in jpeg form.
Converting those images to searchable files will take much time and millions of dollars, officials of the U.S. Holocaust museum said at a news conference before the meeting with survivor groups.
“To make it machine-readable would take millions and millions,” said Sara Bloomfield, the museum’s director. “We don’t have the time.”
Instead, said Michael Haley Goldman, the director of the museum registry, the priority would be to answer survivor questions with trained staffers searching through the material. Top priority will be given to survivors with outstanding restitution claims, on the assumption that some information obtained through the search could facilitate the claims.
Of about 800 inquiries received even before the launch of the service, most had to do with survivors seeking information on the fate of families, Goldman said.
Officials said that in some cases, the archive material would provide death and burial information, which would help in insurance restitution cases where survivors need specific documentation. But officials also warned that in the vast majority of cases, such information was not recorded or preserved at the time.
Another imperative of the archives, Bloomfield said, was to add evidence at a time of a resurgence in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.
“Keeping the International Tracing Service closed at a time when the president of a country says the Holocaust didn’t happen is morally indefensible,” she said, referring to Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
About 30 representatives of survivor groups attended the closed briefing; Friedman said questions were mostly technical and calm. That made for a quiet denouement to a process that at times has been roiling.
Some survivors, particularly those still seeking restitution in various forms, had campaigned for instant, Internet-searchable access, and they wondered at the snail’s pace of the effort to open the archives.
The nations controlling the International Tracing Service — Belgium, Greece, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Britain and the United States — had signed an accord in 1955 after assuming control of the archives from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Privacy concerns, particularly among the European nations and the Red Cross, kept it inaccessible, officials said. Pressure from survivor groups seeking evidence to bolster restitution claims led the tracing service to announce in 1998 that it would open the archives, but finding a formula acceptable to all was difficult.
Paul Shapiro, the director of the museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, said some nations wanted to create a “worst common denominator” standard, applying each nation’s most restrictive standards across the board. He added that the U.S. Holocaust museum successfully argued instead that each nation should apply its own standards upon receipt of the archives.
There were no restrictions on who could ask for information, museum officials said. So citizens of a nation that applies restrictive standards to sharing the information are free to submit inquiries to Yad Vashem or to the U.S. Holocaust museum, which do not.
Shapiro said that one restriction kept in place at the behest of some of the European nations — he did not name them — was that each nation maintain a single repository.
Museum officials suggested that the provision allowing each nation to distribute the materials according to its own laws and practices meant the museum was not bound by the restriction. However, the museum will not share the materials with other U.S. Holocaust centers for now, to avoid frustrating individuals searching for information, said spokesman Andy Hollinger.
Museum staffers are specially trained to search the Bad Arolsen documents and to integrate those searches with other archives in order to provide the most comprehensive possible responses, Hollinger said.
Another consideration, according to sources, is that commission members of the tracing service who still have privacy qualms would be angered if documents were available on the Internet. Disagreements now could hobble delivery of databases still held by the tracing service.
Ultimately, said Friedman, the goal is to integrate existing archives in the United States, Israel and Europe into a single searchable database, but that could take a decade.
To the east is Libya, a vast desert nation, where not a single Jew remains from the forced exodus that followed Israel’s founding in 1948.
To the west is Algeria, a bloodstained country that once boasted 140,000 Jews and today is home to barely 100.
Squeezed between these two oil-rich giants is Tunisia, a Wisconsin-sized oasis of tranquility that safeguards its 1,500 Jews, foots the bill to restore old synagogues and even welcomes Israeli tourists — despite the lack of diplomatic relations between Tunis and Jerusalem and Tunisia’s history as PLO leader Yasser Arafat’s home during the 1980s.
In many ways, Tunisia is distinct in the Arab world.
The country is home to the Arab world’s only Jewish legislator, an 81-year-old senator who also is president of Tunisia’s Jewish community. In November, World ORT returned to the country after a 35-year absence, inaugurating a computer laboratory and IT center at the Chabad School of Tunis at a ceremony attended by Education Ministry officials.
And despite the absence of diplomatic ties with Israel, in 2005 an Israeli delegation that came to a U.N.-sponsored telecommunications conference in Tunis was headed by Tunisian-born Silvan Shalom, at the time Israel’s foreign minister.
But stability in Tunisia — for its Jews and for the country as a whole — has come at a price, analysts say: democratic rights.
“Unfortunately, Tunisia is a long way from democracy,” said Nejib Ayachi, founder and president of the Maghreb Center, a Washington-based think tank that focuses on North Africa. “They keep saying they’re working on it, but I personally believe that institutions and the rule of law should come first, before establishing a democratic system that works effectively.”
President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has been in power since ousting the ailing Habib Bourguiba in a bloodless coup in 1987.
Though Tunisia has held several presidential elections, few take them seriously. In 1999, Ben Ali’s party won 99.66 percent of the vote. In 2004 he officially won 94.48 percent of the vote after a constitutional change two years earlier enabled him to seek re-election.
But supporters point out that under Ben Ali’s rule, Tunisia has been able to develop one of the highest levels of literacy in the Arab world, as well as one of its lowest rates of infant mortality and unemployment.
Roger Bismuth, the Jewish member of Tunisia’s Chamber of Deputies, credits the 71-year-old president for keeping Tunisia on a moderate course, promoting education and protecting Tunisian Jews from the chaos and religious extremism enveloping much of North Africa.
“The president is good to us,” Bismuth said, adding, “We are very careful. Our security is very tight, even if you don’t see it.”
“There is a national consensus around Ben Ali,” Mohamed Nejib Hachana, Tunisia’s ambassador to the United States said in an interview. “He is the savior of Tunisia, and he’s putting our country on the right track in this very risky and difficult moment. He is deadly serious about democracy and pluralism.”
The threat of Islamic terrorists groups like Al Qaeda has given Arab dictatorships a handy excuse to crack down on civil liberties, even in monarchies where there’s been some nominal movement toward democracy, such as Jordan and Morocco, says Abdeslam Maghraoui, a North Africa expert and visiting associate professor at Duke University.
“The regimes are dealing with this threat in a very efficient way,” said Maghraoui, who is also the former director of the Muslim World Initiative at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “However, they’re clamping down on civil liberties, freedom of the press and freedom of expression. Democracy may actually be suffering because of this.”
Experts say terrorist activity is on the rise throughout North Africa’s Maghreb, a region that encompasses Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania.
Last month, twin car bombs in Algeria devastated a government building and the U.N. headquarters in the capital city, Algiers, killing more than 50. Also last month, a French family of four vacationing in Mauritania was gunned down.
Both attacks are believed to be the work of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a terrorist group increasingly active in North Africa.
The last serious attack in Tunisia took place in 2002, when Al Qaeda agents attempted to bomb North Africa’s oldest shul, Djerba’s Ghriba Synagogue. The truck bombing didn’t damage the synagogue, but it killed 21, most of them German tourists, and scared away visitors for several years.
“They wanted to shut down the tourist industry, and in fact they did,” Bismuth said. “And in December 2006 we had some more incidents, which were definitely traced to Al Qaeda.”
Bismuth visited Washington in November to meet with Jewish members of Congress and to lobby for U.S. help in Tunisia’s battle against extremists.
Although it is far removed from the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Tunisia commands respect in the region both for having hosted both the Arab League — after the organization pulled out of Cairo following Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel — and the PLO, which operated out of Tunis from 1982 to 1993.
Hachana said Tunisia was instrumental in bringing Israelis and Palestinians together, despite an Israeli attack on the PLO’s Tunis headquarters in 1985.
“Tunisia played a very constructive and positive role in the Middle East peace process,” the ambassador said. “The first dialogue between the Palestinians and Americans was in Tunis. This was followed by the first official dialogue between the PLO and Israel.”
Those two dialogues, he said, gave birth to the Oslo peace agreement and the historic 1993 summit between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Yet unlike Egypt and Jordan, Tunisia has not formally recognized the State of Israel.
“It all depends on the peace process,” Hachana said. “Tunisia has said very clearly that when there’s progress on this issue, Tunisia will react favorably on the normalization of relations with Israel.
“But we must see tangible progress on the Palestinian-Israeli track: a sovereign state of Palestine living side by side with Israel. The main issue is still not solved.”
What makes a good politician? More to the point for Jewish Journal readers, what makes a good Jewish politician?
I’ve been thinking about this since I spoke to the Westwood Women’s Bruin Club about my book, “Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics.”
In my talk, as I did in my book, I dug into this powerful old politician to figure out why he sought power so relentlessly. The idea intrigued a member of the audience.
“Why do politicians do it?” she asked. “How can they put themselves through all that?”
It’s a great question. Since I’m Jewish and write about politics for The Journal, I decided to devote this column to exploring what makes some of our local Jewish politicians good at their jobs.
Good politicians are like actors, a combination of ego and ambition mixed in with a public-spirited desire to help people.
The public-spirited aspect is — or should be — part of the makeup of good Jewish politicians. Whether they are religious or secular, many have been brought up to with Jewish values, including the belief that they should try make the world a better place and that they’ll be judged by the good things accomplished in a lifetime. They extend themselves beyond the confines of their jobs and think of ways to help all kinds of people.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, whose 30th District reaches from Santa Monica through Los Angeles’ Westside and into the San Fernando Valley, is a good example of what I’m describing.
I don’t agree with him all the time. His years of opposition to a Wilshire Boulevard subway delayed the project so long that it may be unaffordable. But as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, he has launched investigations into White House secrecy, steroids in baseball, the subprime mortgage mess, big drug and tobacco companies and the recent Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to block California’s tough clean-air standards.
With his chairmanship and his eye for newsworthy subjects, Waxman has become nationally known.
It’s not so easy for a politician slogging away in City Hall or the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration. That’s because the ethnic politics of Los Angeles have changed in recent years.
As political observer Joel Kotkin and others have pointed out, the interest of many of the rich Westside Jews, who once were a powerful force in local politics, have shifted to the glamour and high visibility of presidential politics.
In addition, political coverage in our shrinking newspapers has diminished, and it has become all but nonexistent on television. Who notices activities relegated to Page 3 of the Los Angeles Times California section? And that’s on a good day. Usually, they are ignored altogether.
Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick, another Jewish politician, has successfully struggled against the media blackout by conducting much-needed audits of major city departments that often make news. (Disclosure: Chick appointed me to the City Ethics Commission).
Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents an area reaching from the Westside into the San Fernando Valley, has not been so fortunate. Like Waxman, he looks beyond his district. As a Los Angeles city councilman, he joined with his colleague, the late Marvin Braude, another good Jewish politician, as authors of voter initiatives that limited commercial developments near residential neighborhoods and stopped oil drilling in the bay off Pacific Palisades.
In those days, Yaroslavsky was hot news. He considered running for mayor. Influential Jews were still interested in City Hall. The newspapers –the Times, the Daily News and the now-dead Herald-Examiner — competed in the coverage of local politics. Television was interested, too.
Today, he’s the same Yaroslavsky, but not many people notice what he’s doing. That’s because he is a member of the five-person Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a body that usually escapes media attention.
Yaroslavsky has deep roots in the Jewish community, and he works hard to maintain them. Most recently, he arranged for The Jewish Federation Council’s Menorah Housing Corp. to build a 45-unit senior citizen housing project on the site of the old county welfare office at Pico and Veteran boulevards in West Los Angeles. I live near there and think it’s a great project.
But he has also extended himself beyond his Jewish base into activities that benefit the whole city. As a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, he was the major force behind the Orange Line busway across the San Fernando Valley. The busway connects to the Red Line subway, making it possible for those who live in the Valley and work downtown to use public transit.
Yaroslavsky also was the sponsor of a countywide tax increase that provided needed funds to trauma centers in danger of closing. And he has taken the lead on the Board of Supervisors in efforts to provide housing and services for the homeless, although chances for success in that area are dim, given the board’s taste for inaction.
There are other good Jewish politicians. I happened to pick three I know pretty well –Yaroslavsky, Waxman and Chick — because each, in his or her own way, illustrates how the values of Jewish life can be carried over into the secular obligations of public affairs. They have been doing this a long time, setting an example for a new generation that will make sure our community is deeply involved in Los Angeles civic life.
Until leaving the Los Angeles Times in 2001, Bill Boyarsky worked as a political correspondent, a Metro columnist for nine years and as city editor for three years. You can reach him at bw.boyarsky@verizon.net.
Ruthie Rotenberg couldn’t make up her mind. She had to choose between two amazing jobs. One was connected to the future of Jewish education in America; the other could potentially re-energize the Los Angeles Jewish community.
In the past, Ruthie would always seek the advice of her father before making major decisions. She was Daddy’s girl, the little baby who was born a decade after her two brothers, the one who could do no wrong in her father’s eyes. The feeling was mutual. The father, with his quiet wisdom and deliberate ways, could do no wrong with his high-strung, mile-a-minute daughter.
On this occasion, however, it would not be easy to seek the father’s advice. He had recently suffered a stroke and could hear but could not speak.
But Rotenberg had something up her sleeve. She knew her father’s body language. So when she spoke to him about her job options, she noticed that he seemed to light up when he heard about the second job: executive director of Limmud in Los Angeles.
That little reaction was enough of a blessing for her, and, as it turns out, for our community.
You could argue that Rotenberg was better suited for the first job: to run a new Charter English-Hebrew day school in Miami that was providing government-funded secular and Hebrew education. This had the potential to be revolutionary, and with her background in Jewish education, seemed like a perfect fit for Rotenberg, who has always lived on the East Coast.
But there was another side to Rotenberg: the high-energy city girl who loves to engage with people from all walks of life. You might call it her Limmud side, and it’s the side that won out.
I first met Rotenberg about eight months ago, a short time after she took the Limmud job, and I remember feeling a little nervous about her career direction. The Limmud goal, she told me, was to get a cross-section of 400 to 600 L.A. Jews to pay good money to spend a holiday weekend in Orange County to learn more about their Judaism. This is in a town where you’re lucky to get a handful of Jews to show up in Beverly Hills for a Judaism class when it’s free and there’s valet parking.
But I got really nervous when she asked me for names of key people in the local Jewish community — rabbis, speakers, philanthropists, opinion leaders, etc. — and I noticed that when I gave her names everybody knew, she had no idea who I was talking about.
As the months went by, though, I could see her confidence growing. It helped that she had the support of a prominent circle of Limmud devotees who had been working on the project for some time — like co-chairs Shep Rosenman and Linda Fife, and a 14-member steering committee — as well as a host of other volunteers who have chipped in on a daily basis.
And there’s been plenty of work to go around, from finding co-sponsors to organizing “Taste of Limmud” events to recruiting volunteers to producing podcasts to actually signing people up for the conference. When I caught up with Rotenberg recently over lunch, by the time the coffee came, she had 20 new e-mail messages on her Blackberry. She had just returned from the Limmud conference in London — where the idea originated 27 years ago — and she seemed rejuvenated.
Her energy has certainly helped put Limmud on people’s radar, but I think there’s something else going for her. She hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. She’s an ardent fan of the Limmud idea — to gather Jews of all denominations to celebrate the kaleidoscope of the Jewish experience — but she’s not one of those cuckoo evangelists dripping with single-minded fervor who will pummel you with the greatness of their cause.
In a town where “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is a form of religious practice, you can’t come on too strong and hope to charm people into buying something they’re not sure they want.
Of course, when you’re offering classes like “Sexual Obsession and Repression in Traditional Jewish Practice,” it makes the marketing a little easier. In fact, if there’s one thing that sells Limmud above all else, it’s the range of classes they offer.
For the conference coming up at the Costa Mesa Hilton on Presidents’ Day Weekend, Rotenberg tells me there’ll be up to 14 different classes to choose from at any one time, including some that move (Jewish yoga and dance), inspire (Israel through the lens of poets), instruct (Talmud text study), surprise (the place and role of Arabs in Zionist thought), entertain (various film screenings and musical performances), nourish (the making of a great couscous) and even profit (marketing your Jewish cause).
When you think about it, there’s actually something very L.A. about Limmud: it’s Judaism for freedom junkies with a short attention span who don’t want to be told how to be Jewish.
And the numbers are coming in. After a slow start, they now have almost 400 reservations from Jews of all denominations, and they have maxed out on presenters — all without valet parking.
So Rotenberg is starting to see daylight. Maybe that’s why, at the end of our lunch, she got in a more pensive and reflective mood, and told me the story of how her father passed away a week after she took the Limmud job, and how she might have crumbled without the support of her new Limmud family in Los Angeles.
The morning after her father died, she decided to say “Kaddish,” which she continues to this day. She says that reciting this prayer for her father every morning and hearing Jews say “amen” has been her secret source of energy.
It might also be her way of showing gratitude for her father’s last blessing, the one that helped her come to a place she loves and now calls home.
David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine and Meals4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.
I’m always leery when Jewish groups ride in from out of town to try to save us from the bad guys. We have plenty of sharp-eyed Jewish defense groups locally who can tussle on our behalf. It’s just a bit condescending to think we rubes, out in America’s second-largest Jewish city, don’t know how and when to fight. Or whom.
For the past couple of weeks, the Boston-based pro-Israel media watchdog group CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) has been riling up rabbis, congregants and any Jew with an e-mail address to pressure the All-Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena to cancel the appearance of a prominent Palestinian activist, the Rev. Naim Ateek.
Ateek, an Israeli Arab who lives in Jerusalem, is scheduled to speak at the liberal church Feb. 15-16. As founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center and its sister organization in the United States, Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA), Ateek has championed the cause of nonviolent resistance to Israel in the West Bank. His writings are numerous and explicit: Ateek wants an end to occupation according to U.N. Resolution 242, and reconciliation between Israel and a Palestinian state.
“We want Israel to live in peace and security within its pre-1967 borders,” he said in a sermon at Boston’s Old South Church last year. “At the same time we want justice for the Palestinians in accordance with international law and the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace and security alongside the state of Israel. There is no other way.”
CAMERA and other Jewish organizations vehemently protested Ateek’s appearance in Boston and elsewhere. Their critique focuses less on his vision of a future settlement than on his language and methods. In his sermons and writings, Ateek uses imagery that portrays Palestinians as suffering under Israel as Jesus and the early Christians suffered — raising disturbing images of the ancient anti-Semitic canard of deicide. He has also championed comparisons of Israel to apartheid South Africa and has promoted divestment as a nonviolent tool to bring pressure upon Israel.
These are disturbing tactics and unsettling words. But, man, it sure beats Hamas. It beats Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the armed wing of Fatah by a mile. I’ll take a man who writes that the occupation is the equivalent of the stone blocking “Christ’s tomb” and that “The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily,” over a suicide bomber any day. This is an opponent you can debate, propogandize and educate.
This is the Palestinian resistance that, had it taken root in the Palestinian body politic 45 years ago instead of that cancer called Arafat, the history of that region would have been much different, much better.
So, CAMERA, I admire you, I respect your work, but butt out. Get back on your white horse and go rescue some other Jews.
Besides choosing the wrong enemy here, you risk unraveling longstanding local relationships that have taken much time and care to knit together.
“CAMERA is trying to paint All Saints as an anti-Semitic organzation that is against the State of Israel,” the Rev. Ed Bacon, leader of All Saints, told me. “That is far from the truth. What we are trying to do is teach people to be sophisticated about how they talk about these issues. I’m not sympathetic with Sabeel to the exclusion of the right of the state of Israel to exist.”
Bacon and the local Episcopal diocese, which also supports Ateek’s efforts, have been more than open to the entreaties of the local Jewish community. In late 2004, responding to concerns of local Jewish leaders and its own wisdom, the diocese voted to bypass a resolution put forward by activists to divest church funds from companies doing business with Israel.
Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Jon Bruno has been to Israel nine times. A former beat cop and pro-football player, he doesn’t need to be schooled by Jewish activists on Israeli geography or the importance of security. And it was Bruno who, in April 2005, stepped in and helped the Silver Lake Jewish Community Center buy its $2.1 million property when every Jewish organization said no.
But what about balance? If Ateek is allowed to criticize Israel, shouldn’t pro-Israel activists demand equal time? (Never mind that many of the most damning things Ateek often says are direct quotes from Israeli soldiers, politicians and journalists, who just haven’t learned to be as uniform in their opinions as American Jews).
Ideally, yes, there would be debate and rebuttal. But in the real world grownups hear strong opinions all the time and judge them against past and future information. That’s why most Jewish groups don’t invite Palestinians to their lectures.
Still, the Rev. Bacon has invited pro-Israel activist Daniel Sokatch of the Progressive Jewish Alliance to address his congregation this Sunday.
“The message the liberal churches get from the Jewish community on Israel is, ‘You’re either with us or against us,'” Sokatch said to me by phone. “I think there’s a third way. But we have become hypersensitive on our side.”
Now, there’s awful evidence that the Palestinian state Ateek is fighting for will be anything but hospitable to Palestinian Christians. Last October, Rami Khader Ayyad, the 32-year-old director of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, was shot in the head and stabbed numerous times by Islamic fundamentalists. A month earlier, a masked attacker beat an 80- year-old Christian Palestinian woman in Gaza, calling her an “infidel.” Since the Palestinian Authority took over control of Bethlehem, Christians have emigrated en masse.
But that’s Ateek’s problem. If he believes in the power of nonviolence to win over a Palestinian population educated for generations in hatred and intolerance, good luck to him.
Meanwhile, I, for one, want to hear what the man has to say. I believe Israel is strong enough to withstand the rhetoric of a 70-year-old cleric dedicated to nonviolent coexistence.
Rising costs, crowded waiting rooms and decreasing access to doctors are among the reasons medical patients in Southern California and across the nation use words like “headache” and “frustration” to describe America’s health care system. And with declining insurance reimbursements, rising malpractice premiums, claims frustrations and growing paperwork, individual practitioners are often forced to increase the volume of patients they see as they decrease time spent in the examination room.
It’s an exasperating experience for all concerned, and a small but growing number of doctors and patients are choosing to bypass or minimize the role of insurance in health care through an approach to medicine that is known by a variety of names — platinum practices, retainer medicine or concierge medicine.
Consumers can pay a fixed annual retainer directly to a medical practice in return for a package of medical services that can include same-day or next-day appointments at an office with a spa-like atmosphere, house calls, 24/7 access to a physician via phone or e-mail, preventative care and programs, free checkups and a comprehensive physical once a year. For a fixed price, a growing number of physicians are adding or exclusively providing these and other personal touches.
Annual fees for a concierge practice vary from less than $100 to $20,000, with most practices charging an average of about $1,500. The fixed fee covers all related expenses and allows the physicians to limit the number of patients they see, which supporters say allows them to devote more time to each patient. But detractors of the practice, which includes the American Medical Association (AMA), say its proliferation could eventually limit access to care for those unwilling or unable to pay a retainer fee.
Beverly Hills-based Dr. Albert Fuchs, 39, opened a traditional internal medicine practice in 2000 but switched to a concierge practice more than two years ago. He says without the constant pressures associated with a traditional practice he’s able to spend more time with his patients and follow through with treatments he deems necessary, rather than having to check with an insurance company first.
“I get to actually practice medicine that I was trained in,” he said. “I can be much more comprehensive and it kicks the insurance company out of the examining room because I no longer have to worry about what’s covered, what’s not covered.”
On a typical day Fuchs sees six to eight patients without any real time limits, compared with a doctor in a traditional office who sees mostly double that amount, spending as little as 15 to 20 minutes with each.
Fuchs charges patients an annual fee of $2,400 for his services, a price he believes is within reach for many people.
“It requires a realization that your health is valuable, that it deserves extra spending,” Fuchs said.
By eliminating the third party of insurance companies, concierge doctors say they save money by not having to hire a staff to handle the insurance billing, co-payments and extensive paperwork. For most of these practices the retainer covers the costs for services, so there is no need for billing.
While concierge doctors save money by not relying on insurance for payments, patients don’t necessarily reap similar rewards, since most concierge patients still have and are encouraged to retain some level of medical insurance to cover hospitalization, drug prescriptions and outside lab work. Fuchs’ patients use health insurance for lab tests from Cedars-Sinai, where the doctor has hospital privileges.
And while such practices typically don’t feature specialists, concierge internists and general practitioners will frequently accompany patients on visits to specialists to consult and make recommendations.
Glen Melnick, the Blue Cross Professor of Health Care Finance at USC and a health economist at the Rand Corporation, views concierge medicine as a successful small niche market. It’s something he likes to see.
“In the sense that people are willing to pay for something and the market is providing,” he said.
However, Melnick believes that concierge medicine is far from being a part of the mainstream health care, let alone a cure for the problems plaguing the current health care system. A reason for that is the cost, which he says makes sense only for those whose time is so valuable that paying upfront for quick access isn’t an issue.
“It doesn’t make sense for the average person to pay a couple of thousand bucks extra a year just to get a guaranteed quick appointment,” Melnick said.
Doctors who convert their existing practices to include a concierge service often create a two-tier system whereby patients who pay more get direct access to a doctor while all other existing patients are passed on to a nurse practitioner who will likely be less convenient and possibly less skilled.
And while critics acknowledge that a shift to concierge-level care isn’t possible for most doctors in the highly dysfunctional U.S. health system, they say the trend is still inherently discriminatory and that the public at large will suffer as a dwindling number of general practitioners and internists opt to make themselves available to a small, privileged group of patients.
Gordon Schiff, founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, finds little encouraging about concierge medicine from a patient’s point of view.
“Many of the things that doctors are saying they’ll do under concierge medicine should already be expected by patients. It shouldn’t be a privilege that you have to pay extra for,” he said in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle.
“If medicine is a public service and we’re here to take care of everyone, you don’t limit yourself to people who have money. Most people expect to be treated based on need, not on how much money they have,” Schiff said.
In 2003, the AMA stated that doctors who engage in a two-tier system “in which some patients have contracted for special services and amenities and others have not, must be particularly diligent to offer the same standard of diagnostic and therapeutic services to both categories of patients.”
And in 2004, California Rep. Pete Stark (D-Fremont) described concierge care as a new country club for the rich. During a joint economic committee hearing in Congress, he said, “The danger is that if a large number of doctors choose to open up these types of practices, the health care system will become even more inequitable than it is today.”