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Jewish Journal

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February 8, 2008

Eight ways to give a great toast

Leave a Comment / Special Sections, Weddings /

Making a toast at an event is a touching way to let friends and family know how much you value them and wish them well. I still get misty-eyed when I think of the beautiful toast that my brother-in-law gave at my wedding welcoming me to the family. But public speaking doesn’t come easily to everyone. We’ve all been to big affairs where the toasts were embarrassing and in bad taste, leaving a pall over the entire day — and beyond.

I think often of my friend Cathy’s wedding reception, where her mother decided to give an impromptu toast. Raising her glass high, she looked at the happy couple and said, “We wish the best for our children, but sometimes you just have to take what comes along.” The next sound heard in the hall was the crash of our collective jaws falling to the floor.

Want to make sure your next toast is memorable for all the right reasons?

1. Prepare
Don’t try to wing it. If you need inspiration, look at photos of the person to be honored to jog your memory. Think of your shared history, what you admire most, the person’s endearing quirks or accomplishments. Flip through some quotation collections. Even if you don’t find just the right quote, it may help you figure out what it is you want to say. “It helps if you pick a theme. Words of advice for the bride and groom or what you’ve learned after 35 years of marriage will quickly draw your audience in,” said Tom Haibeck, author of “The Wedding MC.”

2. Get personal
People love funny or touching anecdotes. If you have any doubt about how a story will be received, however, err on the side of caution and delete it. (For the record — need I say this? — stories that involve inebriation, nudity, former spouses or significant others are never a good idea!)

3. Write it down and practice
Either script it out or use highlighted notes, whichever feels most comfortable to you. Practice so that you become familiar enough with it to be able to make eye contact with your audience and aren’t just reading out loud. Speak slowly, clearly, audibly and with expression. (If you can rehearse in the actual room where the toast will be given, so much the better.)

4. Keep it short and simple
A few simple words, ending with a hoisted glass, are all that’s necessary. If you want to say more, keep it to less than five minutes so as not to strain your audience’s patience. (Time yourself beforehand.)

5. Use humor, if you can
Remember that the first rule of comedy is that the joke you tell on yourself is always the funniest. Laugh at your own foibles before tweaking someone else. Stay away from long, complicated jokes and stick with short, humorous anecdotes. “Forget the ‘in’ jokes where only three people laugh because they are the only ones who get it, and avoid off-color jokes that might offend. You want to be as inclusive as possible,” said Sherri Wood of Toastmasters International. If you are not a naturally funny person, don’t feel you have to force the yuks.

6. Don’t try to be someone you’re not
This is not the time for grandiloquent speeches, full of high-flown quotes and flowery flourishes. Nor is it your moment to launch your stand-up comedy career. Just speak simply and sincerely from your heart.

7. Stay away from alcohol
We’ve all been to parties where someone who was drunk tried to give a speech and ended up embarrassing himself and everyone else. If you need something to calm your jitters, Haibeck recommends a good exercise workout prior to the occasion, a lot of rehearsal and taking deep breaths prior to speaking. If you have to give your toast from a podium, practice standing at it for awhile beforehand so you get the feel of it. “Remember that if you stumble a bit, your audience will be sympathetic. They want you to succeed,” Wood said.

8. End with a bang
Give your audience a call to action — to either stand or raise their cups. (Make sure you have your glass with you.) Look directly at the person being toasted and ask the guests to join you in honoring him. Thank everyone and sit down.

If you are asking someone to give a toast at a specific occasion, make sure you give guidelines:

  • Suggested length
  • Important points to hit
  • Important people in the audience to acknowledge
  • Sensitive topics to avoid

Beth Levine is a writer whose essays have appeared in Redbook, Woman’s Day, Family Circle, the Chicago Tribune, USA Weekend and Newsday.

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Israel needs regime change to insure stability

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Last month, Avigdor Liberman, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, resigned from office.

Though this is just one news fact, it resonates with much larger implications in Israel’s political, economic and security arenas, such as possibly affecting the peace process or the investor’s desire to invest in Israel.

Liberman and his party, which includes 11 Knesset members, joined the coalition 15 months ago. The Ministry of Strategic Affairs was especially designed for Liberman, and millions of taxpayers’ shekels were spent to put together this public office. Now, in light of Liberman’s resignation, all of that money has gone to waste, along with the strategic planning and important intelligence work that was done last year.

In addition, Tourism Minister Yitzhak Aaronovitch, who served for less than one year, will be forced to finish his term due to the resignation of Liberman’s party, Israel Beiteinu. Due to Aaronovitch’s resignation, all of his projects and long-term plans will be frozen and perhaps will be canceled by the new tourism minister, who will bring his own agendas.

Liberman’s resignation has many political consequences. When Liberman was part of the coalition, the government had 78 members and was very stable, but with his resignation, it has shrunk to 67 members. Now Ehud Olmert depends more on each one of the coalition members, because if another party withdraws, he will not have a majority vote in the Knesset, and Israel would have to hold new elections.

Thus, Liberman’s resignation strengthens the power and influence of the small parties, because they are able to demand more, and this reality opens more doors to political corruption. Since the prime minister needs to maintain his coalition to stay in power, he will do anything to keep the support of the small parties or others in order to preserve the majority.

Both the resignations of Liberman and Aaronovitch add to the dismal statistics that make up the history of Israel’s government. In the last 11 years, Israel has had eight defense ministers, eight justice ministers, 11 finance ministers and 10 foreign affairs ministers.

The truth is that Liberman recognizes the dire problem of Israel’s government instability and advocates reform. In an article published in June 2006, Liberman stated, “There is no company or a grocery store that can handle a lack of stability; how much more true this is of a government office and a state. We can not continue in this way.”

In 2005, the Citizens Empowerment Center in Israel (CECI) addressed the problem of government instability by spearheading the creation of the President’s Commission for the Examination of the Structure of Governance in Israel. The commission was given the charter to research and examine various types of government structures and electoral systems in order to recommend the best one suited for Israel.

The commission is led by professor Menachem Megidor, president of Hebrew University, and members include prominent community leaders, politicians, former Knesset members and judges. In January 2007, the commission presented its report to the Knesset and other government officials on possible alternatives to Israel’s current electoral system.

To date, the Knesset has already approved several of the commission’s recommendations in the first of three readings. The recommendations include:

1) Implement “Norwegian Law.” Ministers and deputy ministers, with the exception of party leaders, cannot simultaneously serve as a minister and a Knesset member.

2) Increase the voter threshold from 2 percent to 2.5 percent of valid votes in the national elections. This law would reduce the number of smaller parties.

3) Amend the basic law so that it would limit the number of government ministers to between eight and 18.

During the current winter session, the Knesset will discuss some of the commission’s other recommendations, such as the establishment of district elections in Israel. It is important to remember that the commission’s work parallels Israel’s current growing interest in securing government stability, because this issue has become a hot topic among both politicians and the general public.

Israeli citizens need to understand that they can make a positive difference in their government, but in order to do so, they need to make a conscious effort to better understand their democratic rights and responsibilities. Citizens also need to become more civically involved.

They can write letters to politicians demanding accountability; they can urge politicians to establish regional or district elections so that citizens can exercise their votes to determine their Knesset representatives, and they can join local groups supporting candidates and organizations dedicated to government reform.

Israel’s future well-being is dependent on its strength and stability. Now is the time to take decisive action to change the pattern of government instability, which has plagued Israel for the past 59 years.

Change is needed in order to empower the government, alleviate the political deadlock and make Israel more secure in order to address her many challenges, both inside and outside her borders. In light of Israel’s approaching 60th birthday, I urge Jews everywhere to let their voices be heard and support efforts to help usher in a new era and ensure a brighter future for all the generations to come.

Parviz Nazarian is founder of the Citizens Empowerment Center in Israel.

Israel needs regime change to insure stability Read More »

Sanctions only work if they are enforced

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

In a recent report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) challenged the impact of U.S. sanctions against Iran, noting Iran’s ability to negotiate $20 billion in contracts
with foreign firms since 2003 to develop its energy resources. The GAO correctly recognizes that “Iran’s overall trade with the world has grown since the U.S. imposed sanctions.” What the GAO fails to recognize is that the most important provisions of the cornerstone of America’s sanction against Iran, the Iran Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) of 1995, have not been implemented, and it is precisely these provisions that sought to cripple Iran’s ability to trade with the rest of the world.

The authors of ILSA recognized that many countries, including France, Russia and China, do not possess America’s clear moral compass when it comes to doing business with regimes sponsoring terrorism, and sought to cripple such trade. For example, ILSA allows the president to sanction any entity or person, foreign or domestic, who invests in Iran’s oil industry, the backbone and last leg of its faltering economy. Accordingly, the GAO’s claim that “Iran’s global trade ties and leading role in energy production make it difficult for the United States to isolate Iran and pressure it to reduce proliferation and support for terrorism” is misleading and ignores ILSA’s most effective provisions. Indeed, one can argue that Iran’s increased global trade makes it more vulnerable to United States sanctions if the sanctions were actually enforced, since ILSA forces foreign companies to either do business with Iran or the U.S. How many corporations would give up relations with the world’s sole economic superpower to get into bed with a bunch of mullahs in Iran?

What the GAO report does reveal is that even foreign policy legislation has loopholes that can be used to play politics with our national security. Although President Clinton hailed ILSA as a strong measure to contain the Iranian threat, he then went on to ignore the multibillion dollar investment in Iran’s oil sector by European, Russian and Asian firms. According to a report prepared by the Congressional Research Service, Clinton buckled to European Union threats of retaliation if he did not waive ILSA’s provisions. Of course, Clinton’s capitulation led to a floodgate of foreign entities investing billions of dollars in Iran. For all his bravado, President Bush maintained Clinton’s appeasement policy, and today the list of foreign companies (including our strongest allies) investing in Iran is mind numbing. Deals include:

  • A 1997 award to France’s Total SA $2 billion deal to South Pars gas field.
  • A February 1999 award to France’s Elf Aquitaine (now merged with Totalfina) and Italy’s ENI to develop the Doroud oil field. The estimated value of the investment is $1 billion.
  • A project, run by Elf Aquitaine and Canada’s Bow Valley, to develop the Balal oil field. The estimated value is $300 million.
  • A November 1999 contract for Royal Dutch/Shell (United Kingdom and the Netherlands) to develop the Soroush and Nowruz oil fields. The estimated value is $800 million.
  • A July 2000 award to ENI to develop phases four and five of South Pars oil fields. The estimated value is $3.8 billion.
  • An exploration contract for Norway’s Norsk Hydro to develop the Anaran oil field, signed in April 2000.
  • In January 2001, a United Kingdom firm, Enterprise Oil, took a 20 percent stake in phases six, seven, and eight of South Pars.
  • In March 2001, Iran announced it had signed a $226 million contract for a consortium led by Sweden’s GVA Consultants to explore for oil in Iran’s portion of the Caspian Sea.
  • On June 30, 2001, ENI signed a deal, estimated to be worth $550 million to $1 billion, to develop Iran’s Darkhovin oil field.
  • In May 2002, Canada’s Sheer Energy took a 49 percent stake in an $88 million project to develop the Masjid-e-Soleyman onshore oil field.
  • In September 2002, South Korea’s LG Engineering Group, in partnership with two Iranian firms, was given a $1.6 billion stake in phases nine and 10 of South Pars.
  • In October 2002, the Norwegian firm Statoil signed an agreement to invest $300 million in phases six, seven, and eight of South Pars.

Three things are clear from the GAO report. First, international investment in Iran is growing. Second, if Presidents Clinton and Bush had actually enforced the sanctions legislation they signed into law, the United States might very well have prevented the multibillion dollar investments in Iran that have allowed it to brazenly defy UN Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program. Third, it seems that unelected career bureaucrats have come full circle in hijacking policymaking from our elected officials.

A few months ago, the National Intelligence Estimate misleadingly portrayed Iran as having stopped its race for a nuclear weapon. And now, the GAO misleadingly claims that sanctions do not work, while failing to acknowledge that they have not even been implemented. It is not too late, however, to reverse course and salvage whatever credibility America still has in the international community.

We must forcefully lobby our political leaders and demand that they implement all provisions of the ILSA and not buckle to foreign pressure when it comes to enforcing our laws.

David Peyman is an attorney at the law firm of Skadden, Arps in Los Angeles. He has worked for the Clinton Administration as an assistant to the Secretary of the Cabinet and as a research associate to AIPAC’s Senior Middle East Analyst in Washington.

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Detail of the week

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

In one of the oldest synagogues in Los Angeles, Congregation Mogen David, located on the western edge of the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the rabbis have created their own version of “Saturday Night Live.”

During the winter months, from 7-8 p.m. every Saturday night, children and their fathers are invited to learn Torah together. Small rectangular tables are arranged in a large hall, and on many of those tables you will see a father learning with his child. I was one of those fathers recently, and I was there to learn with my 8-year-old son Noah.

The rabbi who runs their fast-growing Sephardic minyan, Rabbi Yehuda Moses, handed us a couple of Chumashim, and we flipped right to the parsha of the upcoming week, Terumah.

I knew that Terumah was full of excruciating detail, so I tried to spin it for Noah with a little philosophy on the importance of details in the Torah, especially with something as holy as the building of the Mishkan (Sanctuary). My philosophy seemed to bore him, though, so I decided to dive right into the details.

For about the next 45 minutes or so, we went through every word of the parsha and analyzed every diagram. I wanted to keep the flow, so we didn’t stop for the commentaries at the bottom of the page. We stayed with the word of God. We learned, for example, how God commanded the Jews to make an “Ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits its length; a cubit and a half its width; and a cubit and a half its height” and to cover it “with pure gold” and “make on it a gold crown all around.”

We read God’s instructions for building the Table: “You shall make a Table of acacia wood, two cubits its length, a cubit its width, and a cubit and a half its height. You shall cover it with pure gold and you shall make for it a gold crown all around. You shall make for it a molding of one handbreadth all around, and you shall make a gold crown on the molding all around. You shall make for it four rings of gold and place the rings upon the four corners of its four legs. The rings shall be opposite the molding as housing for the staves, to carry the Table….”

For the Menorah, we read more instructions: “You shall make a Menorah of pure gold, hammered out shall the Menorah be made, its base, its shaft, its cups, its knobs and its blossoms shall be hammered from it. Six branches shall emerge from its sides, three branches of the Menorah from its one side and three branches of the Menorah from its second side; three cups engraved like almonds on the one branch, a knob and a flower, and three cups engraved like almonds on the next branch….”

We continued with the instructions for the covers of the Tabernacle: “You shall make the Tabernacle of ten curtains — twisted linen with turquoise, purple and scarlet wool — with a woven design of cherubim shall you make them. The length of a single curtain twenty-eight cubits, and the width four cubits for each curtain, the same measure for each curtains….”

On and on we read, page after page of detailed instructions with a level of precision you might find at a Swiss watch factory. It was tedious and repetitive, but I was trusting that the word of God would not bore my son.

Strangely enough, it didn’t. But how could that be? How could all this mind-numbing detail not bore a kid with a Sony PlayStation-designed attention span?

I’m not sure I have an answer, but I know this: Any religion where the main book can read like a Home Depot instruction manual must have something amazing going for it. The spirituality is so hidden, the morality so subtle, the inspiration so obscure, that a few-thousand years later, we’re still trying to figure it out.

It’s the exact opposite of a self-help book with brilliantly crafted nuggets of inspiration. Our book is not consumer-driven. It doesn’t beg to be loved. It doesn’t try to be clear. It doesn’t even try to appear relevant.

It’s the word of God, and it’s our story. Take it or leave it — or wallow in it.

Sure, we have our moments of beautiful clarity, like the Ten Commandments. But for my money, Judaism stands out when it gives you the tedious, the mysterious and the uncomfortable and challenges you to make it your own.

Too often, I’ve seen how rabbis and outreach groups are so intent on making Judaism “relevant” that they hide all the arcane details and go right to the meaningful lessons. They will take one small item from the parsha of the week and build an edifice of life lessons around it. One of the best Jewish Web sites, Aish.com, has a formidable array of teachings on the parsha of the week, but nowhere on their site will you find the actual parsha itself — not even a recap of the story! What is everybody so afraid of? That we will read God’s words and make our own interpretations?

It’s a credit to the Torah that it reads like a story and not a sermon or a sales pitch. We should do more to honor this story — with all its warts and details — even when it sounds like an instruction manual. When the average person today is exposed to 2,000 commercial messages a day, a story that doesn’t try to sell to you is a welcome break — especially one that comes from God.

Maybe that’s why my boy seemed so happy reading about cubits, rods, knobs and curtains; either that or he heard another story about the rabbi ordering some pizza.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine and Meals4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.

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Get it done

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman /

About 15 years ago some stick-like things began appearing on the hard, ugly stretch of Venice Boulevard from where it crosses Lincoln and continues to the beach.

The sticks were trees, but pitifully thin, with trunks a woman could wrap her fingers around and no more than a handful of leaves. Cynical locals like myself were certain the trees would end up stolen, vandalized or turned into a homeless person’s campfire.

I wasn’t alone in wondering what hapless fool saw four barren lanes of L.A. asphalt and imagined a tree-shaded boulevard.

Then I met Jim Murez.

He and Melanie and their two kids were members of Mishkon Tephilo, the Venice congregation my wife was leading back then.

No one could tell me for sure what Jim did, but rumor had it he had something to do with the appearance of the sticks.

And it wasn’t until three weeks ago, a few days before the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, the Jewish New Year of the Trees, that I heard the whole story.

Murez, 55, created and manages the Venice Farmers’ Market, held each Friday morning by the public library. I cornered him there and made him tell me.

Like most tree stories in Los Angeles, it begins with Andy Lipkis, the founder of TreePeople, who was also a high school classmate of Murez.

“Andy came to the market one day and told me, ‘Did you know you could get a half a million dollars to plant trees?'” Murez said as we stood by the itinerant latte vendor (this is the Venice Farmers’ Market, after all). It was 1992. Assemblyman Richard Katz had sponsored AB 471, which provided funds for the “environmental mitigation” following the widening of the boulevard, and the funds were sitting around unused.

In two weeks Murez wrote a 60-page proposal for his community group, the Venice Action Committee. Six months later he received $492,000 to plant 1,400 trees along Venice Boulevard and in the surrounding neighborhoods, including three parks and five schools.

Murez chose indigenous varieties, mostly California sycamores. The idea was to conserve water and create a dramatic shady canopy for the wide street. He resisted a professional landscaper’s idea to line the street, Hollywood-style, with palm trees.

“Telephone poles with grass skirts,” he calls them.

The trees arrived, barely 1.5 inches in diameter and no taller than the curly headed Murez, who stands about 6-foot-1.

Murez turned to a Youth at Risk city-funded jobs programs to provide much of the planting labor, and local residents and school groups pitched in.

“Everybody was pleased something had happened,” Murez recalled.

But few expected the trees to last. And again, they wouldn’t have, unless some hapless fool hadn’t spent his free time pulling a 400-gallon water tank behind his one-ton pickup. That would be Murez.

The city only guaranteed irrigation until 1999. After that, Murez took up the task. It took him a full day each week.

Over the years, Murez wet-nursed the trees. He wasn’t Johnny Appleseed, spraying out seeds and hoping they’d take. He wasn’t ElzÃ(c)ard Bouffier, the character in the Jean Giono story who turns a barren valley into an oak woodland by spreading acorns far and wide. Murez did what he did by sticking by his dream He cajoled the local government bureaucracy. The city, for instance, was supposed to contribute water, but never installed meters for the irrigation. So Murez got the bill, which was in the thousands, and he had to fight.

“People told the city, ‘You can’t bill this guy for watering your trees,'” Murez said.

He persevered, involving his neighbors, leveraging state and local funds, and standing up to the ravages of urban life.

“Basically, I have to make sure the trees don’t get chopped down,” he said. He still calls the city to intervene when a homeowner wrongly prunes a tree: “You don’t top a big tree, you clip from the bottom,” he said.

And the trees are big. Now almost 15 years old, the sycamores top out at 30 feet with thick, sturdy trunks. Their spreading canopies and wide, palmate leaves filter the sunlight and create an archway to the sea. In spring, when the sycamores leaf out in bright green, the drive down Venice is as breathtaking as the ocean itself.

Yes, Tu B’Shevat passed a while ago — the natural time to write about Jim Murez. But a big primary election is a more recent memory — a time when we chose a man or woman to lead us, to do the things we believe we can’t do ourselves, to be, in the overused parlance of Campaign ’08, the candidate of change.

Then comes Jim Murez, to remind us that, in the end, we’re our own best agents of change.

All of which doesn’t answer my original question: What does Jim Murez do?

I asked him, finally.

“I guess you could say I’m a computer consultant,” he said. “I patented the first portable computer in the mid-70s. But that’s not what I do. I’ve spent 20 years running the Venice Farmer’s Market, but …” Murez’s voice trailed off, unhappy with any one answer. “I just do stuff,” he said finally. “I’m a doer.”

Get it done Read More »

Israel [hearts] Valentine’s Day

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

Although many people today correlate St. Valentine’s Day with Christianity, the contemporary, commercial holiday of love is actually rooted in paganism. In honor of the goddess of marriage, love, fertility and women, Juno Februata, the Romans held a pagan festival in which girls and boys were matched for erotic festivities by drawing names from a box.

With the rise of Christianity, the priests substituted the girls’ names with those of saints. Scholars disagree about who the enigmatic Valentine may have been, but according to one legend, he was a priest who defied Emperor Claudius II by continuing to marry couples despite the edict against it during a time of war (single men made better soldiers). His purported execution occurred on Feb. 14, and in homage to his bravery he was given sainthood and honored during the St. Valentine’s Day celebration that still bears his name. Another version of the story claims that the emperor had Valentine imprisoned for life for his crimes. There, he fell in love with his jailer’s daughter. His supposed habit of writing her love notes signed “your Valentine” is one good explanation for the custom of exchanging Valentine’s Day cards that remains so popular in the United States today.

About 10 or 15 years ago, the celebration of this holiday began to show up in Israel. According to professor Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at the Melton Centre for Jewish Education at Hebrew University, Israelis want to participate because it includes them in a larger cultural pattern.

“Just as English has taken over signage at the mall, be it English in English or English in Hebrew, Valentine’s Day offers an opportunity to connect with the West in a non-problematic and universalistic way,” he said. Despite being St. Valentine’s Day, Cohen explains that the holiday has become religiously neutral in recent years. Thus, it doesn’t conflict with Jewish identity for most Israelis.

So what spin do Israelis put on their version of Valentine’s Day? Other than sometimes writing cards in Hebrew, not much of an Israeli angle exists. On a smaller scale, the celebrations in Israel are almost identical to those for the Jewish day of love, Tu B’Av. And both love holidays so closely resemble traditions in the United States that one would be hard-pressed to tell the difference. The scads of nicely wrapped boxes of chocolate; the fuzzy, red-felt-pelted, stuffed hearts; the long-stemmed red roses; the ridiculous epithets for love in stock greeting cards; the expensive gourmet meals; and the couples-only, exclusive spa packages are no different.

Nevertheless, in a country associated far more with war than love, many Israelis are extremely proud to celebrate two days of love rather than just one.

Israel [hearts] Valentine’s Day Read More »

When ketubah didn’t wow, bride created her own

Leave a Comment / Special Sections, Weddings /

ketubah: Jewish wedding contractTsilli Pines couldn’t find a ketubah that she and her fiancÃ(c) liked. The Jewish wedding contract is often artfully handwritten and later framed as a wall decoration. But Pines, 33, a Portland, Ore.-based graphic designer, wanted something modern and simple. So she designed her own ketubah — and then one for a friend.

“I started thinking that other people might also be drawn to what I was doing,” she said.

Pines researched the historical precedent of the form and was attracted to the asymmetrical designs from Iran, which were very much in the spirit of modern graphic design.

“A lot of the early, native ketubot were incredible, too — they were more bold than ornate, and I found that beautiful,” she said.

Having grown up in Northern California, she found the simplicity of Japanese design a big influence: “I’ve looked at an enormous amount of material in the course of studying and practicing design, and I’m sure a lot of that makes its way into my work.”

Pines is creating ketubot that feature trees or flowers or birds or moons under the name New Ketubah. But what sets her work apart from other, more ornately decorated ketubot is the minimalist simplicity, the words floating in open space.

“My designs are loosely based on ideas about togetherness or growth or time, and they are open to interpretation,” she said.

Most of the designs are drawn from nature, and some touch on traditional ideas like the Tree of Life or The Song of Songs. Flora and fauna are actually common themes in ketubot, she said, stretching back to the 17th century, and probably even before that.

“It’s not so much that I’m breaking new ground with the subjects,” she said. “It’s more that I’m trying to use these themes in a graphic language that’s reacting to our current time and place.” Ketubot, she said, “have always spoken volumes about their social context.”

Pines was born in Israel and recalls her parents’ ketubah from the army.

“It’s a government document, much like marriage licenses in the United States — a no-fuss certificate,” she said.

Although she says she is not religious, Pines considers herself “Jewishly connected” and thinks of the form as something personally expressive: “It’s something you don’t have to do, but rather choose to do.”

With New Ketubah, Pines is trying to reach people looking for something different than the illuminated manuscript style of many of the traditional ketubot. “Those designs are beautiful, but they don’t reflect the contemporary aesthetic,” she said. Her designs are for people who are looking for a “cleaner, simpler look,” but still want their ketubah to be a celebratory ritual object.

To complete the ketubah she sews design elements into the paper — the roots in the Tree/Roots ketubah, part of the branches the birds are perched on for the Beloveds ketubah — and packages it so that couples don’t have to worry about framing before the ceremony. Included is an archival pen so that everything is ready for the big day.

New Ketubah tailors its contracts to the different Jewish denominations, including Reform, Humanist and secular texts. (Orthodox and Conservative texts emphasize the obligations the husband has to his wife, while other denominations are more egalitarian.) The ketubah can also be tailored to interfaith, secular and same-sex couples.

“I often help couples translate their own custom text into modern Hebrew because it’s such a personal expression,” she said.

In the future, Pines hopes to branch out into Judaica as well, but for now she’s concentrating on ketubot. She says she didn’t realize how gratifying it would be.

“It’s more than just having a role in the wedding ritual — which is an honor in and of itself,” she said. “I’ve had people tell me that they look at their ketubah when times are hard in their marriage, to remind them of what’s important, and that’s tremendously meaningful to me.”

For more information, visit http://www.newketubah.com/

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Which comes first — the parent or the egg?

Leave a Comment / Special Sections, Weddings /

“You do not get to make your children’s choices for them. You can only choose how you will act when their choices are already made.”

Those words, which appear in the afterword of Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben’s manual for parents of adult children involved in interfaith marriage, summarize in two sentences the crux of his entire book.

“There’s an Easter Egg on Your Seder Plate” (Praeger, 2007) could easily serve as a general guide for caring, thoughtful parenting of adult children in any context. His explanations and recommendations to parents rely on basic tools such as respect, open and considerate communication and the recognition that once children reach a certain age, they must be treated like the adults they are. Above all, Reuben notes frequently, parents of adult children in committed interfaith (or interracial or same-sex) relationships must always remember that the most important consideration for the parent is the preservation of a loving, long-term relationship between parent and adult child.

In this comprehensive guide, Reuben, of Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, does an admirable job of walking parents through the issues they are most likely to confront in the various stages of their children’s interfaith relationships. Eleven chapters lay out a roadmap of possible relationship landmines: dating; the wedding; feelings of failure, loss and guilt; the role of parents’ own values; what adult children want from their parents; extended family relationships; the challenges of interfaith life; conversion; grandparenting; the value of learning about other religions; and separation and divorce. Reuben liberally sprinkles his exposition with examples and exercises designed to help readers work through both Reuben’s conceptual points as well as the readers’ own obstacles to building and sustaining lifelong bonds of love and respect between themselves and their grown children.

In the chapter on dating, Reuben affirms that for Jews, intermarriage used to mean a betrayal of Jewish history; some Jews even considered those who intermarried to be “voluntarily doing to the Jewish people what Hitler failed to do to us: wiping out the next generation of Jews through assimilation and abandonment.” He refutes the application of this premise to present-day intermarriage. Reuben advises Jewish parents facing their children’s interfaith relationships to consider that these grown children are not necessarily rejecting their parents or their parents’ values. Rather, these adults are embracing the egalitarian values often taught to them by their parents as they were being raised. He notes that these adult children are simply expressing their parents’ values in a different way than their parents did, and then guides readers through the process of discussing with their children the often volatile issues in a manner that will leave each side feeling heard and respected.

Later, in the context of conversion, Reuben complements his point by noting that “taking such a decision personally is one of the most insulting responses you could have…. Such an attitude from one’s parent is a powerful statement that your parent continues to see you primarily as a child.”

Reuben tells us repeatedly that parents need to keep their children’s choices in perspective, maintain “emotional flexibility,” and remember that “unconditional love is just that — not conditional on your children making the choices that you might make, but [loving them] simply because they are your children.”

Repetition is simultaneously the book’s strength and its biggest weakness. Some readers will have no trouble understanding Reuben’s thesis of respect and communication originating in and being exemplified by the parent in the parent-adult child relationship. For these readers, the frequent recurrence of similar points in chapter after chapter may cause them to wonder if perhaps the book’s crucial concepts could have been satisfactorily covered in far fewer pages. However, for readers who perhaps seek a new approach to interfaith, same-sex or any variety of issues that cause friction in their relationships with their adult children, the repetition of Reuben’s principles and the illustration of their application in many different contexts may come together to form a rare, helpful guide to an increasingly common dilemma.

That observation brings us to the paradox of “There’s an Easter Egg on Your Seder Plate.” In his final chapter, Reuben notes that “[a]ny parent who asks … how to be supportive without being intrusive and overbearing at the same time … already has enough sensitivity to the possibility of overstepping their appropriate parental bounds that they probably don’t need any advice from me or anyone else. It is usually those who never even think of this as an issue who are in need of having their level of sensitivity raised regarding the emotional impact that they as parents continue to have on their adult children.”

True enough. So the question becomes: How do you get the people who could most benefit from Reuben’s book to read it?

This article was first published on InterfaithFamily.com.

Tracy Hahn-Burkett is a writer who focuses on family topics, including interfaith and multicultural family issues. She blogs at UnchartedParent.com.

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Balancing family and friend requests not an easy task

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Getting married is a balancing act. I never quite understood this until my guy proposed.

What’s the big deal in wedding planning? I always thought. You set a date, pick a place, settle on a band, choose a few of your favorite flowers and do a dinner and cake tasting. What’s difficult about that?

It’s not difficult. In fact, that part’s been rather fun. However, the part that I am complaining about is the negotiations between family and friends. Trying to please everyone is proving impossible.

Unlike most brides-to-be, I never really thought about getting married. Honestly, I thought I’d either never find the right guy, or I’d pull a Gloria Steinem and get married later in life. That said, I once thought if I ever found myself in a position to say, “I do,” then maybe we’d elope or have a destination wedding and/or maybe, just maybe, invite a few of our family and friends.

Well, my boyfriend-turned-fiancÃ(c) had other plans. He’d always imagined a big wedding. He comes from a sizable family. And my father, who’d been placed in an unusual role these last few years as my therapist — allowing me the opportunity to vent after and sometimes even during the worst dates imaginable — decided he wanted a celebratory send-off, although, this could be more for him than for me. Bottom line, we’re a very close father-daughter team. And I feel that this was very much my father’s dream wedding.

Weddings are supposed to be about the bride and groom right? But I want my parents, his parents, his siblings, my relatives and our friends on board and excited about sharing our special day. We were trying to do all that, but we had our tangles and snags along the way.

It wasn’t intended to be a black-and-white wedding, but because I asked my attendants to pick their own black gowns, my future mother-in-law figured it was a black-and-white wedding. I happen to like black and want to be a low-maintenance bride by not requiring my girlfriends to spend extra money on silly, colored dresses they’ll never wear in public ever again. Black seemed the easiest way to go.

My soon-to-be nieces — the two flower girls — would look good in black velvet, appropriate material for a winter wedding, I thought. My sisters-to-be couldn’t agree on the right style, a problem I had never considered until they started to disagree. What do I know about choosing a flower girl’s dress?

To be sure, it’s a difficult task finding black velvet in the middle of July. I suggested they hold off the search until fall, but they still were trying to outdo each other’s suggestion, and I was caught in the middle of the building fury.

When it came to choosing flowers, we interviewed eight florists and still had yet to sign a contract. My father arranged the initial meeting with a woman who will remain anonymous. The four of us (mom included) sat down, and right away, this woman announced she was the most expensive florist in town.

Well, thank goodness it wasn’t a meeting scheduled by me. My father’s eyes glossed over when he heard her regular floral budget. Basically, it was the GNP of a small country. Next!

Then a few girlfriends asked if they could bring a guest — other girlfriends or family members. According to wedding etiquette, guests are supposed to be friends of either the bride or groom. Of course, we’d include a long-term boyfriend, girlfriend and engaged couple, but did I have to invite my bridesmaid’s sister or my friend’s long-ago touring companion? The e-mail exchange was frantic.

Normally, couples choose bands based on either watching a live performance, friends’ suggestions or asking for DVDs of past weddings. In our case, both my guy and I heard a band play the year before and thought the group was perfect for our parent’s generation. My parents were the ones paying for the wedding, so they would need to be happy with the choice. This band also played some modern tunes.

We all set out on a Saturday night to hear the band play, and they were awful. I mean the worst sound ever. How could we not have noticed that? I guess vodka martinis make a difference.

Another band sounded great, but the leader lacked emcee skills and seemed to take 10-minute breaks between each set. Another Saturday night wasted.

My in-laws are wonderful, kind people. I lucked out there. And they offered to host the rehearsal dinner. But where?

Our idea was to choose a restaurant that reflects our personalities — maybe an ocean view or a view of the marina since we love the beach, sailing and scuba diving. But his parents are more traditional and chose an inland site.

In the scheme of things, it wasn’t so bad. They offered to host because they agreed with our union, and they like my family. It is important that everyone is happy, healthy and gets along with each other, right?

It would have been nice to have more input on the location venue, but oh well. What’s most important is that I found a good, caring, smart and sexy MOT (member of the Jewish tribe) with whom I’ll share my life. That and a dream honeymoon.

Dana Greene is a syndicated columnist in San Diego who writes about couples issues. She can be contacted at danagreene1@yahoo.com.

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