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Jewish Journal

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March 28, 2008

Cheney talks Iran in Israel; U.S. strike seen as remote

Leave a Comment / Israel /

With U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Israel this week talking about Iran, the big question was whether President Bush would be willing to use military force in the waning days of his presidency to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The answer from most Israeli intelligence analysts: not likely.

They say the chances of a U.S. military strike against Iran or its nuclear installations — whether out of Bush’s view of a strategic imperative or conviction that no one else will do the job — are remote.

Along with talks on Iran, during Cheney’s visit to Israel from Saturday to Monday he focused on two other key issues: the possibility of Israel-Syria peace talks and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

On these, too, time seems to be running out for the Bush administration.

But it was the Iranian dilemma that topped the agenda in two meetings Cheney held with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and one with Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

Barak, arguing that a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten regional and international stability, said no option should be taken off the table, including the use of force.

Israel and the United States now believe they have identified an Iranian “smoking gun.” For the Americans, the “smoking gun” no longer is the capacity to arm long-range missiles with nuclear warheads but simply the enrichment of uranium, which serves no purpose other than the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Indeed, if the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate published last December suggested a chasm between Israeli and American assessments, Israeli officials say the views of both sides now are almost identical.

They agree that Iran is trying to speed up its uranium enrichment program. Israel estimates that Iran will be able to build a bomb by late next year or early 2010.

Israel also figures that the chances of the Bush administration ordering a pre-emptive military strike against Iran are virtually zero. The only such scenario the Israelis envision is if the Democratic presidential candidates appear to be far ahead of their Republican rival and Bush senses a “now or never” strike option.

Even in these circumstances, the Israelis say, an American strike is highly unlikely.

Still, the Israelis are hoping that the hard-line Cheney will push the envelope — a role he reportedly played vis-Ã -vis the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The debate over what to do about Iran will continue next month in Washington when top American and Israeli officials meet for another scheduled round of “strategic dialogue.”

On the Syrian issue, significant nuanced differences have emerged.

While the Bush administration does not trust Syrian President Bashar Assad, Israel believes it might be able to work with him. Israel and the United States recognize the possibility of a huge strategic gain by prying Syria away from the Iranian axis.

In his talks with Israeli leaders, however, Cheney made clear that he did not think this was possible. Indeed, the vice president said the United States had evidence that Syria and Iran were doing all they could through Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to undermine Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

While a few weeks ago Israel received new signals from Assad that he was willing to talk, the Syrian position cooled quickly, as it has frequently in the past.

Israeli analysts now expect little movement on the Syrian track at least until after the Bush administration leaves office next January. Assad, they say, would be prepared to make peace with Israel and break with Iran only if the United States underwrites the deal with strong economic and diplomatic support.

The current thinking has it that Assad is biding his time in the belief that he’ll get a better deal from the next American president — whomever is elected.

With 10 months to go in its tenure, the Bush administration is investing considerable energy on the Palestinian front. The Annapolis conference last November was followed by a flurry of high-level visits to the region — Bush himself in January, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in early March and now Cheney.

The impression, though, is that the visits have been all process and little substance. A peace deal by the end of the year — the stated goal of the Americans, Israelis and the Palestinian Authority — seems highly unrealistic.

Israelis and Palestinians have not been able to make significant progress on their own, and the United States has not been prepared to force either side to make concessions.

Indeed, after his talks with the Israelis, Cheney made it clear that this administration will not lean on Israel. Cheney also warned the Palestinians that ongoing terror could cost them their chance for statehood.

The lack of progress in the peace talks has led to widespread disillusionment on the West Bank.

A recent survey by leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki showed a sharp increase in support for terrorist violence and a pervasive skepticism about the chances for peace with Israel based on the principle of two states for two peoples.

According to the poll, 84 percent of Palestinians supported the terrorist shooting spree earlier this month in which eight students were killed at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem. That is a sign of just how radicalized Palestinian society has become. In the mid-1990s, polls showed Palestinian support for suicide bombings at less than 20 percent.

Although most Palestinians still say they want a two-state solution, few believe it will happen soon. Shikaki attributes the dismal poll numbers to dashed Palestinian hopes raised by Annapolis.

Cheney met with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah, who asked him to pressure Israel to halt settlement expansion.

Some Israeli experts are predicting a new intifada.

“The ground is on fire and Israel is blind to what is happening,” said Bar-Ilan University’s Menachem Klein, an expert on Palestinian affairs.

What the current American administration is able to do in its last few months in office could be critical.

American success in pushing the peace process forward could mean a measure of stability. Failure could mean another horrific round of escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Cheney talks Iran in Israel; U.S. strike seen as remote Read More »

Letter from London: ‘An English Tragedy’ is timely on stage

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Theater /

The curtain parts to reveal a stage in the shape of a huge swastika. There is a perceptible gasp from the mostly older matinee audience in the London suburb of Watford.

World War II is still the most vivid memory in most of their lives, and the Nazi symbol to them represents, at the very least, nights spent under German bombardment from the skies — or worse. Watford has a significant number of Jewish residents and there are several synagogues in the area.

In an atmosphere of increasing British anti-Semitism and vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric in the left-wing press here, the play we’re about to see, “An English Tragedy,” couldn’t be more timely. Written by South African Jewish playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood (“The Pianist,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”), it is the story of John Amery, son of a Cabinet minister, who along with the infamous Lord Haw Haw made propaganda radio broadcasts for the Nazis that were beamed to England.

Amery’s father, Leo, was educated, along with his friend Winston Churchill, at Harrow, one of the top English public schools, and at Balliol College Oxford. He married Florence “Bryddie” Greenwood, whose brother, Viscount Greenwood, sent the infamous Black and Tans to Ireland. The Amerys were connected to anyone who was anyone in the British establishment.

Following a predictable rise through the ranks of the English Conservative Party, the diminutive Leo, of whom it was said, “If he’d been a foot taller and his speeches a half hour shorter, he could have been prime minister,” became secretary of state for India in Churchill’s wartime Cabinet.

The Amery’s first-born, John, was bright, handsome and charming but a problem from the moment he was born. He followed his father to Harrow but was expelled twice, his housemaster declaring him the most abnormal boy he had ever encountered. He developed a penchant for champagne, grand hotels, fast cars and even faster women, as well as men.

Later, at a school in Switzerland, he told his tutor he financed his lifestyle by prostituting himself to older men. He took his childhood teddy bear with him to nightclubs and cafes, ordering drinks and food for the stuffed toy.

Evelyn Waugh may have used Amery as a model for the character Sebastian Flyte in “Brideshead Revisited,” published a decade later. Amery’s contemporaries described him as having no sense of right or wrong or the consequences of his actions.

He married three times, each time to prostitutes. To this point, the story of Amery is not much different from that of a number of aristocratic young British wastrels, who inevitably drink and drug themselves to an early death. What makes Amery different is that in the mid-’30s, he developed an interest in extreme right-wing politics and an obsession with communists and Jews. He believed communism was an international plague carried by the Jews with the aim of bringing down the British Empire and taking over the world.

He fought for Franco in the Spanish Civil War and eventually came under the influence of the French fascist Jacques Doriot. After he wrote violently pro-Nazi letters to the French press, the Germans realized that if they could parade the pro-Nazi son of the British aristocracy, it would be a considerable feather in the Fuhrer’s cap. Soon his parents had the dubious pleasure of listening to their son’s voice beamed from Berlin into their stately British home.

And that’s where the play opens, as the swastika-shaped stage — designed by Ralph Koltai, himself a Kindertransport refugee from Berlin to England — divides to suggest the different locales where the story plays out.

On Nov. 19, 1942, the Amerys listen to their son’s rantings. Under the infamous program opening, “Germany calling, Germany calling,” Amery proclaims, “Your patriotism is being exploited by people who for the most part hardly have any right to be English. Between you and peace lies only the Jew and his puppets.”

His broadcasts were never as popular as those of Lord Haw Haw (the Irish traitor William Joyce) and eventually the Germans dropped them. Amery then visited British prison camps in Germany, where he tried to recruit the prisoners to join his self-styled Legion of St. George to fight with the SS against the Soviets. He managed to recruit a grand total of 57 men.

In the play, which could eventually come to Broadway and the West Coast, the senior Amery is terrified that his son’s treason will ruin his career, but both Churchill and King George VI reassure him.

In 1945 on a visit to his hero Benito Mussolini, John Amery was captured by Italian partisans and sent to England for trial. He remained sanguine throughout: “I don’t suppose for a moment they’ll bring a charge against me,” he boasted to his captors, “but if they did, of course, my father would see to it.”

And indeed, his family tried everything in their power to save him. His mother even petitioned the king. But after the war ended in September 1945, Churchill’s government fell and Leo Amery lost his seat in Parliament.

Nevertheless, the Amery’s second son, Julian, then an officer in British Special Operations and later a member of Parliament, went to Spain and returned with documents purporting to prove that his brother had become a Spanish citizen and therefore immune to prosecution for treason against Britain. At the same time, a psychiatrist hired by the family pronounced him mentally incapable of knowing right from wrong.

Either defense might have worked, but when Amery entered the courtroom on Nov. 28, 1945, he stunned his family and the court by pleading guilty and was sentenced to death. The entire proceeding lasted eight minutes.

It was this part of the story that intrigued playwright Harwood. Why would Amery, who considered himself not only not guilty but a patriot, suddenly plead guilty?

Harwood had originally heard the Amery story from his friend, Dame Rebecca West, whose book, “The Meaning of Treason,” dealt with both Joyce and Amery. But when he asked West for an explanation of the guilty plea, she said Amery had done it to save his parents from embarrassment.

Letter from London: ‘An English Tragedy’ is timely on stage Read More »

Photo exhibit highlights the human cost of our bounty

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Photos /

In the stark black-and-white photo, two small children play in and around water, as children anywhere might do on a hot day. But there’s something odd about the image: it isn’t the shore or a recreational pool they’re playing in, but a concrete irrigation canal.

“The children’s father works in the orchards,” said Rick Nahmias, creator, writer and photographer of “The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers,” a recently opened exhibition at the Museum of Tolerance and of the book of the same name.

“Their mother works in the packing houses. Midday they pack a lunch and the kids bring their pet chicken, and they play in the canal…. Against all odds, these people are holding their family together. There’s something beautiful about that,” Nahmias said.”At the same time, there’s something horrifying because it’s not Santa Monica Beach or the YMCA. It’s an agricultural canal, and the water is tainted with pesticides.”

Nahmias, who is Jewish and in his early 40s, lives in the San Fernando Valley. A photographer/writer/filmmaker who has worked for corporate and organizational clients, his recent efforts have focused on what he feels “really matters”: documenting the lives and struggles of marginalized people and communities. His other photo-documentary projects include “Golden States of Grace,” a collection of images and oral histories depicting off-the-beaten-path religious groups in moments of sacrament and prayer. Another undertaking, “Last Days of the Four Seasons,” now in post-production, chronicles the lives of Holocaust survivors residing in a Catskill bungalow colony that is in the process of being shut down for good.

Nahmias said that the idea for “The Migrant Project” took root in 2002, when he was working for Arianna Huffington as a writer and researcher.

“On a break from my political writing, I spent a week at a culinary institute in Napa,” Nahmias said. “While there, I realized that no one talks about how this amazing bounty of food gets to our kitchens and tables. And I thought: ‘Let me take a stab at this.’ I felt passionate enough about this issue to leave a paying job in order to try to do something that was both creative and political.

“Another thing was that I had spent time [researching] the life of Edward R. Murrow, especially ‘Harvests of Shame,’ his groundbreaking 1960 documentary on migrant farm workers. I had not seen anything done currently that addressed that.”

In order to gather material for “The Migrant Project,” Nahmias crisscrossed California’s agricultural areas, from Calexico to Sacramento, listening to stories and taking photos. His aim was to put a human face on what he calls an “invisible and consistently neglected population.” Each of the exhibition’s 40 black-and-white photos — which are accompanied by Nahmias’ written commentary — offers a glimpse into the “collective saga about the very human cost of putting food on America’s table.”

For example, there’s Maria. She looks, unsmilingly, straight at the camera, her face framed by leaves. On the day Nahmias was scheduled to shoot Maria’s portrait, she was evicted from the trailer park where she lived with her three children. Her Latina landlady had “snooped around” and discovered Maria is HIV-positive.

“Here was an incident of bad behavior by someone in the community to someone beneath her,” Nahmias said. “Do I glaze over that? Or do I document it? I felt I had to bring that truth out and let people make of it what they will. It was amazing to me that Maria could put aside her own issues, her eviction, her fear and pain, her anger and sadness, and talk very candidly with me about her journey, what she’s doing now, how she’s surviving.”

Nahmias pointed out another photo: A laborer is in the shade of a grapevine, cutting down a bunch of grapes. He’s on one knee, his back ramrod straight, a hedge-clipper in his right hand, his left hand swathed with a protective cloth. A shaft of sunlight slants down on the grapes and makes them look like precious jewels. The light, the farm worker’s pose, his concentration — it looks like a religious moment in a classical painting.

“It had to be about 110 degrees when this photo was taken,” Nahmias said. “This gentleman was kneeling in this grape arbor all morning. I’d heard from a number of farm workers that they see their labor as a spiritual duty — helping to bring God’s bounty to the earth. Religion is one of the few shreds of dignity that farm workers have, something they can hold onto while doing enormously hard work and suffering degradation.”

Nahmias said more than a million people in California are involved in migrant farm labor, and the big growers have little or no human connection with them.

“A middleman-agent brings the growers undocumented laborers who are willing to work for three or four dollars per hour,” Nahmias said. “If a worker is owed [money], what’s he going to do? He doesn’t speak English; he can’t go to court because he works six days a week, and there are 8,000 complaints piled up ahead of his.”

While preparing this exhibition, Nahmias said he came to believe “that no other group of people in this country works as hard and is paid so little for that work. And no group plays such a vital role in preserving the lifestyle that we’re fortunate to have.

“I hope that this exhibit lays a few seeds of compassion … so that when people look at ‘the immigration issue,’ they’ll realize it’s a human issue…. We eat three meals a day, and we’re incredibly lucky to do that…. I do educational programs, I talk with the kids, I tell them, ‘Look, you’re going for your Happy Meal, this is where that tomato comes from’…. [So] by virtue of the lives we lead, as Americans and as human beings, we owe it to the migrant workers to look in their eyes and understand how we’re reflected in their eyes. We owe it to them to understand what responsibility we have.”

The exhibition continues through May 25 at the Museum of Tolerance, 9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. “The Migrant Project” book is available at the Museum of Tolerance. Half the proceeds from book sales will go to organizations helping migrant farm laborers. For more information, call (310) 553-8403.

Photo exhibit highlights the human cost of our bounty Read More »

Books: Bird-watching and ‘the Jewish question’

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Green Living /

No doubt because I once worked at a Jewish newspaper and have written a novel about a woman rabbi — not to mention a work of nonfiction called “The Talmud and the Internet” — I am sometimes asked if my new book about bird-watching, “The Life of the Skies,” is a Jewish book.

At the risk of sounding like the joke about the zoology student obsessed with Jews who called his thesis “Elephants and the Jewish Question,” I invariably find myself answering, “Of course!”

It may seem strange that a book that talks about John James Audubon, Henry David Thoreau and Roger Tory Peterson, and that includes a quest for the possibly extinct ivory-bill woodpecker, seems to me to be so obviously Jewish. Must everything be about Jews? The answer, of course, is yes, everything is about the Jews — or at least Judaism is about everything.

I began bird-watching 15 years ago and, unlike many activities, I can trace it back to its originating moment. I was at Shabbat lunch one day in Manhattan, and a man — a rabbi, as it turned out — observed that “the warblers will be coming through Central Park soon.”

It was March. I had no idea what warblers were, but I knew I wanted to go out and find them. I felt, almost mystically, that they might lead me somewhere.

I’ve been following them ever since, and they have led me many places — outward into this country and other countries — especially Israel, where birds are movingly abundant, and also into myself, my own evolutionary origins and the mysterious questions about what my relationship is to the natural world that produced me and from which I was nevertheless oddly cut off.

“Birds are the life of the skies, and when they fly they reveal the thoughts of the skies,” wrote D.H. Lawrence. That phrase, “The Life of the skies,” has theological overtones.

Whether you believe birds were created on the fifth day of creation, as the Bible tells us, or that they evolved in slow, painstaking eons from a dim reptilian past, their existence embodies and raises religious questions.

Are birds the life of the skies because the skies have no life outside of the biological world that fills them — no divinity? Or are they the life of the skies because divinity, creation itself, is implicit in them? Even as it may be implicit in us, animals though we be.

Environmental questions are at heart religious questions. What do we owe the natural world and why? Must we save the natural world because the earth is the Lord’s, as the psalmist said so beautifully? Or because it is ours?

Either way, we should care about saving it, but I think it is important to push through to the questions — the religious questions — at the heart of our interest in the environment.

I worked at The Forward newspaper for 10 years, beginning in 1990. It never once occurred to me that Abraham Cahan, the creator of the Yiddish Forverts, was a bird-watcher. But then I read that in 1903, when the Kishinev pogrom broke out, Cahan was off bird-watching in Connecticut and, according to a friend’s memoir, rushed back to New York, binoculars and bird guide in hand, because he “wanted to be with other Jews.”

This of course might tell you that there weren’t a lot of Jews bird-watching in Connecticut in 1903, when bird-watching was just coming into its own. But it makes great sense to me now that Cahan was a watcher and namer of birds.

His whole project as a journalist, in addition to the search for justice for working people, was to help Jewish immigrants feel at home in America. His newspaper, for that reason, used increasing amounts of English and answered questions continually about the habits of the country.

Birds for Cahan were, I suspect, another dimension of the vocabulary of America. We sturdy ourselves in new places by leaning on the natural world.

Audubon, who arrived in America from France in 1803, was an immigrant as much as Cahan, and by creating “The Birds of America,” he was in some sense assimilating himself into his new home, even as he was giving his new home a wild, animal aura.

Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams, when he was off on a diplomatic assignment, “Do you know that European birds have not half the melody of ours?” That quotation appears as an epigraph in Alfred Kazin’s landmark study of American literature, “On Native Grounds,” which Kazin published in the dark year of 1942.

Kazin was himself a child of immigrant readers of the Yiddish Forverts, and one feels in his whole book the urge to establish himself as part of the American landscape. Much as any founding father — or founding mother, which Abigail Adams really was — he wanted to put his country on equal footing, both morally and politically and also environmentally, with Europe.

Birds are the language spoken by the land itself. In that sense, they are transcendent of any single nation, even as they reinforce national identity.

Birds raise complex questions of belonging, much as Jews often have.

I was once talking to Kazin, and he told me his daughter was living in Israel.

Well, I said, “She’s really on native ground.”

Kazin became extremely upset. “You think that’s funny,” he said, “but it’s not.”

He had labored too long as a child of immigrants to fit himself into a single place. He wanted to be a bird of America.

But even the birds of America nest in one region, winter in another, pass through a third during migration. I see birds in Central Park that come from Costa Rica and are on their way to Canada.

Kazin’s ethnic anxiety mirrors a larger anxiety about where we ourselves belong in the natural world. We all must figure out where we belong geographically but also metaphysically. We are technically in the animal kingdom but also in a kingdom of our own devising that sets us apart from the animals.

Books: Bird-watching and ‘the Jewish question’ Read More »

When the rabbi talks politics from the pulpit

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

In 2006, Rabbi Nancy Myers of Westminster’s Temple Beth David used her Rosh Hashanah sermon to address the horrors of the Abu Ghraib scandals.

She was about to make a point about acting morally as Jews when a congregant walked down the sanctuary’s aisle with his hands crossed in a time-out signal. Myers, new at the time to the Reform synagogue, thought the interruption was because someone had had a heart attack, so she stopped talking.

Instead, the man shouted out, “You have no right to get up there and say those things from the pulpit; you have no right to talk politics!” The rabbi heard some murmurings of approval from the congregation and considered for a moment simply walking out herself, thinking her views were in conflict with her new congregation.

But then another congregant stood and said, “I was finding it interesting what the rabbi was saying, and I want her to finish.” This was followed by some applause. So Myers continued where she’d left off, and the angry congregant was escorted outside.

As it turns out, he did not leave for good. “He was angry for about a year, and now he loves coming here,” Myers said recently. “He’s one of my strongest supporters.”

Although Myers said the incident taught her “about being more sensitive to my audience and about the diversity of my membership,” she continues to believe rabbis should comment on current events. “I believe it’s an important part of the rabbi’s job to raise a whole host of different issues,” Myers said.


In recent weeks, as Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama came under fire for incendiary remarks made by his now-former minister, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, new interest has arisen in how controversial statements made by clergy can play out. Obama, in his speech in response to the outcry, talked about healing racial divides, but he also admitted that he had been aware of remarks harshly critical of America and of whites made by this man who had been his longtime spiritual guide. “Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely,” said Obama, who went on to suggest: “Just as I’m sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.”

So what happens when rabbis make controversial remarks offensive to their constituents? Do people leave, or do they, like Obama initially did, stay on out of loyalty even when they disagree with the comments? How do such situations play out in the Jewish community?

There are, to be sure, many religious positions in Judaism that offend some people, and the reactions depend on the individual.

For example, Liz, a social worker who preferred not to give her last name, attended High Holy Day services with a friend a couple of years ago and was shocked by the rabbi’s sermon. “He was talking about all the terrible things going on in the world — Iraq, global warming, disease — and then he said, ‘You know, a lot of interfaith marriages are happening,'” she said, paraphrasing the Orthodox rabbi, whom she declined to name.

“Did he just connect the Iraqi war and global warming to intermarriage?” she wondered at the time. As the child of an interfaith couple, Liz said, “it was very offensive to me that he would take catastrophic things and connect it to a personal choice.” She has not returned to that rabbi’s — or any other — synagogue since.

When it comes to world politics, too, Jews have many opinions — and many aren’t afraid to voice them. Yet rabbis who take stands on political issues often face objections from congregants who disagree. Indeed, one of the first rabbis in America to make a political statement that offended congregants almost paid with his life.

In 1861, the Reform Rabbi David Einhorn vociferously denounced slavery to his congregation, Har Sinai Congregation of Baltimore, which was a pro-slavery state. A mob threatened to tar and feather him, and he had to flee north.

Yet his call for social justice was historic, according to Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive director of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. “He established freedom of the pulpit. Rabbis have the right to preach what they feel is appropriate to their congregation,” Diamond said. “But they have to deal with the consequences.”

Most rabbis aren’t so literally chased by mobs, but there is a modern-day equivalent in the outraged congregation, or in public responses to a rabbi who takes a strong political stance.

That’s what happened after Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of the Modern Orthodox B’nai David-Judea congregation in Pico-Robertson, delivered a sermon about the need to consider a divided Jerusalem. He published his remarks as an op-ed in this newspaper, which was followed by a Los Angeles Times article covering the outrage caused by the scandal. In the aftermath, Kanefsky held closed-door meetings with some upset congregants.

Although Kanefsky declined to talk about the specific incident, he said that in general a rabbi has to maintain a precarious balancing act.

“The balance between saying what, as a member of the clergy, you think needs to be said and respecting the diverging opinion of the congregation, is an extraordinary balance to maintain,” he said, adding, “I’ll be clear it’s something that I think, and not some God-given proof.”

When to be political is a judgment call, agreed Rabbi Leibel Korf of Chabad of Los Feliz. “If it’s necessary to take a stand and make a point about something, I will not hesitate to take a stand,” Korf said. But not all the time. “If you’re a rabbi trying to do outreach and bring people closer to Yiddishkayt, it’s not my responsibility to bring up every single issue or the more unacceptable issues as constant preaching.”

But he added, “I say the truth. I believe in my uncompromised opinion rather than what people want to hear,” he said. “When we are suffering in Israel, and I truly believe we have a right to be there — and if people will be offended by it — I’m not going to change my topic.”

When the rabbi talks politics from the pulpit Read More »

Briefs: Professor criticised for ‘hate speech’ at CSULB; Purim is fun and sober for L.A. teens

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Professor Scolded for ‘Hate Speech’ at CSULB

The Jewish Studies Program at Cal State Long Beach (CSULB) last week reprimanded Kevin MacDonald, a professor at the university whose writings on race are popular with anti-Semites and white supremacists, for views that are “professionally irresponsible and morally untenable.”

“We wish to make it clear that in no way do we wish to impede Dr. MacDonald’s First Amendment rights or interfere with his academic freedom,” the letter stated. “But just as he has the freedom of speech to advance his white nationalist agenda, so too do we have the freedom of speech to deplore his prejudicial views of Jews and non-whites and state that Dr. MacDonald’s writings on white ethnocentrism, Jews, race, and immigration do not enjoy the respect of many of his colleagues.”

Signed by the programs co-directors, Arlene Lazarowitz and Jeffrey Blutinger, and history professor Donald Schartz, the letter urged CSULB administration to distance itself from MacDonald.

“In the 14 years that he has been writing this stuff, no institution on campus — no department, no program, no college or the university — has ever issued a statement about him. The only thing the university has ever done about Kevin MacDonald is they have given him a sabbatical. We feel that it is time the university stood up and said something,” Blutinger said. “We are leading by example.”

An evolutionary psychologist, MacDonald is best known for his claim that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy” that allows its members to succeed by undermining other groups, such as white Europeans. This argument was published in a three-volume series named after the final book, “The Culture of Critique.”

“Not since Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ have anti-Semites had such a comprehensive reference guide to what’s wrong with ‘the Jews,'” the Southern Poverty Law Center reported last year.

In a lengthy response, MacDonald wrote that the Jewish program accurately characterized his belief in the need for a white “ethno-state” and failed to refute his argument.

“The claim that the best way to defend ethnic interests is to develop an ethnostate certainly reflects the reality of ethnic relations in the last century or so,” MacDonald wrote. “Jews of all people should understand the attraction of establishing an ethnostate.”

— Brad A. Greenberg, Senior Writer

Sober, but Joyous, Purim for L.A. Teens

More than 600 Los Angeles teens attended Purim parties this year thrown by an Orthodox youth group intent on showing the kids a festive holiday while keeping them sober and off the streets.

Because drinking alcohol is a ritual part of celebrating Purim, teens often find easy access to liquor and wine on the holiday, which in the past has led to some dangerous and illegal activities. This year, the National Conference of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) of the Orthodox Union sponsored Purim parties.

“Teens are out there looking for ways to celebrate Purim. We needed to create a responsible venue to compete against unsupervised and potentially harmful experiences,” said Rabbi Effie Goldberg, West Coast director of NCSY.

About 100 teens gathered for an NCSY bash, complete with live band, at Golan Restaurant in North Hollywood. At Congregation B’nai David-Judea on Pico Boulevard, about 500 teens celebrated with a costume contest, dancing, arcade games and a Wii competition. No alcohol was allowed in, and inebriated teens were turned away.

Aleinu Family Resource Center, a program of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles that serves primarily the Orthodox community, launched an “Absolut Choice” campaign. The organization sent out 7,000 postcards offering parents pointers for talking to their teens about celebrating Purim responsibly and the dangers of binge drinking. At synagogues on Purim, Aleinu distributed 3,500 water bottles with an “Absolut Choice” label that included information on the dangers of rapid drinking and drinking and driving.

In addition, Hatzolah emergency first response service put up posters around synagogues and other venues warning of the dangers of binge drinking, and rabbis urged people not to serve minors drinks as they went door to door delivering Purim baskets or collecting money for charity.

“I believe Purim was a safer Purim in Los Angeles this year,” said Debbie Fox, Aleinu director. “When the community works together, we have a safer community.”

— Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Education Editor

Israel At 60 Bash to Raise Funds for Sderot

Shalhevet High School students are organizing a community festival on March 30 for Israel’s 60th birthday.

Fully student-run, the carnival will include a live performance from the Moshav Band, Israeli vendors, kosher food, a petting zoo and rides. Maxine Renzer, 11th grade student co-chairperson of the school’s Israel Action Committee, has planned the event over the past four months along with three other students. Last year the festival raised more than $3,000, and this year they hope to raise much more, Renzer said.

“The Jewish people at this time are going through a lot of hardships, and we need to help in any way we can, especially students,” she said. “If this is how we can help, it will be an amazing thing,” she said.

The event, co-sponsored by StandWithUs, B’nai David-Judea Congregation, Beth Jacob Congregation, NCSY, Bnei Akiva and The Jewish Journal, will have its funds matched by an anonymous donor, with proceeds going to Table to Table, an Israeli organization that helps feed the hungry in Sderot.

For more information, call Shalhevet High School at (323) 930-9333.

— Celia Soudry, Contributing Writer

Children, Adults Spice Up Summer Activities With Yachad

The Orthodox Union’s Yachad National Jewish Council for the Disabled is offering summer programs for developmentally disabled children and adults to participate in travel, sports, arts and drama. Yachad’s offerings include a two-week “Yachad Getaway” to New York for ages 18 and older. Campers will stay on a private estate and can choose from daily activities such as swimming, dancing, baking and creative arts projects.

Attendees can learn how to become coaches or counselors and are placed in positions suiting their specific abilities.

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A spiritual boost in Simi

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Three-dozen rabbis and cantors are sitting in silent meditation in a sun-filled room at the Brandeis-Bardin Campus at American Jewish University in Simi Valley.

They open their eyes and Rabbi Sheila Weinberg guides them in a mindfulness exercise.

“Feel how much space there is in your body, how much aliveness,” she urges.

Later the clergy share deeply personal feelings about challenges they confront on the job.

One rabbi describes how vulnerable she feels when she wants to introduce a new melody to her worship service. Sometimes, the rabbi admits, she avoids doing so out of fear the congregation will protest.

Another rabbi says that when he comforts a grieving congregant he sometimes cries. He wonders if, as a professional, he should mask his emotion.

The others in the room nod sympathetically.

“If your heart is stirred, your heart is stirred,” Weinberg says.

These clergy members — many of them top rabbis and cantors in the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal world — are spending five days at a contemplative practice retreat organized by the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

Since January 2000, the New York-based institute has run retreats for hundreds of rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators, bringing them together in cross-denominational cohorts that meet for four five-day sessions over an 18-month period.

This particular group is part of more than 200 alumni of earlier retreats. They again have taken five days away from their pulpits to meditate, do yoga, share their feelings about their work and study Chasidic texts on spirituality.

They come not to learn how to be better at their jobs — although that’s certainly part of it — but to recharge their spiritual batteries, renew their souls.

“What we’re trying to do, on one level, is renew rabbis, cantors and educators whose jobs just drain them,” says Rabbi Rachel Cowan, the institute’s director and one of the founders of the spiritual retreat program. “It gives them rest and companionship. They’re really quite lonely.”

In the process, Cowan says, retreat participants report back that they are better at their jobs.

“Rabbis need to be genuinely present in people’s lives at times of pain and joy, not coming in with a formula,” she says. “What blocks them from doing that is overwork and emotional burnout.”

Jews expect a lot from their clergy. They must be towers of spiritual and moral strength, compelling speakers, skilled administrators and creative innovators. They must be learned in Torah, kind to children, willing to leap tall boards of directors in a single bound.

Above all, they must have no personal needs.

“To a certain extent, congregations are still looking for that superhuman rabbi,” says Rabbi Levi Moreofsky, the director of rabbinic programming at Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future in New York. “There’s still the assumption that the rabbi knows everything, can do everything.”

That all-powerful image increasingly is coming under attack as rabbis, cantors, seminaries and other Jewish organizations begin to realize that clergy, too, need a place to renew their spirits. But it’s difficult to get past the stereotype.

“Burnout, job fatigue — clergy are totally subject to all of that,” says Rabbi Marc Margolius, who coordinates the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s alumni retreats. “But it doesn’t seem to register as a professional need.”

In recent years, however, rabbinical seminaries and some Jewish organizations have started to address the issue. They mainly run leadership-training courses for rabbis and, to a lesser extent, cantors. The courses are aimed at improving job skills, although some attention is given to meditation, one-on-one mentoring or discussion groups where clergy can air their grievances within the fold, far from the prying eyes of their congregations.

“It’s a relatively recent development,” says Rabbi Hayim Herring, the executive director of STAR/Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal. “For a long time, congregations took it for granted. What needs does a rabbi have? He’s there for our needs.”

As part of its PEER program, STAR brings up to 20 younger rabbis a year to leadership development retreats that have a strong focus on self-care. Rabbis are notorious for neglecting their own health, Herring says, and those who attend these retreats must “publicly commit” to an ongoing program of exercise, yoga or the like.

Several have “changed their lives” because of the program, he says. One who pledged to run three times a week later called Herring to say he’d actually lowered his cholesterol.

The Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary has been running Rabbinic Training Institutes for 23 years. Each year the seminary brings 60 rabbis to a remote location for a week of professional and personal growth.

Rabbi Marc Rolf, who runs the program, says evenings are devoted to discussions of personal and spiritual needs in small groups, with conversation catalyzed either by text study or more experiential methods. Last year Rabbi Alan Lew, the author of “One God Clapping,” led the group in meditation and a discussion on anger.

“Rabbis suffer from compassion fatigue,” Rolf says. “They use the same faculties in their professional lives as in their personal life. This gives them a time to unplug from their congregational lives, to recharge their spiritual batteries and reconnect with colleagues.”

Two years ago, the Center for the Jewish Future took over a Yarchei Kallah program developed in Boston by Rabbi Jacob Schachter. Forty Orthodox rabbis under the age of 40 are invited to join a cohort that meets twice a year for two years and then once a year thereafter for two-day retreats focused on teaching, learning and bonding.

“The rabbinate is very lonely,” Moreofsky says. “They come together to share Torah and what they’re going through — what they enjoy in their work, what they see as a challenge.”

Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel in Chicago says he “very much” enjoyed “the safe space and collegiality” he experienced at the kallah.

“The Orthodox world is waking up to this,” Lopatin says, adding that he and his younger colleagues are more willing to show their human side than their elders were.

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