The 94th annual Hadassah convention recently traveled to Los Angeles and JewishJournal.com VideoJew Jay Firestone was all over it, like jelly on gefilte fish.
To get a feel for the convention, VideoJew submerged himself in many of the activities. On his journey, he made new friends and even visited with some old friends. But does he find his ‘
VideoJew does Hadassah Read More »
The numbers are staggering. According to the latest report conducted by the national office of social security, 677,700 families (20.5 percent of all families) currently live below the poverty line in Israel. The statistics get even worse when you count the children — 925,800, which is more than 35.9 percent of Israel’s entire population younger than 18.
The Israeli Ministry of Welfare and Social Services claims that new initiatives have been put in place to reduce the increasing poverty.
“The government decided last year for the first time on a clear goal to reduce the poverty in Israel. A social economic agenda was formed based on a report by the National Organization for Economics headed by Professor Manuel Trachtenberg,” said Nachum Ido, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services Office in Jerusalem.
By encouraging economic growth and improving education, science, technology and research and development in key sectors of the population, the government plans to ameliorate the situation by 2010. Theoretically, the plan is a good one — especially for the most affected sectors of the population, the ultra-Orthodox and the Israeli Arabs. But for those who cannot afford to buy food today, two years is a long time to wait for the next meal.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the problem is the lack of attention it receives in the international and local media, whose coverage of Israel centers largely on nuclear threats from Iran, internal political turmoil and the wild success of the Israeli economy — thanks largely to the high-tech industry.
With the shekel currently listed as the strongest currency in the world and the perceived economic growth despite close ties to the struggling American economy, the poverty is difficult to fathom. But for Abraham Israel, the founder and director of the Hazon Yeshaya Humanitarian Network in Israel, it is grotesquely apparent.
Israel’s Hazon Yeshaya means meal in many languages Read More »
“I wish I had 10 percent of the success with the Israeli government as I have with private donors,” sighed Moshe Kaveh, the president of Bar-Ilan University.
His sentiment is understandable. Together with Israel’s six other research universities, Bar-Ilan has been in a prolonged financial wrestling match with the country’s budgetmakers, which, Kaveh warned, could well lead to another academic strike in the fall.
On the other hand, private donations to Bar-Ilan are at a new high, with the West Coast and the Southwestern states leading the rest of the country by a wide margin.
Kaveh was recently in Los Angeles and, in an interview, gave an update on the state of both his university and of Israeli higher education.
Founded 53 years ago, Bar-Ilan is now the largest Israeli university, with 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students, double the number of a decade ago.
To accommodate expanding enrollment, professional schools and research projects, the campus at Ramat Gan has also doubled in size over the last eight years and the campus is one of the showpieces of Israeli higher education.
Although many consider Bar-Ilan an Orthodox bastion, some 60 percent of its students graduated from secular high schools and only 40 percent from religious schools.
Regardless of ideology or academic major, however, every student must spend 25 percent of the curriculum on Jewish studies.
The religious and social mix makes for some lively discussions, inside and outside the classroom, but Bar-Ilan may be one of the few places in Israel, Kaveh said, where the Orthodox and the secular can debate their different perspectives with civility and tolerance.
Bar-Ilan has also seen a boom in new facilities, mostly underwritten by private donations, with Los Angeles philanthropists contributing the lion’s share.
Facilities for studies and research in nanotechnology, medicine, brain research, psychology, languages and Jewish heritage bear the names of such Los Angeles donors as the Gonda (Goldschmied) family, Fred and Barbara Kort, Max and Anna Webb, Lily Shapell, Jack and Gitta Nagel and Milan and Blanca Roven.
Now in the works is the Digital Judaic Bookshelf Project, which aims for nothing less than a complete compendium of Jewish knowledge and thought. Its foundation is the university’s Responsa Project, with some 90,000 questions and answers on all aspects of Judaism.
Private donations now make up 20 percent of Bar-Ilan’s total budget.
“Ten years ago, I couldn’t have dreamt of the kind of support we are getting now,” said Ron Solomon, West Coast executive director.
The kippah-wearing Kaveh, 64, is a prominent physicist, who spends every summer conducting advanced research at Britain’s Cambridge University.
His area of scientific expertise is disordered systems and chaos theory, a specialty he finds useful in dealing with the Israeli government, and that brings him to the downside of his current message.
“All we have in Israel are our brains, but what we are seeing is a steady brain drain, mainly to the United States and Europe,” Kaveh said, sipping water in the lobby of the Century Plaza Hotel.
He puts most of the blame on the government’s budgetary priorities. Currently, the Ministry of Education provides 65 percent of the national university budgets, including faculty salaries, but during the last “seven bad years,” as Kaveh put it, the government has reduced support to higher education by 25 percent.
One result has been that faculty slots have been frozen at all Israeli universities, which means that retiring or departing professors are not being replaced.
Another drawback is that there are no positions available for Israelis who have finished their studies or taken faculty positions at foreign universities but want to return home.
The situation has become so confrontational, that the country’s professors went out on a three-month strike last winter, with Kaveh, as immediate past chairman of the Council of Israeli University Presidents, playing a key role in negotiations with the government.
Some figures point to the discrepancy in funding between Israeli and American universities. The Israeli government budget for all the country’s universities, with their 250,000 students, comes to $1 billion a year, Kaveh said.
By contrast, the University of California, with 10 campuses and 220,000 students, runs on an $18 billion operating budget.
Unless the Israeli government turns its attention to the problem and restores the cut funds, the country’s universities will likely shut down in October or November, Kaveh warned.
He brightened as he returned to discussing the fundamental mission of Bar-Ilan.
“We generally think of the B.A. as the bachelor of arts degree,” he said. “I like to think that B.A. stands for Ben Adam, the Hebrew term for mensch. That’s our real mission, to create a graduating class of menschen.”
Donors push Bar-Ilan to head of the class Read More »
Ahmadinejad to Attend U.N. Summit
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans again to attend this year’s summit at the United Nations in New York. The Iranian president told state television Monday he will fly to New York in September for the annual gathering of international leaders at the U.N. General Assembly. His speech, Ahmadinejad said, will discuss “ruling the world based on justice.”
Ahmadinejad’s attendance at the United Nations last year drew fierce protests over his statements against Israel and in denial of the Holocaust. The Iranian president used that visit to appear at Columbia University. A year before that, he took time out from the U.N. summit to address the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations in New York. — Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Obama to Visit PA, Israel
Barack Obama will meet with Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank on his Middle East trip next week. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee and senator from Illinois, will visit Ramallah on July 23 and will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Obama will first travel to Israel July 22-23, where he is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, President Shimon Peres and opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Israeli officials.
Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, visited Israel in March but did not travel to the West Bank. Instead he spoke with Abbas by telephone.
— JTA
Conference to Boost Holocaust Allocations
The Claims Conference will increase its allocations in 2009 by $23 million. The decision by the conference’s board of directors at its annual meeting July 8-9 brings the overall allocation for next year to $193 million.
“Increasing Claims Conference allocations is essential to addressing the growing needs of Nazi victims as they age,” said Julius Berman, conference chairman. “These funds are for home care, hunger relief, medical care, winter supplies, emergency cash grants and other vital services to Nazi victims worldwide.”
The funds mostly represent the proceeds from the sale of unclaimed Jewish property in the former East Germany. The conference also will fund $18 million in Holocaust education and remembrance projects.
— JTA
L.A. Rabbinical Student Wins Point Foundation Scholarship for Gays, Lesbians
A rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) has won a highly competitive scholarship from the Point Foundation, the nation’s largest provider of resources for academic study in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
“One of my main motivations for becoming a rabbi is that I care deeply about repairing the world,” said Rachel Timoner, whose Point Foundation scholarship will support the thesis research she will undertake during her final year at HUC-JIR.
“That concern comes from my own experience of marginalization as a lesbian,” Timoner said. “The award from the Point Foundation supports that work.”
Timoner, who is currently serving as a rabbinic intern at Leo Baeck Temple, said that through her thesis project, she hopes to expand the conversation about halacha (Jewish law) in order to engage Jewish communities in the larger global dialogue about some of our era’s most pressing concerns.
“Many Jews have an ambivalent relationship to halacha,” Timoner said. “But the three issues I’m raising in my thesis” — the meaning of Shabbat observance, the treatment of workers and our collective treatment of the Earth — “connect to a lot of urgent questions. It basically means asking, how should we live in the world?”
The Point Foundation was established in 2001 by Bruce Lindstrom, an entrepreneur who helped to launch companies that eventually became part of Costco and Sam’s Club. Since its inception, the foundation has distributed more than $6 million in scholarships, which average about $30,000 a year, a figure that includes direct financial support, mentorship programs and leadership training.
Timoner, one of 27 Point Foundation scholarship recipients this year out of an applicant pool of 1,300, said that after her studies at HUC-JIR, she wants to become a congregational rabbi.
“I want to be with people through all aspects of life,” Timoner said. “That’s a rare privilege.”
— Nick Street, Contributing Writer
Kadima Heschel Graduates First Class
Kadima Heschel West Middle School, a transdenominational Jewish day school in West Hills, celebrated a milestone on June 17 when it graduated its first class. The 56 eighth-graders that graduated were part of the original 130 students who enrolled in the school one year ago.
The school, which serves sixth, seventh and eighth grades, was founded as a result of a middle school merger between Kadima Hebrew Academy in West Hills and Heschel West in Agoura.
The newly founded school’s mission is to “provide students with the tools necessary to form a strong Jewish identity,” while creating an environment conducive to learning and growth.
— Molly Binenfeld, Contributing Writer
B’nai Mitzvah Contest Offers Photo Prize
Playing to the budding celebrity in every 13-year-old, Dave Lee and Jo Kaplan of Massachusetts-based Allegro Photography have created a b’nai mitzvah essay-writing challenge, with a top prize valued at $4,500 that includes a rock star photo shoot, coverage during the big day, as well as a coffee-table gallery book and a 300-image online album.
Essays should answer one of the following three questions: What aspect of your day would you most want us to capture in photographs and why? What does it mean to you to be Jewish in 2008? If you could invite anyone (alive or dead) to your celebration, who would it be and why?
Bar or bat mitzvah students with a celebration date from Oct. 15, 2008 to April 15, 2009 are eligible to enter the contest. The deadline for entrees is Aug. 15, and the winner will be announced Sept. 15 at the Allegro Photography Web site
However, if the site of the celebration is more than 125 miles from Boston, the winner’s family is responsible for the photographers’ travel expenses, including hotel accommodation and car rental.
For entry information and contest rules, visit http://www.allegrophotography.com/contest/ or e-mail contest@allegrophotography.com.
— MB
Briefs: Ahmadinejad to attend U.N. summit, Obama to visit PA, Israel Read More »
Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the first black sub-Saharan rabbi ordained at an American rabbinical school, has had a very busy time since returning to Uganda in June, after not having lived there for five years. Among other activities, the American Jewish University graduate recently supervised about 250 formal conversions to Judaism: men, women and children, ages ranging from 4 to 80, who had been preparing while he was gone for their meeting with the beit din.
“We started the conversions on July 8,” said Sizomu, who spoke with The Journal by cellphone from his Ugandan village. “And we have continued the conversions throughout the week. People not just from Uganda, but also from Kenya, South Africa and from Ghana.
“We are very happy about how Judaism appeals to Africans,” he continued. “We are not going out there and asking people to convert. We are here, and people come to us and express their desire to make that commitment, their desire to immerse themselves in Jewish education.”
The African converts also immersed themselves in nature’s mikvah.
“The mikvah was the river,” Sizomu said. “So the women went to one part of the river, and the men went to a different part. It was so beautiful.”
The mass conversions were not the only major event for Sizomu since returning to Uganda. During the same week, he hosted the first-ever meeting of PAJA, the Pan-African Jewish Alliance.
“Jewish community leaders [came] from black African communities in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia,” Sizomu said.
The idea for this gathering arose during a think tank session at Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a donation-driven, nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco. According to its Web site, Be’chol Lashon’s mission is to increase the number of Jews throughout the world by advocating for “a more expansive Judaism.”
“Instead of hand-wringing about our losses from intermarriage or low birth rate,” said Diane Tobin, Be’chol Lashon’s director, “we advocate for a different attitude and approach, which is to promote growth and inclusiveness. We’re partners with Jewish communities in Africa and around the globe. We believe that the potential for the growth of Jewish communities is significant … in countries that many may not think about when it comes to the Jewish people.”
It was Be’chol Lashon that subsidized Sizomu’s years of study at rabbinical school.
“We first met Gershom Sizomu over six years ago,” Tobin said, “and we decided to provide him with a fellowship to complete his formal rabbinic training, in cooperation with the American Jewish University. His purpose was our purpose, also, for Rabbi Sizomu to go back to Uganda and live out his dream of growing Judaism in Uganda and other parts of Africa.”
Perhaps one of the reasons that Judaism is increasing in Uganda is that, according to Tobin, the 39-year-old Sizomu, under the auspices of Be’chol Lashon, has been instrumental in improving the quality of life in his village and in nearby villages, as well.
“While he was at rabbinical school,” Tobin said, “Gershom worked tirelessly to bring life-saving services and equipment to his country and his community. He believes that there can be no true spiritual life without those elements that preserve life and prevent disease. An enormous problem in his part of the world is malaria, and he’s been very active in bringing in mosquito nets, as well as medicine.”
Now that he’s returned home, Sizomu can see the fruits of his — and Be’chol Lashon’s — efforts. His village now has running water and electricity, services that will soon be available in neighboring villages, as well. Sizomu said that “there are very good changes that have taken place in these villages. We are making very good progress.”
If there was culture shock for Sizomu, his wife and their daughters when they left their Ugandan village five years ago and moved to an apartment in Bel Air, it was nearly as much of a shock to come back to their village filled with mud-hut dwellings.
“Living in Los Angeles,” Sizomu said, “my family became used to the conveniences of modern life: washing machine, cable television, high-speed Internet, so many conveniences. In the U.S., if you want something, you go straight to the counter and get what you want. Things here in Uganda are much slower. It’s harder to get things done here. And there is a lot that needs to be done. But we are making progress every day.”
Sizomu — now the busy spiritual leader of his community — said that since coming back home, he’s had little time to reflect on what he misses about the United States.
“I feel that I gained a lot while living in Los Angeles,” Sizomu said, “and now I can give that back to my people in terms of teaching Torah and community leadership. For me, the best part about returning here has been to see how eager the people are to learn about Judaism and to be Jewish.
“Five years ago, when I left this village, I knew I’d be back some day. And I knew that my return would be very special … and it has been.”
As soon as I saw The New Yorker cover spoofing right-wing fear mongering over Barack and Michelle Obama, my first thought was that my friend, Sanjay, in Mumbai, India, hada point about Americans and stupidity.
What was it but stupidity that left so many Americans gullible to right-wing accusations that Obama was that turban-wearing, Osama bin Laden-loving Muslim on the magazine’s cover, bumping fists with his militant, rifle-toting wife, Michelle, as the American flag burned in their fireplace.
Where was Barry Blitt’s cartoon months ago, when a loud “So what?” might have nipped in the bud those ridiculous “Obama is a secret Muslim” rumors? So this Muslim, at least, was relieved to see the stupidity lampooned so starkly.
But as soon as I began to revel in the caricature, a little dismayed hand-wringing began. Because now the very people who were offended by right-wing accusations about Obama were acting offended by a cartoon lampooning those very same right-wing machinations. It is as if America has gone mad, or worse, gone brainless.
I remember a dinner-table conversation in Mumbai a couple of weeks ago when Sanjay — an architect and businessman — turned to me quite earnestly to proclaim, “Americans are inherently stupid.”
“How do you live with them?” he asked.
There we were — an Indian and an Egyptian — discussing America over dinner at the Royal Yacht Club, built by British colonialists for the enjoyment of white privilege and off limits to us brown people back when they ruled India.
Then Manique, a Sri Lankan woman, joined the conversation to tell us that during a visit to the United States a few years ago, someone actually asked her if they had bread in Sri Lanka. I asked her, half-jokingly, if it was the same American who asked my dad at an Athens hotel over dinner years ago whether we had fruit in Egypt.
More than just shocked amusement, these incidents show why all of us would vote for Obama if we could. He would never ask us if we had bread or fruit in our countries. Why? Obama is much like us. He has traveled. He has lived abroad. And he has family in several countries. He has a different script for what an American is. He is an American who is comfortable as a citizen of the world — with or without his lapel pin.
This is what makes the right-wing “secret Muslim” accusations and the stupid gullibility surrounding them all the more ludicrous and imperative to lampoon — just as Blitt does in this week’s New Yorker.
Those howls of “offensive” and “tasteless” flung at The New Yorker suggest to me Blitt’s ability to lampoon not just the right wing but even some on the left wing who have promoted fears about Obama.
Wasn’t it Hillary Clinton’s campaign that leaked pictures of Obama in Somali traditional garb, looking just like that crazy figure on the cover of The New Yorker? And didn’t Clinton herself suggest that white, working-class America wouldn’t vote for black, hypereducated Obama?
And wasn’t it The New York Times that published an op-ed by a right-wing commentator that was such an ignorant and embarrassing display, claiming that Obama wasn’t Muslim enough and would be hunted by Muslims because he had abandoned the faith of his father — who was an atheist, by the way.
Just as we were amused at how confounded Americans are that we, too, have bread and fruit in our countries, the Obamas confound because they don’t fit with in simplistic boxes meant to keep them securely in their place. They’re not at all the black stereotype, and it seems to scare the hell out of some Americans.
Jack White points out in an essay on The Root Web site: “We are all, including Obama, in a place we never really thought we would be, and it has knocked us off our feet. We don’t know how to act. We don’t have a plan. We’re searching for our equilibrium. And until we regain our footing, we can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior from people who ought to know better. Hold on to your hat.”
Which is why methinks the outrage over Blitt’s cartoon is less an issue of genuine offense and more a case of “the lady doth protest too much.” It touches on a fear of the world changing much too fast for many Americans to keep up.
The New Yorker cover ridicules an America that is being left behind, grappling with quaint notions of Muslims in regulation turban and white robe and militantly angry black women. And whether other countries have bread or fruit.
We, the children of a post-colonial world, don’t fear an Obama planet. It has been our world for a long time. We’re happy finally to see the growing success of one of our own.
No, I didn’t mean a Muslim. Stop hyperventilating.
Mona Eltahawy is an award-winning, New York-based journalist and commentator, and an international lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues.
Fear of an Obama Planet grips some Americans Read More »
Irv Weintraub, chief operating officer of the William Morris Agency, talks about his distaste for business travel, the philanthropic flipside of Hollywood excess and why Jews in entertainment don’t support Israel.
The Jewish Journal: What’s the best thing about your job?
Irv Weintraub: I never know what I’m going to end up doing during the day. And the personalities of people in the business are certainly ‘interesting.’ What I also love is that mostly everybody I deal with has a good soul.
JJ: Mostly everybody?
IW: There’s always going to be the occasional people who are self-centered. People tend to get jaded about what they are and what they do, how they contribute to society at large. That’s why we encourage people to get involved with their community, so they can get some perspective.
JJ: Because there’s egocentrism in entertainment?
IW: It’s all about what your character is. If you have a real firm grounding in values, I think that you can still deal in this business and draw upon those. Sometimes people don’t want to leave that last dollar on the table.
JJ: How have you found time to raise a family?
IW: It was one of the many reasons for taking the [WMA] job. If you want to be good at your job, you have to put in the time. There’s no free pass. My second year in public accounting, I was out of town for 13 weeks. To be on the road and then living in hotels out of suitcases is not glamorous. I don’t care where you’re going.
JJ: Were they nice hotels at least?
IW: No. There aren’t many nice hotels in Midland-Odessa, Texas.
JJ: How do you rationalize the excess of Hollywood, how people in entertainment have three Ferraris at home, and yet there are nearly 80,000 homeless people sleeping on the streets of Los Angeles?
IW: I drive a very nice car. I’m part of the culture you’re talking about. But people who know me also know that I’m not only charitable financially, but give time. I can think of some of the people you might be talking about — and I know that they are very charitable — they just don’t want it known. That’s part of the dilemma that Hollywood faces. If your ego needs that build up, you’re gonna publicize the fact ‘I give to all these organizations.’ Look how many people give anonymously — they don’t need that.
JJ: Isn’t ego publicized in where you live and the car that you drive?
IW: I don’t think the Torah says you have to live a poor life. I think what it says is, you have to do something to improve the world in which we live. For me, it’s always been — can I look myself in the mirror and feel like I’m doing the right thing?
JJ: Why do people think Jews run Hollywood?
IW: I’m not sure I want to answer that question.
JJ: Do you think it’s true?
IW: There’s no question that there are very prominent people involved in this business who are Jews. There are also people who are not Jews. For a long time this was a business where successful people happened to be Jewish.
JJ: You make it sound circumstantial.
IW: I’m not a historian; if you look at people who are in significant positions in the business, the percentage of Jews is probably higher than what you see in the general population of Los Angeles and probably the country. Whether it’s heritage or skill set, or the needs that this business has, people tend to gravitate to maybe where their skills match. Is it something unique in the Jewish heritage that Jews are more creative? I don’t know.
JJ: What does it actually mean to be a Jew in Hollywood?
IW: When I have reached out to people in the Jewish community in Hollywood and talked to them about Jewish causes, they’ve been very receptive. If you were to look at the giving record in [The Jewish] Federation, you would not see some of the most prominent Jews in Hollywood on the list of the most prominent temples today like you did 30 and 40 years ago. I think there are myriad causes that people feel are very important today and may not have existed then.
JJ: Why do you think Hollywood is less inclined to ‘give Jewish’ nowadays?
IW: We have one thing that’s not happening now that happened then, which was the memory of the Holocaust. We are 50-plus years removed. The urgency that existed then doesn’t exist today. The Federation campaign did better with Lou Wasserman — people didn’t tell him no. There isn’t that iconic person like Lou who is willing to be identified publicly with their Judaism.
JJ: How would you characterize Hollywood’s attitude toward Israel?
IW: There are many in Hollywood who don’t want to be identified with the complexities that surround the state of Israel. It’s more difficult for them to say ‘I support what Israel is doing,’ if you look at press that’s come around with regard to the Palestinian situation.
JJ: Why doesn’t it bother you?
IW: I have a better understanding of what’s going on. I think the portrayal at times — in papers in the U.S. and around the world — can be viewed as anti-Semitic. Only with knowledge can you respond to that.
This interview was edited for space and content.
Q&A with showbiz power broker Irv Weintraub: Why doesn’t Hollywood give Jewish? Read More »
Marty Kaplan
Thank you, thank you for adding Marty Kaplan to your staff (“The Los Angeles Bagels,” July 11).
He shines physically and intellectually. He is not only smart but wise (and so is Rob Eshman).
E. Ehrenreich
Torrance
Boys to Men
Although I only have anecdotal evidence to support my belief, I believe that women have been running synagogues for some time now (“Boys to Men,” July 4).
I grew up in the ’50s in Redwood City, about 25 miles south of San Francisco. My best friend was Catholic, and he and I took piano lessons at his church, Mount Carmel. We both agreed that women ran Mount Carmel and Temple Beth Jacob.
In the case of Beth Jacob, a conservative synagogue, not only did women lead the choir, play the organ, arrange the flowers, arrange the Kiddush table, teach Sunday school, organize the shul’s social activities, but they also drove out one rabbi and brought in another.
My friend said that, without women, Mount Carmel would collapse as an organization. Most of my friends were Jewish or Catholic, and the only active Protestants I knew were Episcopalian. (My other friends who were not Jewish or Catholic wouldn’t be caught dead in a church.) But in the Episcopal Church, too, women ran things.
What I am saying about Redwood City may well be true of most suburbs in the ’50s. The men commuted to their jobs and came home too tired to worry much about religion. Probably, though, only a small percentage of middle- and upper-middle-class women worked then. These women had time on their hands, and many of them decided that their church or synagogue was a good place to put this time to use.
Moving some of these women was their sense of loss of the tight-knit communities they had known in the big cities. (This wasn’t an issue for my own mother, who came from Spokane, or for my father, either, because his family had moved down the peninsula in the ’20s.)
In short, I think the feminization of religion began in the suburbs during the post-war period.
Stanton J. Price
Glendale
In his article, Rob Eshman correctly states that men no longer feel as involved in Judaism as they used to, with the exception of the Orthodox world. His conclusion is that “the weakness of Orthodoxy is that it doesn’t (yet) fully include women.” Its strength is it pushes men to the plate and become active in meaningful, mature ways in their spiritual life as the Jewish leader in their own home.
I can forgive his ignorance of Orthodoxy because he also states that he is a non-Orthodox man engaged in Jewish life. I respectfully suggest that he should engage himself more in the Orthodox world before he talks about Orthodoxy.
All of the liberal movements allow women to fully participate in services because the vast majority of their members have no Jewish life other than going to services, nor do they know much about Judaism. They don’t keep kosher, observe Shabbat, the laws of family purity, etc. They expect their rabbi to observe these mitzvot, and they participate in spectator Judaism.
Their rabbis never explain that the reason women are not counted for a minyan is because they are not obligated to time-bound mitzvot as men are and that you can’t count someone for a mitzvah if they are not obligated to perform that mitzvah. The liberal (any movement other than Orthodox) rabbis never explain that each of us has different roles to play and each role is important and vital.
Orthodox women run the home and are called akeret habayit, the housewife, the foundation of the home. They receive an extensive Jewish education and are responsible for instilling Jewish concepts and values into the family’s daily life.
The home is supposed to be a mikdash m’at, a small sanctuary. Of course, for this, they are belittled by the “enlightened” members of the liberal movements, who have the chutzpah to think that they know more than Rashi, Maimonides, Nachmonides and all of the sages and commentators of the past. To them, the Torah is eternal until they want to change it for the latest fad that comes along and the oral law is nonexistent.
The reason people are leaving the liberal movements is because they do not stress the observance of Torah, that the Torah is eternal and it is the word of God. These movements do not stress any hard and fast values, and everyone is free to interpret the Torah in any manner that they see fit and to do whatever makes them feel good.
Morton Resnick
Oxnard
Kaddish for Carlin
I applaud the article on comedian George Carlin by Rob Eshman, the editor (“Kaddish for Carlin,” June 27).
Yes, there are times when it is a judgment call and a good one to make: Carlin was the exception to the rule. Though he was not Jewish, he was Jewish enough to be included in The Jewish Journal. I enjoyed the article.
Elizabeth Krugers
Los Angeles
Nextbook
Tom Tugend’s piece on Nextbook included an enlightening interview with architect Peter Eisenman about his Holocaust Memorial in Berlin (“Writer Discovers Nextbook’s New Read on Culture,” July 11).
It brought up memories of my only visit to the memorial at dusk in early March 2006, when snow was on the ground and on some of the thousands of concrete slabs in the first year after its opening.
As a refugee from Nazi-occupied Vienna and previous visitor to Berlin in the 1980s, I had an immediate epiphany about this jarring five-acre site in the center of the city. Finally, here was a permanent, stark and indelible reminder of the city’s and country’s past.
In their daily encounter with the memorial, Berliners and visitors alike cannot escape its impact. I felt an immense satisfaction as I walked on to the evening’s performance at the nearby Komische Oper.
Walter Unterberg
Van Nuys
Kaplan, Eshman, Carlin and Tom Read More »
Rabbi Levi Meier, Whose Pulpit Was Hospital Rooms, Dies at 62
It’s often hard to distinguish between one memorial and the next, especially when you’re dealing with prominent members of the community. Family members, friends, colleagues and rabbis will get up and pour out their praise for the departed- recounting his or her many accomplishments and fine character traits. This is perfectly natural, and it’s also a mitzvah.
Monday morning, at the standing-room-only memorial at Beth Jacob Congregation for Rabbi Levi Meier — author, psychologist, husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, teacher, student, friend, brother, neighbor, gentleman and chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for more than 29 years — who died July 13 at age 62 after a long illness — things felt perfectly natural, right up until the very end.
We heard how Meier touched the lives of thousands, especially the many sick patients he gave hope to, and the many families he comforted. We heard about all the little touches of thoughtfulness felt by everyone who came into contact with him.
A colleague at the hospital talked about how Meier brought mezuzot, kosher food and synagogue services to Cedars-Sinai. Someone else, reminiscing about the rabbi’s unique and gentle way with people, quoted him as follows: “With good interpersonal relationships, you can accomplish much. Without them, you need to fill out three forms to get a box of paper clips.”
The rabbi’s daughter talked about their nightly and very lively family dinners and explained how a young daughter of 8 could come up with the word “Jung” at Scrabble: Her rabbi-psychologist father shared many aspects of his professional life with his children.
He shared a lot more. If you expressed an interest in anything, chances are, within a few days, you’d receive an article in the mail on that subject.
When comforting patients, he shared his time, plenty of it. He seemed to always add “another five minutes,” because he thought that maybe those extra minutes could make all the difference in the world. His pulpit, one of his children said, was hospital rooms.
Interestingly, the memorial, with all the well-deserved praise it showered on Meier, actually underplayed his achievements. No one mentioned the eight years of Torah classes he gave to the Avi Chai Torah Salon — an eclectic monthly gathering of writers, artists and producers (which I often hosted), who yearned to study and debate Jewish texts. Many of the participants were at the memorial; one of them sat next to me and I could see him trying to hold back tears.
In the end, though, after all the emotional accolades for a unique and quiet force of the Los Angeles Jewish community, it was the final speaker who was the most powerful.
Right before pallbearers were asked to prepare to carry the casket, which would soon be flown to Israel, one of the rabbi’s sons was asked to come up to recite a special prayer. It felt like it would be a formality; all the speakers had already spoken.
The young son got up, read the prayer, and just before stepping down, went back to the mike … and gave up all pretense of composure.
With his voice unraveling, and surrendering to his tears, the young son said what was probably on everyone’s mind — it was “way too soon” for his father to be gone — and then, stumbling out of his mouth came the only words I know for certain I will not forget from Rabbi Levi Meier’s memorial: “I wish I would have said I love you more often.”
Rabbi Levi Meier is survived by his wife, Marcie; children Chana Gelb, Malka Grebnau, Isaac and Yosef; grandchildren; and brother, Rabbi Menachem.
— David Suissa
Johanna Cooper, Award-Winning Radio Producer, Dies at 53
Johanna Cooper, a Kennedy Award-winning radio producer whose vibrant work encompassed topics from undocumented children to “Jewish Short Stories From Eastern Europe and Beyond,” died July 10 after a three-year battle with breast cancer. She was 53.
Cooper, an active member of Temple Beth Am, was the producer of dozens of documentaries for outlets such as National Public Radio. She was drawn to broadcasting, at least in part, “because of her passion for storytelling, especially stories that preserve the intersection of family and identity,” said her friend, Paula Pearlman, executive director of the Disability Rights Legal Center in Los Angeles.
Cooper’s many Jewish-themed shows included “Hanukkah: A Time for Superheroes,” featuring director Sam Raimi (“Spider-Man”), and KCRW-FM’s award-winning “Jewish Short Stories From the Old World to the New” hosted by Leonard Nimoy.
“[Johanna] had a wonderful sense of human about people and their foibles,” said Ruth Seymour, KCRW’s general manager. “Her perceptions and insights were invaluable.”
Not long before her death at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Cooper had been awarded a grant to prepare a documentary about the Jews of Venice, Italy, and the ghetto in which they had been forced to live.
In her own Beverly Hills Labor Zionist childhood home, Cooper was inspired by stories of her cousin, Rosa Robata, a Holocaust heroine who was tortured and hanged after helping to blow up a crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944.
The young Cooper played guitar at Los Angeles-area senior citizens centers (her mother, Norma, worked as a social worker at Jewish Family Service) and eventually earned her own master’s degree in social work from Columbia University, as well as a second master’s in film and television from USC — all while launching her radio career.
After she married public interest attorney Sam Jason in 1991 and moved to Pacific Palisades, she became renowned among her friends for her Jewish holiday celebrations and for being “blessed with the gift of presence,” said Rabbi Naomi Levy, who officiated at Cooper’s funeral at Mt. Sinai with Rabbi Joel Rembaum of Temple Beth Am.
Just before the bar mitzvah of her son, Max, three years ago, Cooper was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and began a number of rounds of chemotherapy.
On the first day of class at a new kosher cooking school in Brooklyn, 22-year-old Erica Zimmerman carefully slices raw potatoes into a stainless steel bowl.
Zimmerman, a student at New York University, says she’s always been interested in cooking, but as an observant Jew only wanted a kosher school.
“The only kosher cooking school is in Israel, and I can’t take off a year to go,” she said. “Then I heard about this new school on Facebook, and I jumped at the opportunity.”
Last week, the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts opened in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Flatbush. The $4,500, six-week intensive course, run in cooperation with the continuing education department of Kingsborough Community College, is the only professional kosher cooking school in North America.
According to director Jesse Blondel and founder Elka Pinson, it is the only one in the world besides the Jerusalem Culinary Institute, a 5-year-old school in Israel.
Pinson has been dreaming of establishing such a school for years. Last year she took over the top floor of her husband’s housewares shop on Coney Island Avenue and advertised for a chef/teacher on craigslist.
Blondel, a 26-year-old Brooklyn native, responded. The kitchen manager at the Culinary Center of New York, he was seeking a new position. Organizing and directing a new cooking school seemed just the ticket.
“I realized there isn’t any other kosher cooking school, I’m Jewish, and I grew up not far from here,” he says.
Thirteen people showed up for the course, which teaches basic French culinary skills, from making sauces and soup stocks to cooking the perfect omelet, as well as applying kosher laws in a commercial kitchen.
If you keep kosher, Pinson says, you might shell out $40,000 or more to attend the Culinary Institute of America or one of the other prestigious cooking schools, and never be able to taste what you’re learning to cook.
“Then you go home, buy the ingredients, and cook and taste it there, double the work,” she says.
Pinson says that’s the experience of many, if not most, of the chefs working in kosher restaurants in this country. The Center for Kosher Culinary Arts is the first step in changing that, she says, by providing professional training for the kosher cooking crowd.
The center’s six-week course can only cover the basics, but it’s a start.
“We’re on the crest of this new interest,” Pinson says. “Guaranteed in six months somebody else will do it, too. Good luck! It’s a lot of work.”
New kosher cooking school steps up to the plate — and that’s not chopped liver! Read More »