Allosemitism (noun) — Jews as the perpetual ‘other’
WEIMAR, Germany (JTA)—I learned a new word this summer—“allosemitism.”
Coined by a Polish-Jewish literary critic named Artur Sandauer, the term describes a concept with which I am quite familiar—the idea of Jews as the perpetual “other.”
Allosemitism can embrace both positive and negative feelings toward Jews—everything, as the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman put it, “from love and respect to outright condemnation and genocidal hatred.”
At root is the idea that, good or bad, Jews are different from the non-Jewish mainstream and thus unable to be dealt with in the same way or measured by the same yardstick.
The word cropped up during a recent symposium on Jewish and Roma (Gypsy) cultures that I attended here as part of a project called, significantly, “The Other Europeans.”
It was gratifying to find a term that so aptly describes the ambivalent ways in which Jews are regarded. And it was amazing to me that I hadn’t come across it earlier, considering all my reading and writing on the subject, not to mention my experiences over the past decades as a Jew in Europe.
We all know about anti-Semitism and the historic demonization of Jews. But anti-Semitism can be counterbalanced by an idealization of Jews and Jewish culture that also can be divorced from reality.
“People who think Jews are smarter than everyone else don’t have Jewish relatives,” my brother Frank likes to quip.
The Other Europeans project examines some of these issues by focusing on the relationships between Jewish and Roma cultures, particularly in the realm of music.
The project statement doesn’t use the term “allosemitism.” Instead it describes Jews and Roma as having “transcultural” European identities “in both fact and imagination.”
This, it states, has led to the condemnation of both groups as “rootless,” “parasitic,” “degenerate” and worse, as well as to continuing anti-Semitic and anti-Roma outbursts. At the same time, it notes, “the same transcultural character of Yiddish and Roma music is romanticized and embraced by contemporary ‘world music’ pop culture, which frames it as subversive and transgressive and therefore ‘hip.’ “
The Other Europeans project is the brainchild of the musician Alan Bern, an American who has been based in Berlin since the 1980s.
It is sponsored by three Jewish culture festivals—the Weimar Yiddish Summer Weeks, which Bern directs; the annual Festival of Jewish Culture in Krakow, Poland, which this year marked its 20th anniversary; and the KlezMORE Jewish Music Festival in Vienna.
All three present and teach Jewish music and culture to a predominantly non-Jewish public.
Bern, a key figure in the klezmer music revival over the past two decades, is a thoughtful observer of the sometimes uneasy cultural dynamics between Jews and non-Jews in Europe.
“You define culture through interactions,” he told me during one of our many conversations. “What defines something is often the point of view from which you regard it.”
How to define what is “Jewish” provides endless fodder for debate in post-Holocaust, post-communist Europe. Jews are few here now; Jewish communal life, though reviving in some places, is in flux; and Jewish cultural expression is often embraced or even perpetrated by non-Jews.
Strict halachic definition may suffice for the religiously observant. But for Jews and non-Jews alike, that has always told only part of the story. And indeed, as experienced so drastically in the Shoah, definitions of what, or who, is Jewish often come from the outside.
Is there, as the concept of allosemitism implies, a “certain Jewish something” that does so set Jews apart?
The Jewish Museum in Munich has mounted an exhibit this summer actually called “That Certain Jewish Something.” It takes a creative and rather provocative approach to explore the intangibles that can imbue objects, situations and even individuals with a sense of Jewishness.
The museum called on the public to bring in an object the people felt had “a certain Jewish something” about it with a written statement about why they had chosen that item. More than 120 people, most of them non-Jewish or with only distant Jewish roots, answered the call. All the objects were delivered on one day, June 22, and then arranged in display cases with the stories behind them.
The resulting, wide-ranging collection, as the museum puts it, provides “a multifaceted view into a very personal and modern picture of Judaism.” Some of the objects are explicitly Jewish: menorahs, an old container for matzah, kitschy shtetl figurines, family silverware marked for meat and dairy, a Ten Commandments paperweight, a comic book called “Shaloman.”
But for many of the items—a flashlight, a rock, a tablecloth, a necklace, books, paintings, an ordinary pair of sneakers—“that certain Jewish something” is revealed only through their meaning to those who selected them.
A set of faded snapshots shows a smiling, bespectacled fellow attending a party in a Mexican costume. The man who brought them in had found the snaps when he moved into a new apartment, and they apparently showed the previous tenant, a Jewish man who had passed away.
An 11-year-old boy brought in a shirt from the Bayern-Munich football team because he had read that the team’s president before World War II had been a Jew.
The ordinary pair of sneakers belonged to a Jewish man. They in fact are a tangible symbol of the force of his faith: He wears them to the synagogue on Yom Kippur, he wrote, as they are made of cloth, not leather, which is prohibited on the holiday.
That allosemitic, “certain Jewish something” is in what they represent, or how they are represented, not in what they actually are.
Allosemitism (noun) — Jews as the perpetual ‘other’ Read More »
Obituaries
June Walker, Presidents Conference Chair and Hadassah Leader, Dies at 74
June Walker was in working mode two weeks ago.
On July 21, she presided over a farewell reception for outgoing Israeli U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman. Two days later she led a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which she chairs.
Late in the week, however, tests revealed the cancer she had fought for seven years had advanced too far to allow for a new round of treatment. Walker, of Rockaway, N.J., died Tuesday at 74.
“She was such a remarkable fighter,” said Walker’s rabbi, Amy Joy Small. “She did not let it stop her. She had things to do.”
Walker, a former president of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, became only the second female to lead the conference last year when she replaced investment banker Harold Tanner as chairperson.
“Leaders of the United States and Israel held her in high regard and respected the person even more than the positions she held,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, the Presidents Conference’s executive vice chairman, in a statement. “They, as we, recognized immediately her integrity, her intelligence and the sincerity of her advocacy. I am personally, as is the conference collectively, devastated by her passing.”
Walker’s nomination in April 2007 as chairperson was something of a departure for the Presidents Conference, the main communal umbrella body on foreign policy, which in recent years has been headed by prominent businessmen.
A respiratory therapist, former college professor and health-care administrator, Walker was a longtime community activist whose involvement with Hadassah began as a teenager.
In June, Walker was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa in recognition of her years of work on behalf of Israel, and in particular her devotion to health care in the Jewish state. Walker was one of seven honorees, including a former director of the Mossad intelligence agency and three university professors, but was chosen to deliver remarks on behalf of the group.
“She told me that she was determined she was going to be strong and healthy to get to Haifa and receive this award because it was for her symbolic of her lifetime achievement, something that represented for her a culmination of her accomplishments,” said Small, who accompanied Walker to Israel for the ceremony.
Small recalled that the honorees were to walk across a balcony and down a flight of stairs, a feat that she knew would be challenging for Walker, who was suffering back and leg pain as a result of her disease.
“She held herself with such dignity and such honor you would never have known that she was suffering,” Small recalled. “And she was beaming.”
Later, Small wrote that Walker was “this generation’s Golda Meir” in an article published on the Web site of the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation.
Walker rose through a succession of positions at Hadassah before assuming the presidency in 2003, a post she held for four years. Under her leadership, the organization raised $75 million for a $210 million inpatient tower at its hospital at Ein Kerem, Jerusalem, and completed a $48 million emergency medicine facility in Jerusalem.
She also grew the student body at the Hadassah College of Technology in Jerusalem from 600 to 2,000 students.
“It is with a very heavy heart that we begin to mourn June Walker, a unique leader and a wonderful friend to many,” said Walker’s successor as Hadassah president, Nancy Falchuk. “June once said that Hadassah embodied everything she was interested in: Israel, women’s empowerment, Judaism, education, medicine and Zionism. But June personified values that Hadassah stands for: pride, dedication, and spirit enhanced by her own personal grit.”
Walker is the first Presidents Conference chairperson to die in office. The group says it has no succession plan.
“We’ve never had it,” Hoenlein said, adding that when top officials have become incapacitated in the past, former chairmen have temporarily stepped in.
Walker taught at Passaic County Community College in New Jersey and was the director of inservice education for pulmonary medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. She is also a member of the Citizens Committee for Bio-Medical Ethics, the American Lung Association and the Reconstructionist Congregation Beth Hatikvah of Summit, N.J., according to her official Hadassah biography.
She is survived by her husband, Barrett; son, Davi; daughters, Julie Richman and Ellen; and six grandchildren. The funeral was held Aug. 31.
— Ben Harris, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Oluwaninse Abhay Charan Adeyemi died July 8 at 11. He is survived by his father, Ayodele; mother, Adrienne Liberman; sister, Parama Liberman; and brothers, Manjari and Daniel Liberman. Hillside
Jacob Barad died July 12 at 75. He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; and sons, David and Glenn. Hillside
Irene Barton died July 15 at 85. She is survived by her sons, Fred and Mark. Hillside
Mervyn Max Becker died July 21 at 78. He is survived by his wife, Yetta; son, Aaron; daughter, Carla; one grandchild; and sister, Elaine. Groman
Lynda Belasco died July 21 at 61. She is survived by her husband, Steven; son, Joshua; and uncle, Irving (Charlotte) Nudell. Malinow and Silverman
Dr. Murray Gill Boobar died July 7 at 85. He is survived by his wife, Helen; and daughters, Robin Lappen and Mindy Cahan. Hillside
Larry Chalfin died July 20 at 68. He is survived by his wife, Vicki; son, Charles; and daughter, Leah Gordon. Hillside
Edward Chersky died July 17 at 83. He is survived by his wife, Evelyn; and sons, Robert, Barry and Stewart. Hillside
Mania Sara Cymer died died July 12 at 97. She is survived by her sons, Harry and Max. Hillside
Ilse Erlanger died July 13 at 97. She is survived by her daughter, Susan (David) Leveton; and grandchildren, Steven Leveton and Stephanie Kinedale. Hillside
Frances Gordon died July 15 at 97. She is survived by her nephew, Peter Spring. Hillside
Dr. Lawrence Gosenfeld died July 19 at 67. He is survived by his friends. Hillside
Victoria Harris died July 21 at 100. She is survived by her sons, Godfrey (Barbara), Micheal and David. Hillside
Philip Kozin died July 20 at 96. He is survived by his daughter, Gail (Stan) Holander; and son Howard. Hillside
Anna Landsberg died July 12 at 92. She is survived by her sons, Abe and Raymond. Hillside
Charles Robert Lever died July 16 at 78. He is survived by his wife, Pamela; and stepson, Mark Neilson. Hillside
Diane Rita Mehlman died July 17 at 75. She is survived by her son, Lon; and daughter, Dina. Hillside
Emily Bell Miller dies July 14 at 93. She is survived by her daughter, Joyce (Stephen) Ranger; and granddaughter, Courtney Ranger. Hillside
Terry Lee Miller died July 12 at 69. She is survived by her daughters, Allison and Julie; four grandchildren; and companion, Norman Lieberman. Hillside
Gerald David Novorr died July 13 at 91. He is survived by his wife, Pearl; son, James; and daughter, JoAnn. Hillside
Bernard Rumack died July 21 at 87. He is survived by his daughter, Robin; and sister, Vella Bass. Hillside
Lillian Schafer died July 13 at 86. She is survived by her daughters, Sue Sanders, Lyn Caron and Elaine Thomassian. Hillside
Rubin Schieren died July 21 at 93. He is survived by his daughter, Phyllis (Ben) Berkley; son, George (Ellen); and seven grandchildren. Malinow and Silverman
Ira Schulman died July 20 at 81. He is survived by his sons, Alan and Russell; daughter, Leslie Mendoza; sisters, Davida Racine and Diane Friend; and partner, Nora Graham. Hillside
Mike Simon died July 10 at 75. He is survived by his wife, Angela; sister, Billie Evenas; and stepdaughter, Patricia Garza.
Harry Talsky died July 17 at 93. He is survived by his children, Leland and Martha. Hillside
Marla Lynn Waldman died July 20 at 51. She is survived by her father, Gerald; mother, Barbara; and brothers, Ron and Craig. Hillside
Hilda Weiner died July 15 at 93. She is survived by her sons, Arnold (Elaine) and Edward (Susan). Hillside
Checklist: What to do when someone dies
Make sure to contact the hospital or mortuary so that you can fill out any paperwork, i.e., death certificate, as soon after the death as possible.
If you have preplanned:
- Contact the doctor to fill out any paperwork.
- Contact the funeral director (who should have a list of arrangements).
- Call your synagogue and speak with the rabbi about possible times for the service.
- Register the death with the synagogue.
- Re-contact the funeral home/mortuary to arrange for a funeral time.
- Contact close friends and family/chavurah so they can help relay funeral time and information.
- Decide for how many days you will sit shiva. Your friends/chavurah can arrange for people to sit shiva with you and your family.
If you have not preplanned:
- Contact the doctor to fill out any paperwork.
- Call a Jewish funeral director to arrange for someone to pick up the body and to discuss available times for the funeral at a Jewish cemetery.
- Call your synagogue and speak with the rabbi about possible times for the service.
- Register the death with the synagogue.
- After speaking with both the director of the cemetery and the rabbi, arrange for a funeral time.
- Call a mortuary that may or may not be affiliated with the cemetery (depending upon which cemetery you use). Set up a service time that is convenient both for the rabbi and the mortuary.
- Have your friends/family/chavurah make calls to friends/family/loved ones to relay funeral time and information.
- Decide for how many days you will sit shiva. Your friends/chavurah can arrange for people to sit shiva with you and your family.
Resources
Web sites:
“My Jewish Learning Death and Funeral Practices
“A Guide to Jewish Burial and Mourning Practices” published by the Funeral Practices Committee of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California
A Guide to Jewish Mourning and Condolence” by Jerry Rabow, Valley Beth Shalom
Funerals: A Consumer Guide (Federal Trade Commission)
Consumer Guide to Funeral & Cemetery Purchases (California Department of Consumer Affairs Cemetery & Funeral Bureau)
Books
“Mourning & Mitzvah: A Guided Journey for Walking the Mourner’s Path Through Grief to Healing” by Anne Brener (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001)
“The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning” by Maurice Lamm (Jonathan David Publishers, 2000)
“So That Your Values Live on: Ethical Wills and How to Prepare Them” by Jack Riemer and Nathan Stampfer (Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994)
“A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort: A Guide to Jewish Bereavement” Ron Wolfson (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2005)
— Jane Ulman
JEWISH CEMETERIES AND MORTUARIES IN LOS ANGELES
CEMETERIES
AGUDATH ACHIM CEMETERY
1022 S. Downey Road
Los Angeles, CA 90023
323 653-8886
800 654-6772
Opened in 1919. Owned and operated by Chevra Kadisha Mortuary.
BETH ISRAEL CEMETERY
1068 S. Downey Road
Los Angeles, CA 90023
213 653-8886
800 654-6772
Opened in 1907. Owned and operated by Chevra Kadisha Mortuary.
BETH OLAM CEMETERY OF HOLLYWOOD
900 N. Gower Street
Hollywood, CA 90038
323 469-2322
877 238-4652
www.betholam.com
Opened around 1927. Organized as the Jewish section within the larger Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, now called Hollywood Forever.
EASTERN COMMUNITY JEWISH CEMETERY
15270 Woodcrest Dr.
Whittier, CA 90604
310 943-3170
Opened in 1987.
EDEN MEMORIAL PARK
11500 Sepulveda Blvd.
Mission Hills, CA 91345
818 361-7161
800 441-7161
Opened in 1954. Acquired by Service Corporation International (SCI) in 1985.
HILLSIDE MEMORIAL PARK
6001 Centinela Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90045
(800) 576-1994
www.hillsidememorial.org
Opened in 1946. Owned by Temple Israel of Hollywood since the 1950s.
HOME OF PEACE MEMORIAL PARK
4334 Whittier Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90023
323 261-6135
800 300-0223
www.homeofpeacememorialpark.com
Opened in 1902 in current location. Owned and operated by Rose Hills Memorial Park.
MOUNT CARMEL CEMETERY
6505 E. Gage Ave.
City of Commerce, CA 90040
(323) 653-8886
(800) 654-6772
Opened in 1931. Owned and operated by Chevra Kadisha Mortuary.
MOUNT OLIVE MEMORIAL PARK
7231 E. Slauson Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90040
323 721-4729
Opened in 1948. Donated to Chabad of California in the 1980s.
MOUNT SINAI MEMORIAL PARKS
5950 Forest Lawn Dr.
Los Angeles, CA 90068
(800) 600-0076
(323) 469-6000
www.mt-sinai.com
Originally founded by Forest Lawn in 1953 and exclusively Jewish since 1959. Owned by Sinai Temple since 1967.
6150 Mount Sinai Drive
Simi Valley, CA 93063
(800) 600-0076
www.mt-sinai.com
160-acre site purchased in 1997 and opened in 2002. Owned by Sinai Temple.
MOUNT ZION CEMETERY
1030 S. Downey Rd.
Los Angeles, CA 90023
Opened in 1916. Currently owned by Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles and operated by Rose Hills Memorial Park, which owns Home of Peace.
SHOLOM MEMORIAL PARK
13017 N. Lopez Canyon Road
San Fernando, CA 91342
818 899-5216
Founded in 1951. Privately owned.
YOUNG ISRAEL CEMETERY
13622 Curtis and King Road
Norwalk, CA 90650
(213) 653-8886
Opened in 1938. Owned and operated by Chevra Kadisha Mortuary.
JEWISH MORTUARIES
CHEVRA KADISHA MORTUAR
7832 Santa Monica Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
800 654-6772
323 653-8886
www.chevrakadisha.com
Founded in 1976 as a private organization and not a traditional “chevra kadisha.”
R.L. MALINOW GLASBAND WEINSTEIN MORTUARIES
7700 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA 90046
800 300-0223
323 656-6260
GROMAN EDEN MORTUARIES
11500 Sepulveda Blvd,
Mission Hills, CA 91345
800 522-4875
www.gromaneden.com
GROMAN MORTUARIES
830 W. Washington Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90015
213 748-2201
HILLSIDE MORTUARY
6001 W. Centinela Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90045
800 576-1994
310 641-0707
www.hillsidememorial.org
Founded in 1946 in association with Hillside Memorial Park.
MOUNT SINAI MORTUARIES
5950 Forest Lawn Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90068
800 600-0076
323 469-6000
www.mt-sinai.com
6150 Mount Sinai Drive
Simi Valley, CA 93063
800 600-0076
323 469-6000
www.mt-sinai.com
Associated with Mount Sinai Memorial Parks.
MALINOW AND SILVERMAN MORTUARY
7366 S. Osage Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90045
(800) 710-7100
SHOLOM MEMORIAL PARK MORTUARIES
8629 W. Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035
310 659-3055
www.sholomchapels.com
13017 N. Lopez Canyon Road
San Fernando, CA 91342
818 899-5211
www.sholomchapels.com
Founded in 1951. Associated with Sholom Memorial Park
# # #
Compiled by Molly Binenfeld and Jane Ulman
Checklist: What to do when someone dies Read More »
Russian judge: sexual harassment good for humanity
Kim Murphy has written many great articles for the Los Angeles Times. She won the Pulitzer in 2005 for her reporting on Russia during the previous year, and one story sticks in my mind unlike any other: “
Whispered in Russia: Democracy is Finished.”
That headline came to mind when I read today that a Russian female ad executive lost her sexual harassment lawsuit against her boss because the judge ruled “that employers were obliged to make passes at female staff to ensure the survival of the human race.”
Now, obviously sexual harassment claims and democracy have little to do with each other, but the judge’s indifference to the former brought to memory complaints about the latter. That and what happened to oppositional political leaders like Gary Kasparov last year. I read this article from The Telegraph after hearing on NPR this morning that the CEO of BP Russia has gone into hiding.
So, at this point I will stop burying the lede and offer the latest lunacy from Russia:
The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia’s history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.
She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss.
“He always demanded that female workers signalled to him with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word,” she earlier told the court. “I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically.”
The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.
“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.
Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.
According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.
If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children. Yes, the judge assures us, seemingly inappropriate, and illegal, work situations are all part of human history, God’s divine plan manifest.
Russian judge: sexual harassment good for humanity Read More »
An incomplete guide to Jewish funerals and burial
When Eileen Isenberg thinks about her own funeral, she has a very clear picture in her mind.
“First I want 20 minutes of sad,” she said, to allow people to remember her, with the second movement of Mozart's 21st Piano Concerto playing in the background.
“Then I want people to bring out the klezmer music and platters of all different kinds of rugelach and chat about the good stuff and the fun.”
When it's time to push the casket down the aisle, she wants a band
“I want to leave my dear friends with a sweet taste in their mouths and a twinkle in their hearts,” said Isenberg, 77, a Reform Jew who isn't planning to die anytime soon.
This is definitely not what a Jewish funeral used to be. At least not in the non-Orthodox world.
When it comes to thinking about the end of life, be it in the business of funeral homes or in the minds of Jews everywhere, the world is changing.
“It's not about mourning the death anymore. People want to celebrate life,” said Isenberg's daughter, Lynn, a Marina del Rey resident who launched a customized funeral planning business, “Lights Out Enterprises,” after penning the novel, “The Funeral Planner” (Red Dress Ink, 2005). Lynn Isenberg believes mourners can celebrate without compromising the life and integrity of the deceased.
Blame it on the baby boomers. One outgrowth of the aging of 78 million largely nontraditional Americans born between 1946 and 1964 is that they are revolutionizing the final frontier with personalized send-offs, both for themselves and their parents.
You can also blame it on our death-denying, death-defying culture. Why fall back on those morose, antiquated and tiresome rituals when we can put some “fun” back into the $11 billion funeral service industry?
And you can blame it on the high cost of dying. And the lower cost of cremation. Along with the opportunity to have our ashes mixed with cement and forged into an artificial reef ball, to rest eternally on the ocean floor.
Or blame it on ignorance of Jewish burial and funeral customs. The fact that we don't know a grave from a crypt. Or what to do if we happen to be unaffiliated, intermarried or tattooed.
Still, while not everyone is jumping on the “I gotta be me” funeral bandwagon, a funny thing is happening on the way to the mortuary.
These days, more and more Jews are breathing new life into Judaism's age-old approach to death and dying. They're also sometimes discovering that the rituals
For traditional Jews, this is no surprise.
“It's been done this way for 3,600 years,” said Moe Goldsman, who has served as funeral director and mortuary manager at Sholom Chapels Mortuaries and Sholom Memorial Park in Sylmar since 1989. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”
As with most things Jewish, the practices governing burials are based on Torah: “Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return” (Genesis 3:19), as well as, “As we come forth, so shall we return” (Ecclesiastes 5:14).
They also operate on the principles of respect, speed and simplicity, rendering everyone equal in death, with these key components:
-
Nothing should be done to prohibit the natural decomposition of the body. Embalming or cosmetic enhancement is prohibited.
-
The body is accompanied or watched from the time of death until burial. It is ritually cleansed and dressed in white linen shrouds.
-
Burial is in a plain wooden casket, with no metal parts. The casket remains closed.
-
Burial takes place in the ground, as soon as possible.
- Flowers are discouraged. Charitable contributions are instead suggested.
Historically, each community's holy society, or chevra kadisha (not to be confused with the Los Angeles for-profit mortuary by the same name), took on the responsibility of caring for the deceased, considered the most sacred task in Judaism because it's a mitzvah that cannot be repaid. Over the years, the non-Orthodox community has relinquished this obligation to the care of strangers.
Jon Kalish of NPR's 'All Things Considered' recorded a chevra kadisha preparing a body
“Someone passes away, you call the mortuary and they pick up the body. You're totally removed,” said Sinai Temple's Cantor Joseph Gole. “It wasn't too many generations ago that you did taharah (the ritual cleansing and purification of the body) right on the kitchen table, in the house.”
Tachrichim or shrouds, Hillside Mortuary
An incomplete guide to Jewish funerals and burial Read More »
Deferred dream comes true for actress Nan Tepper
“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” African American poet Langston Hughes asked.
Not always. Take the case of Nan Tepper, who deferred her dream for half a century but, at 77, is now winning plaudits as the iron-willed grandmother in Neil Simon’s play, “Lost in Yonkers,” at Theatre 40.
When Nan (then Brodie) was in grade school in Centerville, Iowa (pop. 8,500, including 12 Jewish families) she played the younger sister in Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” at the local community center, and her dream of life upon the stage was born.
The dream moved a step closer to realization when the family moved to Los Angeles at the end of World War II. She was cast in plays at Los Angeles High School and later at UCLA, where she majored in theater arts.
In her college freshman year, Nan met Paul Tepper, a veteran studying under the GI Bill, and they married during the following Easter vacation.
The new Mrs. Tepper got her degree in theater arts in 1952, but like many young couples in those days, the wife went to work while the husband continued with graduate studies.
Her first job was as a script typist at CBS, although her test evaluation was “types very fast but with lots of mistakes.”
“I still remember typing the scripts for ‘Amos ‘n’ Andy,’ ‘My Friend Irma’ and ‘The Burns and Allen Show,'” Tepper said.
She started moving up the ladder after switching to the local CBS Channel 2, but for the next seven years she was busy giving birth to and raising two sons.
Meanwhile, Paul had earned his law degree and started working for the city attorney’s office, while Nan went back to full-time work in 1966 as a researcher in the KNXT-TV Channel 2 news room.
“There was only one woman reporter in those days, Ruth Ashton Taylor, and no minorities,” Nan recalled, but as she rose from researcher to producer, work was never dull.
“We covered the Watts Riots, civil rights struggle, busing, Vietnam and political conventions with reporters and anchors of the caliber of Bill Stout, Jerry Dunphy, Jere Witter, Maury Green, Linda Douglass and Connie Chung,” she said.
By the mid-1980s, Tepper was ready for executive responsibilities and was named vice president and director of human resources for the CBS West Coast network.
She retired in 1998, for two main reasons.
“I was 68 and felt I had done it all,” Tepper said.
At the same time, her husband Paul had suffered two strokes and was wheelchair bound.
Now she started to take the first tentative steps to realize her long-deferred ambitions. She took weekly acting classes, went to auditions and started getting small parts in small theaters.
Once on stage before a live audience, “I had the feeling that this was what I had always wanted to do,” she said. “I had been a student, wife, mother, news executive and caregiver, but I had always promised myself that one day I would be an actor.”
Paul died in 2005, and her stage work helped Nan Tepper to deal with the loss and resume her life.
Although there are not all that many roles for older women, she has been working steadily, mainly with the Theatre 40 and Theatre West companies, but also an occasional TV appearance.
One of her assets is an excellent ear for accents. In one play, she sported both an Irish brogue and a Jewish dialect, in another drama she was a Russian newcomer, and currently she is a German immigrant.
“I am having a wonderful time,” Tepper said. “I have learned that if you feel you have a passion or talent, don’t be afraid to take a risk. Suppose I make a fool of myself? At this point in my life, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Among the major gains has been the friendship and backing of her younger colleagues and of Howard Teichman, her favorite director.
Most important is the encouragement of family and friends. “My late husband was tremendously supportive, and so are my children and their families,” Tepper said. “After all, what your kids want most is for you to be happy and fulfilled.”
‘Yonkers’ Takes up Residence in Beverly Hills
Besides its multimillion-dollar mansions, luxury stores and, recently, Iranian Jewish mayor, Beverly Hills is also home to Theatre 40, which, year in and year out, offers some of the Southland’s most enjoyable stage experiences.
The professional company gets its 2008-2009 season off to an auspicious start with Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers.”
While sprinkled with the prolific playwright’s patented punchlines, the drama probes deeply into the pains of a three-generational Jewish family, dominated by an iron-willed matriarch.
Simon, who won his only Pulitzer Prize for “Yonkers,” wrote the play in 1991, but set the action in the homefront of wartime America in 1942.
The Kurnitz family lives in a small Yonkers apartment above its candy store, owned by Grandma, an immigrant from Germany with steel gray hair and a cane, who has buried two children and has twisted the lives of the remaining four.
Living with Grandma is daughter Bella, a 35-year-old woman with a childlike mind. A second daughter, Gert, has an odd speech impediment, which is played for a lot of laughs, even in our politically correct era.
The two sons are Louie, a small-time mobster, and feckless Eddie, who borrowed money from a loan shark to succor his wife during her terminal illness.
Eddie is paying Grandma a rare visit, hoping that she will take in his two boys, Jay, 16, and Arty, 13, for a year while the father accepts a well-paying job as a traveling salesman in the South to earn enough money to pay off his debts.
The two boys’ aversion to staying with the intimidating matriarch is exceeded only by Grandma’s hostility to the idea, but eventually everybody settles in for months of domestic guerrilla warfare, lightened by flashes of humor.
The two main protagonists, or antagonists, are Grandma and Bella and the two have it out in a wrenching final scene. Both win in the end, with Bella finally asserting her independence and Grandma digging into her past to explain her deep bitterness.
Director Howard Teichman has drawn strong performances from a fine cast, particularly from Nan Tepper and Maria Spassoff in the key roles of Grandma and Bella. Rarely has a generational conflict been portrayed with more tension and naked acrimony.
“Lost in Yonkers,” playing in repertory with David Marshall Grant’s “Pen,” continues through Aug. 28 at Theatre 40 on the Beverly Hills High School campus, 241 Moreno Drive. For information and reservations, call (310) 364-0535.
Deferred dream comes true for actress Nan Tepper Read More »
Paul Shapiro’s ‘vout’ mishegoss
In 1945, the hippest Hollywood nightlife destination was Billy Berg’s, on the corner of Vine and DeLongpre.
A tall, suave black man named Slim Gaillard, who favored pinstripe suits, held court there. Black entertainers were seldom booked west of Western Avenue in those days, and Gaillard’s appearances at Berg’s were, in a very real sense, where Hollywood’s racial integration began.
With supreme self-confidence, Gaillard and his rotund bassist, Tiny “Bam” Brown, mesmerized audiences (which included Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman) with original novelty songs that mixed Harlem jive, Greek, Spanish, Italian, Yiddish and plain old gibberish. His favorite invented word was vout, and Gaillard used it liberally. When Hollywood committed him to film, a feature movie was titled, “O’Voutie O’Rooney.”
The polymath entertainer spoke seven languages, sang, played the guitar and piano (with the backs of his hands), and was capable of extemporizing whole songs in the moment. Gaillard, who died in 1991, was extremely resourceful. He could practically make an entire song out of the word “avocado.” Gaillard had a million-selling record in 1945, “Cement Mixer.” The tune came together as Gaillard took a break from a recording session, walked outside the studio and saw some men doing street repair. One of his most endearing records was a ditty called, “Dunkin’ Bagel” (1946). It’s largely a 4/4 instrumental, with Gaillard hollering rhythmic epigrams (“Matzoh balls!”) to Brown’s exercised responses (“Matzoh balls-oreeny!”). Gaillard gave the term mishmash a good name.
Fast forward to the present. Saxophonist Paul Shapiro, a mainstay of New York City’s downtown creative nexus, recognizes Gaillard as one of his musical forebears. Shapiro’s background in jazz and funk led him to recording session work with Michael Jackson, Rufus Wainwright, Queen Latifah, Lou Reed and Jay-Z, among many others. The saxophonist recorded two albums on John Zorn’s Judeocentric Tzadik label as a leader: “Midnight Minyan” (2003) and “It’s in the Twilight” (2006). They were both serious instrumental collections of traditional Jewish songs and standards, seen anew through the contemporary prism of Shapiro’s working aesthetic of jazz, funk and rhythm ‘n’ blues. But a funny thing happened on the way to downtown hip street cred. Shapiro encountered songs from the 1930s and ’40s
Prolific songwriter Henry Nemo, who died in the Pacific Palisades in 1999, wrote “A Bee Gezindt.” Nemo was an academy of jive (like Calloway and Gaillard), but also a fine tunesmith. He wrote several Cotton Club revues with Duke Ellington and contributed the lyrics to Duke’s evergreen “I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart.” In 1992, I asked Nemo about the black stride pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith, Ellington’s piano mentor and the cantor of the Harlem synagogue. “We got along great,” The Neme recalled, “because I was usually the only one on the scene he could talk Yiddish to.”
On his new album, “Essen” (Tzadik), Shapiro explores the cultural mash-up that occurred in American popular music when Jewish music
From a phone in central New York, Shapiro talked about the ways Jewish culture melded with other cultures. “You know where I think a lot of it occurred?” he asked. “The Catskills resorts. It wasn’t just Jewish bands that played in those hotels. Jews were mad about Latin music in the ’50s, and many Latin musicians went up there. They learned some Jewish songs, like any good musician would. But there was a connection, I think, because the Sephardic among us came through North Africa and Spain, with our Ladino music. There was not only a natural affinity between cultures but it was also a work opportunity for the bands.”
The Ribs and Brisket Revue has two great assets in singers Cilla Owens and Babi (pronounced Bobby) Floyd. Their vocals are both exuberant and nuanced. Floyd sounds like a crazed cantor on his vilde chaya vocal for “Utt-Da-Zay.” Torrents of pidgin Yiddish that would have delighted Gaillard have occasional bits of irony bobbing to the surface (“you actually vant this thing?”).
Owens would have made a fine singer for swing era orchestras like Lucky Millinder or Andy Kirk (in fact, she brings to mind Kirk’s vocalist June Richmond). She displays fine blues feeling on “A Bee Gezindt.” She also manages to play both sides of the coin on Sophie Tucker’s “Mama Goes Where Papa Goes,” where she delivers some of the lyrics in Yiddish. The band plays like a juke joint combo used to dodging beer bottles and bullets. Shapiro’s nasty alto sax breaks would have qualified him for duty at Duffy’s Gaieties on Cahuenga Boulevard, when Lenny Bruce emceed for the peelers in the ’50s.
Tucker is also a seminal figure for Shapiro. “I hear in her,” he said, “a serious blues infection. She had the Yiddish inflection from her background but she seriously studied the blues. It was absolutely unique that she had both. Loren Sklamberg of the Klezmatics works at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research on West 16th Street in New York. He showed me a copy of the 1922 Okeh record of ‘Mama Goes Where Papa Goes,’ and it’s printed in Yiddish and English. It was recorded by many singers, including Ida Cox, the black blues singer and later, Kay Starr. I took a little from each version and gave it to Cilla. I think she’s one of the great stylists in this day and age.”
Shapiro is unequivocal in his praise for Zorn’s benevolence, through Tzadik. “It’s really Zorn,” he stated flatly , “who let me do my own music.” It was an opportunity that came with a price, though. “When I came to him with the idea for my earlier albums, he insisted that I not take this lightly. He wasn’t going to let me get away with just passing references to Jewish music. It’s very important for him that the music that he releases in his Radical Jewish Culture series be real artistic statements. He doesn’t want to be seen as a cultural appropriator.”
How have the Tzadik albums and their creative processes affected Shapiro on a personal level?
He thought for a moment and chose his words carefully before answering: “I would say that while I haven’t been transformed religiously
Paul Shapiro — Dunkin’ Bagel
Slim Gaillard 1946
* Mishegoss (Yiddish) — craziness, foolishness.
Paul Shapiro’s ‘vout’ mishegoss Read More »
Back to School
I primarily do two kinds of teaching: Torah classes in a wide range of areas within my extended congregational community and California civil procedure and advanced torts at law school. As the terms wind down, my law students often ask whether I would mind devoting time in our last class of the term to reviewing material we have studied. And that is the way of teaching. One begins by explaining where she is going with her message or class, one teaches or writes accordingly and one concludes by reviewing for her students or readers what she has taught.
In Parshat Devarim we begin a new book, Deuteronomy, the fifth and final volume of the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch. In Hebrew, we call it the Chumash, or the Torah. Christians call it the Old Testament. Each of these names implicitly perceives the Book of Devarim as part and parcel of an integrated package.
Primarily in the late 19th century
Interestingly, many non-observant Jewish historians and theologians see in Wellhausen’s writings an unmistakable reflection of the intense anti-Semitism that pervaded German academia in the late 19th century. It was incomprehensible for so many Germans, including intellectuals, to fathom that the Master of the Universe would have chosen the Jewish People, as among all nations on earth, to have received the Torah in their millions amid thunder and lightning, dramatic shofar sounding and the glory of the Divine revelation at Mount Sinai. It was easier to posit that a bunch of individuals had written book parts. The school of literary criticism provided an angle.
For those of us who believe with absolute intellectual certitude that the entire Chumash is the exact Word of the Creator, down to each letter
The Jewish nation in the Sinai Desert, learning at the feet of Moses, are not law students preparing to take a written final or to sit for a bar exam while their law school professor weaves together a term’s lectures in one final review. But they know that, at their journey end, they will
Our greatest teacher is summing up the lessons of a lifetime. Get out your notebooks and pens, your laptops. Start writing and typing notes right after Shabbat each week.
And share the Word.
Rabbi Dov Fischer, an adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School and Chapman School of Law, is founding spiritual leader of Young Israel of Orange County. He blogs at www.ravfischer.blogspot.com and can be contacted via his Web site at www.ravfischer.com.
The soldier in the center ring
“Sagiv’s from Israel!” a woman whispered to her seat partner as Aloysia Gavre, director of the West Hollywood Cirque School, introduced Sagiv Ben-Binyamin, a Hadera-born aerial artist and instructor, at a public showcase for the circus school.
As far as he has traveled, literally, from Israel to this Southern Californian loft-like gym space, Ben-Binyamin has come an even greater distance in recent years in his transition from the Israeli army to the circus sphere, a change he refers to as “extreme.”
Ben-Binyamin, 30, served for three years before moving to the United States at 22, and his move raises an interesting question: Is life in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), one of the strictest armies in the world, really so different from performing the high-wire act he’s now doing? Could it be that a three-ring circus and a three-prong attack have more in common than we think? After all, the demands of the circus and the army overlap threefold: physical endurance, group support and all that drama (just watch any episode of “Army Wives” to see the incredible amount of theatrics that surface at least once a week).
Regardless of such surface similarities, Ben-Binyamin says these days he feels pretty far from his Israeli army experience.
“It’s been a while since I’ve thought about it,” he said. “It was physically hard, I think, mainly because of no sleep … especially at the age when you need 10 hours of sleep.”
But it was important to him to serve. He notes that service is emblematic of the Israeli culture, an institution in which all participate: “I’m happy that I did it.”
“I think it’s pretty similar,” he added. “In the army they teach you how to support each other, and in the circus, naturally you want to support and help your fellow performers.”
But the army wasn’t enough to keep Ben-Binyamin away from his long fascination with gymnastics, which led him to the circus.
“When I moved here, I discovered the circus … I was sucked into it so fast, and I found a local job here, you know, grooming pets and animals. I didn’t have the right visa necessarily, but I wanted to stay here.”
Already, he’s moved from Seattle to Florida to San Diego and now Los Angeles. He’s also working for Cher in her Las Vegas show at Caesars Palace and getting ready for Broadway with the original production of “Birdhouse Factory.”
As far as long-lasting benefits, the army and the circus both come into play. In doing stunts for the “Spider-Man” movie as a side gig, Ben-Binyamin said his circus training was helpful, but he also needed to be tough, “I guess that’s the Israeli part.”
The soldier in the center ring Read More »