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Jewish Journal

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September 18, 2008

Defender of Faith

Tommywood, Uncategorized /

If the bestseller charts are any indication, it’s become popular to condemn religion.

Books such as Sam Harris’ “Letter to a Christian Nation” and “The End of Faith,” Richard Dawson’s “The God Delusion,” Christopher Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great” and Bill Maher’s soon-to-be-released film, “Religulous,” would have us see faith as antiquated, illogical and dangerous.

And let’s face it, the arguments they make are not without merit: In the shadow of Sept. 11, religion seems at the root of much hatred and violence the world over. The announcement of a financial, sexual or political scandal involving a religious official — whether we cringe or feel some secret schadenfreude — no longer shocks us. At the same time, in this country as in others, it seems like religion is increasingly seeking to take on public and political dimensions, reaching into education, medicine, science and social programs.

In a world where religion is the cause of so much folly, it becomes harder to defend faith, which makes Rabbi David Wolpe’s new book, “Why Faith Matters” (HarperOne), all the more
important.

“Why Faith Matters” is not a book that will convince anyone who doesn’t already believe in God — nor is it meant to. Yet believer and nonbeliever alike should find “Why Faith Matters” thought-provoking and challenging.

What the book does well, in short, succinct chapters, is address some of the more popularly held charges leveled against religion, such as “religion causes violence” or “science and religion are at odds.” And it does so in a readable and erudite way, quoting from sources as diverse as Tacitus, Heinrich Heine, Nietzsche and Rabbi Hayyim of Zans.

More importantly, it makes the case for the seldom-acknowledged benefits of faith, such as community and charity, and elucidates how religion and religious practice can enhance the lives even of those who don’t and will never believe in God. Wolpe also hopes the book will give comfort to those who have faith.

“It’s not only written for those who doubt,” Wolpe said recently, “but to settle the souls of people who believe.”

ALTTEXT Wolpe is turning 50 this Friday, Sept. 19, and has been the rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles for the past 11 years. “Why Faith Matters” is his sixth book, and he wrote it not as a polemic response to the “New Atheists,” but as a personal book about his own journey.

He was born in Harrisburg, Pa., where his father, Gerald Wolpe, was a Conservative rabbi. When David was 10, the family moved to Philadelphia, when Wolpe’s father became the rabbi of Har Zion, a large
Conservative synagogue on the city’s Main Line.

Stephen Fried’s “The New Rabbi” (Bantam 2002) chronicled the search to find a replacement for
Wolpe’s father when he retired. A New York Times’ article about the book describes Wolpe’s relationship with his father as “wonderfully complicated.”

In “Why Faith Matters,” Wolpe explains that as a teenager, after seeing the vivid documentary footage about the Holocaust in Alain Resnais’ “Night and Fog,” he became an atheist, embracing Bertrand Russell as one of his sages. Wolpe said he is attempting in this book to speak to his younger self. Yet, to a great extent, Wolpe now regards atheism as a failure of the imagination.

His central argument boils down to a rejection of the notion that “the only thing that is real is what you see or measure.” Faith, he argues, adds another dimension to our experience of the world.

To Wolpe, religious faith is “an orientation of the universe,” a way to invest all we do and all we
experience with wonder and with meaning. When Peggy Lee asks: “Is that all there is?” Wolpe answers, “No.”

This reminded me of an incident that occurred when my daughter was very young. She went
through a phase, as all children do, of looking at the world around her, full of questions.

One night she asked me who made the stars in the sky. I replied, “God did,” as much to come up with a quick and final answer as to avoid giving a more complicated scientific one.

A few weeks later, coming home late, as my wife, daughter and I stood at the front door, and as I
fumbled to find my keys, my daughter said: “Listen.” I listened and didn’t hear anything.

“What?” I asked. She pointed upward and said, “It’s The God. The God is everywhere.”

Many people don’t see or hear God’s presence at all. And some feel that believing is childish.

Wolpe believes, however, that “there are things we outgrow and things we grow into.” That struck me. What we dismiss as young people (like the value of having a job with a health care plan or retirement fund), we might revisit as we grow older.

Wolpe’s own journey led him after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania from teenage atheist to studying to become a rabbi at the University of Judaism (UJ) in Los Angeles (now American Jewish University). He spent a year in Israel and was ordained in 1987 at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York, where he wrote his first book, “The Healer of Shattered Hearts” (Henry Holt
& Company).

Over the next few years, Wolpe bounced back and forth between Los Angeles and New York, serving as director of UJ’s library and assistant to the chancellor of JTS before returning finally to Los Angeles to serve as rabbi at Sinai Temple. Although Wolpe has been Sinai’s rabbi for the last 11 years, he has performed High Holy Day services at Sinai since he was a student 25 years ago.

His tenure has not been without controversy. Whether it’s been making peace among his diverse congregants or addressing the allegorical nature of Scripture or encouraging “rock” services, such as Craig Taubman’s “Friday Night Live” (which can draw as many as 1,000 attendees to services with gospel, hip-hop or rock music and speakers from Elie Wiesel to writer David Kohan of “Will & Grace”), Wolpe’s tenure has been marked by a certain fearlessness.

He brings the same approach to his brief in defense of faith, embracing the objections others avoid. For Wolpe, the notion that religious ritual is primitive or some form of magical thinking misses the point.

“Ancient can be venerable and cherished,” he told me. “Religious practice can’t always be explained in a utilitarian fashion. Sometimes, religious practice is its own reward.”

Similarly, Wolpe feels that study of Scripture offers its own pleasures at every stage of life that we
encounter it. For him, it is not the literal words alone, as much as the experience we garner from studying Scripture that faith adds to our lives. Not unlike a psychiatrist interpreting a dream, we may care less about whether it’s true than what we can learn from it.

As to the charge that religion causes violence, Wolpe answers simply that “the feeling of certain groups that they are better or exempt is … an ugly side of human nature. It’s not specific to religion.”

Without minimizing the deaths caused in the name of religion, Wolpe asks us to consider the historical record that demonstrates that the toll of war has been great or greater in those periods when religion was suppressed. We need only consider the millions of victims of the anti-religious regimes of the 20th century: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

Monotheism, Wolpe said, is based on “not how you treat God, but how you treat others” — and in that respect, religion may be seen as a brake on human nature’s more evil inclinations.

Faith can also be a salve, or as Simon and Garfunkel put it, “a bridge over troubled waters.”

I can report that my daughter no longer asks the same questions she once did. (Now they begin with, “Why can’t I?”). Neither do I.

As we get older, we no longer ask so many questions aloud. Our questions become more private: Why? Why are we on this earth? Events occur, and we ask: Why me? Or, why not me? These questions fill us not so much with wonder but attack us in moments of despair.

Wolpe knows these questions well, not only as a rabbi but from personal experience. His wife is a cancer survivor, and Wolpe himself has had neurosurgery for a benign brain tumor, as well as chemotherapy for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer that remains incurable, but for which he is now in
remission. Wolpe told me that it was on the day he finished chemotherapy that he decided to write “Why Faith Matters.”

In “Why Faith Matters” he does not suggest that faith can provide specific answers to our existential questions, so much as that it offers ways for us to look at those questions and the universe differently — and that doing so provides each of us with ways to address those questions.

While writing this article, I happened to have lunch with two friends who both have been diagnosed with cancer, one of whom is still undergoing treatment. When I asked them whether their cancer experiences had impacted their faith, both said it had, but in ways they would not have predicted.

Neither said it made them more observant, but both
remarked on how much they appreciated the hospital visits or phone
calls they received from their clergy and fellow congregants, and how
moved they were upon hearing that others were praying for them. They
felt that those aspects of faith helped them endure. Those are elements
of faith that don’t get mentioned enough.

Religion for Wolpe “is
a complex of things, rather than an abstract set of beliefs.” What
Wolpe feels is lost in the discussion of religion by
“the new atheists” is the positive benefits of religion, such as
community, a sense of social responsibility, a commitment to charity
and charitable acts and of believing that there is something larger
than oneself, having boundaries, submitting to a “higher power.”

By
contrast, faith, Wolpe said, can also make a “disturbance” of life,
making life more difficult. As Wolpe put it, the sense that you are put
on this earth for a reason carries with it responsibilities and
challenges to meet a higher standard. Speaking with Wolpe, you get a
sense that this is particularly true for him; that he is a person who
is always pushing himself.

In honor of Wolpe’s 50th birthday,
Sinai Temple is hosting a dinner on Sept. 21, at which time he will
formally announce the creation of an Israel Center at the temple.

He
is creating what he believes to be the first independent center in the
United States to promote Israel. Recognizing that a connection to
Israel
enhances one’s Jewish identity, Wolpe wants to deepen that
relationship. He wants families to travel there, to offer specialized
tours tailored to specific interests, to be able to teach about Israel
better, not only in terms of its history, but also its culture, to
invite Israeli artists, writers and performers. He envisions perhaps
even having a program for an Israeli artist in residence.

ALTTEXT
“I’m very excited about the possibility” Wolpe said, adding that he
hoped that the center would be offering its first programs a year from
now, “if not before.”

The center is still in its formative
stage. Eventually, Wolpe hopes to hire a full-time director for the
Israel Center and determine a place for the center to be housed
(whether in the synagogue or elsewhere). Wolpe believes that the
community has shown great
support for Israel and is ready to sustain a dedicated independent
Israel Center. A center that, Wolpe asserts, “is not political.” He
wants each congregant to find their own connection to Israel —
whatever their political and personal interests.

Similarly,
in “Why Faith Matters,” Wolpe suggests that faith, religion and
religious practice are to be valued — if not for what they offer us
then for the benefits they offer our children by learning to look
beyond themselves, to be charitable, to treat others as they would like
to be treated.

Clearly, you don’t need religion to teach these
ideals, but these are aspects of religion that rarely receive
recognition from its critics. Faith, Wolpe believes, offers us a chance
to give our children a way to suffuse their own lives with meaning and
better prepare them for the challenges they will encounter.

Recently,
I went to see the Coen brothers’ comedy, “Burn After Reading,” which I
enjoyed very much.
However, as I remarked on my blog, someone viewing the film from a
purely moral perspective would say that the world the Coens present on
screen is a faithless, nihilistic one: The characters curse with
abandon. Marital vows mean nothing; adultery is rampant. Crimes are
committed without much thought. Life isn’t valued; murder isn’t so much
a crime as an annoyance. People are motivated by narcissism, greed,
lust, revenge. People don’t so much care about their jobs as care about
keeping them. Life has no greater meaning or purpose.

The
movie is very entertaining, but it reminded me that Wolpe’s point is
well taken: Life without the benefits of faith is the poorer for it.

The
objective narrative of our lives is mundane and prosaic: We are born;
we live; we die. It is the subjective that colors and enriches our
experience. We all know the power of music or art, of laughter and love
to transport us. Why then, not add faith to the list? And what of the
connection between the two?

My freshman year of college, I
met a woman who told me, “Al Green is God.” Now, whenever the first
chords of “Love and Happiness” play on my iPod, I know she was right.

Which brings me back to Wolpe the writer — not the rabbi.

It
is also worth noting that “Why Faith Matters” is a book meant to settle
the soul of David Wolpe, given that his first impulse when concluding
chemotherapy was to write a book.

“I love literature,” Wolpe
said. “I have always found consolation in words, in both reading them
and also writing them and speaking them. One of the really great gifts
of being a rabbi is that you are expected to translate your experience
into something that other people can understand and benefit from. That
forces you to reflect on it and create some kind of mosaic out of the
jagged pieces of a life. And that’s really a great lesson.”

Wolpe
elaborated: “A teacher of mine, Simon Greenberg, once said that
the best sermons are always delivered to yourself. And I would say
that’s true of the best books, too. The best books are written to
yourself. If you don’t write something that means something to you,
it’s unlikely to touch anyone else.”

And so, on the occasion of his 50th birthday, Wolpe has given us — and himself — a memorable gift.

Defender of Faith Read More »

A clash of two birthdays

Leave a Comment / Judea Pearl, Opinion /

Last month, in my column titled, “Al-Jazeera and the Glorification of Barbarity“, I described Al-Jazeera’s royal celebration of the birthday of Samir

Kuntar, the unrepentant child-killer psychopath and called on the network to “publicly apologize to its viewers in the Arab world for attempting to turn their children into the likes of Kuntar; to the journalism community, for robbing the profession of its nobleness, and, most urgently, to us, citizens of this planet, for re-legitimizing barbarity in the public square.”

Those who expected Al-Jazeera to apologize should recall that apology in Al-Jazeera’s worldview is tantamount to humiliating surrender. Surprising, a letter signed by Al-Jazeera’s general director, Khanfar Wadah, was received by the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz, a copy of which I have obtained, saying: “Elements of the programme violated Al-Jazeera’s code of ethics” (Ha’aretz, Aug. 6).

This letter prompted Ha’aretz editors to issue a cheerful headline: “Al-Jazeera apologizes for ‘unethical’ coverage of Kuntar release.” Two days after the letter was sent, however, Ahmad Jaballah, the station’s deputy editor-in-chief, denied that the channel had ever apologized or sent any letter to Israel.

On Aug. 8, in an interview with the Lebanese daily, Al-Akhbar, Jaballah called the report on the letter “utter nonsense and totally groundless” (MEMRI translation). It is, indeed, utterly impossible for Al-Jazeera to apologize for echoing its viewers’ deepest passions.

The most frequent question I received from readers of my column was: “Did you get any response from Arab or Western readers?”

I will summarize these responses below, together with responses to another, totally different birthday commemoration, one that contrasts the surrealism of Kuntar’s carnival with the spirit of our local community and illuminates what many characterize as a “clash of civilizations.”

The responses to my August column fell into four major categories, as encapsulated in the following quotes:

  • “They apologized, didn’t they? So, why rub it in?”
  • “I am ashamed of being an Arab; Al-Jazeera does not speak for me.”
  • “What do you expect of those Arabs, they are fed this hatred with their mother’s milk.”
  • “What about the millions of Iraqi children killed by Americans and the crimes of Israel against the Palestinians?”

I expected these four types of responses, but what struck me as odd was that the fourth group came not only from anti-American fanatics and jihadi Web sites but also from well-meaning American intellectuals, among them respected journalists and political analysts. It seems that two very simple ideas, so obvious to ordinary folks, have not been able to penetrate the skulls of some of our intellectuals.

The first is that, irrespective of body counts and political agendas, those who take pride in targeting the innocent or who aim at maximizing civilian casualties are not on the same side of heaven as those who struggle to prevent such acts and minimize civilian casualties.

Most people are under the impression that U.N. diplomats, coerced by a certain block of terror-sympathetic countries, are the only thinking humanoids who are incapable of formulating a commonsensical definition of the evil of terror. This is no longer true; evidently, the body-count argument now blinds the best of us.

The second idea concerns the fundamental distinction between individual behavior and societal norms. When an American or Israeli soldier targets civilians, he/she is court-martialed, not glorified as a hero for youngsters to emulate.

Al-Jazeera’s celebration of Kuntar’s birthday party was unmistakably designed and choreographed to position child-killer Kuntar as a role model for Arab society, and it undoubtedly succeeded, given the admiration that Kuntar commands these days in the Middle East, including his recent meeting with Mahmoud Abbas. Some Western intellectuals are not willing to sit down and calculate the number of years it would take for human civilization to clean up the moral warpage that Al-Jazeera is spouting in the young minds of its 50 million viewers.

In sharp contrast to the birthday of Kuntar, next month will witness another birthday celebration closer to my heart: the birthday of our late son, Daniel Pearl, who would have turned 45 on Oct. 10. Unlike the former, this birthday will not be celebrated on satellite TV with butcher knives, Hezbollah fatigues and “Heil Hitler” salutes. Instead, it will be celebrated by grass-root communities, including Danny’s musician friends, to commemorate and perpetuate his passionate use of music to connect people of diverse background.

Danny’s birthday represents the soul of a different society, one whose role models are truth-seeking journalists and bridge-building musicians not child killers; a society that celebrates life not death; one that commemorates birthdays with music and interfaith gatherings not butcher knives, assassination threats and vows to “meet the enemy very soon.”

As some readers probably know, every year since 2002, the Daniel Pearl World Music Days have taken place worldwide during the month of October. Music Days involve hundreds of musical happenings and concerts that include dedications to the ideals for which Danny stood, as well as declarations against the culture of terror and hate that took his life. In 2007, more than 500 concerts were dedicated in 42 countries, uniting and empowering many thousands of people in a stand for a more humane world.

Here in Los Angeles, this year’s World Music Days will prelude in Royce Hall on Sept. 21 with the American Youth Symphony dedication of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, joining the Angeles Chorale with “Alle Menchen Verden Bruder” (All men will be brothers). This will be followed by the Yuval Ron Ensemble on Sept. 25; the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Oct. 4-5; the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Oct. 12; Kadima String Quartet, Oct. 22; the Victory Orchestra, Oct. 26; and many more concerts, festivals and performances dedicated to the ideal of a hate-free world.

The Los Angeles Jewish community has played a special role in World Music Days in the past seven years. Synagogues, Jewish schools and community centers have turned their October gatherings into a powerful opportunity to inspire members with unity and purpose, as well as reach out to neighboring, non-Jewish communities and catalyze lasting alliances through the shared values that World Music Days symbolize.

The Weizmann Day School in Pasadena, for example, has for the past seven years invited the children of both a Muslim school and an Episcopalian school to come to their campus and sing songs of peace in tribute to Daniel’s memory. These concerts have developed into lasting relationships and joint programming throughout the year.

Major synagogues, such as Valley Beth Shalom, Sinai Temple, Temple Israel of Hollywood and University Synagogue in Irvine have dedicated musical portions of the High Holy Days or Kabbalat Shabbat services to Daniel’s last words — “I am Jewish” — and thus transformed routine liturgical texts into a powerful poetry of pride and resilience, cogently relevant to our troubled century.

Two clashing birthdays, two cultures and two outlooks for the 21st century.

Our rabbis, cantors, school principals and community leaders understand that a birthday celebration is a profound statement of identity, not a propaganda gimmick. It is a mirror of society, its principles, norms and aspirations, not an impulsive vent of one’s hatred.

They understand that those who celebrate Kuntar’s birthday with butcher knives and Hezbollah’s fatigues are committing their children to another century of helplessness, while those who celebrate the birthday of a friendship-building journalist-musician-humanist elevate their children to a balcony of hope.

The former are nourishing a generation of Kuntars, the latter rear a generation that reveres life and can look itself in the mirror without shame.

For a full and growing list of World Music Days events visit ” target=”_blank”>www.danielpearl.org) named after his son. With his wife, Ruth, he co-edited the anthology, “I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl” (Jewish Light, 2004).

Shooting Stars
(To Daniel Pearl)

It seems unfair, a waste,
To journey like a shooting star,
One thousand cosmic years through space.
To smile one time, just once,
Emit your brightest ever light and swing
In daring curvature to nowhere,
Like that actor on the stage
Who ends the play to no applause,
And bows to empty seats, yet glows.

Unfair! a waste!

But a child may chance to stare
And see that daring curvature, remember?
Which may bewitch this child to motion,
Remind him of those cosmic years, of freedom,
Jolt his mind to point up north
Yond the curtain of prediction,
Dare to shed the bonds of earth
And bend the course of expectation.

Unfair? A waste?

My eyes to shooting stars, to motion.
My heart to one that just passed by,
Softly traveled, bright, secured,
Like a wandering minstrel,
Measuring the path of your world, oh God,
With kisses.

A clash of two birthdays Read More »

Republican Jews behind negative Obama poll *

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Remember the Republican Jewish Coalition? (Yes, they really exist.) They’ve been pushing real hard for their guy, John McCain, and working against his rival, Barack Obama.

This much is, obviously, to be expected. But Ben Smith at Politico reports that the RJC was also behind a poll that asked Jewish voters their feelings about anti-Obama semi-truths.

Matt Brooks, RJC’s executive director, told Smith that the poll was administered to “understand why Barack Obama continues to have a problem among Jewish voters.”

A large chunk of Smith’s story is after the jump:

Republican Jews behind negative Obama poll * Read More »

Israel converts Ahmadinejad

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Not exactly. But considering his history of diatribes against Israel and the Jewish people, you’ve got to wonder: Who got to Mahmoud?

TEHRAN — The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took the unusual step on Thursday of publicly defending a high official accused by legislators and senior clerics of saying that Iran was a friend of the Israeli people.

Nonetheless, Mr. Ahmadinejad repeated his opposition to Israel, saying that while “some say the idea of a Greater Israel has expired, I say the idea of a lesser Israel has expired, too.” He also called the Holocaust a “fake” and accused Israel of perpetrating a holocaust on the Palestinian people, The Associated Press said.

In mid July, the vice president for tourism, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, was quoted as saying Iran was “a friend of the Israeli people.” He repeated the comment in August saying there was “no hostility toward the Israeli people.”

The rejection of Israel is a founding principle of Iran’s Islamic revolution so that any suggestion of recognition of Israel is heretical, and Mr. Mashai’s remarks drew protests from some 200 legislators and from some senior clerics. But, despite their calls for his ouster, Mr. Mashai was not dismissed or disciplined.

On Thursday, Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose son is married to a daughter of Mr. Mashai, came to his defense, saying that Mr. Mashai “has served the people and the government for 30 years.”

“He has never used the term ‘Israeli people’ and never will.” he said.

Instead, Mr. Ahmadinejad insisted that “what Mr. Mashai said is the message of the government,” representing that as Iran wanting to help people who had been “tricked” by the authorities into living in Israel.

“Our nation has no problem with other nations, but as far the Zionist regime is concerned, we do not believe in an Israeli government or an Israeli nation,” he said.

Oh. Nevermind.

Israel converts Ahmadinejad Read More »

Gay shul’s blessing for anonymous sex *

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Oh my. JTA has a shocking feature about a new blessing a gay synagogue in San Francisco has developed for anonymous sex:

Among the most innovative—and controversial—aspects of the siddur soon to be released by San Francisco’s main gay synagogue is a prayer for “unexpected intimacy.”

The new prayer is meant to be recited after engaging in anonymous sex, though those involved in the project say it could also be said for other meaningful encounters with strangers.

It is featured in the forthcoming siddur created by Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, a 31-year-old synagogue in San Francisco affiliated with the Reform movement.

“In the dark, in a strange place, our father Jacob encountered a stranger with whom he grappled all night,” the prayer begins, referring to the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. “He never knew the stranger’s name, yet their encounter was a blessing, which turned Jacob into Israel and made him realize, I have seen God face-to-face.”

The prayer, titled “Kavannah for Unexpected Intimacy,” goes on to ask God—“who created passion and wove it throughout creation”—to permit the encounter to be a blessing “that allows us to both touch and see the Divine.”

Proponents of the siddur see the prayer—included in a section of innovative blessings meant to enhance life-cycle moments—as an effort to elevate a practice that, in some quarters, is viewed as integral to gay culture. But even among Jewish leaders that the gay community regards as allies, the prayer is seen as crossing a line, sanctifying an activity that Judaism reviles.

That is the most outrageous reading I’ve ever heard of Jacob and the stranger. So that’s why they “wrestled” all night. Right …

Casting unquestioning acceptance aside—but not reaching for stones—this is a bastardization of Israel’s story and a poor attempt to get God’s approval for visiting bathhouses. Rabbi Elliot Dorff, a sage among American Jewish thinkers and a co-author of an opinion permitting same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay rabbis in the Conservative movement, doesn’t mince words:

“A one-night stand is officially an act of prostitution in the Jewish tradition,” Dorff told JTA’s Ben Harris. “It’s not just that it’s not ideal, it’s that it really is seen as being something that a Jew ought not to engage in.”

*Updated: I just spoke with the shul’s Rabbi Camille Angel, who is upset with Harris’ article. She wouldn’t provide details but said, “We are in conversations with JTA about retracting the story based on both inaccuracies and the harmful representation that the story is generating.”

I’ll give you more as I get it.

(Hat tip: Jeffrey Weiss at the DMN religion blog)

Gay shul’s blessing for anonymous sex * Read More »

I can’t believe you haven’t seen it

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

I learned a lot about my husband when we went on our first date at ” title=”Singing in the Rain”>Singing in the Rain,” “” title=”Inherit the Wind”>Inherit the Wind,” “” title=”The Music Man”>The Music Man,” “” title=”“Guys and Dolls,”>“Guys and Dolls,” he has found new films that he loves.

He even has ended up watching made-for-TV movies he never in a million years would have watched before being with me: How many guys would have ever made a conscious effort to watch Hallmark’s entire “Love Comes Softly” series?

We have a sort of “in joke” now. Whenever we start watching a film that he, at first, wasn’t sure he wanted to see, he’ll look at me and say: “I hate you.” As in “I hate you for showing me this movie because I love it, dammit.”

I still have to watch “” title=”Field of Dreams”>Field of Dreams.” Tell me who got the better end of that deal?

I can’t believe you haven’t seen it Read More »

Buying local produce adds spice to holiday dishes

Leave a Comment / Food, Holidays /

As an avid farmers’ market shopper, I welcome the holiday season by noting what’s at the market, rather than by turning the page of my calendar. The High Holy Days are a time of endings and beginnings, and nowhere in my everyday life is this more apparent than when I visit my local market this time of year.

Certainly, the crops’ comings and goings evoke the holidays’ agrarian roots. But when I buy directly from local producers, I’m aware of subtle shifts within a season, and, if I’m really paying attention, of an accounting of the entire past year’s weather (and pests) and toil that has determined what is before me now.

This year will my family enjoy late-season figs and plums, along with new harvest dates and apples for a sweet new year? Will the season’s first pomegranates arrive in time to offer blessing for a year of plentiful merits?

Culture and tradition may dictate holiday fare, but climate and weather make the final menu decisions for me. Call it surrender or call it living on the edge, this local, seasonal approach makes every food on my family’s holiday table resonate with multiple meanings.

First of all, everything tastes better. Shopping locally is shopping in season, and foods have more flavor when grown and harvested in their true time and place. When even the potatoes and carrots are exceptional, I’m grateful to the farmers and shop with greater appreciation for the fixings for our celebration: the eggplants my mother uses in our family’s fire-roasted appetizer salad we simply call chatzilim (eggplants); bright-yolked eggs for knaedlach, and deliciously fresh, free-range chickens for roasting and grass-fed beef briskets for braising, with loads of local onions.

I rejoice in the bounty of heirloom apple varieties so honeyed that they need no adornment. But honey we must have, so I stop at the local gatherers to choose delicate orange blossom and robust buckwheat flavors.

If farmers have pomegranates, I’ll scatter pale-pink and ruby kernels over salad and rice and use the juice to glaze seasonal beets. Our table will be graced with market fruits and broomlike date blossoms.

If you’re a farmer, the connection between land and table is even more profound.

Esther Maso of Weiser Family Farms prepares Rosh Hashanah dinner from ingredients produced on the farm started by her parents 25 years ago as a retirement dream. Their Tehachapi and Lucerne Valley fields yield plenty: eggplants, peppers and beets for salads; fingerling potatoes, root vegetables, onions and garlic for roasting; and green-and-white-striped Sweet Dumpling squashes to stuff with rice, honey and cinnamon.

Known for its heirloom potatoes, the farm is now a multigenerational enterprise — Sidney, a former chemistry teacher from Boyle Heights; Raquel (from Mexico City); sons Alex and Daniel; daughter Esther, who left her job as a Hebrew day school teacher to help out; and now granddaughter Sarah, who’s an agricultural marketing student at Cal Poly Pomona.

This sense of family permeates farmers’ markets. Chefs who frequent them feel it as they seek their own favorite holiday ingredients.

Andrew Kirschner of Wilshire Restaurant wants great carrots and prunes for tzimmes-stuffed capon, because “having worked with local farmers so long, it’s special to have their foods at my own family’s table.”

Pastry chef Zoe Nathan of Rustic Canyon Seasonal Restaurant and Wine Bar gets dried pluots and plums for rugulach, and Evan Kleiman of Angeli Caffe buys armloads of leeks (that we may vanquish our enemies) for Sephardic leek patties she learned about from a friend years ago.

For me, that special ingredient is the date. In Southern California, we have a unique opportunity to connect with this ancient crop, for the desert southeast of Los Angeles produces our country’s entire supply.

Only if you shop locally do you learn that the two-and-a-half-month harvest begins just after Labor Day, and that there are many more varieties than Deglet Noor and Medjool — in early September I also find 24-hour-old Barhi, Khadrawi, Amber, Precioso and Zahidi — and that you can enjoy them, as they do in the Middle East, in varying stages of ripeness, from golden, crunchy Khalal still on the stalk to melting Rutab and the familiar, chewy dried Tamar.

I’m always overcome by their biblicalness. So is date rancher Robert Lower of Flying Disc in Thermal, Calif.

“Many a time when I’m out in the palm, with a view to the east almost unobstructed by humanity, I’m transported to what it must have been like 5,000 years ago,” Lower says. Over the millennia, there have been a few improvements to the date, but pollination and how they grow are the same as they were back then. It’s hard to improve on perfection.”

Everett Davall, another producer, tells me, “We’re so lucky to have a desert in the United States.”

Where many of us would see an arid expanse, the date grower sees fecund possibility. Isn’t that what Ecclesiastes 3:13 is all about— seeing the good in toil, finding the blessings in the not so obvious?

I’m directed to this passage by Adina Rimmon, who works at the Santa Monica market with citrus and pomegranate grower Peter Schaner. For Rimmon, a member of Beth Jacob Congregation, the physical labor, communion with farmers and customers and intense seasonality bring her closer to God.

The equally devout Catholic Schaner agrees: “I’m completely dependent on God for my existence as a farmer. I can’t ever forget that connection.”

“Getting closer to our food source gives us opportunities to explore our relationship to our fellow man, God and ourselves and find deeper symbolic meaning in ritual foods,” said the appropriately named Rimmon (Hebrew for pomegranate). “Take the pomegranate. You could say the blessing and be done, or you could also think about the fruit’s other attributes — the tree’s thorny branches, the fruit’s thick skin — the challenges required to get to the treasure inside.”

And this is perhaps the richest of all the gifts I receive by shopping locally: life lessons from passionate farmers to help me reflect and do mitzvot — support small family farms, help protect agricultural space and close the circle. Judaism isn’t easy, especially at this time of year. Neither is farming.

Flame-Roasted Eggplant Spread With Lemon and Garlic

Use traditional black-purple globe eggplants or try purple-and-white Rosa Biancas with creamy white flesh and few seeds. Either way, choose firm, shiny eggplants that are heavy for their size and free of soft spots. Although a bit messy, roasting eggplant over an open flame adds sweet smokiness and keeps the flesh white.

2 large eggplants (about 1 pound each)
4 to 6 tablespoons canola or other mild cooking oil
1 scant teaspoon minced garlic
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Kosher or sea salt
Cucumber and tomato for garnish
Challah or pita crisps to serve

Place the whole eggplants directly on the burners of a gas stove turned to medium-high or close to a medium-high fire on a grill. Roast, turning often, until the skins blacken and flake and the eggplants collapse and are meltingly tender — 10 to 15 minutes. As the eggplants start to char, the skins will tear and release steam and juices. If the skin burns before the flesh is tender, lower the flame slightly.

Remove each eggplant to a plate. Use two large spoons or spatulas to manage this. While still hot, split them open flat like a book. Scoop the pulp into a sieve set over a bowl, scraping as much as possible from the skin and leaving any juices behind. If there are a lot of seeds, remove some, and pick out any black bits of skin. Drain for 10 minutes, discard the juices and place the pulp in a bowl.

Using a whisking motion, mash the pulp with a fork, adding the oil gradually until the mixture is light and fluffy. Stir in the garlic, lemon juice and salt to taste.

The mixture will be a pale gold. It can be refrigerated for up to one day before serving. Serve at room temperature garnished with cucumber and tomato and accompanied with challah.

Makes about two cups.

Pomegranate and Orange-Glazed Beets

24 small beets, 1 to 2 inches in diameter or 3 pounds larger beets, quartered
1 to 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher or sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup orange juice
1/3 cup pomegranate juice
1 tablespoon margarine or butter

Preheat oven to 400 F. Cut off the beet greens, leaving one inch of stem attached to beets, and reserve for another use. In a large baking dish, toss the beets with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Cover pan and roast beets until almost tender when pierced with a knife, about 30 minutes, shaking the pan once during cooking time. Uncover, shake the beets again, and roast uncovered until tender, about 15 minutes more.

When cool, peel the beets using a paring knife (skins should come off easily). The beets may be prepared one day ahead and refrigerated. Return them to room temperature to finish the dish.

Pour the orange and pomegranate juices into a large skillet set over medium-high heat, and cook until juices are reduced by half and slightly syrupy, about 10 minutes. Add the beets and a little salt and pepper.

Reduce the heat to medium, and cook the beets, frequently spooning the juices over them until the juices become a very thick syrup, six to seven minutes. Stir in the tablespoon of margarine or butter, reduce the heat as needed to keep the glaze from browning and stir constantly one to two minutes until the beets are richly coated and the juices are a thick glaze. Add salt and pepper as needed.

Makes six servings.

Slow-Roasted Seasonal Fruit

Use a mix of late summer and early fall fruits, such as Golden Delicious (or other tender, quick-cooking) apples, pears, figs, peaches, prune-plums, and concord grapes. If you prefer, you can use an off-dry red wine instead of the muscat dessert wine. Serve with honey cake.

3 pounds mixed fruits
1 cup concord or red grapes
1/4 cup honey
1/3 cup muscat wine

Preheat oven to 375 F. Halve fruit and remove pits or cores, and quarter apples and pears. Place fruit cut-side up in shallow baking pan. Scatter grapes on top.

Warm the honey and drizzle over fruit. Pour wine over all and roast, basting occasionally, until fruit is tender and juicy and edges are browned, about 45 minutes.

If desired, place under a hot broiler to further crisp the fruit. Serve warm or make this early in the day and serve at room temperature.

Makes eight servings.

Roasted Potatoes, Root Vegetables, Onions, and Garlic

ALTTEXT
This recipe can be multiplied easily but use a little less oil than the math would call for. A variety of small fingerling potatoes are lovely here because they can be roasted whole. Add red or yellow carrots to the mix for extra color.

2 pounds potatoes, scrubbed and left whole if less than 2 inches in diameter or halved or quartered
1 pound each carrots and parsnips, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 onions, cut into eighths
1 small head of garlic, cloves separated but unpeeled
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat oven to 400 F. In a large roasting pan(s), toss all ingredients together with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Roast uncovered until vegetables are tender and browned, one to one and one-half hours. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

Makes eight servings.

Sweet Dumpling Squash Stuffed With Honeyed Rice

Add a little or a lot of honey, depending on how sweet you would like this dish. The squashes can be baked a day ahead, filled in the morning and reheated just before serving.

8 sweet dumpling or other small, hard squashes, 8 to 10 ounces each
1 tablespoon oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 rib celery with leaves, chopped
1 cup long grain rice
1 cup each chicken stock and water or 2 cups water
1 to 3 tablespoons honey
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup currants or raisins, optional
Kosher salt

Preheat oven to 375 F. Place whole squashes on baking sheet and roast until tender, 45 to 60 minutes. Cut off tops about one inch down from crown of squashes to make lids. Use a spoon to scoop out and discard seeds and strings.
If the cavities are very small, scoop out some of the cooked meat and reserve. Squashes may be prepared to this point a day ahead and refrigerated.

In a medium pot over medium heat, sauté onion and celery with the oil, seasoning with a little salt, until translucent, five to seven minutes. Add rice to pot and cook, stirring frequently, until rice grains whiten, two to three minutes.

Stir in stock, any reserved cooked squash, half teaspoon salt, honey and currants. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover pot and cook rice until tender and all liquid is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

Add cinnamon and stir rice with a fork to fluff and allow steam to escape. Taste and add salt or additional cinnamon to taste.

Fill the cavities of each squash with rice mixture, mounding but not packing the rice. Use about a third of a cup for each squash. Put squash tops on (some of the rice will show at the sides), place on baking sheet and return to oven to heat through, 20 to 25 minutes. Squashes may be filled several hours ahead; allow rice mixture to cool first.

Makes eight servings.

Recipes adapted from “The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook: Seasonal Foods, Simple Recipes and Stories From the Market and Farm,” by Amelia Saltsman (Blenheim Press, 2007).

Amelia Saltsman, a Santa Monica-based writer and teacher, is an ardent supporter of local farming and the author of the award-winning “The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook: Seasonal Foods, Simple Recipes, and Stories from the Market and Farm.”

Photo: Fresh veg at the Santa Monica Farmers Market

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Fast meals to beat the Kol Nidre rush

Leave a Comment / Food, Holidays /

It’s a scramble every year, but Jews somehow manage to beat the clock getting dinner to the table on Yom Kippur eve — the most hurried meal on the holiday calendar.

It isn’t easy to conclude the evening meal with enough leeway to arrive at synagogue for the Kol Nidre service, which ushers in this most solemn holiday.
The challenge is finding the time to pull together a meal that is nourishing and light, exalted but not extravagant, yet effortless. It’s even more difficult when Yom Kippur lands in the middle of the workweek, as it does this year.

“One Yom Kippur I left the office early, raced home and hurled dinner on the table for my daughter and a couple of friends,” recalled Pamela Vassil, the director of marketing and communications at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. “I inhaled my food in order to arrive at my shul for the 6 p.m. service and get a seat up front. But I ate so quickly, everything sat in my esophagus. It never had a chance to digest. I spent the entire night worried that I’d get sick.”

Wendy Moss, a style and wardrobe consultant in Manhattan, said she used to invite other families who belong to her synagogue.

“But by the time I got to services, I was out of breath and couldn’t relax,” she said.

Moss now cooks only for her immediate family.

Reducing the rush is part of the pre-Yom Kippur experience. Some plan the menu the day after Rosh Hashanah. It’s advisable to select uncomplicated recipes requiring few steps. Plain fare is in line with the serious nature of this holiday.

The pre-fast menu requires special attention. For example, recipes should be low in salt to avoid causing undue thirst on Yom Kippur when drinking anything, including water, is forbidden.

“I do a lot of cooking and freezing in advance,” said Rita Paszamant, a travel agent in Little Silver, N.J. “Since my family expects the same menu every year, preparing for this meal is like falling off a log.”

As an appetizer, Paszamant offers a choice of chopped liver or gefilte fish, which she buys pre-made.

“The dessert is certainly store-bought, too,” she said. “I always serve cinnamon babka, which they all love.”

While purchasing prepared foods is convenient, it can have its down side with the long lines, short tempers, incorrect orders and high prices. Often it’s less stressful to make your family’s favorites at home. Nothing is more nurturing before fasting than the smell of chicken soup and baking apples wafting from the kitchen.

“I do all the cooking myself,” Moss said. “I find it better that way, especially if I plan ahead and stay organized.”

She roasts a chicken — it’s traditional and easy to make.

“I gave up on Cornish hens,” Moss said. “They have to be stuffed. It’s an extra step.”

She suggested that one place to cut corners is serving fresh fruit for dessert.
Hours before the sun sets on Yom Kippur eve, Paszamant defrosts the chicken soup and the potted beef she prepared days earlier. Before serving she adds finishing touches such as freshly chopped vegetables.

To save time, Paszamant sets the dining-room table the night before and washes pots and utensils before dinner time.

“Having a warming drawer has been a blessing,” she said, explaining that the feature in her oven maintains the temperature of hot foods without drying them out.

“My family knows we start eating at 5 p.m. on erev Yom Kippur,” she said.
As in most households, her kitchen clean-up is the final hurdle.

“Everyone helps clear the table, course by course,” Paszamant said.

Observant families refrain from performing any manual labor after sunset, when the holiday begins. Many Jews eat dinner extra early so they can quickly wrap leftovers and wash the dishes before leaving for synagogue.

“In past years, I’ve run out and left the dishes in the sink,” Moss said. “If at all possible, I recommend hiring help to clean up the kitchen. That’s the most important thing I’ve figured out.”

Guests have their own stress.

“I keep looking at my watch, wondering if we’ll get out on time,” Vassil said.
The resourceful find a comfortable solution to the dilemma.

“One year I went to a restaurant a block from my shul,” Vassil recalled. “At first I felt guilty about the decision, but I got over that when I saw people from my synagogue sitting at other tables.”

Now she makes a reservation for every Yom Kippur eve.

“I have a leisurely dinner, including a cup of coffee, something I never had time for when I prepared dinner at home,” Vassil said.

But Moss, like many, prefers a traditional home-cooked meal before starting the 24-hour fast. While she calls herself a perfectionist at heart, Moss has become more realistic.

“I keep the menu simple,” she said. “I don’t prepare anything elaborate. Entertaining in my usual style just got too crazy on Yom Kippur eve.”

“It’s liberating to know on this one night a year, you don’t have to prepare a fancy meal,” Vassil said. “The point is to eat without pressure, to arrive at shul in a peaceful state of mind, in time to get a good seat.”

The following menu can be prepared in 90 minutes. Three of the recipes can share the oven, maximizing time. Start with the squash, which takes the longest time, followed by the apples and the chicken. While those three items are baking, prepare the potatoes. All four dishes should be ready about the same time.
Better still, prepare the recipes a day or two ahead. They can be reheated in 15 minutes.

The recipes are low sodium in deference to the fast.

Maple Glazed Acorn Squash
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 75 minutes

No-stick, vegetable spray
4 small butternut squash
4 tablespoons pure maple syrup, preferably Grade A

Preheat oven to 350 F. Coat a 10-by-15-inch ovenproof pan with no-stick spray.
Cut squash in half lengthwise, parallel to its ridges. With a spoon, scrape out pits and fibers; discard. Place the eight halves in the prepared baking pan.
Drizzle each half with maple syrup.

Bake for 75 minutes, or until edges brown and flesh is soft when pierced with a fork. Serve immediately.
Makes eight servings.

Lemon Chicken With Dijon Mustard
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 45-50 minutes

4 chicken breasts (8 halves), with bones and skin
Juice from 2 fresh lemons
1 1/2 cups white wine
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
No-stick vegetable spray
Disposable broiler pans, optional
Salt to taste, optional
Paprika for coloring, optional

Rinse chicken breasts under cold water. Pat dry with paper towels.

In a large bowl, whisk together lemon juice, white wine and mustard until well incorporated. Place chicken in bowl and coat evenly with lemon juice mixture; reserve.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Coat a roasting pan with a rack with no-stick spray. (For a fast clean up, use disposable broiler pans, coating them with no-stick spray.)
Remove chicken from lemon juice mixture and shake off liquid. Lightly salt and sprinkle with paprika, if desired.

Place chicken skin side down on prepared pan. Bake for 15 minutes and turn over breasts. Continue baking for 30 minutes or until juices from the thickest part of the breasts run clean when pierced with a knife. Serve immediately.

Makes eight servings.

Sliced Red Potatoes and Onions
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 35 minutes

8 red “A” potatoes, 1/4 to 1/2 pound each
2 large onions
6 tablespoons olive oil, or more, if needed
2 14 1/2-ounce cans beef broth (low sodium, if desired)

Wash potatoes and pat dry with paper towels. Keeping skins on, cut potatoes into slices about 1/8-inch thick. Slice onions thin.

Divide olive oil between two large skillets and heat briefly over medium flame.

Place half the potatoes and onions in each skillet. Sauté until onions turn golden and potatoes soften slightly, about 15 minutes. (If they brown too quickly, turn down flame. Some skins may loosen from potatoes.)

Remove pans from flame. Pour one can of beef broth into each pan. Return pans to flame and cover. Simmer until potatoes are cooked through, about 20 minutes.

Serve immediately.

Makes eight servings.

Cranberry Baked Apples
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 60 minutes

No-stick, vegetable spray
8 small baking apples (Cortland, Gala, Fuji or any apple recommended for baking — except Granny Smith
2 cups cranberry juice, or more if needed
2/3 cup golden raisins

Preheat oven to 350 F. Coat a 9-by-13-inch ovenproof casserole with no-stick spray.

Rinse apples under cold water and dry with paper towels. Core apples with a knife by cutting a wide circle around their stems. Continue to cut in a circular motion. In a funnel shape, the opening will narrow the deeper you go. Remove the seeds and as much core as possible.

Place apples in prepared pan. Pour cranberry juice over the apples. Juice should be about 1/4-inch deep in bottom of pan. Add more juice, if needed.

Bake apples for 55 minutes, basting with pan juice occasionally. (If juice dries up, add more to keep apples in a juice bath.)

Remove pan from oven and fill apple cavities with raisins. Baste with pan juice. Continue baking for five minutes. Apples should be soft but not falling apart. Serve immediately or cool to room temperature.

Makes eight servings.

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Cancer survivor brings art, courage to other patients

Leave a Comment / L.A. Woman /

Judi Kaufman has trouble remembering numbers. So the two-time brain cancer survivor, who is now living with her third tumor, assigns colors to numbers to help keep them straight.

The system is simple and intuitive: zero is white, 13 is black. Eighteen — chai — is red.

“Red is the color of courage,” said Kaufman, 64. “Life takes courage.”

If Kaufman’s courage ever falters, few could tell from her brisk schedule of activities. She’s a member of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) Board of Governors. A one-time recipe tester for Bon Appétit magazine, she holds kosher cooking classes for adults and children. And she gives the bulk of her time and energy to Art of the Brain, a nonprofit she founded in 2000 to help fellow brain cancer patients navigate the disease’s often-profound physical and mental effects — through art.

“People who have brain cancer oftentimes turn to art to feel better,” Kaufman said at her Beverly Hills home on a recent afternoon. “They learn to stop judging their work. Any kind of art can help, whether it’s music, writing, filmmaking, painting. We are always trying to help patients find their own artistic talent.”

Kaufman began writing poetry to counter feelings of despair following her diagnosis in 1997. Since then, she has composed enough material for four books. Proceeds from the sale of her books help fund Art of the Brain, which through galas and partnership events has so far raised more than $3 million for cancer research at UCLA.

As the organization gears up for its ninth annual fundraising gala at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall on Oct. 4, Kaufman hopes Art of the Brain can reach out to more cancer patients in need of comfort and hope.

“Brain cancer is the most lonely cancer,” she said. “It affects the way you act and feel. You think, ‘Should I go out and be seen like this, or stay inside?’ It’s easy to just stay inside.”

That’s a decision Kaufman still wrestles with. She sometimes turns down lunch dates with friends because her speech, which was damaged by her two surgeries, often comes out slurred and normal conversation takes as much energy as “running around the block.”

But Kaufman said her personal struggles are what make other people with brain cancer — many of them lonely and misunderstood — able to relate to her.

“Unless you walk this trip, you don’t really know what people are going through,” she said. “You don’t have much left after brain cancer. I felt I was only half a wife, half a woman. One of the premises of Art of the Brain is to restore peoples’ self-esteem.”

The organization is built on a system of 20 volunteer “illness mentors” who visit with cancer patients and their families and offer both physical and emotional support. These volunteers, affectionately called “Brain Buddies,” aid with everything from meal preparation to explaining the nuances of the disease. They also help patients cope with anger and depression by encouraging them to pick up, for example, a paintbrush or a pen.

When Kaufman first started sketching out poems in 1997, she found she had a lot to say that she wasn’t able to tell family members or friends.

“I tried not to burden other people with my depression, so it came out in my writing,” she recalled. “That was how I survived. I learned to take layers off — to become more truthful. I lost all my inhibitions.”

Kaufman’s poetry deals with cancer and sex, social acceptance and forced limitations. Her humor, which she freely deems “cockeyed,” can be jarring, as when she compares her tumor to an unconventional pregnancy. Her sadness and strength are palpable in her 2007 book “Do You Want Your Brain to Hurt Now or Later?” as she dwells on the value of flaws:

Perfection is not about real human beings.
Perfection is a cartoon, without the humor.
Perfection cuts away the core of caring.
Perfection is a hidden illness.

Writing was a catharsis for Kaufman, whose initial misdiagnosis almost cost her her life.

For two years, Kaufman had chalked up her recurrent headaches to menopause. When the headaches eventually turned to seizures, her husband, Roy, rushed her to the emergency room. Doctors there told her she’d had a stroke and sent her home with no medication.

“Seizures are often a symptom of strokes; that’s why brain cancer is often misdiagnosed as a stroke,” she said. “They told me, ‘Go home, rest.’ But I still felt that something was wrong.”

Kaufman went to UCLA’s Neuro-Oncology department for a second opinion, where she was properly diagnosed and booked for emergency brain surgery.

“They said, ‘The good news is you didn’t have a stroke. The bad news is you have a brain tumor the size of a golf ball,'” she recalled.

After her surgery, Kaufman sought a meaningful way to thank Dr. Timothy Cloughesy, director of the UCLA Neuro-Oncology Program. She wanted to create a support system for other brain cancer survivors, stripped of their professional skills, deprived of basic mental functions and plunged into an uncertain new lifestyle marked by fear and self-doubt.

Kaufman and Cloughesy founded Art of the Brain based on Cloughesy’s observation that the creative process had helped many of his patients find release and hope on the often-steep hike to recovery.

“We want to give people back a sense of purpose in life,” said Kaufman, who dealt with her own feelings of loss after having to abandon a successful career as an entrepreneur and business owner.

A Pasadena native, Kaufman got her degree in home economics from CSUN, and went on to work for the Southern California Gas Company giving home cooking demonstrations. She tested recipes for the newly founded Bon Appétit magazine in the early 1970s, and in 1977 — after a “wild vision” — established a mail-order confection company Grand Chocolate Pizza in her own kitchen.

After she and her husband adopted and raised two daughters — Jennifer and Suzy — Kaufman gave a series of cooking classes she called “Building Bridges by Breaking Bread,” based on the notion that sharing food fosters friendships.

Perhaps most devastating to Kaufman, when her brain cancer returned in 2003, was being deprived of her ability to cook.

Kaufman couldn’t speak or walk after her second surgery. She lost her senses of taste and smell for two years. She lost her ability to comprehend numbers permanently.

“I wasn’t able to cook because I couldn’t measure,” she said. “But then I said, ‘Oh, forget the measuring.’ Now, I just feel the art of it.”

Recently, Kaufman began giving cooking classes again, and can often be found in her stainless steel kitchen baking mandelbrot. She calls the jagged scar on her scalp, usually hidden beneath a heap of honey-blonde hair, “my badge of courage.”

Having cancer has emboldened Kaufman in other ways, too — after her first surgery in 1999, she traveled to Israel for the first time.

“I wanted to learn more about my roots,” said the 30-year AJC member, who is active on both the Los Angeles chapter board and the national Board of Governors. “When I think about hope, which can be a little shaky, I go to the Torah to learn lessons about motherhood, belief, family struggles, life and death.”

Kaufman’s tumor is inoperable, and she doesn’t know how much time she has left. But in late August, she got to experience a milestone she didn’t expect: becoming a grandmother.

“I never thought I’d live to see this,” she said of her grandson, Garrett. “I feel like I’m in God’s hands right now. I have been reborn twice, after my first and second surgeries. Now there is a third new life — my grandchild. What more could I ask for?”

To learn more about the cooking classes, call Judi Kaufman at (310) 858-7787. Kaufman’s poetry books can be found online. Art of the Brain’s ninth annual gala takes place Oct. 4, 6:30 p.m. at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall. For more information, call (310) 825-5074 or visit Cancer survivor brings art, courage to other patients Read More »