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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

February 4, 2009

Christian-Jewish coalition saves Jewish schools in former Soviet Union

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How important are Christian-Jewish relations? I’d definitely say it beats have my coreligionists blame my ancestors’ coreligionists for killing their Messiah and stealing their money. Christian-Jewish coalitions are often spoken of in stories about support for Israel, sometimes involving massive rallies or being connected to iconoclastic ministers like the Rev. John Hagee. Today, one such organization is joining with the Israeli government to help save World ORT schools in the former Soviet Union.

From JTA:

The 16 ORT schools face being absorbed into the public education system, and losing their Jewish character, following the Jewish Agency for Israel’s decision to stop funding the program which provides for Jewish studies, teachers wages and security. The program also funded hot meals and school buses.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the Israeli Ministry of Education made the $600,000 pledge in response to a frantic search for funding, led by the ORT representative in Russia, Avi Ganon. He tried to find ways to keep the schools Jewish, despite cuts in funding by the Ministry of Education and, more recently, the Jewish Agency.

However the long term future of ORT’s network of schools in the former Soviet Union is not yet secured.

“The Fellowship feels privileged to be able to help; but this is only a band-aid and there’s no solution yet to the fundamental issue,” said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the IFCJ. “The fundamental issue is that there is no Jewish organization that is willing or capable of assuming responsibility for the welfare of Jewish children and their future in the Former Soviet Union.”

Christian-Jewish coalition saves Jewish schools in former Soviet Union Read More »

In Search of a Jewish Environmentalism for the Family

Leave a Comment / Green Living /

I like to think of myself as an ecoconscious kinda gal. My husband, Julian, and I make an effort to tread lightly on this earth. We bring our own bags to the supermarket, we buy local, organic food whenever possible and we try to choose products with the least amount of packaging.

While greening our lives has been something of a no-brainer, we started to get serious about it once I became pregnant. Suddenly I saw toxins everywhere, and the sad state of our planet became a dire thing. The future was no longer this nebulous thing now that I had a little person in my charge.

I hope to give my 14-month-old, Leon, the world — quite literally — so we began to try harder. I phased out my chemical-laden cleansers and started making my own, usually a combination of vinegar, water and maybe some lemon or baking soda. Out went our dish soap and shampoo; in came the nontoxic biodegradable stuff. Paper towels and napkins have been traded in for cloth versions.

Making ecologically sound choices has evolved into a lifestyle for us. And though it isn’t always the easy choice — I long for fewer dirty rags and a sparkling, bleached-out bathtub — it’s what we’re most comfortable with.

As Julian and I feel our way through our second year as parents, the “green” portion of my household has come readily, though we’re still forging our family’s Jewish identity. I’ve started to wonder if our ecosensibilities could be a part of the equation. Jewish environmental activism has become de rigueur as eco-Jewish organizations, initiatives and conferences have become commonplace. Do the same principles of eco-Judaism apply within the walls of my home? And does it even matter?

“There’s nothing in the Torah that says we should be using vinegar instead of harsh chemicals,” said Liore Milgrom-Elcott, project manager at the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life. “But there is a general sense that we are stewards of the planet.”

“One of the first things in Genesis, when God gives us the world, is it’s not just a free-for-all; we need to make sure that it’s cared for properly,” she said. “That’s a permanent obligation that can extend to any environmental consideration.”

Environmental considerations apply to the home, too.

“When the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish home became the new temple,” Milgrom-Elcott said. “All of our rituals replicated what used to happen in the Temple. If you are a person who cares about the earth, the simple, logical, Jewish step is that your home should represent these values.”

Everyone I spoke with regarding the Jewish-ecological connection mentioned the Jewish obligation toward tikkun olam, Hebrew for “repairing the world.” Although the tenet can (and should) be extended to just about any social justice issue, Milgrom-Elcott points out that it can (and should) be taken literally, too.

“There’s no question that we’ve damaged our world,” she said.

Though I found Milgrom-Elcott’s theories inspiring, I had trepidations about my motivations. Of course I wanted a healthier planet for all future generations — but my foremost concern is for my son.

“We all get inspired by different things,” said Barbara Lerman-Golomb, the director of community relations at the environmental and food education nonprofit, Hazon. “You’re not just taking care of your son but you’re taking care of others so there will be a planet there.”

Lerman-Golomb assured me there’s nothing selfish about my efforts close to home.

“It’s a social justice issue because of the fact that our lifestyle, how we live, impacts other people — not just locally but globally,” she said.

“Our universal identity is part of our Jewish identity,” said Ellen Bernstein, a writer, teacher and founder of Shomrei Adamah, the first national Jewish environmental organization. “Being Jewish also means being part of the greater world. It means being a blessing to the world. That universality is a very important part of being Jewish.”

I loved how Bernstein viewed her humanity as a key element of her Jewish identity rather than the other way around. But I wasn’t entirely convinced about the eco connection until I began to ponder the whole “light onto nations” thing.

Lerman-Golomb told me how she raised her two daughters, ages 18 and 21, in a vegetarian, ecoconscious home.

“I would send my kids off to school with lunchboxes with no waste in them,” she said, recalling how another mom commented on how she couldn’t handle the thought of daily Thermos washing. Eventually, Lerman-Golomb said, the mother traded in juice boxes for reusable containers, too.

That got me thinking that no matter what Julian, Leon and I do — whether it’s renting bikes (and not cars) on vacation or shlepping aluminum water bottles around the city, we have the opportunity as humans, and Jews, to set an example.

What it boils down to, I think, is intent. I’m still not sure how much we’ll entwine our Judaism and environmentalism, but I like that it’s an option.

“When you’re doing it [being ecologically sound] as part of the Jewish community, it spreads,” Milgrom-Elcott said. “If you’re having someone over for Shabbat dinner, and you’re serving food that’s local and seasonal, chances are it will come up in conversation.”

In Search of a Jewish Environmentalism for the Family Read More »

Farming the Land, Torah in Hand

Leave a Comment / Green Living /

Naf Hanau lives in the Bronx, an odd choice for someone who calls himself a Jewish farmer.

But Hanau, 23, is in the heart of New York City only for horticultural school, to learn skills he’ll put into practice when he and his girlfriend, 27-year-old Anna Stevenson, buy land near Rochester, N.Y., and start their farm.

“Five years from now I see myself farming with Anna,” Hanau said. “Growing food, growing vegetables, feeding people real food and making a living from that. Supporting a family without being a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher or an accountant.”

Stevenson is also preparing for their future, working as the farm manager at the Adamah Jewish environmental program at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Conn. She is in charge of a four-acre field where she and the Adamah fellows, young Jews on three-month internships, grow pesticide-free fruits and vegetables that they provide to the retreat center, make into pickles and sell through a community-supported agriculture agreement. Through the agreement, people buy weekly boxes of fresh produce directly from local farmers.

Stevenson, too, introduces herself as a Jewish farmer, even though she thinks the title is “kind of gimmicky.” But it describes what she does quite accurately. She hoes, plants, weeds and harvests, but she also teaches, studies Jewish texts and rests on Shabbat.

“You work your butt off for six days and you really need Shabbat,” she said. “You appreciate Shabbat physically as well as emotionally as well as spiritually.”

Hanau and Stevenson are part of a small but growing number of young activists in the new Jewish food movement who are turning to the land as a way of expressing their Jewish values. They are not farmers who just happen to be Jews. They are Jewish farmers, working the land according to agricultural laws set down in the Talmud, teaching their peers and trying to promote the importance of growing one’s own food within the greater Jewish community.

They leave a corner of their field unharvested for the poor, in accordance with the Mishnaic tractate Pe’ah, or corner. They don’t plant wheat and barley together, a teaching from tractate Kilayim, or holding back. They slaughter goats and chickens they raise themselves, practicing “tzar ba’alei hayim,” the commandment to show kindness to domestic animals. They say a bracha, a blessing, before they eat. Some keep kosher, some do not, but all are committed to some kind of Jewish dietary practice.

Unlike the Labor Zionist youth of the 1960s and ’70s, who learned farming so they could move to Israel and join kibbutzim, today’s young Jewish activists say they can farm any land Jewishly. It doesn’t have to be Israel.

Even their sources of inspiration are different. Their parents and grandparents looked to the 19th century, reading Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and Labor Zionist thinker Dov Ber Borochov, while this new generation casts its gaze farther back to Torah, Talmud and the ancient Israelites.

“I very much identify as a biblical Jew,” said Aitan Mizrahi, 31, who raises goats for milk and meat at the Isabella Freedman center.

Mizrahi, who is not traditionally observant, lets his beard grow to symbolize his connection to Judaism.

“It reminds me of who my ancestors were,” he says, “and how they would walk the hills of Judea with their goats and sheep and really have a deep relationship to the land, an understanding of how that land connected them to Hashem, the holy spirit of God.”

For most North American Jews who made aliyah to kibbutzim 30 years ago, the draw was Israel, not farming.

“The people I knew in Habonim were hippies, but we were Jewish hippies,” said 51-year-old Dani Livney, who immigrated to Israel in 1980 and joined Kibbutz Gezer, where he still manages its olive grove. “No one ever said, ‘let’s start a farm in America.’ Farming wasn’t the major focus. Israel, Zionism and kibbutz were the focus.”

Many of this new generation of Jewish farmers have connections to Israel, either through family or past trips. But it doesn’t pull them the way it pulled their parents.

Tali Weinberg, 31, spent the last few years farming for a seed company on Salt Spring Island, just off the coast of British Columbia. Her parents met in the late 1960s on the Israeli kibbutz where her father grew up. Her grandparents were members of Labor Zionist youth groups in 1930s-era Poland.

Whereas her parents and grandparents believed they were helping a struggling new country, Weinberg grew up with an Israel that seemed strong and independent.

“I feel a call to be connected to the land, like my grandparents, but I don’t feel it has to be in the land of Israel,” she said. “What’s more critical is that we connect, period. It’s less about where we’re going to do it and more that we have to do it because of the direction the food system is moving in.”

The few young North American Jews who are actually working full time as farmers are part of a much larger group of environmental and food activists who come out of a growing number of new Jewish farm-education initiatives such as Adamah; the Philadelphia-based Jewish Farm School; Kayam Farm near Baltimore; the Teva Learning Center, a program of Surprise Lake Camp in Cold Spring, N.Y.; and Hazon, an advocacy organization that promotes sustainable environmental practices and sponsors an annual Jewish food conference.

At December’s conference, Kayam director Jakir Manela, 27, presented the Talmud’s teachings on agriculture to a roomful of young activists.

“One-sixth of the Talmud deals with agriculture,” he pointed out, adding that while most of those laws are specific to Israel, others can be applied anywhere.

The Mishnah contains diagrams of how to plant various species in the same field, which Kayam used to pattern its own Jewish Educational Garden. In late February, Kayam is sponsoring a weekend study of Seder Zera’im, the tractate devoted to agricultural law, as part of the group’s ongoing efforts to root its farm practice in Jewish values.

“It’s not just important as Jews that we eat local, but that we recognize that we have a particular tradition about it,” he said.

The goal of the Jewish farm-based schools is not to churn out farmers but to make gardening and farming normative practice within the wider Jewish community. The leaders of these programs say they look forward to the day when every Jewish community center, synagogue and day school will have its own garden. These efforts will be spearheaded by what they hope will soon be 180 young Jews graduating each year from the Jewish farm school programs.

Through farming, these farm school alumni grew closer to their Judaism.

“Before I did the Adamah program, I would say I was a farmer first who happened to be a Jew,” Weinberg says. “Then I learned about the true nature of our people, of our roots, of our tribal identity in the land of Israel 2,000 years ago. I’ve not only become more of a Jewish farmer, I understand more of what it means to be a Jew.”

The Jewish philanthropic community is starting to take notice.

Since 2005, the Jewish Farm School has run workshops on urban sustainability in Philadelphia, led organic gardening programs at Surprise Lake Camp and planted rooftop gardens for synagogues in New York City. In June, with grants from the Foundation for Jewish Camping and the Jim Joseph Foundation, the school’s farming program will take up permanent residence in Putnam Valley, N.Y., sharing the site with a new eco-Jewish summer camp.

Across the board, Jewish environmental and farm-education initiatives are enjoying similar increased interest.

“Today we are being supported by the Jewish community,” said Simcha Schwartz, 30, who co-founded the Jewish Farm School with a $2,000 Hazon grant.

Schwartz in five or six years hopes to establish an agriculturally based Jewish high school at the new site.

“We don’t all need to be farmers,” he said. “To have farming be a little part of every Jewish person’s life, that’s our goal.”

Farming the Land, Torah in Hand Read More »

Librarians worry about Jewish Community Library takeover

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The potential merger between the the Jewish Community Library at American Jewish University, which I reported on in last week’s Jewish Journal (” title=”Association of Jewish Libraries”>Association of Jewish Libraries. She wrote to me after the story was published:

My only disappointment is that you interviewed 3 of us (Suzi, Ellen, and myself – library professionals in the community and Suzi as our national president of the Association of Jewish Libraries) – but you didn’t reference it. I was not looking for name inclusion but rather a simple statement that the national and local professional library communities were not in favor of the merger – so the community will know that JCLLA has our support.

It’s a point well taken, and I learned a lot about libraries from talking to these women. Some of what I learned:
• Librarians get regular notices of new publications from which they order their books. Librarians at Jewish libraries get different and more specific catalogs, which is why their collection can be more complete than say a public library’s Jewish collection.
• The County Library system has cultural and ethnic collections at each branch. The Culver City Branch of the Los Angeles County Library houses the Jewish collection.
• Libraries are generally most successful when they are a convenient stop in a person’s daily agenda. Picking up a book, and especially returning books, has to fit in as stops on other errands. That is why some librarians fear that the AJU, on a hilltop campus off Mullholland, might not work for a community library, even though it is geographically a midpoint between Valley and City Jewish communities.

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The Last Straw in Venezuela?

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

On Shabbat morning, Jan. 31, Caracas Jews, already rattled by increasing government-sponsored anti-Israel campaigning, awoke to yet another manifestation of hostility. Only this time it was worse.

Overnight, 15 heavily armed men stormed into Caracas’ principal synagogue, Mariperez, breaking through its electric security barrier. At gunpoint, they tied and muzzled two security guards. Then they pilfered offices, desecrated the Torah scrolls and ritual items and threw them all to the ground. After five hours, the attackers fled, shooting in the air and shouting anti-Semitic slurs, leaving their parting message of hate graffittied across the walls: “Out Jews,” “Damned Jews,” “Murderers,” “Death.”

The Jewish community in Venezuela, now estimated between 8,000 and 10,000, has been living under increasing tension, grappling with conflicting messages from the government. Their lives as Jews have been a dizzying ride of fear, reassurance, panic and disbelief. But the boldness and ferocity of the Caracas attack seems to have convinced at least some of them that it is time to go. 

Before President Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, the Jewish community enjoyed a solid and stable relationship with the Venezuelan government and people for many generations. Since then, the relationship has been strained over a series of disturbing incidents, such as Chávez’s deepening relationship with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, two raids in 2004 and 2007 of a Jewish day school and community center by armed soldiers allegedly in search of weapons and comments in the media about “the killers of Christ” in connection with amassed wealth. This year, however, after the war broke out in Gaza, government rhetoric ratcheted up even further, with government-sponsored anti-Israel rallies, regular anti-Semitic on-air readings and writings in government-controlled media, followed by the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador and the breaking of relations with Israel.

While President Chávez overtly assails Israel about its policies, he has issued many reassurances to local Jewish community leaders over time. This time was no exception. In a statement on Monday, Feb. 2, Chávez rejected any connection between his government and the synagogue attackers.

“We condemn the actions against the Caracas synagogue,” Chávez said. “ Violence must be condemned no matter where it comes from, and we will combat it no matter where it comes from.”

The community remains skeptical. Chávez is largely viewed as promoting and inciting anti-Semitism in a country that had otherwise never been anti-Semitic.  In a videotaped news report, Abraham Levi, President of the Confederación de Asociaciones Israelitas de Venezuela (CAIV), an umbrella organization for Jewish organizations, denounced the government’s “anti-Jewish posture, originating with the war in the Middle East between Israel and Hamas … inciting the people.”

Internationally, Jewish organizations all point to an inflammatory media, blurring the lines between anti-Israel and anti-Semitism, ranging from calls for a boycott of Jewish companies whose owners support Israel, to overt demonization of Israel and the Jewish community.

In his condemnation of Israel, for example, Chávez has called upon the local Jewish community to denounce the actions of the Israeli government.

“We have a strong Palestinian community here that we love, and a Jewish community that we love.” Chávez urged Jewish community leaders to speak out against the war in Gaza.

In response to accusations of inciting anti-Semitism and his responsibility for the profanation of the synagogue, Chávez said, “It is far from my government to compel acts of violence…. One has to ask oneself, who benefits? Not the government, not the people, not the revolution.” Then Chávez went on to make a veiled reference to his political opponents, as if they were behind the attack.  “It is certain sectors of the oligarchy that are seeking to darken these bright days,” he said, “seeking to create a scandal right before the Feb. 15 elections.”

On Feb. 15, Venezuelans will go to the polls in a special election to decide whether Chávez can run for office indefinitely. If the referendum passes, many Jews believe Chávez will cement his hold on power.

The Caracas attack directly threatened the Jewish community, and their tone now is distinctly different than it had been before Jan. 31, when they seemed reluctant to point fingers at the government for the rising anti-Semitism. Yet the community has been facing a string of incidents, all leading to the same irrevocable conclusion.  Approximately one month ago, the Hebraica, a large Jewish community center and school, was raided by the police. A few weeks ago, a rabbi was beaten on the street while taking a walk on Shabbat. Two weeks ago, on Jan. 20, services at the same synagogue, Mariperez, had to be suspended due to obscene graffiti. The synagogue did not feel it could guarantee the safety of its congregants. This time, services again were canceled. 

Elías Farache, president of the Asociación Israelita de Venezuela, said that attendance had been down due to suspects seen filming congregants and the synagogue’s grounds.

“We feel threatened, terrified and unprotected,” Farache said. “We are citizens and have been for several generations. It is incumbent upon the government to guarantee our permanence here, our right to worship and our lives.”

Meanwhile, community members remain at a loss as to how to react to these hostilities. Some are considering leaving their country for good, while others re-assert confidence in their safety in Caracas. One local synagogue member, comforted by Chávez’s statement, told me by phone, “Venezuelans are not anti-Semitic and never have been. There is a clear distinction between an anti-Semitic posture and an anti-Israel posture.”

Another recalled the community’s deep roots in the country and discussed emigration in the context of exile: “Jews in Venezuela date back to the days of Simon Bolivar … and as Venezuelans, have lived through much. Governments come and go, and this will not last.”

No one had enough confidence in their safety to allow their name to be used. 

“Of course it seems to all of us that this was carried out by a parapolice group, and it reeks of government,” said one synagogue member. “Chávez’s response, blaming the oligarchy, makes him even more suspect, since it is evidence that he is not seeking the responsible ones, but a scapegoat.” In response to questions about the future, this synagogue member added, “The result of the referendum will define our future here…. Of course we are considering Plan B … perhaps Colombia, perhaps Israel.”

Julie Drucker, a former Venezuela resident, writes about Venezuelan Jewry for The Journal. She can be reached at {encode=”juliedrucker@yahoo.com” title=”juliedrucker@yahoo.com”}.

The Last Straw in Venezuela? Read More »

One Year Later, Gold’s Changes Face Kudos, Backlash

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People are starting to get the message that The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles isn’t going to be their grandparents’ umbrella organization, a place that year-in-year-out supplies office space and significant support to blue-blood agencies without being selective or soliciting competition for funds.

Change has been much more than a buzzword in the 13 months since Stanley Gold, president of the investment company Shamrock Holdings, took over as the Federation’s volunteer chairman with the mission to turn the 98-year-old institution upside down and “make it relevant.”

The Federation’s internal government has been re-drawn, and the board now is less than a third the size of the old 133-member parliament. Beneficiary agencies like Jewish Family Service and the Bureau of Jewish Education now receive funding for specific programs instead of their entire operation and must shoulder more of their own expenses, including part of, and eventually all of, their rent. And, in the latest and perhaps more significant sign of change, the Federation’s longtime president, John Fishel, announced last week that he will step down at the end of 2009.

Yet, when Gold was asked to evaluate his own performance in mid-December, he said: “It’s a B, B-minus. If I told you I’ve knocked the cover off the ball, you wouldn’t believe it, and no else would either.”

Gold has brought in big-ticket board members like Westfield’s Peter Lowy and former Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing and has brought young, new leaders to the table. The Federation also increased its annual campaign by about $500,000, or 1 percent, in a very tough economic year. But 2009 is expected to be even more challenging than 2008, and Gold, who a year ago spoke of not only remodeling The Federation but changing the culture, said much more remains to be done in his remaining 11 months as board chair.

But the question some are asking — inevitable in a city as schizophrenic as Los Angeles with its Jewish community that is both diverse and opinionated — is whether Gold’s overhaul of The Federation will be good for the Jews.

Many believe it will be. Some even wish change would happen more rapidly.

“Everybody benefited from the status quo — except for the community,” said Jay Sanderson, CEO of JTN Productions and a former Federation board member. “Most Jewish organizations in this community are completely overstaffed. They are enormous for what they do. There are tired organizations that don’t have a lot of vision and are spending a tremendous amount of money doing the same old, same old.”

“I like what Stanley Gold’s intention is. It just hasn’t gone far enough in The Federation yet, and hasn’t gone far enough in the community,” Sanderson continued. “That isn’t because of Stanley. The pushback is just ridiculous. Many institutions are functioning like they did in the ’50s. There is not a lot of vision in the community, and most of these organizations spend more money on staff and raising money then they do on what their mission is.”

But others — and not just the agency heads that have lost the guarantee of Federation support — have sounded a voice of caution.

“The dimension that is missing, I believe, and was missing before and has not been filled, is community building,” said Gerald Bubis, founding director of the Irwin Daniels School of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

“The big error of most federations in the country during recent times has been devoting more and more of [their] resources to generating funding from major givers. When that collapses, the model breaks down because so many others view themselves as being either disenfranchised or ignored or seen as unimportant.”

Bubis, one of the many individuals whose opinion Gold has sought, gave Gold “high marks for trying to do something radically different, which was needed in the system and is needed in the system.” But, he feels only “lip service” is being given to the issue of community building, a duty that has long proved vexing in Los Angeles.

And then there is the frustration being expressed by those who fear The Federation is preparing to ditch agencies that have served the community for decades in favor of innovative new organizations, particularly those that may be sexier for donors than, say, maintaining an old cemetery or supporting indigent Holocaust survivors.

In multiple interviews with leaders from various Federation agencies — there are 20 locally — many expressed worries about The Federation’s vision for the community.

“It began as a federation of agencies,” said Gil Graff, executive director of the Bureau of Jewish Education. “I would hope that part of its thinking about what it means to be a federation would be a renewal of interest, a continuity of interest, in being closely allied with agencies that helped create The Federation.”

Until 1990, the bureau was a wholly owned branch of The Federation; last year The Federation provided almost two-thirds of the bureau’s $3.8 million budget. Two years ago, in adopting a new strategic plan, the bureau determined it would need to do more of its own fundraising. That effort has intensified during the past year, because The Federation has raised the price for staying in its headquarters at 6505 Wilshire Blvd.

“We won’t take kids on an educational program, or we won’t have a teacher workshop or won’t have scholarship support for kids — we don’t want to do that because the rent is going up,” Graff said. “So we will have to raise more funds to make up for that, because the bureau is not about paying rent, but giving kids a Jewish education.”

Graff and other agency leaders also are worried about The Federation’s new method for distributing funds to community organizations.

This year, The Federation has ignited competition among the agencies for dollars by funding specific programs rather than organizations. The stated goal is to encourage agencies to improve efficiency — implying that to date they’ve been inefficient — and to ensure that the best programs in the community are being supported, not simply programs that always have been funded.

“I realize more funders want to target their money in a way that feels like they are getting more bang for their buck and they are able to direct resources to particular priority areas. It is just a tough economic time to be doing that,” said Paul Castro, executive director and CEO of Jewish Family Service (JFS). “As an agency head, our greatest challenge is to raise general operating support.”

JFS has been particularly hard hit by the economic downturn. Demand for services has skyrocketed while their biggest source of revenue, the state government, has slashed support. The Federation has stepped up recently to help JFS — with a $50,000 grant for its community food bank and $100,000 for a central intake program for people in need — but JFS anticipates further reductions in government support this year and has already laid off staff and cut services.

“We certainly are not going to raise enough money to supplant the cuts from government. When they are $500,000, $600,000, $700,000 a year, it’s inevitable. What we can do is focus resources to help our clients transition out of programs in these times,” Castro said. “Agencies like us can only help the fall. We can’t prevent it. We need to, together, begin to look at the most important priorities for the community.”

Like JFS, most Federation agencies receive the bulk of their funding from third-party sources: either government organizations or donors or both. But now that they have less to count on from The Federation — based on the fact that their funding remained flat for this year even as they’re being asked to pay The Federation 10 percent of the cost of their rental space — agencies are increasing their own fundraising efforts.

Rent at the Wilshire address will continue to increase, as well — agencies will pay 25 percent of the market rate to remain in the building in 2009, 50 percent in 2010 and 75 percent in 2011. Both Federation officials and agency leaders expect that some of the organizations will look for cheaper rent in other parts of town. It’s unclear what that would mean for the future of 6505 Wilshire Blvd. It’s also unclear how that might affect the integrated sense of community that the current setup reflects.

“Everyone is looking elsewhere. It’s a dollars-and-cents approach,” said an agency president who asked not to be identified.

Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of American Jewish University who spent two years as the president of JFS and currently serves on The Federation’s board and as co-chair of its committee on the vulnerable, said he is troubled that plans put into place months before the collapse of the U.S. economy haven’t been reconsidered in light of hard times.

“The stock market has lost 40 percent of its value and people’s retirement funds are shot to pieces and people have lost jobs, and the state is in really bad shape,” Dorff said, not mentioning that agency funding from individual donors has declined, too. “Given the downturn and the fact this means there is even greater need now, those things need to be taken into account by Federation regarding whether it hurts those agencies further to take away their rent subventions.”

Dorff said he had hoped that the board would reconsider reducing the rent subventions this year, but what members decided to do was to forgo passing on any rent increases.

Gold said that the agencies’ rent subsidies need to be brought into focus: “They have had a subsidy that has been unseen for them. It is not because we are anti-agency. They need to go out and raise funds and stand on their own two feet. It was an unhealthy relationship that made them dependent on The Federation, and The Federation could no longer support it.”

Yet Steven Windmueller, dean of HUC-JIR’s Los Angeles campus, believes the vulnerable are particularly vulnerable during this transitional period, and it’s too early to judge whether the changes at The Federation will prove to be for the best.

“Uncertainty is maybe the most pressing point that I hear … whether it will work and be able to capture the excitement and attention of donors,” Windmueller said. No one needed to be told change would be difficult. But even before Gold took over The Federation’s lay leadership, he warned that it would be especially so. And many understood why.

“This is not just a business; this is the Jewish community and these are people’s lives,” said Rabbi Stewart Vogel, a member of The Federation’s board. “But what people forget is if they don’t take that time to reorganize and re-evaluate, then there won’t be a successful Federation to help these organizations. But that process is painful.”

This pain of change is being felt across the country. In all but a few cities, the old federation model is no longer effective, said Gary A. Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research in San Francisco. Most Jewish communities have outgrown the geography that their federation was founded upon. Tobin said Los Angeles, with its miles of connecting freeways and its transient culture, can’t be served by a federation that uses, say, the same model as Baltimore, which is a centralized, dense and highly affiliated Jewish community. Like many federations, Tobin said, Los Angeles’ needs to change if it is going to thrive.

“The interesting thing, over the next 10 years, will be to see which agencies The Federation chooses to support at all. It should be based on something other than history, habit and tradition. It should actually be based on community priorities and what agencies are doing that serve the community best and most,” he said. “I wouldn’t presume that just because they are in the building now, that they will be receiving support five years from now.”

Senior Writer Julie Gruenbaum Fax contributed to this report.

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Candidates Seeking Out Support of Iranian Jews

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Iranian Jews, as well as other Iranian Americans, are being courted for contributions and political support in the run-up to the March 3 elections for Beverly Hills and West Los Angeles city council races, but nearly two years after Beverly Hills City Councilman Jimmy Delshad was sworn in as the first Iranian American mayor in the United States, a hoped-for bounce that would find more Iranian Jewish candidates entering area races has yet to materialize.

Two out of 12 candidates running for three spots on the Beverly Hills City Council are Iranian Jews. But the showing is weak compared to 2007, when half of the six candidates competing for two seats in Beverly Hills were Iranian Jews.

And despite its large Iranian Jewish constituency, none of the six candidates running for Jack Weiss’ Fifth District seat on the L.A. City Council is an Iranian Jew. Instead, the City Council candidates are appealing to the extended Iranian Jewish community for its large voter turnout and financial strength.

While political organizing is taking place in the Iranian Jewish community, it’s still struggling to establish its political identity after three decades in Southern California and lacks a Berman-Waxman-style machine that could nurture consistently viable candidates.

David Rahimian, 27, an Iranian Jewish political activist and a former special assistant to L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said that while the recent presidential race and city elections have energized a small but growing group of his peers, getting them to consider running for office is a tough sell.

“The one hump members of our community need to get over is that you won’t get rich working in this [political] field. But the rewards of being able to see a positive community impact far outweigh any form of compensation,” he said.

Political activity among Iranian Jews is a fairly new concept. The community in Iran was largely barred from government involvement or elected office by Iran’s Muslim majority until the early 20th century. In Los Angeles today, a younger generation of Iranian Jewish professionals is working with local organizations like 30 Years After to get out the vote and connect with politicians who wish to court the community for support. The recent election of President Obama has also sparked political interest among young Iranian Jews.

“I would say the community interest in politics is now higher than ever, especially because we are coming off of a presidential election that saw record turnout of both already registered and newly registered voters,” Rahimian said.

But without the historical precedent represented in the last Beverly Hills City Council election, Delshad also sees the community’s political enthusiasm waning.

“I don’t see as much excitement this time around among the Persians,” Delshad said. “Last time I ran, it was different because there were only two open places on the council, with three Persian candidates running — and you’ve got to remember that there was real excitement in the community about my mayorship if I were elected.”

His successful grass-roots campaign in 2003 first energized Beverly Hills’ Iranian Jews and catapulted Delshad into office, making him the first Iranian Jew elected to public office in the United States. The Beverly Hills City Council rotates the job of mayor annually among its members in order of seniority, and when Delshad was re-elected in 2007, his turn came up and he made national headlines by becoming the first Iranian American mayor in U.S. history. His term on the five-seat Beverly Hills City Council will end in 2011, and Delshad said he has no plans to run for a third term.

Delshad has not endorsed any of the 12 candidates vying for the three City Council seats in March, saying he wants to avoid any potential ill will that could arise in the future.

For their part, the two Iranian Jewish candidates running in Beverly Hills are concerned about being tied to criticism Delshad has weathered from a small but vocal group of non-Iranian Beverly Hills residents who accuse him of favoring mass development in the city.

One of the Iranian Jewish candidates in the Beverly Hills City Council race is Fran Cohen, the city’s Architectural Commission chair. Touting an architecture background and business experience, Cohen said she is qualified to handle the challenges of new real estate development in Beverly Hills.

“I believe our City Council needs someone with my background in architecture and urban planning to analyze the development projects that come before the council and come up with a consensus on development projects,” said Cohen, who has also worked in a Massachusetts state office for urban development. “I’m not a politician. I’m just one of the community members who cares about the city, has volunteered her time to improve the city.”

The second Iranian Jewish candidate running for the Beverly Hills City Council, Michael Hakim, is a 30-something property manager making his second run for the seat after losing in 2005. When it comes to development issues, Hakim wants to see the city make transportation a priority.

“We need to improve the traffic situation by investing in better regional public transportation coming into the city, having more subterranean and above-ground parking and having minibuses that easily will pick up people from the parking structures to the stores and other areas in the city,” he said.

Since his defeat in 2005, Hakim said he has increased his involvement with city community groups.

“I see young people who want to have greater participation in the city,” he said. “I want to encourage them with after-school programs or youth job programs…. If they see a young person like myself on the council, they will be more willing to get involved.”

Despite a weak showing from Iranian Jews on the Beverly Hills ballot, voter turnout could help the candidates’ chances. In Beverly Hills, Iranian residents account for between 20 percent and 25 percent of all registered voters. According to official February 2007 Beverly Hills city election results, Delshad and the two other Iranian Jewish candidates for the City Council received more than 50 percent of the total votes cast.

With the highest concentration of Iranian Americans in Los Angeles living in the city’s Fifth District, which stretches from Westwood to Sherman Oaks, only two of six candidates for that City Council seat have reached out to Iranian Jews and other Iranian voters in the district.

Former California Assemblyman Paul Koretz has been campaigning actively among local Iranians of various religious backgrounds. He has not only set up his campaign headquarters in the community’s Westwood stronghold but has also appeared on local Persian-language radio and television stations.

“During my political career I’ve come to know the Persian community very well,” said Koretz, who also served on the West Hollywood City Council. “They have an incredibly rich history; they’re very talented and successful individuals, and they’re an asset that the city needs to fully utilize and to listen to.”

While Delshad won’t support a Beverly Hills candidate, he has given his endorsement to Koretz. Other local Iranian Jewish leaders are lending political support to Koretz based on his prior City Council support of improvement projects to Temple Beth El, the synagogue of the Iranian American Jewish Federation in West Hollywood.

Alex Helmi, an Iranian Muslim business owner in Westwood, said Koretz’s message of embracing local Iranian Americans and addressing their needs has resonated within the community, because many Iranian Americans in the Fifth District have long felt neglected by outgoing City Councilman Jack Weiss.

“Mr. Koretz has been the only candidate to approach us with an open heart, and we need new leadership on the council who, unlike Weiss, will listen to us and actually do what he promises,” said Helmi, who will be hosting an Iranian community fundraiser for Koretz on Feb. 10 at his Westwood rug shop.

Koretz campaign officials said he not only plans on speaking to several Iranian synagogues in the area but will also be speaking at a West L.A. mosque in order to reach other Iranian voters in the district.

Adenna Bleich, a former a field deputy and Jewish community liaison for Weiss, has also been courting local Iranian Jews in her bid for the Fifth District seat. Last November, Bleich spoke at a lunch event hosted by 30 Years After to reach younger voters in the community.

“I plan to continue the friendship and outreach [with Iranians] I began as a City Council field deputy, where I made it a point to attend events in this community and even put together the first Iranian American Town Hall, with all the heads of the city departments,” said Bleich, who is an Orthodox Jew.

As to whether she’s concerned about her connection to Weiss hurting her support from within the Iranian community, Bleich said she is running on her own record of experience in city government and had endorsements from a number of local Iranian rabbis and community activists.

“I am running for City Council because I know that we can do better and make this beautiful city even more lovely, more efficient and more successful,” Bleich said. “And I want the Iranian community to be partners in this important effort.”

Listen to Karmel Melamed’s podcast about the Iranian Jewish candidates for the Beverly Hills City Council race on his Iranian American Jews.

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PJA Names New Executive Director

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PJA Names New Executive Director
After a seven-month search to replace its founding executive director, the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) announced this week that Elissa Barrett, an attorney for Bet Tzedek Legal Services, will take the helm.

Barrett, 38, survived seven interviews and was the last candidate standing after a national search performed by m/Oppenheim Associates, a premier nonprofit search firm. She has been a member of PJA’s board of directors since 2000 and will begin her duties as executive director March 16.

“Elissa Barrett brings to PJA exactly the kind of bright, dynamic and resourceful leadership we need as we consolidate our growth in California and look toward the planned national growth of our organization,” Douglas E. Mirell, PJA board president, said in a statement.

At Bet Tzedek, which provides legal aid to low-income Angelenos, Barrett directed the Sydney M. Irmas Housing Conditions Project from 2002 to 2007, when she became the nonprofit’s pro bono director and created the Holocaust Survivors Justice Network. The project links Jewish social service agencies, law firms and corporations to help Holocaust survivors receive German reparations.

“I am excited to see what she will do at PJA,” Mitch Kamin, Bet Tzedek president and CEO, said in a statement. “If it’s even half of what she’s done at Bet Tzedek, it will be truly amazing. Our loss is the community’s gain.”

PJA was launched in 1999 as a liberal organization concerned with social justice and strengthening Jewish identity through advocacy. Over the years, it has been best known for its living-wage and kosher-clothing campaigns and for encouraging dialogue with young members of L.A.’s Muslim community.

The founding executive director, Daniel Sokatch, was, like Barrett, trained as a lawyer. He left last July to be CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Barrett said he left behind a healthy balance sheet and a talented staff.

“I love the mix of haimish and activist. I love the way PJA incorporates Jewish learning into it’s activism in a way that is so accessible. You could have gone to Hebrew school or yeshiva or be a rabbi or you could be an unaffiliated Jew — and all are equally welcome and find a place in PJA,” Barrett said. “I think that is an important place for PJA to occupy in the Jewish community.”

On March 29, PJA will celebrate its 10-year anniversary with a dinner at the Skirball Cultural Center that will honor Sokatch and Erwin Chemerinsky, a renowned constitutional scholar and founding dean of the UC Irvine School of Law.
— Brad A. Greenberg, Senior Writer

Hospital Official Finds Trauma Parallels in Life-Threatening Illness, Danger in War
Dr. Ernest Katz’s recent trip to southern Israel crystallized for him a parallel he’s been exploring for several years: Children and families facing a life-threatening illness and those facing life-threatening weapons respond to the trauma in similar ways.

“For a parent informed that their child has a life-threatening illness, the reaction is similar to a parent whose kid is hit by shrapnel — my wonderful, healthy child has gone from being a regular kid to being at death’s door,” said Katz, co-director of a psychological and social support network for children with cancer at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA).

Over the last three years, Katz has been mining collaborative opportunities between Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Soroka Medical Center, which is affiliated with Ben Gurion University in southern Israel.

During a visit to Soroka at the end of the Gaza operation, Katz curtailed the lectures he was supposed to give helping Soroka develop the state-of-the-art social and psychological services CHLA has built through its Hematology-Oncology Psychosocial and Education Program (HOPE). Instead, he helped out at, and learned from, the programs the hospital was offering to support the community during the traumatic time.

Wounded from the area were all brought to Soroka — everyone from a Beersheva mother who threw herself on her child but was unable to prevent the shrapnel from entering his skull to severely wounded Hamas fighters and Gazan children. In addition to medical services, they needed psychological support.

During the war, while Beersheva schools were closed, Soroka brought 300 children of hospital staff to the pediatric hospital, where hallways double as bomb shelters and state of the art classrooms, a movie theater and a staff clown are a regular part of the medical center.

“The community came through in a big way, with volunteers and actors and celebrities to keep everyone’s spirits up. The hospital became this safe meeting place, where people could come together and try to get through it — that is what a hospital should be,” said Katz, saying he could see applying those lessons after major earthquakes.

The collaboration began three years ago, sparked by Chaim and Sheryl Saban, who are supporters of both institutions.

After Katz set up the initial contacts between the two institutions, CHLA expanded the program. In addition to the psychosocial services, Soroka and CHLA have an exchange for two pairs of medical residents a year.

Researchers also regularly share information and look for collaborative opportunities.

“There are a lot of differences in how we practice, but there are a lot of similarities,” Katz said. “We have a lot to learn from each other.”
— Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Senior Writer

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They May Be Short, But They Pack a Wallop

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Vying for an Oscar in the Animated and Live Action Shorts category is about as close to anonymity as you can get in Hollywood.

Yet among the finalists are some impressive entries, such as the German “Spielzeugland” (Toyland).

Set in a small German town in the winter of 1942, the 14-minute film follows the close friendship between two 6-year-old boys, the Aryan Heinrich and the Jewish David Silberstein.

The Silberstein family is about to be deported to a concentration camp, but when Heinrich asks his mother where his buddy is going, she tells him he’s taking a trip to Toyland.

Heinrich is intrigued, and when the town’s Jews are rounded up the boy sneaks aboard the train to accompany David to Toyland.

In less than a quarter hour, the vignette tells us more about the emotional devastation sowed by the Nazi regime than many a big-budget feature.

Screenings of the five animated shorts, including the hilarious Russian “Lavatory Lovestory,” and the five live-action shorts will start Friday, Feb. 6, at the Landmark (West Los Angeles), Laemmle Sunset 5 (West Hollywood), South Coast Village (Costa Mesa) and Laemmle Playhouse 7 (Pasadena). There will be separate admission tickets for the animated shorts and the live-action shorts.

In addition, the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills will present all 10 shorts at 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 17. For more information, visit www.oscar.org, or phone (310) 247-3600.

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Mia Kirshner Documents a Different ‘L’ Word: Living

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At a Los Feliz café, Mia Kirshner seems nothing like Jenny Schecter, the narcissistic diva she portrays on the Showtime lipstick lesbian drama, “The L Word.” When the sixth and final season premiered recently, Schecter was found dead in a swimming pool, possibly offed as a result of her sexual or other improprieties. The role is the latest in a series of provocative characters the 34-year-old actress has played in film and on television since she was a teenager. But in person Kirshner comes off less as a femme fatale than a waif in her baggy black dress, long ponytail and tiny gold Star of David necklace. 

In a demure, polite voice, she said she has been grateful for the chance to play Schecter, in part, because the salary has allowed her to pursue a more personal project: “I Live Here,” a four-volume anthology about the lives of refugees in the Russian republic of Ingushetia; Burma; Juarez, Mexico; and Malawi. Kirshner said she spent $200,000 to travel to these regions in order to collect testimonies from people rendered stateless or without a home. Collaborating with three co-authors and top comic artists such as Joe Sacco, she aspired to tell their stories through photographs, collages, paintings and journal entries, including her own.

In a brothel on the Thai-Burmese border, Kirshner spoke with prostitutes who appeared to be under 15: “There are no beds, only plastic mats with faded flowered bedding,” the book says. “A girl climbs out of the closet and into the room. She was hiding from a potential customer.”

Kirshner also met with child soldiers, mothers dying of AIDS in Malawi and a Chechnyan mother and children living in Ingushetia in a rank “shed the length and width of a throw rug, with a water spigot out back.”

The inspiration for “I Live Here” was deeply personal for Kirshner. “I come from a family of displaced persons,” she said. Her mother, Etti, the daughter of Bulgarian immigrants to Israel, immigrated to Israel after World War II and relocated to Toronto after marrying Mia’s father, Sheldon Kirshner, a Middle East analyst with the Canadian Jewish News.

“The winter was not the only thing in Canada that made [my mother] feel like a foreign body,” the actress writes in “I Live Here.” “The house where my mother grew up was a salon of languages: French, Hebrew and Bulgarian; visitors who brought Turkish coffee, bourekas, olives, conversation. Here in Canada it is so often silent. Joy replaced the blankness when an aerogram would arrive … my mother would read them over and over, as though each word were a small boat taking her back across the sea to her parents’ home in Jaffa.” 

Meanwhile, the actress’s paternal grandparents had survived the Holocaust but lost a 9-year-old son, Izhou; when Mia was 9, she perused myriad books on the Shoah in her father’s study to try to find a photo of her dead uncle. At Shabbat dinners at her grandparents’ house, she writes, “I would watch my grandfather vanish. His eyes dark slits, mouth open in mute horror. Sometimes, he would stop talking for days…. Now my father likes to travel; they never want him to leave. Hysteria accompanies his departures, my father repeating his itinerary over and over again.”

By the time Kirshner was 15, she, too, was on the road, living out of hotels as she took acting roles in a series of art-house films. She found herself an agent at the age of 12 and several years later persuaded her father to sign a “nudity waiver” in order to make her film debut as a dominatrix in 1993’s “Love and Human Remains.” “My mother wouldn’t sign it, which was understandable,” Kirshner said. “She didn’t want me to show my breasts. I imagine as a parent that must have been a very difficult thing for my father to do, but the film was tastefully done and I’m grateful that he was supportive of my dream.”

Kirshner next played a stripper in Atom Egoyan’s “Exotica,” a seductive assassin in TV’s “24” and, in 2001, landed the role of Jenny Schecter in “The L Word,” which has been deemed a groundbreaking (if soapy) series portraying steamy lesbian relationships. In the series’ pilot, Jenny arrived in Los Angeles and immersed herself in the lipstick lesbian scene; eventually the character emerged as perhaps the most scandalous Jewish woman on prime time, revealing that, among other things, she had once stripped under the name, “Miss Yeshiva Girl.” 

Kirshner voiced regrets about some of her professional choices. “Unfortunately, when you start your career at such a young age, in a way you’re becoming a young adult through your work, and mine represented some of the dark narcissism you can feel at that age.” She said her mother in particular was uncomfortable with her risqué magazine spreads and provocative interviews. “I did say a lot of things to shock; it was a form of defiance against my conservative background, and quite immature, unfortunately…. Certainly it was empowering for me to pose in lingerie and bikinis, but some of those photographs were not refined.”

After Sept. 11, Kirshner said, she was feeling “dead inside creatively. On the one hand, I was able to support myself as an actress, which is a very lucky thing, but on the other, I was not living a life that I was proud of. I wondered, ‘What am I contributing? It’s time to make a change.’”

She envisioned “I Live Here” as a way to provide information about “‘secret’ lives being led all over the world, in brothels, in prisons — stories that in many ways aren’t accessible to the media.”

“I think it’s a very creative project,” Sheldon Kirshner said in a phone interview. “I think it’s very well researched. Obviously, I was worried about Mia’s safety in some of these places. But I do believe the project shows that she is interested in the outside world, in things that transcend acting.”

Kirshner intends to continue the project through her I Live Here Foundation. “It’s as much on a personal level a journey of exposing some of the very selfish ways in which I live, and the great ignorance in which I had been living,” she said.

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