fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

March 26, 2009

Phoenix Rises – Milken JCC Readies for Big Splash

Leave a Comment / Community /

The New JCC at Milken in West Hills, which was damaged but not destroyed in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, has survived another peril and is looking toward a brighter future and a recovery of lost members.

Negotiators for the Jewish Community Center at the Bernard Milken Community Campus and The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles confirmed Monday that they had reached full agreement, following nearly two years of frequently tense discussions.

The agreement’s key provision calls for a cost-sharing arrangement in the future operation of the four-acre Milken campus, which, besides the JCC and its recreational facilities, also houses offices of The Federation and its agencies.

Starting in 2010, the JCC will pay a rising percentage of the Milken campus budget, hitherto borne entirely by The Federation, leveling off at 65 percent by 2013. Projections for the total annual budget range from “well over $1 million” to $1.6 million.

Steve Rheuban, chairman of the Milken JCC board, and Richard Sandler, The Federation vice chairman, both declared the agreement a win-win solution.

The Federation, which owns the campus property, will be relieved of much of its financial burden.

The Milken JCC, in turn, is assured of its continuing tenancy as the “primary occupant” of the campus, as long as it pays its share of the cost, and can plan for the future on that basis.

Perhaps no one welcomes the resolution with greater joy than the young campers and the mature seniors who have been deprived of the JCC’s Olympic-sized swimming pool, shut down two years ago during an impasse between the two sides.

Following reconstruction of some of the facilities, the pool is scheduled to open in the early summer, said Paul Frishman, the JCC executive director.

When that happy day arrives, it will also reverse the precipitous decline in JCC membership, Rheuban hopes.

With the closing of the pool and uncertainty about JCC’s future, membership dropped from a peak of 1,500 to a current figure of 350, he said. In parallel, nursery school enrollment dropped from 125 to 70.

The roots of the Milken JCC go back to the West Valley JCC, which was founded in 1969 and bought the Milken campus, then a horse ranch, in 1976.

Subsequently, the site was deeded to The Jewish Federation, which put up $15 million to build up the campus, completed in 1987, and came up with additional funds to restore the buildings after the 1994 earthquake.

At one point, the protracted negotiations seemed near a breakdown, when the JCC was facing a $250,000 deficit but rejected a one-time bailout offer of $350,000 from The Federation.

Both JCC leaders and members balked at a condition of the bailout that they would have to surrender JCC’s right to remain as the major tenant of the campus.

But on Monday, both sides were eager to forget the past and look ahead to happier days.

“This outcome is a triumph for the community as a whole,” Rheuban said. “Both sides treated each other with respect, and I am pleased that we were able to get together.”

Sandler observed that “During some of the negotiations, you could hear horror stories from both sides, but that’s in the past. Now everyone wins and the best interests of the community are served.”

Frishman is busy planning for the future. He is aiming for an eventual membership of 2,000, including 100 nursery school kids in the fall.

With the pool in shape and new equipment for the fitness center, he anticipates an enrollment of some 200-300 kindergarten to eighth graders for the 10-week summer camp.

A major attraction for the summer camp will be the swimming school, conducted by Olympic gold medalist Lenny Krayzelberg.

Some 150-200 seniors, whom Frishman refers to as “active adults,” visit the JCC daily and consider it a second home. Frishman hopes to expand their activities, which include trips, musicals, discussion groups and card playing.

He envisions an upswing in the participation of young couples, as well, with the parents dropping off their toddlers at the nursery school and then heading for a workout at the fitness center.

Frishman also plans a further outreach, to involve the Russian and Israeli communities in JCC’s activities.

Phoenix Rises – Milken JCC Readies for Big Splash Read More »

Community Briefs: Greek and Jewish Concert, British Chief Rabbi Address Jews, Solar Power

Leave a Comment / Community /

Greek and Jewish Concert Benefits College

For nearly two centuries, Thessaloniki, Greece, reigned as the largest Jewish city in the world. Sephardic Jews expelled from their homes by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain found refuge there and even referred to the area as the “Mother of Israel.”

Dario Gabbai was one of thousands of Sephardic Jews living in Thessaloniki in the 1940s. But like so many others, his time in Greece was cut short. By April 1944, Gabbai found himself riding in a cattle car with his family to Auschwitz.

The Nazis had invaded, and the city would never again be the same: More than 95 percent of its Jewish population would be lost. Among them were the Jewish students at Anatolia College.

Today, Anatolia College functions as an elementary school, secondary school and a private nonprofit university in Greece, chartered by the state of Massachusetts and accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. But back then, the more than 90 Jewish students enrolled in the institution perished.

On Monday, approximately 300 people — Jews and Greeks alike — gathered at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel for “An evening of Greek and Jewish Music,” hosted by former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and his wife, Kitty. The fundraiser will benefit the college, helping create two memorial classrooms at the school, as well as support Holocaust education at the institution and in the city at large.

“We wanted to do it in memory of them,” said Kitty Dukakis, referring to the Jewish Anatolia students who were lost during the Nazi invasion.

Kitty Dukakis, who is Jewish, said the idea for the event began when she visited the school’s campus nearly two years ago but also stemmed from seeing the traveling photo exhibition, “Hidden Children in Occupied Greece,” which told the stories of 16 Jewish children in Greece who managed to escape death during the Nazi occupation, thanks to the Christian families who were willing to take them in.

“It was there that Kitty and I said … ‘Maybe we can do something. Bring the two communities together again,’” Michael Dukakis said at the start of the evening, while noting that he himself was often mistaken for being Jewish on the campaign trail, although he is in actuality Greek.

Consul General of Israel Yaacov Dayan and Consul General of Greece Dimitris Caramitsos-Tziras joined the Dukakis family on stage before the music started.

“We will not be silent. And when we speak, we do it on behalf of all the silent communities around the world,” Dayan said.

Craig Taubman, a local Jewish artist who has also composed music for television and films; Cantor Alberto Mizrahi, a Greek-born tenor and cantor at the Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago; the Rev. John S. Bakas, dean of the Saint Sophia Cathedral and the Greek Orthodox Community in Los Angeles; and Anna Vissi, a leading Greek recording artist, made up the eclectic group of Jewish and Greek musicians who entertained the crowd for the evening.

Gabbai, now 86, sat in the front row of the concert hall, far from the Nazi crematorium he was once forced to work in but managed to survive.

“It was a very beautiful evening, a good time” he said. “The singing brought me back to many younger days.”

— Lilly Fowler, Contributing Writer

British Chief Rabbi to Address World Jewry in Webcast on Commandment to Learn Torah>/b>

Thousands of Jews at 350 locations worldwide will hear a lecture this Sunday by England’s Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks in a synchronized webcast to commemorate the biblical commandment of gathering Jews to learn Torah.

Sacks’ lecture about freedom, hope and unity is sponsored by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI), the adult educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, in honor of the upcoming Passover holiday and the Hakhel year, or Jewish year of gathering. In biblical times, the entire nation would gather in the Temple’s courtyard every seven years to hear the words of the Torah.

People from six contents and numerous time zones will gather at Chabad houses and other Jewish centers at the same time on March 29. Groups will begin assembling as early as 6 a.m. in Australia and as late as 9:30 p.m. in Europe and Israel. Groups will gather at around 11:30 a.m. in several locations throughout California.

Rabbi Sacks’ lecture is the second in JLI’s four-part “Unity Lecture” series. The first was given in January by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who is best known for his Hebrew translation and commentary on the Talmud.

The next lecture will be delivered in June by Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel.

Sacks has been chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth since 1991 and is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading contemporary exponents of Judaism.

For times and locations, visit www.unitylecture.com.

— Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Senior Writer

Solar Power to Light Eternal Lamps

Twelve Southern California synagogues will simultaneously flip the switch on new solar-powered Eternal Lamps on Tuesday, April 7, at 10 a.m., in honor of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to recite a special prayer over the sun.

Jews bless the sun in a ritual known as Birkat Hachamah once every 28 years, when tradition holds the celestial bodies are aligned just as they were when they were created. The Southern California Board of Rabbis, with a $10,000 grant from the South Coast Air Quality Management District, is celebrating the ritual by installing solar panels in synagogues to illuminate the Eternal Lamp, or Ner Tamid, which stays lit above the ark containing the Torahs at all times.

“Birkat Hachamah and Passover are times of spiritual renewal for the Jewish community, and we believe that harnessing solar energy is a powerful symbol of that renewal,” said Rabbi Mark S. Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, one of the participating synagogues, will celebrate the event with distinguished guests and a children’s choir. The synagogue will bury a time capsule containing children’s essays and pictures about their hopes and visions of what energy sources we will be using by 2037 — the next time the Blessing of the Sun ceremony will be celebrated and when the time capsule will be reopened.

For a list of participating synagogues and more information, visit www.boardofrabbis.org.

— Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Senior Writer

Community Briefs: Greek and Jewish Concert, British Chief Rabbi Address Jews, Solar Power Read More »

Thinking Outside the Matzah Ball Box

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Cover Story, Food, Holidays /

When the Israelites rushed out of Egypt, Pharaoh’s men on their heels, they hurriedly bundled their belongings, food included, to carry as much as they could on their backs and donkeys. Seeking to nourish themselves throughout their desert journey to the Promised Land, they rolled together unleavened bread crumbs, eggs and oil to create a round, nutritious finger food. They heated these in water jugs, along with chicken bone scraps, to preserve them and give them flavor. And that’s how matzah ball soup was born.

At least that’s how the matzah ball legend should read. The round dumpling traditionally made of matzah meal, eggs, and some kind of fat is so entrenched in Jewish tradition that its history seems to date back to the Torah itself. The icon of Jewish pop culture, the staple of deli menus, the culinary gem of bubbies worldwide, matzah ball soup is the unofficial symbol of Jewish cuisine, the soup of the one God.

But like many dishes generally regarded as “Jewish foods,” like gefilte fish and cholent, matzah ball soup originated in Eastern Europe. The Yiddish word for matzah balls, “knaidelach,” comes from the German word for dumpling, “knödel.” The matzah ball may very well have been the vanguard Jewish food of its time, an adaptation of the gentile dumpling suited to Passover restrictions and pantries, invented by the Martha Stewart of the shtetl, her (or his?) name now lost in obscurity.

Since then few Jewish chefs, professional and amateur, have dared to tamper with the matzah ball. In that sense, the matzah ball is the “ultra-Orthodox” Jewish food. The most popular recipe for many home cooks today may very well be the one on the matzah meal box. But with the growing sophistication and cross-fertilization of many types of cuisines, that’s changing.

“I think traditional cooks are breaking out; they’re more sophisticated,” said Adeena Sussman, a recipe developer, food writer and cooking instructor based in New York. “Everyone is traveling more and interested in ethnic cuisine. There are a lot of kosher Web sites where you can get kosher gourmet products. Actually, I think Jews who keep Passover strictly are those who are seeking the most innovative ideas because they are those who follow the laws for eight days and are trying to keep their families well-fed and interested for eight days.”

One of the most popular maverick matzah ball soup recipes has been Susie Fishbein’s tri-color matzah ball soup, as featured years ago in her popular “Kosher by Design Entertains” cookbook (Mesorah Publications, 2005) and on “The Today Show” with Katie Couric. The recipe calls for a green maztah ball made with pureed spinach, a yellow matzah ball made with turmeric and a red matzah ball made with tomato paste. 

“It was a funky spin on something traditional, and that’s what I do,” said Fishbein from her home in New Jersey. She sought a matzah ball soup that wasn’t only flavorful, but visually appealing and healthful, especially for the children. “I’ve had mothers come up to me in shul and say ‘I only make the green ones, and they’re called ‘Shrek matzah balls,’ and my boys love them.’”

Matzah balls are like a “blank canvas,” ripe with possibilities for adding flavor and color. Last year Sussman developed a “dill-infused chicken soup with herbed matzah ball gnocchi” recipe featuring matzah balls shaped like the Italian potato dumpling and rolled with spinach, parsley and dill. Green herbs are intuitive additives, because they often compliment the flavor of the chicken soup and also reflect the spirit of spring. Sussman recommends ground chicken, ground beef and horseradish as other nontraditional additives.

But not every ingredient works. “There were definitely things that were not winners,” said Fishbein, recalling her own experimentation. “Blueberry matzah balls are hideous. Carrot matzah balls covered with carrot juice were hideous.”

Like the Torah, matzah balls are open to a variety of interpretations and subject to intense debate. Surprisingly, some of Southern California’s top chefs believe the matzah ball is sacred. 

“I don’t want to recreate the matzah ball; I think it tastes fine how it is, as long as it has a light texture,” said Suzanne Tracht, executive chef at LA’s Jar chophouse on Beverly Boulevard. “They shouldn’t be too hard. You shouldn’t use them for weapons….The most important part of the matzah ball, since it’s basically a dumpling, is the broth — that’s where it comes out.”

Every year, Tracht holds a Passover seder at her restaurant, and this year she’s making a consommé with lemongrass, galangal and ginger. “We make it so intense that we clarify the broth, as well, so that it has a more rich and intense flavor.”

Todd Aarons, executive chef at the gourmet kosher restaurant Tierra Sur at the Herzog Wine Cellars in Oxnard puts his “stock” in the broth, as well. “I’m a purist. I would play around with the broth first, and I’d probably keep the matzah ball intact.” For his own matzah ball soup, Aarons likes to use duck and chicken bones for a deeper flavor. “When I eat it, though, it doesn’t remind me of my mom’s, which is okay.”

He became convinced of the powerful absorption properties of the matzah ball after his Yemenite wife served regular matzah balls with her Yemenite soup, traditionally made with chicken, beef and exotic herbs, including hawaij, a Yemenite spice mix consisting of cumin, coriander, pepper, cardamom, cloves and turmeric. He likens matzah balls to bread used for dipping. “Every culture has a chicken soup. You can explore all different kinds of chicken soup and throw a matzah ball in, and it would work.”

In fact, the matzah ball is the only Ashkenazi food that has been warmly embraced by Sephardic traditions, especially in Israel. “Sephardic cooking is much more popular in Israel now than Ashkenazi cooking — Israel is a warm country, the ingredients are more suitable for Middle Eastern food,” said Janna Gur, editor-in-chief of Israel’s leading gastronomic magazine, Al HaShulchan, and author of “The Book of New Israeli Food” (Schocken, 2008). “Many recipes make the crossover to Ashkenazi households, but not vice versa, except for matzah ball soup.”

Another (chicken or beef?) bone of contention among chefs and cooks relates to texture: dense or light and fluffy?

Cookbook author and food writer Judy Zeidler, also a bubbe of seven, prefers fluffy matzah balls, hands down. “When I got married, my mother-in-law always made sinkers — matzah balls so hard they sink to the bottom of the pot. I grew up with my mother’s matzah balls. Like clouds, they floated to the top of the soup. My husband thought they were ridiculous, but he thought they were so much easier to eat and so much more flavorful.”

To make matzah balls as fluffy as her mother’s, she recommends separating the yolk and whites and then folding the yolk and matzah meal into egg whites beaten into soft peaks. Seltzer is recommended instead of water to increase fluffiness, and chilling matzah balls plays an important part in determining texture.

“Chilling will make it much easier to roll so you can manipulate them,” said Fishbein. “If you can roll them right at the outset you have a lot of matzah meal in them, and they probably won’t be very fluffy.”

Sussman is the only one interviewed for this article who prefers dense matzah balls, or, as she likes to call them, “matzah balls al dente”, an Italian term to describe pasta that is firm but not overcooked.

But home cooks shouldn’t feel discouraged if they can’t think out of the matzah meal box. “My mother used to make matzah balls from scratch,” said Sussman, “but one year we actually tried the mix and found that it worked quite well and started making them from the mix, not because we couldn’t make it from scratch, but because we liked them.”

Thinking Outside the Matzah Ball Box Read More »

The Making of ‘The Chosen Dish’

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Food, Multimedia /

Prior to becoming a food writer and restaurant reviewer for The Jerusalem Post, I always thought of kosher food as limited and bland. But Israel demands competitive kosher cuisine — hotels generally adhere to kashrut laws; corporate lunch meetings must often accommodate observant clientele alongside secular counterparts who’d prefer a Tel Aviv bistro serving sautéed shrimp. This is true even though, at the same time, at the heart of Israeli culture are Jews who, no matter how much they like to think of themselves as the new Hebrews, still fondly recall their grandmother’s traditional kosher Jewish specialties.

In America, however, kosher restaurants seem stuck. The smaller size of their target clientele and the expense of sustaining kosher standards — with the high cost of meat and on-site kosher supervision — can lead to compromises in creativity. And because FFBs (the acronym for “Frum (religious) From Birth”) usually have limited basis for comparison, they don’t know how much better a steak grilled to perfection with butter really tastes. Though Jewish cooks often create culinary wonders in their own kitchens, sadly, the high standards of homemade food have yet to become the norm in the common kosher marketplace.

The explosion of food competitions, from “Iron Chef” to “Top Chef,” inspired me to wonder what a Jewish food competition might offer. This led me to conceive “The Chosen Dish,” an online kosher cooking competition produced in conjunction with jewishjournal.com. And what better way to launch a program challenging chefs and home cooks to redeem kosher foods from their unsavory stigma than by having them recreate the iconic Jewish food: matzah ball soup.

Together with The Journal’s VideoJew Jay Firestone, I visited the kitchens of two local chefs and one home cook who agreed to step up to the seder plate with their own recipes.

Mexican Japanese Katsuji Tanabe, executive chef of Shiloh’s kosher steakhouse, had no tradition to fall back on — he only recently discovered his Mexican mother’s Jewish roots; her ancestors left Spain during the Inquisition, only to assimilate later. Caterer Hilit Gilat from Israel created matzah balls inspired by her mother-in-law, served in an elaborately prepared beef and chicken consommé. Michelle Chaim adapted her mother’s recipe to create a homey herb-and-garlic-infused matzah ball soup. For the final taste test, we gathered them at the state-of-the-art kosher kitchen at the beautiful Four Seasons Hotel Westlake Village, where “The Chosen Dish” was determined by a panel of judges.

But I’d rather you watch the chefs at work rather than read about them. Check out the series on www.jewishjournal.com/thechosendish on April 1 for your Passover viewing pleasure and find out whose matzah ball soup will be “The Chosen Dish.”

Participants of The Chosen Dish were asked to abide by the Ten Commandments of The Chosen Dish. The rest was left to divine inspiration.

1.    This is The Chosen Dish who has commanded you to make matzah ball soup.

2.    You shall have no unkosher food before us

3.    You shall not make for yourself a matzah ball from a package

4.    Thou shall honor thy judges and hosts

5.    Observe the Passover seder by making enough food to feed a family of six and two guests

6.    Thou shall not kill your dish by overcooking it

7.    Thou shall not commit adulteration of your soup

8.    Thou shall not steal your mother’s recipe, only adapt it

9.    Thou shall not bear false witness against your competitors’ dish

10.    Thou shall not covet the other chef’s matzah ball

 

The Making of ‘The Chosen Dish’ Read More »

Chicken and Duck Soup

Leave a Comment / Food, Holidays /

You will need one whole duck for this preparation. Have your butcher separate the breasts and legs from the bird and de-bone the legs. All the leg and breast meat should still have its skin on. Ask your butcher to grind all the meat for you. You will have approximately 1 3/4 pounds of ground duck. Make sure you collect all the bones from the duck for the broth.

Duck Dumplings

2 boneless duck legs with their skins (approximately 3/4 lb.), put through a meat grinder

2 duck breasts with their skins (approximately 1 lb.), put through a meat grinder

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 medium-sized Spanish onion, minced

1 tsp. ground cardamom

1/2 cup matzah cake flour

3 tsp. salt

Broth

3 lbs. of chicken back bones

The bones of one de-boned duck with its wings

2 tbs. olive oil

2 large onions, peeled and quartered

3 ribs of celery, whole

1 carrot, 1/2-inch-thick pieces

1 head of garlic sliced in half, separating the top from the bottom

1 tbs. turmeric

4 dried Persian limes (lemon omani*), put in a towel and crush the limes open.

1/2 tbs. dried mint

Sea salt to taste

1 cup chopped fresh spinach

Juice from 1 fresh lime

Fresh herbs such as mint, dill and parsley, chopped

Rinse bones with cold water and set aside. In a large stock pot heat olive oil and add the onions, celery, garlic and carrots, and stir while cooking for approximately five minutes until onions become translucent but not brown. Adjust the flame in order to not brown vegetables. Add the turmeric, crushed dried limes and the mint, and continue to sauté for an additional two minutes. Add the chicken backbones, duck bones and enough water to cover the bones by approximately six inches. Bring to a boil and ladle off the coagulated albumin and fat that will rise to the top. Reduce to a low flame and simmer for 2 1/2 hours.

In the meantime, to make the dumplings, mix the ground duck meat with the garlic, onion, cardamom, matzah cake flour and salt. Roll into 1-inch diameter meatballs. Refrigerate until the broth is ready.

When the broth is ready, carefully pour broth through a strainer and into a clean pot. Bring the broth back to a simmer and add the chicken dumplings. Place a lid on to the pot, and let cook for ten minutes or until the dumplings have cooked all the way through.

To serve, place a couple of dumplings into each soup bowl along with some freshly chopped spinach, herbs and, if using, the blanched fava beans. Taste the remaining broth and adjust the saltiness. Add the juice of the fresh lime and ladle the soup into bowls.

To find lemon omani visit these Web sites: www.kalustyans.com and www.sadaf.com

Chicken and Duck Soup Read More »

Exploding Knives, and Other Hazards of Kashering

Leave a Comment / Food, Holidays /

Let me just start by admitting that I probably didn’t really need to put the knife directly on my burner. But it was the first time in a very long time I was kashering anything, and I had conflicting guidance from my rabbi and my mother, and I thought I needed to drop a hot metal object into my hot water urn to make it kosher for Pesach (I was totally wrong. Do not try it at home.).

How was I to know the knife would explode into my face, leaving me traumatized — though only slightly injured?

But my ignorance is exactly the point: In preparation for Passover, usually smart homemakers end up doing really dumb things with superhot materials, all in the name of removing any trace of chametz (leavened grain products). And, often, people get hurt.

“Here you have this extra cooking and extra work, while the kids are running all over the house, and the combination, naturally and unfortunately, brings in a high volume of calls,” said Tzvika Brenner, chairman of Hatzolah, an all-volunteer first-responder system operating in three Orthodox neighborhoods in Los Angeles that has been responding to emergencies since 2001.

On any normal day, Hatzolah usually gets about five calls; before Passover, that number jumps to between 10 and 15. Hatzolah has 86 trained EMTs who are able to respond within minutes, even seconds, to an accident in Pico-Robertson, Valley Village or the Fairfax/Hancock Park area and then transfer care to the paramedics once they arrive.

Most Passover calls involve burns, either from kashering or cooking accidents.

Kashering involves subjecting pots, dishes or cooking appliances to extreme treatments to eliminate even invisible traces of offending food. Those treatments usually involve heated metal or rocks, boiling water, superheated ovens and, in some cases, blowtorches.

“It’s not something we do every day, so accidents happen,” Brenner said.

And, as in my case, half the things we do don’t really need to be done, according to Rabbi Eliezer Eidlitz, executive director of Emek Hebrew Academy Teichman Family Torah Center in Sherman Oaks and founder of the Kosher Information Bureau and kosherquest.org. He said when Passover approaches, he receives twice the usual daily 100 e-mails with questions regarding kosher products and kashering a kitchen.

“The reason I went into this in 1976 was that people were going so overboard,” he said. “And it didn’t make them any more observant of halachah.”

Many women don’t trust rabbis when it comes to kashering a kitchen for Passover — they want to do it like their mothers did it or better than their neighbors do it.

Eidlitz has seen men and women strain their backs moving refrigerators to clean up any crumbs, which, he said, is completely unnecessary. Only accessible chametz needs to be removed. People blowtorch ovens, damaging the thermostat and killing the gasket that lines the door, when all they really need to do is turn the temperature up as high as it goes for about an hour.

While he lauds the impulse to be thorough about kashering, he laments that so many women can barely stay awake at seders because they’ve spent the week repapering every shelf, lining their refrigerator with heavy duty foil (thereby limiting air circulation and breaking the compressor) or covering the counters. All unnecessary, he says. If it’s clean and it’s cold it does not need to be kashered or covered. Only appliances or utensils that come into contact with heat need any special treatment.

In fact, it was from Eidlitz that I learned I hadn’t needed to kasher my hot water urn at all. I could have just cleaned the outside, and that’s it.

I’m not sure how I got it into my head that I need to drop a hot object into my urn. Heating a rock or a piece of metal and dropping it into boiling water is a standard method for kashering pots, because it causes the water to overflow, thus insuring that every part of the pot has been covered in boiling water.

I didn’t have a rock, so I decided to use a solid metal, blunt knife from my everyday stainless steel cutlery. I put the knife on the burner, and after a minute or so, I leaned over to turn the flame off.

Which is exactly when the knife exploded.

Turns out the core of the knife handle was made of ceramic or some other kind of porous composite rock. When I put the knife on the burner, the metal and the rock heated up at different rates, and the built-up energy resulted in the rock exploding out of the metal casing.

The explosion threw me backward and muffled my hearing.

Shards of something hit me straight on, and I shrieked, imagining myself forever blinded and scarred by what I thought was hot metal shrapnel all over my face, in my eyes, in my mouth.

I hobbled to the bathroom and washed off what I soon realized was a chalky substance. I had pocks all over my neck and some on my face, but I could still see — my eyes didn’t even hurt — and there was no blood or open wounds. I ended up with small burn blisters on my neck, eyelids, face and arms that were gone within a few weeks.

Brenner said L.A.’s Hatzolah has never been called for any exploding knife incidents, but there are plenty of other ways people have managed to hurt themselves.

To kasher granite or marble countertops, you pour a small amount of boiling water onto the counter. That can get kind of tricky, especially if you’re trying to keep the water from dripping onto wood cabinets or onto the floor. People often pour much more water than needed, Eidlitz said, and sometimes the water spills into their shoes, which can cause severe burns.

Brenner has had cases of people playing with the fire as they kashered. Or a man might grab a utensil he thinks needs to be dipped in boiling water, only to find out that his wife just removed it from the steaming cauldron.

Most often, Brenner, himself a responder, sees cooking accidents.

“You’re in a rush to take something off the stove or out of the oven, and many times you put it down the first place you find, not realizing it’s too close, in the reach of young children,” Brenner said.

He warns of leaving cords for hot water urns loose, vulnerable to being pulled down.

Eidlitz thinks many of the accidents, and the general exhaustion of Pesach, would be mitigated if people asked more questions about what they really need to do.

But he knows he’s fighting an uphill battle. And he admits the zealotry of Passover may have advantages.

“There is a good reason why statistically only between 11 and 18 percent of people buy all kosher food year round, but over 70 percent do for Pesach,” Eidlitz said. “And that’s because as little girls, women today saw their mothers and bubbes working their kishkes [guts] off to make sure that everything is so meticulous. And something that important gets ingrained in a person.”

Exploding Knives, and Other Hazards of Kashering Read More »

A Road Map for the Digital Immigrant

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Welcome to my new blog for the Jewish Journal. Technology reviews have become very commonplace and it isn’t my intent to add one more column to the already long list that report on the latest techno-gadgets. In debating whether to write a blog for the Journal I decided it would only be worthwhile if I could write it from a “different” perspective.

Personally, growing up in Australia in the 60’s and 70’s, the closest I came to technology was using one of those yo-yos that lit up at night. Years later I found myself owning a growing software development company at the center of the personal computer revolution in the 1980’s and 90’s. We marvelled at everything that could be done with our new devices and took tremendous satisfaction in developing new ideas into products. Technology became my passion. Much like the immigrant that comes to a new country, I could appreciate things that natives took for granted … while also maintaining the perspective of what life was like before technology overtook every aspect of our daily existence.

Textbooks talk about groups of “technology natives” and “technology immigrants”. Natives grew up using technology at every turn whereas technology immigrants have had to adapt and integrate technology into their everyday lives. If you’re a digital immigrant you may be overwhelmed by the constant flow of new gadgets. You’re always yelling at your kids to get off their devices and go outside and play. There are times it feels like pushing water uphill. Technology is taking over everything in your life but you struggle with how and where to use it at work and play.

This column is for you – the digital immigrant.

How can you tell if you’re a “digital immigrant”? I’ve come up with a list of 10 simple signs that will let you know:

10. You use phrases such as “When I was a kid..”. If you’re already nodding in agreement then please do us both a favor and stop here. There’s really no point in wasting time reading the rest of this article. Life is too short … especially in your case.
9. You think “Flash” is an obscene gesture.
8. You keep complaining that the keys on your cell phone were made for people with “smurf fingers”.
7. You’ll text on occasion but you simply can’t bring yourself to type abbreviated phrases such as “how r u” and “lol”.
6. You have at least one digital clock in your house that has been flashing “12:00am” for the past few months.
5. When encountering a technical problem you flee in panic searching for the nearest 10 year old.
4. You curse while trying to type simple text messages on your cell phone. Anyone looking over your shoulder would see phrases such as “whga5t ar3we 7yplo” on your screen … clearly you don’t have smurf fingers.
3. When your friend tells you that he has a new Blackberry in his pocket you warn him that the stain will never come out.
2. When told that your computer needs new memory chips you request “barbecue flavored”.
1. You’re over 25 years old.

If you’re over 50 years old – which I am – then technically speaking you’re an “Illegal Digital Immigrant”. Apparently nobody checked your digital citizenship status when you bought that computer or cell phone. You managed to gain entrance into the digital world but let’s be honest – you’re likely to hurt yourself and really shouldn’t be there.

So come back often and join in our discussion. We’ll try and navigate through the many ways that technology might improve your life and warn you about the ways that it might potentially intrude and cause harm. Used appropriately, technology can be your best friend … but with the perspective and wisdom that comes with being a digital immigrant we’ll see that technology isn’t always the solution. There will still be those days when you want to dust off that old yo-yo and give it another spin.

Sam Gliksman
{encode=”sam@mail.swsoftware.com”}

A Road Map for the Digital Immigrant Read More »

City of Images

Tommywood, Uncategorized /

Los Angeles has long held a fascination with the visual; beholden to looks, surfaces and images, it is a city where even the buildings seem to strike a pose. So it might seem surprising that until now, there’s never been an institution here devoted to photography. But that all changes this week with the opening of the stunning new Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City.

Located on the site of the former Schubert Theater, in the shadow of the CAA “Death Star” offices at 2000 Century Park East, the Annenberg Space is a freestanding, 10,000-square-foot facility. With free admission and inexpensive validated self-parking, it is a community space, inviting residents and tourists alike to engage with print and digital images. More than anything it is a “Temple of Photography,” as Wallis Annenberg herself called it recently, celebrating an art form, but also a means of seeing the world we live in.

Form meets function in the design for the space, by architects DMJM Design: A central exhibition space for digital exhibits – circular in form and with a ceiling that resembles a camera aperture – is surrounded by galleries filled with photographic prints. The floor plan consciously suggests a camera, though at the same time, walking through the print galleries reminds one of a piece of film threading a camera spool. Other references to the medium can be found in the gray metal finishes throughout the museum and floors made from recycled tires that remind one of camera grips.

There’s also a full-service kitchen and an area for classes and workshops.

Interviewed at the opening press event, Annenberg explained that her passion for photography is a response to an upbringing surrounded by art, where the focus was always on “the beautiful.” Her parents collected Impressionist paintings (which were donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art). Given that she believes “life was far more complex,” Annenberg said she was drawn to photography that expresses “the full range of human emotions and gives us insight into our own souls.”

That is a pretty fair way of describing the opening exhibition,”L8s Ang3les,” a collection of work from 11 Los Angeles photographers. The show reminds us of the power of photography to show beauty and horror in all its forms and asks us to marvel at how the eye and the instrument can capture a story or encapsulate a whole life in an instant.

Included are the conceptual work of artist John Baldessari, the social reporting/portraiture of Catherine Opie and Lauren Greenfield, architectural photography by Julius Shulman and Tim Street-Porter, celebrity portraits by Douglas Kirkland and Greg Gorman, and the photojournalism of Carolyn Cole, Lawrence Ho, Genaro Molina and Kirk McKoy, all staff photographers at the Los Angeles Times.

One wanders from Kirkland’s images of Marilyn Monroe, to Greg Gorman’s portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio, to Catherine Opie’s images of members of the gay, lesbian and transgender community, to Lauren Greenfield’s portraits of girls at their quinceañera or a bar mitzvah boy yearning for gifts he imagines will lend him status, or a young girl in the Barney’s shoe department. Then there are Coles’ searing images of the brutality of war, the reportage of the other staff photographers, which bring our world home to us. What sticks, in the end, is a sense of the humanity captured by these works.

The Annenberg Space, Kirkland told me, represents “the dawning of a new time for photography,” adding that he believes the Annenberg will come to equal the renown International Center of Photography, a museum and school in Manhattan .

Greenfield, who grew up in Los Angeles, told me she sees the educational potential of the Annenberg Space in the power of “photography to speak directly to kids.” She feels photography is an art form that kids understand intuitively and immediately. What impressed her about the Annenberg was that “everyone will feel welcome. No one will be intimidated.”

All the photographers I spoke with stressed that the Annenberg Space’s technological breakthrough lies in its ability to display so much of an artist’s work at once – a feat accomplished by using digital projection screens and by a series of tabletop touch screens that allow the visitor to examine an artist’s work in depth (plans are being made to allow one to order prints from the tabletops, as well). Having a center in Los Angeles where they could see the work of their peers and participate in workshops that will create a greater sense of the photographic community excited them all.

The Annenberg Foundation was established in 1989 by Walter Annenberg, whose father, Moses “Moe” Annenberg, owned the Daily Racing Form and acquired the Philadelphia Inquirer. Walter Annenberg expanded the empire with such publications as TV Guide and Seventeen and was canny enough to sell out at the right time to Rupert Murdoch in 1988 for a reported $3 billion (recently TV Guide magazine changed hands for $1 – I kid you not).

Walter Annenberg, who died in 2002, served as Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Great Britain, and Leonore, his second wife, studio boss Harry Cohn’s niece and chief of protocol for the State Department under Ronald Reagan, died just this month. Wallis, Walter’s surviving child, and several of his grandchildren, Lauren Bon, Charles Annenberg Weingarten and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten, serve as trustees of the Annenberg Foundation, which is one of the largest private foundations in the United States and which supports a wide range of charitable activities both in the U.S. and abroad, many of which are the specific passions of its trustees.

Although the name of the Annenberg Foundation is well known to anyone who watches public television, or from their endowments to museums, universities, schools and hospitals across the United States, several local projects dear to Wallis Annenberg are set to open over the next several months: This week’s opening of the Space for Photography will be followed this summer by the Annenberg Community Beach House, located in Santa Monica on the site of the former Marion Davies estate, the only public community beach club on Pacific Coast Highway – or as I intend to refer to it, my beach club. And next year, the former Beverly Hills Post Office will be rebooted as The Wallis Annenberg Center for Performing Arts.

If ever we needed to be reminded of the power of art and community to lift our spirits, it is now. The iconic American photographer Edward Steichen once said that “photography is a major force in explaining man to man.” The Annenberg Space for Photography gives Los Angeles a place to enjoy the artistry of the surface image and the humanity that lies beneath.

City of Images Read More »