June 3, 2009

How a Settlement’s ‘Natural Growth’ Appears at Ground Level

Iran First

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman / Rob Eshman

I’ve had six different conversations over the past two weeks with the leaders of six different pro-Israel groups, few of whom get along particularly well and none of whom work closely together.

All these groups are out raising money, launching this or that educational campaign, meeting politicians, squabbling among themselves.

The world has dramatically changed, but the Los Angeles pro-Israel community still operates as if it’s 1993 — Clinton and Arafat are shaking hands on the White House lawn, there’s no recession and there’s no uranium in Iran.

If there were ever a time to make common cause with a united voice, it is now. And if ever there were a leader who needed to recognize the power of a united Jewish voice, it is President Barack Obama.

I’ll get to the content of the message in a moment, but understand that it will carry far more weight coming from the broadest spectrum of American Jewish pro-Israel opinion.

For years there have been sharp ideological differences between competing pro-Israel groups. What you would call the right supported Israeli settlement in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, opposed a Palestinian state and refused to even entertain the notion of ceding control of a single square inch of Jerusalem.

What you’d call the left favored negotiations over land, supported a Palestinian state, opposed further settlement and kept an open mind over the future status of Jerusalem.

American Jews did battle over these divisions, each of which proffers a starkly different vision of what kind of state Israel should be. They set up offices, held rallies, bought round-trip tickets for an endless parade of Israeli speakers, and ran full-page ads in this paper advancing their cause.

Then, it all made perfect sense (especially those full-page ads).

Now, it’s time to rethink. There are a host of reasons why — there’s less money to go around, yesterday’s clear ideological walls have crumbled — but there is one that trumps them all: Iran.

The pro-Israel community needs to join together from across the ideological spectrum and let President Barack Obama know that he is flat wrong about linkage.

Administration officials have said that there is a connection between progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace and dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat. Obama has declared a “linkage” between Israel halting its settlements and America’s ability to deter Iran from building a bomb.

There are so many reasons why this formulation is deadly, but let me start with the simplest: It assumes if peace doesn’t come tomorrow, it could always come the day after. But if Iran chooses to develop and use its nuclear capacity against Israel, there will be no day after. In other words, Obama is linking a political and human-rights dilemma to an existential threat. At the risk of reducing historical analogy to the absurd, imagine if, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had told President John F. Kennedy, “We’ll stop pointing those nuclear warheads at you as soon as you make progress on civil rights.”

There are realpolitik reasons why linkage is foolish as well. An Iranian bomb would increase the chance of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, give Hezbollah and Hamas a nuclear umbrella under which to fire their rockets at Israel, and, at the very least, elevate the Iranian regime as the savior of the Palestinians when its policies have done nothing but undermine the development of a civil Palestinian society.

Would the Iranians really use a nuke against Israel or sell one to Israel’s enemies? With all due respect to Fareed Zakaria, who peddles Iranian pragmatism like salted pistachios, no one knows for sure. But why in the world would any sane Israeli, or supporter of Israel, want to take that chance?

I’m not about to second-guess Obama on how to approach the Iranians. The last administration, despite its pro-Israel rhetoric, left Israel in a far more precarious position than it found it. But Israel and “linkage” is a dangerous non-starter — a policy that demands that America’s pro-Israel groups finally bury their ’90s hatchets and join the 21st century.

Every pro-Israel organization, from the left to the right, from Peace Now to ZOA to AIPAC to StandWithUs to AJC and more, ought to sign on to a single full-page advertisement in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and, of course, The Jewish Journal.

Here’s my draft of the text:

Dear President Obama:

As you know, the American Jewish community harbors deep ideological divisions over how Israel should handle its conflict with the Palestinians.

But today we are joined together to oppose any policy that conditions America’s full and immediate commitment to a denuclearized Iran to Israel’s settlement policies or its negotiations with the Palestinians.

While we disagree sharply among ourselves over the settlements and the negotiations, we know that linking them to progress on the Iranian nuclear issue imperils the existence of Israel as well as peace and stability in the Middle East.

We urge you to send a clear and consistent message to Iran and the world that any country whose leader threatens to destroy another — and supports terrorists who share that exact goal — can never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

Never before in our history have we joined together to express a single unified opinion, but we do so now in the hope that you might hear us and take heed.

With All Our Prayers for Your Success,

The Jews. All of us.

Iran First Read More »

Renaissance Teens With Purpose

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Education, Graduation / Jewish Journal

With a touch of awe, we present our annual sampling of outstanding high school seniors. This year’s graduating class includes artists, performers and young entrepreneurs, some of whom have raised many thousands of dollars for people across the globe, reached out to Muslims and Latinos and advocated for the oppressed worldwide. They’ve helped pass state legislation, overcome their own disabilities, ranked statewide in sports and earned national recognition for journalism.

And they have done this all with an underlying belief that with a sense of responsibility and some empowerment, they can change the world.

If what the world needs now is a belief that there are people out there who can — who will — create a better future, we need look no further than the class of 2009.

Samson (Sammy) Schatz

Samson (Sammy) Schatz : President-in-Training

by Orit Arfa, Contributing Writer

Samson (Sammy) Schatz has always said he wants to be president. “I don’t know if I really want that, or if that’s what I say, but I kind of do,” the Milken Community High School senior said. Whether or not he ever reaches the highest office in the land, he’s already gotten a good start at leadership — and if he does land the job, Israel is assured of having a great, intimate friend.

Last year the Milken student-body president spoke at the installation of the Israel flag at the Israeli consulate on Wilshire Boulevard, and earlier this year he introduced the AIPAC board at the committee’s national conference in Washington, not the first one he has attended. He won — a few times — the award for “best delegate” at the Model United Nations conferences, where he represented Cuba, Ukraine, Japan and, of course, Israel.

Entering Princeton in the fall, he intends to continue his involvement with Israel advocacy, with an eye toward attending the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. A skilled orator and debater, he will take the podium again when he gives his speech as Milken’s valedictorian.

“What makes me who I am and what I do is that I’m always over-packing myself and taking on a whole bunch more than I took on before.” As student-body president, he re-drafted Milken’s student government constitution to clarify the responsibilities of student governors. He helped change the school cell phone policy to allow cell phone use during non-class and non-programmatic periods as well as helping change the dress code to allow non-collared shirts while focusing on overall modest dress. As a member of the student judiciary court, he divined fair “consequences” for students who break the rules, “not because I love getting kids in trouble, but the stimulation of getting people to think,” adding that “we integrate our Jewish values on how not to alienate this person but bring them back into the community in a positive, creative way.”

He still found time to play the lead in this year’s production of “Sweeney Todd,” sing in the school choir and play percussion, sometimes with his father’s band, the Dale Schatz Band, at his family’s synagogue, Sinai Temple. Growing up in a Conservative household and as a student at Sinai Akiba day school since he was in “diapers,” Jewish values have always played a central role in his life. “I’m a very spiritual person, and I get that spirituality from being involved in Camp Ramah, which I’ve done every summer,” he said. He’ll spend this summer as a counselor in Ramah before gearing up for Princeton, where he plans to be actively involved in Jewish campus life.

“I’ve forged my own Jewish identity, and it’s been great.”

From: Milken Community High School
To: Princeton University

Shelby Layne

Shelby Layne: Turning Jewelry Into Justice

by Rachel Heller, Contributing Writer

It started as a dinnertime conversation. Shelby Layne’s father had just heard a presentation about a new Jewish World Watch (JWW) campaign to provide solar cookers to women in Darfuri refugee camps, so the women wouldn’t have to risk getting beaten or raped when they left camp premises looking for firewood. Then only 15, Shelby’s interest was piqued.

“I’d always felt like I wanted to help the community in some way,” recalled Shelby, now 18 and a graduating senior at Harvard-Westlake School. “I’d heard about Darfur and the suffering going on, but I felt helpless — I didn’t know how I could make a difference.”

When she learned more about the Solar Cooker Project and found it only cost $30 to buy two stoves — which could save women’s lives and protect the dignity of a whole family — she knew she had found her answer. But Shelby sought a larger way to help, beyond donating money from her own pocket. So the enterprising teen devised a plan to turn her jewelry-making hobby into a fundraising drive that, over the past three years, has raked in more than $70,000 for the cause.

Shelby solicited unwanted jewelry from family and friends and made her own necklaces and earrings to peddle at her first sale in September of her sophomore year. She informed JWW of her plans, and the genocide-awareness organization helped spread the word. From that, Shelby was able to give $8,500 in jewelry proceeds and monetary donations to the Solar Cooker Project.

“It blew my mind,” she said. “We literally had a shoebox filled with money. When we counted it at the end of the day, all of a sudden I realized, ‘I could keep going with this.’ When I have the power to literally help save lives, why wouldn’t I?”

Since then, Shelby has done more than keep the fundraising momentum going — she has become an activist leader at her school, training her peers to advocate for refugee causes through the JWW Activism Certification Training Club. She routinely educates synagogue audiences across the city about the Darfurians’ plight and the violence against women. And as a 2008 winner of the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award, she donated her $36,000 in prize money to fund advocacy and outreach programs through JWW.

When she enters Barnard College this fall, Shelby isn’t sure whether she’ll concentrate in international relations or political science. But whatever she chooses, she knows she wants her studies to incorporate her greatest passion — human rights. l

From: Harvard-Westlake School
To: Barnard College

Aaron Feuer

Aaron Feuer: This Acorn Didn’t Fall Far

by Orit Arfa, Contributing Writer

Aaron Feuer has a car and could drive to school at North Hollywood High School Highly Gifted Magnet every day, but instead he takes the school bus — a clean bus, thanks in part to the efforts of his mother, an environmental attorney and Los Angeles superior court judge who fought to clear Los Angeles’ school busses of carcinogenic fumes.

“People think it’s crazy I don’t drive to school. Why drive to school when I can take the bus?” he said.

Growing up in a household where politics, law and education dominated dinner-table discussions, Aaron seemed destined for a high-school career merging all three fields. As a child he recalls attending stock political receptions with his father, Mike Feuer, now state assemblyman for the 42nd District.

“It was more like, ‘This sounds really cool, Dad, can I come?’ And he’d say ‘Yes.’ Most of the time I’d go for the food,” Aaron said.

He recalls the adults treating him like an equal — and even before he turned 18, he proved that he could hold his own with those in high office. After presenting recommendations for improving student health to the State Board of Education as a freshman, he was elected president of the local branch of the California Association of Student Councils (CASC), a nonprofit student-led organization fostering student leadership. As a senior he went on to become the statewide president of CASC, organizing leadership training programs and collaborating with state government on education legislation.

Thanks to his efforts, a state bill passed in May granting students the legal right to seats on the Los Angeles School board, without the right to vote.

“The Los Angeles school board had been dragging their feet. They’re not really excited to give us what we’re entitled to,” Aaron said.

Last summer he worked as a page for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, doing more mundane work like setting up rooms and running errands. Not that he complained. “Making copies on the Senate floor is the coolest place to make copies.”

The class valedictorian, he said he is leaning toward a career in education, a passion that began in seventh grade, when he launched a program through Temple Emanuel (where he became bar mitzvah) to collect and deliver used computers to underprivileged families. “I can’t imagine what it would be like in middle school these days if you get a research project and couldn’t do it” without a computer of your own, he said.

Aaron will be attending Yale in the fall.

From: North Hollywood High SchoolHighly Gifted Magnet
To: Yale University

Brett Pierce

Brett Pierce: From the Locker Room to Carnegie Hall, He’s Got the Bases Covered

by Dikla Kadosh, Contributing Writer

Brett Pierce is a real-life Troy Bolton. Like the high school heartthrob from Disney’s “High School Musical” franchise, Pierce is a handsome, popular star athlete at Brentwood School — a baseball and football player — as well as a gifted singer who performed at Carnegie Hall this spring.

As a safety and back-up quarterback on the varsity football team, he was ranked first in interceptions in Southern California and second in the state toward the end of the 2008-2009 season. His final standing was eighth in Southern California — quite impressive for someone who only started playing football in 10th grade on the junior varsity team and took the next season off in order to focus on his first love — baseball.

“My love of baseball came from my grandpa,” said Pierce, who has been playing the sport since he was a little kid. “He used to tell me stories about playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn.”

This year, Brett managed to find the time and physical energy for both the line of scrimmage and the pitching mound, starting one-third of the baseball games on the varsity team.

But the 6-foot-tall athlete happily tossed aside his pads and cleats this spring in exchange for a tux. Brett is a tenor in the Brentwood Concert Singers choral ensemble, which was invited to perform at Carnegie Hall in March with a handful of other distinguished high-school choruses. The group sang Vaughan Williams’ “Dona Nobis Pacem,” a 1936 cantata that champions peace over war. Along with his sports gear and machismo, Brett also leaves behind his competitive edge when he sings.

“This concert wasn’t a competition,” he said. “Which I was happy about, because I’m really against competition. That’s not what art is about.”

The Encino native and member of Temple Judea in Tarzana is heading to his No. 1 choice college in the fall — USC— but not to play on the school’s legendary Trojan football team or to pitch on the baseball team. He said he got to play while he could and he’s grateful for that, but college will be a time to explore new things. Having managed to squeeze in some acting at the Young Actor’s Studio between volunteering at SOVA and the Skirball Cultural Center, hosting a school radio show, and acing a couple of AP classes, Brett is contemplating a career in the entertainment industry.

With his breezy charm and silver-screen smile, perhaps he’ll be the star of a Disney movie — make that musical — someday.

From: Brentwood School
To: USC

Sammy Brunelle

Sammy Brunelle: YULA TeenReaches Across Barriers

by Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Senior Writer

It’s not often that an Orthodox Jewish teenager gets involved in the Resurrection Church.

But Sammy Brunelle is all about breaking barriers.

Last year, Sammy started tutoring a student at the school connected with the Resurrection Church in Boyle Heights, an institution his father has long supported.

Within a few months he had marshaled several of his peers from YULA yeshiva high school, and the school let them leave early on Fridays to tutor the middle school kids, mostly Latinos, in math and science. Sammy relished the experience, not just of helping the kids learn academics, but also because he knew this would leave a positive impression on kids who had never seen Jews before. He also organized a holiday food drive, bringing 20 YULA students to the church food bank before Thanksgiving.

Now the tutoring program includes 20 or so regulars and new leadership to help it continue when Sammy heads for yeshiva near Jerusalem next year and then to Duke University.

His ability to reach across the divide has found its way to intra-Jewish relations as well. He is a member of the Diller Teen Fellowship, a national program sponsored by the Helen Diller Foundation and run in Los Angeles with The Jewish Federation. For a year, teens of all denominations meet for monthly discussions on Jewish issues and then travel together to Israel on a trip to raise social consciousness.

“The program opened my eyes to some real problems in Israel that I hadn’t seen before, and it helped me to become more accepting of other Jews,” Sammy said.

A starter on the basketball team who made the league all-star team and a captain of the baseball team, Sammy is also the YULA student council vice president, a youth leader at Young Israel of Century City and a National Honor Society member.

He hopes to use all this experience in the biotech field. He has worked summers in Abraxis BioScience, a biotech lab where he’s done things like replicate viruses and mix DNA.

And he hopes to continue doing the unexpected.

“I had always volunteered and done community service, but I wasn’t breaking any barriers, nothing revolutionary,” he reflects. “Now I have things to be fully proud of.”

From: YULA High School
To: Duke University

Alex Kreisman

Alex Kreisman:Reaching New Heights

by Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Senior Writer

When Alex Kreisman sets goals, there isn’t much he’ll let get in his way — whether his goal is getting straight As or adding 11 inches to his height.

Alex was born with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism. In fifth grade, he chose to undergo limb lengthening, a painful, multi-step procedure that involved surgery to break his upper and lower leg bones and attach a shaft to push the bone segments apart a millimeter a day for three months. After another surgery to remove the shaft, he spent three months in a wheelchair and many more months in physical therapy.

The procedure netted Alex four inches, bringing him to about 4 feet 4 inches when he was a sixth-grader at Temple Israel of Hollywood Day School, a familiar and nurturing environment that helped his recovery.

Seventh grade at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES) presented a jarring contrast. He was thrilled to be placed in advanced computer and math classes — he was taking honors algebra with 12th graders — but the kids were cruel.

“Because I was taller, I thought it would be a whole new look on life,” he said. “I was shocked to find that it didn’t really matter that I just went through all this pain and stretching of my bones.”

He switched midyear to The Willows Community School in Culver City — a much softer landing — and for high school has gone to New Roads.

He has always set high standards for himself, considering an A-minus failure. And after ninth grade, he opted for another round of the limb-lengthening procedure, gaining another 7 inches and losing a few months of 10th grade. Today he is 5 feet 3 inches and will undergo arm lengthening this summer.

All the while, he kept his grades high and went out of his way to help others.

“I guess because I was different than everyone else I wanted to show them I was as smart — or even smarter — so I pushed myself to succeed,” Alex said.

He plays basketball and baseball — he made the little league all-star team some years ago — and this year helped his school’s golf team wins the league championship.

Over the years, he’s stayed involved at Temple Israel, working at the summer camp and volunteering for social action events.

At a summer medical seminar at San Diego State University, he “treated” patients played by actors, and he hopes to double major in economics and anatomy at Pitzer College, with an eye toward medical school. His chosen area: Orthopedics.

From: New Roads
To: Pitzer College

Rachel Smith-Weinstein

Rachel Smith-Weinstein: A Songbird Takes Flight

by Orit Arfa, Contributing Writer

In 2008, Rachel Smith-Weinstein auditioned for the title role of the Los Angeles Opera’s opera camp production of “Friedl,” which tells the story of the artist Friedl Dicker Brandeis, who saved hundreds of children’s artworks during the Holocaust by hiding them in suitcases in the concentration camps. Not only did Rachel get the part, but the writers were so impressed with her mezzo soprano voice that they tailored the score to fit her.

“Over the past few years, I’ve done a lot of research and a bunch of shows having to do with the Holocaust, so getting into that and being able to recreate something so close to history was unbelievable to me,” said Rachel, 18.

She first discovered her love for performing when she was 8 through the Donlavy Dance Company in Studio City and honed her voice and musical training at downtown’s Colburn Conservatory. Since middle school she has performed in LA Opera’s community productions, which are performed at the Los Angeles Cathedral, of “Noah’s Flood” and “Judas Maccabaeus,” and in LA Opera camp’s “Figaro’s American Adventure” and “Brundibar,” an opera first performed by the children of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Rachel’s home is very much on the stage, and also in Israel. She deferred her studies at Oberlin College in Ohio — her first choice because of its top-notch conservatory — to study Hebrew and Israel studies in Israel through Young Judea, subjects she has taught as a Sunday school teacher at her synagogue, Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood.

She describes herself as a “nerd” for her knowledge of “useless facts,” but she’s as much a scientist as a singer, one of just 300 students at North Hollywood High School’s Zoo Magnet, a public school located in Griffith Park, where she has nurtured her love for biology and animals. Caltrans is working with plans she and a group of students submitted for the creation of a wildlife corridor to be incorporated into the building of the 405 freeway overpass near the Skirball Center.

Rachel’s musical talent also came in handy when she worked as an assistant to the bird show at the Los Angeles County Zoo, feeding and training condors, eagles, cranes and roadrunners. “I would sing to them sometimes. They seemed to calm down when I did.” l

From: North Hollywood High School Zoo Magnet Center
To: Oberlin College

Daniel Toker

Daniel Toker: Just Do It

by Jason Lipeles, Contributing Writer

When most of his friends left for camps over the summer, Daniel Toker, 17, stayed home to work on his mystery/fantasy novel about a man who is killed by Greek gods. Daniel, who reads three hours a day on average, looks forward to growing as a writer at Princeton University.

Even if the course load is heavy, he has no doubt that he can accomplish anything that he sets his mind to. This year, for instance, he took five Advance Placement classes each semester. “I’ve always had this kind of determination. I see a future goal, and I work to it,” Daniel said, “I don’t care how hard it is or how long it takes — I just do it.”

In the eighth grade, Daniel set goals to be an all-star student, finish his second novel, learn a foreign language and become the lead in a school play by the end of his senior year of high school. Amazingly, he accomplished all of these goals and more.

Daniel leads the Israel Advocacy Club and Literary Magazine Club at New Community Jewish High School and, in his spare time, takes one-on-one oratory lessons with the school’s principal, Bruce Powell. In 2008, Daniel blew his classmates and teachers away with a heartfelt speech at a Yom HaAtzmaut assembly that people still compliment him on.

Because both of his parents are from Israel, Daniel has a close connection to the Jewish state. “I feel like I really own it. And I feel like it’s the only place I can really call mine,” he said.

With so much drive, it seems that Daniel would want to do everything on his own. Instead, he recognizes that “the role of the leader is to elect people who are good at what they do and to keep inspiring them to … keep working.”

As for future plans, he hopes to double major in English and civil engineering at Princeton and, after college, work as an architect or a professional writer. l

From: New Community Jewish High School
To: Princeton University

Noa Naftali

Noa Naftali: Galvanizedby Global Living

by Rachel Heller, Contributing Writer

Growing up in a suburb of Tel Aviv, Los Angeles native Noa Naftali went to elementary school on a kibbutz. Field trips were to the cow pen. Students often came to class barefoot. Rules were lax, and school was always out at noon.

Transitioning to Oakwood School in the fifth grade when her family moved back to Los Angeles was a jolt, to say the least.

“I definitely experienced some culture shock. I didn’t know what Juicy Couture was and the other 10-year-olds did. I was a little bit overwhelmed and confused,” Noa recalled recently. “But I think I’ve adjusted pretty well.”

That’s an understatement, considering what she’s done since then.

A current events-conscious teen, Noa has written for her school newspapers since eighth grade, including during a few-year stint at Harvard-Westlake School and at the Walworth Barbour American International School in Israel when her family moved back for her sophomore year of high school. Middle East issues have most often drawn her interest, such as honor killings in tribal Arab cultures. This year, she also wrote a “green column” for Oakwood’s newspaper, highlighting members of the school community working to protect the environment.

Spending 10th grade in Israel fueled Noa’s passion for learning about other cultures. She volunteered with Friendship’s Way, an after-school enrichment program for Jewish and Arab children in south Tel Aviv, bonding with volunteers of all ethnic backgrounds and drawing inspiration from the way children transcended religious divides to become friends. She was so moved by the experience that when the organization’s decrepit building needed repairs, she helped organize a fundraising concert with popular Israeli singer Noa that took in $100,000 — enough to renovate the whole facility and build space for more children to attend.

Always looking to broaden her horizons, Noa also takes part in Global Nomads, an organization that joins students across the world in videoconference discussions on such hot-button issues as human trafficking and water politics.

When she heads east to attend Tufts University in the fall, Noa hopes to major in — what else? — Middle East history. But whatever career she chooses, she says, she would like traveling to continue to be a big part of her life.

“I would ideally not like to live in one place for more than five years,” she said. “As hard as the first move was for me, every move since then has been easier and has taught me a lot about myself.” l

From: Oakwood School
To: Tufts University

Elana Eden

Elana Eden: Never Standing Idly By

by Julie Gruenbaum Fax, Senior Writer

As a ninth-grader transferring to the Modern Orthodox Shalhevet School from the public Paul Revere Middle School, things started off a little shaky for Elana Eden. She wrote two stories for the school paper that she says came out terribly. She was placed in the lowest Hebrew class. And she stumbled over some unfamiliar rules of Orthodoxy.

As a senior, her teachers all hold deep respect for her, calling her a humble and unassuming force. She’s jumped to honors Hebrew, and not only is she editor of the Boiling Point, the school’s award-winning paper, but she garnered three national and two local journalism awards for her opinions and reporting.

Elana has used the newspaper as a platform to encourage her peers to consider and act upon moral issues around the world — from Darfur to paying for online music downloads. Her role model, she says, is Nicholas D. Kristof, the New York Times columnist who travels the world witnessing and reporting on humanitarian crises.

If all the pieces fall into place, she’ll be beginning on that path next year. Before starting at New York University, she is planning to spend a year at Ben-Gurion University volunteering for a program that helps Sudanese refugees who trek to Israel.

She’s already spearheaded fundraisers and awareness activities about Darfur and has raised enough money to pay for a well in a developing country. She’s organized teams for just about every fundraising walk — AIDS, MS, Jewish World Watch, Parkinson’s, breast cancer. When a teacher was diagnosed with breast cancer, Elana went home and ordered a huge batch of pink wristbands to sell to raise money for cancer research.

She is a violinist in the school’s orchestra and alto section leader in the choir, and she also holds diverse interests in politics — she has written about her summer with far-right-wing relatives in a West Bank settlement, and she’s a featured writer on a forum started by a moderate Muslim.

When she helped run the school’s Red Cross blood drive this year, the committee linked the blood drive to a campaign to urge the Red Cross to visit Gilad Shalit, who is being held prisoner by Hamas. The theme for that drive is the mantra that empowers Elana. “Do not stand idly by your brother’s bloodshed.” l

From: Shalhevet School
To: New York University

Lizzie Klein

Lizzie Klein: Creating Greener Pastures for Kids With Disabilities

by Jason Lipeles, Contributing Writer

Lizzie Klein remembers when she was 7 her father telling her what was recyclable and what was not. “I made mistakes all the time, but he’d always correct me,” she said, “always tell me, ‘no, no, no, it goes in this one,’ and explain to me why.”

Now, through Green-4-Kids, a nonprofit organization she founded about a year ago, Lizzie, 17, not only deals with her own trash, but recycles the whole neighborhood’s garbage. Lizzie said that, luckily, her class at Valley Torah High School has supported her ever since she proposed the idea.

Every week, she and her friends collect the recyclables from local homes and restaurants, sort them and turn them in for money at the recycling center.

All of the proceeds are donated to organizations that specialize in helping children, especially children with disabilities. Including additional donations, Green-4-Kids has raised $10,000 for the cause.

Lizzie, who will attend Cal State University Northridge, has a particular interest in helping children and hopes to be a pediatrician someday. She has volunteered with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, delivering flowers to children in the hospital, and looked after children with disabilities at Camp Chesed and The Friendship Circle.

Lizzie is known for her leadership skills in other arenas as well. As student council president, she organizes school activities and social events. Her position requires her to constantly motivate students and staff to work together as a community and, remarkably, she never loses her optimistic spirit. “I try to see the good in everything, and I believe everything happens for a reason — even adversity,” she said.

With a black belt in karate and a passion for kickboxing, she loves to move, but has lessened her commitment to these activities as she has become more involved in her academic and volunteer work.

Recently Lizzie and her friends made a Green-4-Kids Web site and are looking to expand their collection route. So, don’t be too suspicious if a group of smiling teenage girls drives around your neighborhood. They’re not joyriding — they’re collecting trash. l

From: Valley Torah High School
To: Cal State University Northridge

Renaissance Teens With Purpose Read More »

Our Covers, Pope’s Sex Advice

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor / Jewish Journal

Our Covers
I am continuously impressed with the intellectual quality of the contents of The Jewish Journal. Especially for a free newspaper (which I have to pay to get delivered).

Yet, like many others, I often find your covers in poor taste.

What baffles me is the contrast between the outside and the inside.

Obviously, those who create the very intelligent inside also create the covers.

Have you ever addressed this contradiction? Or maybe you do not think it is a contradiction. Perhaps it is just a marketing ploy to get people to pick up The Journal.

Maybe I missed an explanation in one of your editions. But I sure am curious.

Amiel Shulsinger, El Monte

Rob Eshman responds:
Thank you for your kind words regarding our content. As for our covers, they do tend to be a bit more provocative and attention getting than some people like. Given that most of our print readers pick up the Journal for free, and that all but 4 percent of the Journals we distribute are returned to us (the industry average is around 10 percent) we are loathe to fix what isn’t broken. We are also very proud of our graphic designers, who each year (this year included) win awards for their work. That said, one reader who shares your opinion of our covers told me he found the ideal solution: he pretends the paper is in Hebrew, and reads it from back to front.

Pope’s Sex Advice
Rabbi Boteach argued that Christians such as Miss California are wrong to think that gay marriage is the primary threat to the family; the threat to the family is our culture’s degradation of women through pornography and similar reductions of women to sex objects (“What Would Jesus Say About Miss California?” May 22). Pope John Paul II wrote a profound book on these issues, “The Theology of the Body.” In it, he argued that it is always wrong to treat another person as an object of lust and that marriage and sex must be based upon love and service to each other. This viewpoint is opposed to pornography and similar types of degradation of women and men. Rabbi Boteach and other Jews of similar views should read John Paul; while there are profound theological differences, of course, between the Christian and the Jewish perspective, we should all know that many of us are trying to pull together, the same way, to preserve the family in a world increasingly hostile to it.

Rick Gibson, via e-mail

Hit Them Where It Hurts
I’m sick of hearing my fellow Jews whine about anti-Zionism/Semitism on college campuses, like UC Irvine, and doing nothing about it but write articles in Jewish papers, plead with unmotivated administrators and naively attempt “meaningful dialogue” with the perpetrators (“The Crucible of UC Irvine,” May 29).

The only way to get the administrators to act is to kick ’em where it counts — in the pocketbook. Tape the MSU’s activities on campus and send copies to the alumni, both Jews and gentiles. Advise them to withhold their contributions until the administration puts an end to the MSU’s hostile activities.

When confronted with a decline in donations, the administrators will be forced to step up to their responsibilities in ensuring a safe environment, free of organized hatred.

Daniel Iltis, Los Angeles

Cremation Ad
I am not Orthodox, I don’t have a strong opinion about cremation in either direction and I feel Steve Flatten’s letter (objecting to the cremation advertisement) was mildly extreme but clearly heartfelt (Letters, May 29). Mr. Eshman’s response doesn’t deal with Mr. Flatten’s upset, turmoil, bewilderment and sense of betrayal by a publication that he appears to read regularly. I disagree with Mr. Flatten but I also respect his passionate beliefs and I believe that there should have been some acknowledgement of the ancient nature and powerful meanings of certain practices for many Jews. Mr. Eshman’s response is surprisingly (for him) disrespectful and almost arrogant in its lack of acknowledgement of and lack of response to the emotions involved in the Jewish community about such issues. Mr. Eshman’s response’s reasonable endorsement of “sharp and fair-minded debate” is very different than his also casually telling someone that they should “challenge their own beliefs and practices.”

Charles Portney, Santa Monica

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Dear President Obama

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion / David Suissa

Now that you have brought your can-do spirit and sense of optimism to that most intractable of conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, I thought I’d share a few words of caution.

First, Mr. President, be prepared to fail and to cut your losses. Be open to the possibility that this conflict is bigger than you are and there is nothing you can do to “solve” it.

When I hear you wax eloquently about creating a Palestinian state, I see you holding a flower in your hands. This flower, which represents the Palestinian state you so yearn for, needs to be planted, watered and nourished.

For several decades now, whenever anyone wanted to plant that flower, no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t do it. The flower had no roots, and the ground was full of sand. Nobody cared enough to give the flower the key nourishment it needed — preparing the Palestinian people for peace with their Jewish neighbors.

Today, as I see you holding aloft this rootless flower, I see you falling into the same trap.

Which brings me to my second point: Don’t be so sure everyone wants peace. When you hear Arab and Muslim leaders tell you that “if only you could solve the Palestinian problem,” they would have better relations with America, help you fight terrorism, help you confront Iran, etc., be skeptical. They will do anything, including exploit your weaknesses and put you on the defensive, in order to stay in power.

For most of those leaders, power comes before peace. The Palestinian conflict is their suckling milk, their Al Jazeera-fueled drama that diverts attention from their own brutal and oppressive ways.

Listen to the words of one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject, your special adviser on Iran, Dennis Ross:

“Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away. This is the argument of ‘linkage.’”

Of course, as you have often reminded us, a peaceful Palestinian state would be in Israel’s interest, as it would ensure that the country stays Jewish and democratic.

So here’s my third point: Don’t assume the Palestinians want a state as badly as you do.

Consider this fact. The last Israeli administration made unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians, offering 97 percent of the West Bank, the evacuation of tens of thousands of settlers and even offering what was previously unthinkable: accepting the principle of a “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees and offering to resettle thousands of Palestinians in Israel.

The offer was rejected by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who said that “the gaps were too wide” and who later added, “No to the Jewishness of the Israeli state.”

These latest Palestinian “nos” from our “moderate partner” continue a pattern of rejection that started more than 60 years ago, way before the first Jewish settlement was ever built, and traces to a poison you recently noted — anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement.

There’s a perverse logic at work here. If you constantly demonize Jews in your schools, media and mosques, glorify suicide bombers and teach your children that there was never a Jewish presence in the land where Israeli Jews now live, how can you then turn around and tell them you will now make peace with these evil “foreign invaders”?

This Jew-hatred is independent of Jewish settlements, and is the longest-running impediment to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The fact is, the Palestinians have invested a lot more energy in hating the Jewish state than in trying to create their own.

With that as background, Mr. President, perhaps you can understand why many of us don’t see how a showdown with Israel over “natural growth” in the settlements will improve the prospects for peace. Israel hasn’t built a new settlement in years. How will your relentless pressure on existing settlements help deal with the Hamas charter calling for the destruction of Israel or the ongoing Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state?

A more even-handed approach would have been to put equal pressure on both sides to begin a “dismantle for dismantle” plan: Israel dismantles the buildup of illegal outposts while the Palestinians dismantle the teaching of Jewish hatred.

As it is, your single-minded pressure on Israel has backfired. Instead of encouraging the Palestinians to move forward and offer their own concessions, it has emboldened them and other Arab leaders to set new conditions for restarting peace talks, and given them a perfect excuse to do nothing.

“I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements,” Abbas told The Washington Post. “Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality…. The people are living a normal life.”

Unfortunately, there are others who are not living a normal life, and those are Jews in places like Sderot and Ashkelon, who over the years have been at the mercy of thousands of Palestinian rockets from Gaza that have rained down on their homes, schools and synagogues.

Which brings me to my final word of caution: You might not like the status quo, but believe me there’s worse, like the West Bank turning into a terrorist state with a thousand rocket-launchers pointed at Israel’s major population centers.

If you can find a way, Mr. President, to convince a few million Israelis that the Palestinian state you have in mind will be free of the Jew-hatred that is behind all these rockets, you will find plenty of Jews ready to help you water that plant.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine, Meals4Israel.com and Ads4Israel.com. He can be reached at {encode=”dsuissa@olam.org” title=”dsuissa@olam.org”}.

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Obama’s biggest battle in Cairo: Muslim conspiracy theories?

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Brad A. Greenberg

We’re still waiting for President Obama’s much-anticipated speech at Cairo University Thursday, which you can receive in text installments on your cell, but already Al Qaeda is pissed off about what the U.S. president might say.

Difficult as it will be for Obama to chart a course for peace in the Mideast, Jacob Bronsther opines in today’s Christian Science Monitor that Obama’s biggest challenge is not Israeli settlements or the fate of Jerusalem but “Muslim fascination with conspiracy theories.”

Bronsther writes:

It goes beyond Saudi schoolbooks that teach as fact the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a demonstrably bogus Jewish “plot” for world domination) and Tehran’s sponsorship of a Holocaust skeptics conference. The 2004 tsunami? That was possibly caused by an Indian nuclear test, ably assisted by experts from the US and Israel, according to Egyptian newsweekly Al-Osboa. According to the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Project, majorities in Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and Turkey do not believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks. And when asked in the same survey what is most responsible for Muslim nations’ lack of prosperity, about half of those in majority Muslim countries responded “US and Western policies” either first or second, beating out “lack of education,” “government corruption,” “Islamic fundamentalism,” and “lack of democracy.”

Conspiracy theories threaten American diplomacy because when Mr. Obama promises X Thursday, a great percentage of Muslims will believe he really intends Y or that some shadowy organization will ensure Z. Every culture exhibits some interest in conspiracy theories (see “The Da Vinci Code”), but they are especially resonant in Muslim contexts, and Western leaders need to find a way to mitigate this problem. The first step is to understand its origins.

One explanation is Muslims’ historical experience with double-dealing, divide-and-conquering colonial masters. But there is a deeper rationale for religious Muslims (and most Muslims are extremely religious by Western standards). This is the cognitive dissonance – the mental disturbance caused by the collision of contradictory ideas – stemming from the Muslim world’s relative lack of prosperity and power.

You can read the rest here. Also in The Monitor, an exploration of why Obama is visiting Egypt and Saudi Arabia but not Israel.

The most popular conspiracy theories, of course, are those pertaining Jewish world power. Their popularity is not limited to the Muslim world.

After the jump, a heads-up from the White House press office about what Obama will discuss in his speech. No real surprises here. This is Ben Rhodes, Obama’s speechwriter, speaking:

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Ahmadinejad Willing to Act on Threats

Leave a Comment / Opinion / Jewish Journal

It is astonishing how world leaders and those in charge of shaping public opinion miss the point about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They totally ignore this man and his state of mind. Not that the criticism directed at him isn’t tough. It is. Following the Iranian leader’s hateful and inciting remarks at the U.N. racism conference in Geneva, where Ahmadinejad called Israel a “racist entity,” there was a firestorm of criticism.

Alejandro Wolff, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, denounced the “Ahmadinejad spectacle” as “vile and hateful speech.”

But what Wolff and others don’t seem to understand is that Ahmadinejad is perfectly willing to cross the line from hate speech to hateful acts, from rhetoric to violence.

The evening after Ahmadinejad’s U.N. fiasco, an Iranian opposition member who has spent 12 years in the Islamic republic’s jails for his political views, told the local Geneva television of Ahmadinejad’s biography. Mostapha Naderi remembered being whipped on the soles of his feet in 1983 while he was spending time in the notorious Evine prison in Tehran.

The torturer, who kept his face hidden, was known by an alias, Mirzai. Naderi later found out that the man’s true name was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“A lot of people in Evine knew his true name,” he said. “That is why Ahmadinejad’s biography says nothing about 1981, 1982 and 1983. That is exactly the period he was serving as a torturer in Evine.”

When asked about other possible witnesses, he named a few who were all executed during the famous prison massacre of 1988, when some 30,000 opponents of the regime serving time in prisons were massacred following the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

Apart from the prison, Ahmadinejad has had a record of participating in extraterritorial commando operations against political opponents abroad.

Naderi had a specific adjective for Ahmadinejad: “He is dangerous. Seriously dangerous.”

That is the point everybody seems to be missing. This man is dangerous. This regime is dangerous, because such a dangerous man has been its president for four years, and he seems on his way to be elected for four more years.

It is astonishing to see people worrying about the United Nations being humiliated by him or about eventual talks with the United States being torpedoed by his behavior. That is fine. But that is not enough. That is far from enough. They should worry about the same person with nuclear arms capacity.

It is most irrelevant to say that other countries in the region have nuclear capacity. Cynics say no other country having nuclear capacity has called for the elimination of another nation. I would add, no other country, with or without nuclear capacity, has massacred political prisoners serving time on grounds of still sticking to their political views.

On May 1, Delara Darabi, a 23-year-old female artist, was executed in Iran, accused of a crime she was said to have committed when she was under 18 years old. In fact, they kept her in jail for seven years to be old enough to be executed.

During only six days in the month of May, the Iranian regime has hanged 16 prisoners in six cities. Last year some 400 public executions were announced by the regime. No other regime does that to its people.

If anything, Geneva’s incident shows how naively the Iranian danger is being dealt with.

Nooredin Abedian taught in Iranian higher-education institutions before settling in France as a political refugee in 1981. He writes for a variety of publications on Iranian politics and issues concerning human rights.

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Edgar Bronfman moving to London

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Danielle Berrin

Why are U.S. billionaires absconding for London? The tax rate there is substantially higher for the wealthy than in the U.S., clocking in at 50%. But who cares, says Edgar Bronfman, heir to the Seagram fortune and who also belongs to one of the Jewish world’s most dedicated philanthropic families. He’s movin up and out: Bronfman will move his family of six from New York to London where he will take over Warner Music, the world’s third largest music company.

From the Times online:

Madonna may have rediscovered her appetite for the Big Apple, but the American media mogul who runs her former record company has decided that life may be a little better on this side of the Atlantic.

Undeterred by the rise in the higher rate of income tax to 50 per cent, Edgar Bronfman, the billionaire heir to the Seagram fortune and the chief executive of Warner Music, is leaving his native New York for a house in Kensington, West London, with his wife, Clarissa, and four young children from his second marriage.

He plans to run Warner Music — the world’s third-largest music company, home to Green Day and R.E.M — from both London and New York, in a move that is a coup for the British capital, which had been losing ground to its American rival as the City struggles amid the credit crunch.

Mr Bronfman said that his principal reason for moving was to give his children some experience of life outside the United States and he plans to stay in the UK “for a period of one or two school years”. His presence will help to boost Warner’s faltering British operations, which have performed worse than its American business.

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Auto Esteem Deficiency

Q&A with Karen Bass: Life in the Hot Seat

Leave a Comment / Community, Opinion, Raphael Sonenshein / Raphael J. Sonenshein

Political analyst and Jewish Journal columnist Raphael Sonenshein interviewed California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass at the Jewish Journal offices on May 29, 2009, as California faces a dire budget crisis. She talks about her background growing up among Los Angeles’ Jewish community, her background in community organizing and her rise in California politics.

Raphael J. Sonenshein: Good morning, Speaker Karen Bass. So nice to have you here with us.

Karen Bass: Good to see you again.

RS: Good to see you too. Growing up in Los Angeles, you probably had a lot of contact with this part of town and the Jewish community. Can you tell us a little bit about it?
KB: Sure. Well, I was born and raised in LA, and I moved into the Venice-Fairfax area from the South Central area when I was 10 years old, and went to Hancock Park Elementary School, which was actually all Jewish. As a matter of fact, my first contact with the Jewish community was showing up at school for Yom Kippur and being the only person in my class, and that’s how I contacted the Jewish community. (laughter) But from Hancock Park Elementary School, I went to Hamilton High School, which was predominantly Jewish during those years.
Growing up in the Venice-Fairfax area, it was an area of activism where a lot of the parents of my friends were activists, either union activists or involved in different organizations. So the values that I treasure really were a result of watching the Civil Rights Movement on TV, talking to my father about what growing up in the South meant, and then growing up during the ’60s and watching young people try to change the world, led me to making a lifetime commitment to working for social and economic justice.

RS: And then you ended up back in South Central Los Angeles?
KB: Right. I chose to, professionally, by the way. I worked in the medical field, and that was my day job. My night job was being a community activist, but I never got paid for it, and in the ’80s I just became obsessed behind the whole crack cocaine epidemic and wanted to figure out a way to address the War on Drugs, because it was so obvious to me and others in the 1980s when we watched all of the drug laws being passed, that we would be right where we are today, with an over-concentration of people who are incarcerated. So I wanted to try to shift the agenda for the drug problem away from incarceration toward a more comprehensive public health viewpoint, which is viewing a drug problem as a health issue and as an economic issue. So I created Community Coalition. We were in the middle of a terrible gang crisis at the time, and I believed that the young gang members actually had a lot of leadership skills, they were just being driven in the wrong direction, and that if there was an outlet for their leadership then they would go in the right direction. So you take an adolescent, and one of the jobs of an adolescent is to rebel, and if you take that rebellion and channel it in a positive way, you can take that energy and then that energy becomes something that’s fighting for change versus rebelling with no direction.

RS: Right. You know, a lot of community organizers look down on elected politics, or say, “I’m never going to have anything to do with elected politics.”
KB: I did, too.

RS: I bet you did. (laughter) How did it happen that at one point you had that attitude, right?
KB: Right.

RS: But you also worked with a lot of elected officials in your community organizing. What made you think that maybe you might want to sit in that chair at some point?
KB: Well, I don’t think I ever did think I wanted to sit in the chair. I think it’s just as a person who’s committed to fighting for social change, you find at different points in time you fight for that change in different venues, and so to me at a certain point in time it was important to step into the electoral arena. But I definitely had to be pushed and prodded, because I was much more interested in getting other people elected than I was myself. But because of term limits there’s such a quick turnover that people at one point turned around to me and said now I needed to jump in, and specifically it was Miguel Contreras from the Los Angeles County Federation who really pushed. Diane Watson, Congresswoman Diane Watson, who told me that I had spent enough time in the community and that there were no African American women in the legislature and so I needed to go to Sacramento. We built this coalition of labor and community folks that was involved in elections, and so we were trying to impact various Propositions, from 209 to 184, which was three strikes, 187, various propositions, and so we had built an apparatus that could involve people and organize people around elections. So when it came to my own election, I had a great time. I mean, it was great to get all of the people that had always been involved. There were some interesting experiences along the way. One, because I was the only woman, and so that was kind of fun. I was running against Nate Holden.

RS: Right. (laughter)
KB: And that was fun. But the young folks that I had worked with did a lot of door knocking, and I did a lot of phone calling, and I had some interesting phone calls because when I talked to some people they would say, “Well, you know, these young folks came by, and they knocked on the door, and they were talking about why they should vote for (you).” But what impressed the voters was the fact that the young people knew me. They had worked with me, so they didn’t need a script. They could talk specifically about the work of the coalition and all that stuff. But one of the things I learned on the campaign trail was people knew the coalition but nobody knew me, and if you remember, I specifically didn’t believe in putting myself forward as an individual.

RS: Well, let me get… you show up in Sacramento now. What surprised you when you got up there or what did you think when you first showed up and spent your first few months just as a regular member of the assembly?
KB: Oh, it was a lot easier than I thought. I found it to be very welcoming, extremely welcoming. As a matter of fact, the welcome was so overwhelming to me, because I guess I had been the first African American woman in a long time, and people just came out like you wouldn’t believe and embraced me. And also, just the help that was everywhere. So I didn’t feel lost at all, because there’s just a lot of people around with tons of expertise. One of the things that I thought was interesting was that there are kind of low expectations in a way. For example, there are lobbyists who will give you legislation.

RS: Just hand you a piece of legislation, all ready to go, wrapped up?
KB: Well, more or less. And you don’t have to have an original agenda. (laughter)

KB: That, I found surprising, and because I was running in a safe district—my election was in March—I had until December to prepare. Since I had eight months to prepare, I spent time going up to Sacramento, finding out who the players were, who were the veterans, who were the people from the Willie Brown era, finding him, tracking him down, and making him talk to me. So by the time I went up there I felt very ready to be there.

RS: Now, your agenda, foster care was one of the top ones, right?
KB: Well, what I did, Raphe, in the eight months when I was waiting to go up, I tried to figure out what I wanted to accomplish by 2010, because I knew I had such a short period of time, and I tried to identify what issues to work on. I looked at foster care and realized when I looked over the legislative records of other people that foster care was one of the few issues you could get people on both sides of the aisle to agree on. And also that had been studied to death, so everybody knew what needed to be done, but it wasn’t an issue that generated a lot of political will and definitely had very little power. But what I did first was, again using a community organizing approach, is I established a statewide network of all folks that had been involved in foster care. I organized focus groups and community meetings and hearings up and down the state where people began to tell me what they wanted to see done legislatively, came up with about 25 pieces of legislation, created a select committee on foster care, and then I went to various members and I saw, you know, which pieces of legislation they wanted to carry, and then we put forward a comprehensive agenda on foster care. And one issue specifically that we had worked on at Community Coalition were relative caregivers, the grandmothers and all, and they were viewed very negatively, because in Sacramento people’s view is, well you messed up on your own kids, why would you take care of your grandkids properly. So that’s harsh, but that was …

RS: Because it’s a whole different story.
KB: Well, it gets said, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” those kind of things, and so I wanted to really change that perspective, so I organized a public hearing on relatives. We had about 300 grandmothers and aunties and uncles come up, and by the time we were done and they heard the real-life testimony, that had gone away. That perspective was gone, and relatives now are elevated a lot higher.

RS: How did you get to become a leader?
KB: I started off in the leadership. My first position was majority whip.

RS: Oh, and when did you become majority whip? How quickly did you become majority whip?
KB: On the first day I was sworn in.

RS: Now how did that happen?
KB: Speaker (Fabian) Nuñez wanted me to be a part of his leadership team and offered me the position of majority whip. It was interesting because everybody strives to be a committee chair. I didn’t want to chair a committee, because I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to focus on an issue, not just a whole area. I actually love the floor, and the floor and the assembly is very chaotic, and I really like the floor. I still like the floor, so the first term I was majority whip, then I became majority leader, which then meant I was responsible for everything that happened on the floor. The whip works under the majority leader, and then became speaker in my third term.

RS: OK, so becoming speaker, what were the politics of that?
KB: Yeah, it was a battle, but it was another battle that I was pushed and prodded in. Speaker Nuñez really wanted part of his legacy to be helping the first African American woman become speaker, and then a number of my colleagues encouraged me to run. I actually was headed in another direction. I was going to run for the senate seat that I believed Mark [Ridley-Thomas] was going to vacate. I went and got the votes—this is really kind of a funny story, because I was packed, my bags were packed and I was ready to leave to go to Atlanta to meet with President Carter and Rosalyn Carter, something that I had wanted to do. And before I left to go to the airport, Fabian called me down to his office, and he said, “Well, how are the votes going?” I said, “It’s going fine.” I think I had close to about maybe 20 commitments, and I had another six or seven pending, and it took 25 votes to get the majority, and so he was like, “Oh, no, this is over. You’re not going anywhere.” And so we pulled the rest of the votes together that night, and then the next morning there was the election and the caucus, and then we had… so that was Feb. 28, and then the swearing in was May 13.

RS: Okay. So you become Speaker. Now this is a big difference.
KB: Well, you know, yeah. One of the reasons I was reluctant is because I was concerned about the budget, and at that time we knew we had a budget problem. I had no idea I was going to become Speaker when the national economy melts down. (laughter)

RS: What was Gov. Schwarzenegger’s style like when you first started dealing with him? What was your sense of working with him?
KB: It was fine. You know, the governor, he’s from L.A. He might be a Republican, but he’s an L.A. Republican, and he’s from the entertainment industry, so interacting with him was fine. What’s been funny to me is sitting in meetings with the legislative leaders and watching the Republicans interact with him. Because the two Republican leaders at the time, they were both from the Central Valley, and they kind of looked at him like he was from another planet, and he looked at them like they were from another planet. But for me, I could relate to him. I mean, he’s West LA.

RS: And that became an interesting dynamic as time went on.

RS: So now you become Speaker, and all hell breaks loose on the budget front, so you’re now part of the Big Five, as they call it.
KB: Right, as the only woman and the only woman of color.

KB: You know what plays out more in Sacramento than race dynamics, are gender. Sacramento is an extremely male environment, and I think that… I mean, the guys are fine with me, but let me just go backwards and tell you that when Fabian was deciding whether or not to choose me as majority leader, he said to me, “I just don’t know how the Republicans are going to interact with you because they’re all men.” I mean, there’s a couple of Republican women, but… I said, “Fabian, I’ll be fine.” Number one, I’m used to all-male environments, but I also knew that they probably had little, if any, history of interacting with an African American woman. So, you know, things are just very male-oriented, but I’ve found that people are not quite sure how to interact.

RS: So how do they interact? When they seem uncomfortable, how does it manifest itself?
KB:What they didn’t see was, they didn’t see how I was handling them, and so I think that the male legislators are a lot more competitive and a lot more individualistic. The female legislators are much more cooperative with each other. So the rap on me was as Speaker could I really be Speaker, because I’m being too nice and I don’t fight. I just believe very strongly that there’s ways of fighting that is not—what do I call it? You know, it’s not yelling and screaming and whooping and hollering. I call it the Tarzan style of leadership. (laughter) I’ll give you a couple of examples. Over this last budget fight, they would sit in the room, and they would talk about were there any jobs —this is the Republicans and the governor—we need jobs and we need to make sure that we have the infrastructure money, and blah blah blah… but all the jobs they were talking about was jobs that guys would do. And at one point I got up and said, “You know, you’re talking about you’re concerned about jobs, and you’re going to lay off teachers, healthcare folks, and human services workers, who are all women. And so if you’re going to talk about jobs, you’ve got to talk about jobs for both men and women.” And after that they stopped talking about jobs. (laughs)

RS: So before we go further into the budget, which I really want to go into, tell me about your style as Speaker in terms of going around the state and going to your members’ districts, and presumably even going in to visit some Republican members in their districts.
KB: When I harvested rice, it was with one of my Republican members who wanted me to go see. Well, I was asking him about rice, because when I would fly into Sacramento, I would see as you’re landing I would see these big fields of water, and I didn’t know if it was flooding, because we were having flooding at that time, or if it was rice farming. So we would talk about that, and so he wanted me to come and see the rice farm, and so I did. I went and spent the day with him and just had a fascinating time. But what I’ve tried to do as Speaker is I’ve tried to be a Speaker that really promotes and empowers my members, and so the way I’ve been doing that, for example, is I have—and I’m also trying to… what I’ve been doing is trying to challenge the culture in the capitol, because it’s a very individualistic culture, and it’s a culture where ours and the other house are in competition, which to me is strange since we’re all Democrats, and so when you’re tackling a global issue, one individual can’t do it.

RS: It was 24 hours after you were sworn in that the budget just went all to hell?
KB: Well, it was 24 hours after I was sworn in that the governor released his version of the budget, which had drastic cuts, and so I had to go into fight mode right after. What happened then is it took us forever to actually pass the budget, and then we went into this longest time in history before the budget was passed. Then the budget gets passed, and then that’s when the economy collapsed, because the budget was signed around September, and it was around September when everything fell out.

RS: Right, and then the stock market goes, and now you know you have a catastrophe on our hands, right?
KB: Well, yeah, but what I fought for in the fall was for people to not view California in isolation. This was a national problem. Unfortunately, a lot of times the way it gets written about, the only thing that gets written about is the dysfunction of California as opposed to the fact that the entire globe is in crisis. The reason why it hit California so hard was because we were at the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis. Forty percent of the foreclosures took place here. So I was fighting hard that it be viewed in the national context, and the minute they started the bailouts for industries and all, I was trying to fight for money for states, because how can you give money to an individual company and not give money to the world’s eighth largest economy? So the minute Obama was elected, I was in D.C. right away, meeting with the transition team and trying to lobby for assistance to states, and also coming back here and trying to make the argument that there needed to be help to states from the Federal Government.

RS: Now, how did you, in your negotiations, how did you manage to get at least some flexibility on taxes from the Republican leadership in that agreement?
KB: Well, first of all, it was not the tax package the governor proposed. It was a tax package that frankly was more regressive from my point of view. And then it was the Republicans coming to grips with the fact that there was no other way to do it. That’s what took so long.

RS: Now, did you see that process of recognition going on over the course of the term?
KB: Oh, absolutely, and not only that. For example, the governor, in our Big Five discussions, from the very beginning admitted we needed revenue, but it took him several months before he publicly came out and said it.

RS: And how did the Republicans at the table take that admission?
KB: Well, they said “absolutely not, no way, no how, we will close this without taxes.” Plus, I’m talking to my counterpart in the assembly all the time, and helping him come to grips with what’s needed.

KB: Well, one of the things that I wanted to do right after I was sworn in was create this commission that would modernize the tax system, so that while you’re addressing the crisis, you are also trying to address some of the long term structural issues. They’re supposed to come out with the recommendations in July. So I guess my point is that while you’re in the middle of a crisis, you absolutely have to address the crisis, but you can put other things in place that will go into effect or be voted on later that still deal with the problem,.

RS: Why do you think the (May 19) ballot measures went down? What’s your electoral analysis?
KB: One, I think it was just darn confusing to people, and I think people were angry, and people were angry about the fact that we were putting this on them and didn’t understand that the reason why we were was because when you have a proposition the only way to change it is to go back to the voters. And I think there’s definitely election fatigue. I mean, look how many people came out to vote for the mayor’s race before that, and then a few months later we’re asking them to vote again? And I think that’s the main reasons, and I know from polling that took place afterward that people’s main reaction was “Don’t come to us to solve the problem. You solve it.” And you know how it is, people want services, but they don’t want to pay for the services. They want you to pay, but not me. (laughs)

RS: So what we’re looking at now, the world has changed, the two leaders you dealt with on the Republican side have been deposed, and there’re new leaders there who presumably became leaders because they’re going to stick more to the party line on revenue. So where do we go from here? When the Big Five sits down now, it’s a different Big Five, right?
KB: Yeah, when the Big Five sits down now, first of all we already have a budget, so we do not need a two-thirds vote for a budget. What we have to do right now is close a $21-billion deficit.

RS: And you can close that without a two-thirds vote, by a majority vote?
KB: Exactly. Now, I don’t personally believe that we can make $21 billion in cuts, so we have to look at some revenue solutions, too.

RS: So what kind of cuts—I mean, what kind of battle will there be over cuts?
KB: Well, let me just tell you. Fundamentally, the governor is proposing the wholesale elimination of certain programs. CalWorks, he proposed just today—he just came out with a whole new series of cuts a couple hours ago. One of those was to cut adult day healthcare. He has proposed an additional $700 million hit to education. These he just came out with. He’s proposing reducing state workers’ salaries 5 percent, so there’s a whole new series of cuts. But I can tell you that one of the things is we are going to fight against the categorical elimination of programs, and actually our fight this time will be to make reductions. And the reductions are going to be of a devastating nature. One of the things that has made all of us crazy is that the numbers of the deficit keep changing, and so we were told about a month ago that we had an $8-billion deficit, and if the measures didn’t pass that was going to grow to a $14-billion deficit. From last week to this week, it’s grown another $7 billion, so now it’s to $21 billion.

RS: It’s just mind-boggling. Since a lot of that’s driven by what’s happening with the economy, some of the cuts hurt the economy further, and then the gap gets bigger.
KB: Well, let’s take CalWorks. If we did eliminate CalWorks, for every dollar that we cut to CalWorks, we lose $3 or $4 of Federal funding. So it’s a real Catch 22.

RS: A constitutional convention, there’s talk about a set of ballot initiatives, some people are talking about a commission for constitution revision. Do any of these ideas strike you as having a chance of preventing the next crisis, as a long-term reform?
KB: Yes, actually the Senate Pro Tem and myself in a couple of weeks are going to release our ideas, which we are going to establish a bicameral, bipartisan group that is going to look at many, many of the reforms, and that group will look through the rest of the legislative year, and we’ll propose some things legislatively and some things we’re going to have to go to the ballot with. I mean, we have no choice. And so I absolutely think there’re several things that need fundamental reform. Number one, it’s crazy for the world’s eighth largest economy to have a budget every year. You would think we could have a budget every two years or so. We need to update the tax system. We need to revise the initiative process. We need to address the two-thirds. There are several things that lead to… I mean, the average citizen doesn’t realize that we only control 10 percent of the state budget. The rest of it, our hands are tied because of initiatives.

RS: Now that you’ve lived under them, what do you think of term limits?
KB: Oh. I think term limits are horrible. Number one, you can’t be a long-range thinker. But also, for example, what we went through with the Republicans. I mean, the reason they didn’t want to vote for revenues is because they were worried about the next time they ran in a Republican primary, and history says that if you are Republican and you vote for taxes, you can never hold public office again. So now, consequently, several of the guys are facing recalls. So I actually think it’s important for them to be reelected so that we can change that history. It means that they’re worried about every vote they take, and there are several people in the house running against each other for various positions. We wouldn’t have that dilemma if term limits weren’t in place. So I don’t think term limits should go away, but I think they should be adjusted, and the terms should be lengthened.

RS: What kind of contribution do you want to make after 2010 when you’re termed out as Speaker? Where do you see your own path going?
KB: Well, you know, I’ve been involved in public policy my entire life, so I will continue working on the same issues that I’ve been working on in Sacramento, and if I have an opportunity to run for another office, I will consider that. If I don’t, then I will be involved in some area of policy, maybe working for a foundation, maybe going back to the university and teaching.

RS: Thank you very much, Speaker Bass.
KB: You’re welcome.

Raphael J. Sonenshein is chair of the Division of Politics, Administration and Justice at Cal State Fullerton.

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