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Jewish Journal

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September 16, 2009

Anti-Israel Protests Roil Toronto Film Fest

Leave a Comment / Community, Entertainment, Hollywood Jew /

Rather than celebrating artistic freedom, this year’s Toronto International Film Festival became the locus of an artist-led, divisive boycott against Israel.

The controversy centered on Toronto’s choice of Tel Aviv for its inaugural City-to-City program, which showcases a series of films from a select city. The spotlight is an opportunity for the Israeli film industry to gain visibility at a festival that is considered among the most prestigious film festivals in the world and a launching pad for Oscar buzz. 

What at first seemed like a natural choice, given the Israeli film renaissance of recent years, turned into a divisive fight over Israeli politics, initiated by John Greyson, a Canadian documentary filmmaker, who withdrew his documentary short from the festival in protest of the Tel Aviv sidebar.

A letter titled, “The Toronto Declaration: No Celebration of Occupation” quickly was drawn up, protesting the “celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv” and the absence of films from a Palestinian perspective. That letter, calling Israel an “apartheid regime,” attracted a groundswell of support from such names as Jane Fonda, Harry Belafonte and Noam Chomsky, as well as David Byrne, Julie Christie and Wallace Shawn.

The protest campaign, in turn, provoked a counter-protest statement drawn up in Los Angeles and signed by some of the most powerful players in both the Jewish establishment and the entertainment industry.

“Anyone who has actually seen recent Israeli cinema, movies that are political and personal, comic and tragic, often critical, knows they are in no way a propaganda arm for any government policy,” the statement read. “Those who refuse to see these films for themselves or prevent them from being seen by others are violating a cherished right shared by Canada and all democratic countries.”

The Jewish Federation of Toronto, in partnership with The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, created the counter-statement as an ad for The Global Mail, Canada’s national newspaper, expressing Hollywood’s support for the Tel Aviv spotlight. More than 100 Hollywood celebrities and industry leaders — including Natalie Portman, Jerry Seinfeld, Sasha Baron Cohen, musician Lenny Kravitz, producer Guy Oseary and CBS entertainment president Nina Tassler — signed under the tagline, “We don’t need another blacklist,” a reference to the mid-20th century Hollywood blacklist that denied entertainment professionals employment based on their politics.

“We’re looking at an increasingly bitter battle for the hearts and minds of the public,” John Fishel, outgoing president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said Sunday of the agency’s decision to participate. “We should never become complacent that a point of view in terms of the legitimacy of the State of Israel is shared by everybody. When you see opinion leaders who are household names saying untruths or distortions, it’s necessary to mobilize.”

“The Toronto Declaration” declared that Toronto “whether intentionally or not, has become complicit in the Israeli propaganda machine” and faulted Tel Aviv, in particular, for being “built on destroyed Palestinian villages.” The letter claimed that focusing on Tel Aviv without including perspectives from the West Bank or the Gaza Strip is “like rhapsodizing about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.”

From the beginning, the back and forth has been intense.

Festival co-director Cameron Bailey defended the Tel Aviv program in an open letter on the festival’s Web site, writing that although Tel Aviv “remains contested ground,” he was attracted to Tel Aviv “because the films being made there explore and critique the city from many different perspectives.”

And there has also been some back-stepping: On Tuesday, Jane Fonda issued a clarification on The Huffington Post, after Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz, director of the Chai Center, contacted her. She said she had “signed the letter without reading it carefully enough” and that “some of the words in the protest letter did not come from my heart.”

Opponents of the protest do not support punishing Israeli filmmakers — many of whom are vocal critics of their government — because that is seen as an act of censorship.

“The most ardent critics of the State of Israel are its own filmmakers,” said independent producer Tom Barad, who drafted his own counter-protest letter. His letter attempts to dispel the charges against Israel by looking at history.

“The entire world was formed through military victories and defeats,” Barad said by phone from St. Louis. “Every state since the beginning of nations has been formed this way, but only Israel is continually disclaimed from its legitimate right to exist.”

Other Hollywood notables, including David Cronenberg, Norman Jewison and Ivan Reitman have also publicly denounced censoring the Tel Aviv program. “Film is essentially about telling global stories, exploring the complexities and contradictions of the human condition,” Reitman told The Hollywood Reporter. “Any attempt to silence that conversation, to hijack the festival for any political agenda, in the end, only serves to silence artistic voices.” Jewison — who is not Jewish — told the trade the protest “smacks of anti-Semitic bigotry.”

Although Federation President Fishel didn’t call it anti-Semitism, he said the vitriolic charges against Israel may hint at something more invidious than artistic censorship: “I see this as a pitch battle in the context of a larger war about reinforcing the legitimacy of the State of Israel,” Fishel said. He and entertainment division director Meredith Weiss orchestrated the support ad, which Fishel says was well received in Hollywood.

“Many of these people have visited Israel and seen with their own eyes that Israel is a complex country and that the creative work of some in the film industry is very critical of Israeli society and government and they think that’s healthy,” Fishel said.

“Everybody realizes that boycotting the free exchange of ideas and calling Israel an apartheid state is a false analogy and unacceptable,” though he added, with resignation, “I regret to say it won’t be the first or last time we’ll have to deal with this type of thing.”

Anti-Israel Protests Roil Toronto Film Fest Read More »

Home for Rosh Hashanah With Chef Todd Aarons [RECIPES]

Leave a Comment / Food, Holidays, Recipes /

What does the chef of Oxnard’s Tierra Sur cook for Rosh Hashanah? Since his kosher restaurant — located at Herzog Wine Cellars — is closed during the holiday, Todd Aarons has the opportunity to create a family meal at home.

“Rosh Hashanah has lots of foods that are symbolic of having a great and prosperous new year. Leeks, pumpkin or squash, pomegranates, dates and, of course, apples with honey. For our family meal we will have a whole fish such as snapper, which I cook encrusted in salt,” Aarons shared recently on his blog (toddaarons.blogspot.com).

“The first time I had this dish was when I was working at a little Italian restaurant just outside the city walls of Lucca, Italy, called Giamperos. This dish, using branzino [a European sea bass found in Northern Italy], was served tableside by a skilled waiter, because the salt crust needs to be removed and the filets of fish lifted off their bones. Leeks will also turn up on my holiday table as leeks agrodolce [sweet and sour]. This incorporates honey into the meal; usually I use chestnut honey for this preparation.”

At a young age, Aarons was always painting and drawing, but he was especially intrigued by the preparation of ethnic foods. After several trips to Europe in his teens, he fell in love with European table service, traditional regional foods and the pride Europeans take in food preparation.

“I have always been an artist, and feel like I ended up with the medium of food to express myself. Food has a nurturing quality that I like. It is an art that is consumed and it has a short time of existing on a plate before it becomes a part of our sensory memory. Food, like all other art forms, has a well-developed history with common rules and traditions. I enjoy the history and the reinventing of utilizing ingredients,” Aarons said.

While attending the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, Aarons refined his craft with Zuni Café’s Judy Rogers (a favorite chef for this writer).

After receiving rave reviews from such restaurant critics as Ruth Reichl while working with chef-owner Peter Hoffman at Savoy in New York City’s SoHo District, Aarons was invited to study with chef-author Madeleine Kamman at the School for American Chefs at Beringer Vineyards in the Napa Valley.

His travels took him next to Tuscany, where he worked at Dal Delfina with chef-owner Carlo Cioni in the village of Artimino, just outside of Florence, Italy. There he learned traditional family recipes from Carlo’s mother.

“Working for chef Carlo always reminds me of the connection of flavor and the food they produced. The air you breathed in on those olive tree-filled hills is what you tasted on the plate,” Aarons said.

In Tel Aviv and Netanya, he immersed himself in eclectic cuisine and kosher dietary laws.

Now at Herzog, Aarons is devoted to creating a menu in the Tierra Sur Restaurant at the highest levels of kosher cuisine, which includes using locally grown ingredients.

In addition to his Salt Baked Fish, Aarons is planning to include Chicken and Veal Dumpling Tagine With Apples as part of his holiday meal at home. A type of Moroccan stew traditionally cooked in a clay pot with a conical lid, his tagine, which features honey and spices such as cardamom along with apples, has become a family favorite for Rosh Hashanah.

Salt Baked Fish

You might be a skeptic about the outcome of a recipe that calls for 5 to 6 pounds of kosher salt, but this recipe will make you a believer. The salt forms a crust that locks in all the delicate flavors of the fish, while the skin of the fish protects it from absorbing too much salt.

One 5- to 6-pound whole striped bass, California white sea bass, red snapper, grouper arctic char or a small salmon such as Coho salmon (have your fish monger gut, scale, remove the gills and trim all fins).
Fresh herbs (any combination of rosemary, sage, parsley, thyme, marjoram, oregano or savory)
6 to 7 egg whites
1/2 cup water
5 to 6 lbs. kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Whisk egg whites and water together in a large mixing bowl. Add the kosher salt. Incorporate all the salt into the mixture with your hands (use latex gloves if your skin is sensitive). The mixture should feel and look like wet sand. If needed, add more whisked egg whites to achieve this consistency.

Place a 1/2-inch layer of the mixture on the bottom of a baking dish, such as a glass or enamel one that will fit the entire fish. (An oval-shaped casserole dish works best because it mimics the shape of your fish and you will use less salt.)

Rinse your whole fish with cold water in the sink, especially the gutted underside and the head cavity. Place the fish on the bed of salt. Place 1 to 2 tablespoons of any combination of the herbs inside the belly of the fish. Cover the fish completely with the rest of the salt mixture. You want to have at least 1/2 inch of salt covering the entire fish, and you should not be able to see any part of the fish when you are done.

Place the fish in the preheated oven one hour before you plan to serve it. Cooking time will vary from 45 minutes to one hour. Check internal temperature at 45 minutes with a meat thermometer. The fish should reach 145 F.

Place the entire fish on the table inside its baking dish. Crack the top crust using a meat tenderizer or the back of a big metal spoon, and remove the top layer of crust carefully. Peel off the skin of the filets, gently remove the meat from the bones and serve.

Makes six servings.

Chicken and Veal Dumpling Tagine With Apple

2 tablespoons pure olive oil or canola oil
1 cup baby cippolinni or pearl onions, peeled and whole
6 Braeburn or Granny Smith apples, firm and tart (peeled, cored and cut into 1-inch cubes)
1/4 cup Baron Herzog Sauvignon Blanc
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 cup honey
1 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or sage leaves, chopped
Chicken and Veal Dumplings (recipe follows)
Sea salt to taste

In a large sauté pan with a lid, heat oil and add the onions. Sauté until they begin to brown and then add the apples. Continue to cook over a medium flame until the onions and apples are both caramelized. Be attentive and continuously shake and stir your contents, otherwise the sugars will quickly burn on the bottom of the pan.

Add the Sauvignon Blanc and let the alcohol dissipate for 30 seconds. Add the honey, vinegar, chicken stock and chopped herbs and cook uncovered on a low flame for 5 minutes. Add the chicken dumplings, cover with the top of a tagine and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Adjust seasoning with sea salt. You may do this last step 10 minutes before serving.

Makes six servings.

Chicken and Veal Dumplings

6 boneless chicken thighs (approximately 1 pound)
1 pound veal stew shoulder meat
1 cup of crustless French baguette or other rustic hearth-baked bread
4 ounces soy milk (full fat — 4 grams or higher in fat content) or Mocha mix
4 garlic cloves
1/2 medium-size Spanish onion
1/2 tablespoon ground green peppercorns
1/2 tablespoon ground coriander seed
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 large egg
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil or canola oil
kosher salt to taste

Take crustless bread and saturate it in the soy milk. Grind the thigh meat and veal through a medium die, or have your butcher grind it for you. If you are grinding it yourself, send the garlic and onion through the grinder after the meat to help clean out the inside, otherwise mince the onion and garlic by hand.

In a mixing bowl, place the ground meat, minced garlic, onions and spices. Give the meat a good preliminary mix with your hands. Place the meat, the soaked bread and any remaining soy milk in the bowl of an electric mixer. Fix the paddle attachment to the mixer and begin to mix the meat on a medium speed. While the meat is mixing, add the egg, egg yolk and 2 teaspoons of salt. Turn mixer up to a high speed and whip for two minutes. The mixture should be stiff.

Take a small sample and cook it in a skillet. Test for salt level and adjust.

Roll your meat mixture into 1 1/2-inch to 2-inch diameter balls. Add oil to a skillet and brown the meat dumplings, but do not cook them all the way. Plate dumplings and reserve for tagine.
Makes six servings

Leeks in Agrodolce
(Sweet and Sour)

6 leeks, dark green tops shaved down and removed
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 pinches sea salt
1 cup Baron Herzog Sauvignon Blanc
1/2 cup vegetable stock
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1 sprig of each, fresh thyme and oregano
1/4 cup dried black currants

Leaving the root end intact, shave down the top of each leek and then slice the root end in half lengthwise. Wash leeks under cold water and then place in a bucket of cold water so sediment falls to the bottom. Remove and dry leeks on a kitchen towel.

In a large sauté pan, heat the olive oil and add leeks one at a time. Using tongs, gently cook the leeks over a medium flame for approximately 10 minutes (avoid browning). Sprinkle the sea salt over the leeks as they become translucent. Lower flame, tilt the sauté pan away from you and add the wine. Turn flame back up and add the vegetable stock, honey, vinegar, herbs and currants. Bring to a boil, reduce the flame and simmer. Place a piece of parchment paper fitted to the sauté pan over the leeks and continue to simmer approximately 5 minutes, until leeks are supple and the liquid has been reduced to a glaze. If more time is needed, add a bit more vegetable stock and cook longer. The parchment will steam the leeks and allow for the reduction of the sauce at the same time.
Makes six to eight servings.

Judy Zeidler is the author of “The Gourmet Jewish Cook” (Morrow, 1999) and “Judy Zeidler’s International Deli Cookbook” (Chronicle, 1994). “Judy’s Kitchen” appears on Jewish Life Television. Her Web site is judyzeidler.com.

 

Home for Rosh Hashanah With Chef Todd Aarons [RECIPES] Read More »

Looking Inward in the New Year

Leave a Comment / Books, Holidays /

The caretaker of the only shul in Rangoon, Burma, posted this notice just outside the sanctuary before Rosh Hashanah, 2007:

“A tree may be alone in the field, a man alone in the world, but a Jew is never alone on his Holy Days.”

Moses, the caretaker, and his son were the only Burmese Jews at services that year. The few remaining Jews in Rangoon are older and frail, and at that time the rains were heavy and the streets were often violent. Some Israeli tourists and an American writer showed up unexpectedly. Together, they said the blessings over juice and then apples and honey, and someone tried to blow the shofar.

Sammy, the caretaker’s son, who has spent time in Israel and in New York, plans to take on his father’s role, upholding in his way the Jewish community of Burma, Charles London reports in his spirited travelogue, “Far From Zion: In Search of a Global Jewish Community” (William Morrow). Moses muses that if he doesn’t keep up the shul, who would? Who would be sure that no Jew would be alone? Moses swore to his father that he would keep the synagogue open, that there would always be a place for Jews in Burma. He has found ways to cut down on operating costs by sharing water and electricity with Muslim shopkeepers on the block. Sammy says his father is not a religious man, but he’s happy when he sees people in the shul and hears their songs.

“The people are his prayers,” Sammy says.

In exploring issues of Jewish identity, London is particularly drawn to Jews who have stayed behind as their communities have largely dispersed, those who try to create something meaningful in spite of pressures to leave.

London also visits Jewish communities in Cuba, Iran, Uganda, Germany and Bentonville, Ark. — home of Wal-Mart and a fast-growing Jewish community — in an effort to tease out answers to questions about belonging and cultural transmission. His narrative, filled with memorable people and anecdotes, is also a personal story, of his own searching and connection to Judaism, as it evolves. The author of “One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War,” London is program director for War Kids Relief, a youth peace-building organization. He was inspired to begin his travels after his grandmother’s death, when he was surprised to learn that she came from a close-knit Orthodox background in a small town in the American South.

London’s book, along with several other new titles, makes for timely reading at this introspective moment of the Jewish year. These are books that ask more questions than they answer.

“The Life Worth Living: Faith in Action,” by Byron L. Sherwin (Eerdmans) is a thoughtful examination of the largest questions — about the purpose and meaning of life, the nature of wisdom and relationship with God.

Sherwin, a rabbi and theologian who serves as professor at Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies in Chicago, writes of faith and spiritual life in authentic and accessible ways, often using Chasidic tales as illustrative material. For him, a life worth living is one of beauty, goodness and meaning, and he speaks of cultivating virtues of gratitude, humility, wisdom and love. While this is a deeply Jewish book, he also looks to other traditions and philosophers for their wisdom and teachings. His themes often parallel themes of the machzor (holiday prayer book). For those who follow the tradition of in-shul reading, this thin book might be a good candidate.

Be sure to take along Erica Brown’s new book as well. “Spiritual Boredom: Rediscovering the Wonder of Judaism” (Jewish Lights) is an important, passionate book on a subject that’s not often discussed in positive ways.

Brown’s awareness of her own boredom — her sense of being stuck in her religious ways and no longer feeling satisfied — sparked her profound search for its causes and resolution. Brown is director of adult education for the Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning and scholar-in-residence at The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and the author of “Inspired Jewish Leadership.” She takes an approach that’s religious, philosophical, psychological and practical.

As she explains, there’s boredom and Jewish boredom. The latter is “the product of situations and behaviors within a Jewish context that are typical, mediocre, and culturally induced. Boredom becomes the bane of communal Jewish living when our friends and institutions stay rooted in sameness. It sums up the tedium of uninteresting prayer services, the humdrum of a Hebrew school class where the aleph-bet is taught year after year without curricular sequencing…. It is the Jewish day school graduate who gets to university and is over-stimulated by Renaissance art, the philosophy of language, and an introduction to microbiology and wonders why his Judaic studies have been much less sophisticated.”

She worries a lot about boredom and its corrosiveness. Boredom diminishes the recognition of blessing and blessedness, blurs our vision of what is awesome and beautiful. The sense of routinization minimizes intensity of feelings and experience.

Fortunately, she also sees another side — that boredom can be a platform for new thoughts. “Creative minds,” she writes, “are often stimulated by boredom, regarding it as a brain rest until the next great idea looms on the horizon of the otherwise occupied mind.” The book underlines her point: Out of boredom grew a fresh, challenging analysis that is anything but a rote way of looking at things.

About finding mystical wonder, she quotes Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in a line relevant for the new year: “An epiphany enables you to sense creation not as something completed, but as constantly becoming, evolving, ascending. This transports you from a place where there is nothing new to a place where there is nothing old, where everything renews itself, where heaven and earth rejoice as at the moment of Creation.”

Sandee Brawarsky is book critic for The Jewish Week.

Looking Inward in the New Year Read More »

Jay Sanderson Named New Federation President

Leave a Comment / Community, News /

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles has named as its next president Jay Sanderson, CEO and executive producer of Jewish Television Network (JTN), a nonprofit producer and distributor of Jewish-themed television programming.

Sanderson, 52, replaces John Fishel, who served 17 years as Federation president and resigned last January, effective next Dec. 31.

“I’m extremely excited and feel deeply privileged,” Sanderson said in an interview Tuesday morning at the home of Stanley Gold, The Federation’s board chair. “I’m surprised. It’s such a big, important job I wasn’t sure I was going to be the person that they chose, especially given the quality of the other candidates.”

In the final week of a three-month process, the selection committee had narrowed an initial field of some 20 candidates down to four: Sanderson, former City Councilman Jack Weiss, former William Morris COO Irv Weintraub and Joshua Fogelson, executive director of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.

Gold and Richard Sandler, The Federation’s incoming chair, informed Sanderson of the decision on Tuesday at around 9 a.m.

“All of our candidates were very, very qualified, and in that regard it’s a good decision to have to make, because we have good people,” said Sandler, an attorney who works closely with Michael Milken and the Milken Family Foundation. “Jay has the knowledge of the community, he has the skill set, and he has certainly accomplished a tremendous amount as head of JTN.”

Sanderson has been professionally active in the Jewish community for two decades, primarily in Jewish media. Since 1989, he has led JTN, during which time, among other accomplishments, he created and served as executive producer of the PBS series, “The Jewish Americans,” and the upcoming PBS documentary on modern genocide, “Worse Than War.”

Along with JTN board member Michael Lynton, chair and CEO of Sony Pictures, and News Corp. Executive Vice President Gary Ginsberg, Sanderson also created Newsweek’s annual list of “America’s Top Rabbis,” published by the magazine for the past three years.

Prior to joining JTN, Sanderson, a graduate of Syracuse University, was an independent producer of films and documentaries.

Sanderson says he will leverage his experience in communication to help The Federation expand its membership and fundraising base, and build the Jewish community.

“My No. 1 goal is to really return to being central in the community, and in doing that we have to reach out to the whole community,” Sanderson said. “It has to be a convener and a collaborator. There are thousands and thousands of Jews who want to be involved in Jewish life who need to be engaged in The Federation.

“The community is so diverse, and there are so many more organizations than there have been in the past, we have to assert ourselves in terms of outreach,” he said.

Sanderson pointed to the kinds of grass-roots organizing efforts that helped make Barack Obama president — Internet technology, e-mail, networking — as tools that could help The Federation reach and inspire a new generation of Jews.

“There’s a lot of Jews out there who are not engaged but not disinterested,” he said.

Sandler agreed. “Federation has been around a long time,” he said. “But people under 50 years old really don’t know what Federation does.”

The Federation has traditionally raised funds and distributed them across a variety of social service, educational and advocacy agencies, in Los Angeles, Israel and elsewhere. It has also created and run its own programs and activities.

“A lot of people see Federation as this big organization, but they don’t see the small, important things it does,” said Sanderson, pointing to the KOREH LA literacy program as one example. “It does amazing things on the ground to help people.”

Sandler, who will take over as board chair on Jan. 1, joined Sanderson in saying that engagement also means more outreach and collaboration with existing Jewish organizations and synagogues. Sanderson promised “a whole other level of engagement” with synagogues and major locally-based Jewish organizations like the Skirball Cultural Center, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and American Jewish University.

This Rosh Hashanah, The Federation will launch one such collaboration — a communitywide effort to raise money to fight local hunger and to distribute the funds through a variety of organizations and synagogues.

“Every synagogue has participated,” Gold said.

Sanderson takes the reins of the nonprofit, headquartered at 6505 Wilshire Blvd., at a difficult economic time, when donations to federations around the country are down. Gold said The Federation’s annual campaign will be down between 10 percent and 12 percent from the $50 million it raised in 2008.

“I’m not one of those people who recognizes this as a more challenging time,” Sanderson said. “Every period in philanthropy has its ebbs and flows. If The Federation is successful in reaching out and really telling its story in a way that’s powerful, new donors will come in.”

To assist in the search for Fishel’s replacement, The Federation hired Development Resource Group, a nonprofit headhunting firm based in New York. Estimates put the cost of the search at around $250,000.

“It was as thorough and fair and democratic a process as I’ve seen,” Gold said.

Sanderson, who lives in Encino with his wife Laura Lampert Sanderson, a psychologist, son, Jonah, and daughter, Isabelle, said he is looking forward to working with his new Federation co-workers, the lay volunteers and the larger Jewish community.

“I can’t do this alone,” he said. “Stanley Gold did a fabulous job, as did John Fishel, leading Federation to this point, and my job is to take what they’ve done and build on it. We’re all really excited about the future.”

Jay Sanderson Named New Federation President Read More »

Jammin’ With the Shofar

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Holidays /

Salvation comes in many forms: religion, prayer, meditation, friends and family. For David Zasloff, though, it came in the form of humor and music, specifically the musical heritage of ancient Jerusalem: the Shakuhachi (Japanese) flute, drums, autoharp and, most notably, the shofar. 

At a recent pre-selichot event at Temple Beth Haverim in Agoura Hills, the fruits of his redemption were on display. As a temple employee brought in the newly dry-cleaned Torah covers to be set atop the scrolls, Zasloff set his stage to entertain and challenge the assumptions of those in attendance. The disarming personality and humorous style with which he told of his life journey were a clear indication of how much he is influenced by his faith.

Once addicted to alcohol and drugs, he is not shy about revealing how his life used to be full of vices. Since getting clean over 25 years ago, he has relentlessly sought to eliminate all that was negative from his life, including not only the obvious substances, but also sugar, meat and caffeine. Just as the shofar once was used to signal that the ancient Jews should pack up their tents and “leave anything behind that got in the way of connecting with God,” Zasloff’s rededication to his faith and music have provided the same signal.

Some consider the shofar an antiquated homage to the crumbling of the walls of Jericho, and restrict its usage to Rosh Hashanah. “It has been said,” Zasloff told his class of about 25, “that you can’t play a melody on the shofar. Well, obviously that’s not true.”  He went on to prove that theory wrong. “I think it’s an expansion of consciousness,” he said.

Zasloff has been playing the shofar for over 30 years, mastering tunes from “Flight of the Bumblebee” to “Hava Nagilah” to “Happy Birthday.”

In addition to his unusual stylings on the shofar, Zasloff also offered several drum solos, a stand-up comedy routine and a half-recorded half-live musical version of what he believes King David dancing in Jerusalem must have sounded like. 

During the comedy portion, he offered an explanation for his brand of religion, about which he has written a book titled, “Zen Judaism, The Joy of Suffering.” According to the self-proclaimed inventor of Zen Judaism, its followers “believe everything is sacred, and everything is marketable.” 

He shared his suggestions about how to incorporate tai chi into jogging, and how to relax the facial muscles and the body by humming “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” in addition to adding several stories about his failed marriages. He did make a point to mention that he is currently happily married, assuring the audience, “and I know the difference.”

Zasloff’s shofar playing has been fostered over years of practice and dedication, all of which began quite by accident one day at a friend’s house. As Zasloff explains, his friend, who knew he was a musician, asked if he could play the shofar, and Zasloff picked it up and played “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

“I blew it, and that’s what came out,” Zasloff remembers.

Between the songs and countless quips, Zasloff offered this as his best advice for both playing the shofar and living: “Relax. The most important thing […] is to be yourself. Do God’s will; be joyous; live in the moment.”

As if it wasn’t evident enough that Zasloff is a man who listens to his own advice, he concluded with the song “Oh Boy, Oh Boy, I’m So Happy Now.” The smile on his face served as confirmation.

Jammin’ With the Shofar Read More »

Posing the Right Questions

Leave a Comment / Holidays /

As the Fingerhut professor of education at American Jewish University and president of Synagogue 3000 — a program designed to rethink Jewish synagogue practices and goals — Ron Wolfson has long been looking for answers to some of life’s most complex questions. At the same time, he has remained, at his core, a teacher.  And a teacher, he said “always starts with a question.”

“The Seven Questions You’re Asked in Heaven” (Jewish Lights Publishing), his ninth book, allegedly challenges readers to consider questions that could be asked upon arrival in heaven — or wherever the soul embarks when the body leaves the earthly world. Despite the premise, Wolfson said, the book’s suggestions and stories are really about living and reflecting today.

“It really is the question of ‘how do you think you’re going to look back at your life and make an assessment of what you did with your time on Earth?’” Wolfson said. “The book is not about heaven at all. The book is about life on this Earth.”

The premise, he said, was inspired by a quote from the fourth-century talmudic scholar Rava: “At the hour you enter [heaven] for judgment, they will ask you … Did you deal honestly with people in your business practices?”

Rava poses six ultimate questions, which Wolfson condensed and simplified into five: Were you honest? Did you leave a legacy? Did you set time to study? Did you have hope in your heart? Did you get your priorities straight?

Wolfson added two more questions, from the 19th-century German Orthodox Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and the early Chasidic sage Rabbi Zusya, respectively: Did you enjoy this world? Were you the best you could be?

Wolfson set out to extrapolate the questions’ meanings. “My interest,” he said, “was in exploring what the questions really are trying to get at.”

The book intersperses Judaic teachings with stories of Wolfson’s own personal experiences, including encounters with relatives and friends, as well as strangers. Through these stories, he encourages readers to examine and assess their own lives. 

One such story deals with a couple, Leia and Dwight Smith, who left their high-powered jobs to live in and run a shelter that provides hot meals every day to more than 120 of Santa Ana’s homeless population. 

The Smiths are “a couple who decided long ago not to have their own children. Instead, they devote their lives to the hundreds of people who come through the Isaiah House each week,” he writes.

When he set out to address Rava’s second question, “Did you busy yourself with procreation?” (which he rephrased as “Did you leave a legacy?”), Wolfson was careful to incorporate a range of stories, such as the Smiths’, taking into account the challenges his readers might face.

“I knew right away that was going to be a difficult question, because 10 percent of the population can’t have children,” he said. However, the examples and context he gives explain different ways to leave legacies, evident even in the book’s dedication: “For my ancestors, From your descendant.”

With the High Holy Days fast approaching, Wolfson said he hopes people find the book relevant.

He doesn’t pretend to have an inside track on the afterlife: “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but the idea that you can reflect back on your life even before you’re gone, is my goal as an educator.”

“Ronnie’s genius is in the way he speaks to people,” said Rabbi Ed Feinstein, senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino and a friend and neighbor of the author. “Normally we think of people who are really smart, really wise, really deep, as speaking in an idiom which is above our heads. … Ronnie’s genius is to speak to you in a language which makes you realize your own inner wisdom, and this book is a great example of that.”

Wolfson began teaching in 1974, while a graduate student at American Jewish University. He has yet to stop teaching, or learning, which speaks to one of the book’s fundamental premises, which he summarizes as: “Rava just wants you to have an appointment to learn.”

Wolfson strives to live by example, learning and growing every day; that is a goal his daughter, Havi Wolfson Hall, said he lives up to. “He’s always a student,” she said. “He learns from every experience.” 

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LAUSD Supports Federal Bill Against Businesses Working With Iran

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The seven-member board of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Sept. 8 unanimously approved a resolution in support of a newly drafted federal bill that would prohibit the U.S. government from contracting with telecommunications companies that work with the Iranian regime. While only symbolic in nature, the resolution was California’s first school board resolution related to Iran. It was drafted by board member Tamar Galatzan, who is Jewish, and is intended to send a message to federal policymakers and to corporations doing business with the Iranian government.

“Sponsoring a resolution like this, while just a little thing, shows companies in the telecommunications industry that they are going to have to make a clear choice and choose whether they want to do business with the government of the United States or with a terrorist-sponsoring state like Iran,” Galatzan said. The proposed federal bill, titled the “Reduce Iranian Cyber-Suppression Act,” would prohibit the U.S. government from entering into or renewing contracts with corporations that export certain computer and telecommunications technologies to Iran.

Before a final vote on the resolution, David Peyman and Sam Yebri, two members of the board of 30 Years After, an L.A.-based nonprofit promoting the participation of Iranian Jews in political, civic and Jewish life, addressed the LAUSD board in support of the resolution.

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Iranian Group, Docs Debate Health Care Options

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Click here for the video of the debate.

Members of the nonprofit group 30 Years After and the Iranian Jewish community gathered Sept. 13 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Beverly Hills for a panel discussion on health care. Panel participants included William W. Brien, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center co-chairman; Sarita Mohanty, USC KECK School of Medicine assistant professor; Howard Kahn, CEO of L.A. Care; and Larry Greenfield, vice president of the Claremont Institute.

Greenfield and Kahn agreed that one challenge is that people are living longer. When Medicare was enacted in 1965, the average life expectancy was under 65 years of age. Since the average life expectancy is now close to 80 years of age, but Medicare still kicks in at 65, there could be a shortfall in funding for the program by 2017.

Eraj Basseri of 30 Years After spoke, saying we don’t focus enough of our attention on our health. Kahn had a solution for that message when he took the podium; he held up his Blackberry to say doctors should use such technology to send us messages about our health.

“My main vision is to educate and empower people to become inspired,” said Basseri. “Access is a major problem, but I would hate to see any reform that hurts the quality. I don’t think that is fair.”

Questions from the audience included how to avoid creating a public health care system similar to other developed countries like Israel, England and Canada, where wealthier people who can also afford private coverage may have greater access to quality health care. The response was that the wealthier population in the United States is already opting out of the system by using PPOs, so the debate should instead focus on how to prevent the system from worsening.

Other concerns included how physicians who accept Medical and Medicaid can survive with the current lower rates of reimbursement for the government programs. Kahn said he disapproves of the system, but that there is a need to raise revenues.

A few questions were also directed toward concerns about a public option. “If the government is to come up with a public option that puts more people into Medicaid, I believe it will be a failed public option,” said Brien.

30 Years After organized the event to provide education about the current national health care debate. “I think more education is needed so the community is informed on both sides of the debate, rather than merely siding with the traditional party they usually side with,” said Benjamin Pezeshki of 30 Years After.

Click here for the video.

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NCJW Receipts ‘Best of L.A.’

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The itemized donor receipts offered by the National Council of Jewish Women’s Los Angeles Council Thrift Shops were singled out in the August issue of Los Angeles Magazine’s “Best of L.A.” this year. And indeed, from direct experience, it’s true — you can drop off your single bag or loads of stuff cleaned out of closets, drawers and the garage and soon after receive in the mail a clear and detailed accounting of the NCJW’s assessment of fair market value for use when filing your income taxes.

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Nachshon Reaches Out to Unfulfilliated

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In an airy Encino dining room, Cantor Judy Greenfeld instructs 12 women gathered around a lace-covered table on how to relax. Eyes closed, she tells the women to lean back in their chairs, abandon stressful thoughts and picture themselves on a pristine white beach.

“We are at a moment before the New Year where we are shedding our old skin, shedding the things that don’t work for us,” Greenfeld intones calmly. “Sitting before a vast ocean of potential, we can visualize anything. We can prepare ourselves to be the best we can be, even better than last year.”

The class is offered through the Nachshon Minyan, an alternative religious community Greenfeld founded three years ago to make Torah more vivid and accessible to a wider audience. And like everything the Nachshon Minyan comprises — monthly Shabbat services and holiday celebrations, a women’s Torah-study course and Torah school for kids — this morning’s High Holy Days class is imbued with a spiritual inclusiveness that has drawn a devoted and burgeoning membership of about 50 people, despite the group’s lack of a permanent building. Greenfeld says the minyan has inspired many participants to embrace Judaism for the first time in their lives.

“My goal is to reach out to people who have been disillusioned — the unaffiliated, and the unfulfilliated,” Greenfeld said. “I want to find those people on the fringe and give them something that is educational, personal and beautiful.”

In practice, that has meant shaking up the Shabbat service a little. Greenfeld, a former professional dancer, makes music a cornerstone of her monthly Saturday morning services, which are held at the Baha’i Cultural Center in Encino and fall somewhere between Reform and Conservative ideology. She also shortens the service by forgoing the haftarah, and provides English translation and transliteration to all the prayers in an alternative prayer book she compiled herself.

One more thing — there’s no rabbi.

Cantors are fully qualified to lead services, said Greenfeld, who was ordained at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. And instead of having one religious figure give the sermon each month, Greenfeld invites activists and community leaders to speak at Nachshon Minyan gatherings about faith and tikkun olam.

On Rosh Hashanah this year, Greenfeld and her featured speaker, artist Benny Ferdman, will hand out white flags to members of the congregation — symbolizing surrender to God — which also will serve as blank canvases on which participants can list their commitments for the New Year.

For Yom Kippur, the congregation will host teacher Erin Gruwell, leader of the Freedom Writers high school diary project, dramatized in the 2007 film of the same name. Gruwell will speak at the Kol Nidre service about how people find their personal focus in the effort to better the world.

Past speakers have included educator Sandra Roberts of the Paper Clips Holocaust memorial project, publicized by the eponymous 2004 documentary; Rabbi Capers Funnye, an African American rabbi and first cousin of First Lady Michelle Obama; and Holocaust survivor Eva Moses Kor, subject of the 2005 documentary, “Forgiving Dr. Mengele.”

It’s this kind of programming, coupled with an air of friendly informality, that Greenfeld says appeals to unaffiliated Jews who had either left the fold or never felt like they were part of it. “I know that feeling of sitting in those giant rooms on the holidays and desperately looking in the prayer book for something to catch onto,” said Greenfeld, who grew up “bored” by Conservative services in suburban Ohio. “When you don’t feel like you matter, the service just leaves you cold and feels like a burden,” she said.

Student Amy Somers calls the Nachshon Minyan “Judaism from the heart.”

During the High Holy Days workshop, Greenfeld had her class read and discuss a packet she created called “The Holiday GPS System,” encouraging participants to reflect on ways they could reach a place of forgiveness and balance before the New Year. Most of the students were from the Women’s Torah Study Journey, a weekly group Greenfeld created to make the study of Torah — whose dense text and religious heft often intimidate new learners — more approachable. So many women wanted to join that Greenfeld had to create a second class last year.

Greenfeld also runs a Nachshon Minyan Torah School for grade-school children. Meeting weekly at the cantor’s home, students learn Torah, prayer and Hebrew, and after graduation move on to the Nachshon Minyan’s program for b’nai mitzvah. Pre-teens meet with Greenfeld individually, and she says she tries to inspire a love of Judaism. “I tell them, ‘You’re the next generation — if you don’t love it, it’s not going to continue,’” she said.

This year, Greenfeld hopes to have members plan the monthly Shabbat services. Friday night and Saturday morning services will be held on alternating months, with the children from Greenfeld’s Torah school planning all of the Friday night gatherings. Set to be held at the nearby Los Encinos School, Friday services will feature themes such as Western Jewish heritage or a chocolate Shabbat.

Keeping services fresh and interesting is key to getting hard-to-reach unaffiliated Jews in the door, Greenfeld believes. And once they’re in, she said, “I try to meet them where they are — wherever they are in their spiritual journey.”

For more information and High Holy Days tickets, call (818) 789-7314 or visit www.nachshonminyan.org.

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