The death of marriage
” target=”_blank”>litter and ” target=”_blank”>surprising split-up, they are going to be annoying me independently.
The death of marriage Read More »
June 1, 2010
About
Maital Guttman
Maital is a modern wandering Jew. Her documentaries deal with personal stories of hope, from South Africa to Moldova, Los Angeles and now, Tel Aviv. www.dewdropfilms.com
Brandon Gellis
Brandon Gellis is the Institutional Publications Supervisor at the University of Wyoming, and has lived in Laramie, WY since 2005. In addition to pursuing his MFA in Graphic Design, Brandon loves hiking, biking, skiing, movies, and traveling with his spouse and four-legged family members.
Molly Kane
Molly G. Kane, is a 5th year rabbinic student at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. Before attending HUC-JIR, Molly completed a graduate degree in Nonprofit Management at Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy. She did her undergraduate work at Brandeis University. Molly is also a writer known for her comedic songs and comedy routines. Her writing is based off of life-experience as a liberal white Jewish girl from the suburbs. She often sings and writes about her love for Israel and of course being gay. Molly is the Rabbinic Intern for Congregation Kolot Chayeinu in Park Slope, Brooklyn where she resides (yeah, Brooklyn!) She is proud to have roots in both Chicago, IL and Westport, CT. Molly has many passions including: Torah, riding her bike, baking, and hanging out.
Janelle Eagle
Janelle K. Eagle is a documentary filmmaker with an insatiable desire to get out there, see it, and share it. A strong believer that change happens over good home-cooked meals, Janelle has dined with locals all around the world. She hopes she’s helped create change along the journey. She shares her writing, photography, and videos on www.journeywithjanelle.com.
Naomi Goldberg
Naomi Goldberg is a native of the Central Valley of California, an alumna of URJ Camps Swig and Newman, and a professional gay.
Tera Greene
Tera “Nova Jade* Greene is a professional lesbian of color and Jew by Choice. She is a producer of music and film, a renowned DJ and always finds herself in the midst of action; in fact, she usually is the action! http://djnovajade.wordpress.com/about/
Kalil Cohen
Kalil Cohen is an educator, filmmaker, and writer living in Los Angeles who performs under the name Metahuman. He has identified as Jewish his whole life, and began identifying as transgender in 2004.
Chanel Dubofsky
Chanel Dubofsky is a writer, activist and Jewish educator in New York City. Her writing has been published in Quick Fiction, Staccato, Dogzplot, Glossolalia, the Lilith Blog and Makom-Haaretz. You can follow her adventures in feminism and art at Diverge (www.idiverge.wordpress.com).
Lia Mandelbaum
Lia Mandelbaum was born and raised in Tampa, FL and moved to Los Angeles in 2007. She flew out to Los Angeles to become a resident at Beit T’Shuvah, which is a Jewish residential treatment center for addiction and Synagogue. She eventually moved to Santa Monica as she transitioned from being a resident to a full-time employee of their development department. Lia recently resigned from Beit T’Shuvah to move on to her next journey and decided to go back to school. Her goal is to become a psychotherapist and use her experience, strength and hope to help others who may feel lost.
Sasha Perry
Sasha Edge is an award winning documentary filmmaker who’s work has focused on issues ranging from universal healthcare, to sustainability in today’s food production, to issues of Ethiopian and Bedouin communities in Israel. Sashas current work is focused around Jewish feminism.
the circuit
From left: Monty and Marilyn Hall, Joyce Brandman, Jewish Home CEO-President Molly Forrest and Jewish Home board chair Dave Swartz. Photo by Steve Cohn
Emcee Carl Reiner, left, and event co-chair Pam Rubin, right, present honoree Joyce Brandman with the Jewish Home’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Photo by Steve Cohn
From left: Event co-chair Harold Foonberg and emcee Carl Reiner.
Photo by Steve Cohn
The Los Angeles Jewish Home honored Monty and Marilyn Hall with its Habonim (Builders) Award and Joyce Brandman with its Lifetime Achievement Award during the Celebration of Life: Reflections dinner at The Beverly Wilshire on May 24.
From left: Rabbi Heshy Glass, head of YULA Boys School; 10th-grade student Sammy Azair, the drive’s organizer; and Rabbi Arye Sufrin, student activities director.
YULA Boys High School students collected more than 1,000 canned items during a March food drive for Tomchei Shabbas, which provides Shabbat food packages to thousands of needy L.A. Jewish families.
Calendar Picks and Clicks: June 3-11, 2010
THU | JUNE 3
(BUSINESS)
The Israel Conference highlights technological innovation in the Jewish state. Guest speakers include Yosi Matias, managing director of Google Israel research and development center, and Moshe Lichtman, head of Israel research and development for Microsoft. Thu. 7:30 a.m-9:30 p.m. $240 (advance), $295 (door). Luxe Hotel, 11461 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 476-6571. theisraelconference.org.
(ISRAEL)
Following the shooting of a documentary in Bat Ayin, one of the most controversial Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Leon Williams leads a discussion on the left, right and center of political viewpoints on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Thu. 7:30-10 p.m. $17 (advance), $20 (door). Private residence, 13442 Weddington St., Sherman Oaks. (818) 986-9819.
(MUSIC)
Indie songstress Rachael Sage, who blends Middle Eastern sonic influences and playful Yiddish verses into her unique brand of jazzy, art-pop tunes, performs in support of her latest album, “Delancey Street.” Ages 21 and up. Thu. 8 p.m. $10. The Hotel Cafe, 1623 1/2 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 461-2040. hotelcafe.com.
FRI | JUNE 4
(THEATER)
The comedy-drama “Dinner With Friends,” celebrated playwright Donald Margulies’ Pulitzer Prize-winning meditation on troubled middle-age married couples, opens for a three- week run. Fri. Through June 20. 8 p.m. (Friday), 2 and 8 p.m. (Saturday), 2 and 7 p.m. (Sunday), 7:30 p.m. (Tuesday-Thursday). La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts, 14900 La Mirada Blvd, La Mirada. (562) 944-9801. lamiradatheatre.com.
(THEATER)
“The Socialization of Ruthie Shapiro” follows a woman revisiting her preconformist youth in 1960s Los Angeles. Fri. Through July 11. 8 p.m. (Friday and Saturday), 2 p.m. (Sunday). $27 (opening night, all seats). $25 (premium seating, remaining nights), $22 (general), $18 (KCRW members), $17 (seniors and veterans), $11 (current military with ID), $5 (students). Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd. West, Los Angeles. (323) 851-7977. theatrewest.org.
SAT | JUNE 5
(FILM)
Most people know U2 guitarist The Edge, but fewer are familiar with his MOT wife, Morleigh Steinberg, a filmmaker, dancer and choreographer. Two years ago, Steinberg directed “Unsung,” a six-minute short exploring contemporary possibilities of traditional Irish dance. Dance Camera West, which celebrates experimental dance media, screens Seinberg’s short along with seven others on the art of movement. Sat. 8 p.m. Programs also on Friday, 8 p.m., and Saturday, 6 p.m. $10. Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, 631 W. Second St., Los Angeles. (213) 237-2800. redcat.org.
(ART)
Bronze sculptor Susan R. Kaufman joins more than two-dozen painters, photographers, sculptors, woodworkers, jewelers and potters for A Taste of Art, Temple Beth Torah’s inaugural community art show. Sat. 7-10 p.m. Free. Temple Beth Torah, 7620 Foothill Road, Ventura. (805) 647-4181. templebethtorah.com.
(ART)
Take a self-guided tour of Culver City’s bustling art scene. ARTWALK Culver City features 37 galleries and exhibition spaces with members of the L.A. Jazz Collective performing inside in the late afternoon. The action happens near the intersection of Washington and La Cienega boulevards. Sat. noon-8 p.m. Free. Culver City. Various locations. (310) 253-6000. culvercity.org.
(THEATER)
In 1930s and ’40s New York, Jewish and Italian mobsters get what’s coming to ’em when a stool pigeon sings in “Brooklyn U.S.A.,” originally performed on Broadway in 1941. Sat. Through July 31. 8 p.m. (Thursday-Saturday). $20 (seniors, students, groups), $25 (general). Write Act Repertory Theatre, 6128 Yucca Ave., Hollywood. (323) 469-3113. brooklynusa-theplay.org.
(THEATER)
Wartime secrets threaten to tear apart two middle-class families in “All My Sons,” a play that earned Arthur Miller a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Sat. Through July 25. 8 p.m. (Saturday), 7 p.m. (Sunday). $25. Raven Playhouse, 5233 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood. (323) 960-4420. plays411.net.
MON | JUNE 7
(ART)
“Self-Portrait a la Frida Kahlo” examines the prolific painter’s ability to re-create herself on canvas. Gregorio Luke, an expert on Mexican and Latin American art, discusses Kahlo’s work; two of Kahlo’s surviving students share memories about the artist; and dance company Taller Coreografico de la UNAM performs. The event also features an exhibition of Kahlo’s clothes and jewelry. Mon. 7 p.m. Free (reservations recommended). Ford Theatres, 2580 Cahuenga Blvd. E., L.A. , (323) 461-3673. fordtheatres.org.
(MUSIC)
Stephen S. Wise Temple hosts an evening of Israeli, Chasidic, Persian, Yiddish and American music. The World Music Concert features performances by Chief Cantor of Vienna Shmuel Barzilai, Stephen S. Wise Cantors Nathan Lam and Tannoz Bahremand, andSinai Temple Cantor Arianne Brown. Mon. 8-9:30 p.m. $20 (general), $36 (reserved). Stephen S. Wise Temple, 15500 Stephen S. Wise Drive, L.A. (310) 889-2208. wisela.org.
THU | JUNE 10
(LECTURE)
Authors Dani Shapiro (“Devotion: A Memoir”) and Sylvia Boorstein (“Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life”) join Rabbi Laura Geller to discuss “Devotion: Exploring Faith and Doubt in Our Search for Peace.” Literary Affairs’ Julie Robinson moderates. Thu. 7:30 p.m. $20. Temple Emanuel, 8844 Burton Way, Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills. (310) 553-4265. tebh.org. tebh.org.
RSVP to {encode=”literaryaffairs@earthlink.net” title=”literaryaffairs@earthlink.net”}.
FRI | JUNE 11
(ART)
Jewish artisans will be among the mix of 250 artists participating in the 25th annual Contemporary Crafts Market, featuring jewelry, glassware, ceramics, hand-painted textiles, custom furniture and more. Fri. Through June 13. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Free (children 12 and under). $8 (general). Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, 1855 Main St., Santa Monica (310) 285-3655. craftsource.org.
(FILM)
Documentary filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg followed legendary comedian Joan Rivers for one year to create “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” a candid portrait of the pop icon’s life at 76 years old. Fri. breakthrufilms.org.
(THEATER)
Playwright Barbara Lebow’s “A Shayna Maidel” highlights the bumpy New York reunion of two Polish sisters — one a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, the other brought up in America — after a 20-year separation. Fri. Through July 3. 8 p.m. (Friday) 2 and 8 p.m. (Saturday), 2 p.m. (Sunday), 8 p.m. (Thursday). $50-$60 (opening night, includes reception), $32-$42. International City Theatre in the Long Beach Performing Arts Center, 300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach. (562) 436-4610. internationalcitytheatre.org.
Calendar Picks and Clicks: June 3-11, 2010 Read More »
Chris Rock asks, ‘Is Jon Stewart a Jewish comedian?’
Chris Rock isn’t Jewish, but he certainly talks about Jews quite a lot.
Just before I interviewed him for The Guardian last month, he appeared on Bill Maher’s show and talked about his childhood. At Maher’s probing, he recalled the traumas of his high school experience, having been bussed from an all black neighborhood to an all white school where he was subsequently picked-on. And yet Rock couldn’t recall the formative racism of his youth without drawing parallels to another minority in town, who (believe it or not) he said, had it worse.
Rock: Yeah, yeah. The school I went to—junior high, high school and grade school—were pretty Italian and Irish, and so they beat up the blacks and they beat up the Jews. So I would kinda be friends with the Jewish guys….I used to work at the NY Daily News and it was like ‘On The Waterfront’ where they pick you and there’s no rhyme or reason to why they pickin’ anybody. Well it was Italians first, then the Irish, then the blacks then the Jews and that’s in ‘89, ‘88, ‘87, ‘89.
Maher: The blacks were ahead of the Jews?
Rock: The blacks were ahead of the Jews, even then. So it’s always been me and some Jewish guy…
Likewise, Rock couldn’t talk about his comedy without talking about his Jewish brethren. When I asked him if he thought there was a “black humor” the way there is Jewish humor, he bristled: “I think more white people come to see me do stand-up than most white comedians cos comedy’s just comedy,” he told me. “I don’t consider myself a black comedian. I am a comedian.”
But can you have such a universalist attitude when race figures so prominently in your routine? “I don’t talk about race any more than Jackie Mason talks about being Jewish,” he insists. “Is Jon Stewart a Jewish comedian?” he shoots back. “Or a political comedian? I watch the guy all the time; he says three jokes and if the joke doesn’t kill, he’ll say something Yiddish. God bless him. We’re all comedians; we’re all brothers.”
Read more Chris Rock here.
Chris Rock asks, ‘Is Jon Stewart a Jewish comedian?’ Read More »
Memo to NPR: Stop Calling Flotilla “Pro-Palestinian”
The demigod journos at National Public Radio can do almost no wrong in my book, but they have to stop referring to the flotilla that Israel raided yesterday to tragic results as full of “pro-Palestinian” protesters.
On every newscast, every promo, there was NPR, describing the protestors as “pro-Palestinian.” I think I even heard Warren Olney and Larry Mantle at their respective NP affiliates pick up and spread the same lingo.
And it’s just wrong.
By what standard are these people pro-Palestinian? They want a two state solution for the Palestinians and the Israelis? By that standard Ehud Barak and the majority of Israelis are “pro-Palestinian.” As President Bill Clinton and any number of Arab commentators have said, Barak’s generous offer at Camp David, was rejected outright by Yasser Arafat. Cearly, Ehud Barak is more pro-Palestinian than Arafat.
Are the protesters pro-Palestinian by virtue of the fact that the Israelis have killed Palestinians, and these people want to protect them? Well, Hamas, which took over Gaza in a series of violent struggles from the Palestinian Authority, has killed many Palestinians, in some cases throwing them alive from rooftops. Hamas continues to kill Palestinian dissenters and Fatah loyalists. I don’t believe in killing Palestinians whose political affiliations I oppose. By that standard, I am clearly more pro-Palestinian than Hamas.
Are the flotilla protesters pro-Palestinian because they want to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza? Israel delivers tons of that each day—not enough—but more than, say, Turkey. By that standard Israel is more pro-Palestinian than the protesters.
Are they pro-Palestinian because they want Gaza to be self-ruled? The vast majority of Israelis supported a unilateral pullout from Gaza, which Israel undertook under Ariel Sharon. The vast majority of Israelis would have been happy to let Gaza alone after that, but for incessant rocket attacks Hamas militants directed from within Gaza into Israel. More than anything else, those attacks brought on the blockade. If Hamas wanted Israel to truly leave Gaza alone, it would have left Israel alone. By this standard, too, Israel is more pro-Palestinian than Hamas. By this standard, Ariel Sharon is clearly pro-Palestinian.
I’m someone who thinks Israel’s blockade of Gaza is short-sighted and counterproductive. But I have no illusions that the IHH, which organized the protest, is pro-Palestinian—it is pro-Hamas. Hussein Ibish of the Ameican Task Force on Palestine called it “a group of fanatics” on Larry Mantle’s KPCC show today. So why is NPR giving IHH supporters credibility that even Palestinians don’t give them?
The only fair terminology NPR and other news organizations should use when describing the protesters is this: “pro-Hamas.” Otherwise, to be fair, they would have to describe Barak, Sharon, most Israelis and most American Jews—using the same standards—as “pro-Palestinian.”
Memo to NPR: Stop Calling Flotilla “Pro-Palestinian” Read More »
Sacred Monologue: Parashat Shelach Lecha (Numbers 13:1-15:41)
Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, the late Jewish Theological Seminary chancellor and rabbinic literature scholar, taught: When I pray, I speak to God; when I study, God
speaks to me. Brilliantly, Finkelstein answered skeptics of Jewish prayer, who might await God’s response in the course of worship, by turning us from the synagogue to the beit midrash (study hall), from prayer to Jewish study, to hear God’s voice.
If our unique interpretations of Torah constitute God’s sacred response to each individual worshipper as much as Torah on the whole represents God’s message to all of us, then a community in prayer — a minyan — is the sum total of our sacred monologues as much as an individual’s prayer is her own.
It is all the more remarkable then that the talmudic sages determined that the proof-text for the requirement of a minimum of 10 adults to comprise a minyan — a quorum for Jewish communal prayer — is the biblical reference in this week’s Torah portion, Shelach Lecha, to 10 of the 12 scouts sent to report back on conditions in the Promised Land prior to our ancestors’ entry to make it their home. The Torah refers to these 10 scouts as an edah ra’ah (an evil congregation) for they were the group that discouraged many of the Israelites, saying that what they had witnessed would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for our ancestors to conquer the land promised to them by God.
Surely, the sages might have found a better paradigm for a minyan, itself an edah (congregation). In fact, elsewhere in the evolution of rabbinic interpretation, the rabbis later associated the requirement of 10 adults with the 10 righteous individuals who were not found in Sodom and Gomorrah, but whose presence would have saved the cities from destruction. Perhaps the rabbis developed this alternative minyan origin because the association with the 10 scouts, who failed miserably in their task, bothered them.
Still, the original talmudic source demands closer consideration. What were the sages thinking? Perhaps the association of the 10 scouts who got it all wrong was, in actuality, a commentary on what might have inspired them to have gotten it all right. Perhaps the sages imagined that all went awry with the 10 scouts because they didn’t begin with prayer. Maybe the rabbis imagined that the two remaining scouts, Joshua and Caleb — whose study of the land and its inhabitants was correct — began in prayer, unlike their colleagues.
This reconsideration of the minyan’s talmudic origin might be helpful to us to maintain more Jewishly informed expectations of prayer, in which greater emphasis is placed on our own sacred monologues — rather than on God’s response — and to better see or hear God’s message through the study of Torah and the world around us.
In God’s presence, but absent as yet of God’s response, we can feel and consider our own concerns and yearnings, our blessings and our gratitude, inviting God to respond in the course of our living, loving and learning, and refining our capacity to connect, inquire and understand. Knowing ourselves with greater depth, we may be better equipped to hear God’s voice in the words we study and to find the sparks of Divinity in the people and in the world.
When we search for a community of Jewish learning to find enduring meaning and transformational effect in God’s message of Torah, we might be wise to begin by seeking out communities that pray together as much as they study together, so God’s monologue and our own can align to comprise a sacred dialogue.
And, similarly, when we seek teachers or scholars with whom to study Torah and Judaism to explore God’s truth, we might value all the more those teachers and scholars who strive in prayer as much as they do so in scholarship.
God’s monologue to us is expressed through the words of Torah, their interaction with life and millennia of interpretation deriving from their encounter with one another, awaiting our own perceptions of God’s message to us today, individually and collectively. However, the messages we study — God’s sacred monologue — might indeed require a filtering process that only our own sacred monologues, in the context of Jewish communal prayer, might provide. In aligning the two monologues, a sacred dialogue might well emerge that can reflect and support the goodness of our own communities today, just as it might have done so for 10 misguided scouts long ago.
When we seek teachers or scholars with whom to study Torah and Judaism to explore God’s truth, we might valueall the more those teachers and scholars who strive in prayer as much as theydo so in scholarship.
Rabbi Isaac Jeret is the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Tamid of South Bay (nertamid.com) on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Sacred Monologue: Parashat Shelach Lecha (Numbers 13:1-15:41) Read More »
Ireland to Israel: Let new aid ship break Gaza blockade
From HAARETZ.com:
International activists vowed on Tuesday to try to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip with another ship carrying humanitarian aid, a day after an Israel Navy blockade on the first six-ship convoy left nine people dead and several more wounded.
The Irish-owned MV Rachel Corrie, a converted merchant ship bought by pro-Palestinian activists and named after an American woman killed in the Gaza Strip in 2003, set off on Monday from Malta, organizers said.
Read the full article at HAARETZ.com.
Ireland to Israel: Let new aid ship break Gaza blockade Read More »
Lila Weinberg, Chicago historian and author, dies
Lila Weinberg, a Chicago historian, author, teacher and editor, has died.
Weinberg, who died May 29 at the age of 91 from complications of cancer, collaborated with her late husband, Arthur, on six books on social history, including two on attorney Clarence Darrow. One of the books, “Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned,” spent 19 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list in 1957. Arthur Weinberg died in 1989.
A resident of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood for 45 years, Weinberg was a senior book manuscript editor and a journal manuscript editor at the University of Chicago Press for 34 years, from where she retired at age 80.
Weinberg was honored as a Newberry Library treasured author. She received the John Peter Altgeld Freedom of Speech Award from The Newberry Library Bughouse Square Debates Committee in 2001. The Weinbergs also were honored by the Society of Midland Authors with a special body of work award in May 1987.
The Weinbergs are well known in Chicago as having conceived the idea in 1957 of the annual commemoration of Darrow’s death by throwing a wreath over the Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge in Jackson Park, Chicago—the site where Darrow’s ashes were strewn—on the anniversary of his death. The ceremony continues today in conjunction with an accompanying symposium focused on an issue of concern to Darrow that is still relevant today
Lila Weinberg, Chicago historian and author, dies Read More »