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Jewish Journal

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July 13, 2010

Obituaries July 16-22, 2010

Leave a Comment / Obituaries /

Mildred Bass died April 20 at 94. She is survived by her daughter, Diane; son, Ron; and several grandchildren. Hillside

Saul Cohen died April 17 at 87. He is survived by his son, Marc. Malinow and Silverman

Lorraine Ditcher died April 18 at 86. She is survived by her sons, Phillip, Bruce and Jeffrey; and three grandchildren. Hillside

Leon Jennings Fershing died April 18 at 95. He is survived by his wife, Winifred; son, Gregory; and one grandchild. Hillside

Ethel Gollin died April 6 at 93. She is survived by her daughters, Helene (Kenneth) and Roberta (Leonard); four grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and her sister, Florence Kantrowitz.

Ronald Sheldon Goodman died April 16 at 77. He is survived by his wife, Rochelle; sons, Mark and Keith; sister, Audrey Etkin; and four grandchildren. Hillside

Robert William Oblath died April 19 at 93. He is survived by his wife, Robin; daughters, Valerie, Danice Bay and Lisa Hertz; sons, Robert (Stella), Michael, Geoffrey (Benedicta) and Jonathon; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Hillside 

Corinne Peikoff died April 13 at 84. She is survived by her daughter, Lori; sons, Howard, Richard and Michael; two grandchildren; and daughter-in-law, Suzanne. Hillside

Harold Pessin died April 16 at 87. He is survived by his wife, Helena Paap; daughter, Patricia; son, Bruce; brother, Archie (Melinda); two grandchildren; and stepdaughter, Linda Ostrowski. Hillside

Arnold Plotkin died March 18 at 80. He is survived by his daughters, Julie and Shari (Michael) Streb; son, Steve (Suzanne); and four grandchildren. Mount Sinai

Corrine Kitty Presser died April 15 at 87. She is survived by her daughters, Bobbie and Jane Raphael; four grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. Hillside

Rabbi Seth Rosen died Jan. 11. He is survived by his mother, Doris; sisters, Elise (Bob) and Alix (Brandon); and nieces, Jana and Suzanne.

Jerome Rossoff died April 13 at 84. He is survived by his daughter, Lauri Kinney; sons, Mack and Bob; and five grandchildren. Hillside

Norman Michael Schulman died April 16 at 68. He is survived by his wife, Stephanie; daughters, Marisa and Jennifer Rebbert; son, Matthew Tracy; mother, Florence; sister, Alaine Schwartz; and brother, Carl. Hillside

Rachel Scapa died April 20 at 86. She is survived by her daughter, Susan (Rick) Deckman; son, Ino (Kathrine); six grandchildren;  four great-grandchildren; sister, Tova Haim; and brother, Joseph Zacar. Malinow and Silverman

Louis Share died April 15 at 89. He is survived by his wife, Harriet; daughter, Karen (Skip Howard); and four grandchildren. Hillside

Roy Sommer died April 15 at 89. He is survived by his wife, Barbara; and son, Barry. Hillside

Diane Rita Thau died April 3 at 68. She is survived by her husband, Irving J.; sons, Andrew and David; four grandchildren; and daughters-in-law, Rachel and Christina. Hillside

Charlotte Tilt died April 17 at 83. She is survived by her daughter, Eileen Lavy; two grandchildren; one great-grandchild; sister, Mildred Hozinsky; and brother, William Strogatz. Malinow and Silverman

Sandra Weinberg died April 6 at 69. She is survived by her daughter, Tami Leevan; sons, Jordan and Steven; three grandchildren; and sisters, Sheila Miller and Gloria Morris. Hillside

Thelma Lee Wispe died April 19 at 75. She is survived by her daughter, Carolyn (Larry) Burns; son, Howard; three grandchildren; one great-grandchild; and brother, Sheldon (Elaine) Bern. Hillside

Wilma Lillian Wissner died April 15 at 85. She is survived by her husband, Edwin; son, Peter; and four grandchildren. Hillside

Gilbert Wittlin died April 15 at 74. He is survived by his wife, Celinda; daughters, Caroline and Debra Martin; two grandchildren; and brothers, Alvin, Joel and Larry. Hillside

Obituaries July 16-22, 2010 Read More »

Federation Eliminates Israel and Overseas Department

Leave a Comment / Community /

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles began the process of disbanding its Israel and Overseas Department this week, letting go the director, Lois Weinsaft, who has worked for Federation for more than 26 years.

The tasks of the department, which had fewer than 10 staff members and directed funding decisions and programs related to Israel and world Jewry, will now be integrated into other Federation departments.

“Our support for Israel has never been stronger, but our investment in Israel needs to be evaluated like everything else to make sure we’re making the maximum impact in Israel and recognizing that Israel’s needs are evolving like our local needs are evolving,” said Jay Sanderson, Federation president.

Sanderson said Federation’s investments in the Jewish Agency for Israel and in other programs remain intact. The Federation’s Israel office, which oversees programs on the ground, will take on increased functions.

The move comes as part of a greater restructuring Sanderson presented to the board earlier this month that will channel Federation’s focus into three general areas — the Jewish future, serving Jews in need and interacting with the wider community.

Sanderson said integrating Israel activity into other departments is a good example of how the institution, whose annual budget is $50 million, will better utilize its professional staff and funding.

“Israel is at the heart of everything we do, and by segregating it, we haven’t allowed it to be at the heart of everything we do,” Sanderson said. Now, programs dealing with poverty in Israel will be handled by the department focusing on Jews in need, while the Jewish future will encompass all educational programs, both in Los Angeles and Israel.

But some wonder if the integration model is too simplistic.

“It’s easy to say we’re going to join education with education, but there are big differences between educational issues here and educational issues around the world, particularly in Israel,” said Herb Glaser, a past chair of the Israel and Overseas Department and a founding chair of the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership. Glaser said he has not yet fully analyzed the intent and implications of the decision to dismantle Israel and Overseas.

Glaser is one of several lay leaders who will serve on a new Israel Advisory Committee, which Sanderson said will look at big-picture strategy related to Israel and will reevaluate, among other things, the singular focus on Tel Aviv, as a result of the Tel Aviv/Los Angeles Partnership.
Sanderson also recently hired a new chief operating and financial officer for Federation, Ivan Wolkind, who has served in top executive positions in high-tech companies and is a lay leader in the Jewish community.

“People in this community are saying that they want this Federation to run more cost-effectively and more efficiently, and the only way we can do that is by looking at the way the business is being run and asking where we can do things differently. Integration is part of that, so as a result, there will be some functions in this building that will go away, and by doing that we will be able to give more money to places we support, and we will be able to do it in a more meaningful way,” Sanderson said.

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Courting Controversy, Orthodox Rabbis Address Women’s Leadership, Conversion

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In late June, at its first annual conference, the International Rabbinic Fellowship (IRF), an association of Modern Orthodox rabbis, addressed two of the toughest challenges facing today’s Orthodox communities: outlining the spiritual leadership roles that should be made available to women and setting a policy on conversion that would improve the process for both converts and rabbis.

Forty members of the two-year-old organization, which numbers over 150 members across the United States, Canada and Israel, gathered at a retreat center outside Baltimore to study Torah and engage in discussion that was, according to IRF secretary Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, “heated — but heated in a good way.” Rabbis Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea and Drew Kaplan of the Hillel at California State University, Long Beach, attended from Los Angeles. At the end of two-and-a-half days, the IRF established its own central conversion committee to “oversee, guide and ensure the thoroughness of conversions performed by IRF members” and had passed a resolution stating that women “should have every opportunity to fully serve the Jewish community.”

The IRF was founded in 2008 as a more liberal alternative to the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA), a larger and more established association of Orthodox rabbis, and the conclusions reached at the recent IRF conference appear to be direct reactions to resolutions and policies enacted by the RCA, which at its convention in April passed a resolution on “Women’s Communal Roles in Orthodox Jewish Life.” The RCA resolution stated that it “cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.”

On the subject of ordaining women, the two resolutions are in agreement. “We are not going to be endorsing women’s ordination,” Kanefsky said. But he criticized the RCA resolution for making no concrete suggestions of ways women can be involved in Orthodox communal life. “It offered no forward-looking direction whatsoever,” Kanefsky said. The IRF resolution explicitly lays out a number of leadership roles open to women, including acting as teachers, spiritual guides and mentors. “The primary purpose of [the IRF] resolution was to offer a forward-looking sense of direction,” Kanefsky said.

The IRF also established a Va’ad Giur (conversion committee), apparently in response to the RCA’s Geirus [Conversion] Policies and Standards (GPS) system of conversion,  which it has promoted since 2007 as the most effective way to ensure uniform standards among Orthodox rabbis. The RCA had hoped conversions overseen by a GPS-approved beit din (a Jewish court that rules on conversion) in the United States would be recognized by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Despite the RCA’s attempts, Kanefsky called the current state of Orthodox conversion “chaotic” and said the IRF’s conversion committee is an attempt to reassert “rabbinical autonomy.” “The rabbi on the ground,” he said, “best understands the potential convert, best understands the realities and the circumstances of the potential convert’s life, and having to send your potential convert to a beit din that doesn’t know the person, doesn’t understand the person’s life circumstances, is more often than not going to lead to obstacles and perhaps even rejection.”

To date, the leadership of the RCA has not made any public statements about the IRF. But at this year’s RCA convention, a group of members proposed an amendment to the RCA constitution stating that people who belong to rabbinic organizations that hold positions contrary to RCA policy would not be able to serve as officers in the RCA. “That was dead aimed at the IRF,” Kanefsky said. “Who else could they have been talking about?”

Courting Controversy, Orthodox Rabbis Address Women’s Leadership, Conversion Read More »

Jewish Groups Dismissed by UC President Decry Double Standard on Acts of Hate

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University of California President Mark G. Yudof responded with a mix of dismissal and reproach July 6 to leaders of 12 Jewish organizations who had cosigned a letter asking him to take firm action to protest and prevent future outbreaks of anti-Semitism on UC campuses.

On June 28, leaders from Stand With Us, the Orthodox Union, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others, sent a four-page letter to Yudof, stating that “bigotry against Jewish students has occurred over many years and on many University of California campuses” and asking Yudof to examine the problem on UC campuses with “an explicit focus on anti-Semitism.” The letter acknowledged that the university had established an Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion, but said that the body would “not address the specific issues of Jewish students.”

“Without an explicit focus on anti-Semitism,” the letter said, “the problems of Jewish students will not be recognized and addressed in the same straightforward manner as those of other minority groups.”

Among the incidents mentioned were the protesters who last April repeatedly heckled Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, during a speech he gave at UC Irvine, the staging of Israeli Apartheid Week on the same campus in May, and the appearance of swastikas on buildings at UC Santa Cruz earlier this year.

In his response, dated July 2, Yudof called the letter “a dishearteningly ill-informed rush to judgment against our ongoing responses to troubling incidents that have taken place on some of our campuses.” Nevertheless, he pledged “to do everything in [his] power to protect Jewish and all other students from threats or actions of intolerance” and pointed out that he and the University of California Board of Regents had each set up “campus climate committees” to “measure [the] climate for tolerance at the University of California for the long term.” 

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, wrote the Jewish groups’ letter, along with UCLA Professor Emeritus Leila Beckwith and Roberta Seid, a lecturer at UC Irvine. Speaking by phone Wednesday, Rossman-Benjamin said she feels Yudof missed their point.

“He’s misconstrued our letter,” she said. “We have never suggested that the advisory task force couldn’t address our issues.” What they were asking for was for the president to do three things: 1. establish “a working definition [of anti-Semitism],” 2. issue “an acknowledgement that there has been a history of a problem of anti-Semitism on UC campuses” and 3. make “a commitment to address that problem.”

Some Jewish organizations approached declined to sign the letter to Yudof, among them the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), both of which were mentioned by name in Yudof’s response. “All incidents of hate speech,” Yudof wrote, “including the depiction of swastikas on campuses, have been promptly investigated.  In such matters, I have sought guidance from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and other Jewish groups.”

“We have frequently discussed matters with [Yudof],” said Ken Stern, director of the Division on Anti-Semitism and Extremism at AJC, who has been writing about these issues for over 20 years. AJC declined to sign the letter in part because of the campus climate committees Yudof had already set up. “We thought it was wise not to prejudge what that was going to achieve,” Stern said.

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Dismissal of 3 YULA Teachers Sparks Protests Among Students, Grads

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A generation of students and graduates of the Yeshiva University High School (YULA) are rallying around three veteran teachers who were recently dismissed.

Former math department chair Manny Katz and Judaic studies teachers Rabbi Ephraim Niehaus and Carol Bess were relieved of their positions at the end of the 2010 school year. All three had been with the school, located in the city’s Pico-Robertson district, since its founding in 1979. Nearly 400 students attend the Orthodox high school, which is split into boys and girls campuses.

On May 20, Katz, a 1995 Milken Family Foundation Jewish Educator Award recipient, told 20 current and former students in an e-mail that the three teachers were not leaving YULA voluntarily. He asked students to forward his message to others in an effort “to set the record straight.” He also asked for written testimonials.

“I’m not trying to keep my job,” Katz wrote. “To me, it’s all about respect. After 31 years of dedicated service to this school, I feel I deserve more than to suddenly be discarded like yesterday’s newspaper.” The others declined to comment for this article.  Katz has retained an attorney and is pursuing legal action.

Katz’s letter sparked anger among supporters of the teachers and prompted former student Joseph Roth to create a Facebook page titled “Protest the Unfair Termination of Mr. Katz, Rabbi Niehaus and Mrs. Bess.” The page now numbers more than 950 members. The site encourages members to write to school administrators and board members demanding an explanation. Roth said he is unaware of any official response to letters or e-mails. “The main issue is that the school must have had a reason, and we want to know why,” said Roth, a senior at UCLA. “If it’s a poor reason, we might want to put pressure [on YULA officials] to reconsider.”

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Facing confrontation on Israel, Presbyterian Church manages a compromise

Leave a Comment / United States /

U.S. Jews and Presbyterians say they have salvaged a fragile unity of purpose from an assembly that was poised to create a rift between the two faiths.

The outcome of last week’s General Assembly in Minneapolis of the Presbyterian Church (USA) was remarkable in that all sides in the contentious debate—Jewish groups and the authors of a controversial report on the Middle East that had alarmed the Jews—agreed that the outcome was better than any side had expected.

Rather than adopt the report’s recommendations, including sanctions against Israel and divestment, the assembly revised the report’s recommendations and adopted an amended resolution that both camps applauded as evenhanded.

Ron Shive, who chaired the Middle East Study Committee, released a letter to the assembly prior to the vote urging endorsement of the changes that incorporated some of the concerns raised by Jewish groups.

“A week ago, it looked as if the Presbyterian Church (USA) was going to enact a version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within its own body, so divided were we on all sides,” the letter began. “Today, we still have disagreements on items in the report, on methods we should pursue, on arguments we should make. But today, by God’s grace, we have discovered that together, we may actually be more faithful and effective in seeking peace with justice for both Palestinians and Israelis than separately.”

The president of the church’s Auburn Theological Seminary, Katharine Henderson, who was key to facilitating the dialogue on the resolution, said the Presbyterians who favored the Palestinian cause had been unaware of the prominence within the Jewish and Israeli communities of groups that took Palestinian needs into consideration.

Conversely, Jewish groups had not internalized the degree to which Presbyterians, and other Christians, are moved by the plight of the diminishing numbers of Palestinian Christians who have been squeezed out because of the conflict. Those sympathies often lead to broader sympathies for the Palestinians.

“I think that people came from very polarized places supporting the narrative that they had been persuaded by, so there was a pro-Palestinian camp and a pro-Israel camp,” she said.

She co-authored the letter Shive sent prior to the vote. The letter anticipated a more healthy dialogue.

“Beyond any expectation, we find ourselves discovering a new model of ministry together, a model committed to seeking, hearing, and responding to the fullness of narratives and commitments with the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, Jews, Christians and Muslims,” it said.

The culmination was that in votes last Friday in Minneapolis, the assembly rejected sanctions and divestment as a means of protesting Israel’s Jewish settlements in the West Bank and its blockade of the Gaza Strip, as well as theological critiques of Zionism that Jewish groups said bordered on the anti-Semitic.

The assembly resolution that eventually passed recognized both Israeli and Palestinian claims in the conflict.

The consensus encompassed the church’s most strident critics of Israeli policy and an array of Jewish groups including organizations that often lean conservative on pro-Israel issues, such as CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America. It was critical to maintain that consensus in the coming months, the sides said, in order to keep positions from hardening down the road.

Ethan Felson, the director of domestic concerns for the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Jewish public policy umbrella organization, credited Henderson for facilitating dialogue rather than confrontation between the two sides.

“Many people who are passionate on all sides live in echo chambers,” Felson told JTA on Monday after hosting Henderson on a conference call with JCPA constituent groups. “When you develop genuine relationships with people with contrasting views, oftentimes you recognize that it’s possible for our narratives to overlap rather than conflict.” Felson also attended the assembly.

Henderson said the challenge was the devolution of the argument into pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian camps within the church. At an assembly with the sides setting up competing booths, she and others endeavored to get the sides to communicate.

“Over the course of the General Assembly, as people began to listen to each other, they realized the importance of the other narrative and really began to learn why people felt the way they did,” she told JTA.

A coalition of 12 national Jewish groups signed a JCPA statement welcoming the rejections of the problematic recommendations on Israel prepared by the church’s Middle East Study Committee.

“Rejection of overtures calling for the use of divestment and labeling Israeli policy as apartheid demonstrate a desire for broader understanding in the quest for peace,” the statement said. “The General Assembly has modeled a more inclusive voice on the Arab-Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

There were qualifications: The JCPA statement noted with disappointment that the assembly deferred for further consideration a paper recommending improvements in Presbyterian-Jewish relations that has been long in preparation.

The Anti-Defamation League issued a separate statement that was sharper in its disappointment. Though the ADL credited the assembly for actions that “averted a rupture,” it slammed the conference’s recommendation that the U.S. government consider withholding aid as a means of pressuring Israel.

What made the outcome extraordinary, participants said, was that the drafters of the report saw its effective rejection as an improvement as well. The assembly endorsed the positive elements of the report—promoting hope, love and reconciliation. But instead of disseminating the report, the assembly tasked the committee with coming up with eight representative, authentic narratives—four Israeli, four Palestinian—for consideration.

Shive told the Los Angeles Times that he did not see the changes to the recommendations arising out of the report as weakening the Middle East Study Committee’s argument pressing for greater consideration of the Palestinians.

“I don’t think that’s watering down,” he said, referring to language recognizing Israel’s security needs. “I think that’s listening to our Jewish partners and saying, ‘This is something that needs to be in the report.’ “

Dexter Van Zile, the Christian media analyst for CAMERA, a pro-Israel monitoring group that often sharply hits back at Israel criticism, said it was incumbent on Jewish groups to recognize the depth among Christians of sympathy for the Palestinians.

“One of the things I have learned in the past few years is that there really is a genuine concern on the part of the activists; it’s genuine,” said Van Zile, who attended the assembly. “People who ignore that concern and dismiss it aren’t going to get anywhere.”

Conversing with pro-Palestinian activists has the potential of introducing pro-Israel concerns about burgeoning anti-Semitism in the Middle East, he noted.

“You have to address Israel’s legitimate security concerns, and you have to talk about some of the underlying causes of hostility to Israel.”

Henderson pressed the case for follow-up at the local level, perhaps extending to joint Jewish-Presbyterian projects such as investment in the West Bank economy, and face-to-face encounters between Jews and Palestinians such as those organized by her seminary.

Letting the good will engendered by the dialogue at the assembly lapse, she warned, might harden positions two years from now at the next assembly.

“It’s incumbent upon those of us who were there, myself included, and all of us in this coalition,” Henderson said, “that we are accountable to each other to continue the work with each other in the church and with our Jewish and Palestinian partners.”

Facing confrontation on Israel, Presbyterian Church manages a compromise Read More »

Political Lens Colors Fictional World

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment /

“Wherever You Go” by Joan Leegant (Norton, $23.95) is a fluently written, insightful story whose major characters come gradually into focus as the pages turn. Initially, the distinct strands seem confusing, but gradually the interconnections become apparent. All becomes clear. The background of Jerusalem is lovingly rendered; the strains and tensions in Israeli society are spoken through the characters without dominating the story. It is a story, not a political manifesto or a diatribe. With all that, I was left uneasy. 

My unease goes to the heart of what it means to write a novel. For all that writers claim to be pristine in intention, there are political valences to most novels — and certainly to one set in the Middle East. So when one reads a novel about extremism in the Middle East and the extremists are American Jews from Brooklyn, what is the right attitude? I suggest three possibilities:

1. This is a case of what critic and essayist Gilbert K. Chesterton described: “A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: ‘Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.’ “In other words, objecting to a writer’s subject and preferring another is simply expressing that one’s own taste should have been followed. How dare she write about something that I would not have written about! Such an approach, he rightly says, is bunk. 

2. The existence of extremists who hail from New York and influence the political process in Israel is genuine and disturbing. So a good cause is served by such a novel. It illuminates a reality that is powerful and painful in Israel today.

3. For a Jewish writer to tackle extremism in the Middle East, and to localize it among American transplants, feeds into invidious stereotypes about the deepest problems in the region. Particularly as the characters are so uniformly unappealing, driven by the cause with minimal shared human feeling. For a Jewish novelist to depict such Jewish ideologues cannot be simply chalked up to the caprices of art. It is a political act. 

How one reacts to Leegant’s book will depend on which of these characterizations seems most apt. I recall the rallies I observed when I lived in Israel in which Meir Kahane would reel off scores of biblical and talmudic allusions to demonstrate the superiority of an ethnically pure Israel. To the extent I remembered his rhetoric, I was sympathetic to Leegant’s aims. There is some truly despicable stuff that gets corralled under the noble banner of Jewish nationhood. 

But I was saddened that this was the story of Israel she chose to tell in her first novel. Almost uniformly, the less religious the characters, the more human they are in their bearing toward the world. Even those who become religious and lapse are somehow humanized by the ebbing of religious attachment. 

Leegant is a skilled writer. Her first book, a collection of stories titled “An Hour in Paradise,” won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for Jewish American fiction as well as a PEN award. From the opening sentences, there is no question that it will be an intelligent and thoughtful read. So can one let it go at that? 

The conflict with the Arabs forms a necessary but little-heard background to this story. And while it is not the responsibility of a writer to present a balanced picture, there are a few places in the world where one cannot write without a political echo trailing through the book. You cannot write about Kashmir, or the Balkans, and protest when someone takes your work to have political implications. Leegant has chosen to place her characters in a fraught, riven place in the world. I wish she had done so with a wider lens; it would give us a truer, deeper picture.


David Wolpe is the rabbi of Sinai Temple. You can follow his teachings at facebook/RabbiWolpe.

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Forgotten Man Sought Origin of Kindness

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment, Judaism /

At exactly the point where religion, history and science intersect, we find the great besetting question of whether humankind is good or evil by nature. Why, for example, did a few Righteous Gentiles put themselves at risk to assist the victims of the Holocaust while so many others served as “Hitler’s willing executioners”?

The struggle to answer what is essentially a moral question through the scientific method is described in fascinating detail in “The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness” by Oren Harman (Norton, $27.95), a remarkable account of the scientific study of selflessness and, at the same time, a biography of a wholly overlooked figure in the history of science.

Harman points out that the hard questions of good and evil begin in the Bible: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Cain asks. The same questions were still being asked when Darwin first suggested that “survival of the fittest” was a matter of natural law. Yet it is also true that some amoebas sacrifice themselves for the benefit of their fellow creatures, vampire bats share blood, and “sentry” gazelles warn the flock by leaping when a lion is spotted, thus putting themselves at risk of death.

“Is there, in fact, a natural origin to our acts of kindness?” asks Harman. “Does the virtue of amoebas and bats and gazelles and humans come from the very same place?”

Harman, a professor at Bar- Ilan University in Israel, chose an unlikely focal point for his ambitious work — the strange life and tragic death of a man named George Price (1922-1975), a “forgotten American genius” who “caught a glimpse of the great canvas of natural selection,” reduced the workings of altruism to an “elegant equation” and “literally came off the street, anonymous, to present it to the world.” Yet Price ended up as a forgotten eccentric buried in a pauper’s grave in London.

Some famous figures populate “The Price of Altruism” — “from nineteenth-century czars to mid-twentieth century telepathists to biological mathematicians and brain imagers,” as the author himself sums it up — but Price’s life story provides “a precious and original counterpoint.” 
Raised in New York City during the Depression, Price was though to be “strange, mechanical, even perhaps slightly autistic,” but also undeniably gifted, even if “his genius was baffling, even a little unsettling.” He dropped out of Harvard because of poor grades, ended up at the University of Chicago, joined the Manhattan Project in 1943 and later worked at IBM. But even as his articles and inventions were beginning to attract attention, Price was unemployed, estranged from his wife and family, and ever more baffling to those who encountered him.

“Was he a cocky chemist? A restless engineer? A prophet?” asks Harman. “Somehow George Price was simultaneously all of these — and none.”

Price moved to London during the swinging ’60s, but his only concern was to find the “law of human nature,” an effort to place the apparent altruistic behavior that could be observed in the natural world into the context of evolutionary biology. He may have neglected his own aging mother and abandoned his wife and children, but he sought “to fathom the mystery of family” by turning to science. “It was to be a clean affair, and perfectly rational,” Harman writes, “nothing like the mess he had made of his life.” The result, according to Harman, was a mathematical equation “that had the power to do what generations since Darwin had failed to do: watch natural selection work in all its glory at different levels and the very same time.”

Yet his efforts at science did nothing to save him from his mortal afflictions — social isolation, physical ailment and mental illness. His paper on “Selection and Covariance” was “hardly noticed by anyone,” and Price himself, in any event, had fallen into the grip of religious delusion. His sudden embrace of a weird variant of Christian fundamentalism was torqued by the belated discovery that his father had been Jewish.

“I have the honor … to inform you that I am both a Christian and a Jew,” Price wrote to an acquaintance. “Didn’t you always sense, subconsciously, that I was too intelligent to be a Gentile? (I suppose what threw you off from guessing the secret was that you felt I was too handsome to be a Jew. But, you see, that came from my mother’s side).”

The strange trajectory of Price’s life ended in terminal dysfunction. “[S]ince he knew the streets better than anybody, helping homeless down-and-outs like himself would be the job he could accomplish with greatest skill,” Harman writes of Price’s final act of altruism. But, in the end, Price died alone and by his own hand.

“[W]hether George killed himself because of illness, unrequited love, confusion, or philosophical despair, his life and death continue to provide invaluable instruction,” concludes Harman, who quotes a friend of Price for the proposition that “George’s life had been a ‘completed work of art.’ ”

“The Price of Altruism” reaches into the stratosphere of moral and philosophical speculation, even as the author tells the sorry tale of George Price in all of its heartbreaking detail. Somehow the two narratives throw light on each other: “For the search for a biological ‘altruism code’ pits not only the individual against the group and the gene against the individual,” Harman explains, “but also true goodness against masquerading self-interest, and heartless biological necessity against the transcendence of the soul.”

So “The Price of Altruism” is, at once, a work about the history of science, the biography of a strange figure on the margins of the scientific enterprise and a morality tale about the price of intellectual ambition. At each of these tasks, the author shows himself to be an accomplished scholar, a clear thinker and a compelling storyteller.

Jonathan Kirsch, book editor of The Jewish Journal, is the author of 13 books. He blogs at www.jewishjournal.com/twelvetwelve and can be reached at {encode=”books@jewishjournal.com” title=”books@jewishjournal.com”}.

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Calendar Picks and Clicks: July 17-23, 2010

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks, What's Happening /

thursday pick

(MUSIC)

Hungarian Romani folk artists Parno Graszt — an eight-piece ensemble with strings, good vibes and innovative instruments (trash cans included) — rock the Skirball Cultural Center’s courtyard, kicking off the museum’s “Sunset Concert Series” highlighting global sounds. Thu. 8 p.m. Free. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 440-4500. skirball.org.

SAT n JULY 17
(THEATER)

“Play Dates,” a new comedy written by “Jewtopia” co-creator Sam Wolfson and directed by Jennifer Chambers, features a married couple, a radio relationship expert and a couple of kindergartners all struggling with love. Sat. Through Aug. 1. 8 p.m. $20. Elephant Theatre, 6322 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 960-7776. plays411.com/playdates.

(THEATER)

“Star Trek’s” Chris Pine, a distant Member of the Tribe (his maternal grandfather was Hollywood attorney Max M. Gilford), stars as an unstable, cat-loving, revenge-seeking Irish terrorist in “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” a play by “In Bruges” writer-director Martin McDonagh. Sat. Through Aug. 8. Various times. $30-$45. Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. (213) 628-2772. centertheatregroup.org.

SUN n JULY 18
(ART)

“Freedom of Expression,” a new exhibition, showcases the mixed-media talents of 10 local artists. Sun. Through Aug. 22. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (Sun.), 10 a.m.-9 p.m. (Mon.-Thurs.), 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Fri.). Free. The Finegood Art Gallery at the Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus, 22622 Vanowen St.,West Hills. (818) 464-3218. jewishla.org/finegood_art_gallery.cfm

(MUSEUM)

Photojournalist Marissa Roth explores the aftermath of ethnic cleansing in “Srebrenica: Then Is Now, Fifteen Years After the Massacre,” an exhibition that documents the lives of women who lost husbands and sons in July 1995, when 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and teenage boys were killed over 11 days during the Bosnian War. Sun. Through Aug. 3. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. (Sun.), 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (Mon.-Fri.). $11 (students), $12 (seniors), $15 (adults). Museum of Tolerance, 9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 553-8403. museumoftolerance.com.

MON n JULY 19
(TISHA B’AV)

Dance for Jerusalem and fallen soldiers during “Dancing on Tisha B’Av.” Led by David Katz, this intermediate/advanced group features circle dances to music ranging from 1970s tunes to contemporary hits. Mon. 7:30-9:30 p.m. $6. Beth Shir Sholom, 1827 California Ave., Santa Monica. (310) 453-3361.  www.bethshirsholom.org.

THU n JULY 22
(COMMUNITY)

Grammy-nominated DJ MATTER takes to the turntables during the Young Leadership Division Summer Bash. If you need a break from dancing, consider helping with a social action project to aid the homeless. Thu. 8 p.m.-midnight, $12 (advance), $18 (door). The Bungalow Club, 7174 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. (323) 761-8132.  www.yld.jewishla.org.

(COMMUNITY)

Learn about services offered to those struggling in the current economy during the Federation Mini Mission. Attendees visit and hear about the Emergency Cash Grant program; the Jewish Free Loan Association, which offers interest-free micro loans; Jewish Vocational Service; and more. The daylong event includes a hands-on volunteer effort with Tomchei Shabbos to prepare Shabbat meals for needy families. Thu. 2-7 p.m. $5. Various locations. (323) 761-8081.  www.jewishla.org..

FRI n JULY 23

(BOOKS)

In honor of the David R. Godine publishing house’s 40th anniversary, “Books That Matter for People Who Care” features a lecture by David Godine on his company’s letterpress printing method and the future of publishing in an electronic world. He also signs copies of his autobiography, “Godine at Forty: A Retrospective of Four Decades in the Life of an Independent Publisher.” A tour of the Getty Research Institute and a reception follow Godine’s lecture. Fri. 3-4:30 p.m. Free (reservation required). The Getty Center’s Museum Lecture Hall, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. (310) 440-7300.  getty.edu.

(SHABBAT)

Looking for a different Shabbat celebration? Chabad of Simi Valley’s Shabbat Under the Stars features an extensive dinner menu, stories and inspired Torah learning under the night sky. Fri. 7:30-10:30 p.m. $10 (children), $18 (adults), $50 (families). Reservations required. Chabad of Simi Valley, 4464 Alamo St., Simi Valley. (805) 577-0573. chabadsimi.org.

Calendar Picks and Clicks: July 17-23, 2010 Read More »