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Jewish Journal

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January 5, 2011

Jewish community stresses feelings at its peril

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

We shouldn’t be the least bit surprised that American Jewry is in trouble. We have been overemphasizing what feels good at the expense of what does good for the Jewish people for quite some time.

Allow me to explain.

Many Jewish organizations have taken to pursuing political agendas that at best are distantly, and usually not at all, connected to Jewish concerns. For example, B’nai B’rith International has taken positions on immigration reform and Latin American free trade. The National Council of Jewish Women has spoken out on the earned income tax credit and the line item veto. The ADL has taken stances on same-sex marriage, immigration and reproductive rights. And the Reform movement’s URJ biennial advocated for “righteous, healthy eating,” health care reform and statehood for Washington, D.C.

While I certainly understand the desire to repair the world, spending time and energy on these issues doesn’t help us to create more committed Jews. If a group of law school students devoted years to charitable endeavors, their efforts, while highly laudable, would in no way advance their study of jurisprudence. To be effective attorneys, they must still concentrate on law. To be effective Jews and effective Jewish organizations, we have to concentrate on specifically Jewish matters.

Some might argue that we can both advocate for political positions and inspire Jews to be more committed. That’s just not happening. A multitude of studies demonstrates how non-Orthodox Jews are becoming less and less involved in Jewish life. Very simply, too many Jews are becoming citizens of the world at the expense of being committed citizens of their Jewish community.

We also hurt ourselves in the pursuit of equality in the Jewish community. How could equality be a bad thing? When it gets in the way of placing the brightest, most talented individuals on our boards and in our organizations. It should not matter whether an organization or a board is populated by a majority of female, male, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, gay or straight Jews. Our organizations deserve to be filled with the very best individuals we can find. The Jewish world shorts itself every time it places equality ahead of quality.

Most of us don’t make business decisions in this way, so why do we think such an approach makes sense in our Jewish work? It might feel good to seek balance, but the greater Jewish good suffers as a result.

It is painful to note that an increasing number of American Jews favor Palestinian causes over support of the Jewish state. Here is yet another example of feelings winning out over common sense. Many of us understandably but sometimes wrongly tend to sympathize with the weaker of two opposing parties. After all, why would the stronger group appear to need our support? Presumably it is able to easily protect itself.

Yet strength and weakness have no relationship to right and wrong. How we instinctively feel about two parties tells us nothing about their moral quality. A weaker group that intentionally targets civilians is morally inferior to a far more powerful nation that institutionally attempts to target terrorists.

Of course there are faults to be found with Israel’s conduct. But Israel’s enemies are nowhere near Israel morally with regard to freedom of speech and religious practice, treatment of women and of gays, or waging war with moral constraints.

As it relates to the programs we create, our support for the State of Israel, those we choose to guide our organizations and myriad other matters, our Jewish communities must start acting more on the basis of what does good rather than what feels good. We must get more into the Jew-building business and not spend as much time in the feel-good business.

The irony is that as we do, at least as it relates to the vitality of our Jewish communities, we ultimately will have more to feel good about.

(Joel Alperson is a past national campaign chair for United Jewish Communities—now known as the Jewish Federations of North America. He lives in Omaha, Neb. His views do not necessarily represent those of the organization.)

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Jewish topics in spotlight at Palm Springs film fest

Leave a Comment / Community, Entertainment, Film /

Among its 193 movies from 68 countries, the Palm Springs International Film Festival has included a varied menu of special Jewish interest during its Jan. 6-17 run.

One entry is the world premiere of “The Rescuers,” which documents the remarkable deeds of 13 gentile diplomats from different nations, who defied the orders of their governments to help save an estimated 200,000 European Jews during World War II.

The documentary is the work of three unlikely collaborators — Michael King, a local African American filmmaker; British historian and prolific author Sir Martin Gilbert; and Stephanie Nyombayire, a Rwandan human rights activist who lost more than 100 family members in her country’s genocide.

The trio and their camera crew traveled to 18 countries to interview dozens of people who were related to or had known the diplomats or had been saved by their intervention.

One “cast member” is England’s Prince Charles, whose paternal grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece, hid Jews in the royal palace in Athens during the German occupation.

Among the diplomats, only the name of Sweden’s Raoul Wallenberg is widely known, but they include a member of the Nazi party; a Turkish Muslim; two Americans; two Britons; and former envoys from China, Japan, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy.

King, a film teacher, producer and Emmy winner best known for his documentaries on inner-city teenagers, was asked why he decided to make “The Rescuers.”

“I’ve always made socially conscious films, and I have always been fascinated by the mystery of goodness,” he said, sipping coffee in a French cafe in Westwood.

“The story of the rescuers, who risked their careers by choosing God over their governments, has universal significance.” Besides, he added, “If Steven Spielberg can make ‘The Color Purple’ (on the lives of black women in the Deep South), why can’t I make a film about the Holocaust?”

As King learned more about the rescuers, he and executive producer Joyce Mandell realized that here was a story for all ages and nationalities.

“I was overwhelmed by the courage of these diplomats,” King said. “They worked days and nights to issue visas, passports, and protection and transit letters, established safe houses, snatched Jews from death marches and deportation trains, smuggled Jews across borders and hid them in their own embassies.”

Other Jewish-themed festival films include Israel’s two top movies of 2010, “The Human Resources Manager” and “The Matchmaker,” as well as the Polish picture “Little Rose,” about the communist government’s anti-Jewish campaign following Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Also scheduled are “Grace Paley: Collected Shorts” about the Jewish writer and activist; “My So-Called Enemy,” about Palestinian and Israeli teenagers on a trip to the United States; and “Next Year in Bombay,” about the Bene Israel community in India.

“The Rescuers” will screen Jan. 9 at 7 p.m. and Jan. 13 at 4 p.m. at the Palm Canyon Theatre. For more information, visit this story at jewishjournal.com

For details on other movies and ticket information, phone (800) 898-7256 or visit www.psfilmfest.org.

Jewish topics in spotlight at Palm Springs film fest Read More »

San Diego cross deemed unconstitutional — again

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

The San Diego cross case continues its two-decade legal saga. Yesterday the 9th Circuit ruled that the cross on public land is an unconstitutional “government endorsement of religion.” But instead of ordering its removal, the court sent the case back down to the District Court.

The LA Times explains what’s next:

Instead, a three-judge panel sent the case back to a federal trial judge for “further proceedings” on the issue of whether the cross can be modified to “pass constitutional muster” as a war memorial, wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown.

(skip)

The practical effect of Tuesday’s decision is that the Mt. Soledad cross will have to be removed from the memorial site unless a full panel of appeals judges reverses the ruling or the Supreme Court accepts review and reverses it, said San Diego City Atty. Jan Goldsmith.

The cross has had quite the history. I can only assume this case will drag on for another handful of years. And apparently the type of solution that allowed the Mojave cross, before it was stolen, to survive constitutional challenge is not an option on Mt. Soledad.

San Diego cross deemed unconstitutional — again Read More »

Anonymous donor leaves $1.5 million to Jewish Federation

Leave a Comment / Community /

The anonymous woman who left $1.5 million to organizations affiliated with the Jewish Federation wasn’t someone leaders of the organization knew — in fact, she was someone few people knew well at all.

But those who did know her say that the gift, which is to be divided among seven organizations that benefit children in need, makes sense.

“I don’t know much about her childhood,” said Greg Heller, the donor’s wealth planner, “but I can tell you it wasn’t good.”

During her girlhood, his client was orphaned in Japan, Heller said. She made her way alone to the United States, moving in with relatives upon her arrival. But she still struggled — exactly how isn’t clear — and the young woman turned to weaving as an escape.

“She would tell me that when she worked on her weaving, she was able to go into that place in her head that gave her peace,” Heller said. “That was her joy — she loved to do what she did.”

As time went on, the talented weaver turned her passion into a career. Working alone, she built her business from the ground up, becoming a master of the craft and eventually repairing garments for the royal family of England.

Her expertise was recognized in Hollywood as well, said Heller, who counts a number of celebrities among his clientele.

“Any celebrity that I would bring her name up to, knew her or knew of her,” he said.

Throughout her career, she chose to remain mostly in the background, turning down clients that she didn’t like and rarely taking public credit for her work.

She never married or had children of her own, living a somewhat isolated but spiritual life. Through it all, Heller said, she always cared deeply for the welfare of children.

When planning her estate, it was no surprise that she wanted to focus on organizations that offered what she so desperately needed as a child herself — a place to turn for help.

Heller introduced her to Karen Sternfeld, the women’s campaign senior associate director at the Jewish Federation. Heller asked Sternfeld to present his client with a list of organizations to consider for her estate.

“I started asking her questions and found out very quickly that her area of interest was children in need,” said Sternfeld.

After weighing her options, the donor — without telling anyone why — informed her attorney that she would be leaving $1.5 million to seven organizations Sternfeld told her about. 

The scope of the gift came as a surprise to everyone.

“I didn’t know until Greg told me,” said Sternfeld.

Jay Sanderson, the president of the Jewish Federation, said that the most surprising element was the donor’s lack of affiliation with the organization or the Jewish community prior to the gift.

“How can you not be surprised about a donor who comes out of nowhere with such an extraordinary gesture of generosity?” he said. “It’s overwhelming — it’s the highest form of tzedakah.”

For the foundations that received the money, her gift will go a long way toward ensuring that as many kids as possible are reached with their services.

“My goal will be to use the money toward arts enrichment programs,” said Elias Lefferman, president of Vista Del Mar, one of the recipients. “She was an artist in her own right, and I’d hope to maintain that money for children in our residential program, for our school and in our theater.”

Even as the money is distributed, the woman who made it possible will remain something of a mystery. Yet Heller believes that the gift will create a legacy from the gifted artisan’s life.

“She took whatever was damaged and repaired it,” he said, “so that you couldn’t notice where the damage was in the first place.”

Anonymous donor leaves $1.5 million to Jewish Federation Read More »

Netanyahu heckled at Carmel fire memorial

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel's Carmel Fire /

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was heckled and an Israeli government minister was forced to leave a state memorial ceremony for the 44 people killed in the Carmel fire.

The relatives and friends at Wednesday’s memorial at Kibbutz Beit Oren, which sustained damage in the fire, allowed President Shimon Peres to speak but began heckling Netanyahu when he began his turn.

Bodyguards had to protect Netanyahu as some of the hecklers advanced toward the stage. The hecklers blamed Netanyahu for the fire and their relatives’ deaths.

The partner of Haifa Police Chief Ahuva Tomer, a fire victim, stood up and said that he would not let Netanyahu speak until Interior Minister Eli Yishai of the Shas Party, who also has been blamed for the lack of firefighting preparedness, left the room, calling his presence “a slap in our face.” Yishai did leave the ceremony.

“The fire that did not rest for a moment turned dozens of our families into bereaved, grieving, pained families,” Peres said before the incident. “No tribute and no memorial ceremony will ever return to their loved ones.

“In those moments, when the firefighters stood in front of that wall of fire and today, as we mark 30 days since the disaster, we stand here as a shocked nation, unprepared for the disaster. This is the truth, painful though it may be: We weren’t prepared for the fire, we couldn’t imagine that this would happen. Thus the flames scorched the hearts of the families and the confidence of a nation—a nation that followed the efforts to enlist foreign aid and which cherished those efforts. Now we must learn our lessons.”

Netanyahu in his speech promised that dealing with fires and other natural disasters will happen more quickly in the future.

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University of La Verne hires new Jewish president

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

The annual model Passover Seder held by its campus ministry notwithstanding, it’s safe to say that the University of La Verne, a federally recognized Hispanic-Serving Institution where the majority of those enrolled are self-declared minority students, has never been a major hub of student Jewish life. Located 30 miles east of Los Angeles in the city whose name it bears, the main La Verne campus is nine miles from the nearest Chabad and 30 miles from the hub of the Inland & Desert Hillel at the UC Riverside campus.

But if past performance is any indication of future results, Jewish life at La Verne could get a shot in the arm when Devorah A. Lieberman takes over as the university’s first Jewish president, in July 2011.

The situation at La Verne, a 119-year-old nonsectarian university established by members of a German Christian sect known as the Brethren, isn’t all that different from the one that Lieberman encountered at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y., where she is provost and vice president for academic affairs. Lieberman helped turn that small private school — which is affiliated with the Lutheran church — into a more diverse and inclusive place than it had been.

“When I came to Wagner seven years ago, I’m going to guess they had about 10 Jewish students,” Lieberman said. “[In] 2010, they had over 150 Jewish students,” or about 8 percent of the 1,800 enrolled at Wagner. (More than 10 percent of Staten Island’s 471,000 residents — 52,000 — are Jewish, a 2002 survey found.)

During her tenure at Wagner, Lieberman also helped make the school more welcoming to Muslim students. The college turned its 80-year-old chapel building, which had been home exclusively to Christian worship, into a space that accommodates regular Jewish and Muslim prayer services as well.

At La Verne, Lieberman would like to reach out to the Jewish community in Greater Los Angeles and beyond. “I think this is a wonderful opportunity to show Jewish students that are local, and nationally, that this is a campus that can support students of any faith, including Jewish students,” Lieberman said.

The move is a homecoming of sorts for Lieberman, who also will be La Verne’s first female president. “I grew up in Covina,” Lieberman said. “I left after high school. I never imagined I’d be coming back to Southern California.”

University of La Verne hires new Jewish president Read More »

Appreciating the Tension: Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16)

Leave a Comment / Torah /

Nature abhors a vacuum. And so do biblical stories.

If we take a minute to read the story of the Exodus not from our point of view — that of the liberated

victims — but from the objective view of an outside mediator, we will likely find ourselves asking the following questions: Did it really have to end this way? Did the story really have to climax in violence? Wasn’t Pharaoh slowly but steadily coming around to Moshe’s position? Wasn’t a negotiated settlement still plausible?

The biblical narrative certainly seems to suggest so. Remember where the parties began: In response to Moshe’s request for a three-day religious furlough for the people, Pharaoh responds, “Who is God that I should hear his voice?! I do not know God!” But by the time the frogs are wreaking havoc in Egypt, Pharaoh petitions Moshe, “Pray to God so that He may remove the frogs, and I will send the nation out, and they may worship God.” Pharaoh now acknowledges the power of God, and recognizes Israel as a nation deserving at least a modicum of dignity. When the frogs actually disappear, Pharaoh’s offer disappears with it. Pharaoh’s pride and ego run deep after all. Yet an objective mediator would note the progress in the recalcitrant party’s position — progress that could be built upon.

And very shortly thereafter, major positive changes on the ground indeed begin to occur. Ibn Ezra, basing himself on a talmudic teaching, writes that following the fourth plague, Pharaoh actually began to ease the burden of slavery. Even more dramatic is the comment of the 19th century sage Netziv, who notices that Pharaoh refers to Israel as “Israel,” rather than “the nation,” following the plague of hail, signaling a paradigm shift with far-reaching implications. In Netziv’s words, “after the plague of hail Pharaoh lifted the bondage altogether [!]. He only refused to send them out, intending rather to treat them with honor [in Egypt]” (Netziv’s commentary to 9:35). Pharaoh was far along a trajectory heading unmistakably toward the ultimate release of Israel — all without a single drop of Egyptian blood being shed.

As we move into the ninth and 10th plagues, Pharaoh, already having lifted the bondage, comes closer to fully granting the three-day religious furlough in the desert, which is all that Moshe had ever explicitly asked for. “Go and worship God. Only leave your flock here. You may take your children as well.”

How much distance is there now between the two positions? A mediator would think that this is the moment for God and Israel to recognize how far things have come, and even to accept — for now — the offer being made. And then, after returning from three days in the desert, at least giving moral suasion (backed up by an obviously big stick) a shot, and perhaps securing the ultimate goal of complete freedom without ever needing to actually kill any Egyptians at all.

In fact, this is the kind of approach that would align much more closely with the commands that God Himself would later issue to us, and the talmudic legal tradition that would derive from them. We are instructed in great detail concerning the rejection of vengeance taking, the value of compromise, the conduct of warfare so as to inflict minimal damage on noncombatants. We are even commanded to “not abhor the Egyptian, for we were strangers in his land.” The violent climax of the Exodus story stands in stark contrast with our normative legal tradition, and to read the story in a vacuum, without simultaneously consulting our legal tradition, would result in a severe disfigurement of Torah. The inherent tension must be a vital part of our learning.

Clearly, God had a wider agenda in Egypt. Beyond securing Israel’s freedom — a goal that might eventually have been attained even without the slaying of Egypt’s firstborn — God was out to establish, once and for all, that no man, no matter how powerful, is a god. That no people, no matter how weak, should be abused. That no voice, no matter how commanding, ought be heeded when it opposes the voice of God. This was a unique historical moment, requiring, in God’s judgment, a unique, spectacular and forceful manifestation of power. And the firstborn of Egypt were caught in the crosshairs.

Yet, the tension between the story and the law is thick. The vital questions as to how to balance basic legal values and unique historical needs, how to negotiate the tension between normative interpersonal laws and the pressing urgency of a particular moment, are timeless questions, and they must occupy a central place in our learning and thinking.

Biblical stories abhor a vacuum.

Yosef Kanefsky is senior rabbi at B’nai David-Judea (bnaidavid.com), a Modern Orthodox congregation in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

Appreciating the Tension: Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) Read More »

Conspicuous consumption — What don’t we get?

Leave a Comment / Gina Nahai, Opinion /

Not long ago, I happened to be standing next to a guy at the Apple store in Century City. I was waiting by the register to pay for a new charger for my laptop; he was in line to buy the new iPhone. He looked like he was in his 60s and had had a few facelifts. When I asked, he said this was his second day of waiting in line: The day before he had waited 12 hours and finally “got” a phone for his daughter. I think he thought that meant he was a good, caring parent. He had returned and spent nine hours — so far — to “get” a phone for himself. Did he realize he was paying for the thing, and not “getting” it for free? I asked. He said he had the 3G, and wanted to upgrade to a 4G — which wasn’t really an answer to my question, but never mind. I asked if he had a job. He said he’s a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills — which, again, may or may not have been an answer to my question.

Now, I’m a huge fan of all things Apple, and I love my iPhone and MacBook almost as if they were human. And I knew it was none of my business what the guy does with his time, but I still went ahead and asked if he thought the 4G was going to sell out for good, or if he expected the first batch that goes on sale to have supernatural qualities — like giving a guy eternal youth, or something of equal value. He looked at me like I was fresh off a goat farm somewhere and said, “No, but I wanted to get it the day it goes on sale.”

Not that it made an impression on him, but I’m reminded of that conversation every time I hear about people standing in line to buy something in this country. I grew up with stories of people standing in food lines — the Jews of Esfahan during the great famine at the turn of the 20th century, my French grandmother in Paris during World War I, the Jews of Europe in concentration camps, the little African children with bloated stomachs in the early ’70s and thereafter. So it’s always a shock to me when I hear of crowds gathering outside Best Buy in the freezing night to wait for the store to open the day after Thanksgiving, or of all those rich and beautiful women outside Saks Fifth Avenue on Wilshire at 6 in the morning the day after Christmas. I’m stunned that a grown man on Long Island would get trampled to death in the stampede toward a plasma TV or a digital camera, or that women in Beverly Hills would fight tooth and nail over something from Chanel until the cops have to be called in to separate them. And I was saddened at the sight of all those women earlier this month being reduced to a heaving, sobbing, genuflecting mass over a bunch of handouts from Oprah. This, in the richest country in the world. Before television cameras and reporters’ eyes, on the evening news and on the front page of the Times, and isn’t it all so great? Everyone coos. Isn’t Oprah just grand? The queen of the talk show handing out cake to the studio audience! Isn’t it so good for the economy when people with 70 pairs of shoes get to buy seven more pairs at 70 percent off the original $700 a pair?

What do we look like, I wonder, to a mostly hungry, underprivileged, forever striving world? A nation camping outside Kmart in the snow, taking the doors off the hinges at Walmart, beating each other up at Saks and Neiman Marcus when our stores and closets are overflowing with things no one really needs to survive and our supermarkets are packed with food.

I know I’m being judgmental and self-righteous and generally unpleasant, but I really think a country’s decline or rise depends on the values its people uphold. I doubt many of the men in line at the Apple store, or the women outside Macy’s on Black Friday, would wait half as long in order to vote, say, or show half as much passion about most anything else in life. I know brisk sales help create a robust economy, but an economy based on creating and selling and owning things — an $1,800 leather belt, a $6,000 cotton dress, a $130,000 bag — at overly inflated prices, a culture that reveres the handing out of diamond earrings instead of (I’m sorry; I really believe this) coupons for old people to pay their electric bills, a rich city like Beverly Hills that can’t or won’t sustain a single bookstore, but where jewelry shops are a dime a dozen, is destined, I am convinced, for something much less than the kind of greatness this country once achieved.

I see the plastic surgeon in and around Beverly Hills all the time. Once, he sat at a table next to mine in a restaurant. I asked him if he was happy with his new 4G. He had no idea what I was talking about, but I’m willing to bet he was among the first to line up to buy the iPad when it came out. 

Gina Nahai is an author and a professor of creative writing at USC. Her latest novel is “Caspian Rain” (MacAdam Cage, 2007). Her column appears monthly in The Journal.

Conspicuous consumption — What don’t we get? Read More »

The Case for the Torah

Leave a Comment / Dennis Prager, Opinion /

The Case for the Torah: Part I / Part II / Part III / Part IV / Part V

With this first column of the year, I have decided to devote a number of my columns this year to making the case for the Torah.

If I may be personal for a moment, I will admit that, like most people, as I get older, the fact of mortality begins to play a more conscious role in my life. So, when I think about what I would like most to leave behind, in addition to good children and the good opinion of those who knew me, it is the case for America’s unique values (the American Trinity, as I call it — Liberty, In God We Trust, and E Pluribus Unum) and the case for the Torah and its unique values. I fear that both Americans and Jews have largely forgotten what world-changing values they have brought into the world.

The greatest Jewish contributions have been God and the Torah. But most Jews do not know why God and the Torah are so important, and many Jews think neither is important at all.

We Jews are a messenger who forgot his message. The message is to bring the world to the universal God of that Torah, the God of morality, the God of the Ten Commandments, and to the moral values of that Torah. (This does not mean converting people to Judaism, though Jews should be very open to converts. Rather, it means converting people to a system of moral and other values that is rooted in monotheism as laid out in the Torah.)

Why have Jews lost their sense of being a messenger?

I think there are four primary reasons, both external and internal.

1. Once the Roman Empire became Christian, Jews and Judaism were essentially declared enemies of the state. It is very hard to advocate a message when you are fighting for your life.
2. Jews, therefore, became preoccupied with survival. When a man is drowning, his one concern is not drowning.  Nothing else occupies his mind. Unfortunately, Jewish preoccupation with survival continues to the present day, even where, as in America and Israel, Jews are free to advocate the Torah’s values.
3. Jews and Judaism became increasingly insular as much of Jewish law became preoccupied with having Jews avoid interactions with non-Jews (nonkosher wine is an example).
4. Halachah, Jewish law, became so all-encompassing that it became an end unto itself; indeed, it became the very purpose of a Jewish life. As a result, the religious Jew came to be defined quantitatively — i.e., by how many ritual laws he observed. The more laws a Jew observed, the more “religious,” the more authentically Jewish, he was and is perceived to be.

What, specifically, are Jews supposed to be advocating?

The answers lie primarily in those five books known as the Torah and, secondarily, in the rest of the Jewish Bible.

But there are two huge challenges to accomplishing this.

The first is the one I have just noted: You have to first believe that you have a mission in order to embark on it.

The other is even more daunting. Even if Jews were to be convinced that they have to teach the Torah’s values to the world, too few would know what to teach.

Here’s a possible way to test this thesis: If you or your rabbi were given an hour a week for 52 weeks to teach the Torah on YouTube to a mixed audience of millions of Jews and non-Jews, what would you teach them that would make them and their societies better? The question is not what would you teach them in order for them to have a more scholarly understanding of biblical text, but what distinctive values of the Torah would you teach them that could impact their moral behavior and values?

It is my belief that the Torah is the most important and influential book ever written, that it is God-given, and that properly understood, it provides the finest recipe for a good life and a much better world. But — and this is a big and necessary “but” —  properly understood, it would also involve rejecting many of the dominant values and beliefs of our time.

One final point: Some years ago, I had an epiphany. I realized that I wasn’t using almost all the technology I purchased to its fullest capability, because I never read the instruction manuals. In a lifetime of photography, for example, I had rarely looked at the instruction manual that came with the camera or with a flash attachment. Over time, through trial and error and suggestions from others, I took some nice pictures, but I wasn’t nearly the photographer I wanted to be or could be. And the reason was that I didn’t know much of what my camera or flash was capable.

There is an analogy to life here. If we need an instruction manual to use our cameras properly, why would we not need an instruction manual to know how to lead a life properly? Sure, through trial and error, and through others giving us suggestions, some can get through life without necessarily doing any real harm and even doing some good. But we fool ourselves and do not improve the world if we think we can do it consistently and well without an instruction manual.

And the greatest instruction manual is the Torah. I intend to show why that is so. 

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host, columnist, author and public speaker. He can be heard in Los Angeles on KRLA (AM 870) weekdays 9 a.m. to noon. His Web site is dennisprager.com.

The Case for the Torah Read More »

So long, Eva

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

It’s not easy to handle death. It’s so naked and finite. No matter how much we talk about the spiritual journey to the next world, about legacies that never die, about a life well lived, there’s really no consolation for the pain of missing someone — really, really missing someone.

I will miss Eva Brown, a Holocaust survivor who passed away last week at the age of 83 after a three-year fight with cancer.

What I will miss most is the sparkle in her eyes. She seemed to always have it — when she first told me about her cancer; when she’d listen to me complain about stuff in my own life; when someone would let her down; when things were really good or when things were really bad.

She even had it a couple of weeks ago, when I brought my kids to see her one last time to say good-bye. I had a premonition it would be the last time, because my friend Marci Spitzer had left me a message that “Eva would like to see you very soon.” When I got to Eva’s house in West Hollywood that Sunday afternoon — where we’d once been neighbors and where she had lived for nearly 60 years — Eva told me the doctors had said her long battle was over. By now, her two surviving daughters and her granddaughter were there with her around the clock. She was taking painkillers. It was just a question of time.

But she still had the sparkle in her eyes, the sparkle that said, “I’m still here.”

She mentioned that for the past few days she had been having visions of her father and husband walking through her room. They were the two men closest to her. She lost 59 members of her family in the Holocaust, but her father, a prominent rabbi, miraculously survived. They had moved to America after the war, and she never lost her attachment to him. She spent many hours at our Shabbat table telling us stories of what it was like to grow up as the daughter of the chief rabbi of a little town in Hungary when there was plenty of love but no running water.

Story continues after the jump.

Video footage with Eva Brown taken October 2007.

She had a 50-year love affair with her husband, Ernie, who passed away about 10 years ago. But they had different outlooks on life. Her husband could never get over the pain of the Holocaust and the bitterness in his heart. She once shared with me that on his deathbed, he confessed to her that he regretted having been bitter most of his life.

Eva, somehow, managed to avoid bitterness. At the age of 16, she was sent to 10 concentration camps in just one year. Her signature story, captured at the beginning of Thomas Fields-Meyer’s book, “If You Save One Life,” describes her encounter with an American soldier, who rescued her from a long death march. He asked her, in Yiddish, “Who did this to you?” and she didn’t have it in her heart to point her finger at a German soldier. She believed in justice, but not revenge. She also believed, as her father taught her, that every life was worth saving — hence the title of the book.

This ability to be positive and look to the future was almost inexplicable, because she spent so much of her time talking about the pain of her past. For many years now, she has been part of the family at the Museum of Tolerance, where she has spoken regularly to various groups about her Holocaust experience. The last few years, as if she could sense the clock ticking, she increased her appearances at schools, churches and colleges. El Camino College in Torrance even set up the Eva Brown Peace and Tolerance Educational Center in her honor.

I attended many of her talks. The extraordinary thing about Eva’s message is that even as she talked about death, murder and pain, she always ended up in the same place — with an intense love of life. She left Holocaust theory to the intellectuals. Her specialty was living.

It was as if her years in the pits of darkness had led this tiny woman to reveal herself as an evangelist for the celebration of life. She saw this as a very Jewish thing — savoring every breath of life that God gave her. She loved going out. When I would take her as my “date” to the Maimonides Academy trustees dinner, she’d put on a nice dress and perfume and would ask to go in the sports car, even if she had trouble getting in.

Her sparkle attracted a “circle of love” from Jewish women in the community, among them Sara Aftergood, Lesley Wolman, Marci Spitzer and Kathy Barnhard, who constantly brought her the soup she so loved and invited her for Shabbat and holiday meals. When Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer visited her a few days before she died, Eva didn’t want soup — she wanted to hear the song, “Eshet Chayil.” She soaked up pleasure until the very end.

One of those pleasures was taking pictures. Her house was full of them.

On that last Sunday when my kids and I went to say good-bye, after we all shared kisses and sweet words, she asked me in a weak voice: “Can we take a picture?”

We took a couple of great shots with the kids. If you look carefully, you can still see that little sparkle in her eyes.

To see a memorial for Eva Brown, visit evabrown.net.

So long, Eva Read More »