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May 4, 2011

Rudolph Kastner: Traitor or savior?

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

When a Hollywood synagogue wants to draw upon the strengths of its congregation, is it surprising that there’s a surfeit of attorneys and actors? Such is the case at Temple Israel of Hollywood (TIOH), which heralded the talents of both sets in last weekend’s performance of “The People vs. Kastner,” a dramatic imagining of a trial for Rudolph Kastner that never happened.

Kastner is the Hungarian Jew who convinced Adolf Eichmann to send some 1,685 Jews on a train to Switzerland, even as another 480,000 were shipped off and exterminated in concentration camps. Rather than being celebrated for saving Jews, Kastner became a lightning rod after the war, accused of treason for collaborating with the Nazis. In 1957, he was assassinated on the streets of Tel Aviv.

For the May 1 performance, produced as a Yom HaShoah remembrance event by the synagogue’s new arts council, a legal team played by real-life jurists and historic witnesses portrayed by thespians created an aura of authenticity — a courtroom scene in which the audience was the jury, determining at the end of the day whether Kastner was guilty.

The legal team included L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich as defense attorney, former federal prosecutor and attorney Bert H. Deixler as prosecutor and L.A. Superior Court Judge Leslie A. Swain, who happens to be Deixler’s wife, as judge. All but Trutanich are TIOH members.

The company of actors included Alan Rosenberg (“L.A. Law”) as Kastner, Paul McCrane (“ER”) as Eichmann, and a host of “witnesses,” including Curtis Armstrong (“Revenge of the Nerds”), Libby Clearfield (“Oregon Trail Live!” and a teacher in the TIOH religious school), Enid Kent (“M*A*S*H”), Phil LaMarr (“MADtv”), Danny Maseng (TIOH cantor and music director, who has appeared on “Law & Order,” among other shows) and Monica Horan Rosenthal (“Everybody Loves Raymond”). Only Rosenberg is not a part of the TIOH community.

(In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that this reporter is also a TIOH member, and that the author of “The People vs. Kastner” is Jonathan Maseng, a frequent contributor to The Journal, who is also an aspiring screenwriter and the son of Hazzan Danny Maseng.)

From the standpoint of some of the congregation’s other professional attorneys chatting in the lobby during intermission, there was no contest that authenticity had been upheld. One attorney remarked that seeing Trutanich cross-examine the witnesses proved why you should hope he’s on your side in a courtroom.

“The Talmud says, ‘Save one Jew, and it’s as if you’ve saved the world,’ ” Trutanich repeatedly told the courtroom audience — many of whom knew little of the story of Kastner beforehand.

The show revealed a man who was recognized by the Nazis as a prominent player in the Jewish community and manipulated by the Nazis for his power. Each side hoped to outsmart the other — Kastner desperately promising money he wasn’t sure he could procure to buy freedom for Jews; Eichmann trying to maintain Kastner’s silence about the deportations and make sure Kastner would “stay in the game.” Although Kastner did not go on the train himself, Eichmann put many of Kastner’s relatives on board, according to the script, to ensure his complicity. Kastner also was able to travel to Switzerland, though he reportedly returned to Hungary and was later shipped to the camps.

The professional authenticity of the legal team was well-matched by the actors, who ad libbed answers to questions they had seen in advance. It was a testament to each actor’s skill that while the event ran long — close to four hours — the audience stayed until the end to vote overwhelmingly (266 to 27) to acquit Kastner, convinced that he had done all he could to save as many Jews as he could in a desperate situation. What in life was seen as his “collaboration” seemed, according to the production’s evidence, acts of expedience — Kastner’s attempt to do the best he could. His own family was saved, we were told, not by his own request.

Equally extraordinary, however, was what occurred after the show ended, when two survivors of the actual Kastner train spoke to the audience.

George Z. Bishop stood from the audience and testified to Kastner’s goodness, bearing real-life witness, in the form of his grandson at his side, that one life saved is truly more than a single gift.

And, as a finale, Arthur Stern, another Kastner survivor, rose to tell the group of how his own father, Leo Stern, an Orthodox rabbi, had an unlikely but important collaboration with Kastner. In Hungary at the time, the Orthodox were not inclined toward Zionism, but in light of what was happening, Rabbi Stern and Zionist Kastner collaborated to get Jews across the border.

Too many Hungarian Jews, Stern remembered, had a fundamental “trust in their government.” Before 1944, Hungary had sheltered its Jews and escaped the horrors going on in Germany and other countries around it, and the Jews wrongly believed that they would survive by following the laws of the land.

Stern told of how, as a young man, he went to see Kastner to ask him to put his girlfriend on the train. Kastner complied, Stern said, describing this act as a testament to Kastner’s generosity. But as viewed by one in the audience, this belated information also appeared as new evidence that might affirm what Kastner’s accusers believed — that he put favored friends onto the train, knowingly choosing “who will live and who will die” — exactly what Trutanich so convincingly said Kastner did not do.

And that is the difference between art and history — a series of events tied up with a ribbon in a theatrical performance, even one showing many sides like this one, may still be even more subtly complicated in life.

So, was Kastner a hero or a villain? We know he saved 1,685 Jewish lives — Jews who went on to procreate and to create new worlds. And to shake the hand of one of those survivors who came to witness this extraordinary retelling is to know that Kastner’s achievement is something to be thankful for, even if it wasn’t perfectly done.

Rudolph Kastner: Traitor or savior? Read More »

There’s something about winning

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

I’ll never forget sitting with a group of intellectuals several years ago, at the height of the messy war in Iraq, and discussing why President Bush and America had fallen so low in the esteem of the world. One great mind after another offered sophisticated analyses. My head was spinning.

Finally, someone piped up: “Everything would be different if Bush were winning the war.”

At which point a distinguished professor from Israel said: “This is brilliant! Bush’s real problem is that he’s not winning!” I sat there, slightly stunned, thinking: How can something so complicated lend itself to such an easy insight?

I reflected on that insight the other night when President Obama announced the killing of Osama bin Laden after a nearly 10-year pursuit. Here was a president who had suffered relentless criticism for his handling of foreign affairs. And now, as Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on his blog: “Our President, in the blink of an eye, has gone from a hyper-criticized, seemingly-swamped possibly-one-term leader to an American hero, a commander-in-chief who calmly oversaw the killing of the greatest mass murderer in American history.”

And why did he become a hero? Not because he made one of his inspiring speeches or announced a brilliant new policy.

He became a hero because he got a win. It’s as simple — and as complicated — as that.

We love to teach our kids that life is not about winning and losing but “how you play the game.” That may be true when you’re dealing with people of good faith. But when you’re dealing with people who are out for blood, it’s a good idea to know how to win.

Naturally, Jews and Israel have always been juicy targets for people out for blood. So, how should one deal with such aggression?

I found a wonderful answer last week in a shoe store, of all places, on trendy St. Denis Street in downtown Montreal. The French Canadian owner of the store, who has been there for 25 years, decided last year to carry a woman’s shoe line from Israel called Beautifeel. Well, wouldn’t you know it, within a few months, a vicious boycott campaign was under way against the store, led by a popular local politician, Amir Khadir.

To give you an idea of the tone of their campaign, one of the boycotters’ leaflets had an oversize image of a woman’s shoe stomping on a pile of buried naked bodies — reminiscent of those horror shots of emaciated bodies you see in Holocaust documentaries. Written on the shoe was “Beautifeel. Made in Apartheid Israel.” On top was the headline, in French, “Boycottons la boutique Le Marcheur” (“Let’s boycott the boutique Le Marcheur”).

Week after week, the boycotters recruited large and noisy crowds to hand out the leaflets and implore people not to enter Le Marcheur. Their mission was to pressure the owner, Yves Archambault, to stop carrying the Israeli shoe line so that the neighborhood would be “apartheid free.” But Archambault refused, out of principle. It didn’t seem right to him that he should be told how to run his business. His business suffered, but he held firm.

The story hardly ends there. The Jewish community in Montreal got wind of the boycott and went nuts. A “buycott” campaign was launched, and Jews from all over the city came to buy shoes at Le Marcheur. A woman bought a hundred pairs. Archambault became a local hero.

Meanwhile, creative minds went to work producing counter leaflets mocking the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement as “Boycott Derangement Syndrome,” explaining the discrimination and hypocrisy inherent in the movement. These leaflets gave people the Israeli side of the story. Archambault did his own research and found out that the Israeli shoe company (besides making great shoes!) hired women, minorities and Palestinians and treated their employees very well. The Quebec General Assembly drafted a unanimous resolution condemning the boycott and supporting the store.

And what happened to the initiator of the boycott, Amir Khadir? He went low-key and stopped coming to the demonstrations. Apparently, he concluded that the backlash might not be good for his political future.

I tell you this story not to remind you of the insidious global movement to demonize the Jewish state. That’s old hat by now. I’m telling you this story because it’s a tribute to the noble virtues of fighting back and winning.

Too often, we recoil at the idea of fighting. It leaves a bad taste in our mouth. We dread the thought of “lowering ourselves to the level of mudslinging.” We prefer notions like “engagement” and “bridge building.”

But the nasty boycotters of St. Denis Street who used Nazi imagery to malign an Israeli shoe company were not looking for engagement or bridge building. They were looking for blood — and a victory.

Faced with such aggression, how else to respond but to fight back?

Yes, in such cases, life is a zero sum game. One side wins, and the other side loses. The Jewish community of Montreal, with the support of a brave French Canadian shoe merchant, fought back ferociously and smartly against what it perceived as a grave injustice to the State of Israel. And, guess what — they won.

It’s not as dramatic as taking down bin Laden, but we’ll take it.

There’s something about winning Read More »

An Israeli named Juliano Mer-Khamis

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman /

Two competing narratives define the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Juliano Mer-Khamis represented the troublesome third.

That’s why I so admired him.

Mer-Khamis, 53, was an actor, filmmaker, theater director and playwright. He starred in some major Israeli movies, and with his strikingly good looks and talent, he could have made quite a career of that alone. But Mer-Khamis founded the Freedom Theatre, a playhouse and cultural center in the Jenin Refugee Camp, one of the only professional venues of its kind in the northern West Bank.

In a region defined by competing tribes, he laid claim to both of them. His mother was Arna Mer, a Jewish Israeli who was among the original settlers of the town of Rosh Pina (her father, Gideon Mer, pioneered the eradication of malaria in pre-state Israel). His father was Saliba Khamis, an Israeli-Arab intellectual.

Born in Nazareth, Mer-Khamis said of his background, “I am 100 percent Palestinian and 100 percent Jewish.”

On April 4, 2011, Mer-Khamis was gunned down on a sidewalk in Jenin by two masked Palestinian assailants. He is survived by his widow, Jenny, a Christian Finnish activist who is pregnant with twins, as well as a daughter and son.

I was in Israel the day after the murder, and it cast a pall over many conversations. There was a lot going on in the region at the time: The infamous Goldstone Report had just been heavily qualified — by Goldstone — and Arab governments were still tumbling to pieces and facing off massive citizen protests. But it was Mer-Khamis about whom people felt a need to speak.

“It’s a setback, enormous,” Yael Dayan, the longtime peace activist, author and current chair of the Tel Aviv City Council, said to me during a conversation in her office above Rabin Square.

“Friends from the New York Theatre Workshop came to see him,” she said. “They brought him to New York; they came here; everybody saw in it something exciting. But he was all the time under fire.”

As an Israeli Jew, Mer-Khamis served for a year-and-a-half in the elite paratroopers of the Israel Defense Forces. He was released when he refused to stop some of his father’s elderly relatives at a checkpoint.

As a Palestinian activist, he founded the Freedom Theatre when his mother’s original theater in the Jenin camp was bulldozed by Israeli authorities following her death. His partner was Zakaria Zubeidi, a former military leader of the Jenin Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, whom Mer-Khamis persuaded to struggle through art, not violence. The Freedom Theatre’s goal is to nurture skills in Palestinian youth that will help them envision and build a better society.

By 2009, 700-800 children attended every year, including many girls, The Economist reported.

Mer-Khamis’ theater was not lovey-dovey, teaching kumbaya and tolerance. It was theater of rebellion. But the theater’s production of “Animal Farm” dared to suggest that a violent intifada could lead to Palestinians becoming their own oppressors.

No one knew better than Mer-Khamis that while he could, with enormous struggle and talent, merge his own hyphenated identities into a single rich existence, the lure of the fanatics could be too great for many others around him.

There’s an eerie clip I found on YouTube of Mer-Khamis explaining to the camera and to his wife, in Hebrew and English, about his fate.

“I am telling how I am going to end my life,” he says. “A bullet from a f——d up Palestinian, who is gonna be very angry we are in Jenin, with this blond [woman], coming to corrupt the youth of Islam, and he’s going to bam-bam-bam, and they’re going to find me dead on the doorstep.”

That’s pretty much what happened. 

Why write about Mer-Khamis now, so many weeks after his murder? For two reasons. One, this is the week American forces finally killed Osama bin Laden. As wonderful and brave an achievement as that is, we all know that we will never be able to eradicate terror by killing every last terrorist and potential terrorist. The reason the Mer-Khamises of the world are so precious is that they illuminate a different way to fight for change, one that doesn’t make the world worse. 

“We believe that the strongest struggle today should be cultural, moral,” he said in an interview on electronicintifada.net. “This must be clear. We are not teaching the boys and the girls how to use arms or how to create explosives, but we expose them to discourse of liberation, of liberty. We expose them to art, culture, music — which I believe can create better people for the future, and I hope that some of them, some of our friends in Jenin, will lead … and continue the resistance against the occupation through this project, through this theater.”

You can disagree wholeheartedly with Mer-Khamis’ political opinions.  But the larger idea that he stood for — that he died for — is of fighting for one’s rights through art, culture and free expression, of teaching to confront violence, and one’s own feelings of hate, with the power of creativity, which is the power to build up, rather than destroy. What a humane legacy. That is why Jews, Muslims and Christians around the globe mourned Mer-Khamis’ death, yet celebrated bin Laden’s.

The second reason is that this coming Tuesday, May 10, is Israel’s 63rd birthday. It’s a time to celebrate what the state has become and to wonder what it can yet achieve.

Mer-Khamis was an intimation of some possible Israeli future, one in which identities combine rather than conflict, where the sum of the parts, instead of spinning apart, create a greater whole, a greater Israel.

An Israeli named Juliano Mer-Khamis Read More »

Letters to the Editor: Survivor’s pension, Philanthropy, Passover Seder, Jane Harman, Tom Cruise

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Opinion /

Holocaust Survivors’ Pensions

We appreciate The Jewish Journal’s recognition of the work being done by Bet Tzedek’s Holocaust Survivors Justice Network (HSJN) (“Holocaust Survivors Win Modest Pensions,” April 29). However, there were some glaring omissions that merit acknowledgement as well as a basic premise with which we must take issue.

In the three years since Bet Tzedek conceived of and established the HSJN, it has become unprecedented in size and scope. It has become the largest pro bono initiative in U.S. history. Never before have so many partners come together in such a coordinated effort to provide free legal assistance to a single client group across the United States. Most importantly, the HSJN has helped survivors receive awards totaling more than $4.5 million to date. This is not a modest amount.

One of the most significant aspects of the ZRBG pension program is that, in addition to a monthly pension, survivors receive a one-time back payment. While mention was made of one survivor’s back payment in the photo caption accompanying the article, there was no discussion of these significant back payments in the actual piece. The fact is that the average retroactive payment is about $25,000, with awards of up to $100,000 not unheard of. These are far from modest amounts, and for many of our clients who are low income, they sometimes represent the difference between eating and not eating on a regular basis.

Bet Tzedek’s commitment to the HSJN is unwavering. It is a moral imperative; the most honorable of work in support of the most vulnerable among us. For those interested in learning more about this groundbreaking initiative, we invite you to visit holocaustsurvivorsprobono.org.

Sandy Samuels
Executive Director
Bet Tzedek Legal Services

Editor’s Note: The one-time back payments awarded with ZRBG pensions often amount to tens of thousands of dollars and can make major differences in the lives of Holocaust survivors. Nevertheless, one need only compare the total amount won by lawyers in Bet Tzedek’s Holocaust Survivors Justice Network ($4.5 million so far, most of it in one-time back payments) to the far larger amounts of money handled every year by centralized organizations like the Claims Conference (which in 2011 is allocating approximately $270 million for services to Nazi victims in 46 countries) to see how the ZRBG pensions could accurately be described as modest.

Neither that comparison nor the original article is intended to diminish the work being done by Bet Tzedek and the lawyers in its network to help needy survivors.

Jewish Philanthropy

If only more Jewish philanthropists practiced what Rabbi Korobkin preaches in his article (“Give Until It Hurts,” April 29). As a Jewish community, we have opportunities to help non-Jews in Haiti and Japan, for example, via Magen David Adom and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces; their rescue teams and medical corps were among the first groups to arrive at those disaster sites. Also, our Jewish schools would be more accessible and vibrant with local donors supporting our Jewish community.

Kol Ha’kavod to Rabbi Korobkin for eloquently expressing his beliefs.

Marci Spitzer
via e-mail

A Rabbi’s View of the Passover Seder

I am perplexed by David Suissa’s critique of telling our own stories within the master narrative of the Jewish story (“A Seder for Broken Jews,” April 22). Locating my story (the Torah of my life) within the story of the Exodus (the Torah of tradition) is the whole point of Passover. “In every generation, each of us is obligated to look upon ourselves as though we really did come out of Egypt.” And then we tell that story to our children.

Passover works on four different levels:

Historical: We were slaves in Egypt.

Political: There’s a pharaoh in every generation and a people, not only Jews, desperate to become free.

Psychological: Each of us has a narrow place from which we struggle to break free.

Spiritual: Each of us envisions a promised land of wholeness.

The master narrative of the Exodus, redemption, is the Torah of tradition. Through that lens we understand the Torah of our lives — our politics, our personal struggles, our spiritual aspirations. I become the story, and the story becomes me. The orange on my seder plate is next to the traditional symbols. They don’t compete with each other as David implies; instead, they enrich each other and my connection to our story.

Rabbi Laura Geller
Senior Rabbi
Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills

Another Seder Viewpoint

I am writing to complement you [Rob Eshman] on your outstanding writing (“The Arab Seder,” April 15). It’s a delight for me to read such a brilliant piece of concise enlightenment. I’m sending copies to friends.

Howard Steven Shapiro
Beverly Hills

How to Fill Harman’s Seat

The ideal candidate for the 36th Congressional District would do the following (“Democratic Hopefuls Talk Israel in Bid for Harman’s Seat,” April 29):
1) Repeal Obamacare, an unconscionable and unconstitutional government entitlement

2) Lower the tax brackets weighing on American taxpayers

3) Reduce government spending by tackling monstrous federal programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid)

4) Limit the size and scope of the United States Government (no more Department of Education, Energy, etc.)

5) Focus this country’s resources on promoting individual liberty here…

6) . . .instead of infeasible nation-building abroad.

Career politicians like Debra Bowen and Janice Hahn want nothing more than to perpetuate the statist tax-and-spend status quo. Besides, don’t they have something better to be doing, like fulfilling the offices that they have already been elected to?

RINO (Republican In Name Only) Mike Gin wants to (*ahem*) “reform” Obamacare, an unmanageable program worthy only of repeal. Besides, the praise that he has received from the L.A. Times only highlights his liberal credentials, and the last thing this district needs is another liberal lawmaker (see above).

From the crowded field of contenders, only Kit Bobko and Craig Huey stand out as representative material. I respect Mr. Bobko’s stance on limiting government spending, but Craig Huey’s outsider status as a small businessman has earned my respect.

Vote for Craig Huey for U.S. Congress!

Arthur Christopher Schaper
Torrance

Jewish Leadership and Zionism

This op-ed does not even attempt to refute the facts of the JADL, [Jews Against Divisive Leadership] ad (“The Zionism of Rabbi Richard Jacobs – A Model for Our Times,” May 6). J Street and the many groups supported by the New Israel Fund masquerade as supporters of Israel but act as adversaries. The opinion piece is an illustration of the disconnect between American Jews and the leadership of too many of our Jewish organizations.

David B. Goldenson
via e-mail

Dear JADL (Jews Against Divisive Leadership) and its signers of The Jewish Journal ad:

The kindest thing I can say about your ad is that it has great “chutzpah” — to think that a small group is representing all Reform Jews. In fact, I personally am insulted that you would include me as a Reform Jew in your ad. The title of your group is an oxymoron … it’s your group that is divisive. And I’m surprised that the signatories are so careless to allow so many inaccurate points with the purpose of discrediting Rabbis Yoffie and Jacobs. Why do you choose to go around the Union for Reform Judaism to influence change of policies if you disagree with them? Instead, you pay for an expensive ad to do exactly what you say you are against: divisive leadership.

Dozens of smart and knowledgeable leaders of the Union for Reform Judaism thoroughly evaluated Rabbi Rick Jacobs’ credentials before selecting him as the nominee for the next URJ President. Although I was not part of that process, I can be more convinced of their judgment in selecting Rabbi Jacobs—than a bunch of mavericks trying to represent themselves as speaking for the Reform Movement.

As Jews (and especially rabbis), you should heed the points that Rabbi David Ellenson (& his HUC colleagues) expressed in his response to your ad.

If you are truly Reform Jews, you know that Reform Judaism is a dynamic enterprise, reflecting a demonstrated evolution of Jewish practice and policies. This evolution, time and again, responds to Reform Judaism by the influences of welcoming inputs from all liberal Jews. You could be part of the solution and yet you choose to be a problem. Publishing this ad is not being part of any constructive solution.

It’s one thing to have a healthy debate on Israel attitudes and policies. It’s another thing to put a blemish on the signatories of this ad with their unfair AND divisive ad. Your ad and your names won’t be forgotten by myself and others. Like other lashaon hara behavior, your words will reflect on your reputation and will be remembered when you write a paper, present a lecture or look for a position on a committee or employment.

I am proud to a Reform Jew and in particular proud to be a member of the Board of Trustees of the Union for Reform Judaism. I have loved working under Rabbi Eric Yoffie and looking forward to Rabbi Rick Jacobs’ role as URJ president, especially with his passion for Israel.

Alan Warshaw
Palo Alto

An Open Letter to Rob Eshman’s Son

Dear Adi:

Although I don’t suspect this letter will be published or reach you, the fact that I am taking the time to write it on Holocaust [Remembrance] Day is somewhat significant.

Your father indicates that you will be visiting Auschwitz (“An Open Letter to My Son,” April 29). Do you see those smoke stacks by the crematorium? That is where, for expediency (in order to make room for more and more murdered Jews), millions of our race were incinerated. Your father’s newspaper ran an ad a couple of years ago from a Reform institution advertising cremation for Jews. Can you believe it? I never allowed The Jewish Journal in my house after that and told your father so in a letter. To his credit he published it. It’s ironic that a neighbor was visiting my wife and by chance left a copy of The Journal this week. I couldn’t help myself and peaked at it and immediately came across your father’s letter to you.

Your dad says that the goal of the March of the Living is for young people to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and to lead the Jewish people into the future vowing “Never Again.” This brings me to another letter I wrote to your dad, “A Jew for Gun Control, The Ultimate Irony.” Again to his credit he did publish it, although I doubt it had much effect. You are going to visit the Warsaw Ghetto. Adi, can you imagine 10,000 Warsaw Ghettos? So much resources would have to have been devoted to multiple uprisings by the Nazis that indeed the war would have ended a year earlier, and perhaps a million more Jews would have survived. Today there would be tens of millions more Jews in this world. Of course most will tell you that couldn’t happen in the United States and who needs guns here? Most said at the time that it couldn’t happen in that civilized society in Germany either. Oh, by the way Adi, while on the subject of gun control, when you visit Israel please realize that while arming the Arabs in 1948, the British imposed strict gun-control laws on the Jews. You see they wanted the Arab’s oil (sound familiar?), and figured by doing this the Arabs would make quick work of the Jews. Hashem had different plans and you would not be visiting Israel if the Jews there went by gun control in 1948 or now!

Oh, and Adi, before this letter gets too long I would like to address on Holocaust [Remembrance] Day, the Holocaust that is going on today. It is appropriate that I address this with you because your father once wrote an article encouraging Jewish girls reaching a certain age to consider marrying non-Jewish men. You don’t believe it? Well I have the article. Again I wrote a blistering letter to him asking him to save that advice for the future Sara Eshman-Kelly. Again he published it. You don’t have a sister, Sara, do you? The Holocaust I refer to today is being spread by the Reform, who have already succeeded in destroying more Jews than perished in the Holocaust. So please keep in mind that Josh Levine, or Izzy Shapiro, traveling with you may not be Jewish. (Gee I hope those are not actual names in your group.) The statistics will bear me out on this and it is not just personal opinion. However, let me tell you of a couple of personal experiences with very close friends who married non-Jews with Reform “rabbis” officiating. You see I am 63 now and can tell you what went on when I was in my 20s and what has unfortunately resulted today. Let’s take my friend Alan W. from the Bronx. He came from a family in which his grandparents came from Europe and spoke only Yiddish in the house. He married an Irish girl and a Reform rabbi officiated at the ceremony. His children, not Jewish, were even bar mitzvah by a Reform rabbi. Oh, sorry the first was, his wife offered the second child $5,000 not to be bar mitzvah and he took it. I ask Al about his kids, 30 and I believe 25, and neither has yet to date a Jewish girl and one is living with a non-Jew.

How about my friend Ron H. from the Bronx? He has a very Jewish last name and his father of blessed memory was a kosher butcher in the neighborhood. He married a non-Jew and again the Reform “rabbi” performed the service. Oh, by the way, Adi, let me point out that they all said and say this: “WE ARE BRINGING THE KIDS UP JEWISH.” In a recent conversation with him I asked if either of his kids are dating Jews and his exact answer was: “Nah, they figure their father married a Christian so they will do so as well.”

Last, but unfortunately not least, is my friend Steve. We have been friends here in California for over 30 years. His wife has worked for many, many years in a Conservative institution in the Valley. A few years ago he gave me the bad news that his daughter would be marrying a non-Jew. I hope it wasn’t because of reading your dad’s article because she was getting older. I immediately told him not to invite me to the wedding because I did not consider it something to celebrate. He did not. Our friendship has survived but whether the Judaism of his great-grandchildren will, is very, very much in doubt.

So Adi, I unfortunately have many more similar examples of Jewish friends I grew up with in the Bronx in the ’50s with but will not tell you about them here.

I will leave you with this advice:

“NEVER AGAIN” does not only involve genocide by force but the subtlety described in this letter to you. This is the most dangerous and potent kind because you don’t know it is happening until it is too late. So please listen to the advice of learning the lessons of the past, as your Dad points out, while understanding at the same time what will assure the future for Jews and Judaism.

Steve Flatten
via e-mail

What Does Tom Cruise Stand For?

Until I read Danielle Berrin’s excellent blog post a couple of weeks ago (”Should the Simon Wiesenthal Center Honor Tom Cruise?”), I only knew that Scientology was a rather kooky celebrity “religion.” I was amazed at what I read in Ms. Berrin’s post. Under FBI investigation for human trafficking? This led me to read the New Yorker article she references; then I discovered that there is an enormous amount of evidence available to show that Scientology is a highly manipulative, very crass organization whose primary goals are to make money and to achieve good “PR” by presenting themselves as worldwide “humanitarians.” Through this phony “humanitarian,” cynical “human rights” schtick, Scientology is able to recruit more paying converts.

Scientology’s ethos is very far from humanitarian, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center should not collude with this “church” in advancing that agenda. For Scientology, this award would be more than just something nice: It would be an incredible victory and moneymaking opportunity.

In the past two weeks, I discovered many, many press releases and Scientology Web sites in which the organization’s late founder, L. Ron Hubbard, is described as a humanitarian on a par with Rev. Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. But on the many other Web sites dedicated to exposing Scientology’s vicious, racist, illegal and immoral beliefs and activities, I learned that Scientologists take the sayings and writings of their founder to be absolute, infallible, inflexible dogma. Many of Hubbard’s views were remarkably Hitlerian. Let me give you a small sample:

“There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale [e.g. gays and lesbians, who Hubbard is describing here], neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the Tone Scale by un-enturbulating some of their theta by any one of the three valid processes. The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow.” — Hubbard, “Science of Survival”

“The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered.” — Hubbard, “Science of Survival”

“A Venezuelan dictator once decided to stop leprosy. He saw that most lepers in his country were also beggars. By the simple expedient of collecting and destroying all the beggars in Venezuela an end was put to leprosy in that country.” — Hubbard, “Science of Survival”

“A truly Suppressive Person or group has no rights of any kind and actions taken against them are not punishable.” — Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 1 March 1965, HCO (Division 1) “Ethics, Suppressive Acts, Suppression of Scientology and Scientologists”

“Psychiatry” and “psychiatrist” are easily redefined to mean “an anti-social enemy of the people.” This takes the kill-crazy psychiatrist off the preferred list of professions. …The redefinition of words is done by associating different emotions and symbols with the word than were intended … — L. Ron Hubbard, HCO PL, 5 October 1971, PR Series 12, “Propaganda by Redefinition of Words”

There are many, many other examples of such hateful ideas being promoted by the organization’s founder.

It is true what Rabbi Hier says about “guilt by association.” However, the beliefs of Scientology are utterly repugnant. Jews of all people should be highly attuned to the dangers of such beliefs, and critical of anyone who would not immediately reject and repudiate such beliefs. It way well be that Tom Cruise is a nice guy who has given away a lot of money. As a Scientologist, however, he must embrace Hubbard’s views without the slightest question. Any deviation from those views is seen in Scientology as a “high crime.”

Perhaps Tom Cruise should be given the award. First, however, I would ask that he give a “yes” or “no” answer to this question — without any equivocation or evasion: “Tom, do you reject these statements of L. Ron Hubbard’s?” (followed by a selection of hateful writings such as those presented above).

It would be interesting to hear his response.

Sarah Green
via e-mail

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Rhea Kohan: No one spits in her kids’ Kasha

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Mother's Day /

Sunday afternoon at the Kohan home is one of those classic portraits of familial bliss: Children are screaming, singing and scurrying about, clamoring for attention, eager to play, while the adults assembled in the kitchen are trying to have a coherent conversation. Clearly, a tall order.

“Chris backed up an off ramp!” Jenji Kohan exclaims as she bursts into the kitchen 20 minutes late for the interview, in jeans and a T-shirt, her two sons in tow. “There was an accident in front of us, and we would have literally been on another hour, and so he backed up the off ramp.” Charlie, 11, is ecstatic at his father’s heroics: “My brother and sister were like, ‘Yeah, go Dad!’ ” This being the Kohan household, an ordeal on the freeway is nothing if it begets a good story.

Jenji and Co.’s arrival brings a swirl of energy into the room —Charlie wants to perform his latest magic trick (he’s telepathic), and Oscar, a playful, teasing 5-year-old, is hungry. “Have some cheese and crackers,” his grandmother, Rhea, directs with classic motherly insistence. “Would you like some cereal? Some raisins?”

Jenji and David, Rhea’s two writer offspring (son Jono is a music entrepreneur and day trader) have gathered today at The Journal’s behest to talk about their mother in honor of Mother’s Day. A novelist by profession, among her notable accomplishments is the fact that she managed to raise three well-adjusted, unpretentious children in Beverly Hills.

“Sorry, is this disrupting?” Jenji asks. 

Well, yes, but the chaos of different characters all descending upon the family kitchen is where this family’s story begins. And even though the Kohan children — twins Jono and David, 47, and Jenji, 41, are all grown up with sizable homes of their own, their parents’ home is still family ground zero. It is here, amid a blend of California modern and deco interiors, that their talents were incubated and nurtured — the original writers’ room.

In fact, the drama that unfolded within these walls launched four enviable Hollywood careers: Buz Kohan, the family patriarch, is a television writer for variety shows and specials with 13 Emmys to his credit; Rhea is an author of three novels and a screenplay; David is the creator of the eight-season hit sitcom “Will & Grace”; and Jenji is the brain behind Showtime’s wickedly subversive comedy “Weeds.” A mere 10 minutes in their midst and it becomes obvious why so much of David and Jenji’s success flows from family spectacle, literally and creatively: Both modeled their career choice on their parents’ vocation, and both have found endless inspiration filtering their own refracted experience of family and turning it into entertainment.

Watch any episode of “Will & Grace” and you’ll see that the relationship between a gay man and a Jewish woman who are roommates is really a kind of created family; on “Weeds,” the nuclear family breeds dysfunction and darkness but also unmatched loyalty and love.

So it makes sense that when asked to reflect on their personal and professional bonds with their mother, such an event would take place in their childhood home — a house not only thick with their history, but with their telling of it. Yet it is also a place grounded in normalcy and ordinariness — celebrity visits were frequent, but decidedly absent were any orgiastic, drug-induced parties. Thanks to Mom, Hollywood success was celebrated but not subsuming.

Looking back, Rhea sits at the table confident and queenlike. She is all color: Titian tresses, sapphire eyes, creamy white skin. She wears a rosy blouse, an emerald leopard-print scarf and bright blue sandals — not one for understatement. Her novels “Save Me a Seat” and “Hand-Me-Downs” are, first, about a woman who struggles with pursuing a career and raising her children, and, second, a story of how a family matriarch born in the “wrong” generation tries to realize her own potential through the celebrity of her offspring. A third novel, “Low Heart in the Hole,” is currently sitting on a publisher’s desk.

“Why isn’t Jono here?” Jenji asks her mother with a slight edge in her voice. “You have another child.” Jono, the 6-foot-tall eldest son, is the only nonwriter in the family, and his siblings’ perceptible distress at his absence is the only topic that even hints at a sore subject the entire afternoon. Luckily for the Kohans, any sensitivity, deep or shallow can be remedied with a joke.

“Did it not occur to you?” Jenji presses, while they pose for photographs. “Do you not like him?”

Rhea, who earlier had quipped that her daughter’s confrontational nature scares the you-know-what out of her (“she’s psychologically scary”), is, by this point, fed up.

“He’s my FAVORITE!” Rhea snaps. “You know, there was a ‘Mama’ cartoon I used to put on the refrigerator, which said, ‘Here comes my favorite — and then the other two.’ ”

The threesome resolves to complete the family circle by printing a digital photo of Jono, which Rhea holds in her lap. But the prospect of getting a decent photo is fast becoming a Sisyphean task as the writers chafe under the camera’s glare, looking sort of like aliens who have just landed on the wrong planet. It’s fittingly comic: Jenji and David stand awkwardly opposite each other, fidgeting and leaning, unsure whether to smile or run script, as Rhea sits daintily beneath them, beaming.

Every few minutes, one of Jenji’s kids cuts in with a dire question or to jump on top of her, but mostly, Buz keeps them entertained in the bedroom.

“She’s amazing when she’s not actually your mother,” Jenji says with a sly smile and an eye roll. “All my friends love her.”

David, who plays quiet and patient to his sister’s bellicosity, laughs.

“If you ask her for advice, there is nobody wiser,” he says of Rhea. “But if she foists her advice upon you, that’s the ‘Jewish mother’ thing.”

“It’s the complete lack of boundaries,” Jenji says.

“Complete lack of boundaries?!” Rhea asks incredulously. But she is more amused than annoyed, chuckles lightly and shrugs it off.

Her own upbringing was more rigid: Rhea grew up in a traditional Jewish home in New York. Her mother was a homemaker, and her father was a school principal, who moonlighted as head of the local yeshiva. They kept kosher, went to shul, and their greatest aspiration for their daughter was for her to marry well (she didn’t, according to them, though her now-48-year union with Buz has since proved them wrong). Rhea rebelled by studying chemistry and taking an apartment in Manhattan after a broken engagement.

“When I got married, my husband was unemployed, so my parents were very unhappy,” she recalls. “When he first came to my parents’ house, my mother wouldn’t let him in the living room. But he never bored me, and he was so talented.”

David, Rhea and Jenji Kohan

That experience didn’t stop Rhea from inflicting the same expectations upon her daughter.

“I was told to go to Caltech and sit on a bench and meet someone,” Jenji says wryly. “We weren’t supposed to do what we’re doing. David was supposed to go to medical school, and I was offered a condo if I went to law school.”

“Writing was a fallback position,” David says. “If we can’t get real jobs, we know we can always do this. That’s what our parents did.”

Rhea had intended to work in the sciences and ended up a novelist. “Mentsch tracht, Gott lacht — know what that means? Man makes plans, God laughs.” She likes to joke that her novel “Hand-Me-Downs” is about her foremost maternal wish, which was for her children to grow up and make her look good.  “I wanted my children to grow up and have jobs where they would never have to come and ask me for money.”

By that measure, Rhea can rest easy. But she also deserves credit for keeping them in check, imparting to her children that success is no excuse for self-absorption — it’s how you put food on the table. And it was Buz who spent long hours on television sets to support the family, while Rhea stayed at home, how her children preferred it.

“When I got the galleys back from one of my books, Jenji picked it up and dropped it on the floor and said, ‘Big deal! Do you ever go into bookstores? There are thousands of them there!’ ” Rhea says that whenever she left the house for work, Jenji would conveniently get sick and call her from the nurse’s office. So much for working moms.

“They say there are book Jews and money Jews,” Jenji says. “We were raised book Jews; it was about intellectual and educational and personal achievement. It wasn’t about accumulation.”

“It was always like, things stayed for a long time,” David recalls. “Houses stayed, cars stayed, wardrobe stayed — nothing really changed.”

That’s not to say the family didn’t have its mishegoss — Jenji, for instance, was something of a rabble-rouser.

“I was not an easy kid; I got in trouble a lot,” she says. But rather than condition her otherwise, Rhea embraced her daughter’s quirks, even encouraged them.

“Omigod, I got suspended once from school for telling a headmaster I wouldn’t take his ‘bureaucratic bull——,’ and she took me to Hollywood Boulevard the next day and bought me a James Dean poster, because I was her rebel without a cause.”

Now David and Jenji are both parents themselves, and although there are neurotic behaviors they’d like to avoid, most of the time they can’t help but model their mother’s style.

“There are so many times when you catch yourself in a moment where you know that you are absolutely duplicating your parents in every way, on every level,” David says. “A chromosomal tic is happening.”

“I find more quotes that I use, more than her lecture style,” Jenji says. “Like, ‘Don’t let anyone spit in your kasha.’ ”

“If it feeds you, go out with it,” Rhea adds.

“No. That I will not repeat. I want my daughter to have a little self-esteem.”

Rhea Kohan is anything but stereotypical, though her children say she has some deeply refined neuroses: Overbearing? Check. Neurotic anxiety? Check.

“She’s always nervous that something bad will happen. Always,” Jenji says. “And that was imposed upon us, and it’s been a real struggle to not impose that fear onto my kids.”

“It’s like that Philip Larkin poem,” David says, “ ‘They f—- you up, your mom and dad, they don’t mean to, but they do.’ ”

More than fame or flashiness, storytelling is the Kohans’ cherished currency. It is their way of encapsulating life but also of living it. Issues are handled with humor; discipline comes with a bon mot. Being clever is more important than being a bigshot. And writing isn’t some haphazard genetic imperative or self-aggrandizing gift, it’s a primal urge.

Not that it should be too primal. Rhea does have one major boundary she hopes her children will respect (even if they don’t), and that is: Don’t air your religious angst.

“I’m very conscious of not doing anything that puts down Jewish people,” Rhea says firmly. When David once presented her with a “Will & Grace” script that mocked Orthodox Jews, she disapproved, and the scene was rewritten. After Jenji was discouraged from enrolling in rabbinical school because of her marriage to a non-Jew, she created a character who pursued the rabbinate to avoid war deployment. Rhea disapproved; this time, the scene was not rewritten. “I don’t like anyone to be critical of Jews or Israel. I’m very pro-everything-Jewish. To me, Israel can do no wrong.”

Rhea being so traditional, you might think that her daughter’s intermarriage troubles her, which it did, at first, but that’s over. “It’s the only marriage in the family that worked out,” Rhea admits. “Both my sons married Jewish girls, and both have been divorced.”

As if on cue, Jenji’s youngest son walks into the room: “Oscar, are you Jewish?” Rhea prods.

“Ken!” he shouts with a big, giddy smile.

In their Jewishness, the Kohans are something of an anomaly in Hollywood. Because they’re seriously, openly and comfortably Jewish. Jenji’s family belongs to two shuls, a chavurah group, and her kids attend Jewish day school and summer camp; David is a member at Sinai Temple and IKAR, and shares his mother’s pro-Israel political zeal. And every Friday, as they’ve done since childhood, the family has Shabbat dinner together.

“I think most of the the Jews out here [in Hollywood], they’re f———[cowards],” David says. “They want to stay away from [Jewish identity], they feel like it’s gonna alienate them. And I was always pushing for more — what’s particular can be universal. Like, why on earth would Seinfeld never declare what he was?”

He looks at his mother and says, “You instilled in me that being Jewish is not something to be ashamed of — it’s something to be absolutely proud of.”

Rhea smiles and nods, then offers one last story: “When I was 10 years old, I began to wonder if, indeed, Judaism was the right way. And I remember doing a lot of reading about it and decided that yes, it is the right way…”

“There is no right way,” Jenji cuts in (as much as she says she hates political correctness, she is the one to tip the scales in favor of fairness).

“Well, to me, being Jewish was the most logical,” Rhea continues. And, without a hint of reservation, she adds: “I just felt that on an intellectual level the Jews were way superior to every other religion. And I feel that way to this day. And I would say to my children, if you ever get lost, you look for a house with a mezuzah on the door, and that’s the door you knock on.”

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Stories of Pre-state Israel’s Helpers Now on Film

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Holidays /

Ruth Stern could have lived a life of privilege and security in her native South Africa. Instead, in 1946, while still in her teens, she and two dozen other South African youths boarded a ship bound for Palestine.  

Their goal: to study and travel the land for several months before returning home, where they would be expected to spread Zionism.

Seated in an upholstered armchair in her living room on a warm April day, Stern, now 84, recalled her group’s long sea journey and their arrival in British-ruled Palestine. 

In a strong, clear voice, Stern, an elegant, straight-backed woman, recalled how she and the other “young South African brats” heeded a call to study in pre-state Israel, with the understanding that they would return home and promote Zionism.

“It started the greatest adventure of my life,” she told the young Israeli interviewer and camerawoman who had come to hear her story.  

A taste of that adventure has been caught on film, thanks to Toldot Yisrael, a Jerusalem-based nonprofit dedicated to recording and sharing the testimonies of the people who took part in Israel’s founding. 

Established in 2007, the organization recently completed its 500th interview. The growing archive is a resource for academics, educators and filmmakers and will eventually be open to the public. Some of the footage is available on YouTube.

Aryeh Halivni (Eric Weisberg), Toldot Yisrael’s founder and director, said his organization’s work was inspired by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah testimonies project.

“I’d been thinking about the idea for years and years, but I’d assumed someone else had already done this. But when I visited different archives, I learned that no one had done it in a comprehensive way.”

Halivni — like Spielberg before him — feels he is racing against time.

“It’s now or never,” Halivni said, because the majority of people who contributed to Israel’s founding are at least 80. The interview took place in a cafe because Halivni runs the project out of his home in order to save on overhead.

While some of those interviewed were born in pre-state Israel, others arrived after the Holocaust or from Arab countries. Some were volunteers from overseas who felt compelled to fight for a Jewish homeland either at home or in the Middle East.

The videotaped interviews are preserved unedited, for future use.

Several have been spliced into short films that are being used for educational purposes. Toldot Yisrael and The iCenter, a Chicago-based organization that promotes Israel education, are conducting an ambitious pilot project utilizing “founder” testimonies in selected schools, community centers, Jewish camps and youth groups.

Anne Lanski, executive director of The iCenter, said her organization was drawn to the testimony project “because it exposes young people to personal anecdotes and motivates them to learn more about this period. We’re finding that what started out as someone else’s story becomes “our story.”   

Additionally, the History Channel offered 20 two-minute testimonies as part of its 2010 Israel Independence Day coverage.

While there is no shortage of people in Israel who lived through this volatile era, Toldot Yisrael seeks people whose experiences expose different facets of that period.

In the short Toldot Yisrael film “November 29, 1947: The Story of a Vote,” Suzy Eban, the widow of Abba Eban (who was serving as a liaison officer to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine), recalls how the Israeli delegation to the United Nations lobbied the world’s ambassadors to vote for the Partition Plan, the foundation for the establishment a Jewish state and a Palestinian state.   

“It was touch and go,” Eban said, noting that until the last moment, no one knew which way the ambassadors would ultimately vote.

Another of the film’s testimonies recalls how, when the vote was taking place, an ambassador from an unnamed South American country went to the bathroom. He was pursued by a Spanish-speaking Jew, who recognized the ambassador’s shoes under the bathroom stall.

The Jew told the ambassador, “I’m here to bring you back to the voting.” And he voted.

Eban relates how, after the vote, she, her husband and Moshe Sharett, who was then the secretary of the Jewish Agency, drove from the United Nations in Lake Success to Manhattan.

“No one said a word. It was overpowering,” Eban says, reliving some of the wonderment.

The organization’s next short film, “The Volunteers: Answering the Call of History,” is set for release this month. It tells the story of people from Western countries who volunteered and helped in the founding and building of the State.

“I don’t think most people realize the extent of the contribution from the U.S., England, South Africa,” Halivni said. “I think it is important for Jews from the Diaspora to feel that the founding of the state is their story as well.”

Stern’s story will appear in the movie, as will the wartime experiences of British-born hairdresser and businessman Vidal Sassoon, who fought in the Palmach, and longtime Yeshiva University President Norman Lamm, who volunteered in an American bullet-making factory.

As the camera rolled in her living room, Stern described the long ship journey from South Africa to Palestine.

“The ship was also carrying 200 Italian prisoners of war back to Italy,” she recalled.

When they finally arrived, “We were bedraggled, dirty, tired, but there was something spiritual, and it caught me,” Stern said.

During a trip to the Negev, Stern met a young pioneer named Uri at a desolate outpost called Revivim, and they fell in love. Stern was back in South Africa, as her program required, when she received a letter telling her that Uri had been killed in an ambush.

Uri’s death “was a call out to help out the Jewish state,” Stern said. She went back to the fledgling Jewish state in 1948, soon after war broke out.

This time, Stern made her way to Rome, where the Haganah met her group of Mahal volunteers from overseas and brought them to Israel along with Holocaust survivors.

Stern became a practical nurse at “military hospital number 5,” which was full of wounded Israeli soldiers.  

One day, Stern noticed a wounded soldier reading a book in English. Her romance with Teddy Ben-Amar blossomed, and they soon married.

“I truly believe it was a privilege to be part of rebuilding the Land of Israel,” Stern said during a break in the filming. “I had a calling and made my promise to Uri in the Negev that I would return.

“And I did,” Stern said.

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Why Israel Matters

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Holidays /

Zionism is like democracy. Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other kinds, and the same can be said, on its 63rd birthday, of the State of Israel. The Zionist project, in 2011, may be shot through with thorny problems, but it is still the best answer to the question it was designed to resolve, the so-called “Jewish Question.” 

Given the persistence of anti-Semitism, how can the Jews function in the world? A hundred years ago, Jews differed vociferously on this question, much as they do today. Then as now, not all Jews agreed that political Zionism, the establishment of an independent Jewish state, was the best solution. The very Orthodox believed that only God, in keeping with Divine plan, could redeem our people, and all that Jews could do, as ever, was pray and observe God’s law. The Yiddish secularists known as Bundists believed that universal socialism would lift all boats, Jewish and gentile alike. And various Jews worried that a Jewish state in the Land of Israel would inevitably become too chauvinistic, militaristic, religiously fervid for its own good. 

Some Jews argued that an autonomous entity was indeed necessary, but should be situated somewhere other than Palestine, in a land less holy and complicated. Israel Zangwill, the acerbic Anglo-Jewish author and Territorialist leader who had supported Theodor Herzl’s scheme for a Jewish homeland in Uganda, put the problem in a nutshell in 1919: “Zion is a bride who after her divorce from Israel has been twice married to Gentiles — once to a Christian and once to a Mohammedan —and when Israel takes her back he will find his household encumbered with the litter of the two intervening ménages.” 

Revisiting this image in the turbulent Middle East spring of 2011, I am suddenly reminded of a classic nugget of Talmud (BT Ketubot 16b), wherein the schools of Hillel and Shammai differ on how best to greet a bride. Beit Shammai says: “It depends what the bride is like.” Beit Hillel says: “Beautiful and gracious bride.” Beit Shammai says to Beit Hillel: “If she were lame or blind, you would say a beautiful and graceful bride?” Beit Shammai argues for sad, unvarnished truth; Beit Hillel prefers attitude adjustment that greases the path to peace. Here’s a Jewish question: Which approach better serves the Zionist cause on Israel’s 63rd birthday? 

Rewind to 1882, when Dr. Leon Pinsker of Odessa, my favorite Jewish diagnostician, asserted that “Judeophobia” was an incurable gentile disease with lethal consequences for Jews. In his tract “Auto-Emancipation,” he argued that the scattered Jews, in order to be normal people, and not unnervingly ghostlike or “uncanny,” needed a homeland of their own, a place where they could be the hosts. Someone who is everywhere a guest and nowhere a host, Pinsker said, has a hard time laying claim to other people’s hospitality. 

Today, American Jews can say this diagnosis does not apply to them — they are not strangers or guests — but surely this was not always the case. Pinsker’s tract of 1882 appeared a year after the assassination of Czar Alexander II (by non-Jewish radicals), which triggered pogroms against Russian Jews. This, in turn, set off the great and historic migration of millions of East European Jews to the United States, nation of immigrants, and not to the dusty Ottoman province of Palestine. America welcomed the refugees for 40 years — but then, let us not forget, didn’t. After World War I, as racism and nativism swelled in a jittery world, Congress cut immigration to a trickle, slamming the Golden Door shut in 1924, barely a year after my father, a Russian Jew, was lucky enough to arrive as a child at Ellis Island.

But after 1948, everything changed. Dr. Pinsker’s prescription was correct: The creation of Israel as an independent state revised the image and raised the self-confidence of Jews everywhere. As a proud Israeli, I would argue that the simultaneous phenomena of Israel as a strong sovereign nation and the unprecedented success of the American Jewish community are anything but a coincidence. Simply put: Israel matters.

America matters, too. Its Jews have done well, and their achievements have been good for Israel. For centuries, Jews in the Diaspora, lacking physical power, majored in economics and gained their influence that way. How has that influence been perceived in America? Mark Twain, in an ostensibly sympathetic essay of 1899 called “Concerning the Jews,” noted that “ten or twelve years ago” he’d read in the “Cyclopaedia Britannica” that the Jewish population of the United States was 250,000. “I wrote the editor,” he wryly continued, “and explained to him that I was personally acquainted with more Jews than that in my country, and that his figures were without a doubt a misprint for 25,000,000.” 

Behold the subtle nexus of anti-Semitism and its sneaky twin, Philo. I would hazard a guess that many Americans, in the 21st century, still do Twain’s inflated math. His pointed remark is a mixture of admiration and caution: Watch out for those clever Jews, they’re everywhere. Do I mean to suggest that America is an illusion, and Israel is the only solution? Hardly, but in the end, who knows? Listen now to an expert, Chaim Weizmann, the Russian-born chemist from Manchester University who became Israel’s first president. In 1946, he offered his scientific opinion to a panel of British and American officials that convened to evaluate the situation in Palestine:

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