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Jewish Journal

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May 11, 2011

Yoya’s promise

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

“You must promise me that you will tell this story, what happened here,” the rabbi said to the bar mitzvah boy, Joachim “Yoya” Joseph. They had just finished the ceremony in a small barrack in Bergen-Belsen, where they covered the windows so the Nazi guards would not see them. The rabbi, Simon Dasberg, a community rabbi from Holland, pressed a little Torah scroll in the young boy’s hands as he spoke to him.

I probably won’t make it out of here alive, the rabbi said to the boy. So take this Torah scroll; it will remind you to tell this story.

Nearly 60 years later, that little Torah scroll was sitting by Joseph’s fireplace when someone asked what it was. The person asking was Col. Ilan Ramon, who would soon become the first Israeli astronaut and a Jewish hero. By some twist of fate, Joseph had become a space scientist and a colleague of Ramon’s. When Ramon heard the story of the Torah scroll, he was “overwhelmed.” He felt an urge to follow the rabbi’s instructions — “you must promise me that you will tell this story.”

The next day, Ramon mustered the strength to ask Joseph if he could take the Torah scroll with him into space. A few days later, in early January 2003, Ramon would take off as part of the U.S. Space Shuttle Columbia mission.

And he took with him Rabbi Dasberg’s little Torah scroll from Bergen-Belsen.

On the morning of Feb. 1, as the shuttle was re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, it suffered a horrible malfunction and disintegrated somewhere above Texas. The tragedy stunned the world.

Meanwhile, soon after the tragedy, Dan Cohen, a documentary filmmaker living in Washington, D.C., saw a news clipping about the little Torah scroll and contacted its owner, Yoya Joseph.

When Joseph told him the story of the scroll — how he had smuggled it out of a concentration camp and eventually given it to Ramon — again it was as if Cohen was hearing Rabbi Dasberg’s message directly: “You must promise me that you will tell this story.”

Thus began Cohen’s seven-year adventure to bring the story to the screen. Cohen was fascinated by this “little Torah that could,” by the many twists of fate in the story, and, not least, by the incredible symbolism of an artifact of the Holocaust making it into space — as he describes it, “from the depths of hell to the heights of space.”

Cohen’s own journey culminated in Los Angeles last week, with the screening of his documentary film, “An Article of Hope,” at the gala premiere of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.

The selection of the film was made by Hilary Helstein, the festival’s founder and driving force. It turns out that Helstein herself had been moved by Rabbi Dasberg’s appeal to the bar mitzvah boy in Bergen-Belsen to “tell this story.”

In fact, what I find most remarkable about this whole saga is that beyond the high drama of triumph and tragedy that the story represents, it is a little Dutch rabbi in a Nazi concentration camp who seems to drive the story: It was his idea to have a bar mitzvah ceremony, despite the dangers involved; to give a young Jewish boy secret lessons every morning at 4 a.m.; to smuggle the little Torah scroll into the camp for this very purpose; to figure out a way to smuggle in the boy’s mother from another camp to attend the ceremony; and, finally, to put the Torah scroll into the boy’s hands as a lifelong reminder to “tell the story.”

It is as if the rabbi knew that one day the story of this little Torah scroll might make its way to prominent people, like a Jewish astronaut or professional storytellers in America.

The rabbi didn’t settle for words and memories. He could have asked Joseph simply to “remember to tell this story,” but instead, he added a ritual: Keep this Torah scroll with you at all times.

There’s something very Jewish about backing up an idea with something concrete. We live for ideas and values that we can convey orally, but, ultimately, we’re nothing without the written Book. The Book is our insurance policy, our timeless transmitter. Like President Shimon Peres says in the film, “Ilan Ramon didn’t just carry the scroll into space, the scroll carried him.”

Perhaps the rabbi understood that the scroll itself was the story — a symbol of how the Jewish people have survived despite impossible odds.

The film, which begins slowly, takes off the minute the scroll enters the picture. From then on, the story grabs you and doesn’t let go. At the packed premiere at the Writers Guild Theater, there were very few dry eyes in the house.

I moderated a panel discussion after the screening, and as I listened to Cohen discuss his deep attachment to the making of the film, I felt a similar idea seeping into my own mind.

I imagined myself as the little bar mitzvah boy in Bergen-Belsen, and I could almost hear Rabbi Dasberg say: “You must promise me that you will tell this story.”

As I left the theater, I could not imagine writing about anything else.

An Article of Hope” will screen on Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30 p.m. at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, 8844 Burton Way, Beverly Hills, CA 90211. $9-$11. For tickets and more information, visit www.lajfilmfest.org.

David Suissa is a branding consultant and the founder of OLAM magazine. For speaking engagements and other inquiries, he can be reached at {encode=”suissa@olam.org” title=”suissa@olam.org”} or davidsuissa.com.

Yoya’s promise Read More »

The Circuit: Jewish Vocational Services 80th Anniversary, Richard Michael Powell inducted into HUC

Leave a Comment / California, Circuit, Community /

Jewish Vocational Service (JVS) celebrated its 80th anniversary on Jan. 29 with a gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to honor its past board presidents. Among the 500 guests were Stanley Dashew, who received the agency’s Tzedakah Award, and emcee Keith Erickson, a former L.A. Laker and longtime CBS sports broadcaster. Thirteen board presidents attended the event as well as family members representing JVS board presidents who had passed away.


From left: JVS CEO Vivian Seigel, Tzedakah Award honoree Stanley Dashew and emcee Keith Erickson. Photo by Bill Aron


Front row, from left: Joan Berne, wife of JVS President Fred C. Berne; MaryAnn Klapper, wife of Mike Klapper; JVS President M.M. Chuck Maltz; Shirley Goldenberg, wife of Irwin H. Goldenberg; and son Dan Goldenberg. Second row, from left: David Licht; Sunny Caine; Adrienne Horwitch; Marilyn Garber, wife of Robert Garber; James Maslon; and George Polinger. Third row, from left: A. Charles Wilson, Susan W. Robertson, Abner Goldstine and Donald S. Simons.  Fourth row, from left: Current JVS President Jeffrey Paul; Jack Suzar; Ivan Axelrod, son of Morry Axelrod; Andrew Palmer, grandson of Felix Juda; and Rick Powell.
Photo by Bill Aron.


Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion inducted Richard Michael Powell, president of Ashjer, LLC, and Joan B. Seidel, president of Morton Seidel & Co. Inc. into its board of governors during a meeting in Los Angeles on Feb. 7. From left: Irwin Engelman, HUC-JIR board of governors chair; Powell; Seidel; and Rabbi David Ellenson, HUC-JIR president.

The Circuit: Jewish Vocational Services 80th Anniversary, Richard Michael Powell inducted into HUC Read More »

New York Imam talks peace in L.A.

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Speaking at UCLA’s Royce Hall on May 4, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, whose planned Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan — the so-called Ground Zero mosque — ignited a firestorm of protest last summer, said that the killing of Osama bin Laden gave him hope.

“This signifies the end of an era of terrorism,” Rauf told the largely supportive and diverse audience of about 600 students, activists and community members.

The imam has traveled around the world as a special envoy of the U.S. State Department to talk to Muslims about America and Americans; the evening event was just one of many that have taken Rauf to cities around the United States to talk to Americans about Muslims and Islam.

“You have to go out and speak with people, and they will support you,” Rauf told The Jewish Journal before the event. Rauf has been seeking support for his organization, the Cordoba Initiative, a multifaith effort aimed at improving relations between Islam and the West. Rauf is no longer formally associated with the project in Lower Manhattan, which is known as Park51, but is working to establish Islamic cultural centers, or Cordoba Houses, in New York City and elsewhere.

Rauf regularly speaks to members of the Jewish community, many of whom were in attendance at Royce Hall. “The major challenge with the Jewish community is the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which has cast a major pall on Jewish-Muslim relations for the last half-century or more,” Rauf said.

About a dozen people, many of them Jewish, stood outside the hall before and after the event circulating fliers that accused Rauf of misrepresenting himself as a moderate and holding large placards that read “The Ground Zero Mosque: Second Wave of the 911 Attacks.” Among them were representatives of the Calabasas Chapter of ACT for America. The group was behind an unsuccessful petition submitted to UCLA’s chancellor earlier this year accusing the Muslim Student Association of sedition and asking the chancellor to shut the group down.

Rauf frequently finds himself speaking with “fair-minded, moderate” Americans who are “intellectually OK” with the idea of building an Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan but are nonetheless emotionally resistant to it.

“Americans are basically just, and the majority of people, once they have the opportunity to truly engage with you and ask the probing questions, and feel satisfied, they will do the right thing,” Rauf said in an interview. “The only ones who are still opposed to you are the ones who are rabidly — whether they are anti-Semitic, or anti-Islamic, or racist — are those people who have those prejudices, and will always have those prejudices.”

New York Imam talks peace in L.A. Read More »

American Jewish World Service moves to J Space

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

American Jewish World Service (AJWS), a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to developing countries, recently signed a lease for office space in Los Angeles, and on May 6, a ceremony marked the organization’s move into the office.

At the ceremony, Ruth Messinger, president of AJWS, affixed a mezuzah to the doorpost of the new Los Angeles office, and Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR recited a blessing.

“This is a huge step forward for American Jewish World Service in Los Angeles,” Messinger said. “We’re a nice-size organization, doing what I think is very, very important work around the world, but this is a big country, and we had to figure out strategically where to be located.”

Until now, the West Coast administrative activity of AJWS — which promotes health, education, economic development and disaster relief in 34 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas — has been done out of its office in San Francisco, along with limited operations in Los Angeles.

“Allison [Lee, Los Angeles regional director of AJWS], “has been operating AJWS-LA out of her house and car,” Messinger said.

The new space, known as J Space, is set up by the nonprofit Jumpstart to become a multitenant nonprofit center with shared office space for multiple Jewish organizations.

The office is located in a Westfield Corp.-owned office building in Century City.

Jumpstart co-founders Shawn Landres and Joshua Avedon also attended the ceremony. AJWS moved into one of the two closed-door offices at J Space — Jumpstart occupies the other — and the move reflects AJWS’ faith in J Space’s mission.

It was “not just [about] getting a physical space,” Messinger said, “but getting a physical space that has meaning.”

American Jewish World Service moves to J Space Read More »

UPDATE: Chef to try for falafel ball record at Santa Clarita fest

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Food /

UPDATE: The falafel ball, weighing nearly 52.8 pounds, has been certified as the world’s largest.

The Santa Clarita Valley could become home to the world’s largest falafel ball on

May 15, when local chef Dawn Walker tries to craft and cook a deep-fried chickpea patty that will outweigh the 24-pound falafel ball that set the record a year ago in New York.

Part of the third annual Santa Clarita Valley Jewish Food and Cultural Festival, Walker’s attempt will be documented for the Guinness Book of World Records. If a test run held two weeks before the event is any indication, the ball could end up weighing as much as 50 pounds.

The organizers considered attempting to break other food-related records before settling on the falafel ball. “We thought about a matzah ball,” Sandi Hershenson, the event’s chairperson, said. “That was hundreds of pounds.” The world’s largest rugelach (440 pounds) was also out of reach, Hershenson said.

Temple Beth Ami, Congregation Beth Shalom and the local Chabad are hosting this year’s festival, which will include food vendors, musical performances and a kugel-baking competition. The event coincides with Big Sunday, and attendees will be able to take part in a number of mitzvah projects and community service opportunities.

The festival drew 1,500 people last year, and organizers anticipate an even larger number this year, particularly in light of the cancellation of this year’s Israel Independence Day Festival in Woodley Park.

Attendees will be invited to help mix the chickpeas for Walker’s massive falafel ball, but they won’t get to taste it. “If 2,000 people are all putting their hands in it, I don’t know who would want to eat it at that point,” Hershenson said. The ball will need to be deep fried and baked to ensure it is fully cooked throughout, a requirement of any Guinness competitor.

The event will be held at College of the Canyons and runs from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Details are available at scvjewishfoodfestival.com.

— Jonah Lowenfeld, Staff Writer

UPDATE: Chef to try for falafel ball record at Santa Clarita fest Read More »

Tuition grants, endowments to benefit day schools

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Education /

More than half the students in Los Angeles Jewish day schools receive financial aid to pay tuition, which runs between $12,000 and $30,000 per year. And with both tuition and the number of students requiring aid expected to continue climbing, BJE: Builders of Jewish Education is partnering with local donors and national organizations both to alleviate the immediate crisis and work toward long-term solutions for lowering the cost of Jewish education.

Last week, BJE announced that Los Angeles is one of three cities to split a $3.1 million Generations grant from the AVI CHAI Foundation and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) that will provide seven day schools with financial aid dollars and training and resources necessary for developing an endowment capable of spinning off funds in perpetuity. BJE raised $600,000 to match AVI CHAI’s contribution to secure the grant, and is now accepting applications from elementary, middle and high schools.

“If you look at what is happening in the school world, the schools and universities that are successful and able to weather the economy are those that have big endowments. So we set that as a high priority,” said Miriam Prum Hess, director of BJE’s Center for Excellence in Day School Education.

Only a few of Los Angeles’ 38 Jewish day schools have any sort of endowment, and the Generations grant joins other initiatives that in the last few years have focused on endowment.

A Jim Joseph Foundation grant totaling $12.7 million gave five Los Angeles Jewish high schools money to provide scholarships to middle-class families who earn too much to qualify for financial aid but still struggle to pay tuition. The grant came with funds to hire and train development staff, and required schools to raise their own monies for endowment.

Now completing the second year of a six-year cycle, the five high schools have raised a combined $2.3 million for their endowments.

“It’s difficult to think endowment when you need to raise money to keep the lights on,” said Larry Gill, board president of Shalhevet, where tuition for next year is $27,250. “But the reason the Jim Joseph program has been so effective is that it has really forced discipline on us. It’s sort of like a 401(k) — it forced us to put money away for the future.”

The grant also enabled Shalhevet to hire two full-time development professionals. Gill says Shalhevet is well on the way toward securing pledges of $500,000 for the endowment to meet a June 30 grant deadline.

BJE itself has secured pledges of nearly $10 million for a community fund that, starting in 2012, will add 25 cents to every dollar schools raise for endowment. The community fund, also a requirement for the Jim Joseph Foundation grant, was seeded with a $5 million matching challenge from the Simha and Sara Lainer Family Foundation. BJE has set a target of $100 million total for the community fund combined with the schools’ individual endowments, but Prum Hess says that number will have to grow to meet the community’s growing needs. More than half of the 9,500 students in BJE-affiliated schools are projected to receive financial aid next year.

To further help schools build fundraising infrastructure, BJE set up the Leadership and Fundraising Academy (LFA), an 18-month program for administrators and lay leaders, funded by a grant from Peter and Janine Lowy.

Sinai Akiba is one of the few schools in Los Angeles to have an endowment — a $7 million fund it started in the 1980s — and participation in LFA has enabled it to broaden its fundraising activities and focus its mission, according to headmaster Rabbi Larry Scheindlin.

“The thing we have learned most from the LFA process is that it is educational quality that drives the future of the school and carries the school into a virtuous cycle of enrollment and fundraising,” Scheindlin said. “It’s a terrible mistake to think that you can cut back on educational quality in order to lower tuition and thereby sustain enrollment.”

Rather, he said, Sinai Akiba has set tuition where it needs to be — $19,400 for the lower school, $21,600 for the middle school for the 2011-12 academic year — and increased its financial aid program, going from 15 percent of students a few years ago to 27 percent this year. The school has actively recruited and offered aid to families who thought they couldn’t afford a Jewish education.

Prum Hess says the presence of the LFA and the success of the Jim Joseph grant helped Los Angeles win the AVI CHAI grant, which relies on training existing development staff.

BJE raised $600,000 to qualify for the matching grant, then raised additional money to offer each of the seven schools $52,000 over three years, rather than the $25,000 prescribed by AVI CHAI. The hope is that the scholarship money, though a modest amount compared to the need, will alleviate some immediate stress and stabilize enrollment, and allow schools to develop their capacity to raise endowment funds, Prum Hess said.

In addition to the cash infusion, each school will receive five days of coaching with an experienced fundraiser and marketing materials that schools can customize. A BJE staff person, hired with the grant money, will serve as a resource to guide schools through the process of shoring up its fundraising apparatus.

The help, according to Shalhevet’s Gill, can’t come soon enough.

“If things continue in the current crescendo of cost versus money earned, in a very short amount of time the advantage of a Jewish education will be the purview of the extremely wealthy only. And that would be a disaster,” Gill said.

Tuition grants, endowments to benefit day schools Read More »

Educator realizing lifelong dream to become rabbi

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Dvora Weisberg doesn’t think she’s had any unfair advantages over her fellow rabbinical students graduating from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) this month. Well, maybe a few.

“I do have a considerable number of years over most of the other students,” Weisberg, 51, admitted recently.

That, and she’s also the director of HUC-JIR’s School of Rabbinical Studies.

On May 15, Weisberg will be ordained as a rabbi through the program she oversees, graduating as a member of the rabbinical class of 2011 alongside a dozen of her pupils-cum-classmates in a ceremony at Wilshire Boulevard Temple. For the longtime educator, her ordination will mark the fulfillment of a dream almost four decades in the making.

Weisberg, who has directed the rabbinical school at HUC-JIR’s Los Angeles campus for the past two years, said she’s proud to have reached this milestone in her career. 

“It’s very exciting — I’m excited to be ordained,” she said. “It has been interesting trying to balance these different roles. It’s a really unique way to grow into a job.”

Simultaneously managing the Reform rabbinical school and studying in its curriculum has meant a full schedule of office work, homework and teaching — sometimes going from professor to classmate in the course of a single morning. But from her vantage point near the finish line, Weisberg said it was worth it.

“There comes a point in a person’s life when you look past how busy you are and realize that if there’s something you really want to do, you should just do it,” she said. “It got to a point where I thought, ‘I should just go ahead with this.’ ”

After all, becoming a rabbi was something she’d wanted to do since she was 16.

It started with a love of the Hebrew language. Weisberg told an educator she wanted to be a Hebrew teacher and was given a challenge as a response: Why stop there when you could be a rabbi?

But the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS), where she wanted to study, was not yet accepting female rabbinical students when she graduated from Brandeis University in 1981. So she pursued her master’s and doctorate there in Talmud and rabbinics instead.

Along the way, she got married, had two children and — when JTS began training female rabbis — applied again to the rabbinical school. Despite being accepted, however, she didn’t want to change her course of study mid-degree.

“I moved toward [ordination] a number of times, but it never quite worked out” between building a family and a teaching career, she said. “It didn’t seem to fit into a schedule — it would always be taking away from something else.”

When Weisberg joined the HUC-JIR faculty as an assistant professor 10 years ago, she again considered the possibility. But it wasn’t until HUC-JIR President Rabbi David Ellenson encouraged her that she took the plunge.

Ellenson will be brimming with “pride and nachas” when he confers the title of rabbi upon Weisberg on May 15, he said.

“I am overjoyed that Dvora has completed this step on a journey she was destined to take decades ago,” he added. “She has such tremendous spiritual depth and combines that with a profound knowledge of Jewish rabbinical tradition. The rabbinical school has flourished under her leadership. It’s only fitting that she will now also bear the title of rabbi.”

Weisberg and the HUC-JIR faculty took steps to avoid a conflict of interest on the director’s part. Although certain thorny situations couldn’t be sidestepped — such as co-teaching the ordination seminar she was required, as a student, to take — “at least I didn’t have to grade my own papers,” she said with a chuckle.

And while she made sure to secure paid internships for the other students, she herself took an unpaid one at Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills.

At first, Weisberg was concerned her studies would take too much time away from her students, but she now feels her going to school was beneficial for them. “It’s an affirming experience for students to see their director experience what they’re experiencing directly,” she said. “I was not just sitting in an office, but learning alongside them. The students have been incredibly supportive and enthusiastic.”

Sometimes Weisberg contemplates how her life might have been different if she’d had the chance to go to rabbinical school earlier. But she doesn’t dwell on it too much.

“I feel that I’ve had a really amazing career,” she said. “I love what I do — I love teaching Talmud. I’m not sorry I chose the course I took. I’ve been given this gift that I’ve suddenly gotten the opportunity to grow in a new direction right where I am. It has been an incredible blessing.”

At the ordination ceremony, Weisberg will introduce her class and give a short talk on what it means to be ordained. “I’m really going to focus for the first hour and 45 minutes on being the director, and then I’m going to spend the last 10 minutes being a student,” she said. During those 10 minutes, she added, “I’ll probably cry — but I always do.” 

Her family will watch her graduate from HUC-JIR the following day, including her 21-year-old son — who will have graduated from USC, right across the street, three days earlier.

Now that she’s finally becoming a rabbi, Weisberg has another set of questions to consider.

“A lot of people have asked me, ‘What’s going to be different?’ ” she said. “I think that I may think about things in a more multi-dimensional way; the experience of having gone to rabbinical school while directing one really deepens your appreciation of rabbinic education. But this decision wasn’t about changing my work. This has been a journey of introspection and growth, and thinking about how being a rabbi might shape my work from now on.

“What will this be like? I don’t know — I’ve never been a rabbi before.”

Educator realizing lifelong dream to become rabbi Read More »

Funder Helps Holocaust Survivors Make Ends Meet

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Todd Morgan has a slew of rich, high-profile clients with names like Sylvester Stallone and Barbra Streisand, and there are pictures in his corner office at Bel Air Investment Advisors in Century City to prove it.

Perhaps the most important people helped by the wealth manager, however, have little money and possess names that are unknown to him. They are the hundreds of local Holocaust survivors who have benefited from his Morgan Aging With Dignity Fund.

Established with a $2 million commitment 10 years ago at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, it provides emergency assistance to survivors who may need help paying for medicine, transportation, in-home care, funeral expenses and more. It is overseen and administered by Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles (JFS), which is honoring Morgan on May 19 with its Spirit of Humanity Award.

“It was a godsend,’ ” Susie Forer-Dehrey, chief operating officer for JFS, said of the gift. “The reality was, there wasn’t enough money. [Today], there’s really not a situation that goes by that we’re not able to put something toward whatever emergency there is for a survivor in Los Angeles. Ultimately, that’s changed the whole landscape.”

There are thousands of Holocaust survivors in the Los Angeles area, and many live below the poverty line, struggling to make ends meet even with available stipends. That’s where Morgan’s fund has made a difference.

It started by chance when Morgan, Federation chairman at the time, received a phone call from a rabbi who had lived through the Holocaust. The man had health problems and couldn’t afford his medication. Morgan sent the man money but also called JFS.

“The issue there was: How could this happen?” he said.

After JFS staff helped him understand the situation — there was money, just not enough — he worked with them to set up the fund to fill in the gaps.

“Once he got that, he totally became engaged in a different kind of way and wanted to help provide and help be part of the solution of how we’re going to get the services needed and the funding needed to the survivor population,” Forer-Dehrey said.

Morgan, 63, grew up in Minneapolis as the son of a jewelry store owner. He had no direct connection to the Holocaust but became interested in it as a young man.

“I always said to myself: I wish I was alive during that period, because I would have liked to have done something to try to help those people,” he said.

While working on Wall Street in the 1980s, he got involved with the fight to help free Soviet Jews, and he visited some in Israel. He was moved by their stories, just as he was by the Holocaust survivors here in Los Angeles — some of whose tales he’s heard in person as he’s continued his involvement, others through the anonymous quarterly reports he receives from JFS.

“The biggest thing they tell you is: I don’t have any brothers, sisters, no parents. I lost everybody, so who do I call when I need help?” Morgan said.

Even the smallest requests can take on huge significance. One woman requested additional in-home support so that she could have someone help her bathe more regularly.

Forer-Dehrey recalled, “I remember her saying to me, ‘Look, for four years I didn’t take a shower in Auschwitz.’ She said, ‘I think at this point in my life I should be able to shower on a more regular basis.’ … How are you going to argue with that? It’s Todd’s money that has enabled us to provide those things — the smallest, smallest things in life that bring comfort to the survivors.”

It’s a lot different from the world in which Morgan spends much of his time. As senior partner of Bel Air Investment Advisors, he helps manage and oversee $6 billion for 260 families.

But helping the quality of life for Holocaust survivors provides a satisfaction that has no price tag, said Morgan, who is a member at two congregations, Wilshire Boulevard Temple and Kehillat Israel.

“For self-satisfaction, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done outside of raising my kids,” he said. “I want to do good things while I’m alive. I want to enjoy watching good things happen.”

So far, more than 800 people have been helped by the funds. The father of two said he wants his children — as well others in the community — to learn from this example and continue this sort of giving, especially because it helps the living.

“I’d rather give my money to help those that are alive now, that have the pain of day-to-day,” he said. “I think it’s tough enough just getting old, let alone to have nothing.”

While he said he has continued to add funds on top of his original commitment, Morgan is giving a lot of thought to what comes next.

“I’m talking to a rabbi or two about my next projects,” he said. “I like projects.”

Morgan will be honored May 19 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Tribute also will be paid to the following JFS volunteers winning the Anita and Stanley Hirsh Award for their work with Café Europa, a support and friendship group for Holocaust survivors: Colette Ament, Susan Brandler, John Gordon, Sharon Krischer, Hillary Moers, Shana Passman, Norma Satzman and Barbara Winthrop. l

Funder Helps Holocaust Survivors Make Ends Meet Read More »

Letters to the Editor: Why Israel matters, Rudolph Kastner, Rabbi Jacobs, Osama bin Laden

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Opinion /

Jacobs’ Appointment Garners Rabbis’ Support

We are past presidents and leaders of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the largest and oldest rabbinical organization in the world. We are ardent Zionists, deeply committed to a Jewish democratic State of Israel in secure and recognized borders. Some of us identify ourselves with J Street, others with AIPAC and others with neither. However, one should not doubt the firm commitment of each of us to the welfare of the Jewish state and Jewish people. In that respect, we are typical of the broad spectrum of pro-Israel involvements that characterize the Reform movement.

We enthusiastically support the choice of Rabbi Richard Jacobs to succeed Rabbi Eric Yoffie as president of the Union for Reform Judaism and are deeply dismayed at the unwarranted attacks that have been leveled against him. Like Rabbis Yoffie and Schindler before him, Rabbi Jacobs has made the welfare, security and democratic character of Israel a prime focus of his rabbinate. He is an ohev Yisrael (a lover of Israel) of the first order.

What we need today are Jewish leaders in Israel and North America who will not hesitate to struggle with the difficult questions of peacemaking and human rights, while firmly committed to the security of Israel. Rick Jacobs is such a leader. Rabbi Jacobs speaks his mind independently and with unswerving integrity.

Rabbi Jacobs has had an incredibly successful career as a congregational rabbi, national leader and innovator. At this challenging moment in Jewish history, we look forward to his transformational leadership. We fully support him and congratulate the leadership of the Union for Reform Judaism who selected him.

Rabbi Steven A. Fox, CCAR Chief Executive
Rabbi Jonathan Stein, CCAR President, 2011-2013
Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus, CCAR President, 2009-2011
Rabbi Peter Knobel, CCAR President, 2007-2009
Rabbi Harry Danzinger, CCAR, President, 2005-2007
Rabbi Janet Marder, CCAR President, 2003-2005
Rabbi Martin Weiner, CCAR President, 2001-2003
Rabbi Charles A. Kroloff, CCAR President, 1999-2001
Rabbi Richard N. Levy, CCAR President, 1997-1999
Rabbi Simeon J. Maslin, CCAR President, 1995-1997
Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman, CCAR President, 1993-1995
Rabbi Walter Jacob, CCAR President, 1991-1993
Rabbi Samuel E. Karff, CCAR President, 1989-1991
Rabbi Herman E. Schaalman, CCAR President, 1981-1983
Rabbi Donald Berlin, Past Chair, CCAR/URJ/HUC Joint Commission on Rabbinical Placement
Rabbi Deborah Prinz, CCAR Director of Program and Member Services
Rabbi Hara Person, CCAR Publisher and Director of Press
Rabbi Lennard R. Thal, CCAR Interim Director of Rabbinic Placement

How fortunate we are to have rabbis like Kelman, Marmur and Ellenson speaking out on situations such as the proper and respectable appointment of Rabbi Richard Jacobs as president-designate of the Union for Reform Judaism. Their obligation is to speak out when injustice occurs, and they have clearly spoken on behalf of lack of civility and irresponsibility on the part of certain critics.

The meaning of passionate Zionism is not the need to give up one’s moral thinking and action. Blind loyalty is unhealthy in any relationship, and loyalty and love for Israel does not require that one relinquish his or her moral compass. Rabbi Jacobs’ dedication is expressed through his public support of J Street; his ability and skills to perform well in this job are not based on his political choices. 

The appointment of Rabbi Jacobs should be applauded and the strength of the HUC-JIR rabbis proclaiming their support for him should be a paradigm for young rabbis as to their future commitments.

Sally Shafton
Manhattan Beach

Kudos for Cover, Content

I very much appreciated two special elements in the May 6 issue focusing on the topic of “Why Israel Matters”:

1. The well-written, reflective and broad piece by Stuart Schoffman, who knows how to talk to Americans about Israel;

2. The original art on the cover by Durar Bacri, along with the helpful bio.

Along with other readers, I imagine, I’d love to find Schoffman appearing more often in The Journal and also to encounter future covers using original art.

Rabbi Susan Laemmle
Los Angeles

The People vs. Kastner

Susan Freudenheim’s report on “The People vs. Kastner” performed on Yom HaShoah at Temple Israel of Hollywood is excellent (“Rudolph Kastner: Traitor or Savior?” May 6). Nevertheless, there are some misunderstandings.

Kasztner was not “shipped to the camps.” He traveled with Kurt Becher up to the very end of the war through Germany, Austria and Bohemia (then parts of Germany) visiting concentration camps and remnants of Jewish communities (in Vienna, Slovakia, etc.), trying to improve the lot of detainees. They contributed to two transports (in addition to the one to Bergen-Belsen and then Switzerland) of Jews from camps to Sweden and another to Switzerland. The lot of detained and hiding Jews in Vienna and Bratislava was improved. Kasztner achieved this, with the support of Kurt Becher and later, indirectly, of Himmler.

After the occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944, Himmler’s representatives in Hungary were: Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher. Eichmann organized the transport of Jews to Auschwitz with a small staff. Most of the job was done, per his instructions, by Hungarian authorities, mainly the Gendarmerie, whose actions were so savage that the Germans occasionally interfered because torture of individuals was not part of the routine deportation process. Kurt Becher was the other member of Himmler’s team. Both were SS officers with rank “Obersturmbannfuehrer” (lieutenant-colonel). Later, Becher was promoted to “Standartenfuehrer” (full colonel); Eichmann was not promoted, indicative of Himmler’s change of direction. Becher’s job was not to deport Jews but to extract money and major properties from the richest Jews in Hungary for the benefit of the SS. Thus Becher extorted from the Baron Weiss family (Hungary’s richest industrial clan, creators/owners of a vast industrial empire) their properties to the SS. In exchange, the Baron Weiss family was flown to Lisbon: None saw Auschwitz. In other words: Eichmann was the chief murderer, Becher the chief extortioner. Another difference: Eichmann hated Jews and tried to exterminate all of us. Becher, also a Nazi (member of the “Totenkopfverbaende” the SS units trained to mass murder Jews in the USSR in 1941), a cool opportunist. By mid-/late 1944 he knew that Germany was losing the war: He decided to work with and protect Kasztner. Toward the end of 1944, Himmler himself became convinced that Germany was losing … he protected Becher and, in October 1944, stopped mass killing Jews. His aim: separate peace with the Western Powers. This was against Hitler’s wishes. Himmler’s closest associates, Mueller and Kaltenbrunner, continued to agitate for killing Jews.

Kasztner, with Becher’s aid, saved more than just 1,684 members of the “Kasztner transport.” He succeeded in changing the deportation of about 18,000 Jews (from Debrecen and Szeged, big cities in Hungary) to Strasshof, Austria, instead of Auschwitz. Via Becher and Himmler, he contributed to freeing 1,200 Jews from Theresienstadt to Switzerland (the “Musy transport”) and of over 1,000 to Sweden. He, via Becher, improved the lot of the few Jews left in Vienna and Bratislava, etc. Nobody knows the number of Jews saved by Kasztner. An estimate of 25,000 cannot be far from the truth.

Surprisingly, only few authors quote his “Report of the Jewish Rescue Committee of Budapest” (“Der Bericht des Juedischen Rettungkommittees aus Budapest”), typewritten in 1946 (my copy of the original from Yale University). The report includes a letter by R. D. McClelland, representative of the U.S. War Refugee Board, praising Kasztner’s actions. Nor is R.L. Braham’s monumental “The Politics of Genocide” quoted widely in connection with Kasztner.

My father, Leo Stern was a director (one of seven) of the Orthodox community of Budapest (not a rabbi!) in charge of economic affairs and, from 1941, for support of refugees who came in large numbers from Yugoslavia, Slovakia, Poland, USSR and even Romania. He worked closely with Kasztner, who had similar responsibility in the Zionist Organization of Hungary. They became friends: Kasztner visited our home frequently. A young man (19 years old in 1944), I admired him greatly. He was, in several instances, very kind to me.

The performance at Temple Israel of Hollywood was outstanding. I decided with great apprehension to attend because I am used to so many distorted reports about Kasztner. Until the advent of the documentary film “Killing Kasztner” by Gaylen Ross, most representations of Kasztner were far from the truth. Therefore, I was prepared to make some scathing comments about the play but promised my wife, Edith, to do this in a civilized manner. Great was my surprise to see such excellent acting and set-up. Rabbi Rosove, Cantor Maseng and his son, and the actors (particularly Carmen Trutanich, Bert Deixler and Alan Rosenberg) deserve compliments for a memorable performance.

The above is long. Nevertheless, I hope that it can be published.

Arthur P. Stern
Beverly Hills

Point / Counterpoint

Anyone notice the big difference between the two articles on the Rabbi Jacobs ad? The defense cited facts (“I support … J Street”; opposing stronger sanctions against Iran; supporting Goldstone’s Gaza report; opposing U.S. veto of Security Council resolution condemning Israel; took part in demonstrations by Sheik Jarrah Solidarity Movement; screaming at Jewish family; evicted because they refused to pay rent to Jewish landlord).

But the condemnation of the ad by three rabbis was all name-calling (distorted caricature; plague of separation; appeal to the specter; right-leaning; wrapped themselves in the flag of Zionist purity; self-appointed purists; self-righteous certainty; disregard for nuance; allergy to reason; witch-hunt; demagoguery) and irrelevancies and generalizations (cares deeply; strong relationships; bilateral encounters; studies in Israel; owns property in Jerusalem; spends every summer; passionate Zionist; part of the solution; immense charm; mature; wise; mensch; striving for balance; leadership). They didn’t try to rebut the specific accusations made in the ad.

Ergo: The accusations are justified.

Louis Richter
Reseda

After Bin Laden

It is now several days after we killed Osama bin Laden and barely one word, nada, about the response in the Arab/Muslim “street” and of the government of those “streets.”

This is so obviously completely contrary to past journalistic practices; it should lead one to wonder.

Leon Perlsweig

CORRECTION

The article “Rhea Kohan: No One Spits in Her Kids’ Kasha” (May 6), incorrectly described Buz Kohan’s profession. He is a writer for television variety shows and specials.

Letters to the Editor: Why Israel matters, Rudolph Kastner, Rabbi Jacobs, Osama bin Laden Read More »

Right Goal—Wrong Strategy

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The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) held a ” title=”hate crime report” target=”_blank”>hate crime report, for 2009, revealed that, nationally, there were 1,303 religiously based hate crimes, of which 107 were directed against Muslims. Clearly a matter of concern, but, put in context — there were 931 hate crimes directed against Jews (a numerically comparable cohort nationally) that year — hardly a reason for a feeling of “psychological alienation.” Locally, the ” title=”Pew poll” target=”_blank”>Pew poll found that Americans were concerned about domestic Islamic extremism (the poll was conducted in the wake of the deadly Fort Hood Army base murders) — 79 percent of the public was “very or somewhat concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the United States.” If four-fifths of the public is troubled by the rise of American-based Islamic extremism, and there are headline-making incidents to support that concern, one doesn’t have to be George Gallup to conclude that, like it or not, it will impact attitudes toward Islam and, likely, American Muslims.

Nothing justifies extrapolating from individuals to the larger group in terms of stereotyping and bigotry, but the events of the past decade have clearly put Americans’ tolerance to the test and attitudinal shifts — if not actions — can be the result; the death of bin Laden is but one step in the right direction. Fewer American Muslims heeding the siren call of religious martyrdom would help as well.

MPAC’s president, Salam Al-Marayati, in a post-bin Laden statement buttressed his hopeful message of a “new era” dawning with an analysis that concluded that bin Laden was essentially an outlier in the Muslim world: “His acts of senseless terror have been met with moral outrage by Muslims worldwide at every turn in the past decade.” The logic presumably being that if the outlier is gone, saner heads will prevail in the Muslim world.

If only that were true. The sad reality is that bin Laden had, and likely still has, a sympathetic audience for his fanaticism in large swaths of the Muslim world.

A largely ignored Right Goal—Wrong Strategy Read More »