Volume 26, Number 14
Volume 26, Number 14 Read More »
May 31, 2011
Diplomat’s removal not due to threats, State Dept. says
The U.S. State Department denied that the removal of one of its diplomats from Bahrain was due to threats.
Ludovic Hood, a human rights officer, left Bahrain on May 26 following two months of threats, including Internet photos of Hood’s wife and information on where he and his family lived, McClatchy Newspapers reported Tuesday.
An online post referred to Hood as “a person of Jewish origin” and another referenced his “Jewish wife.” Hood is not believed to be Jewish, although his wife is, according to McClatchy.
Despite reports, Harry Edwards, a press officer at the State Department, said Hood’s departure and return to Washington had been in the works for several months and was not due to the threats.
“Ludovic Hood’s departure from Bahrain was routine,” Edwards said. “He was not recalled to Washington, his posting was approved here more than six months ago as part of a normal assignment.”
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Is Haim Saban dumping Obama or playing political hardball?
It’s no secret that there are powerful forces within the American Jewish community who feel deep distrust and doubt when it comes to President Obama’s relationship to Israel. Whether Haim Saban, the billionaire media mogul and largest individual donor to the Democratic Party counts himself in that camp is a worthy question.
What is not worthy is shoddy reporting that projects false conclusions.
Late last week, in a report on an interview Saban gave to CNBC about the Obama-Netanyahu summit, a Commentary Magazine headline declared that a “key Jewish donor breaks with Obama.”
“One of the most important Democratic donors in the past two decades, whose generous contributions helped pay for the DNC headquarters in Washington, D.C., has indicated that he will not contribute to President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, because of the administration’s stance on Israel,” reporter Alana Goodman wrote.
This of course, is a very significant statement, given that it concerns a major political donor known for his single-issue concern – Israel—but the problem is, it isn’t true.
When asked by a CNBC anchor if he was satisfied with Obama’s clarification about a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, what Saban actually said was: “[On that point] we’re all good; as an Israeli-American we’re all good.”
Saban’s criticism, which he made of both Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was that they need to address their differences in private, not at the U.N., not in front of the cameras. Understandably, Saban would like to see the relationship afforded the dignity of confidence between friends.
“The Prime Minister should not be speaking as he has to my President in the oval office,” Saban told CNBC. “That is not an acceptable behavior. Nor is, frankly, President Obama’s handling of every controversy in public, as he has done.”
Even though, under the Obama administration, U.S. military aid to Israel is at its highest in Israel’s history, there remains ambivalence and skepticism regarding Obama’s diplomacy there. Saban seems to be satisfied with Obama’s official policy towards Israel but not with his personal affinity for the Jewish state.
“I’m very perplexed as to why the president, who’s been to Cairo, to Saudi Arabia, to Turkey, has not made a stop in Israel and spoken to the Israeli people,” he said. Saban also suggested that with a direct address to the Israelis, Obama could assuage their concerns about brokering a Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
That’s when the anchor asked Saban if he would contribute to Obama’s re-election campaign. Saban replied obliquely; saying that Obama didn’t really need his financial support: “He has raised so much money and will raise so much through the internet, more than anybody,” Saban said, but made it clear that if he were solicited, he would contribute to Obama’s campaign. Saban also said he would remain a “staunch” supporter of the Democratic Party and indicated his money would be better spent educating and influencing members of congress above and beyond the executive cabinet (the idea that U.S. congressional support for Israel is most vital to Israel’s security and prosperity is also AIPAC’s operating principle).
So what’s with the sensational headline that suggests Saban is withdrawing his full political support from Obama?
At best, it’s a shallow misunderstanding; at worst, it’s irresponsible journalism. Haim Saban is a well-worn political influencer and I can only assume, extremely careful and calculated about the statements he makes to the press. What he’s doing here is playing a political game, sending a message to the President that says, ‘Well, maybe I won’t contribute to your re-election campaign unless…’
His goal is clear: he wants the President to visit Israel and talk to Israelis. He wants the President not simply to support Israel but to love, to treat it as more than a strategic interest, but as an ally, a friend.
This is very smart posturing because it sets up the opportunity for a quid-pro-quo. When it comes time for Obama’s re-election campaign and Saban is next on the call list, rather than a guarantee of support, Obama will have to make good on Saban’s request.
Read my profile of Haim Saban here.
Watch the CNBC interview:
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Netanyahu: ‘Next year in a more built up Jerusalem’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his uncompromising stance on a united Jerusalem Tuesday night, saying he plans to authorize more building in the capital, in a speech at Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
The prime minister spoke on the eve of Jerusalem Day that commemorates Israel’s liberation of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War.
Mercaz Harav, an orthodox Yeshiva located in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem was the site of a terror attack in 2008 in which a Palestinian gunman killed eight students.
Read more at Haaretz.com.
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Braun Looking Like an All Star Starter
“>HERE. The Mets’ Ike Davis is not in the top 5 for First basemen which is loaded with Albert Pujols, Joey Votto, and Prince Fielder. We hope to have updates on the AL soon which we hope will include Ian Kinsler, Kevin Youkilis, and possibly Danny Valencia and/or Sam Fuld.
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L.A. nightlife king Sam Nazarian now selling hot dogs
Apparently, hotels, nightclubs and restaurants are not fashionable enough to undergird developer Sam Nazarian’s SBE lifestyle brand, so he’s adding a new, unlikely element: hot dogs.
That’s right—among luxury linens, rooftop swimming pools and St.Tropez-style nightclubs, Nazarian is now purveyor of Papaya King hot dog carts. The 35-year-old developer has teamed with the New York-based company to launch a series of hot dog stands throughout Los Angeles, the first of which opened in the heart of Hollywood last week. No word yet on whether the Manhattan transplant will taste any good in L.A. and with long lines round the clock at the Hollywood institution Pink’s, Nazarian has a tough act to follow. According to at least one customer surveyed by the New York Times, Papaya’s sausages are just “average.”
From the New York Times:
This symbol of New York landed last week in the heart of Hollywood, with a cluster of balloons and a cheeky billboard campaign that includes an off-color joke about a casting couch. (Another Papaya billboard reads: “We’re 100 percent natural. But we think we’ll fit in L.A. just fine.”)
Not only is the first time in its 80-year history that Papaya King has looked west of the Hudson, it has also chosen as its first target a city that might be as crazy and competitive about food — and hot dogs — as New York. Indeed, even at 1:10 a.m. on Monday, a long line of people was spotted at Pink’s Hot Dogs on La Brea Avenue, waiting patiently for one of this city’s more celebrated hot dogs.
…
Papaya King teamed up with a restaurant and luxury developer, SBE, to open the shop here and, in the year to come, in other locations across the West. Sam Nazarian, the founder of the company, said he was not worried about the homegrown competition, saying the Papaya dog — not to mention the signature Papaya Drink, made with fresh papaya juice — would more than hold its own with the Western audience.
“Pink’s is a fast-food stand — it has everything and anything,” he said. “For us, it’s literally all about the hot dog.” Mr. Nazarian said he liked and respected Pink’s, but “L.A., I think, is looking for something new.”
Read my 2009 profile of Sam Nazarian here
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Meeting Tim Burton: From My House to His Art Show
At the opening of “Tim Burton,” the ghoulishly charming filmmaker’s retrospective at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday, the wild-haired auteur held court at the Resnick Pavilion, where more than 700 pieces of his movie and personal artwork will be on display through Halloween. My husband, Ron Magid, and I were eager to attend—not only for the chance to meet this master of the macabre but also because one of our own pieces is on display. It’s a scarecrow head from Burton’s 2001 remake of “Planet of the Apes,” a three-foot-tall, skeletal visage that signals to Mark Wahlberg (in the film) he is entering forbidden yet sacred territory.
Ron, a collector and purveyor or high-end movie memorabilia, essentially saved the head from the garbage (it hadn’t sold at auction and its owner didn’t want to shlep down to the company’s warehouse to pick it up), but the exhibition’s originating curators thought it was vintage Burton when they visited our home while preparing the show. “The minute I saw that scarecrow head I knew it was going to be in the exhibition,” Ron Magliozzi, one of the show’s organizing curators, told me when I interviewed him for my story on the retrospective—which will grace the cover of The Journal’s summer preview on June 3.
Those perusing the exhibition—and our scarecrow head—included Burton’s favorite film composer, Danny Elfman, who wrote the score for “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” among other Burton films such as “The Corpse Bride” (which, as I outlined in this 2005 story, was inspired by a 16th-century Jewish folk tale). Elfman also penned music to accompany the exhibition. Also on hand was Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction, Winona Ryder, who starred with Depp in “Edward Scissorhands” and was also in “Beetlejuice;” Crispin Glover and Martin Landau (who won an Oscar for portraying Bela Lugosi in “Ed Wood”).
Ron and I met the affable Magliozzi once more at the opening, along with organizing curators Jenny He and Rajendra Roy—and Burton himself. He was far sunnier than one might expect of cinema’s reigning gothic director: Ron told Burton how much he had admired the scene from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” in which the children finally enter Willy Wonka’s lair; as it turns out, that very sequence is the one that inspired Magliozzi to create the exhibition. “I was watching ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ in the theater and there was just this magical moment when Willy Wonka opens the door, bringing the children into the chocolate factory for the first time,” Magliozzi said. “Somehow I thought: We should be doing an exhibition of Tim Burton.”
Ron’s reaction to the scene was perhaps even more dramatic—he actually teared up —and Burton seemed genuinely touched by that revelation, even putting his hand to his chest in response. He thanked Ron for rescuing the scarecrow head from the garbage. And then he was off to the performance by Jane’s Addiction in front of the pavilion, where a real topiary deer from “Edward Scissorhands” stood amidst other Burtonalia.
The show will be on display through October 31.
Check out my full story on the exhibition:
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‘LUV’ Endures
Murray Schisgal’s comedy “LUV” is, as the alert reader might suspect, about love, even passionate love, but don’t expect any moon in June or till death do us part nonsense.
Actually, “LUV” works best as an anti-love play, and, after seeing it, any starry-eyed boy or girl might opt for a celibate life of devotion, if only their parents would let them.
Before seeing the show at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, a ticketholder would be well advised to check out the book at a library (for younger folks unfamiliar with such obsolete terms, look it up on Google) and read the preface by Walter Kerr, then the theater critic for the late New York Herald Tribune.
“LUV” premiered on Broadway in 1964, a time when the avant-garde, according to Kerr, wallowed in “self dramatization, in romantic self-pity. … See how drained I am, how devastated, the squirming near-cadaver says, proud of his position as the Man Who Has Been Most Badly Treated.
“Where is the spotlight that will display me as victim?” Kerr continues. “The universe may be silent, but I will not be. Hear my moan. Isn’t it something, really something, how I am ravaged?”
By taking this very sentiment to its absurd extreme, Schisgal has written a play whose puncturing of such pretensions may not feel as fresh as 50 years ago, but which retains considerable wit and humor.
The play’s three characters, Harry Berlin, Milt Manville and Ellen, the object of both men’s love and loathing, are quite obviously Jewish New Yorkers, à la Neil Simon, although the ethnicity and locale are never mentioned.
Harry is a neurotic nebbish, and the two others are not far behind, though to go further into their symptoms and the ingenious plotline would spoil the fun.
However, they share a common leitmotif — Nobody knows the suffering I have borne — and they compete fiercely for the title of the most put-upon human being in Gotham. For example:
The two men reminisce about their respective childhoods.
Milt: What did you used to get for breakfast?
Harry: A glass filled with two-thirds water and one-third milk.
Milt: Coffee grounds, that’s what I got.
Harry: With sugar?
Milt: Not on your life. I ate it straight, like oatmeal.
The original Broadway production of “LUV” was directed by Mike Nichols and must have been a howl with actors the likes of Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson.
However, the current revival, presented in collaboration with the West Coast Jewish Theatre and directed by Howard Teichman, gives the audience its money’s worth.
Particularly nimble as Harry, mentally and physically, is Michael Goldstrom, who bears a notable resemblance to a young Charlie Chaplin, especially when outfitted with a cane.
Betsy Zajko as Ellen bemoans the misfortune of being smarter than any man around, not a major feat, and Rob Roy Cesar as Milt rounds out the ménage.
The clever stage design by Jeff G. Rack includes a bridge from which Harry tries to commit suicide at regular intervals, and a lamppost from which he tries to hang himself, also unsuccessfully.
“LUV” plays Wednesdays through Sundays until June 26 at the Reuben Cardova Theatre on the Beverly Hills High School campus. For information and reservations, go to www.theatre40.org, or call (310) 364-0535.
“Nazi Hunter-Simon Wiesenthal” runs Sunday through Tuesday evenings. For more information, call (310) 364-3606.
Dodgers continue support for Maccabiah games
The Los Angeles Dodgers will again underwrite the baseball tournament at the Maccabiah games in Israel, according to an announcement from the Maccabiah Organizing Committee.
Frank McCourt, though occupied with ownership of the team and a contentious divorce, said, “Our sponsorship hugely enhanced the baseball experience at the 18th Maccabiah Games in 2009, and the Dodgers are proud to continue our close association with the Jewish Olympics.
“We are delighted to participate in spreading the baseball message internationally and eagerly look forward with all Jewish and Israeli fans to seeing great ball at the 2013 Maccabiah.”
On the Israeli side, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also put aside a few other concerns and pledged that his government will provide substantial support for the next Maccabiah, scheduled for July 16-30, 2013.
On the local end, a committee of 36 well-heeled Angelenos is again swinging into action, after raising $1.8 million for the 2009 Maccabiah. The money went mainly to subsidize the participation of athletes from smaller Jewish communities around the world.
Steve Soboroff, who organized the Los Angeles efforts, said that, as previously, local supporters have pledged $50,000 each to serve as “consultants” for the 2013 event.
In addition, former Mayor Richard Riordan will again sponsor the Maccabiah chess competition and the Jewish Life Television network will broadcast highlights of the games.
In a related development, the main venue for the next Maccabiah may be Jerusalem’s expanded Teddy Kollek stadium, rather than the traditional Ramat Gan facility near Tel Aviv.
Some 8,000 athletes, among them junior and senior competitors, participated in the 2009 Maccabiah, setting a new attendance record, Maccabiah executive director Eyal Tiberger said during a recent visit to Los Angeles.
They came from 52 countries, and organizers hope to add Cuba, Morocco, Burma and Singapore to the 2013 list.
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Toledo’s only day school closing
The only Jewish day school in Toledo, Ohio, is closing at the end of the school year due to a lack of enrollment.
The David S. Stone Hebrew Academy will shut down when the school year ends next week, the Toledo Blade reported.
The school, serving grades K-5, dropped from an enrollment of more than 100 students several years ago to 22 this year. It was founded in 1968 and served all Jewish denominations.
The United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo conducted a two-year study to explore alternatives that would allow the school to remain open. Among the options the committee studied was sharing the school with another faith group by holding secular classes together and religious classes separately, the Blade reported.
“It wasn’t a decision reached lightly or quickly,” Kirk Wisemayer, the UJC’s chief executive officer, told the newspaper.
The Jewish population in the Toledo area has declined from approximately 7,500 in the early 1970s to fewer than 4,000 today, according to the newspaper.
Wisemayer said there are more than enough children to populate the Jewish day school in the Toledo area.
“You have to ask yourself the question, ‘Does the community really support the Jewish day school if they’re not sending their children to it?” he was quoted as saying by the Blad. “And if they’re not supporting it, should we, as financial stewards, be funding something they don’t support?’ That was the primary reason for the closure of the school.”
Neither the school nor the UJC have noted the closure on its website.
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