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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

June 14, 2011

Palestinians to unveil new Hamas-Fatah unity government next week

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Palestinians said on Tuesday they were ready to form a unity government and expected to unveil its new cabinet at a meeting between President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Cairo next week.

Leaders from the two factions met for several hours in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss forming the new government agreed under a reconciliation deal reached in April.

“The prime minister’s name and that of the ministers will be announced before the people on Tuesday (next week),” Hamas’s deputy politburo head Mousa Abu Marzook, told Reuters in an interview.

Earlier on Monday, a Palestinian negotiator said that talks between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo had broken off until next week without an agreement over a new Palestinian prime minister.

Palestinians to unveil new Hamas-Fatah unity government next week Read More »

The day you become redundant

Leave a Comment / Family /

Parenthood is ultimately about becoming redundant in your child’s life. It’s difficult to comprehend as you hold your newborn baby in your arms, but if you do your job as a parent correctly, your services will ultimately no longer be necessary.

The art and the joy of parenthood is how to raise a self-reliant child who grows to become a self-reliant adult. How do we pass on to our children the knowledge, skills, values and beliefs they will need so that the teaching will remain with them when we are no longer ever-present?

Toward this end, Jewish fathers have particular obligations. The Talmud instructs that a father is obligated to provide his son (child) with Torah, a trade and, some say, to teach him how to swim (Kiddushin 29:A). This formula is interesting, because when the Talmud makes a list, it is meant to be all-inclusive; if something else was needed, it would have been on the list. Thus, our tradition instructs that a father has three sacred obligations in raising a child.

Torah is perhaps the easiest to explain, even if it may seem the most remote to many a Jewish dad. The mindset of the rabbis of the Talmud was focused on Jewish education and the importance of Torah within that framework. Torah, in their view, was not merely knowledge and education, and it was much more than holidays, rituals and stories. Torah serves as the cornerstone of Jewish life — it is morals, ethics and values. Its focus is how to be a good person and, particularly, how to be a responsible Jew. This responsibility is not taken lightly at all; if a Jewish father could not teach his son, it was his responsibility to find his son a teacher to perform the task. What Torah will you teach your child, and how will you teach it?

Teach your child a trade? This may seem far more applicable to our lives today. The ability to support oneself, make a living, plan for the future and support your community has often been stressed in Jewish fathering. But this commandment is about more than finding a good job — it is about legacy and tradition, about knowing the value of things earned and their value in years to come. To teach a child a trade in our modern 24/7, 60-hour workweek world is to teach your child not only to work, but how to work. It is to model the importance of the work/life/family balance. The question then is not what will they do when they grow up, but rather how will they do it? What can you teach from your lifetime of working so they remember that we work in order to live, not live in order to work?

And last is swimming. This concept is perhaps the most important of all, because at its core swimming is about survival. One learns how to swim so he or she will not drown; how fitting that the rabbis entrust this small and somewhat minor task to the Jewish father. To swim, or survive, so to speak, means to have courage and perseverance to navigate the rough waters that lie ahead in life. To swim is to let go of the side of the pool and wade purposefully into the unknown and come out safely on the other side. How will you teach your child courage and perseverance?

In all the roles a Jewish father plays, there is an essential element that is constant: time. How can a father properly introduce his child to Torah, a trade, teach courage and perseverance if he is not around? All of the above seems daunting in the abstract, but when your life is the lesson, the teaching happens for good or for ill whether you are present or not. So the most important task commanded to a Jewish father is: Be present!

Even the simplest task, when done with child in tow, can reap invaluable experience. Leading by example, being a trainer for life, is not easily done in a world of busy schedules, but it can be done. The interaction between father and child during those times provides a lesson in living. It is during these moments when Torah can be passed along. It is also during these moments when a child can learn what it means to be a father and provider, who his/her father is and what priorities have been set in life. It is in all of these moments, as your child watches you live Torah and ply your trade, that they learn from your courage and perseverance, especially in the face of adversity.

If you can do these things, there will come a moment when your child will turn to you and say, “I got it, Dad,” and you will know that he/she truly does. At that time, maybe say the “Shehecheyanu,” the blessing for having survived and been given strength to bear witness to a joyous occasion — in this context being told you’re not needed truly is a time for blessing. Oh, and one more thing, you might cry (yes, men do cry). But know this: Those tears will be bittersweet, the day you become redundant.

Dan Moskovitz is a rabbi at Temple Judea (templejudea.com), a Reform congregation in Tarzana. Visit his blog at The day you become redundant Read More »

Getting to know my dad, again

Leave a Comment / Family /

My 93-year-old father emerged as a different person when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s five years ago. He became independent, assertive, interested and engaging. When my mother died in October, he even became a bit spiritual. He’s certainly not the exhausted father with whom I grew up, who often didn’t know what to say to me. As a teenager and young adult, I never thought we would have much of a relationship. But now, as I approach 60 and he nears 94, the engagement between us has blossomed, as it has with my brother and all our children. The relationship he now has with my wife has become his most significant. She handles his money.

At 93, my father takes almost no medication. He doesn’t use a cane or a walker. And his mind rarely skips a beat. Until he was 88, my mother made just about every decision for them. All the family’s relationships with him were tracked through her. I realize now we had almost no idea who he really was.

Last year, when the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks miniseries about the World War II battles in the Pacific was being shown on TV, my father came forward with stories we had never heard. During the segment on Guadalcanal, he excitedly said to us, “That’s my regiment. Boy, they got that perfect. That’s exactly what it was like.” Then he recalled his fears hearing the Japanese soldiers talking above his head while he was hiding in a fox hole, seeing his friends’ body parts being blown off and suffering more than 10 bouts of malaria. When the segment aired about the regiment being taken on furlough to Australia, he told us about the women greeting the soldiers at the boat and their nights out on the town after unrelenting months in the jungle.

When I watched the young soldiers each week, I tried to see my father as one of them, and through it I saw a whole different person. It is painful to accept that his entire generation is almost gone, including my father’s four siblings, all his friends and his unit. He used to see his Army buddies at reunions, but that ended about seven years ago. He tells me often, “Everybody is dead.”

One of the most difficult realizations is that there is no one alive who was a witness to his life before my generation. He no longer has anyone to gibe with, sharing the particular Yiddish expressions that he, his brothers, sisters and cousins grew up with, contorting into their own vernacular, and mimicking specific uncles’ intonations that came from the Lithuanian shtetl. “Ahh, ich hawb a hejhek — I could give a sh__” and “Zhesh tu? —Take a look at that … you get it?”

True to his generation of Chicago soldiers, one of his favorite foods is still fried shrimp. I sometimes take him to Malibu Seafood, where I order salmon and he loads up on all the treif I stopped eating years ago. Once he said to me, “I’m going to take the leftovers back to the place, so they can heat them up in the microwave.” The place is the Jewish Home in Reseda. 

I said to him, “Dad, they’re not going to heat up shrimp in a microwave at the Jewish Home.” 

“Sure they will, if I ask them to.”

“No, Dad, they won’t.” And I threw the bag away.

Food has become one of his obsessions. He misses my mother’s cooking terribly. Recently, my son opened a restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard. The style is shared, small plates, where many dishes make up a night’s experience. After my father’s first visit, he called the next day: “Listen, don’t they serve a full meal at Micah’s restaurant? How’s he going to make any money?” And then he added, “I sure wish your mother had been alive to see this.” On his next visit, Micah had put on his contemporary Middle Eastern menu an appetizer of “challah and Gramma’s chopped liver.” My father lit up with a huge smile … and ate it all.

He now often asks me about my work. I travel for business. Each time I tell him that I am leaving, he begins to rant and rave: “Again, you’re going? Jesus … how many times can you get on a plane? You need to stay home once in a while.” I realize he misses me. It’s a strange feeling. When I was growing up, I think I could have disappeared for months and he would have never noticed.

Recently I began a blog, called 60DaysTil60, about the 60 days leading up to my 60th birthday. One of the posts was about my mother. Somehow, someone with a computer at the Jewish Home must have been forwarded what I wrote, and they mentioned it to my father. He called and asked where it was published. I attempted to explain a blog to him. That opened up a whole conversation about technology, the Internet, Twitter and Facebook. In the end he said to me, “But if it’s not in a newspaper or a magazine, how can someone read it?” Try explaining that to a person turning 94.

The next time I saw him, he said something that really shook me. I told him I had a dream about my mother and that she was shuffling business cards when she said to me, “Gary, I just can’t seem to reach anybody.”

My father, always very rational, responded, “She’s not really gone.”

I took a deep breath. “Tell me.” 

“The other night, I was lying here on the bed. I heard her call out to me, ‘Herbie?’ It was just the way she always did. She was in this room.”

I believe him.

My father doesn’t ever like to be the center of attention. When I told him I was asked to write this article, he responded, “About me? What’s there to say about me?” Everyone at the Jewish Home reads The Jewish Journal. As he said to me, “No one in this place ever stops talking. There are no secrets.”

I hope he comes out of his room.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I know you’re reading this.

Gary Wexler is turning 60 and blogs about his impending irrelevancy at 60DaysTil60.com. He can be reached at Gary@GaryWexler.com.

Getting to know my dad, again Read More »

A uniquely Jewish demographic trait

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

I’d like to begin this Demographic Duo blog in the Jewish tradition of a Torah learning.

We Jews measure a lot, and we also have a uniquely Jewish way of measuring.  We measure time, populations, our space and geography.  After Egypt, God gave us a calendar, then the Torah and then a census was commanded . After enumerating themselves, God instructs the tribes to take up positions around the Tabernacle, the first thing that one saw leaving home and the first thing one looked for on returning home, kind of biblical GPS. So, time and a census preceded the assembly in physical and spiritual space around the Torah.

Historically non-Jewish censuses were commanded by the central authorities who knocked on,  or knocked down the door, counted you, your household, your possessions and then might have taken a goodly share in taxes and left. This was pretty much the orientation since the Domesday book, which is the record of the great survey of much of England completed in 1086 for William the Conqueror, to the completed recent U.S. 2010 decennial census , without the taxation, though lots of redistricting and government funds are allocated on the basis of the US census results.

The Jewish biblical census was a bottom up self-enumeration, much like a group counting off, but rather than a shout out of numbers, it was done in a manner implemented by Moses by collecting a half-shekel from each person and then counting the money (Ex.30:11-12). As the bible relates : “And the silver of those of the community who were recorded came to 100 talents and 1,775 shekels by the sanctuary weight: a half-shekel a head, half a shekel by the sanctuary weight, for each one who was entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, 603,550 men” (Numbers, verses 25-26) 

The biblical obligation was that each male 20 year old participant, both rich and poor, had to pay the same. The rich could not pay for the poor, and each poor head of household had to earn, receive or borrow a half shekel before count could continue.  This put great pressure on the haves to make sure and enable the have-nots to be counted so the census could proceed.  Only after the census was completed were the Israelites be able to gather around the Tabernacle and proceed with the trek through the Sinai desert.  Without the census, the story would have ended there around Mt. Sinai, and so would have Jewish continuity. To this day, hundreds of thousands of Jewish mini self-censuses take place and without a quorum, a minyan, Jewish group prayer doesn’t happen.

Organized American Jewish communities have maintained this self-enumerating tradition in the form of Jewish population studies locally and nationally.  Without a Jewish population study an organized Jewish community just isn’t “organized” and may be flying blind, not knowing who and where the members of its Jewish community and how its resources can be allocated plan-fully and equitably.  A local Jewish population study often the only way Jewish leadership has a sense of whom they are supposed to be serving, leading and representing. 

Unfortunately, many Jewish federations haven’t found the wherewithal and will to undertake a timely Jewish population study.  Much has changed in Los Angeles since the last Jewish population study was fielded in 1997, 14 years ago. The 2000-1 National Jewish Population Survey also isn’t current and contains information that is twelve years old.

For some Jews who might happen to be surveyed, a local Jewish population study is often the first time they personally have any direct contact with any part of the organized Jewish community. As in biblical times, the local Jewish population study is an opportunity to be counted and add to the Jewish communal tapestry that started at Mt. Sinai where on the first Shavuot its said that all Jews, past and present were at Sinai.

Pini Herman serves as President of the Movable Minyan a lay-lead independent congregation in the 3rd Street area.

A uniquely Jewish demographic trait Read More »

American Jewish Committee launches Latino-Jewish congressional caucus

Leave a Comment / Community, Politics /

The ongoing development of ties between the Latino and Jewish communities took a new turn this week with the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) establishment of a new Latino-Jewish Congressional Caucus. At press time, a group of mostly Latino and Jewish lawmakers were set to meet at an event in Washington, D.C., on June 14, in the hopes of furthering collaborative relationships.

“This is a natural growth of the development of contacts between Latinos and Jews throughout the decades, and particularly in the last few years,” said Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC’s Latino and Latin American Institute. “Why shouldn’t Congress reflect the continuing alliance between Latinos and Jews elsewhere?”

Despite the highly polarized atmosphere in Washington, the caucus hopes to be a bipartisan endeavor, with Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fla.) serving as co-chairs.

AJC’s Latino and Latin American Institute, which supported the establishment of the new caucus, has been working nationally, internationally and locally in Los Angeles to develop relationships between Latinos and Jews. The institute presented an award to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa last October for his work in building connections between the two communities.

Sixteen representatives — mostly, but not exclusively, Latino and Jewish — have signed on to the caucus so far, and a handful of others have expressed interest. Among the confirmed participants from the Los Angeles area are Democratic Reps. Joe Baca, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Brad Sherman. Aside from Ros-Lehtinen, only one other Republican, Rep. David Rivera of Florida, has joined the caucus so far. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the only Jewish Republican in Congress, was approached but declined to take part.

Siegel Vann said she hopes that comprehensive immigration reform and foreign policy will be areas for potential cooperation. “Hopefully, in the weeks to come, the co-chairs will be able to bring members together to come up with a plan of action and identify several issues where they can work together,” she said.

American Jewish Committee launches Latino-Jewish congressional caucus Read More »

Report: Jewish startup sector resilient

Leave a Comment / Community /

Although Jewish startup organizations may themselves be small, a new report presented at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles on June 6 says that the Jewish startup sector attracts nearly $200 million in funding every year and, as a whole, is strong and growing.

“The Jewish Innovation Economy,” a report published in April by Jumpstart, the Natan Fund and The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, is based on a 2010 survey of 660 new Jewish initiatives around the world.

More than half of the organizations have budgets of $100,000 or less. The survey discovered that founders of Jewish startups are well-educated individuals with strong Jewish backgrounds who are regularly involved in Jewish life. Most startup founders reported having worked in nonprofit organizations before founding their own. More than half of these startup founders also reported having participated in at least one program aimed at building Jewish knowledge and commitment among young people.

The audience of about 50 people at the Federation building included more than a few Jewish innovators, and they welcomed the report’s findings.

Jonathan Greenblatt, co-founder of Ethos Water, appeared on a panel with Rebecca Guber of the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists and Shannon Sarna of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation. Greenblatt, reacting to the report, said innovation could offer what the Jewish community needed, which was, in a word, “more.”

“We as Jews need more than sustainability,” Greenblatt said. “We need scale.”

Many of the organizations surveyed are focused on increasing Jewish engagement and commitment among younger Jews. “To be able to hear how they spoke about my age group was really interesting,” Celine Yousefzadeh, 17, the co-founder of an annual fashion show fundraiser at the Milken Community High School, said after the presentation. (Yousefzadeh graduated from Milken one day earlier.)

Despite the diversity among Jewish startup organizations, one questioner pointed out the dearth of social service organizations among the startups featured in the survey.

Shawn Landres, who cofounded Jumpstart with Joshua Avedon and edited the report with Avedon and Felicia Herman of the Natan Fund, explained that the perceived absence of social service-oriented Jewish startups could be attributed to three factors. First, Landres said, Jews already do social service work quite well and the impact of a new startup might be limited. Second, although the new generation of Jewish startups might not be focusing on social service provision in their hometowns, many individuals and organizations are doing important work in the developing world. And then there was the ever-important conversation about money.

“To run a good social service agency, you need a lot of money, and that’s not something most startups have,” Landres said.

Federation President Jay Sanderson, who moderated the panel, said it would be difficult for startups to compete with larger organizations — like the one he leads — when it comes to courting donors.

Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, director of JConnect and Jewlicious, welcomed the information contained in the report.

“It’s easy to take for granted what they’ve done here, and sometimes people bore of studies,” he said, “however without critical study and analysis of the issue, how are we to know what’s going on or make communal decisions?”

Report: Jewish startup sector resilient Read More »

Yossi Klein Halevi: Delegitimization Is anti-Semitism

Leave a Comment / Community /

Israeli journalist and author Yossi Klein Halevi, discussing “The Delegitimization of Israel” on June 6, denounced the boycott movement against Israel and said that delegitimization is the “next expression of classical anti-Semitism.”

He spoke at the 10th anniversary celebration of StandWithUs, a pro-Israel organization, held at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Approximately 180 people attended the event.

During his 45-minute lecture, Halevi, a contributing editor for the New Republic, highlighted the endurance of anti-Semitism.

“The durability of anti-Semitism to even survive Auschwitz is almost as remarkable as the Jews’ ability to survive Auschwitz,” Halevi said.

Addressing Israeli-Palestinian border disputes, Halevi said it is “fair game” to argue that Israel should return to the 1967 borders. Last month, during a speech on the United States’ Middle East policy, President Barack Obama said the U.S. supports Israel’s return to the 1967 borders with the Palestinians. But, he said, talk of “ ’48 borders” is “delegitimization.”

Reinforcing that Israel’s problems extend beyond the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, Halevi said that a war between Israel and Iran, and Iran-proxy Hezbollah, might be unavoidable.

Yossi Klein Halevi: Delegitimization Is anti-Semitism Read More »

Technion professor engineering a social conscience in developing countries

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After he tired of prospecting for gold in his native Canada, Mark Talesnick moved to Israel, where he did exploratory drilling for the proposed Mediterranean-Dead Sea (Med-Dead) Canal project and founded the national ice hockey team.

Obviously, the Technion engineering professor is a man of pioneering spirit and imagination, and he is now applying his talents to provide cheap energy in remote Nepal villages, using natural raw materials that profligate Westerners tend to flush down.

At the same time, Talesnick is teaching a new generation of engineers that a social conscience, linked to innovative change, is as vital to their profession as designing the world’s tallest building or longest bridge.

Before we get to the technical stuff, back to ice hockey, as unlikely a sport in the Middle East as camel racing in North Dakota.

After Talesnick, born 51 years ago in Toronto but raised in Kingston, Ontario (which claims to be the birthplace of the game), decided to make aliyah in 1982, he started recruiting for his dream team.

A few expatriate Canadians and Americans showed up, as well as some sabras who had never been on ice, but were good on roller skates.

In its first game, Israel faced Spain and was trounced 23-4.

But in the next two games, drawing on the spirit that infused the ancient Maccabees, the Israelis beat the Turks and then the Greeks.

“After we defeated Turkey, the local band played ‘Hatikvah.’ That was an emotional high,” Talesnick recalled during a recent visit to Los Angeles.

Following this triumph, Talesnick went on to earn master’s and doctoral degrees at the Technion and then joined the faculty of the civil and environmental engineering department.

In 2008, he established a chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

The organization was started in France in the 1980s, and in the United States in 2001 by professor Bernard Amadei of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Its mission is to improve the quality of life in impoverished communities and in developing countries through small-scale, low-technology projects.

EWB now has 300 chapters worldwide, including a professional chapter in Los Angeles and student chapters at UCLA, USC, Loyola Marymount and California State University, Los Angeles.

The Technion EWB team of some 25 Israeli and American students, of both genders, first looked to the Bedouin village of Kochle in the Negev, whose single generator provided a limited, erratic supply of energy.

One day, Talesnick heard from a villager whose brother was sick in a hospital and could not be released home unless his medications were refrigerated round the clock.

Talesnick passed the problem on to his students, who came up with a small cooler connected to a battery charged through solar panels.

A more complex challenge faced the team at Namsaling, a village of about 1,000 families near the border with India. Like other rural villages in land-locked Nepal, Namsaling had no gas or kerosene for cooking and heating, and so relied on wood from nearby old-growth forests.

The consequences were long-range deforestation and a high rate of respiratory diseases, especially among women, in the poorly ventilated kitchens and homes.

After considerable preparatory work in the lab and on the ground, the Technion team came up with a bio reactor, or biogas digester, constructed in an earth pit about 4.5 feet deep and 8 feet across, and topped by a concrete dome.

When a reactor is finished, animal and human waste and food compost is fed through an inlet into the digester compartment, where bacteria transform the waste into clean methane gas.

Bio reactors were already widespread in Nepal and India, but were built mostly by child labor and in a laborious and often dangerous two-month process.

The team designed an igloo-like aluminum framework, covered with 12 surfboard-shaped slices, which can be easily assembled, dismantled and reused. Initially, the slices were made of Styrofoam, which has now been replaced by locally grown bamboo, with the finished product resembling sushi mats. This method cut construction time to two weeks, while eliminating injuries.

Each reactor supplies a family with five hours of odor-free cooking gas a day; so far, 60 have been built.

Not counting travel expenses for the team members, the cost of building one reactor comes to $440. Private foundations and organizations contribute two-thirds of the amount and the villagers one-third, mainly through their labor and by housing and feeding the Technion team.

“It’s a win-win situation all around,” Talesnick said. “The villagers get gas for cooking and heating, and the residue is used as concentrated fertilizer for organic farming. Fewer trees will be cut down for fuel, and waste no longer pollutes the rivers, drastically cutting down on widespread diarrhea.”

Based on their hands-on experience, Talesnick and Amadei last summer conducted a program at the Technion on “Engineering for Developing Communities,” combining field and classroom work. A similar program is scheduled for this summer, from mid-July to mid-August.

“A major purpose of the program is to teach professional and future engineers that beyond technology they must understand the social, economic and health problems of non-Western societies,” Talesnick said.

He put special emphasis on grasping cultural differences, citing a project in the African country of Mauritania, where a well-intentioned engineering team installed pipes to carry water to individual homes.

Within a week, someone sabotaged the system by cutting the pipes. The culprits turned out to be the local women, who were used to gathering at the village’s water pump and missed their central social gathering place.

Talesnick noted that university engineering courses, even in developing countries, are designed to meet the needs of 10 percent of the world’s population living in technologically advanced countries.

“We need to turn our attention to the other 90 percent of the world,” he said. “At the Technion, I hope that in five years, 2 percent of all students, around 160, will be involved in our projects — not just engineers but educators, social scientists, health professionals and so on. That in itself would represent a paradigm shift in the education we give our students.”

For additional background information, go to www.ewbtechnion.wordpress.com. To watch a video of the reactor construction process, visit youtube.com/watch?v=FcczRnowRSc.

Technion professor engineering a social conscience in developing countries Read More »

My single peeps: Jenni A.

Leave a Comment / My Single Peeps, Singles /

Jenni gave me her CD after we met, so I decided to listen to it while I typed up her bio. It’s much better than I imagined. I’ll plug her site at the bottom of this so you can check it out. 

“Call me Menorah Jones,” she says when we meet. “At least put it in quotes when you write the article.” It’s a corny twist on Norah Jones, whose musical style she most closely resembles. “I’m considered a songstress because of the style I do. Pop music with a jazz undercurrent.” She travels a lot and has played in 14 countries so far. She’s very driven. “Even when I sucked, I booked gigs all over the world and played.” I ask her why every crappy musician I know tells me they’ve toured Europe. “Are they tone deaf over there?” She smiles and moves on. She’s amiable, with a hippie vibe and a “You had me at SHALOM” shirt, but there’s something serious about her. I mention it. “Judaism helps me because it helps me lighten up. My dad always said, ‘Lighten up.’ I’m a Virgo — I can’t help it.”

Jenni was born to Jewish parents but was put up for adoption at birth. She spent four years in the foster care system before she was adopted by Jewish parents. “But my Jewishness came from my soul — not from how I was raised.” It was her Jewish camp that taught her about Shabbat and, most important to her — music. When she came back home and asked her parents to make Shabbat dinners, they refused. So now she hosts them as often as she can. She also started a program at the Jewish Home in Reseda, where her grandma lives. “I’m like the Shabbat fairy.”

“I’m Jewish, but I’m spiritual as well.” I ask her what it means to be spiritual. She answers, “Spiritual is allowing for the unknown to exist without trying to control it, because there’s something bigger than us. And that takes a lot of practice.” I ask her if that bigger thing is God. She says, “I believe there’s something bigger than us — I don’t know what that is, and I don’t need to know.”

She mentions “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” during our conversation. It seems so offhand, yet she brings it up more than once. In the song, a married man sees a personal ad and decides to respond to it. They set a meeting place, only when he shows up it’s his wife who walks in. It turns out neither of them had realized that what they were looking for was right in front of them. So, I ask Jenni about this — and she wouldn’t tell me exactly — but she intimated that there’s a guy she hopes will read this and come to the same conclusion: We were meant to be.

Maybe it’ll happen, but I’m guessing more than likely it won’t. I don’t doubt that Jenni will find someone to love her. I just don’t think her male friend will read this bio and suddenly realize he’s been making a mistake. It’s clear that he doesn’t see her as his soul mate, and it’s for the best she doesn’t try to force a square peg into a round hole. There’s someone out there for Jenni. And maybe he’s reading this bio now. And if he’s the right one, he won’t need a piña colada song to be reminded of how much he loves her. 

Listen to Jenni sing at jennialpert.com.

If you’re interested in anyone you see on My Single Peeps, send an e-mail and a picture, including the person’s name in the subject line, to {encode=”mysinglepeeps@jewishjournal.com” title=”mysinglepeeps@jewishjournal.com”}, and we’ll forward it to your favorite peep.

Seth Menachem is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. You can see more of his work on his Web site, sethmenachem.com, and meet even more single peeps at mysinglepeeps.com.

My single peeps: Jenni A. Read More »

House approves Rep. Weiner leave of absence

Leave a Comment / Politics /

The U.S. House of Representatives approved Rep. Anthony Weiner’s request for a leave of absence.

Weiner (D-N.Y.) requested a two-week leave of absence in order to enter a treatment center to deal with his addiction to having inappropriate online relationships with women.  He reportedly entered treatment over the weekend. House memebrs approved the leave request Monday with a unanimous voice vote.

Calls for Weiner to resign have mounted from his own political party, including from Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz (D-Fla.), chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

House Majority leader Eric Cantor (R.-Va.) last week called on Weiner to resign, and on Monday he suggested that Weiner should be stripped by his party of his place on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, his only committee assignment.

President Obama addressed the controversy for the first time on Monday, saying during an interview on NBC’s “Today” that “if it was me, I would resign.’’

“When you get to the point where, because of various personal distractions, you can’t serve as effectively as you need to, at the time when people are worrying about jobs, and their mortgages, and paying the bills — then you should probably step back,’’ Obama said.

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