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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

July 14, 2011

We can write our own story

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

We can never leave our own story. No matter how painful. No matter how agonizing. But maybe we can rewrite it.

Sometimes it feels as though we are walking inside an insulated tunnel filled with pictures, images, words, and messages that overwhelms our senses. Some of these messages relay fear and haunting circumstances that become the 4d movie we wish we could close our eyes off from ever confronting.

How do we move on from deep rooted pain? How can a family face their future when their child has been torn away from them and brutally murdered? The frustrating part of living this 4D movie is that there are never any answers to the why’s.  The inability to understand tragedy is a constant and man’s search will never learn this answer. The sad fact is, we only have our reaction. We only have our behavior to live with after tragedy has dealt us pain. We only have our own action, our own reflexes, our responses we become in control of.

We can never leave our own story, even though it feels unimaginably swollen with festering burning anguish.

World-renowned speaker, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Jacobson suggests that the word G-d can be swapped with the word “reality”, which can completely alter our image of the Divine; the scriptwriter of our lives.  Reality is the world or state of things as they actually exist in this corporeal sphere.  It is the truth that connects us with what is here and now in this physical realm. But if we have walked into a 4d movie, we also know, eventually that movie must come to an end and we can walk out. Eventually, the credits come up and a new reality does take over; a comforting idea.

These few years we experience on earth are just a blink of the eye in comparison to the vast universe that house our souls and carries our deeds and our everlasting reality to the next world, and the next one and the next one. Our realities constantly shift and change .  Sometimes our reality challenges our inner psyche and sometimes it enlightens us. Sometimes it forces us to grow and sometimes it breaks us. But it always keeps us shifting. Nothing ever stays the same.

Maybe we don’t have to leave our story.

We are born into this world kicking and screaming as we take our first breath of life, as we leave the warm and safe womb that was our existence for nine short months. We are thrown into this mysterious world without any game plan, without any script, without knowing the destiny we face or the experiences we will confront without warning. And yet we are born stronger than we give ourselves credit for, because we do manage to inhale despite the fact that our fragile lungs have never experienced air. We do manage to take a breath and scream and let the unfamiliar world into our fragile six pound frames. We do manage to make sense of pain and laugh again and dance again and sing again. We do manage to confront our existence with raw energy that propels us into the next reality that then becomes the new script of our lives.

Maybe trading in G-d for the word reality helps us in realizing that our reality gives us power. We are not helpless. We are not weak. We are kindled forces born to help thrust the Holiest Reality into this world. We have power to choose how we are going to relate to our ever evolving story.  Our reality is the constant break of waves that heaves through our lives like a tormented ocean always finding ways to push us to the shore. Always finding ways to make us move, to make us evolve, to make us become our better selves. Only after our current relationship with this reality has ceased and we will walk into the next reality, the next world, will we truly learn all the answers for what has become the script of our own lives.

We are Divine beings made in the image of the Divine. The Divine has no image. How can we physically duplicate an image of a blank portrait? What does it mean, what are we supposed to learn from this?

Maybe we are to learn that we are finite beings with infinite possibilities. We are finite beings trapped in a finite world yet built with limitless strength, immense faith, and the boundless ability to overcome the natural. Maybe we have the ability and the power to reshape our own destiny and how we react to pain is part of how we determine our destiny. Maybe we have the ability to change our reality. Maybe we have more power than we think.

We can believe in our 4d movie as the only story. We can reel in pain. We can see our existence as finite. Or we can mobilize our sacred and eternal purpose by holding hands with our Reality and realize eventually this movie ends, the credits come up and we will look at it all from a distance with clarity and understanding.

One day.

Maybe that is the purpose of it all. We can’t choose our story. We can’t walk away from it. But we can inspire others and morph into something new that we never thought we could become because of it.

We can write our own story Read More »

New Beitar Jerusalem owner affiliated with dovish group

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, News, Sports /

A Jerusalem soccer team known for its right-wing fans was bought by an American who served on a dovish pro-Israel group’s board.

Dan Adler bought the team along with businessman Adam Levin, Beitar Jerusalem announced Thursday.

Adler, a Californian and the founder of a media-consulting firm, has served on the board of directors of the Israel Policy Forum, a nonprofit organization that promotes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He and Levin will assume control of Beitar Jerusalem from Israeli-Russian businessman Arcadi Gaydamak, who has owned the team since 2005.

Fans of the team, which plays in Israel’s Premier League, are known for their right-wing hooliganism. In recent years, Beitar has been penalized by the league for fans’ anti-Arab slurs toward opposing players.

The team has never had an Arab player. In 2009, after fans complained, the team’s captain apologized for saying that he would like an Arab to join Beitar.

The team noted in a statement that the two new owners are strong supporters of Israel.

“They made an investment in Beitar as a long-term investment, and they see it as a contribution to strengthen Jerusalem and Israel, rather than business investment,” the team’s statement said.

Adler had previously garnered headlines with a longshot run for the United States Congress. He received only 285 votes in his 2011 Democratic congressional primary but drew national media attention for a comical advertisement featuring an elderly Korean woman witth a thick accent who asked, “What’s a mensch?” Critics accused Adler, who is married to Korean woman, of promoting stereotypes of Asians.

New Beitar Jerusalem owner affiliated with dovish group Read More »

“Harry Potter” Producer David Heyman’s Jewish Connection

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

As the final chapter in the boy wizard franchise “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II” hits theatres July 15, producer David Heyman – who last spoke to me about his 2008 Holocaust film, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas—will be closing a 12-year chapter of his life.

And what a chapter it has been.

First, convincing author J.K. Rowling to sell the movie rights to her bestselling novels, with the promise that he would remain faithful to her story and characters.  Then discovering Daniel Radcliffe, after auditioning hundreds of prospective Harrys, while they were both attending a play, of all places.  Hiring unexpected directors such as Alfonso Cuarón and David Yates to keep things fresh.  And keeping the young cast together through eight films without anyone having a Britney Spears-type meltdown.

When I interviewed Heyman about “Pajamas” several years ago, he was giving his infant son a bath at their London home:  “I do believe you’re the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said at the time.  (Now the boy is 3, and, reportedly, a Potter fan.)

While bathing his son, Heyman told me about the humble beginnings of what has become the most successful franchise in cinematic history:  He had moved back to England in 1996 after some inauspicious years in Los Angeles and set up a modest office, Heyday Films, above a music shop in London.  He had hoped to focus on adapting books for the silver screen, with projects that eschewed what he called “a ubiquitous Hollywood sensibility.”

It was at Heyday that a colleague chanced to read a review about a not-yet-published novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” (its British title) and asked for a free copy in 1997. It was promptly tossed on the “low priority” shelf at the bottom of a bookcase.

“Then my secretary, who was fed up with the rubbish she had to read, remembered the good review, took the book home, and brought it up at a staff meeting. I said, ‘Bad title. What’s it about?’ And she said, ‘It’s about an 11-year-old who goes to wizard school.’ I thought that was a great idea, so I read it and fell in love.”

“I hadn’t a clue that the Potter books would become an international phenomenon,” Heyman continued, “but I loved the author’s voice, that the book didn’t talk down to kids and that it made me laugh. I also liked it because I had gone to a school that reminded me of Hogwarts. We’ve all had friends like Harry’s [hyper-studious] friend, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley, the good-time pal. The book talked about loyalty and friendship and courage and trust, which I most certainly related to. And it was the story of an outsider, an orphan, Harry, who must overcome adversity.

“I’ve felt myself to be an outsider as a British producer in Hollywood—and for personal reasons I won’t expose,” he added with a laugh.

“People who fight adversity and struggle to overcome difficult situations fascinate me,” he said of both Potter and the Jewish boy at the center of “Striped Pajamas.”

The producer’s own Jewish grandfather, Heinz Heyman (the original spelling may have been Heymann), was an economist, newspaperman and broadcaster based in Leipzig—one of the last announcers to speak out against Hitler in early 1933.

Heyman was 6 when his grandfather died—at his typewriter—after completing an article that ran two days after his death as the lead story in The Financial Times.

The producer—who often visited Israel as a child—is continuing his family’s literary tradition with his knack for book adaptations.  Post-Potter, he’s optioned Mark Haddon’s “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” and assigned Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves to adapt and direct it.

Also in the works is an animated movie starring a dung beatle and a ladybug, set to Beatles songs. 

But this past week, Heyman has been busy saying goodbye to “Harry Potter” and the series’ young stars, Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, as well to the older thespians such as Ralph Fiennes (the evil Lord Voldemort), Alan Rickman (Severus Snape) and Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange).

“Working on ‘Harry Potter’ has been the most incredible odyssey,” Heyman told Parade magazine.  “It’s been the gift of all gifts. That being said, I’m very excited about having the time to face new challenges.”

 

“Harry Potter” Producer David Heyman’s Jewish Connection Read More »

Israelis asked to disrobe for Dead Sea

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

American photographer Spencer Tunick has posted a registration for volunteers to participate in a photo shoot of nude Israelis at the Dead Sea.

Tunick, who has gained fame for taking photographs of crowds of naked people at sites around the world, is calling on Israelis to “Disrobe to Save the Dead Sea.”

The installation, which is set for Sept. 17 at the Dead Sea, is being undertaken to raise international awareness of the condition of the Dead Sea, which is rapidly receding.

“I first visited the Dead Sea as a child back in 1979 and was always amazed by its buoyancy and beauty. When I returned for a visit in 2010 I was shocked to see how much the water had receded,” Tunick said in a statement. “This is a body of water that unites 3 different people—Israelis, Jordanians, and Palestinians. The environmental impact is alarming and through my work I hope to bring back life—showcasing the importance of water in this region and creating art with the naked human form that brings world attention to the need to save the Dead Sea.”

Tunick has said that he would like his naked subjects floating in the Dead Sea to be covered in its beneficial black mud.

He recently photographed 5,200 nude Australians on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, one of 75 locations at which he has taken nude photos of crowds.

Israelis asked to disrobe for Dead Sea Read More »

For L.A. federation, thinking ‘big’ means thinking inside the box

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, United States /

According to the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, big Jewish ideas come in small packages—which will soon be delivered straight to L.A. area homes.

The federation recently announced that the winner of its Next Big Jewish Idea contest is high school teacher Batsheva Frankel—for her “Launchbox” concept. Frankel’s winning idea, originally proposed as “Jewww in a Box,” is to create kits filled with thematic and holiday-based activities, educational materials and links to online content on Judaism, which will be mailed to area households.

Frankel will receive $100,000 in funding to develop her idea with the help of federation staff.

“The Next Big Jewish is about rethinking of what a federation needs to be for the next decade,” the federation’s president, Jay Sanderson, said.

“The best ideas and the biggest ideas are simple and they’re accessible,” Sanderson said of the choice. “They’re not complicated.”

In this way, he predicted, the Launchbox is like an iPad—it will “connect Jews in a different way, wherever they are in their Jewish journey.”

The Launchbox, Frankel said, will help people “not just be Jewish, but do Jewish.”

Over the next few months, Frankel will work with federation staff to translate the idea into reality. Still to be determined, according to federation officials, are the nitty-gritty details of how the boxes will be produced and distributed.

The boxes’ actual content will be decided in collaboration with “educators and thinkers to create a box that is really open-ended,” Sanderson said.

The contest was launched in January to coincide with the Los Angeles federation’s centennial.

Launchbox made it through multiple rounds, competing against more than 350 other ideas. Those ideas were eventually narrowed down to 10, and then one, by a panel of judges and more than 100,000 online voters.

According to the federation, in addition to the $100,000 prize and staff time, the contest cost the organization about $40,000, including online advertising, videos and printed materials. Sanderson argued that the level of online participation made the contest a success—even before the winner was chosen.

The federation “engaged 100,000 people in conversation to say what they thought,” Sanderson said. “We received 400 ideas from individuals and groups, and we engaged them as well. From a marketing perspective as well as a content perspective, we engaged a new group of Jews. ”

Sanderson demurred when asked how the success of Launchbox will be judged.

He did say that thousands will receive the boxes, and predicted that from those will come a ripple effect.

“An individual will get a box, but in order to do Jewish, you need people,” Sanderson said. “You’ll have to bring people in.”

For L.A. federation, thinking ‘big’ means thinking inside the box Read More »

The Butchering of 8-Year-Old Leiby Kletsky

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

There are three reasons Hassidic Jews live together in tight-knit and often insular communities. The first is shared values. The second, a strong support network and security in number. And the third is a desire to filter out some of the corrosive elements of outside society from corrupting their children.

All three have been undermined by the brutal murder of Leibi Kletsky by Levi Aron. Where did Mr. Aron stem from? Yes, he dresses like an orthodox Jew. But one can only pray he is mad. Because Judaism, as a religion, commands the highest sensitivity to all life and even inanimate objects. Moses was not permitted to smite the waters of the Nile or dust of Egypt because both had saved his life. Cruelty to animals is one of Judaism’s most severe sins. How could a man schooled in the Jewish tradition of the infinite value of life butcher a boy into pieces?

As for a strong support network, one assumes that this is the reason Leibi’s parents agreed for him to walk home from camp. Noone can now imagine how their unspeakable pain is being now compounded by extreme and unjustified guilt. Why did the boy walk home? But that’s the whole point. Borough Park is a safe neighborhood. It’s the reason you choose to raise a family in a community surrounded by people who are never total strangers. They share your faith, your values, your way of life. So your kids are never in danger. When one family is in trouble, all come to the rescue, as was evidenced by the outpouring of help to find Leibi in the first place. Therefore, when Leibi got lost he walked over to someone who, though unrecognizable as an individual would have been very familiar to him as a member of his community, in other words bearded and with a yarmulke or a hat. Someone safe.

I have long argued that one of the factors that has led to the national child obesity epidemic is parents’ fears for their children’s safety, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Children are no longer permitted to walk to school because parents’ don’t want them to bump into sickos. The net result is that they don’t get the exercise they need. But in the case of a child in a highly orthodox community the thinking would be that the child is safe because unzere, ‘our own people’ are around to help and protect.

But Levi Aron is not unzere. Not only is he not part of the religious Jewish family, he is not part of the human family. He is a beast of the field, a cold-blooded predator, devoid of any spark of G-d or hint of humanity. He is a man without a soul, a spiritless hominid.

Which leads to the most important question of all. In most cases where a child is abducted or brutally murdered by a predator, the child had already been a mark. A pedophile would have been at a playground or on a street corner studying a child who is then abducted. But in this case, a child became lost and he approached a man for directions who turns out to be a diabolical fiend. One can only hope and indeed assume that there aren’t that many crazed killers stalking Boro Park. So how could it be that the child ends up asking the one psychopath who just happened to be at his dentist to pay his bill? In other words, what was G-d thinking? We Jews believe in divine providence. Nothing happens by accident. So a child gets lost and the only person who is around for him to ask ends up being a schizoid killer?

Which brings me to my final point. I said the third reason why religious Jews live together is to protect their children from corrosive influences, to filter out elements of the popular culture and the media which are unhealthy for a child’s development. My G-d, given that’s the case, how do we make sense of a child being killed in a neighborhood set up to protect children?

We will never understand a mind like Levi Aron. Nor should we try. I just read that he is on suicide watch and wish he weren’t. If he killed himself it would be no great loss. He is not human anyway. But I wish I knew what celestial purpose could possibly have been filled by an innocent child innocently bumping into someone who would murder him.

The G-d who we Jews love and to whom we have been, and will continue to be, so tenaciously attached for thousands of years has a lot of explaining to do.

The Butchering of 8-Year-Old Leiby Kletsky Read More »

Comic book artist Gene Colan dies at 84

Leave a Comment / Culture, Is Featured?, News, Obituaries /

Comic book artist Gene Colan, a “towering figure” and “one of the giants of the comic book industry,” who drew characters from Batman to Dracula to Howard the Duck for nearly seven decades, died June 23 at 84.

Colan drew for the two mainstays of the North American comic book industry, Marvel and DC, as well as others, and worked closely with Marvel’s legendary Stan Lee on characters such as Daredevil; Falcon, one of the first black superheroes; the aforementioned Howard the Duck; and others. Over his long career Colan also worked at various times on Batman, Wonder Woman, Iron Man and others.

Colan’s work was described as different from most comic artists, for he “preferred a realistic look that emphasized texture and fluidity: the drape of a hero’s cape, tilt of a head, the arc of an oncoming fist.”

Comic artist and writer J.M. DeMatteis said Colan’s Howard the Duck and Tomb of Dracula were “two of the greatest comics of the 70’s… Colan at his finest: radiant with mood, texture, humanity and a reality all its own. Gene was totally unlike any other artist working in comics at the time—he was a genre unto himself; in the mainstream but with one foot always outside of it—and there’s still no one who can touch him.” Click here for a lengthy comics fan’s retrospective of Colan’s work, with many images of his art.

Tom Field, co-author of the book “Secrets in the Shadows: The Art & Life of Gene Colan,” said “he was referred to as a painter with a pencil.”

Colan was born Eugene Jules Cohen in New York and raised in Manhattan. He studied at the Art Students League of New York and served in the Philippines with the Army Air Forces in World War II. He joined Timely Comics, the precursor to Marvel, after the war, where he drew Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man and Sub-Mariner.

Writer Mark Evanier said fans consider Colan’s work in the 1960s and 1970s on Daredevil, Howard the Duck, Tomb of Dracula, Doctor Strange, Iron Man and others as “the defining versions” of those characters.

Evanier said that Colan was “a charming, self-effacing gentleman who was genuinely moved when fans tried to tell him how good he was and how much joy his work had given them.” In recent years, Colan had glaucoma, and was nearly blind in one eye and limited vision in the other, but continued to work.

Comic book writer Clifford Meth, who helped Colan with his finances and personal affairs in the last few years after the death of Colan’s second wife, offered an emotional elegy to him in a recent blog post: “Gene taught by example the importance of being happy for happy sake. He was what Pirke Avos characterized as a rich man. He was happy with his lot.”

Before Colan’s death, Meth posted excerpts from a conversation he had with Colan at his hospice: “I’m not beyond fear. I’m fearful about death. Everything that you ever wanted to do just goes up in smoke. The idea of being put in the ground or put under the ground is frightening. Most people don’t want to talk about it… But I’ve decided to change my way of thinking. What they’re telling me is not acceptable to me. I’ve got a tumor and it’s cancer. And that’s it. But I’m thinking that whatever you are thinking can come true. If it’s not a selfish thought. I lean heavily on G-d now. I wasn’t always like this. There isn’t anything I have to be afraid of. Love is the answer. And the way to get there is by trying to find good in someone you don’t necessarily like. Prayer can’t be selfish. You don’t pray for a yacht or money—you work hard if you want those things. But if you pray for unselfish things… And if you’re looking for an answer, just ask. You’ll get the answer if the question is worthy of an answer.”

Comic book artist Gene Colan dies at 84 Read More »

Mila Kunis: Trekkie

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

“Black Swan” star Mila Kunis has come out of the closet … as a “massive” Trekkie.

In the latest issue of GQ, Kunis confesses to having an autographed photo of Leonard Nimoy as well as vintage Star Trek action figures, and ranks Treks in order of preference:

Mila Kunis: I was too young to fully understand the importance of working with Hulk Hogan. I just thought he was this huge man. Shatner was di­fferent. I’m a massive Trekkie, so that was crazy. He’s exactly what you think he is.

GQ: When did you get into Star Trek?

Mila Kunis: I got into it in my late teens—18, 19, 20. Something like that. I got into it later than most people. But let’s not talk about it in the past tense. I’m still a Star Trek fan. You never stop being one. Let me give you my rundown of the series in order of most favorite to least favorite.

GQ: I definitely have my answer to this. Let’s hear it.

Mila Kunis: Okay. You should know this list is an ongoing argument between Seth MacFarlane and myself. But I have it: The Next Generation; the original series; then Voyager—

GQ: Okay, you’re already wrong.

Mila Kunis: Fuck. You and I are in trouble already. This always happens with Star Trek fans. After Voyager, then I have Deep Space Nine. Then last is Enterprise.

GQ: Did your Star Trek fandom extend further than just watching the show?

Mila Kunis: Uh, I went a little bit further.

GQ: How so?

Mila Kunis: I went to the Star Trek Experience in Vegas maybe five years ago. I hung out with a bunch of fake characters inside Quark’s bar. [Ed note: Quark was the name of the Ferengi bartender on DS9.] There were all these actors there pretending to be the different characters from the different shows. Yes, I loved it.

GQ: Please tell me you didn’t go by yourself.

Mila Kunis: No! I went with friends. I’m not that big of a loser. But I also have a signed Leonard Nimoy photo in a little frame that a girlfriend gave to me for my 21st birthday. And I’ve got a bunch of vintage Star Trek figurines given to me by Jason Segel. God, it’s so embarrassing.

Then again, this isn’t totally shocking. In 2008, she told Jimmy Kimmel that she was a World of Warcraft addict:

“The problem is, if anyone plays Warcraft… I’m really good, I’m a really kick ass Mage… We’ll you’re your own person and you can get into a guild… You gotta be in a guild, because you gotta do raids that require thirty or forty people. But now with the expansion pack, they’re gonna have raids that require only like ten people. So that’ll really make things a lot easier… Oh my god, it’s such a good game. I love it.”

Mila Kunis: Trekkie Read More »