fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

July 19, 2011

L.A. teen athletes going for Maccabi gold three-peat

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Is Featured?, News, Sports /

Winning a second consecutive gold medal at the JCC Maccabi Games in Omaha, Neb., last year brought with it both excitement and disappointment for Michael Totten and his teammates on Westside JCC’s 16U boys’ soccer team.

“We had two gold medals already, and we were pretty sure we could win another, given the chance,” he said. But much of the team, including Michael, would be too old to compete in the 2011 tournament, as competitors must be between 13 and 16.

Yet Michael, who turned 17 earlier this month, and his teammates will get their chance at a third gold medal. First-time host Israel joins Philadelphia and Springfield, Mass., as a site of the 2011 JCC Maccabi Games and ArtsFest, and the age range for the Israeli component was raised to between 14 and 17.

“The kids were very emotional last year, realizing it was their last Maccabi together,” said co-head coach Dan Sulzberg, whose team also won gold in San Antonio in 2009. “The change made it possible for all my kids to have one last Maccabi together.”

Sulzberg’s team members are among 900 athletes from across the country and Canada, including 177 from Southern California, who will compete in the Jewish homeland July 24-Aug. 5. When the annual athletic and artistic showcase continues Aug. 14-19 in Philadelphia and Springfield, 216 Southern Californians will be among 1,800 participants.

“Knowing we would be playing in Israel motivated us to train even harder,” Totten said.

Goalie Ari Simon called Israel the “best place” to go for the three-peat.

“It’s the epitome of the JCC Maccabi Games,” said Ari, who with his twin brother, forward Asher, turned 17 in May.

Dan Deutsch, director of the JCC Maccabi Experience, said that holding the JCC Maccabi Games and ArtsFest in Israel was a goal of the program since its inception in 1982.

“It’s been a dream from the beginning and demonstrates our commitment to bringing as many teens to Israel as possible,” Deutsch said. The program will provide participants the opportunity to immerse themselves in Israeli culture.

“It’s always important to keep our roots,” said Shay Diamant, the Israel delegation head for the JCC at Milken who will oversee 44 athletes on two boys’ and two girls’ soccer teams. “It’s a great opportunity to meet new kids and have fun.”

The JCC at Milken’s Team Los Angeles will have 55 competitors in Philadelphia and 45 in Springfield across baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming, table tennis, tennis, and track and field.

The Westside JCC is sending 80 athletes total to all three sites, including 23 to Israel, comprising baseball, basketball, soccer, swimming and tennis teams. The ArtsFest participants from Westside JCC are joining the Orange County delegation in Israel.

Many Westside JCC and JCC at Milken teams are favorites to three-peat, including Sulzberg’s soccer team.

“I feel like the Lakers, going for three in a row,” Ari said. “We want to live up to expectations. We’ll come together as a team and handle everything the way we always do.”

Team Westside’s 16U basketball team is also looking to live up to expectations, going for a third consecutive gold medal in Philadelphia.

“We play better under pressure,” said JoJo Fallas, a 16-year-old shooting guard from Shalhevet. “We believe that we’re going to win. Our goal is always to win gold, and we’re expecting no less.”

JoJo, one of four core returners, said East Coast basketball features a more aggressive, attacking style, but his team’s success comes from its finesse.

The golden legacy isn’t limited to the Westside.

The JCC at Milken’s baseball team will be pursuing a third win in Philadelphia, following gold medal campaigns in San Francisco and Denver.

“We play the best baseball in the country,” said catcher Trevor Weiss, a Calabasas High junior. He attributes the team’s success to familiarity. “We know what to expect from each other.”

Newcomers to the JCC Maccabi Games experience also will be making cross-country treks.

“I’m really excited to be in a new place,” said Dani Klemes, a 14-year-old swimmer competing in four events in Springfield for the Westside JCC along with twin sister Allison.

The Beverly Hills High sophomores have high hopes for the competition but value the experience above all.

“I’m looking forward to staying with [my host] family to see what life in Springfield is like,” Dani said.

Being first-timers doesn’t mean that competitors won’t be contenders.

Adam Bobrow, a JCC Maccabi baseball, soccer and table tennis alum, will be accompanying two table tennis talents, Sam Bernstein and Isaac Halfon, to Springfield.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Sam takes the gold,” Bobrow said. “He’s an exceptional player.”

Both Sam, 14, and Isaac, 15, who has taken lessons at the Westside JCC’s Gilbert Table Tennis Club for only a few months, will compete for the JCC at Milken, despite living on the Westside.

Bobrow, a professional table tennis player and actor, took over coaching the JCC at Milken table tennis team as a last-minute replacement, just as he did in 2008.

“It would’ve been the first year that there wasn’t a team at all,” said Bobrow, whose late father, Jerry, was a JCC Maccabi Games delegation head for 18 years. “In the past, kids used table tennis as a back-up [sport] to make the trip, but I want to build the team. I would like table tennis to be their first choice.”

The JCC Maccabi Experience mission is “bringing together Jewish teens from across North America and internationally, and giving them an opportunity to explore their Judaism through a lens of their own special interest,” Deutsch said. “The experience gives a sense of klal, of Jewish peoplehood. They experience being Jewish together.”

Or, in the case of Sulzberg’s co-head coach, Neil Sadhu, what it means to be Jewish at all.

Upon meeting Sadhu four years ago, the Westside soccer players thought he was a Sephardi Jew; actually, he’s Indian.

“Kids have wrapped tefillin with him and taught him all about Jewish culture,” said Sulzberg, who added that Sadhu’s jersey will have “Sadhustein” printed on the back. The team considers Sadhu an “honorary Jew.”

Bobrow, who was involved in the recent 40th anniversary celebration of “Ping Pong Diplomacy,” likens the JCC Maccabi Games to the way table tennis united American and Chinese players.

“They’re learning how to balance friendship and competition,” he said of the athletes. “It’s on a smaller scale, but it’s making and improving relationships between these kids. The concept is very much the same: strangers being friendly with each other.”

L.A. teen athletes going for Maccabi gold three-peat Read More »

Israeli mission to moon for Google contest demands appeal to local donors

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, Science & Technology, Tech /

Kfir Damari, Yonatan Winetraub and Yariv Bash were in Los Angeles last week in an effort to raise $10 million for the construction of a robot that they hope to send to the moon.

The three Israelis are hoping to win the Google Lunar X Prize, which will award $20 million to the first team that successfully launches a robot that lands on the moon, walks 1,500 feet and takes high-resolution photos and videos there, then transmits them back to Earth.

The Google Lunar X Prize — a partnership between the X Prize Foundation and Google — will also award $5 million to the second team to successfully complete the tasks, and $4 million will go to a team that completes other objectives, such as landing next to sites of old Apollo missions and detecting water. An additional $1 million will go to the team that “demonstrates the greatest attempts to promote diversity in the field of space exploration,” according to the contest site. Google is sponsoring the competition and providing the prize money.

Scientists from all over the world are participating in the contest and formed teams. The Israelis’ team name is named Team SpaceIL.

“Our mission in SpaceIL is to put the Israeli flag on the moon. To become the third country to ever soft land on the moon,” said Winetraub, chief technology officer of Team SpaceIL.

To win, the team must first raise the money on its own for the construction of their robots and fulfill all parts of the mission.  Ninety percent of each team’s funds must come from private contributors. The contest opened at the beginning of this year, and the objectives must be completed by 2015.

Team SpaceIL has raised approximately $1 million so far, most of it from Israeli supporters. It is the only Israeli team among the 29 participating.

If the team wins, the award money will go toward promoting youth education in science and technology in Israel. “We’re not in it for the money,” Winetraub said, “We’re in it to make a change. We’re in it to make history.”

Winetraub, 24, Damari, 28, and Bash, 30,  began working six months ago. The design for their robot — named “Sparrow” —  is complete and the three are in the midst of “building the hardware and testing it,” Winetraub said. They recently launched “an experimental rocket to test the landing sensors of the spaceship” and conducted another test involving engine pressure, he said.

They are working out of Tel Aviv University and in facilities belonging to Israeli technology companies, such as Israel Aerospace Industries, an aerospace and defense company. Approximately 80 volunteers — the majority of them Israeli — including space industry experts, researchers, educators and students, are helping with the project.

As of July 15, their last day in Los Angeles, the three had not secured any financial commitments here but had made connections that could lead to donations, Damari, chief operating officer of Team SpaceIL, said.

The Southern California-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Jumpstart, a local nonprofit dedicated to Jewish innovation, organized the team’s presentations in Los Angeles.

“We just want to be there first and take the $20 [million] prize,” Damari said. While many at the meeting wondered when SpaceIL hopes to launch, Damari declined to name specifics but remained confident, saying, “At least one day before the other teams.”

For more information, visit spaceil.com.

Israeli mission to moon for Google contest demands appeal to local donors Read More »

My single peeps: David S.

Leave a Comment / Culture, My Single Peeps, News, Singles /

David, age 53, is a nerd. There’s just no way for me to comfortably write around it or dress it up as something other than what it is. During our entire interview, I was distracted by how his cell phone kept slipping out of a hole in his front shirt pocket and he’d continually poke it back in as if it were going to stay there. I’m not criticizing a man for not buying a new shirt … but why not put the f—-ing phone into your pants pocket? Who puts his cell phone in his front shirt pocket, anyway?

Sometimes I will sit down with a new peep and there will be a little lull as I think of what questions to ask to help me get to know him, or her, better. Other times, like with David, I barely need to open my mouth. He speaks incessantly. He jumps from topic to topic and goes off-course as one story leads him to another story.

David tells me about the CEO of the major company where he works coming to the office for a big meeting. But unlike a story where something happens and it’s interesting, sad or funny, David tells me about a joke he really wanted to say out loud, but didn’t. It’s apropos of nothing, and the story itself — about wishing he could have said something but didn’t — says a lot about how David operates. As a comic book writer and editor, he lives a lot of his life in his own head. But he’s not antisocial, and has gone to the San Diego Comic-Con every year since 1972 “to meet up with old friends, make new friends and hustle up work if I can.”

When it comes to a woman, he says, “Give me someone who’s smart with a heart —that’s key.” I ask him about his dating experience. “Most of my relationships have been a few months — I’m ashamed of this, frankly. I have friendships going back decades … I was always very much a late bloomer — got a late start. But I don’t have a problem being alone. If you’re a writer, you need to get used to being alone in a room for long stretches.”

I ask him how he meets women. “Although God knows I have a mouth on me and I can talk quite a bit, the initial approach has always been hard for me. I’ve gotten better at it, but it’s always been something where I shy away or do it awkwardly.”

Before he gets up to go, David tells me about being at a party and picking up a strawberry from the buffet table. He lifts it in the air and says, “Ah, the strawberry — the slut of the fruit.” He tells me he was relieved when a woman standing nearby laughed. I laugh, too, though I’m not sure why. 

After David leaves, I look over my notes. I’m trying to make sense of David and wondering what anyone would think of these stories, when a woman at the table in front of me asks why I was interviewing “that guy.” I tell her, and she says, “If I were single I’d have gone out with that guy, because he seemed so interesting. If he had a blog where he put all his neuroses on there, a lot of girls would flock to him. That strawberry joke was funny.” And she’s right. The strawberry joke is funny. Because it’s completely ridiculous and, yet, kind of brilliant in its absurdity. And so is David.

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 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: David S. Read More »

Students win Diller prize

Leave a Comment / California, Community, News /

When Daniel Sobajian transitioned from Jewish day school to public school, he saw that students were missing something — school supplies. Distraught, Sobajian made it his mission to solve this problem for L.A. public school students. This month, Sobajian was awarded the annual Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Award — a $36,000 prize — for his efforts in collecting thousands of dollars in school supplies.

Every year, the Helen Diller Family Foundation, part of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, awards the prize to five Jewish teenagers throughout California, between the age of 13 and 19, who excel in tikkun olam (repairing the world) and leadership. The prize money can be used to further the teen’s service project or pay for college.

When he arrived at Venice High School in 2008 after graduating from Sinai Akiba Academy, Daniel realized he wanted to become more involved.

“Seventy percent of students live at or below the poverty line,” Daniel said. “When I saw that there were so many kids in my community without supplies, it inspired me to take action. I knew someone had to, and I knew that I would do anything to make sure all of my classmates had everything they could to go to school.”

He approached his City Council member, Bill Rosendahl, who then appointed Sobajian as a representative to his Los Angeles Youth Council. From there, Daniel formed the 11th District Los Angeles Youth Council to give a voice to his community’s youth. With Daniel in charge, the Youth Council hosted its first school-supply drive, which reaped almost $3,000 in supplies and has now expanded its efforts to include art supplies.

Daniel headed school- and art-supply drives in a handful of schools, libraries and churches throughout Los Angeles, and he also encouraged students to become more educated about problems plaguing their communities. In the last three years, he has raised more than $12,000 in school supplies for the Westside Children’s Center, the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Monica and Mar Vista Family Center.

The proactive teen plans to use the $36,000 award money to expand his project by buying more supplies and getting more schools involved.

“My goal is to not only make sure that everyone in this community has all the school supplies they need, but that every student in America goes to school supplied,” Daniel said.

Younger sister Lisa will take over the project when Daniel graduates from high school in 2012. However, he plans to remain a vital part of the project.

Diller Tikkun Olam Award winners Casey Robbins and Gabriel Ferrick also spearheaded their own school-supply campaigns. Casey, who lives in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, formed Textbooks for Liberia, a textbook drive focused on reducing the lack of educational textbooks in Liberia. Gabriel, who lives in Santa Rosa, advocated an end to genocide through Jewish World Watch’s Backpack Project by providing essential supplies to students in Chad, raising almost $60,000. Fueled by a love of gardening and the environment, Naftali Moed established the Oceana High School Garden, a community-supported garden in Pacifica, enabling volunteers to learn about gardening, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture. By heading the Walk for Water, Liza Gurtin of La Jolla raised more than $35,000 to provide safe, clean water to hundreds of impoverished families in Nicaragua and Tanzania.

Students win Diller prize Read More »

Two-way street: Israel should learn about Diaspora, too

Leave a Comment / News, Opinion /

Rabbi Daniel Gordis, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, caused a storm within the Jewish community a few weeks ago when he published a piece arguing that the connection by students at America’s liberal rabbinical schools — the future leaders of the Jewish communities of the Diaspora — toward Israel was weakening.

But what about the connection felt by Israeli educational leaders toward the Jewish communities of the Diaspora?

I had the privilege to study this year as a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute (MLI), along with dozens of Jewish educational leaders from Israel and the Diaspora.

One day, I met an Israeli educator who, as part of her studies at Mandel, traveled to New York to visit a Jewish day school. There, she encountered an institution of exceptional educational creativity abounding in examples worthy of study and replication.

But when Israelis (outside MLI) heard she had traveled to New York, the only thing they asked her was: “Are you going there to raise money?”

I first came to Israel when I was 21 years old. It was the summer of 1993, and I was the captain of the U.S. swim team at the Maccabiah Games. I fell in love with Israel. Now, as a rabbi and educator, one of the most important things to me is that American Jews see Israelis as brothers and sisters and feel that here — in Israel — they have a home and a family.

During my year at Mandel, I got the chance to visit Israeli schools and meet educational leaders. I learned much. But I am returning to the United States with a sense of sadness, and even concern, about the way Israelis relate to Jewish communities outside Israel.

I am leaving the country with a clear sense that Israel does not really know me or the world to which I return.

For many Israelis, American Jews are a stereotype: tourists. Too many Israelis look at the Diaspora as merely a source for fundraising and a pool of people who should make aliyah.

They believe that the purpose of my community begins and ends in its being part of the AIPAC lobby that secures $2 billion in annual support for Israel.

When an American Jew has an opinion about something in Israel — such as the Law of Return or the fact that Interior Minister Eli Yishai has refused to register Reform and Conservative converts as citizens on their national ID card (in violation of a Supreme Court ruling a decade ago) — many Israelis do not understand by what right someone who does not live in Israel or serve in the army dares to express an opinion about what happens here.

Diaspora Jews are not a stereotype. Jewish communities outside Israel have rich and varied traditions and histories, cultures of vitality and life and, yes, even a future.

But the world to which I am returning — the world of Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox Judaism, of JCCs and Jewish day schools, of Jewish summer camps, of Hillels and Federations — is, for most Israeli educators and, for most Israelis in general, a foreign and even strange world.

Israelis, please understand: We Diaspora Jews are your sisters and your brothers. As a member of the family, I plead with you: Get to know us, not as a stereotype, but as living communities and real people.

Love is a two-way street. I believe with all my heart that what will allow all of us to survive and build a better Jewish future is a feeling of connection and love between us.

I remain committed to Israel. I pray Israel feels the same sense of commitment to this connection.

I invite Israeli educators to visit the United States not (only) to raise money, but also so we can learn together and better understand one another’s worlds. Together we can nourish a deep love for the Jewish people in our communities. It is that love that unites us all.

Two-way street: Israel should learn about Diaspora, too Read More »

Birthright Israel: As political as chopped liver

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Does Taglit-Birthright Israel have a political agenda? Questions about Birthright’s content have come to the fore, magnified by intense debate about Israel and, perhaps, as a consequence of the program becoming a rite of passage for Diaspora young adults. The questions are not new, and from the time the first planeload of participants landed in Israel, observers have been looking for the political agenda. But political agendas are more in the mind of the spectators than a part of the program itself.

To regard Birthright trips as “political” is to misunderstand the program’s goals and how it educates. Birthright is unabashed in its focus on promoting Jewish identity, peoplehood and love of Israel. By regulations reinforced by voluminous guidelines, its educators are required to offer apolitical, “balanced messages.” The overarching point is that identification with and love of Israel does not require support of a specific political position about Israel. 

The Hebrew name of Birthright Israel, Taglit, literally means “discovery.” What participants discover is not a political position on settlements or international negotiations; rather, it is their personal relationship to the Jewish people and connection to their heritage. Birthright may be political in that it has a particularistic focus to connect Jews with Judaism and with other Jews, but this is no more subversive than an effort to deepen family relationships. This ambitious undertaking helps a generation of young Jews develop self-confident connections to the Jewish people and to Israel.

The content of Birthright programs is fixed in terms of core themes, but the specifics of what is taught varies. Although this flexibility suggests that the door is open to politicization, participants are empowered as learners. In educational philosophy terms, Birthright is John Dewey-inspired experiential education. The program teaches by allowing participants to experience Israel and to appreciate their heritage through interaction with others. It engages a participant’s “heart, mind, and body” and utilizes peers, as well as formal educators, as teachers.

Operationally, Birthright works through trip organizers (TOs) who develop specific curricula. TOs are certified by Birthright, which sets standards and evaluates the process and outcome of the trips. Individual TOs handle the logistics and details of educational programming. The TOs represent a diverse group of public and private educational organizations. Although they differ in philosophy, by accepting Birthright’s support, TOs accept the pluralistic educational goals of the program.

The Birthright journey lasts for 10 days, enough time to stimulate participants’ connection with other Jews and develop a sense of Israel. The trip is about engaging with other Jews in the context of Israel, not about teaching specific content. From a social psychological perspective, the trip serves as a cultural island that allows participants to unfreeze and reform their attitudes about being Jewish.

Although most trips are designed for participants regardless of background and interests, some trips are more specialized. Thus, group itineraries might be tailored to individuals from a particular campus or community, those who are athletic and interested in hiking or biking, or those studying law or medicine. Political ideology is not a factor, and young adult Jews are eligible based on age, lack of prior educational experiences in Israel and acceptance of program rules.

The educators who serve as trip leaders are central to Birthright’s success. The experienced guide knows when to talk and when to walk, when to let group dynamics evolve and when to intervene, when to lecture and when to discuss. The best guides are role models who live their love of Jews, Judaism and Israel. In many cases, participants never discern their trip leader’s political orientation. 

At the core of every Birthright journey is a mifgash (encounter) with Israeli peers. Mifgashim take place over five to 10 days of the trip and enlist as co-participants up to eight young Israelis, most of whom are still doing their army service. The peer-to-peer learning made possible by engaging young Israelis is, perhaps, Birthright’s most potent educational tool. By creating personal connections, participants gain insight into the Israeli polity. Diaspora Jews begin to understand that there is a diversity of views among Israelis, and that the political situation is far more complicated than many previously believed. 

Of course, every guide and educator has a set of personal views — left, center and right — and some express them in spite of the regulations. These views are more than mitigated by the mifgash experience. Any group of young Israelis will reveal a spectrum of Israeli views. The late-night conversations among these peers sort out many contemporary issues, including those that are “political.”

The claim that Birthright is hasbara (propaganda) and not hinooch (education) is at variance with how the program is organized and what has been observed with thousands of participants. No doubt, each participant — and each observer — views Taglit through his/her lens. Some of these lenses are political, but the program is about Jewish identity, not the resolution of conflicting Israeli and Palestinian claims. The three key elements of identity — knowledge, emotion and behavior — are all substantially impacted by the experience.

Birthright is counter-cultural — particularistic in a universalistic world, with programming that tackles issues of identity and group commitment. The program has created a new paradigm, a new way for Diaspora Jews to relate to Israel, that emphasizes connections among people, not mythology or ideology. In an era where political diversions are ever sharper and destructive, it is a breath of fresh air and a sign of hope for the future.

Leonard Saxe is Klutznick Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies and director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University; Jeffrey Solomon is president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies.

Birthright Israel: As political as chopped liver Read More »

Run to change a life

Leave a Comment / California, Community, News /

Registration for Chai Lifeline’s charity marathon-running training program, Teen Lifeline, has opened, and a group is training in Los Angeles for the first time since the program started in 2006.

Every participating runner must raise $3,600, with all the proceeds benefitting Camp Simcha and Camp Simcha Special, Chai Lifeline’s medically supervised summer camps in New York for children with life-threatening illnesses.

“This is a local training team, so California people can get together, have camaraderie and prepare for the race together,” said Moshe Turk, national race director for Team Lifeline. “There have always been participants from L.A., but never before a structured” group that trains together.

Those who join Team Lifeline can choose to run in either the Rock ’n’ Roll Las Vegas marathon and half marathon, taking place this December, or the ING Miami marathon or half marathon in January 2012.

Chai Lifeline pays for each runner’s round-trip airfare to either Miami or Las Vegas, three nights in a hotel, transportation to and from the marathons, optional Shabbat dinners and lunches, and pre-race pasta parties (provided he or she has met the minimum fundraising requirement).

Turk said that Team Lifeline raised $1.6 million last year, with almost 400 participants from 26 cities. Proceeds from Team Lifeline help Chai Lifeline keep the summer camps free to families with children suffering from pediatric diseases, including cancer, blood disorders and other chronic illnesses.

Local Team Lifeline runners, in addition to having the benefit of a group to run and train with, will receive a detailed training schedule that says exactly how much they should be running each week and online coaching.

“The majority [of runners] have no running experience,” Turk said. This is for everyone — “from the couch potato to the marathoner.”

Run to change a life Read More »

Peoplehood is history

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, News, Opinion /

The latest buzzword in the Jewish world is “peoplehood.” In a recent article in The Jewish Daily Forward titled “Funding Peoplehood,” Misha Galperin, a top official with the Jewish Agency, writes that for the past few years “the organized Jewish community worldwide has recognized that the next major task facing us is strengthening Jewish identity, which we’ve come to call ‘the price of peoplehood.’ ”

As he writes: “Prominent Jewish sociologists have identified the declining bonds of peoplehood as one of the most significant challenges posed by modernity and by a culture of universalism. Having been raised in a world of pluralism and tolerance, Jews younger than 45 do not necessarily privilege their Jewish brothers and sisters above others when it comes to friendship, marriage, volunteerism and charitable giving.”

This new “peoplehood” buzzword is just the latest iteration of a broader issue that’s been around for decades, using terms like “Jewish continuity,” “assimilation,” “intermarriage” and so on. “Peoplehood” is the latest reminder of a familiar problem for the organized Jewish community: American Jews in general don’t feel compelled to connect to their Jewish tradition.

What I find fascinating about this latest emphasis on “peoplehood,” however, is its tribal connotation. It’s like an admission of failure. We couldn’t get you to connect to Judaism so let’s try something more primal: Connect to your tribe! To your people! It’s the outreach of last resort.

No wonder Galperin’s piece got some heated responses. Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service, which focuses on Jews helping the world (and not just other Jews), wrote: “What’s missing from this piece is a more expansive, values-based understanding of how Jewish peoplehood is expressed.”

Another critique came from Daniel Septimus, of myjewishlearning.com, who wrote: “What is the content of Galperin’s ‘bond of peoplehood’? What is this bonded people supposed to do? What values do they cherish and share? What mission do they work to achieve? The Jewish community’s inability to articulate answers to these questions, while at the same time fetishizing ‘peoplehood’ to the brink of idolatry, is exactly the reason the younger generation has drifted away.”

Personally, I’m torn between two lovers. I have a deep sense of Judaism as a way of life and as a source of meaning and mission, but I also have a deep sense of Judaism as belonging to a miraculous people. If I moved to the desert and did absolutely nothing Jewish for three years, I would still feel nourished by my Jewish identity. The mere fact of “belonging” to my people is enough. It is the very transcendent nature of this feeling that moves me.

In the same way that faith and belief in God transcend reason, my connection to the Jewish people does the same. If I had to constantly justify this connection through reason — if I made it conditional on common actions or values — it wouldn’t have the same power or emotion.

In fact, it’s a mistake to assume that a deeper connection to Judaism and Jewish values will naturally lead to a deeper connection between Jews. Not necessarily. If I see “Jewish values,” for example, as being synonymous with humanistic values like compassion, social justice and freedom, how does that connect me with Jews in yeshivas? Similarly, if I pray and learn Talmud all day, how does that connect me with Jews who express their Judaism by helping Muslims in Darfur?

Given all that, how might we promote a sense of peoplehood with Jews who feel no special connection with their Jewish brethren?

If you ask me, the most natural way to promote Jewish peoplehood is to teach the extraordinary history of the Jewish people.

And I don’t just mean biblical stories with all their grand moral lessons. I mean history, pure and simple. I mean the history of the migration of Sephardi Jews throughout the centuries; the history of the Jews of Europe and the Jews of Persia; the beginning of the Chasidic movement; the golden age of the medieval philosophers; the Jewish contributions to humanity; the beginning of the Zionist movement and so on.

I mean teaching Jews (yes, even in day schools and yeshivas) not just our master story, but also our cultural and ancestral stories — warts and all — and how those myriad journeys have improbably converged in our generation.

Our sense of solidarity can only be enhanced by a greater familiarity with our incredible journey.

Unfortunately, history is the ugly stepchild of Jewish outreach. It doesn’t have the romance of spirituality, the imperative of Torah study, the headiness of repairing the world or the practical relevance of daily rituals. What it does have, however, is narrative. Hundreds and thousands of narratives that have the power to bond us with the collective Jewish experience.

A few weeks ago, I reconnected with my cousin Sydney Suissa, who I grew up with in Casablanca and Montreal. Sydney was always a history buff. He ran programming at the History Channel and is now doing the same thing at National Geographic. My cousin is not Torah observant, but he has a deep connection to his people.

Why? Because he’s been learning Jewish history for most of his life. His connection to his people didn’t come from studying Torah, or from doing tikkun olam, which are important acts in their own right. It came because he embraced a remarkable story and heritage he feels he belongs to and would like to continue.

Galperin and the Jewish Agency are onto something. But maybe Galperin’s next piece should be titled “Finding Peoplehood.” He should invite and help Jews everywhere to discover the amazing story — and stories — of their people.

Values, rituals and study are important, but to build real human connections, you also need great stories. Just ask any Jewish screenwriter.

Peoplehood is history Read More »

Adults who do not speak to a parent

Leave a Comment / Dennis Prager, Is Featured?, News, Opinion /

For two decades I have been on a crusade: to convince adults who have cut off all communication with a parent to re-establish contact.

Through my radio show, which deals as much with personal issues as with politics, I became aware of something that, as a parent, I view as a nightmare:  children who voluntarily disappear from a parent’s life.

The pain I heard in the voices of parents whose son or daughter had ceased speaking to them broke my heart. In some ways, I would imagine, the pain can be more difficult to handle than the death of a child. It is, after all, a form of death, but it has the added pain of having been deliberately inflicted upon the parent. And in the case of grandparents whose adult children have severed all communication, they not only lose all contact with their child, but with their grandchildren as well — something that is not the case when an adult child dies.

While I can imagine situations in which there is a moral justification for cutting off all contact with a parent, those situations are rare. Beyond the parent who presents a physical threat to the child or who has a history — a real history, not a “recovered memory” induced by a psychotherapist — of sexual molestation or serious physical abuse, it is very difficult to imagine a situation in which never communicating with a parent is justifiable.

On one of my radio shows on this topic, I asked adults who have ceased speaking to a parent to call in. One woman in her late 20s, a resident of Santa Monica, told me that she had not contacted her mother in nearly 10 years. I asked the woman if her mother had molested or beaten her. On the contrary, she told me — not only had her mother never done such things, she had always shown her love.

I was, needless to say, mystified.

“So why don’t you talk to her?” I asked

“Because she has a very dominating personality,” the caller responded. “And if I let her in my life, she will dominate it.”

I suspected the influence of another person in her life, so I asked if she was seeing a psychotherapist. When she answered yes, I asked her what her therapist thought of her not speaking to her mother; she responded that her therapist was completely supportive of this decision.

Having dealt with this issue for so long, here are some conclusions I have reached.

In the majority of cases, children who have cut off all contact with a parent are engaged in an act that is so hurtful, it borders on evil.

And if this decision is abetted by one’s psychotherapist, that therapist is an accessory to a moral crime. He or she is also probably an incompetent therapist. The easiest things for a therapist to do are to affirm a patient’s sense of victimhood and to approve of selfish decisions of the patient, even when those decisions hurt others.

Just as good religion makes people better people and bad religion makes people worse people, good therapy makes people better and bad therapy makes people worse. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad religion and there is a lot of bad therapy.

There is an additional danger to cutting off all contact with a parent: How will people who do this feel after their parent dies? The importance of having made some peace with a parent before he or she dies is difficult to overstate. I know women who were sexually abused by their father but who, as adults, have not completely cut themselves off from him — solely to ensure their own inner peace after he dies.

Also, parents who do not speak with their own parent(s) might consider what sort of model they present to their children about how to treat a parent.

This painful subject is one of the many reasons I so strongly affirm a God-based and Torah-based values system. The great majority of human beings go through a difficult period with one or both of their parents, a period when anger or even hatred is greater than love for a parent. I am convinced that it is for that reason — the complex nature of many people’s feelings toward their parents — that the Torah avoids commanding that we love our father and mother. We are commanded to love the stranger, to love God and to love our neighbor, but we are not commanded to love our parents.

But we are commanded to honor our parents. In other words, even if we hate our parents, with rare exceptions, we must still honor them. Honoring them means, at the very least, staying in contact with them.

I wish a study would be conducted of a thousand adult children who have chosen to break off all contact with a parent to reveal how many of them believe in the Ten Commandments as a God-given document. My suspicion is that very few of them do. If I am wrong, however, if religious Jews and religious Christians are just as likely to cut off all contact with a parent as are irreligious people, then I would have to conclude that Judaism and Christianity, whatever benefits they may offer the individual, are morally largely worthless.

The greatest message of Judaism is to act nobly even when one doesn’t feel like doing so. If one cannot do this with regard to one of the Ten Commandments, that message has truly been lost.

And, speaking Jewishly, it is better to eat pork on Yom Kippur than to destroy a mother or father.

Adults who do not speak to a parent Read More »

Letters to the editor: Boyle Heights, Steve Zimmer, circumcision

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, News, Opinion /

Boyle Heights Reflections

Thank you for Tom Tugend’s nostalgic article on Boyle Heights (“The Nickel Pickle,” July 15).

Although I was born in Boyle Heights in 1928, we moved away to “upscale West Adams” when I was a few years old. However, I so well remember the Depression-era Disneyland-like feeling every Friday as we returned to Boyle Heights to shop. All along Brooklyn Avenue (now César Chávez Avenue) were the most delightful sights and smells of butcher shops with their live chickens, delicacy shops with barrels of pickles, bakeries with all of their goodies, and, of course, Canters Delicatessen. Yiddish was spoken all along the crowded avenue as old friends encountered one another.

And oh how well I recall the delicious scents in our car on the way home — salami, rye bread, white fish and one or more freshly slaughtered and still-warm chickens.

Martin A. Brower
Corona del Mar

Reading Tom Tugend’s article on Boyle Heights brought back some deeply rooted and heart-warming memories. I was greatly influenced by David and Mina Yaroslavsky, who were the heart and soul of Boyle Heights. When I first arrived in Los Angeles from England, I enrolled at L.A. City College and in professor Yaroslavsky’s Hebrew classes. My Hebrew-language skills may have benefited, albeit slightly, but the greatest benefit was to me personally. She invited me to her house more times than I can count, and treated me almost like a second son. I had no family here, but David and Mina provided the closest thing to family that I could have wished for. Sadly, she passed away far too soon. I named my first-born daughter Mina in her memory. She was truly “A Woman of Valor.”

She deserves an article all to herself.

Jason Fenton
via e-mail

Leadership Education of Steve Zimmer

We at The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles were proud to read about Los Angeles Unified School Board Member Steve Zimmer’s efforts to give all public school students in Los Angeles the opportunity “to have excellence” (“The Education of LAUSD’s Steve Zimmer,” July 8).

We are also proud that Steve is a graduate of our Federation’s New Leaders Project — a program in which emerging Jewish leaders gain the skills and connections to build a better Los Angeles.

Steve’s passion and efforts exemplify our Federation’s commitment to ensuring a strong Jewish future and the well-being of our city.

Jay Sanderson
President, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

Donna Bojarsky
Co-Founder and Chair, New Leaders Project

With Eshman at Helm, Journal Shines

I want to commend you for providing your readers with such exceptional commentary. I have discovered your paper via Marty Kaplan’s column and will now seek you out as a source of challenging journalism.

Natasha Radic
Paris, France

Just who is this self-appointed judge, Paul Jeser, who has personally decided who should be in charge of The Jewish Journal (advertorial, July 1)? Apparently, it is someone with a lot of audacity, as well as enough cash to buy half-a-page worth of The Jewish Journal.

As for you, Mr. Eshman, I feel privileged to have the opportunity each week to be the recipient of your brilliant editorials. I have made a collection of some of them. Framed on my kitchen wall is my favorite motto, penned by you Nov. 10, 2006 (“Size Matters”):

“The mission of Jews is not just to make more Jews, not just to beat back anti-Semitism, not even to save Israel from its enemies or from itself. Those are all projects we undertake in order to fulfill our real mission, our purpose as Jews. That purpose is to improve the world.”

How fortunate I feel to have access to your inspired articles, and how grateful that you are in charge of what has become one of the best journals in this town.

E. Ehrenreich
Torrance

Better Late Than Never

I was requested to perform a post-mortem circumcision on a 63-year-old Russian immigrant. After the circumcision in the mortuary, it occurred to me that it so sad that the deceased did not avail himself, while he was alive, to have a bris (ritual circumcision) that we usually perform with music, festivities and celebrations. May I suggest to the living to grab, while they can, the opportunity to have a live bris.

Rabbi Jacob Shechet
Los Angeles

Prager Intellectually Dishonest?

Dennis Prager must have a very low opinion of The Journal’s readers’ intelligence (“Maybe San Francisco Will Wake Jews Up,” July 8). We have come to expect, and mostly dismiss, his diatribes attributing the world’s ills to evil liberals, however he might define them, but it is disturbing when he engages in intellectual dishonesty. It has been many years ago that I read Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” but for Prager to equate Koestler’s description of a venal communist system to liberals is ludicrous! Perhaps if Mr. Prager had lived under communism in Hungary as I have, he might be a little more judicious in his oft repeated and tiresome screeds. Well, at least San Francisco can rest easy; Dennis will not likely take up residence in their fair city any time soon.

Tom Fleishman
Valley Glen

CORRECTION

In the July 15 cover story, “On the Road to Renewal, Shul Gets Multipurpose Life,” the top photo on Page 16 should have been credited to The Breed Street Shul Project.

In the same article, Ellen Sanchez was incorrectly listed at the director of Peace Over Violence. Sanchez is the director of Healthy Communities at Peace Over Violence and is heading up the Breed Street Shul Project. Patti Giggans is the executive director of Peace Over Violence.

Letters to the editor: Boyle Heights, Steve Zimmer, circumcision Read More »