Volume 26, Number 22
Volume 26, Number 22 Read More »
July 26, 2011
Gratitude
Susan Orleans gets it almost exactly right when she writes in her New Yorker blog Free Range about the simple, concrete pleasure of waking up in the morning and feeding the chickens.
She lives out in the country now and has a few chickens. Every morning she lugs them a bucket of water and grain.
“Even at their messiest and most burdensome these chicken chores please me,” she writes. “It’s a concrete need—water!—to which I can respond specifically—here you go, birds, water!—and the cycle is complete… It is a relief sometimes to take on a task and see it through and know it to be wholly sufficient.”
That’s all true—I just returned from two weeks of vacation in Europe, and I found myself surprised that one thing I missed about home was my morning pseudo-farm chores. Feed the chickens. Feed the goats. Water the vegetables.
Why do I say “pseudo-farm?” Because on Monday I also had to pick up three empty PBR cans someone tossed into the front yard artichoke patch. Oh, and a used blue thong—not the kind you wear on your foot. If I dared fantasize for a second that I was living on a real farm in the real country, THAT certainly keeps sets me straight.
The one other big pleasure I get from my morning animal chores is this—the one Susan Orleans neglected to mention—is this gratitude. When I toss in the Timothy grass and fill up the laying pellets, the chickens and goats are visibly relieved. (I don’t have to lug water. Susan, do yourself a favor and get an extra garden hose and a self-regulating water bucket). The animals have been up with the sun, agitating the dirt, raising the volume on their clucks and mehs, until finally they see me, the big lumbering hay-carrying creature, calling their names, followed by that damn black dog. And they grow even more excited. They race toward me. They press around me. Thank GOD you’re here. Thank YOU.
Once I drop the food, they race up to it and chomp away, the goats butting each other over who goes first, the chickens according to their prearranged caste system. They all calm down. I read all this as gratitude, as a big THANK YOU.
A lot of what we do for others during the day goes un-thanked. That’s fine. That’s the way society works. The street sweeper who cleans Victoria goes unthanked—he’s finished before I’m awake. Ditto the gardeners who mow my lawn and leave before I’m home from work, the dishwasher in the restaurant where I have lunch—we all do tasks for love or money and receive a fraction of the gratitude due. But if feeling gratitude helps make us happy, so does, to some degree, receiving it. So how great is it to start each morning making seven chickens, two dogs and two goats the happiest they’ve been in hours.
Two mornings ago I walked out and received my gratitude in the form of a picture postcard moment. Ollie, it turns out, has been serving as roost for three of the new birds.
Thanks, Ollie.
Freddi Sue Finegood, Community Leader, 60
Freddi Sue Finegood, Jewish community leader and businesswoman who called both Los Angeles and New York home, died peacefully at her home in New York on July 25 after a long illness. She was 60.
Finegood was born July 27, 1950, and raised in Los Angeles under the Hollywood sign; she graduated from Hollywood High School and UCLA. After an early career as a fundraiser in the Jewish community and then with the family furniture business, she moved to New York City, where she started a business as an art consultant. She later co-launched a juvenile bedding company called Bananafish and served on the board of the Juvenile Products Manufacturing Association.
Finegood was a steadfast patron of the arts. She loved contemporary and fine art, theater and jazz in particular. She was a true product of her family’s extraordinary and generous philanthropic leadership. She was active in The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, including serving on the board of the Furniture division.
Ultimately, she joined the national Young Women’s Leadership cabinet of the UJA. In New York, her philanthropy continued on the Federation distribution committee, and then the board of DOROT. She became president of DOROT three years ago, actively steering DOROT while battling her illness; she was recently re-elected to another term as president.
Finegood is survived by her husband, Ethan Horwitz; daughters Emily and Jessica; sons Matt and Jason; granddaughter Liba Shifra; and mother Rae Finegood. She was predeceased by her brother, Danny.
With her warmth and generosity of spirit, Finegood had a very large number of devoted friends, all of whom join her family in the terrible sense of loss. She will be truly missed.
The funeral will be at 11 a.m. July 28 in New York City at Plaza Jewish Community Chapel, 630 Amsterdam Ave. In lieu of flowers, donations in Finegold’s memory can be made to DOROT, 171 W. 85th St., New York, N.Y., 10024 or at dorotusa.org, or to the Institute for Myeloma and Bone Cancer Research, 9201 Sunset Blvd., Suite 300, West Hollywood, CA, 90069.
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Amy Winehouse, British singer, 27
Amy Winehouse, the talented but troubled chanteuse, was found dead in her north London flat on July 23. She was 27.
According to a statement made by London’s Metropolitan police, the cause of death is “unexplained.”
The results of an autopsy were inconclusive, and a full toxicology report will not be available for two to four weeks. There is widespread speculation that Winehouse died from a drug overdose or alcohol poisoning. British tabloids, though suspect in their veracity, claim she spent her final days on a drinking and drug binge, reportedly buying heavy narcotics such as ecstasy and cocaine shortly before her death.
For those who followed Winehouse in the press, her very public decline augured disaster. Her entry into the international pop scene in 2007 began with the popular single “Rehab,” in which she flouted the idea of seeking treatment: “They tried to make me go to rehab/I said, ‘No, no, no.’ ” Over the years, she was ensnared by drug arrests, public paroxysms, hospitalizations and other bizarre behaviors. Just last month, Winehouse was forced to cancel the remainder of her European tour after bumbling her way through a performance in Belgrade, Serbia. Videos taken by concert-goers revealed a sozzled songstress, tripping around the stage, casting off her shoes and barely able to belt a lyric.
The crowning moment of Winehouse’s short-lived career came in 2008 with the release of her breakout album “Back to Black.” The album included the notorious single “Rehab,” which became a kind of anthem for bad celebrity behavior. Winehouse went on to win five Grammys that year, including Best New Artist.
Soulful and irreverent, admired as much for the self-styled obsidian-haired beehive that became her trademark as for her retro-soul sound, Winehouse was a singular star. She proved incredibly resistant to the music industry machine, retaining her distinct style as a lyricist and singer, never becoming a mass-marketed music product churned out by a record label.
Her most popular singles, “Rehab” and “You Know I’m No Good,” are both deeply personal ballads that hint at the demons with which Winehouse wrestled. She crooned about love and liquor, and her lyrics often include admonitions to the men in her life suggestive of her surrender to those personal struggles.
Winehouse was born Sept. 14, 1983, to a Jewish family that claims several jazz musicians in its lineage, according to The Edmonton Journal. Her mother, Janis, is a pharmacist, and her father, Mitch, is a former cab driver who at 59 launched a career as a musician. Mitch Winehouse had been in New York to perform a concert of his recently released jazz album at the famous Blue Note club when he received the news of his daughter’s death. “This isn’t real. I’m completely devastated,” he told The Daily Mirror. In addition to her parents, Winehouse is survived by a brother, Alex.
Winehouse’s sadly prophetic lyrics offered an image of a messy life, one held hostage by an illness Winehouse could not bring herself to treat. Months shy of her 28th birthday, Winehouse’s youth and emotional instability had not permitted the full realization of her potential. She joins a cohort of legendary musicians — including Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin — who also reached their often drug-fueled ends at 27.
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Double down
If we measure time using the weekly Torah portions, then we can safely say, as we finish the last parasha in the book of Bamidbar, that we are approaching the end of the yearly Torah reading cycle; that means the holiday season is not far away.
Inevitably, during the holiday season, the most common questions I will hear are: “Rabbi, why must we keep two days of Yom Tov? In Israel they only keep one day of Yom Tov [excluding Rosh Hashanah], shouldn’t we show our unity with Israel and only keep one day also? Why can’t the rabbis convene a rabbinical court and remove this ancient practice? Shouldn’t there be one common calendar for the Diaspora and Israel?”
This subject has become a hot-button issue in many communities, and people are clamoring for change. How did we get into this situation?
The Sanhedrin, the rabbinic courts in Jerusalem, protected their right to be the sole authority to proclaim the start of the new month, Rosh Chodesh. After Rosh Chodesh was declared in Jerusalem, bonfires were lit as a signal to the neighboring Jewish communities that a new month had begun. Some time later, hostile people started lighting bonfires on random days to confuse the Jews, and the rabbis switched from bonfires to messengers to spread the word. Since the arrival of the messengers could not be guaranteed in time, a second day was instituted in the distant communities to guarantee that the sanctity of the festival was not compromised. In other words, the second day of Yom Tov was a result of a breakdown in communications. If they had the benefit of the communications we have today, such as e-mail and cell phones, the second day of Yom Tov would not have been introduced. In fact, the talmudic scholars considered eliminating the second day of Yom Tov as soon as they became proficient in establishing the new month. However, they decided not to, in case the knowledge of fixing the calendar would be forgotten; in which case they would be back to square one, using eyewitnesses.
With this understanding that the second day of Yom Tov was a practical measure established to deal with an emergency situation, how can we explain the fact that Yom Tov Sheini spread to every corner of the Jewish world and has been observed for 2,000 years?
Rabbi Yitzchak Zev Yodler, a 19th century scholar, explained that as soon as the second day of Yom Tov became a reality outside of Israel, it introduced and created a new status for the land of Israel and a new relationship with the Diaspora. The second festival day of the Diaspora is a permanent reminder of the spiritual superiority of Eretz Yisrael in Jewish life. The establishment of the modern state of Israel has not eliminated the concept of galut (exile), just because we are free to settle in Israel, should we so desire. Everything about the Diaspora bespeaks spiritual exile: the minority status of the Jewish people in every country other than Israel; the minority status of Judaism in the world outside Israel; the challenge of the economic system to Shabbat and Yom Tov; and the pressures to conform to the culture of the surrounding society.
The state of Israel can afford to observe only one day of Yom Tov, since the entire apparatus of the state backs the national character of the holiday.
It’s also interesting to note that not all people find the second day of Yom Tov a burden. Some people find it so enjoyable they would like to have a third day. In addition, think about the great contribution the second seder has made to Jewish family life and the creation of Yizkor and the amazing climax that Simchat Torah has become to the High Holy Days. Doubling up Simchat Torah with Shemini Atzeret, like they do in Israel, doesn’t compare to what we do in the Diaspora. Yom Tov Sheini has made it possible to double the joy of Yom Tov, and we shouldn’t be surprised if soon in Israel they begin advocating for a second day of Yom Tov.
Rabbi Marc Mandel is a rabbi at Beth Jacob Congregation, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Beverly Hills, and is a member of the faculty of the Academy of Jewish Religion, California.
Gogol, Chekhov … Sholem Aleichem — Russia’s other great author
Despite a long life of distinguished writing, it’s not without irony that Sholem Aleichem today is probably known to most people as the guy who wrote the story behind “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Although he did not write the classic musical, Sholem (or Shalom) Aleichem was indeed the progenitor of Tevye the Dairyman (as well as Menachem Mendl and other Yiddish folk heroes), but he was also the creator of a new literature, a worldly man of profound insight and biting wit, frequently compared to Gogol and Chekhov.
In the documentary “Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness,” writer-director Joseph Dorman has produced a three-dimensional picture of the man, who in his own life and writing represented the transition of Jewish identity from the shtetl to its later variants in Russia, America and Israel.
He was born Shalom Rabinovitz in a Ukrainian shtetl in 1859, the son of a prosperous merchant. When he died in New York in 1916, some 200,000 people attended the funeral, the largest procession of its kind in the city’s history.
Sholem Aleichem died before newsreels became common, so Dorman tells his story through black-and-white photos of the author and his large family, augmented by pictures of shtetl life, linked by generally lively commentators.
Among the latter are Bel Kauffmann, the writer’s 100-year-old granddaughter; Aaron Lansky, founder of the Yiddish Book Center; scholars Hillel Halkin and Ruth Wisse; and “Fiddler” lyricist Sheldon Harnick.
Critic Dan Miron observes that in all his works, Sholem Aleichem “explores one question: How to adapt to modernity and yet not lose the continuity of civilization that was Jewish. Clearly, his answers given 100 years ago cannot be the answers given today. But what we can learn from him is how to negotiate an answer. Or even how to ask the question.”
At the time when Sholem Aleichem was born, some 90 percent of Jews spoke Yiddish, but to the intelligentsia, the language was strictly lower class and not fit for literature, or even a newspaper.
However, Yiddish was still malleable, one critic comparing it to English in the time of Shakespeare, and ripe for a writer who could give it literary form. Sholem Aleichem began his career writing in Russian and Hebrew, but then chose to write in Yiddish instead, and has come to personify the richness of his native tongue.
It was also a time when Haskalah, the Jewish enlightenment, was spreading in Russia and was advocated by Sholem Aleichem’s father, who gave his son both a traditional Jewish and secular education.
Later, living in Kiev, Sholem Aleichem is photographed as an urban dandy and becomes a stockbroker, with ultimately disastrous results.
But all the time he was writing constantly, usually standing up, his reputation spread, and in America he was dubbed “the Jewish Mark Twain,” even though his Yiddish plays were at first thoroughly panned in New York.
Throughout, Sholem Aleichem maintained an ambivalent attitude toward the United States, fearing that the relatively good life and materialism in the golden country would eventually spell the end of Jewish peoplehood.
Writer-director Dorman is a veteran independent filmmaker whose documentaries are frequently seen on PBS, CBS, Discovery Channel and CNN. He is a winner of television’s Peabody Award, a two-time Emmy nominee, and “Sholem Aleichem” won the Jewish Experience Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival earlier this month.
In a phone call from New York, Dorman described himself as having been an “ignoramus” on Sholem Aleichem’s works when he started the film project 10 years ago. As he got more deeply into the material, he became increasingly fascinated with the writer’s descriptions of the transition of Jewish identity from one age, and one country, to another.
The son of an Orthodox physician and psychoanalyst, Dorman said that working on the film sharpened his awareness of both the richness and changing nature of Jewish identity.
“Reading Sholem Aleichem raised a lot of questions for me, which only led to more questions,” Dorman said. “The most important thing is to keep asking questions — that’s very Jewish, isn’t it?”
“Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness” opens Aug. 5 at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles and Laemmle’s Town Center in Encino. Weekend matines are available Aug. 6 and 7 at Laemmle’s Claremont 5 and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. For more on the film, visit this article at www.sholemaleichemthemovie.com.
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A diplomatic partnership
When Jacob Dayan — along with his wife, Galit, and their three children — arrived in Los Angeles in October 2007 to take up his post as Israel’s consul general for the southwestern United States, L.A. got two activist diplomats for the price of one.
With the approach of the end of his four-year term this week, as they looked to returning to their home on the western outskirts of Jerusalem, Jacob (listed as “Yaakov” on his birth certificate and otherwise known as “Yaki” to everyone) and Galit Dayan spoke in separate interviews of their experiences here.
“I’m going back home stronger than when I came, because I know that we Israelis are not alone,” Yaki said, sitting in his office with a splendid northern view of the city and the Hollywood Hills.
It is reassuring and flattering to Angelenos to hear such a remark, as Yaki is occasionally asked why a rising and ambitious foreign service professional, previously in the thick of high-level negotiations with Palestinians, Jordanians and Syrians, and with service in Athens and Washington during a 13-year career, would have asked to be assigned to Los Angeles.
Granted, we have pleasant weather and sunny beaches, but nobody has ever described L.A. as the diplomatic center of the world.
His answer illustrates how much diplomacy has changed from the old image of formally dressed men redrawing boundaries and parceling out colonies behind closed doors to the current focus on influencing public opinion, using all tools of communication and persuasion.
“I can do more for Israel from Los Angeles than almost any other place,” Yaki said. “Of course, it’s the stronghold of the movie and television industries, but, in general, I found the autonomy and flexibility here to launch any project that will benefit Israel and make it happen.”
He arrived with a plan to address three primary communities: Jewish, Israeli and non-Jewish, with emphasis on the growing Latino population.
Besides the quiet day-by-day work of reaching out to each of these audiences, the Dayans and the consulate’s academic, cultural and public-relations staff organized a number of memorable attention-grabbing projects, many later adopted by other Israeli consulates in the United States and throughout the world.
One of the first was to raise Israel’s blue-and-white flag outside the Wilshire Boulevard high-rise that houses the consulate, something that had never been done in the history of the consulate since its opening in 1948.
After considerable red tape and strong opposition by the building’s owner, who worried about security, Yaki’s good friend Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cleared the way.
From left: Consul General Jacob Dayan, Kobe Bryant and Ambassador Michael Oren. Photo courtesy of Jacob Dayan
Typical of Yaki’s style, what might have been a quiet little ceremony turned into a major public occasion. Included were the mayor himself, 3,000 participants, an African-American choir, a Latino band, 60 rabbis and lay people blowing shofars, an Israeli army honor guard, and more.
The flag raising was, thus, reported widely in the Israeli, world and local media and was warmly applauded by Jewish residents. “This was an event where the Jewish community rallied, not to react to a crisis but to take part in a proud and joyous event,” Yaki said.
In another project, Yaki organized and accompanied a group of 18 rabbis of all denominations to Israel on a mission, dubbed Am Echad (One People). “One day, I hope to see as many Israeli rabbis from different denominations sit down and talk together,” he said.
On the political front, Yaki quickly established personal ties with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as well as with Villaraigosa. The connection paid off in 2010, when Israel faced international criticism after the Gaza flotilla was halted by the Israeli navy, resulting in the death of nine Turkish flotilla members.
Yaki and his staff boosted Israel’s damage control by organizing the largest pro-Israel rally in the world at the time, with Schwarzenegger front and center. The rally was widely reported and “made a huge impression in Israel, which now felt that it was not standing alone,” Dayan said.
In a collaboration between the Dayan couple and with cultural attaché Lior Sasson as producer, the consulate staged an Independence Day celebration last May with an exuberant 90-minute show, featuring Los Angeles’ multiethnic talents.
Not every media mention of the consul general has been an unalloyed joy. Early last year, Dayan found himself at the center of a brief flap between Washington and Jerusalem, following a conversation he had with Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s then-chief of staff.
Allegedly, Yaki let it be known that Emanuel had told him the administration was fed up with both sides in the Middle East peace process, and that if progress was not made soon, the White House would turn to other priorities.
Washington and Jerusalem quickly denounced the report as “distorted.” Although Yaki did not comment publicly, Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, spoke up on his behalf, describing Yaki as “one of Israel’s most experienced and respected diplomats.”
Israeli community
Almost from the beginning of the modern state, Israeli governments have wrestled with the unwelcome reality that considerable numbers of their citizens — native born or naturalized — have chosen to leave Israel and live in the Diaspora.
In the first few decades, expatriates were belittled as weaklings, cowards and yordim, those who “go down,” in contrast to olim, who make aliyah and “go up.”
Such denigration did nothing to change the situation, and Yaki has been among those trying to reconnect the expats more with their homeland as well as with the larger resident Jewish community.
While he said he hopes that a fair proportion of the expats, and their children, will return to live in Israel, his main concern is that they not lose their Jewish identity entirely.
“The first generation to migrate here maintains its close connections to Israel,” he said. “The second generation begins to drift away, and the third generation doesn’t know Israel anymore.”
Though America’s economy is not as strong as it once was and unemployment is high, the country’s lure is still potent. Yaki quotes Congressman Brad Sherman as telling him, “Encino is a greater danger to Israel than Iran,” referring to the draw of the American suburban lifestyle.
Such projections may be overly pessimistic, but Yaki is convinced that third-generation Israelis here will be lost without strong Jewish roots entwined with the general Jewish community.
Estimates on the number of Israeli expats in the L.A. metropolitan area, including their children, fluctuate widely, but the consulate uses 100,000 as a working figure.
If such is the case, one out of every five or six Jews in the area is Israeli. However, at this point, Israelis still form a largely self-contained community, with its own shops, newspapers, doctors, lawyers and attitudes.
Except for a few veteran leaders, mostly early migrants, most adult Israelis have few day-to-day ties with the larger Jewish community. Whether this will change, as Yaki hopes, time will tell. He credits his wife with establishing concrete projects to maintain the ties of second- and third-generation expats with Israel (see accompanying story).
Traditionally, the Israeli and Jewish communities came together in large numbers for the annual Israel Independence Day Festival, held in recent years at Woodley Park in Van Nuys.
The popular family celebration had been organized by local Israelis, with Yoram Gutman at the helm for the last 15 years, but the annual event was canceled last spring because, according to Gutman, he lost the financial backing from The Jewish Federation and, worse, was faced with a $43,000 bill for the 2010 event from the Los Angeles municipality for police and fire protection services, which had in the past been rendered for free.
Gutman said festival organizers had always provided a booth for the consulate, without fee, so when the city presented its tab for the first time, Gutman asked Yaki if the latter could talk to his friend Villaraigosa about voiding the bill.
The Dayan family poses for its close-up. From left: Itay, Galit, Jacob (Yaki), Daphne and Tal. Photo by Peter Halmagyi
Yaki said he did request the mayor’s help, but given the city’s own budget woes, was turned down. The festival managed to go on in 2010, but this year neither Gutman nor Yaki attempted to reverse the city’s financial demands.
The consul general said he has, for years, been advocating for a more inclusive Independence Day festival, co-organized with The Jewish Federation and all other major Jewish organizations locally, as well as the Israeli community and incorporating the consulate’s own traditional reception.
He even proposed that the celebration could become a regional event, joined by delegations and entertainment from other southwestern states.
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Israeli, Jewish groups team to help famine-plagued Somalia
An Israeli aid group and Canadian Jewish federations are teaming to help ease the famine in Somalia.
IsrAID is partnering with the Canadian Jewish organizations UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and UIA Canada to bring food and water to suffering populations in Africa. The relief efforts are targeting Somalians who are crossing the border into Ethiopia and Kenya in order to escape the famine.
IsrAID is communicating with the United Nations and government officials to determine distribution logistics and the types of food that are needed.
The United Nations has declared a state of famine in several regions of Somalia; some expect the entire Somali South to be similarly declared in two months.
Droughts, rising food prices, conflict and other factors and have left approximately 11 million in need of assistance in Somalia and neighboring countries. Large numbers of Somalians—approximately 2,000 a day—are fleeing to Kenya seeking food and aid.
IsrAID also has funded refugee camps in Kenya to house approximately 40,000.
The UJA Foundation of Greater Toronto said it is providing $25,000 to the Somali relief effort. The foundation has been a strong supporter of IsrAID, raising at least $2 million to provide relief in areas of natural disaster such as Japan, Haiti and New Orleans.
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Photographs spill “The Secret Life of Swimmers” onto Culver City streets
For anyone who has been to Downtown Culver City lately, the large-scale photos of local swimmers hanging from the lampposts are almost impossible to miss.
“The Secret Life of Swimmers” is a project by Judy Starkman, a Jewish photographer who frequents the Culver City Plunge the city’s only public pool. Starkman spent a year shooting portraits of some of her fellow swimmers, and asked each of them to pose for her twice—once poolside in a swimsuit, a second time somewhere else in everyday clothing.
Starkman documented the process over the course of the year on her blog, and the final portraits went up earlier this month along Culver Boulevard.
Like many swimmers, Starkman clearly feels at home and very comfortable in the water. But in following her subjects to their home turfs, Starkman had to get a bit further out of her comfort zone.
Such was the case when Starkman followed Barry Shore to his Orthodox synagogue.
Shore, Starkman writes on her blog, was paralyzed by a rare disorder that causes the body’s immune system to attack part of the nervous system. Shore was able to recover from his paralysis through swimming.
Starkman writes:
Barry arrives at the pool walking with the aid of walker or a walking stick. He still has trouble moving, his nerves did not make a full recovery, but he is walking and not in a wheelchair. As he tells me all the time, “beats a wheelchair, kiddo!” He has a full time health worker who has to wait three hours for him at the pool because Barry swims three hours a day, six days a week. Of course, he takes the Sabbath off. He swims rain or shine, wind, or snow, as the case was last week. He’s now up to three miles a day. He swims mainly on his back with the aid of two floatation devices on his withered legs, but he is swimming. He listens to religious tapes and never stops moving. Swimming has transformed his life.
Starkman’s blog entry about Shore includes her account of meeting the rabbi of his synagogue. “[W]hen I met the Rabbi,” Starkman writes, “and I went to shake his hand, he skillfully retracted it and with some floundering told me, ‘I..I don’t touch women.’”
The complete series can be found here.
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