Candlelighting: Week of August 12, 2011
Candlelighting: Week of August 12, 2011 Read More »
August 12, 2011
Walking into the raw reality of LA’s Skid Row
A few months ago, as I was at a coffee shop waiting for my drink to be made, I came across an article written in the Los Angeles Downtown News that caught my eye. It was about ” title=”LA’s Skid Row” target=”_blank”>LA’s Skid Row community, which I felt would be invaluable and necessary to have, especially as someone studying to become a social worker.
This past Wednesday, my dear friend ” title=”Midnight Mission” target=”_blank”>Midnight Mission is a human services organization in downtown, Los Angeles’ skid row. My friend and I parked in the lot underneath the Midnight Mission, and as we walked out of the elevator and into the main building, we found ourselves entering into a very raw reality. We walked towards the front of the building, and had to cross through the courtyard to catch up with the group. There were around fifty people, whom I’m assuming were all homeless, who were laying and sitting on the ground, seeking refuge behind the gates. It was an intense reality to face, as I looked around and saw many tired and lost faces, who were holding onto their minimal possessions. As I passed through, I did not want to stare and potentially make them feel as though they were being gawked at, and so I carried myself in a way that was calm and collected. When we passed through the gate and got to the sidewalk, we walked directly into a protest that was going on, led by an organization that was there to protest the walk. I saw a sign that said, “Take your intervention somewhere else,” which they kept yelling repeatedly. The walk has been going on for six years, and up until five months ago, the organization has come to protest every month. I had no idea what to think or what was going on. I was feeling sensory overload though, with all the intensity. There were about five police officers there to accompany the walk, and so I felt protected. Despite all the yelling, the officers kept calm as they made sure the protest didn’t get too chaotic. One of the officers caught my attention because amidst the clamor, he appeared to be very calm and deep in thought. Moments later I realized that it was Officer Joseph, whom I had read the article about in the coffee shop. I went up and introduced myself to him and told him that I was there because of the article I had read. He instantly welcomed me and let me know that he was there to answer any of my questions. I could tell off the bat that he was a kind man. With everything going on, the walk began to move forward, as the protest trailed behind us with their drums, signage and yelling.
As we walked down the street there were a couple of homeless people lying on the sidewalk. The police officers accompanying us told them that they had to move. During the day, homeless individuals are prohibited from sleeping on the sidewalk, and are arrested by the police if they are found doing so. They are only permitted to sleep on the streets between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. The idea is to keep the sidewalks clear of crime, violence and drug abuse throughout the day. ” title=”Our monthly walks ” target=”_blank”>Our monthly walks have successfully garnered the attention of federal, state, county and city legislators who are all working on various solutions for the inhumane conditions that exist in Skid Row. First and foremost is our call for public safety – all people who live Downtown, and especially Skid Row residents, deserve a crime-free, gang-free, drug-free and empowered community to call their own.” Prior to the walk, I had never heard of the CCEA. Hearing the protesters yell about how they believe that the CCEA and the police officers are corrupt really confused me. All I could do was keep my eyes and ears open, and observe what was going on all around me. What I was told by one of the officers, which I found to be interesting, was that people participating in the protest weren’t even living on skid row and had been bused in for the protest, and that the residents of skid row supported the work that the police were doing. I found it interesting that the protesters’ yelling and signage was personalized in a way that would suggest that they did live on Skid Row. Some of them looked like people that one would find living comfortably in the suburbs. I also wanted to keep an eye out for how skid row residents were responding to Officer Joseph, to see if they possibly did support the work done by the CCEA and the police.
As we proceeded down the street, I began to wonder about how many of the people living in the Skid Row population were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ). I’ve heard many times about LGBTQ youth getting kicked out of their homes because their families don’t want to accept their sexual orientation or gender expression. I read an article by the ” title=”JQ International” target=”_blank”>JQ International, that goes into different synagogues and educational establishments, to train their clergy, teachers and family members on how to prevent such circumstances within the LGBTQ Jewish community. If I had been in another family, I may have ended up living in the conditions that I was witnessing on Skid Row.
I noticed an odd looking structure, and was told that they were ATP’s, which stands for Automatic Public Toilets. They replaced all the porta-potties on skid row, which were being used for illegal activity. I was told that the ATP’s are consistently monitored and that the doors automatically open after 20 minutes. They are also self-cleaning. When I went online to find out the name of the structure, I saw a quote in an ” title=”Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority” target=”_blank”>Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Their workers join the monthly walks to conduct outreach to those living on the streets. For a moment, the man was almost willing to get into the van, but his temperament changed and he declined their help. Officer Joseph said that was the 26th time that he has tried to get him to seek shelter. We had to move forward.
Seeing the old man made me think about the beast of addiction, and how people are willing to kill themselves over it. I have known several young people, who had every opportunity in the world, overdose on heroine. They knew that death was always around the corner, but it didn’t matter. They were in such pain that they didn’t want to stop doing the very thing they felt was the only solution for escaping their pain. Officer Joseph said that there are many young people living on skid row that come from very prominent and wealthy families. I’ve known a few people from the Jewish community that have ended up on skid row. Addiction discriminates against no one. I have been to way too many funerals at ” title=”Central City Association Treasure of Los Angeles Award” target=”_blank”>Central City Association Treasure of Los Angeles Award. He said, “In law enforcement, we do not put on our badges to win awards. The real reward is being able to make positive changes where we serve.” He said that he felt there were others who deserved the honor more than him, that rarely get recognized for their work in the Skid Row community. He put out a list of amazing people that worked for organizations like ” title=”Midnight Mission” target=”_blank”>Midnight Mission, ” title=”Skid Row Housing Trust” target=”_blank”>Skid Row Housing Trust, and many others. He even thanked someone he referred to as “the unknown man” who had given up a chance for Officer Joseph to house him, so that an elderly man could be housed. He said, “You touched me brother. I have never forgotten you.” While watching Officer Joseph interact within the Skid Row community, I felt that I was witnessing unconditional love. It was very touching and I hope to have that same kind of presence and influence as I engage within the world.
On the last few blocks of the walk, we passed by where all the gangs congregate. There must have been over a hundred people hanging around in the area. Officer Joseph had me walk with him as he pointed out specific gangs that he recognized, and told me the nicknames of their different members, such as Mousey… They were standing around a park that was closed, but after 9pm the gates open and the gangs take over. You can only be a gang member to enter. They were there to mostly sell drugs. I learned that there was a team effort going on between the men and women in the same gangs, when it came to how they sold the drugs. The men looked out and the women hid the drugs inside of their bodies. They also hid weapons in their bodies. While we were passing through, I saw an old woman scurrying across the street. She must have been over 70 years old. Officer Joseph said that he has tried multiple times to get her into housing but she refuses to go. It was very upsetting to see, especially with the awareness that women are sexually assaulted all the time. Men are also sexually assaulted.
After we turned the corner we once again saw the Midnight Mission, which is where the walk both started and ended. I thanked the woman from the CCEA, Officer Joseph and the other police officers, and tried to walk away quickly since I could see that the protest was getting all rallied up. Once again, Walking into the raw reality of LA’s Skid Row Read More »
A hesped (eulogy) for my mother: Torah and art a synthesis of worlds
My mother (hk”m) died last week. She was a well know artist, committed observant Jew, a deep thinker, and a humble supportive mother. We are all dying, but to live a life that is dignified, creative, and that brings much insight and light to the world is the goal -and this my mother truly did. I offer, a link to some of her more recent large Biblical and Midrashic oil paintings: www.janetshafner.com , and a link to her obituary: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/theday/obituary.aspx?n=janet-shafner&pid=152849006&fhid=4346 . Below is the eulogy I gave for her, one among many that were given.
Eulogy for my mother
My mother made each of us feel and appreciate our uniqueness, our talents and strengths. She helped us to understand that we had something to give to the world, that no one else did, something great. This came through her unconditional love and lack of judgementalism, which enabled her to know each of our strengths and weaknesses, to appreciate and love us as the magnificent individuals even we ourselves did not always know we were. And from her each of us learned to do this with others, to give without judgment, to help without expectation of return, as my father said, to be good people, which is what she wanted from us.
But more than that, she gave us the message that the world was important, deep, mysterious, and was ours for the taking because we were her children. “The world is your oyster” she used to say.
She thought much about life and death, art and human expression, man and god, love and values, about the things that mattered. Life was precious in her eyes, to be cherished. When asked by her art students how she could raise four children, have a devoted marriage, find time to teach and paint, she said “you have to be a pig for life”. What she taught, she taught to everyone who knew her, by being who she was and by imparting her unique vision that we must take life by the horns yet with the deepest humility, practicality and lack of self-importance.
“You have to be lucky” she often said. And she was. Lucky to have a relationship with her spouse, my father, that was the admiration of all who know them, that taught us by example. Lucky to have talent and the modesty to make it real and genuine, not gimmicky or contrived.
She realized we have little control over life and death, prosperity and loss, but we are obligated, honored, to utilize and to appreciate all we are given. When asked if she regretted not becoming a more famous artist, more people not knowing her work well, she said no. I have had it all. “And my children were my greatest creations”.
Mom was a so rare synergy of the sublime and the practical. Like God, she created profound creations, taught wisdom, and shed light, but also fed us, clothed us, comforted us and loved us. She taught us, by example to see the big picture, to comment on the world, and yet, though I never learned it, to balance a checkbook and to make a list. She was the rare Renaissance woman who was not about herself but about using what God gave her to inspire the world and to love her family.
She would often quote Freud to me, “One has to have fulfilling work and a fulfilling love relationship.” Together with my father she taught us to cherish that which is truly valuable and real not superficial or self-aggrandizing. She told us recently that she had been going out with someone before my father who was a good dresser but kept looking at himself in the mirror, she said she knew my father was the right person because among other things he was himself, not really caring about his superficial look, but about deeper things. My mother saw this because this was her mida, her characteristic also; to be oneself, to be real.
She schlepped us to school, to lessons, to camps. She made us soggy tuna sandwiches, did our laundry almost before it was dirty, and cleaned up after us. An inspired artist and yet a disciplined and devoted mother. Cooking giant sedarim, yom tov meals, hosting guests she often did not know who were visiting the community, her chesed was expansive. As my father said about her shiva, it’s the family gathering she would not have to cook for. Her last list, which she made before entering the hospital, incredibly enough said: 1. make obituary, 2.go over will, 3. book hotel for September art show opening in New York. She also made a list for our dear father. It said among other things: check rust on the car. From the sublime to the practical. All in service of her God given talents, the deeper things in our world and her family.
She did not see conflict in the worlds that she had her feet in, though many would have. Art, religion, family, ideas. To her and my father, it was clear that the great thoughts and ideas, no matter their source, were of ultimate meaning and could contain holiness. And indeed we live in a world badly in need of her teaching.
She was inspired by Torah when it was deep and relevant to the profundity of the human condition. Torah for her could not be made less profound that it ought to be. She opened up my religious mind in new ways. For a while I took her biblical art work, her genre for the last 20 years generally for granted, which is easy when you grow up thinking that to be a mother means to be an artist of the highest order. But one day I realized while looking at one of these paintings that it transformed and deepened my understanding of a midrash which I knew and in turn the biblical story that the painting drew on.
I began teaching torah through her art and those I taught realized this was a new and unique way to finding chidush, new insights in the ancient torah that were really there but as yet unrevealed.
When I would tell her how transformative a particular painting was, how powerful, she would shrug her shoulders. She was humble and the consummate artist who left much of interpretation beyond the surface to the viewer and critic. There were times in fact that I found midrashim expressed in her paintings that she did not know. Or radical ideas and commentaries on our world, transformative statements, I would say to her, “this painting is such a strong social commentary, radical, edgy,” but she again would just shrug.
Like her life she communicated the sublime, the truly profound with almost self effacing humility at times and an eye to the grounded and the real and the things that truly matter in life. And that approach is what made her deep messages so relevant.
She was for all of us her children, grand children and extended family, truly, “emi morati” our mother our teacher. Great but there for us in the moment. About everything, from the very very big to the everyday.
Today with her gone our universe is emptier, less vibrant, less deep, less integrated. It is our job to take all she gave us and continue her work of widening and deepening, of provoking and inspiring, of questioning and illuminating, of challenging and supporting each other, of serving and loving.
Tiheh nishmata tirurah bitzrurat hachayim. May her soul, the soul of our mother and teacher, Yihudit the daughter of Chayim Yisrael and Sochia be bound up in the bonds of eternal life and may her name, her work, her insight, her love and her instruction continue to be a blessing to us, to her people and to our world. Amen.
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Parenting a Child with Special Needs
I have always liked monkeys. As a child, my “lovey” wasn’t a bear or a doll – it was a sock monkey I named “Judy” after the chimpanzee in my favorite TV show, “Daktari”, which was a short-lived television series in the late 1960s about a veterinarian who ran an animal study center in Africa and tried to protect the wild animals from nasty poachers and other bad guys. When we go to the zoo, I always insist on a visit to the chimpanzee enclosure, and love to watch them play and swing around.
So with that said, it isn’t too surprising that I wanted to see the latest Planet of the Apes movie, even if the performance capture special effects were supposedly more complex than the plot. Movieweb.com sums up the plot as” …an origin story in the truest sense of the term. Set in present day San Francisco, the film is a reality-based cautionary tale, a science fiction/science fact blend, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.”
But from my perspective, the movie had a lot to say about the challenges of raising a child (okay, in this case a chimp) with special needs as well as caregiving for an elderly parent. The main character played by James Franco is a biomedical researcher raising an orphaned chimp from infancy and is also taking care of his aging Dad while at the same time trying to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease (talk about your sandwich generation).
There are a few key scenes that really resonated for me as a parent of a teen with developmental disabilities. One was when young Caesar, the super smart alpha chimp, is looking out of his attic window at the neighborhood kids riding their bikes and having fun, and he stares out at them with such a look of longing and desire. Caesar sneaks out to have some fun too, and is nearly clubbed to death by a nasty neighborhood dad. At another point in the plot, Caesar is trying to figure out his identity with his adopted human family—is he an animal, a pet or a human? Caesar poignantly signs, “ What is Caesar?”
People often ask me what Danny thinks about having disabilities, but due to his limited speech abilities, plus his obsessing on certain subjects, which is currently the “SuperFriends” cartoon boxed set with the “Legion of Doom”, I don’t really know what he thinks about it. Every now and again, however, I do see that same sense of longing and desire to be part of something that he can’t join in. Sure hope he doesn’t start a revolution about it.
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U.S. threatens to cut off Gaza aid
The U.S. State Department threatened to withdraw more than $100 million in aid to Gaza if Hamas leaders do not end demands to audit American charities working there.
The withdrawal, if enacted, would affect spending in Gaza on health care, agriculture and water infrastructure.
The State Department message, sent Thursday and reported by The New York Times, came after Hamas suspended operations of the International Medical Corps on Sunday for refusing to submit to an audit conducted by Hamas.
Hamas has increased surveillance over nongovernmental organizations for months now, causing rising tension. In June, Hamas demanded that groups allow its officials to audit their finances. United States policy, however, forbids direct contact between NGOs and groups labeled as terrorist by the State Department, as Hamas is, and would lead to an end to humanitarian aid.
In July, the Norweigan goverment sent Hamas a letter saying that if Hamas conducted an on-site audit, charities “might suspend their operations, which will affect significant parts of Gaza’s population.” It also said that Norway would hold Hamas responsible for aid withdrawal.
Taher al-Nounou, a spokesman for the Hamas goverment, rejected both warnings, saying: “These organizations do not recognize and do not want to recognize the Palestinian law. We do not kneel down to any threat. Any organization that wants to operate in the Palestinian territories must respect the laws.”
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Linaclotide is Safe and Effective for Chronic Constipation
Chronic constipation affects about one in six people in the U.S. and is a problem that primary care doctors hear about very frequently. Symptoms include infrequent bowel movements, hard stools, straining, abdominal bloating and discomfort, and a sense of incomplete evacuation. It’s not a dangerous problem, but it causes plenty of misery for lots of people. Though doctors have a few remedies for chronic constipation (which I’ll list at the end of this post) they are only temporarily and modestly effective.
This week’s New England Journal of Medicine publishes the ” target=”_blank”>informative slideshow about constipation.
Learn more:
” target=”_blank”>Experimental Drug May Treat Chronic Constipation (WebMD article)
” target=”_blank”>Two Randomized Trials of Linaclotide for Chronic Constipation (New England Journal of Medicine article. Summary available without subscription.)
Important legal mumbo jumbo:
Anything you read on the web should be used to supplement, not replace, your doctor’s advice. Anything that I write is no exception. I’m a doctor, but I’m not your doctor.
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America’s Pogrom
It was tense conversation. The editor at NPR (clearly Jewish) was defending the reporting about violence in Brooklyn. Twenty years ago black mobs had taken to the streets after a car accident that took the life of a black child. Jews huddled in their homes in fear. Cars were torched, Jews beaten, Norman Rosenbaum, a Jewish student from Australia lay dead, killed by the mob. Police were held back by an incompetent mayor. The media whose job was to report the facts were creating a fantasy, claiming, “there are conflicts between blacks and Jews. Tensions are high as ethnic groups clash.” I told the editor she had the story wrong. There were no attacks by Jews, it was a one way battle. Finally in exasperation I yelled at her, “Jews are dying and you are lying.”
Things were not much better with the so called Jewish establishment. That week the ADL was busy issuing a press release about skinheads in Idaho. The American Jewish Congress and the Reform movement praised the mayor and even asked for a commission to be set up explore discrimination against blacks. Abe Rothenthal in a New York Times column a few weeks afterwards was one of the lone voices to speak honestly. He described the Jewish leadership’s timid response.
“Their usually ferocious faxes were either silent or blurped out diplomatically balanced condolences to all concerned.”
None of the organized leadership had the courage to label incident what it really was, America’s first Pogrom.
What drove the impotence of the Jewish establishment? Why was the media so gung-ho in transforming the story into one that reflected their mindset? Why did the press give a pass then, (and continues today) to Al Sharpton who walked to the streets of Crown Heights inciting hatred against Jews.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg wrote afterwards in the Jerusalem Report that the Jewish leadership did not react since “Chassidic blood was flowing.” Imagine for a moment if mobs of angry blacks were attacking Jews in the upper west side. Would the ADL, AJC sit stoic, politely asking for the violence on both sides to stop and a commission be established to look into Black civil rights. Would they, as Jerome Chanes , a former leader of the JCRC in New York, just last week, two decades later, still describe the pogrom as a “riot” clinging to the argument it was not driven primarily by anti-Semitism.
Liberal Jewish leaders failed to confront their own bias. Deep down they felt that Chassidim caused the problem. “Those religious Jews look different, act different, they are too Jewish, they stick out, they are provoking anti-Semitism. If only they would fit into to America a bit better than this would have never happened.”
The media was not much different; they framed the story as they viewed the world. Ari Goldman star reporter for the New York Times, wrote a blistering article last week revealing the lies and mistruths of the Times reporting. At the time he went along, “as a loyal employee”. Now twenty years later he laments with great angst about the rewriting of the news to fit the mindset of the Times.
The real story is that the Chassidim in Crown Heights were law abiding citizens. The community leadership urged the local Jews not to take the law in to their own hands and respond with violence. Local Jews put their trust in government and waited in fear for the police to protect its citizens.
After the second night of rioting, a desperate fax was send out to Chabad rabbis across the country from the leaders of Crown Heights.
“The mayor is doing nothing, the police are not protecting us, please reach out to your elected officials and ask them to put pressure to stop the violence.”
I called my local congressman, the White House and others. Across the country my associates did the same. Apparently this national uproar prompted the White House to contact the Governor of New York telling him “if you do not do something we will send in troops”. That night the police returned to Crown Heights, and the pogrom ended.
A month later I was in Brooklyn, there was cop on every corner. I asked one policeman “how do you feel about what happened.” He painfully told me, “we are the most embarrassed police force in the world, for two days they held us back and would not let us do our job.”
It’s not just the police that need to do a mea culpa. The leaders of major Jewish organizations that pride themselves on fighting bigotry and anti-Semitism need to do some soul searching and ask themselves about their own bias they refused to confront. Why, as Jews in Crown Heights huddled in their homes, why didn’t they have the courage to speak out strongly and call it what it really was, America’s first, and hopefully only Pogrom.
Rabbi David Eliezrie is a Chabad rabbi in Yorba Linda California. His email is Rabbi@ocjewish.com
Clinton urges world cut economic ties with Syria
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that Syria would be better off without Assad, and called on nations that buy oil or sell arms to Syria to cut those ties.
“We urge those countries still buying Syrian oil or gas, those countries still sending Assad weapons, those countries whose political and economic support give him comfort in his brutality, to get on the right side of history,” she said.
Syria’s oil industry, with which the Assad has close links, generates most of the state’s hard currency from crude output of 380,000 barrels per day.
While Syria exports crude oil, its refinery capacity is not sufficient to meet domestic demand for fuel. Trading sources said Swiss oil traders Vitol and Trafigura agreed to supply state firm Sytrol with 60,000 tons of gasoline this week.
Read more at Haaretz.com.
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Israel-Hollywood ‘Confidential’: The Secret Life of Arnon Milchan
A new book exposes juicy details about Hollywood tycoon Arnon Milchan, who has produced as prolific a list of hit movies as could be expected of any major studio: Pretty Woman, JFK, Free Willy, A Time to Kill, L.A. Confidential, City of Angels, Fight Club, Unfaithful and Mr. and Mrs. Smith are among the 110 credits I counted on imdb.com (Read the list; it’s impressive).
But before he became one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, he was an Israeli intelligence operative, leading a double life as an arms dealer who, according to the book, “Confidential: The Life of Secret Agent Turned Hollywood Tycoon Arnon Milchan” established front companies and secret bank accounts to funnel nuclear arms parts purchases to Israel.
In an excerpt published on The Daily Beast, authors Meir Doron and Joseph Gelman recount Milchan’s introduction to the Israeli intelligence world when he was in his mid 20s.
As Milchan grew [his late father’s fertilizer] business, he had come to the attention of up-and-coming politician Shimon Peres, who introduced Milchan to Benjamin Blumberg, nicknamed Israel’s “prince of silence,” the head of LAKAM (a Hebrew acronym for the Science Liaison Bureau). LAKAM’s very existence was unknown to the United States at the time.
Milchan’s recruitment in the 60’s was gradual. “It was almost a glamorous thing to be involved,” he acknowledged in a March 5, 2000 60 Minutes interview. “Everybody looked to me as a James Bond.”
According to the New York Times’ Michael Cieply, Milchan’s ties to the arms industry has long been an open secret in Hollywood: Milchan had “tantalized Hollywood with his dual identity as a producer of popular movies and a businessman tied to the arms industry,” Cieply wrote. But his work as an Israeli intelligence operative, whom Fox News described as “one of the most important secret agents that Israeli intelligence had ever fielded,” is the book’s main revelation.
According to the book, Milchan became vital to intelligence operations mainly for orchestrating weapons transactions that raked in “hundreds of millions of dollars in commissions that in fact would fund LAKAM and Mossad activities.”
It was May 1985 when Milchan’s ties to the arms business first became public. A Newsweek reporter called Milchan at his Paris apartment after Richard Kelly Smyth, the president of a California-based Israeli intelligence front company, had been indicted for shipping nuclear bomb detonators to one of Milchan’s Tel Aviv companies.
Milchan’s company had pushed him hard for the krytrons and knew perfectly what they were for—even though it was illegal to export them from the U.S. without a U.S. State Department munitions license. Milchan’s Heli Trading Ltd. had ordered 14 shipments totaling 810 krytrons from 1979-82. Now U.S. Customs and the FBI had moved in and the entire Milco operation was in jeopardy. Milchan feared that a politically ambitious and publicity-hungry U.S. prosecutor would come hunting for him, he told us.
After a short conversation with the Newsweek reporter, in which Milchan pleaded ignorance, he booked the first available flight to Tel Aviv. Within hours, TV crews were camped in front of his penthouse and the phone was ringing off the hook.
There was one call he could not avoid—from his mother, Shoshanna. “Everyone is calling my son an arms dealer,” she said, bursting into tears. “It’s embarrassing.”
Arnon was devastated.
“Mother, it’s not like I’m instigating wars in third-world countries and shipping them guns,” he told her. “I’m doing this to help our country.”
The book has also caused a stir for its celebrity gossip tidbits. One bit has Milchan on-the-record (he interviewed with the authors but did not officially “authorize” their account), talking about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s budding romance during the filming of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” – when, as some may recall, Pitt was still married to Jennifer Aniston. According to the book, Aniston kicked Pitt out of the house and Milchan offered Pitt a room at his Malibu mansion.
One of the book’s more scandalous items is a part about Milchan closing down a Tel Aviv nightclub to impress a woman. For this exclusive, private party, Milchan booked one of Israel’s “up-and-coming rock bands, the Lions.”
The bass player for the band was a penniless, unknown, long-haired hippy, who later in life would become a multi-billion-dollar media tycoon in the United States and one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party: Haim Saban[.]
At the end of the performance, rather than invite the band to mingle with partygoers, Milchan banished them to the kitchen, which Saban has never forgotten. He told the authors: “We could only peek through the kitchen doors like lowly servants. We then went up and finished our second set and were escorted immediately from the club through the back door. That’s the way it was in those days, uppity Ashkenazim here, lowly Sephardim there. That’s how I met Arnon Milchan for the first time.”
Milchan, of course, remembers things quite differently. He claims Saban was trying to seduce the beautiful French woman he had been courting that night.
“[S]uddenly I hear behind my back a conversation in French. I turn around and I see Haim Saban, the bass player, chitchatting in French with Brigitte from the stage. Some kind of connection was made and I don’t understand a word of French, and she’s talking back to him and he seems to be charming her – the person I’m dancing with! Basically, he was hitting on her from the stage. So after the set I sent them to the kitchen. That was the farthest place from Brigitte that I could think of. If Haim Saban hadn’t hit on her, he would have stayed with all the ‘Ashkenazim.’ It’s that simple.”
The book goes from party scenes and Hollywood sets to Iran, the former Soviet Union and even South African apartheid, revealing the exhilarating if not divided life of an international powerbroker. Milchan’s gift for seamlessly skirting the bounds between entertainment and warfare as if all of his life played out on a movie set is perhaps his greatest talent. It is a wonder it was real.
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Intuitive eating, the diet that works!
When we come into this world we know when we are hungry and when we are full. Try to get a baby to eat when it is not hungry or be a few minutes late for feeding and notice the baby’s behavior. We come into this world in touch with our appetite. We are intuitive eaters by nature, but some lose that ability at a very young age.
Perhaps there are unnoticeable everyday occurrences that take us from our natural ability to eat intuitively. Here are some to consider:
As an infant, every cry or discontentment may be met with a bottle or pacifier. Mothers put something in the baby’s mouth to distract the baby from whatever was displeasing it. Maybe it was hunger, maybe not. But both mother and child have found something to stop the pain.
As the child gets older he/she is promised a lollipop if they do not cry when they get a shot. The child stares at the lollipop and thinks so hard about that sweet treat that they can ignore the pain of the shot. Once more it is reinforced that we will be rewarded if we stuff down the pain. Is it any wonder that later in life we use sugar to sooth ourselves?
As the child matures it may be taught to eat everything on their plate. They learn not to pay attention to their appetite and eat everything. They may even be promised a dessert if they finish their plate. To make the situation worse they now add the ice cream onto the full contents of the stomach.
Food may be used to reward a job well done. “You’ll get an ice cream cone after you finish your homework.” So you think about the dessert reward while you finish the mundane history essay. Later in life the child may eat mindlessly while working on a different task.
Maybe when a child becomes ill, the caretaker will make it a point to buy all his/her favorite foods. They have all our attention, love and care associated with food. Some start to associate the parental bonding with food. Later in life when a person feels lonely or needs some attention, love or care, they may unconsciously reach for food.
When puberty begins the body starts changing in so many ways. A healthy adolescent can gain anywhere from 20-50 lbs. Most of this gain is due to her body developing and preparing her to grow taller. The weight usually precedes the growth spurts. This is normal, but most adolescents and parents do not acknowledge this fact. When the adolescent starts to gain weight they focus on the number on the scale and diets. It is reported that 50% of girls ages 12-14 say they are unhappy because they “feel fat” and 45% of elementary age children report wanting to be thinner.
The teenager then gets on the merry-go-round of yo-yo dieting. Forty to sixty percent of High School girls in the US are dieting on any given day. There is now research that tells us that cyclic binging and food deprivation (i.e. yo-yo dieting) may produce alterations in the brain that can cause bingeing behavior.
For some people yo-yo dieting may last a life time. Thirty-five percent of people who go on a diet will progress to an eating disorder. Eighty-six percent of people with eating disorders report that the onset of the disorder started by the age of 20. Thirty-three percent of these people started their eating disorders between the ages of 11 to 15 years old.
Here are some eating disorder behaviors that you may notice in an adolescent:
- Comments about feeling fat
- Avoids eating with the family
- Snacking all day
- Must exercise to burn off calories
- Constantly thinking about food, weight or their body size
- Eliminating whole food groups from their diet
- Not eating
- Eating a lot but not gaining weight
- Going to the bathroom during or after meals
- Suddenly loses weight
- Loss of monthly period
- Eating when emotional
Intuitive eating requires the ability to be in touch with your appetite and body. It is important that a child deals with feelings as they occur. By stuffing the feeling down they are disconnecting from their self. They may start to confuse emotions surfacing with being hungry. Intuitive eating will guide your child throughout their life making it easy to maintain their ideal weight easily, naturally and permanently.
Rebecca Cooper is a California licensed therapist, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist, and the author of Diets Don’t Work®. www.DietsDontWork.org. She the founder of Rebecca’s House Eating Disorders Treatment Program™. Intuitive eating, the diet that works! Read More »