About
Nicole Behnam, co-founder of Beyond the Interview, is a journalist with more than 10 years of experience.
Nicole challenges her subjects and uses her personality to bond with them. Reporting is different in the digital age. This isn’t 60 minutes. Now, people can be real. Nicole’s not just interested in what you have to say, but how you feel, where you started, and what you’ve learned along the way.
It’s common for reporters to sit back and rely on the old rules of journalism, but Nicole sees it differently. She helps people be brutally honest about subjects they normally would feel uncomfortable talking about.
With curiosity, sarcasm, and wit, she brings common insecurities to the surface, including her own. As an interviewer, she has found that her interviewees are more candid when they aren’t sitting across someone in a pantsuit who challenges them with laser-beam focus and an air of superiority.
Nicole’s writing has been featured in The Hollywood Reporter, Los Angeles Business Journal, WestsideToday, Jewish Journal, and The Huffington Post, among other outlets. Nicole graduated from the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California as a Public Relations Major.
Jewish Vocational Service Supports Gov. Brown’s Signing of Jobs Bill
On Thursday, Oct. 7, Gov. Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 734, prioritizing vocational training programs over direct employment services, which includes how to make a resume and job interviewing skills.
Jewish Vocational Service Los Angeles, an organization that focuses on helping people seeking jobs, has come out in support of Brown’s decision and the legislation,
“It’s good public policy to get training programs on the street,” said Adine Forman, government affairs and special projects director at JVSLA.
The bill, which will go into effect in 2012, doesn’t affect JSVLA – the group simply has been speaking out in support of the bill. Rather, the legislation dictates how local workforce investment boards (WIBs) use their federal funding, requiring them to devote at least 30-percent to job training programs by 2016. Currently, WIBs spend an average of 20-percent of federal dollars on job training.
According to Marc Lifsher of the Los Angeles Times, opposition included California State Association of Counties, Los Angeles County, the Urban Counties Caucus and the Regional Council of Rural Counties – on the basis that acquiring skills such as “resume writing, counseling, Internet searching” offer a chance for immediate employment, whereas vocational training takes months.
“It makes more sense to figure out based on local demand what makes sense,” said Jennifer Mitchell, policy director of the California Workforce Assocation, which represents the local workforce investment boards. “Training is great—let’s have more money for training absolutely—but I think is the wrong approach. This should have gone through more vetting.”
Forman of JVSLA agreed that providing direct employment services is important – JSVLA, in fact, offers such services via partnerships with local organizations and institutions – but she said that given the current economic climate, providing the unemployed with training – such as solar panel installation and how to use Microsoft Excel – would be more beneficial. For instance, Los Angeles is getting a football stadium, and the currently unemployed, if trained correctly, could be put to work on the stadium, she said.
Sen. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) authored the bill.
In Sept., JVSLA sent a letter to Governor Brown, asking him to support it. The letter read, “Laid off workers need training to be competitive for the jobs of the future – in health care, in the green economy, in manufacturing and in all sectors.”
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The Yoga of Yom Kippur
Dear Friends
It has been amazing year. Thank you for allowing me to journey with you, and I bless you with an incredible year ahead.
The summer has been busy with the world yoga conference in Portugal, the launch of the Jewish Yoga Network in the USA (we had a great first seminar in LA), I’ve completed a new yoga teaching certificate from the College of Purna Yoga (alignment-based, Iyengar-style) and recently a filmed a new video (opposite. The beard has since gone…).
Should my sukkah have a debt ceiling?
Each Sukkot we read in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, that there “is a time to tear down, and a time to build up.” For my sukkah it was time for both.
Last year the legs of my sukkah were bowed and its roof supports looked flimsy. This year I wanted to rebuild my Jewish infrastructure, maybe even expand. But in a year of tight budgets, both personal and national, in a year when even the U.S. Congress had finances as shaky as any sukkah, how should I proceed?
Given the polarizing national debate on fiscal responsibility, I was concerned. Would my fiscal approach to sukkah repair cause it to lean to the left? The right? Or, overwhelmed, would I just sit in my sukkah, go with the Bachmann flow and, like my Yiddish-speaking grandmother, drink “a nice glass tea?”
As a practical guideline, the Talmud provides the requirements: the handbreadths, cubits and crossbeams, and that the roof covering, the schach, should provide more shade than allow sun.
What we don’t get is cost analysis and debt ceilings. Where could I turn for economic advice on how to rebuild my holiday infrastructure?
As the psalm says, “I lift up my eyes to the hills.” Capitol Hill, that is.
For example, President Obama in his recent “jobs” speech before Congress said that “We can put people to work rebuilding America. Everyone here knows we have badly decaying roads and bridges all over the country.”
Obama called for a plan that would “put people to work right now fixing roofs and windows …” And to assist “responsible homeowners,” he added, “we’re going to work with federal housing agencies to help more people refinance their mortgages at interest rates that are now near 4 percent.”
Inspired by the president’s words, I thought, “I have badly decaying stuff, too—my sukkah—with a roof that needs fixing right now. Good-bye sagging schach. And with all that low-interest refi green, I might even add enough room for a few more guests.”
But eyeing my credit card, I wondered: Isn’t borrowing against the house how we got into trouble the last time? Maybe I should look to the other side of the sukkah, so to speak, for a more conservative idea.
Not that the Republicans or tea partiers had presented a schach reduction bill, but House Speaker John Boehner did have a different approach to infrastructure and putting Americans back to work.
“Private-sector job creators of all sizes have been pummeled by decisions made in Washington,” said Boehner, an Ohio Republican, in response to Obama’s jobs speech. “They’ve been slammed by uncertainty from the constant threat of new taxes, out-of-control spending and unnecessary regulation from a government that is always micromanaging, meddling and manipulating.”
Oh yeah, I had been slammed by uncertainty, too. I certainly could build a better sukkah without any meddling. And who needs rabbinic supervision for any of this stuff? It’s just too expensive!
So I was going strictly private sector—no more approved prefab sukkahs or out-of-control holiday spending. But upon reconsideration, maybe just a smidge of supervision might not be so bad, I thought. Who would decide if the etrog was fit to use in my sukkah?
Confused, I needed to talk to someone about both the spiritual and design sides of my plan. I needed a rabbi and an architect, so I called both: Rabbi Alan Lurie of Rye, N.Y.
Lurie is a modern-sounding rabbi with private smicha from a beit din, or rabbinical court, as well as a licensed architect who studied at the Chicago Institute of Technology. He is the managing director of the real estate firm Grubb & Ellis.
In the introduction to his book “Five Minutes on Mondays: Finding Unexpected Purpose, Peace, and Fulfillment at Work,” Lurie wrote, “Uncertainty can, in fact, be a great gift because it can cause us to rethink our established, fixed way of seeing things.” Thus, I thought, he could advise me on my own sukkah uncertainty.
“Certainly I wouldn’t go into debt. I don’t think the Shulchan Aruch would suggest that,” Lurie advised, crushing my expansionary dreams in a fiscally conservative way.
“We all don’t need so much. The country is going through a tikkun, a major correction. We need to readjust,” he said. “I know families who have playrooms bigger than our house, and they are still not happy.”
Moving the debate back in time from America’s founding fathers to a group of fathers much older, Lurie reminded me that the sukkah is supposed to be “a humble structure” and that size was not important.
“To build it just to impress someone is a ‘chet’ [a sin],” he reminded.
“And what about spending for repairs?” I asked.
“A rickety structure is kind of a lovely way to celebrate,” the rabbi responded, quieting my appetite for costly infrastructure repair, though he did point out that my “sukkah needed to be safe.”
“It shouldn’t fall on someone,” he said, sanctioning necessary repairs as the president had proposed.
So I would be “building up” after all, just in a scaled-down sort of way. By compromising, I would soon be on my way to a season of sukkah recovery.
Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles. Contact him at {encode=”edmojace@gmail.com” title=”edmojace@gmail.com”}.
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Quartet to meet Sunday
The Quartet of entities guiding the Middle East peace process will meet over the weekend.
Representatives of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations will meet Sunday in Brussels.
The meeting comes as the Obama administration is endeavoring to head of a crisis set off by the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition at the United Nations.
The bid is still under consideration by the U.N. Security Council, and the United States has pledged to veto it should it obtain a majority, but such a veto could further inflame diplomatic tensions.
The Quartet is urging the sides to resume talks without preconditions and has set a timeline for the end of 2012.
The Palestinians insist on Israel freezing settlements before resuming talks; Israel is ready to talk, but has reservations about the deadline.
Meanhile, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president appealed Thursday to the 47-member Council of Europe to recognize Palestinian statehood.
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Appropriators warn UNESCO on ‘Palestine’
The U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee that controls foreign funding warned UNESCO in a letter that it risks a funding cutoff if it gives the Palestinians statehood status.
“Any recognition of Palestine as a Member State would not only jeopardize the hope for a resumption of direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, but would endanger the United States’ contribution to UNESCO,” says the letter being sent Friday to Irina Bokova, the director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
The letter was signed by Reps. Kay Granger (R-Texas), and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), respectively the chairwoman and ranking member of the Foreign Operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, as well as every other member.
The letter, initiated by Rep. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.), cites existing U.S. law against funding any body that recognizes the Palestine Liberation Organization as having statehood status.
UNESCO’s board this week agreed to allow the full body to vote on whether to recognize “Palestine,” drawing criticism from Israel, the United States and a number of pro-Israel groups.
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Making Amends to My Boyfriend on Yom Kippur
Guest blogger and my dear sister, Jenna Kagel has written a letter to her boyfriend to make amends for Yom Kippur. She has allowed me to repost it here.
Miguel,
I’m sorry that every time you watch a boxing match on TV, I feign a terrible headache that necessitates your assistance.
I’m sorry that every time your non-Jewish afro grows beyond reasonable limits, I demand that you urgently get to the barber shop for a military haircut.
I’m sorry that I buy you clothes that say polo playing aristocrat, when I know you prefer the worn out vintage professor look.
I’m sorry that I continually cook ultra spicy Mexican delights for dinner that give you heartburn for the next three days.
I’m sorry that my vegetarianism prevents us from enjoying the delectable meats that has made your country internationally notorious.
I’m sorry I am lactose intolerant, which means that neither one of us can ever enjoy lapping up an ice cream treat – your favorite food.
I’m sorry that I don’t like your girl friends because they hang on to your every word and glance, which translates into me frowning upon all interactions with people you work with.
I’m sorry that I get emotional when I drink because I drink often and usually while I’m in your company.
I’m sorry that I laughed at you when I discovered that for two weeks you had been using bath gel as a body lotion because you actually thought it was a body lotion.
I’m sorry that I automatically get mad when you show up for dinner late, when I know it’s actually not your fault and it’s really the non-existent bus system in the city.
I’m sorry I never read the book you published, which you dedicated to me.
I’m sorry I have never really read anything you wrote because it seems laboriously taxing just by looking at it.
I’m sorry for making fun of your over-gesticulations because I remember finding that to be endearing when we first met three years ago.
I’m sorry that your name is not Jewish enough for my family and that they re-named you Manny Nunnstein for a year and half, which made you wildly angry even though you never said anything and that there are still distant relatives that call you Manny.
And lastly, I’m sorry that you’re not Jewish. Because if you were, you would have so much more patience and understanding with my kvetching and my chutzpa, and my mishpocha would finally shut up about it already!
Jenna Kagel is a writer and English teacher living in Argentina. She can be reached at JennaKagel@gmail.com
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Five Tips for an Easy and Safe Fast
The Yom Kippur fast begins at sundown today and goes for 25 hours. In Los Angeles the start time is 6:13 pm. The fast ends at 7:06 pm Saturday.
The Yom Kippur fast is no Hollywood diet. There’s no cayenne or green drink, not even maple syrup. No food, no water—nothing. Of course, don’t fast if you or your physician thinks it will endanger your health.
Your fast should be a time to focus on prayer and personal reflection. It should not endanger you, or make you so miserable that you can’t experience the physical and spiritual power of the day.
Here’s five tips to help you to a tsom kal, or easy fast:
1. Drink plenty of water.
Start now, if you haven’t already. The hardest part of fasting is dehydration. Drink plenty of fluids throughout the rest of today.
2. Avoid coffee, sugar, fatty and spicy foods. And junk food.
Keep these out of your system before beginning the fast, as they will increase your need for water tomorrow. Junk foods won’t give you the sustainable nutrition you need—not for Yom Kippur, not ever.
3. Eat normal meals full of complex carbs and healthy foods.
Here’s a trick your rabbi may not tell you: oatmeal. A bowl of whole grain cereal between now and sundown will give you a good base of healthy energy for tomorrow. Don’t try to eat for two days or two people—it will increase your thirst and discomfort.
4. Sleep well.
You need will power to maintain a 25 hour fast, and lack of sleep breaks down the will. After services tonight, get rest. What are you going to do anyway, go out?
5. Don’t rush your final meal.
Give yourself time to eat a healthy, normal meal. Don’t reach for the saltshaker. Have two glasses of water and cut down on the wine. Just before the fast, have another glass of water, floss and brush, and enjoy the day.
6. Avert your gaze.
I almost forgot another important point: Keep all this food out of your line of vision. We eat first with our eyes, then with our noses, finally with our mouths. You can avoid a lot of temptation by going through your home today and putting away any food that’s on the counters, hiding the cookbooks, and turning over the food magazines. Think of this month’s Saveur as a mirror in a house of mourning—cover it up.
Now, what about how to break the fast?
Start with something light—I like a piece of toast or bread with fresh avocado, olive oil and salt. Then again, I always like a piece of toast with avocado, olive oil and salt.
If you don’t gorge when Yom Kippur ends, the day’s spiritual high seems to linger.
Many years ago, when I worked in the Moroccan Jewish neighborhood of Musrara in Jerusalem, I noticed that the men would gather at the end of the fast and do a shot of Boukha, or fig brandy.
Call me a fundamentalist, but I’ve been doing that ever since. But that’s just me…
Tsom kal…..
Let me know your fasting tips in the comments section below….
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Calif. Messianic pastor’s home vandalized with swastika
The home of a Messianic pastor in California was vandalized with a swastika.
A swastika and the word “Jew” were painted on the Hemet, Calif., home that Pastor Michael Rose shares with his wife and children, The Press-Enterprise newspaper reported.
Police are investigating the vandalism as a hate crime. Rose, pastor at the Light of Love Chapel, discovered the vandalism on Thursday morning.
Self-identified Messianic Jews embrace Christian theology and adopt some Jewish practices. Some are of Jewish ancestry, though many are not. Jewish groups have objected to the movement’s use of terms such as “Messianic Judaism” as misleading.
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