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Jewish Journal

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October 12, 2011

Food Forward, gleaning the neighborhoods

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Food, Is Featured?, Leisure, News /

On a recent weekend morning, sunlight lit up a band of eager workers in jeans and T-shirts who had ventured into a backyard at a home in Northridge. They were there to pick oranges.

No, these were not the usual laborers who toil daily in the region’s orchards. These were San Fernando Valley suburbanites willing to volunteer a few hours of hard work gleaning the ripe fruit of heavily laden trees so that it could be transported to food banks. While some of the workers set up ladders and then climbed up to begin picking, others used long wooden rods attached to baskets to gather the bright orbs, dropping the bounty into cardboard boxes or stuffing it into canvas bags slung across their bodies.

All of the volunteers came on behalf of Food Forward, a local nonprofit that Southern California homeowners can call to get their trees harvested for free, with the provision that all the fruit is then donated by Food Forward to hunger relief organizations. It’s a win-win proposition.

On this October morning, it took 10 volunteers just two hours to pick approximately 1,200 pounds of oranges from four trees — and that’s a small pick.

Since Food Forward got its start in early 2009, its troops have harvested approximately 575,000 pounds of fruit from more than 300 sites.

That’s “2.3 million servings of fruit,” Rick Nahmias, the organization’s founder and executive director, said proudly. “And of course every week that goes up.”

Food Forward donates nearly 100 percent of the fruit to more than 20 food pantries and agencies throughout Los Angeles and Ventura counties, the first of which was SOVA.

Currently, the group organizes about 15 to 20 picks each month — most often in Northridge, Granada Hills, Chatsworth, Reseda and other areas of the San Fernando Valley. Before the region was developed into today’s suburban sprawl, it was nearly all orchards, and thousands of fruit trees in residents’ yards still yield an overabundance of citrus year round, thanks to the warm climate.

In this harvest season of Sukkot, Food Forward’s generous yet utilitarian mission seems more relevant than ever. Calling itself a “gleaning” organization, it recalls the Bible’s instructions to farmers to leave the corners of their fields unharvested, so that the food might be picked by the less fortunate.

There are two sets of volunteer/donors in the Food Forward equation: the property owners and the pickers. If a property owner has a fruit tree and can’t consume all the fruit that the tree bears, he can go onto the Food Forward Web site and register a tree. Food Forward responds within 48 to 72 hours, providing a volunteer visit to determine whether the fruit is ripe enough for picking. If it is, Food Forward sets up a date and time for a team to come for the harvesting.

Picks usually take place on weekend mornings, or in the evenings during the week. After the work is done, a Food Forward leader will drive the harvested fruit to the pantry or pantries, or those agencies will send their drivers to pick it up. 

In late September, Van Nuys resident Kelly Lichter donated the fruit of her orange tree for a weekday evening pick.

“It was very important for me to donate,” Lichter said. “I don’t like to waste things.”

Founder Nahmias, 46, grew up in Los Angeles, and, after graduating from New York University with a double major in film and religious studies, he worked as a researcher and writer for Arianna Huffington. While working for Huffington, he read Eric Schlosser’s book “Fast Food Nation,” which reminded him of the documentary “Harvest of Shame,” which he had seen while in college. The film focuses on the plight of agricultural workers and sparked Nahmias’ interest in food justice, particularly migrant workers.

Meanwhile, Nahmias had written a screenplay that garnered some notice in the industry, and his path to a film career seemed all but destined, even as he also interned for director Mike Nichols, famous for films such as “The Graduate” and “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

However, when he took a cooking class in Napa, Calif., he began thinking about where food comes from and started cooking more thoughtfully, leaving his job with Huffington and enrolling in the Epicurean School of Culinary Arts in West Hollywood.

While in cooking school, he also took photographs of California’s migrant laborers, traveling from Calexico to Sacramento to document their struggles.

Between 2002 and 2008, Nahmias built his own freelance photography company, shooting marketing materials for Cedars-Sinai, American Cancer Society and other organizations. He also made another art-and-advocacy series of photographs, “Golden Gates of Grace: Prayers of the Disinherited,” exploring the religious practices of the marginalized; the work is currently on view at the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, in downtown Los Angeles.

The idea for Food Forward came to Nahmias in January 2009 as he was walking his dog around his neighborhood in Valley Glen, on a route he’d traveled countless times before. At this point, however, as his dog was aging, the walks were getting slower.

“I started looking up and saw things I never saw before,” he said, counting them off —  tangerine trees, walnuts, pomegranates — and suddenly he “realized how much of that is just going to the squirrels.”

Troubled by the waste, he called a friend who lived nearby and owned a tangerine tree. He asked her if he could harvest the fruit off her tree — she readily agreed — but before starting, he did a quick Google search for the nearest food pantry.

Food Forward volunteers, with the organization’s managing director Meg Glasser, front row, left.

It turned out that the closest one was SOVA, in Van Nuys. So Nahmias posted an ad on Craigslist, inviting volunteers to help him harvest his friend’s tree. Of the four who responded, one showed up. Together, they harvested 85 pounds of tangerines and gave it all to SOVA.

Nahmias continued harvesting in his neighborhood, each time dropping off the bounty, usually about 100 pounds, to SOVA. Then came a breakthrough: In February, Fred Summers, director of operations at SOVA, received a phone call from a property owner in Chatsworth who had a three-acre orchard with 300 orange trees and was looking for a way to donate the fruit to SOVA.

“It was extremely fortuitous,” Nahmias said, “and Fred made that connection” between the Chatsworth property owner and Nahmias’ recent harvesting efforts.

“Fred and I saw that property together — we were a little intimidated by the scale of the property,” Nahmias said. “We’re talking 300 trees, not all of them in great shape, but, still, 300 trees.” There was at this point no formal organization called Food Forward, just informal efforts on an irregular basis.

“But, we said, ‘Let’s go for it,’ ” Nahmias remembers.

The job required more than 50 volunteers, far more than what Nahmias had been able to pull together up until that point. Calling upon the Slow Food network — whose membership is committed to supporting good food — and Craigslist, and by posting fliers at Starbucks, they came up with enough people who wanted to help.

Nahmias’ first “big pick” — as he calls it — took place in March 2009.

“It yielded not only 6,000 pounds, but our first core of serious volunteers,” he said.

One of them was Erica Kenner, who would later become one of the organization’s six board members and a driving force behind the success of Food Forward. Working as a full-time volunteer, Kenner has forged relationships with property owners throughout the Los Angeles area.

She has a “very high and well-deserved reputation” in the food justice community, said Gary Oppenheimer, founder and executive director of AmpleHarvest.org, a New Jersey-based resource for gardeners who have excess produce and want to find pantries in need across the country.

A month after that first monumental pick, Nahmias’ organization was finally christened Food Forward, although it did not receive its own official 501(c)(3) nonprofit status until about two months ago; up until then, it was sponsored by the Los Angeles Community Garden Council.

The recipient base expanded in June 2009. After meeting with Richard Weinroth, president and CEO of MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity), which has a food bank kitchen in Pacoima and was founded by Catholic and Protestant church members, Food Forward started donating to them, as well.

“I think they have become one of our biggest donors,” Weinroth said. “I want to say they’ve given us well over 100,000 pounds since our inception.”

Given the cutbacks facing agencies like SOVA, Food Forward arrived on the scene at an opportune time.

“It’s a vast untapped natural resource,” SOVA’s Summers said. “Rick and his group have found a way to tap into it. It is a tremendous boost.”

So far this year, Food Forward has donated 58,000 pounds of fruit to SOVA. It has also donated to Project Chicken Soup, the American Diabetes Association and the Downtown Women’s Center.

“It’s crazy to think that what was a little thing I tried in a neighbor’s yard has now scaled to the point where almost two dozen agencies depend on us for fruit on a weekly basis,” Nahmias said.

For pantries to qualify as recipients, they must be able to provide refrigeration to preserve the fruit, be able to provide tax receipts to Food Forward and have a means to distribute the produce.

The operation and transportation also cost money, and these days, the Durfee Foundation and the Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund are among Food Forward’s biggest financial donors.

In October 2009, the Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund awarded Food Forward $25,000 — an unexpected gift, Nahmias said. He recalled what Evan Schlessinger, co-founder of the Jewish Venture Philanthropy Fund, said around the time of the grant: “You are the first group that is not Jewish by identification [that we are giving a grant to]. You are the first group that we are soliciting rather than soliciting us.”

MAZON, a grant-making organization that describes its work as a “Jewish response to hunger,” also recently awarded a $5,000 planning grant to Food Forward to develop a farmers market recovery program.

Food Forward’s success also may seem improbable, given its size. Nahmias works with only two paid staff members: Meg Glasser, managing director and Master Gardener, who develops partnerships with recipient agencies, and Max Kanter, the volunteer coordinator, who works hands-on with fruit pickers.

Nahmias himself didn’t take a salary until April of this year, and he is only a half-time employee while also continuing to work on his photography.

He calls David Levinson, founder of Big Sunday, his mentor, and the two have met over lunches, with Levinson giving some guidance.

Rick Nahmias, founder and exectuive director, loads boxes of harvested oranges into the Food Forward van for delivery.

“I think he’s a great guy, and I think what he’s doing with Food Forward is really cool,” Levinson said recently.

Despite all that Nahmias, who is Jewish, has done for SOVA, he says he does not see Food Forward as in any way a specifically Jewish organization.

“I think there’s absolutely a place for nonprofits that create Jewish identity, but when we’re talking about issues of feeding people and the engine that Food Forward is, and the thousands of volunteers that get involved, I want that to be something that everybody feels welcome at,” Nahmias said.

But, he said, he’s ready to welcome all who are willing to work: “We have The Jewish Federation come out and do picks with us. We embrace faith-based groups.”

Nahmias also never dreamed that one day he’d be running a nonprofit. “I have to be honest, I had absolutely no experience doing this,” he said. “You learn as you go.”

For now, however, Food Forward appears to be the only organization of its kind in Los Angeles. In Northern California, there are two gleaning organizations: Village Harvest in San Jose and Backyard Bounty, which also operates in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and the Santa Ynez Valley.

Randy Baer, a 56-year-old cinematographer from La Canada, was among the 10 volunteers on the Oct. 1 pick in Northridge. His reason for signing up? “They make it very easy to volunteer,” he said as he picked some low-hanging oranges off a tree.

To pass the time, volunteers made small talk — chatting about a wedding, movies, schools. Koa Cano, a senior at Chaminade High School, in West Hills, stood on a thick branch and swung around, grabbing oranges with both hands.

When he was back on the ground, Cano unloaded his bounty into a box that already held about 50 oranges, “This is my favorite part,” he said.

“It’s a group activity and an opportunity to meet a lot of people you wouldn’t otherwise have reason to interact with,” said Dawn Coppin, 38, who also raises funds for the Los Angeles Public Library and volunteers as a picker for Food Forward twice a month.

When they’d finished the harvest, the volunteers loaded some of the 15 boxes of oranges into the Food Forward van, a Ford decorated with pictures of orange trees and displaying the Food Forward logo — somewhat resembling the Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine. The license plate: FRTMBL1

Beyond the group’s obvious accomplishments, Nahmias also sees Food Forward as a means of building community. And in that, it has become, at least to some extent, a victim of its own success. Too many homeowners are signing up and have to go on a waiting list these days. The list now numbers 25 waiting to have their trees picked.

“I think the biggest setback right now is we are overburdened with properties,” Nahmias said. “We need more people who would become pick leaders … to get out once a month and lead a harvest.” Pick leaders must complete a brief training, including shadowing a pick leader.

At the same time, Fruit Forward is also trying to find more fruit trees to glean on the Westside, where there are far fewer trees than in the San Fernando Valley.

Nahmias said his organization’s ability to develop new programs is one of its best attributes.

“I think that’s why people were drawn to it at the beginning, and maybe still are, because it still pivots very quickly.” Among these is Can It!, created to bring in revenue that can go back into the organization. It produces jam from a portion of the harvested fruit, which is then sold online and at the Farmer’s Kitchen in Hollywood and at Clementine in Century City. Glasser is overseeing an effort to sell the jam to more bakeries, restaurants and specialty-food locations, particularly in the San Fernando Valley.

Nahmias remembers his early experiences of being up in a tree, surrounded by all the fruit, which to him meant, simply, so much potential to help people.

“It’s beautiful and maddening, because you realize you’re not going to get to it all,” he said.

“But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”

Food Forward, gleaning the neighborhoods Read More »

San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys Federation launches cultural arts program

Leave a Comment / California, Community, News /

Synagogues and Jewish community centers are among the traditional paths to connect with the Jewish community. But The Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys is taking a different approach to outreach to local Jews with the launch of its new Cultural Arts Program.

“There is a new definition of what it means to affiliate in the Jewish community now,” Federation Executive Director Jason Moss said. “People are finding their way into the Jewish community in different ways. People are feeling connected in ways that never existed 20 to 30 years ago.”

The new program started as a collaboration between Moss, Cantor Judy Sofer, who is now the Cultural Arts Program coordinator, and Stuart Miller, chairman of the Federation’s Cultural Arts Committee. They then sought more input through a larger community discussion.

Among the handful of activities already in the works for the Cultural Arts Program are plays, a youth choir, a youth string orchestra, a challah-baking club and a series of coffeehouses to highlight local musicians and artists.

The program’s public kickoff will be the Oct. 15 debut performance of “Working: The Musical” at the Federation’s headquarters in Arcadia. The musical, based on Studs Terkel’s book “Working,” explores the American workday and features music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked,” “Godspell”).

Sofer said one reason she chose “Working” was because it could have a large cast. The musical already has more than 30 participants, with more interest still brimming, she said.

“There are so many talented people out there, and now we’re able to bring them together,” Sofer said.

Although “Working” does not have a Jewish theme, Schwartz’s music gives it the tie-in the program needs.

“I wanted the show to be in a Jewish theme or that somebody who wrote it or did the music is Jewish,” Moss said, adding that he didn’t want to do the standard performance of “Fiddler on the Roof.” “I wanted to expand out beyond traditional Jewish theater.”

Community donors are supplying the funding for the Cultural Arts Program, which is overseen by the Federation’s Cultural Arts Committee. While program organizers say they have received significant contributions, they hope to find long-term sponsors.

“Finances are a concern,” Miller said. “Once we can show some concrete examples of what we’re doing and be successful there, we hope that … monetary interest will develop.”

Moss hopes the cultural arts programming will reach Jews in the area and provide a new entry point into the organized Jewish community.

“Ultimately, my hope for the programs we run is to raise awareness of this Jewish community,” Moss said, “so people are no longer asking the question, ‘There are Jews here?’ but reframing that question to be, ‘Did you hear what the Jews in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys are doing?’ ”

“Working: The Musical” will run Oct. 15 and 22 at 8 p.m.; and Oct. 16 and 23, at 2 p.m. at The Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel & Pomona Valleys, 550 S. Second Ave., Arcadia. To purchase tickets or learn about other cultural arts events, call (626) 445-0810 or visit jewishsgpv.org.

San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys Federation launches cultural arts program Read More »

Stephen S. Wise students visualize whirled peace

Leave a Comment / California, Community, News /

Blowing in the breeze, a pinwheel read, “In peace, there is no war. There is calm.” Nearby, another pinwheel read, “Kindness,” “Shalom” and “Day of Peace.”

In honor of the International Day of Peace, about 400 elementary school students from Stephen S. Wise Temple joined children around the globe on Sept. 21 wishing for “whirled peace” as part of Pinwheels for Peace, an annual international art project started by two Florida teachers in 2005.

In the project’s first year, 500,000 pinwheels were planted. Last year, more than 3.5 million pinwheels with messages of peace spun in 3,500 locations, including the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

At Stephen S. Wise, art teacher Jan Navah led the project. As students from kindergarten through sixth grade planted the pinwheels -— made of paper, a wooden stick, pins and beads — throughout the 18-acre campus, Navah explained to the students that kids all over the world, on the same day, were doing the very same thing.

“We tried to get the kids to realize this is part of a worldwide movement, that people of all different backgrounds and religions are doing this in the name of peace,” Navah said.

Marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11, students at Stephen S. Wise wrote messages about 9/11, war and peace and tolerance on one side of their pinwheels, and drew colorful patterns to express their feelings on the other side.

Tyler, a sixth-grader at Stephen S. Wise, said he was only 1 year old on 9/11, but his mother told him what happened. With that in mind, he wrote a poem on his pinwheel that called for the end of all wars.

“It was very meaningful,” he said. “The wishes go up to the sky and God hears them.”

Stephen S. Wise students visualize whirled peace Read More »

Steps from another dimension

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment, Leisure /

Choreographer Hofesh Shechter, one of the top new names in the world of dance, doesn’t create shows that deal directly with the realities of life in Israel, but his roots can’t help but emerge in his work. After studying at the Jerusalem Academy of Dance and Music, training with Israel’s leading dance company, Batsheva, and serving a fraught term in the Israeli military, Shechter relocated to London for artistic opportunities eight years ago; since then, he has become one of Britain’s most esteemed choreographers, exploring broad themes such as personal identity and conflict. His 2007 work, “In Your Rooms,” which “bears traces of Shechter’s traumatic time in the military,” according to The Guardian, earned high marks for its exploration of group dynamics versus the individual. In “Uprising,” seven men emerge from shadows to bombard viewers with furious energy, bonding and sparring, making up and falling out. And in his first full-length work, “Political Mother,” which has its United States premiere at UCLA on Oct. 19 and 20, Shechter examines tensions between the state and society as a samurai commits ritual hara-kiri, a dictator shouts guttural commands, and a Chinese puzzle of encounters spurs amusing, sad and shocking events intended to confuse our values and challenge perceptions of what is “normal.” The article below is reprinted with permission from The Telegraph.

Hofesh Shechter is unlike any other choreographer. Not only are his charged and awe-inspiring steps instantly recognizable, the 36-year-old Israeli also writes the powerful and personal music that accompanies them. And he often plays it himself, live.

It was four years ago that he gave modern dance a sublime kick up the backside. In an unprecedented piece of collaboration between prestigious London venues, his double-bill of “Uprising” and “In Your Rooms” was “fast-tracked” over just a few months from The Place (small), to the Queen Elizabeth Hall (medium) and finally to Sadler’s Wells (large).

Effortlessly hip, overflowing with energy and ideas, and darkly cinematic (not least in its use of stark lighting to “cut” instantly between performers doing different things on different parts of the stage), this felt like dance from another, thrilling dimension. And after further ventures — including a restaging of his diptych that felt as much barnstorming rock-gig as dance show, and the soul-searching all-girl piece “The Art of Not Looking Back” for 2009’s Brighton Festival — Shechter launched his first full-length work, “Political Mother,” which debuted at last year’s Brighton Festival, is now touring the world and will have its United States premiere at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Oct. 19 and 20. The piece ambitiously aims to take the frantic, fractured, existentially angst-ridden qualities of “In Your Rooms” up another gear.

“What I’m trying to do is mix more worlds in,” says Shechter. “In ‘In Your Rooms,’ I had a serious editing challenge. It’s dramatic and fragmented and takes you between different places and different times, but you’re essentially in the same world. And I thought, how interesting would it be to create an emotional tension that comes from zapping between absolutely different worlds.”

Does he mean psychological states, or celestial bodies? “Different worlds in a lot of senses!” he replies. “You will feel as if you’re being slapped around between different realities, and that excites me.”

Plunging us deeper into these mysterious parallel universes will once again be a score by Shechter himself. When I catch him and his 10-strong cast in rehearsal, they’re working to an excerpt on his laptop. Although only half-finished, it is full of his trademark percussive fury — “An insane groove!” as he puts it — yet it also sounds considerably richer than his past sonic creations, thanks to its elaborately layered washes of swirling strings.

Music is almost invariably the starting point for choreographers — and yet it is tricky to think of even one other who writes his or her own.

“It started,” Shechter says, “because most of my life, I was really interested in music. I studied piano until I was 6, and I loved recording myself. But then I went into dance, and at certain points I really missed the world of music.”

Shechter was born and raised in Jerusalem. He studied dance intensively from the age of 15, and after three years joined the celebrated Tel Aviv-based troupe Batsheva. “But then,” he says, “when I was 21, I thought, just a second — I don’t know if this is what I want to do with my life, and I left the company.”

Teaching dance in schools in order to make a living, he decided to take up the drums, and before long it occurred to him that he just might be able to fuse his two creative passions.

“Getting into choreography,” he says, “one of the more attractive things for me was that I would be able to do the music for it. I remember when my first piece, the duet “Fragments,” was first performed, my girlfriend at the time asked me, ‘Are you excited?’ And I answered: ‘I’m really excited about people seeing it — but more than that, it’s unbelievable that 500 people will sit in a theatre and will listen to my music!’ So I have to say I’m deeply excited about presenting music plus dance. It’s not a secondary thing.”

Shechter has been based in the UK since 2002, when he moved to London both to escape post-9/11 turmoil at home and to work with fellow Israeli Jasmin Vardimon. He was associate artist at The Place from 2004 to 2006, during which time he began to make a name for himself as an exciting choreographer-for-hire, and in 2008 founded his own, terrific troupe, while also finding time to whip up a cracking little piece for the opening of the second series of the British Channel 4’s teen-drama “Skins.”

Watching just 10 seconds of Shechter’s company in rehearsal — with its fluent and belligerent mixture of hunched frames, clenched fists and elaborately simian floorwork — is enough to tell you whose steps you are watching. Indeed, his movement has a clarity that his attempts to explain “Political Mother” sometimes lack. He talks, for example, about his aim to explore “how people feel inside, not experiences themselves but the emotions buried under them.”

It’s clear that he is aiming typically high.

Mark Monahan is a dance critic for The Telegraph.

Steps from another dimension Read More »

NBA lockout prompts a new motive for aliyah: Basketball

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

Call it circumstantial Zionism.

There’s been a recent uptick in North American aliyah—of basketball players.

More than a dozen North American players have become Israeli citizens and joined professional Israeli basketball teams and second division squads in the past few years.

It’s not exactly a trend but the result of Israeli league rules, the NBA lockout and the dreams of one particular team owner.

With an Israel Basketball Association rule requiring at least two Israelis on the court at all times and a limit of four non-Israeli players per team—combined with a shortage of skilled local players—Israel long has turned to foreign shores for players. The United States has been an obvious source, with its share of talented Jewish American basketball players who can become Israeli on the court by immigrating under Israel’s Law of Return while keeping dual American citizenship.

This year, Maccabi Tel Aviv signed former Duke University standout Jon Scheyer to a two-year contract, and the Chicago-born Scheyer became an Israeli with his move here in August. One of his new teammates, NBA point guard Jordan Farmar of the New Jersey Nets, signed a one-year contract with Tel Aviv in the wake of the continuing lockout. Farmar is eligible for aliyah but has yet to make a decision about immigrating.

Then there’s Jeffrey Rosen, who purchased the Maccabi Haifa team in 2007 wanting to turn it into “Israel’s team for America.”

Former Duke University basketball star Jon Scheyer, who will be playing pro ball for Maccabi Tel Aviv, at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel following his group aliyah flight, Aug. 30, 2011. Photo by Sasson Tiram

With U.S. tryouts in Florida for the past four seasons, he has sent more than 15 Jewish American players to Israel on aliyah, including this season’s Canadian guard Simon Farine, New Yorker Sylven Landesberg and former NCAA Division I guard Todd Lowenthal, who is playing for a second division team.

“For the Jewish American players, playing professional basketball in Israel is a unique way to connect to their heritage,” said Rosen, who wants to make Maccabi Haifa into a viable option for top Jewish American players.

The aliyah organization Nefesh B’Nefesh recently created a sports aliyah program to encourage athletes to move to Israel.

“Aliyah is aliyah,” even if it’s primarily for professional reasons, said Nefesh spokeswoman Yael Katsman. “Look, Scheyer was stuck because of injuries and he wanted to give it a try here. The process of aliyah is so much easier now, and Israel is better known as a solid marketplace.”

Scheyer had his initial NBA dreams dashed after an eye injury and a bout of mononucleosis.

“I was out all last year and then played in the NBA D-League, which was definitely not what I’d planned,” he told JTA. “Maccabi had been talking to me since the end of college and I thought it was a really unique opportunity.”

Certainly any basketball player wants to play in the NBA, says the former American-Israeli basketball star Tal “Mr. Basketball” Brody, who gave up his own NBA dreams 40 years ago when he played in the Maccabiah Games and decided to stay. But when circumstances prevail, Israel is considered a reasonable backup plan.

“Players of the stature of Jon Scheyer or Jordan Farmar would say that their first desire is the NBA,” says Brody, who initially played for Maccabi Tel Aviv and is now Israel’s goodwill ambassador. “Look at [former Maccabi Tel Aviv player] Anthony Parker, who’s now playing for [Cleveland] Cavaliers.”

But Brody, a native of Trenton, N.J., and an Israel Prize laureate—says the athlete aliyah trend is about the globalization of basketball.

“Anybody can play with anybody, so you have a Greek team with few Greeks, an Italian team with few Italians and Israeli teams with less Israelis,” he said.

For other players, an Israeli team may offer an opportunity not available back home.

Farine acknowledges that it was a professional decision for him to make aliyah because as a Canadian, he had less access to professional team opportunities than his American colleagues. And having an Israeli father, he can now make contact with an extensive network of relatives.

“Making a living playing basketball in Israel is better than an office job in Canada,” said Farine, who signed a two-year contract with Maccabi Haifa. “I hope to be living here and playing basketball for years to come.”

Maccabi Haifa’s most highly touted player, the 21-year-old Landesberg, is in his second year with the team and thinks of Israel as a home away from home. Landesberg, the son of a Jewish father and a mother from Trinidad, says he sees the same reaction when people find out that the 6-foot-6 guard with Trinidian features is Jewish. And now Israeli.

“They all get the same facial expression,” he says with a chuckle. “Their eyes get wide open.”

For an American Jew, playing basketball in Israel is about much more than the game, says Brody, considered Israel’s first modern sports hero.

When he first came to Israel in 1965, Maccabi Tel Aviv had never made it past the first round of the European championships. After successfully leading the U.S. team to a gold in the Maccabiah, Brody decided to give a year of his life to Maccabi Tel Aviv and help them advance past that crucial first round.

Israel won its first Euroleague championship in 1977 and has won four more since, making it to the finals 14 times in all.

“The conditions were primitive at the time,” Brody recalls of the early days. “We traveled around Israel, and I saw all that I had studied in Sunday religious school and saw people living it. I said OK, why not?

“I’ve watched the progression of Israeli basketball for the past 45 years and seen the impact on the American players that have come here,” continues Brody, who served in both the U.S. and Israeli armies. “It’s very positive. People have come to play basketball here but have wound up staying.”

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Around the Jewish World, Distinct Traditions for Sukkot

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If I have one wish for Sukkot, my favorite Jewish holiday, it’s this: no more plastic fruit. Each year, Jewish people are commanded to fulfill the mitzvah of building a sukkah — a temporary shelter in which they eat (and sometimes sleep) throughout the weeklong holiday, which this year occurs from October 12 to 19.

The Talmud instructs that one should not only build a sukkah, but one should make it beautiful as a way of honoring God. And yet, so many contemporary sukkahs rely on claustrophobia-inducing blue tarps for walls, plastic fruit as decoration and plastic dinnerware, all of which seem counter-intuitive to the holiday’s spirit of dwelling outside in the gorgeous ephemerality of autumn. Meanwhile, many Jewish organizations have begun to host “pizza in the hut” events (because who can resist a good pun?) that miss out on the opportunity to highlight Sukkot’s harvest themes and the bounty of seasonal produce available.

We can do better — and in fact, throughout history, we have. While there are halachic (Jewish law) considerations and commonalities among all sukkahs — for example, a sukkah must be built in an open space under the sky; it must be temporary; the roof (schach) must be made of plant material; there must be at least three walls — there is still ample room for interpretation and creativity. To provide a little inspiration this year, here is an international tour of beautiful, seasonal — and, in some cases, a bit wacky — sukkah decorations and foods from around the world.

America

Sukkah decorations in the U.S. tend to take their cues from the country’s other autumn harvest holiday, Thanksgiving. Indigenous crops such as gourds and pumpkins are hung from the rafters or piled onto the table. Dried corn stalks and branches with turning leaves lean against the walls or are woven throughout the schach. Paper chains are strung up like streamers, in looping arcs, and, in more recent years, some people have begun to recycle unwanted compact discs by hanging them from the ceiling like flattened disco balls. On the table, seasonal dishes from apple crisp to butternut squash kugels and acorn squash stuffed with wild rice give Sukkot fare a distinctly American flair.

Ashkenazi Europe

Sukkah decorating traditions overlapped across parts of Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Complex paper cuts featuring the ushpizin (the seven heavenly guests — Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron and David — who are said to visit sukkahs during the holiday) were common, as were small decorated birds made from eggshells and hung from the ceiling. Recipes for filled dishes such as apple strudel, stuffed cabbage and kreplach (dumplings) lent warmth to the cool fall evenings and represented the season’s harvest. In Germany, Sukkot meals often ended with lebkuchen, a cake-like honey cookie studded with fruit and nuts.

Bukhara

Traditional Bukharian sukkahs, which live on in the Bukharian communities in New York and Israel, are defined by their rich and intricate jumble of sights and scents. In “A Mosaic of Israel’s Traditions,” Esther Shkalim writes that the Bukharian sukkah is decorated with colorful silk and woven fabrics, while the floor is often covered in embroidered rugs and soft pillows in place of chairs. The entrance, she writes, is adorned with an arch of willow branches, and the ceiling hangs heavy with “giant melons, bunches of grapes, apples, pomegranates, pears and a mixture of mint, basil stems and all kinds of herbs,” lending fragrance to the air. Dishes centered around meat and rice, like the rice and ground beef-stuffed grape leaves called oshi toshi, are served to signify the holiday’s bounty.

France

As Joan Nathan writes in “Quiches, Kugels and Couscous,” in the 19th century, Jews in the Alsace region of France maintained a peculiar Sukkot custom. Their open-air huts were festively decorated with blue and yellow paper chains, rose branches and seasonal fruits like pears, apples and grapes. Most remarkably, they affixed a red onion struck through with rooster feathers to the door of their sukkah, in a colorful and unusual display of superstition. “No evil spirit in Jewish Alsatian memory has ever been able to penetrate, by day or by night, into a sukkah equipped with such a precious bulb,” wrote Daniel Stauben in 1860, in “Scenes of Jewish Life in Alsace.”

India

According to “Who Are the Jews of India” by Nathan Katz, Sukkot observance was not a part of Indian Jewish life for many centuries. Instead, they celebrated Khiricha San (“pudding holiday”) — a parallel festival centered around a corn and coconut milk-sweetened pudding that maintained Sukkot’s harvest theme. By the mid-19th century, however, they were reintroduced to the holiday and began to erect sukkahs constructed from coconut palm branches.

Italy

Historically, the walls of Italian sukkahs were adorned with elaborate paintings or engraved panels featuring images and text from the Torah. Throughout the 18th century, Italian Jews favored decorations made from intricately cut paper. Venice’s Jewish community continues to make a tavola dell’ angelo (table of the angel) for Sukkot — an elegant tablescape of pomegranates, corn and other symbols of abundance and hope. The set-up also included bollo — a sweetened yeast cake studded with dried fruit that Italians eat throughout the holiday. The name comes from the Spanish word “ball,” and attests to the heavy Sephardic influence found throughout Italian cooking.

Judeo-Spanish

Rabbi Herbert Dobrinsky, in “A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Customs,” writes that Judeo-Spanish sukkahs feature biscocho — sweet, sesame seed-covered cookie rings — hanging along with fruits from the schach. Other families bake the cookies into the shape of a Star of David.

Morocco

In “The Book of Jewish Food” Claudia Roden paints a dreamy Sukkot scene: “[In Morocco] huts were built on rooftop terraces and lined with cloth, then filled inside with rugs, mattresses covered with brocades, and silk shawls and embroidered curtains. Strings of electric bulbs lit them up.” In many Moroccan sukkahs, a beautifully decorated chair or stool was hung on the wall to represent either Elijah or the ushpizin. The table was adorned with a sumptuous feast with couscous, fava bean soup and pastilla, a phyllo-dough pie stuffed with chicken, among other delicacies.

Syria

Syrian sukkahs are typically decorated with shivat ha’minim, the seven species mentioned in the Torah: barley, wheat, dates, figs, pomegranates, olives and grapes. According to a 2006 New York Times article by Julia Moskin, on Sukkot, New York’s Syrian Jewish community favors “labor-intensive dishes… sambusak, crisp little half-moons stuffed with allspice-scented meat or tangy white cheese… mahshi, vegetables like tiny eggplants and finger-size zucchini stuffed with spiced meat and rice; and kahk [similar to biscochos], sesame-sprinkled rounds of crumbly pastry.”

Leah Koenig writes a monthly column for the Forward on food and culinary trends. Contact her at ingredients@forward.com

Around the Jewish World, Distinct Traditions for Sukkot Read More »

A Very Korean Sukkot [VIDEO + RECIPE]

Leave a Comment / Blogs, News /

Last year, just before the High Holidays, a producer from TVK24,  Korean Broadcasting emailed me asking if I knew someone whom they could interview for a series about food and tradition in Jewish culture.

Yes, I said, me.

Jisung Bahng asked if she could film me in my kitchen.  I said I had a better idea.  She could film me in my sukkah.

The perfect filming opportunity was coming up in a few weeks, when Jews celebrate the holiday of Sukkot.  We build simple huts and eat in them.

She asked if I had any photos of these huts, and I sent them along. I think she wanted to make sure she wouldn’t arrive at my home to find eight people huddled around a Bunson burner in a cardboard box.

After Jisung and I confirmed a date—the day before the actual start of the holiday, a kind of Faux-kot—I started thinking up a menu.  TK TV is aired in America, Korea and Europe.  It dawned on me I’d be representing Jews to millions of Korean speakers.  My wife Naomi, a rabbi, I knew, could ace the orals, explaining what Sukkot is on camera.  My job was to come up with a menu that didn’t embarrass us.

Truthfully, it was easy.  At Sukkot the markets are overflowing with end of summer and early fall produce.  Swing a lulav and you’ll find something good to eat. Seasonal food, fresh, great ingredients and plenty of it.  Here’s what I decided to cook:

Pumpkin Challah

Eggplant with Tahini and Date Syrup

Sugar Pumpkin with Garbanzo, Garlic, Potato and Chard

Stuffed Cabbage, Stuffed Chard and Stuffed Zucchini

Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemons and Green Olives

Salad with Fennel and Pomegranate Seeds

Salad with Fig, Walnut, Mint and Lemon

Apple and Peach Gallette

Apple and Cranberry Gallette

Apple Strudel with Pomegranates and Dates (Recipe Below)

We invited my parents, our friends the Druckers, my niece, and our friends the Adlers.  Jenna Adler’s parents are Korean, and it’s absolutely true we are happy to hang with them anytime, anywhere. But it did seem like we were trying awfully hard to show off by trotting out the one part-Korean heritage Jewish family we knew.

Jenna was up for it: she could tell her parents to catch her on Korean TV.

Many weeks after our meal, a DVD arrived in the mail.  It was our Sukkah meal, translated into Korean (with English subtitles), and produced for a Korean audience. 

The title of the food documentary series in which our episode appears is, “Living and Breathing DNA.”  Talk about Lost in Translation.

The segment begins with a wide shot of me picking vegetables for dinner, and Naomi picking pomegranates.  I wonder if Koreans are keyed in to the whole backyard local sustainable thing, or if what looks so cool to us looks like peasant life to them. Just how bad is that recession?

Watching the video a year later, two things jump out at me: For someone trying to explain the joyous nature of Sukkot, I look like a constipated undertaker.  Naomi is smiling, explaining the holiday with a relaxed cheer.

 

“Sukkot celebrates the fall harvest,” Naomi said.  “We build these booths to remind us of the time the Children of Israel wandered in desert for 40 years.  It was considered a time when the Children of Israel felt close to God.”

I look at her like I just swallowed a bug.  And when it’s my turn to speak, when Jisung asks me what’s special about Sukkot food, I mumble through my explanation of its seasonal nature, the symbolism, yada yada yada. 

Here’s the insight I contribute:  “It’s a really fun holiday,” I say. “You sit outside and eat a meal.”

Four thousand years of Jewish civilization as interpreted by Beavis.

I began to feel self conscious—never a good thing on camera.  Jisung, an earnest and charming young woman, was hanging on my every word, like the entire Korean nation would take this as they way Jews are.  Over my left shoulder, out the living room window, Goldie Horn, our Nigerian Dwarf goat, had climbed onto the chicken coop, and was watching through the bay window.  She was probably thinking, “Hey, I could do better than you.”

Plus, I notice I keep using the word “traditional. Like,  in every sentence.

“Pomegranates are traditional,” I say.

“The holiday speaks to tradition.”

“The stuffed vegetables are traditional.”

Hate all you want on Food Network, but there is something to be said for a director.

Naomi of course needed no direction.  She said exactly what I think about Sukkot, about the overarching role food plays in connecting us to our pasts, to our people, to our memory (I’m NOT going to say the T word).

“Nothing connects us more to the past than the smell of food from childhood,” she says on camera. “Every time we have a holiday it’s not just thinking about today, it’s rooting us in the past.  For every people there’s a need to know where you come from, and what keeps you rooted where you are, and that food, that tradition, those aromas, that taste, bring you back to where you come from, and it’s so important to keep the traditions alive, to remember where you came from and feel that connection.”

The show really takes off for me when the guests arrive and the food comes out.  We had plenty of bottles of wine, and the food really was good.  The cameraman made the Sukkah, lit up in the center of a dark yard, look mysterious and warm.

They interviewed our guests at the table, and between bites I noticed everyone used the T word. 

For some reason the one person they didn’t interview was Jenna.  I still haven’t figured that one out.

Maybe, for their audience, a Jewish Korean American would be too—untraditional.

Happy Sukkot.

[RECIPE]

Apple Strudel with Pomegranates and Dates

There is no better dessert for a meat meal this time of year.  Using olive oil instead of butter makes a lighter and flakier strudel. The better the apples, the better the strudel.  Buy a mix of tart and sweet apples.  Stay away from Red and Golden Delicious.  If the apples are superb and fresh, don’t peel them:  there’s flavor and color in the peel.

This recipe wants you to not follow it.  Use pears instead of apples for all or part of the fruit.  Figs instead of dates.  Brown sugar instead of honey.  Melted butter instead of olive oil, if you prefer.

12 apples, cored and diced into 1/8-1/4 inch pieces

1 lemon

1 1/2 cup walnuts

honey

olive oil

filo dough

3/4 c. sugar or raw sugar

1/2 – 1 t. ground cinnamon

1/2 c. pomegranate seeds

3/4 c. chopped fresh dates or figs

Preheat oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with bakers parchment or grease well.

In a large bowl, add apples, 1/2 c. chopped walnuts, honey and cinamon to taste.  Taste: add enough lemon juice to balance flavor.  Stir well.

Pulse remaining walnuts in a blender or food processor with sugar a dash more cinamon.

Place olive oil in a dish and get brush ready. 

Lay out filo flat, and keep covered with saran.

Take a sheet of filo, brush lightly but thoroughly (and quickly) with olive oil. Sprinkle with ground nut mixture. Top with another sheet of filo.  Repeat drill for up to 6 sheets. Spoon filling along the edge of the long side in 3 inch cylinder.  Form into perfect shape with hands.  Press ends closed.

Roll gently but not too tightly.  Place seam side down on baking sheet.  Use remaining filling to make another strudel. 

Brush tops of strudel with olive oil and sprinkle with more walnut mixture.  Bake until crispy brown and the apples inside are tender, about 40 minutes.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE:

 

 

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Chef Micah Wexler goes global, and local, at Mezze

Leave a Comment / Food, Leisure /

Chefs often speak of a magical moment during their childhood, when something they tasted — a food so new and bold that it shocked them — changed their life and sent them straight to the kitchen.  For Micah Wexler, 29, the chef at West Hollywood’s Mezze, there was no such moment, just a childhood spent in his mother’s kitchen. 

“It really had to do with all the cooking with my mom, with my grandmothers — mostly for the Jewish holidays. I think that really kind of sparked my interest,” the Los Angeles native said, relaxing at a table at Mezze on a recent afternoon. The restaurant, which opened in the spring offering a mix of innovative Mediterranean dishes along with some of Wexler’s favorite recipes and inventions, already has received positive notices from the Los Angeles Times’ notably tough critic, S. Irene Virbila.

Restaurant staff rush about, preparing the space for dinner service. Sun streams down through a huge skylight onto the potted olive trees in the middle of the elegant room. It’s a far cry from the kitchen in which Wexler spent Passovers helping prepare food for seders at his parents’ house.

With a childhood of home cooking and a local gig at Vincenti restaurant under his belt, Wexler went off to school at Cornell University and, after graduation, found himself in Europe, working at Righi La Taverna in Italy and for chef Martin Bersategui in Spain. Far from being intimidated by the foreign-ness of it, Wexler found the experience refreshing. “To be in an environment like that, where you’re really focusing on something that’s your passion, but also you’re training at the same time, is a really unique opportunity.”

Wexler’s experience in Europe landed him gigs in the kitchens of famed chef Joel Robuchon in New York and, later, Tom Colicchio at Craft Los Angeles. He has also worked locally at Melisse and Patina. The experience would prove valuable to Wexler, teaching him how to make his food stand out when he set off on his own.

“My time at Robuchon, really learning that philosophy … that’s where the simplicity in the flavors and approach comes from. The whole philosophy of Robuchon at his restaurants is, ‘If I’m giving you a tomato, it should taste like the most intense bite of tomato you’ve ever had.’ ”

Wexler brings that simplicity to Mezze and marries it to his insistence on using all local ingredients. “The thing about Mezze, to me, is it’s really a California restaurant, at the end of the day. All of our products … everything is from California — the produce, the meats, the fish.”

Although the cuisine is Mediterranean, it’s far from the standard fare. “There’s a reason why I don’t cook traditional,” Wexler said. “There are so many places in this city that cook a great Mediterranean meal … I wanted to do something different.”

One thing you’ll find at Mezze that’s not a usual staple of Mediterranean cuisine is bacon. “I break a lot of rules,” said Wexler, whose version of his grandmother’s challah is also on the menu. “I want to break rules. I’m not interested in confining myself into a box or doing what’s expected.”

Stepping out of the box includes using some odd spices to liven things up. One of Wexler’s favorites is black lime. “They take limes and boil them in saltwater and dry them out for a period of anywhere from one to a few months. … The boiling in saltwater kind of changes the composition of the limes a bit. They get all black inside, they’re completely dry, and it has this sort of funky, musty but really citrus-y scent to it still. … You throw one or two of those into a braise and it sort of perfumes the whole thing.”

Whether he’s cooking up a twist on risotto using Israeli couscous or preparing his personal favorite, shakshouka, Wexler is constantly experimenting with flavors, usually to the delight of his diners. “I get Israeli people who come in here and say, ‘Oh you have shakshouka. Are you really sure you know how to make shakshouka?’ They always love it, they’re always really happy and impressed.”

The kitchen at Mezze is on full view to the patrons, something Wexler found was important at his previous stints in the restaurant world. “I spent a lot of time in my career working in open kitchens. … From a chef’s perspective, it’s really great to kind of break down that wall and be able to see the guests’ response to your food.” 

Wexler had plenty of input in the design of the restaurant, which is housed in the space formerly occupied by David Myers’ Sona. “My investor here is not just the guy I get money from,” Wexler said. “It’s somebody who cares about us, who’s invested in what we do.”

As for future plans, Wexler looks forward to one day stepping into the shoes of a chef-entrepreneur, like his mentors Colicchio and Robuchon.

“Our goal is to start a restaurant company. We’d like to have several restaurants,” Wexler said.  But for now, “I’m really about making this a great restaurant and building my team and my infrastructure.

“My goal was always to establish myself in Los Angeles as a chef and a restaurateur.”

With Mezze up and running, he can consider his goal accomplished.

RECIPES FOR SUKKOT

Courtesy of chef Micah Wexler

ROASTED BEET SALAD

3 baby red beets
3 baby gold beets
3 baby striped beets
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup sherry vinegar
Sea salt
1 pound halloumi cheese
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon dried mint

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Trim the beets of their leaves and stems. Place each type of beet on a separate sheet of aluminum foil. Add 1 tablespoon olive oil, 1 teaspoon sherry vinegar and some salt to each. Fold the foil into packets. Place the three packets in a roasting pan and roast for 45 minutes or until beets are tender.

Remove beets from oven and allow to cool. Using a clean dish towel, rub off the skins and discard. Cut the beets in half; combine all the beets in a large mixing bowl. Add 1/4 cup olive oil and remaining sherry vinegar.

Mix the yogurt with the lemon juice, dried mint, 1/4 cup olive oil and salt to taste.

Cut the halloumi into cubes and fry in a pan with remaining olive oil until golden.

To dress, place the marinated beets in a bowl and garnish with the yogurt dressing and fried halloumi.

Makes 6 to 8 servings.

POMEGRANATE BRISKET WITH POMEGRANATE GREMOLATA

5 pounds brisket, whole
4 1/4 cups pomegranate juice
3 cups red wine
Salt and pepper
2 carrots
1 onion
2 leeks
4 garlic cloves
2 bay leaves
3 thyme sprigs
1 bunch parsley, chopped
3 ounces pine nuts, toasted
3 ounces pomegranate seeds
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon zest

Clean brisket of any silver skin or excess fat. Place brisket in a large container and marinate for 2 days with 4 cups pomegranate juice and red wine. Remove brisket from marinade, reserve liquid. Dry brisket.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Season brisket with salt and pepper; place in a roasting pan on stovetop. Over medium-high heat, sear brisket until browned. Cut carrots, onion and leeks into large pieces and place around the brisket with garlic cloves. Allow vegetables to cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

Add the reserved marinade liquid, bay leaves and thyme; cover with aluminum foil and braise in preheated oven for 3 1/2 hours or until tender. 

To make the gremolata: While brisket is cooking, combine chopped parsley, pine nuts, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, lemon zest and remaining 1/4 cup pomegranate juice; set aside.

For the last half hour of cooking, remove aluminum foil from brisket and allow to brown while glazing with the juices every 5 minutes.

When brisket is ready to be served, slice and place on a large platter. Spoon the vegetables and pan juice over the brisket, and top with the gremolata.

Makes 8 servings.

Chef Micah Wexler goes global, and local, at Mezze Read More »

Synagogue dispute heads to court

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

The trouble at Shaarei Tefila, one of Los Angeles’ oldest Modern Orthodox synagogues, began in 2008 with a disagreement over whether one member’s brother should be allowed to be called up to the Torah. Over the last three years, however, that dispute led to a competition between two groups of members for control over the struggling 77-year-old Beverly Boulevard congregation.

The conflict is now heading to court.

Each of the two factions claims to represent the synagogue’s best interests. One group, called the Committee of Concerned Members and Stakeholders of Congregation Shaarei Tefila, is led by Allan Lowy, a former president of the synagogue and its only officially “expelled member.”

The other group, which currently controls the synagogue’s board and leadership positions, is composed of mostly, though not exclusively, younger synagogue members who are relative newcomers to the congregation.

Lowy, 62, became a bar mitzvah at Shaarei Tefila and continues to pray regularly at the synagogue. He sends regular updates to about 250 recipients from the e-mail address {encode=”TakeBackOurShul@gmail.com” title=”TakeBackOurShul@gmail.com”}, and said the core of his committee is 25 people, most of them middle-age or older, only some of whom are still formally affiliated with Shaarei Tefila.

After months of back and forth with a Los Angeles-based beit din, or rabbinical court, the two sides failed to agree even on which three rabbis should hear the case. With no clear way forward, the Beit Din of Congregation Agudas Yisroel, led by Rabbi Avrohom Teichman, granted Lowy permission on Sept. 19 to sue the officers of the synagogue in a secular court.

Citing official beit din policy, Teichman would not elaborate as to why Lowy was given this written permit, known halachically, by Jewish law, as a heter arkaot.

Lowy is an attorney and said he intends to file suit after the Sukkot holiday. He will request that the synagogue’s books and records be opened to him and other members and a restraining order placed on the synagogue’s leaders, preventing them from taking actions that would significantly affect the future of Shaarei Tefila. Such an order would prohibit the selling of synagogue assets, merging with another organization or entering into an employment agreement.

Lowy said he also intends to ask the court to invalidate the two most recent Shaarei Tefila board elections and to appoint a monitor for all future elections.

Here, as in many intra-synagogue spats, what might seem to be picayune questions of organizational governance are being hotly contested. And while Lowy claims that the most recent board election, in May 2011, was conducted in defiance of a separate rabbinic injunction, also issued by Teichman’s beit din, members of the synagogue’s leadership counter that Lowy himself is not a “member in good standing” of Shaarei Tefila, and therefore had no right to vote in the last election, nor does he have standing to bring the suit against them.

According to Shaarei Tefila President Alan Goldstein, Lowy still has a “significant” unpaid balance left on his membership account.

“The people who are screaming are not even members,” said Goldstein, a 77-year-old semi-retired businessman who was acting as Shaarei Tefila’s president before being elected to the position in May. “The membership seems to be very happy with what’s going on.”

Lowy, for his part, said that he had attempted to settle his membership account with the synagogue, but that he had been dealt with unfairly by Shaarei Tefila’s immediate past president, Aaron Kin.

Indeed, Lowy traces the beginning of his dissatisfaction with the synagogue’s leadership back to the service in 2008, when Aaron Kin’s brother, Meir Kin, was called up to the Torah in defiance of yet another rabbinic court order. That rare order, known as a seiruv, prohibited any Orthodox synagogue from offering religious honors to Meir Kin until he gave his wife a formal Jewish writ of divorce, known as a get.

Behind the flurry of rabbinic court correspondence, the allegations and counter-allegations of fraudulent elections and fights over unpaid membership dues, what is roiling at Shaarei Tefila is a fight for power.

At stake, first and foremost, is the future direction of a synagogue that was once a proud pillar of Los Angeles’ Modern Orthodox community. Current members of the synagogue’s board, both young and old, have said they are working to ensure Shaarei Tefila will always remain “a community shul.” Lowy and his committee, however, fear that it could soon become a strikingly different institution. And the fact that this synagogue — which, according to Goldstein, filled fewer than one-quarter of the seats in its main sanctuary on Rosh Hashanah this year — is housed in a building worth an estimated $8 million to $10 million cannot be far from anyone’s mind.

Initially known as the Western Jewish Institute, Shaarei Tefila began as a “traditional” synagogue. Men and women sat together in the sanctuary during services, and microphones were used to amplify sound until the late 1960s, when the synagogue began to align itself more with the standard practices of the Orthodox Union.

Over the last two or three decades, however, Shaarei Tefila’s attendance and membership declined, as many Modern Orthodox Jews left the area and moved to Pico-Robertson, Hancock Park or elsewhere. Meanwhile, the neighborhood around the synagogue, which sits on Beverly Boulevard just west of La Brea Avenue, became home to increasingly traditional Jews, many of them affiliated with Chasidic sects.

The newcomers to Shaarei Tefila, the younger men and families who now make up the majority of the synagogue’s membership and board, embody this trend. On Saturdays, about half of the newer members wear the traditional Sabbath-day garb of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect: a black coat, known as a kapote (pronounced kuh-PUH-tuh), cinched with a string belt called a gartel, also black.

“We’re not Chabad,” said Sholom Feigelstock, a Shaarei Tefila board member and the de facto leader of the group of young members. “We’re a group of young guys interested in building this community.”

To Feigelstock’s chagrin, many of the old-timers — including long-time members like Goldstein who have aligned with the new members — regularly refer to the new group of young families as Chabadniks.

With more than 4,000 shluchim, or emissaries, located in the farthest corners of the globe, the visibly expansionist character of Chabad-Lubavitch has occasionally stirred up fears in neighborhoods, communities and college campuses where shluchim establish a presence — a fear that Chabad-affiliated groups are “taking over.”

That’s not the case at Shaarei Tefila, Feigelstock said. In 2008, he and approximately 30 other families who had been praying together at the nearby Chabad of Hancock Park, were invited by Shaarei Tefila’s then-president Aaron Kin to join the synagogue. Feigelstock, who is in his 30s, said that the membership of Shaarei Tefila today includes about 90 young member families who had been drawn to the synagogue to be part of Chabad-oriented services.

The total membership of Shaarei Tefila, Feigelstock said, is hard to determine, but the synagogue sends its mailings out to a list of about 200 individuals and families.

In an interview in May, Feigelstock said that he could understand why the old guard might be concerned by the rapid influx of young families into the community who prayed differently from the Ashkenazi style that had been used in the synagogue for decades. But he dismissed any talk of his group engaging in a takeover.

“We are focused on building Shaarei Tefila to be a nice community for everyone to come to,” Feigelstock said.

Even Goldstein said the synagogue might need an extra layer of protection to prevent its assets from being mishandled, by anyone. “I’m working to create a trust for the shul, in order to make sure that it will always remain a community shul,” he said.

As Lowy prepares his lawsuit aimed at stopping or slowing the changes being made to Shaarei Tefila, the character of the synagogue continues to shift. On Rosh Hashanah, Goldstein said, the main service in the 900-seat sanctuary attracted about 180 people — fewer than the 250 who came to the Chabad-style service in the building’s social hall.

That many people haven’t been seen at Shaarei Tefila in decades. According to Joseph Schames, a past president and 30-year member of the congregation who is now serving as secretary of its board, the synagogue has “turned around in the past year and a half from a shul that was dying to a revitalized shul.”

The main service, which followed an Ashkenazi style, was led by Rabbi Moshe Kesselman, grandson of an influential Chabad rabbi. Kesselman was, until recently, on the staff at Chabad of Beverly Hills and, according to Goldstein, has been retained by Shaarei Tefila to act as the synagogue’s rabbi on a month-to-month basis until a synagogue membership meeting can be called to vote on whether to officially hire him more permanently.

Lowy said he is not opposed to seeing changes at Shaarei Tefila, but rather that he only wants them to be made in a more transparent manner.

“If in an open, fair and transparent election, Kesselman is elected” to be the next rabbi, Lowy said, “it would be my honor to daven [pray] with him. It would be my privilege to work for his success.”

Synagogue dispute heads to court Read More »