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February 22, 2012

A Scholar Who Can Really Shake Things Up

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Judaism, News, Worldwide /

The study of history may strike some readers as a sedate subject. Now and then, however, an historian comes along who can really shake things up.  Timothy Snyder is one such scholar, and I am excited to announce that we will all be afforded an opportunity to meet Snyder in person when he appears as part of the ALOUD series at the Los Angeles Central Library on Tuesday, March 6, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.

Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University, boldly reframed the conventional narrative of the Second World War and the Holocaust in “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin,” a landmark book that reminds us of the crucial but often overlooked role of Poland and Eastern Europe in that tragic era.  When I ” title=”the website of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles” target=”_blank”>the website of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. He can be reached at books@jewishjournal.com.

A Scholar Who Can Really Shake Things Up Read More »

Letters to the Editor: Hollywood, Israel, Democracy, survivors

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

The Hollywood-Israel Relationship

I read with interest the cover story “Zionism and the Three-Picture Deal” (Feb. 3). After decades of efforts to engage prominent Hollywood Jewish celebrities and executives for Israel, it is satisfying to feel that the leaders in the industry are becoming more responsive and positive.

While giving kudos to those who were quoted in the article, I was struck by the chronology of how and why things have changed. I would not characterize any of the participants in the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership’s Master Class as the “B list.” In fact, those who were ready to take a chance on this creative initiative deserve to be acknowledged as willing to identify with Israel when it wasn’t popular.

This year will mark the 64th anniversary of the Jewish state. Some of your readers will remember a previous cover story on the 50th anniversary culminating in an extraordinary show at the Shrine Auditorium featuring an amazing group of performing artists from film, television and music celebrating five decades of our Jewish state. It was one of many successful efforts to engage Hollywood.

Not everything was a “bull’s-eye,” but the process culminating in today’s changing relationship of Hollywood Jews to Israel was the result of hard work of dozens of communal and entertainment leaders. Unlike the article suggests, the process of engagement never ceased. Those who are quoted in the article undoubtedly have contributed to today’s “new” successful relationship to Israel, as did their predecessors.

But let’s not forget that it did not magically occur in a few years nor was it due to a single individual but was part of a collective strategic effort, which needs to continue.

John Fishel
former president The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles

Defining Democracy

You have to love David Suissa’s insistence that we should accept Israel as a democracy by emphasizing the good and accepting the flaws (“The Liberal Case for Israel,” Feb. 17). Actually, “allowing enormous freedom for people to challenge the system” is only a part of a “democracy.” As a liberal, the part of Webster’s definition of “democracy” that I prefer is ”a principle of equality of rights, opportunity and treatment.” This should apply to all citizens, including non-Orthodox Jews.

Martin J. Weisman
Westlake Village

The Media’s Flip, Flop Politics

Marty Kaplan is the first pundit to point out at length the nonsense of today’s mainstream (or rather “mainscream”) media, which covers every flip, flap and flop of presidential contenders (“Political March Madness,” Feb. 17).

It is disturbing how media influences polls, how polls then influence voters, yet voters still do not settle for one candidate. Do we really want our government being decided by the opinions logged on Facebook or fired off on Twitter?

These sound bites are certainly biting away at our political discourse. Indeed, human beings love narratives, and with the expansive amount of technology making up-to-the-minute storytelling even more minute (and ultimately secondary), it is no wonder that the attention spans of many voters hinge and switch so capriciously.

I do see a silver lining to the stormy clouds of political discourse crowding our future election years. Republican strategist Matthew Dowd has pointed out that Super-PAC advertising has whittled down the effect of campaign ads. As the narrative shifts ever so quickly and arbitrarily, individual political hucksters and pundits will forgo the up-to-date follow-up from the mainstream outlets. We will have no choice but to analyze issues for ourselves, for the multiplicity of information will be too daunting for us to accept passively.

Arthur Christopher Schaper
Torrance

Praise for Survivors Column

I want to personally thank and commend The Journal for bringing Jane Ulman to your staff (“Liselotte Hanock,” Feb. 17). She is a fine journalist. After spending over four hours with my wife, Lotte, gathering personal background about her survival experiences, she put a marvelous article together. Considering the space allocation within which she had to work, Jane captured the very essence of my very wonderful, courageous and loving wife, whose strength and perseverance has made our family strong enough to overcome many of life’s adversities. Jane’s finished product truly reflects her outstanding journalistic talent. The Survivors series is a wonderful addition.

Franklin N. Hanock
Valley Village

CORRECTION

An obituary for Norma Katz was published in error in the Feb. 10 issue.

THE JEWISH JOURNAL welcomes letters from all readers. Letters should be no more than 200 words and must include a valid name, address and phone number. Letters sent via e-mail must not contain attachments. We reserve the right to edit all letters.

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Letters to the Editor: Hollywood, Israel, Democracy, survivors Read More »

Opinion: Jewish population of L.A., Valley districts

Leave a Comment / News, Opinion /

So, how will Los Angeles’ Jews fare under the proposed City Council District boundaries? The City Redistricting Commission Web site includes information about the ethnic composition of the current and proposed City Council districts based on voter registration lists. These maps, released for public review during the week of Feb. 13, may be changed by the commission before final submission of a proposed map to the City Council, which will then have several months to make its decisions on a redistricting ordinance.

Estimates of registered Jewish voters were produced by using Jewish surnames. This procedure understates Jewish numbers because most Jews do not have a distinctively Jewish name, and, just as important, because the Jewish surnames used in the assessment are Ashkenazi and thus miss other local populations, including Persian-Moroccan and many Israeli Jews.

For my calculations, I turned instead to the 1997 Jewish population survey, which has its own problem: It is 15 years old. Fortunately Jewish population movement in Los Angeles over the past 60 decades has been consistent and gradual, so the survey can at least provides a general sense of the effects of the redistricting on Jewish Los Angeles. ZIP codes are the smallest geographic unit available in the 1997 study, so I assigned the study ZIP codes according to the current and draft City Council District boundaries, adjusting for ZIP codes divided between council districts.

The 5th Council District, now represented by Paul Koretz, is currently the only “Jewish district” and has long been recognized as such. Roz Wyman, Ed Edelman, Zev Yaroslovsky, Mike Feuer and Jack Weiss all entered political office for the first time representing this City Council District. The 5th District currently consists of neighborhoods on both sides of Mulholland Drive; to the south are Fairfax, Beverlywood, Cheviot Hills, Rancho Park, Century City, Westwood, Brentwood, Bel Air, Benedict Canyon and Beverly Crest. In the Valley, the 5th District now includes Valley Village and the “Valley Hills” neighborhoods — those parts of Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana and Woodland Hills that are south of Ventura Boulevard.

The commission’s draft map, released on Feb. 15, would have created a more Jewish 2nd District, while preserving the 5th District. The 5th District proposed last week would have lost Valley Village, Beverly Crest, Benedict Canyon and the “Valley Hills” neighborhoods. In their place, the district would have gained the Miracle Mile, Larchmont and much of Hancock Park. The 5th District of Feb. 15 would have ended at Western Avenue. The overall Jewish population of the 5th District would have remained the same, and the Orthodox Jewish population of the 5th District would have increased by at least 50 percent, thus making it even more Jewish.

The Feb. 15 plan would have created a second potentially Jewish district in the 3rd District. As currently constituted, the 3rd District includes Canoga Park, Winnetka, West Hills, Encino, Reseda, Tarzana and Woodland Hills. It would have lost West Hills but would have added the heavily Jewish neighborhoods south of Ventura Boulevard that currently are part of the 5th District. Based on the 1997 data, the Jewish population of the 3rd District would have increased by 29 percent.

The most recent map, released over the weekend (let’s call it the Presidents Weekend map), reverses most of the proposed changes to the 3rd and 5th Districts.  With the exception of Valley Village, the neighborhoods south of Ventura Boulevard have been returned to the 5th District; this district will still be enlarged to the east but not as much as in the Feb. 15 draft map. Currently, the 5th District ends at Fairfax Avenue. In the Feb. 15 draft map, it would have extended all the way to Western Avenue.  In the Presidents Weekend map, the 5th District now ends at Highland Avenue. This effectively splits the Hancock Park Orthodox community between the 5th District and the 4th District.

One Jewish neighborhood that would be less likely to be part of a district with a strong Jewish presence is Valley Village, which is slated to move from the 5th District into the much less Jewish 2nd District, as the 2nd District has been reconfigured to create a Latino district, exchanging Jewish populations in Studio City and Sherman Oaks for Hispanic populations in Van Nuys and North Hollywood. Based on the City Redistricting Commission data, the Spanish surname population in the 2nd District will increase by 27 percent. Based on the 1997 study, the Jewish population in the 2nd District will decrease by more than 20 percent. This would happen in either version of the draft map.

The revisions made to the Presidents Weekend map are consistent with a long- standing tradition of carving out a “Westside” Jewish district to which some heavily Jewish Valley neighborhoods have been appended. As of 1997, half the Jewish population in Los Angeles County was concentrated in the San Fernando Valley. As of Feb. 15, the proposed new district boundaries would have recognized this reality. A week later, the future has mostly remained the past.

Bruce A. Phillips is a professor of sociology and Jewish communal studies in the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Louchheim School of Judaic Studies at USC and Senior Research Fellow at the USC Center for Religion & Civic Culture.

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Opinion: Jeremy Lin, the Jews and redistricting

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, Opinion, Raphael Sonenshein /

I was too young to see Hank Greenberg play. That was my father’s generation. But growing up in New Jersey, I well remember the day when Sandy Koufax, playing for the Dodgers, announced his electrifying decision to sit out a 1965 World Series game on Yom Kippur.  Koufax’s action was a great source of pride to a Jewish kid with a baseball glove perennially at hand and who had heard way too many jokes about the thin book of Jewish sports heroes.

I remembered that Koufax moment when I watched the New York Knicks’ Jeremy Lin annihilate my Lakers not so long ago. I had the feeling that Asian-American kids with a basketball perennially at hand must be feeling something akin to what I felt back then. The Lin phenomenon is not like the hoopla surrounding Yao Ming, whose presence in the NBA was really about the internationalization of the sport and who is a huge hero in China. Even though Lin is already attracting attention in both Taiwan and China, he is going to be a special star for Asian-Americans. 

When you look at the local basketball scene, you might wonder what took so long. There is a distinguished tradition of Asian-American basketball leagues, and there is a devoted basketball following in the community. You can see Asian-American girls playing in the high schools in Los Angeles and working their way into the college ranks (in fact, there are more Asian-American women than men in college basketball). 

I was reminded of these parallels between Asian-Americans and Jews while watching the unfolding debate over Los Angeles city redistricting.  Much has changed since the days of Tom Bradley, when a coalition of African-Americans and Jews dominated the political scene. Latinos and Asian-Americans, while part of the ruling coalition, sometimes felt themselves on the outside looking in. Bradley, though, consistently reached out to Asian-Americans and Latinos (saving Mike Woo’s seat in 1986 by vetoing a council redistricting ordinance, and working to create a Latino seat in the 14th District, eventually won by Richard Alatorre).

The rise of the Latino population, and its remarkable mobilization, mean that Latino political aspirations are at center stage. African-Americans, declining in population share, are trying to hold onto their representation. The current city redistricting seems to be focused on managing the inevitable increase in Latino office holding and settling internal disputes in the African-American community. The commission advising the City Council has issued draft maps, but there seems to be a lot of political maneuvering behind the scenes.  Allies of City Council President Herb Wesson seem to want to punish Bernard Parks for not supporting Wesson’s election to council president by moving pieces out of the 8th District, and Jan Perry seems to be in a similar boat. Should the 9th District (now represented by Perry) lose its lucrative downtown business base to the Latino 14th District?  These decisions inevitably impact the other communities of the city because each district must be roughly equal in population. Moving chess pieces in one area can make it harder to achieve fairness in other areas.

Asian-Americans and Jews are feeling the spillover impact of these disputes and negotiations.  The Jewish community, which once sported a half dozen members of the 15-member council, now has only one certain seat, the Mid-City 5th District represented by Paul Koretz, and that is being realigned a bit in the draft plan from the city commission. I asked Bruce Phillips, a professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Religion & Civic Culture at USC to run some numbers (see story below).  He concluded that with the proposed changes, the 5th would be marginally less Jewish, but there could be an increase in Jewish electoral strength in the 3rd District in the Valley.  It looks as if some Valley portions of the 5th District are proposed to be moved to the 3rd,  and Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Hancock Park and Larchmont, currently in Tom LaBonge’s 4th District, would be added to the 5th. In any case, Jewish candidates stand a good case of winning some citywide offices in 2013, and high levels of Jewish voter participation will continue to be consequential in city elections. It remains to be seen whether the proposed movement of Jewish neighborhoods becomes a point of debate.

The Korean-American community, however, has registered complaints about the proposed redistricting of Koreatown. At a City Hall public hearing, Korean-American speakers charged that they were being shunted off until the end of the meeting. The set-to emphasizes the long- standing problem of not having a councilmember who would be responsive to Asian-Americans (only one Asian-American, Mike Woo, has ever served in public office in the City of Los Angeles, despite an Asian-American population of roughly 400,000). Of course, long-standing groups like the Asian Pacific American Legal Center have been submitting and advocating for proposed Los Angeles city redistricting plans all along.

It is hoped that the city will undertake a redistricting process that looks for ways to increase Asian-American representation, either by increasing the number of council districts through a charter amendment or by moving district lines to capture population concentrations of a diverse community that has become somewhat dispersed. In the final analysis, however, neither Jewish nor Asian-American communities have the raw numbers to obtain districts in which they will hold majorities. In the midst of intense conflicts over redistricting, they will have to carefully navigate the debates with an eye to creating districts in which they will have influence, and aim to build coalitions with each other and with other groups.

Perhaps this current redistricting may also activate a younger generation of Asian-Americans (and not just Korean-Americans) to become more politically engaged in the hurly-burly of Los Angeles politics. That would be no less impactful than the rise of Jeremy Lin.

Raphael J. Sonenshein is executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles.

Opinion: Jeremy Lin, the Jews and redistricting Read More »

Can a believer in God believe in luck?

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

Perhaps the most sobering realization I have come to in the second half of my life is the role of luck in life.

I have always wanted to believe otherwise. And I suspect that most people want to believe otherwise. For that reason, many, perhaps most, religious people believe that God wills whatever happens to us: “It was God’s will,” “God took our daughter for His reasons” and so on. Even many people who are not actively religious ascribe whatever happens to God (“My musical talent is a gift from God,” “God made me gay,” “God sent me my wife/husband” and so on). Meanwhile, in Eastern religion, luck appears to play no role. Whatever happens to us is the result of karma — what we get in this life is the result of our behavior in a past life.

We humans are loath to ascribe so much of what happens to luck — good or bad — because it offends our sense of justice and order and because it seems to undermine God’s role. If I was hit by a drunken driver solely because it was my lousy luck to be driving in a certain place and at certain time — not because God had any hand in it — what role, if any, does God play in our lives?

I will answer the God question. But first, let’s figure out what alternatives there are to luck as an explanation.

The most obvious is that everything that happens is due solely to God’s causing it to happen. This became the dominant Muslim belief in the early Middle Ages. The belief arose that to ascribe any other cause than God to anything that happens is to reduce God’s power. If an arrow hits its target, neither the archer, nor the wind pattern, nor any laws of physics are responsible. It was solely due to Allah’s will. That is a major reason the Muslim world did not develop scientifically beyond the early Middle Ages. Science is predicated on identifying laws within nature. But mainstream Islam argued that if laws govern the natural world, then God doesn’t govern the world.

Of course, all of us who have traditional beliefs believe that God governs the universe, and that He created the laws of nature. If God did not will electrons to revolve around the nucleus of the atom, then there would be no universe as we know it. But that is not the same as saying that God willed every individual killed by a drunken driver on the San Diego Freeway.

Aside from the scientific problems that result from attributing to God all that happens, there are also moral and theological problems.

For one thing, if God wanted your child to be born with severe birth defects, your mother to die of breast cancer at age 35, or your wife and young daughters to be raped and then burned to death (as happened to Connecticut physician William Petit a few years ago), it would seem rationally — not to mention emotionally — very difficult to find this God worthy of love, let alone emulation or worship.

A world in which every individual killed in a tsunami, a flu epidemic, by a drunken driver or by some falling object was personally chosen by God to die at that time and in that way is a world governed by a God whose morality is inscrutable. And Judaism has believed since Abraham argued with God that God is morally understandable.

So, guided by reason, I have concluded what has to be rationally concluded: There is a lot of luck, good and bad, in life.

Two major consequences of this belief are humility and gratitude. If our life has gone well, we should be very, very humble, not to mention extremely grateful. Even “self-made men” are inordinately lucky. So, too, people can take some credit for a happy marriage, but not much — happy marriages are overwhelmingly the result of good luck, the luck of meeting and marrying the right person, and the luck that each spouse has grown in compatible directions.

As for children, parents can take some credit and take some blame. But children, too, are often the products of good and bad luck. Many troubled kids come from fine homes, and many fine kids come from troubled homes — because genes, peers, environment and free will play a huge role in how children turn out. And if we have good health, it is overwhelmingly the result of good genes and/or good medicine, neither of which we had any role in creating.

So, then, if luck is so powerful, where does God fit in?

1) God allows luck. God (usually) allows the world to proceed without His intervention. What other choice is there — that God stops every drunken driver’s car from starting? That He intervenes with nature every time cells begin to metastasize?

2) It is our task, not God’s, to fight evil and to conquer nature. Thus pacifism is immoral — it enables evil to prevail. And so is much of the environmentalist movement. It has become so worshipful of nature that it has often abandoned the need to conquer it on behalf of humans. To cite but one example, Western environmentalists have been directly responsible for the death of millions of Africans due to their having DDT universally banned.

3) Through the Torah and the Prophets, God has told us all we need to know about conquering evil. Therefore, our primary concern with regard to God should not be about what we want Him to do, but about what He wants us to do.

4) God apparently does work through nations — much more than in individual lives. That is what the Founders of America called Providence. I believe in that.

5) Because of the above, I also believe that God works in the lives of some individuals who affect the lives of others. I believe God worked in the lives of the people Israel’s patriarchs and through the life of Moses and in the lives of America’s Founders.

6) Whatever the injustices of this world, there is an afterlife. It is there that God works in the lives of each and every one of us. If there is no afterlife, luck is God.

Everyone works out these issues in his or her own way. For me, not wanting to abandon either reason or faith, I believe both in God and luck. And that, in the end, God prevails.

Can a believer in God believe in luck? Read More »

Opinion: Norma’s love

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Is Featured?, News, Opinion /

I’ve always been fascinated by romantic relationships that seem to last forever. When I hear of couples who remain deeply in love after 40, 50, 60 years of marriage, I imagine the thousands of meals they’ve shared together, the thousands of shared conversations, road trips, stories, arguments, conflicts, moments of silence, even moments of boredom that must come from knowing someone so well you can predict their every move.

In today’s dating scene, when a one-hour coffee date can seem like a long ordeal, I marvel at how a couple can go on a few thousand “dates” and still love each other. I mean, seriously, how much is there to talk about?

Well, I met a woman the other day, Norma Zack, who can’t remember ever being bored during the 63 years she spent with her husband, William, who passed away five years ago. Norma is a hopeless romantic. Her love for her husband was so deep that after he died, she had to move to another retirement home because the memory of his absence was too painful. But that didn’t make things any better. The hole in her heart was still there. She missed him more every day.

As simple as it sounds, she needed to find something else to love. She didn’t just miss her husband, she missed the very act of loving him. That act of loving kept her alive. She needed to fall madly in love again.

So she rekindled an old love affair — with words.

At 92, she decided she would become a full-time poet. She gathered some of her old poems and started writing new ones. Each day, she would work on her poems on any kind of paper she could find — from yellow legal pads to the backs of envelopes. After a few years of this, she had accumulated hundreds of papers filled with old scribbled poems and scratch marks.

But who would ever get a chance to enjoy these poems?

As it turns out, a UCLA English student, Laura Rivera, had started a weekly poetry class at the retirement home. She met Norma, fell in love with her poetry, and decided she would edit and publish a book of her poems.

For many months, Rivera met with Norma to go over the random pages of her poetry. She had to decipher the handwriting and the scratchy notes; some of the poems were incomplete. Eventually, they selected 28 poems and published them in a little booklet called, appropriately, “Simple Poems.”

The poems are about love, loss, renewal and simple encounters. In “Will I Be Content,” she wonders how she will cope without her husband: “Will I be content to hear the day’s sounds and songs/And know that he does not?/How can I stop dreams for him/When I have lived within his dreams?”

In “A Fable,” she writes about her search for wisdom: “Come, old man, sit by my side/What’s in the paper bag you hold so tight?/ I will tell you, he replies, if you promise to stay/Listeners are scarce.”

In “Marriage,” she reflects on marital bonds: “I had taken a vow. That was a blanket/To cover all life’s events/Some cracks appeared/Many healed unaided/Others became accepted/We let no space grow too far apart.”

In “Care Giver,” she speaks of the eternity of love: “When we were young lovers/You called me by many names/I answered all with pleasure/Today you call me without a name/I still answer your call.”

In “Too Late,” she writes about their last moment: “You cry out, ‘I’m sliding…’/I jump to hold you tight/To save you from the darkness/Beyond these walls.”

In “Visiting,” she sees a time when they will reunite: “I have watched the fields for many springs/Grow green with tender grasses/And have walked on the fallen winter snows/Clinging to the mound encircling your special space/You’ve seen me, slightly stooped, arms crossed/Walking silently round the markers…/Someday I shall cross the many miles/And on your grave I shall place/One small pebble and next to it/My heart.”

In “Forgetting,” she fears the loss of memory: “I look into the mirror to check myself/I am wearing my pearls/My hair is not combed/Lipstick is on/Wrinkled hose sit in mismatched shoes/Will everything soon be forgotten?/Will even I become/ The last thing I can’t remember.”

In “Unsaid Words,” she laments life’s missed opportunities: “How sad to have crossed paths frequently/Not knowing each other at all/It would not take too long to be strangers no longer/To you, I’d gladly spill all my memories/I’d let them fall as petals shaken from a tree/In exchange/ Talk to me, talk to me/I will clasp your words like lost children/Close to my heart.”

And in “For Simple Poetry,” she explains her art: “What’s wrong with simplicity/Sincerity enjoyed immediately/I hope that one poem reaches you like a summer breeze/Wonderfully cooling and refreshing/That will lie in your memory like the past/Of some lovely day.”

“I love words; I always have,” Norma told me when I met her at her retirement home. “It’s important to love a lot of things. That’s how I stay alive.”

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

Opinion: Norma’s love Read More »

Opinion: President Jacobs

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, Opinion, Rob Eshman /

For many years now, a central narrative of American Jewish life has been the resurgence of Orthodoxy. Surveys show booming populations. Orthodox adults are nudging Jewish voting patterns to the right. In Israel, black-hat baby-making is as productive as a Chinese iPad factory. As American (and European and Middle Eastern) culture experiences a fundamentalist reawakening, so, it stands to reason, would Jewish culture.

But there’s good reason to challenge the assumption that Reform is static and Orthodoxy growing and dynamic, that Orthodoxy is ascendant and Reform is moribund.

The best evidence of that is Rabbi Rick Jacobs. 

In January, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) installed Jacobs as its new president, to succeed Rabbi Eric Yoffie in running the congregational arm of the Reform movement.

“In two years,” Jacobs declared at his induction speech at the organization’s biennial conference in Washington, D.C,  “we will have shaped a new URJ that will become the creative force for shaping the Jewish future in the coming years together.”

Those are big words, the kind you hear from every Jewish organization head and rabbi at every banquet from here to the 92nd Street Y.

But Jacobs, both by track record and talent, seems to be one of those leaders who can actually deliver.

He was part of a cabal of Reform rabbis who fought for greater accountability, and excellence, from the 1.5-million-member, 900-synagogue URJ.  In a classic case of be-careful-what-you-wish-for, he ended up getting tapped to run it.

I met Jacobs for the first time last week, while he was o.n his inaugural swing through L.A.

We ducked into a small room at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform Jewish seminary located near USC. Jacobs, who is 55, is one of the taller Jews you’ll meet. He trained as a dancer and choreographer. With his close-cropped gray hair, dark gray business suit, green tie and knit kippah, he looks like a very sincere, intense Modern Orthodox businessman.

Jacobs’ Jewish background, it turns out, contains multitudes. He was raised in Tustin, Calif., survived Hebrew school — “I suffered through Hebrew school,” he said — and sparked to Jewish life at the Reform movement’s Camp SWIG. Labor leader Caesar Chavez and the protest singer Joan Baez came to the camp to speak and perform.

“It turned the lights on,” Jacobs told me.

While spending his junior year abroad studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Jacobs fell under the tutelage of the Orthodox Rabbi David Hartman.

“All of a sudden, the intellectual vitality of Judaism became so compelling to me,” he said.

Jacobs explored the different streams of Jewish life but was drawn to the legacy of social justice that Reform Judaism has always embraced. At the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, he founded and directed the first homeless shelter in a New York City synagogue and spearheaded an interfaith effort to build 1,200 low-income housing units in Brooklyn.

Jacobs eventually became senior rabbi at Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, N.Y. There, he put into practice innovative Hebrew school, rabbinic and liturgical programs, and oversaw construction of a LEED-certified green sanctuary, complete with a solar-powered ner tamid or eternal light, over the Torah ark. He became active in American Jewish World Service, traveled to Darfur and joined — and has since resigned from—the rabbinic advisory committee of JStreet, the left-of-center Israel lobby.

That affiliation provoked a very minor dustup upon Jacobs’ nomination, prompting an array of pro-Israel activists from all points of view to come to Jacobs’ defense.

“No congregation in this country was more at the cutting edge than Rick’s,” Rabbi David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center told me. “People were outright joyous when Rick was chosen.”

Jacob told me his plans for the movement revolve around finding innovative ways to bring Jewish literacy, inspiration, spirituality and social action back into Reform synagogue life. For those of us who grew up in the Reform movement of the 1970s and ’80s, which had all the spirituality of a hatpin, this seems like a tall order.

But Jacobs, who told me he has meditated since he was 16 years old, wants to find ways to bring authentic Jewish traditions of meditation, music and dance into the liturgy. 

At a time when the cost of synagogue membership is a daunting obstacle to Jewish life, he also wants to find other ways to reach people. In Scarsdale, he hired a rabbinic intern with the instructions never to set foot in synagogue. The intern taught classes and engaged in social action projects in the community.

“There’s a lot going on that’s breaking institutional barriers,” he said.

I asked Jacobs if he thinks the stakes for success go beyond his movement. Is it a coincidence, I wondered, that most American Jews, despite their wealth and success, remain largely politically liberal, and that most American Jews who affiliate do so as Reform? Are American Jews Reform because they are liberal, or are they liberal because they are Reform?  Has the organized Reform movement sustained, codified and institutionalized American political liberalism?

Jacobs thought for while, but resisted any political characterization. He believes in a Reform movement that takes the words of the prophet Isaiah to heart.

“You can argue what the best ways are to achieve opportunity and social justice, but you can’t argue that it is a fundamental Jewish responsibility,” Jacobs told me. “We’ve been a movement that has stood up.”

And now, it’s his turn.

Opinion: President Jacobs Read More »

Whose reality is real?

Leave a Comment / California, Cover Story, Family, Health, Mobile Sections, News /

A little while ago, Hendel Schwartz got a call from a city bus driver.

“Your son walks with God,” the driver told her.

Daniel Schwartz, 23, who has cerebral palsy, is sociable with a great sense of humor, and once he learned the independence of riding buses, he made them something of a second home.

Parents and activists have long understood that those with disabilities have a unique perspective that can, and should, influence those around them.

Take Daniel’s determination. He walks with a limp and his left hand curls in on itself at the wrist and isn’t functional, but Daniel opens his own pill bottles, sinks three-pointers in basketball with alarming frequency, goes bowling every Sunday and visits homebound senior citizens after that. His enthusiasm for leading the blessing after meals at UCLA Hillel on Friday nights has shown other students the joy of Jewish ritual.

“They are going to be leaders in the community — it’s not just about these poor kids with disabilities. It’s not like they’re someone’s mitzvah project,” said Elaine Hall, founder and director of a Jewish arts program for children with autism at ” title=”Finding their place” target=”_blank”>Twentysomethings with special needs are mainstreaming themselves into independence

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Finding their place [VIDEO]

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Lauren Levine is settling in with a group of friends apartment to watch “American Idol,” when a look of panic comes over her face. She rummages around, finds her keys and darts out.

“I left the hair thing on,” she says when she returns, breathless, from her own apartment downstairs. “I was straightening Jasmine’s hair before we came up here, and I forgot to turn it off. Wow. That was close.”

Levine has wide blue eyes accentuated with sparkly eye shadow, and her voice is spiced with a sense of interested wonder. She wants to be a cosmetologist — she’s taken some classes — but for now she is just happy to be living on her own, and working the front desk at a gym in Century City.

Levine’s developmental delays are less obvious than those of her roommate, Jasmine Banayan, who has Down syndrome. Banayan is gregarious and warm and asserts herself as something of a leader among the dozen or so friends who live in a cluster of apartments in Westwood.

The group gets together every night to hang out at one or another of their homes, or to go out to dinner, and, on Friday nights, the five Jewish members of the group are regulars at Shabbat dinner and services at nearby UCLA Hillel.

All are participants in a parent-led experiment in independent living for adults with developmental or cognitive disabilities.

Today’s 20-somethings with disabilities have grown up at the vanguard of a successful mainstreaming model, and they and their parents now are determined to continue to break the mold, to live adult lives with high expectations, in keeping with the ideal that not only is there a place for them within mainstream society, but that they can contribute in meaningful and enriching ways.

While the impetus for change exists, needed funds won’t necessarily follow. Government budget cuts are endangering existing programs, and start-up costs for new programs can be prohibitive.

Story continues after the video.