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Jewish Journal

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March 15, 2012

‘American Idiot’ a very smart idea for Kitt and Green Day

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Tom Kitt remembers well the first time members of the iconic punk-pop band Green Day arrived, several years ago, to hear a reading of “American Idiot,” the musical based on the group’s Grammy-winning 2004 album of the same name.  “Green Day were heroes of mine growing up,” said Kitt, 38, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who adapted the album’s songs for the rock opera about restless youth during the Bush era.

“‘American Idiot’ is not only one of my favorite albums of all time, it’s become an anthem of a generation. It’s a classic, critically acclaimed work that’s made every list of the most important albums of the last decade.”

So when the band, including frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, walked in for that first reading, “It was gut-wrenching scary,” Kitt recalled. “I really wanted them to be happy and to feel comfortable, and if what they were after was just for me to transcribe the album and have it performed pretty much intact, I wanted to show them we could do that. But I also wanted to show them some possibilities of opening things up a bit, with different kinds of orchestration.”

While the album spotlights a rebellious slacker named Johnny, aka the Jesus of Suburbia, the musical expands to include as well two of Johnny’s friends, whose alienation and anger are fueled by the 24-hour media cycle, suburban inertia, drugs, the Iraq war and other fallout from the Sept. 11 attacks — and, in the words of one song, “this world of make-believe that don’t believe in them.” Kitt was tasked with transforming tunes written for the male threesome into songs for 19 male as well as female cast members (17 on the national tour), backed by an eight-piece band consisting of a string quartet, as well as guitars, base, keyboard and drums. 

“The first moment I relaxed a little was after we performed ‘Jesus of Suburbia,’ because as soon as that final chord hit, there was a big ‘Yeah!’ from Billie,” Kitt said of the reading.  “That’s when I sort of breathed a sigh of relief and knew we were on the same page.”

Kitt, who also composed the music for the rock musical “High Fidelity,” has worked on several productions that take place in suburbia, notably his Pulitzer-winning “Next to Normal,” in which a family struggles with its matriarch’s bipolar disorder. His own experience growing up in a Jewish suburban home on Long Island and in Bedford, N.Y., was hardly angst-ridden.  “I wasn’t hanging out at the 7-Eleven; I wasn’t a smoker or a drinker, and I was doing my school work,” he said from his Manhattan home.  He credits his Reform Jewish upbringing for some of that stability: “I was very lucky in that I had a happy home life and that I was interested in things my parents wanted to provide for me,” he said. “I had a lot of Jewish friends, and there was a sense in those circles of having goals, that those things were possible, and that life was not going to be a dead end.”

Scott J. Campbell, Van Hughes and Jake Epstein in “American Idiot.” Photo by Doug Hamilton

Not long after he graduated from Columbia University, Kitt was pursuing his musical theater dreams with his writing partner, Brian Yorkey, at the prestigious BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop; a TV news story about electroconvulsive (“shock”) therapy inspired the 10-minute final project that would eventually become “Next to Normal.” Despite its unusual subject, the show became a Broadway hit, winning three Tony Awards. 

Even though “Next to Normal” wasn’t among the official nominees for the 2010 prize for drama, the Pulitzer board decided to name it the winner anyway, according to The New York Times.  Kitt received the news during a technical rehearsal for “American Idiot.” “I was completely shocked,” he said.  “I jumped up and down and yelled an expletive many times.”

“American Idiot” began circa 2007 as Michael Mayer (“Spring Awakening,” TV’s “Smash”), the musical’s director and book writer (along with Armstrong), was listening to the Green Day album on a road trip. “I sort of couldn’t get enough of it,” Mayer wrote in an e-mail.  “I was just listening to ‘American Idiot’ sort of constantly. So … I got extremely familiar with the whole arc of the album. … It certainly was dawning on me, day by day, that this really is actually a rock opera just waiting for somebody to stage it.”

Kitt promptly came to mind as a collaborator. Mayer said he had been impressed by Kitt’s grasp of diverse musical styles when they worked together on a previous project. “He was the first person I chose to join me on this adventure,” Mayer said.

Kitt immediately agreed that the album would lend itself well to musical theater; he recalled having had “a visceral response to the material,” he said. “I was in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks, and I knew that everyone had very strong, passionate beliefs about how America should be conducting itself in the aftermath. ‘American Idiot,’ for me, captured those feelings in a cathartic way.

“Green Day is a band that you always felt had something to say, whether it was about the times or love or heartache,” he added of the group that got its start in the Berkeley punk scene of the late 1980s. And “American Idiot,” like “The Who’s Tommy,” which also became a musical, was a conceptual album at heart.  “It had themes and storylines and characters, as well as an epic quality,” Kitt said.

Tom Kitt

The action would feature explosive dance numbers and frenetic video screen projections, but the book consisted primarily of the album’s songs — which put extra pressure on Kitt. “I asked myself, ‘How do I adapt what many consider to be a perfect piece of work?’ he recalled.  “That’s when you look within yourself and worry, ‘I could screw this up.’ ”

He found inspiration in the work of Beatles arranger and mentor George Martin, who had orchestrated the plaintive string quartet for the song “Yesterday.”  Kitt, in turn, brought strings into the mix on “Green Day” songs such as “21 Guns” and “Whatsername.” “They’re the instruments to me that sound most like the human voice, so they can have a real, aching emotional quality,” he said.

Kitt used strings in a different way for the song “St. Jimmy,” “where suddenly they’re scratchy, playing these fast and furious chromatic lines — sort of like punk Stravinsky,” he said.

For Green Day’s “American Idiot,” Kitt’s approach was to create a canon that would allow the performers to repeat the critical line, “Don’t want to be an American idiot/one nation controlled by the media.” “Suddenly you have the whole company coming center stage and singing this in an echo-y way — it just keeps coming at you,” Kitt said.  “I felt that was a really cool way to establish what our show is about.”

The band apparently agreed.  “They were with us every step of the way, and if there was anything they weren’t feeling, we kept giving them new options,” Kitt recalled.  “I always said that if the band thought something doesn’t feel right, I would have changed it in a heartbeat.”

For more information about “American Idiot,” which opened at the Ahmanson Theatre this week, go to centertheatregroup.org.

‘American Idiot’ a very smart idea for Kitt and Green Day Read More »

Opinion: Can’t buy me love

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It feels like spring, but there’s little love in the air for Mitt Romney.  The GOP frontrunner expected to have his party’s nomination sewn up by now so he could focus on sending Barack Obama back to Chicago.  But too many Republicans just can’t find it in their hearts to embrace the former Massachusetts governor and are still hoping someone will come along who can make them fall in love. 

The enthusiasm deficit has haunted him throughout the long and winding primary season.  It’s been said he has the charisma of Bob Dole, the GOP’s losing 1996 candidate and the aura of a loser.

But there’s a stronger emotion than love in this election; it’s loathing, and that is what Romney is counting on to lock up the nomination – and what the GOP is counting on to get out the vote against Obama.

Spreading fear and loathing has been the hallmark of the Romney campaign, and nearly all has been aimed at his Republican rivals.  The super PAC run by his friends and former aides has spent more than 90 percent of its money on ads trashing his rivals.

Romney’s rivals have responded with a shots few of their own, and you can bet the Obama campaign’s opposition research team in Chicago is collecting them for use this fall.

The primaries are expected to cost Romney about $75 million, but he has been raising more money than all his rivals and that will only improve after he locks up the nomination.

Newt Gingrich’s —and Bibi Netanyahu’s—most generous benefactors ($11 million plus), casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his wife are expected to shift their spending to Romney as soon as the former Speaker drops out of the race.

Most big Jewish GOP givers are backing Romney, according to a report in the Forward.  More than 10 percent of the $36 million raised by his super PAC came from Jewish donors, primarily ordinary people like Romney: mega-wealthy private equity investors, hedge fund managers and real estate developers.

Mitt’s money may not be able to buy love, but it can buy a lot of votes in what is expected to be a billion-dollar presidential election. Each campaign has its stable of billionaires, but Obama has what Romney lacks: a large network of small contributors, a sign of grass roots support.

The tough primary season has made Romney a better debater and campaigner, but it also has exposed two big weaknesses.  He has failed to connect with people on a personal level (and judging by the allocation of spending he hasn’t tried very hard) and he has demonstrated what one Republican operative and former advisor called a “generous flexibility” on the issues, a desire to do what’s popular rather than what’s right. That explains his failure to criticize Rush Limbaugh’s recent display of misogyny.

Romney faces a big problem in following the Nixon dictum: run to the right for the nomination and the center for the general election.  Most candidates can do it with guiltless ease, but Romney has moved so far from his roots as a Massachusetts moderate to being a self-defined “severely conservative” that making a U-turn could damage him on both ends.

The GOP’s ultra-conservative/tea party wing has had trouble accepting him despite his efforts to convince them of his ideological purity, and they may feel betrayed when he turns his attention to the middle-of-the-road swing voters both parties need to win this election.

If they see him moving too far to their left they may try to teach the GOP a lesson and stay home, not unlike what the anti-Vietnam movement did to the Democrats in 1968.

Many in the GOP’s evangelical base are troubled by Romney’s Mormon faith, but there’s no evidence it will be an issue for Jewish voters, and no one is blaming him for his church’s posthumous conversions of people like Anne Frank, Daniel Pearl and Holocaust victims.

His rhetoric on Israel has been a transparent attempt to make Obama look weak, but close examination shows their positions aren’t that much different.  Romney just sounds more strident.  The Washington Post Fact Checker, Glenn Frankel, said Romney’s charge that Iran would get the bomb if Obama is reelected is just “silly-hyperbolic campaign rhetoric.”

Republicans don’t need to love Romney to vote for him.  They just need to hate Barack Obama enough, and that is what we’ve been hearing from Romney when he hasn’t been smearing his fellow Republicans.  The pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC has already spent over $30 million on negative advertising compared to less than one million defining the candidate and his vision of America, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this month showed voters’ greatest concerns about Romney were “he waffles on the issues” and he’s “too wealthy and does not relate to the average person.”

Romney may have the charisma of Bob Dole but he’s generating a kind of pragmatic enthusiasm in the corporate boardrooms, big banks, business schools and penthouses.  The resulting flood of money may not buy love but will help fuel a highly negative campaign that will do little to change the perception that Mitt Romney is the champion of the one percent.

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Shul Business

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No one taught Rabbi Ahud Sela how to read a budget when he was in the seminary. Talmud and pastoral counseling took precedence over the basics of planned giving.

So when the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly teamed up with American Jewish University (AJU) to create the Rabbinic Management Institute—a certificate program in nonprofit management offering business skills, management training and more—he jumped at the opportunity.

“Every part of the synagogue has to function well, including the business side, and it’s important for the rabbi to understand that,” said Sela, 35, of Temple Ramat Zion in Northridge.

“I needed help in everything,” he continued. “I needed to learn how to read a budget sheet. I didn’t know what it meant to lay out a strategic plan. I didn’t know the different kinds of fundraising that can be done. I didn’t know the latest trends in board management.”

For years there has been a growing need for rabbis to be able to run their institutions, or at least understand how they operate, said Rabbi Cheryl Peretz, director of the institute and associate dean of AJU’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, which is a partner in the program with the university’s Graduate School of Nonprofit Management.

“While rabbinical school might offer a little bit of that training, that’s not really how they spend their time,” Peretz said.

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the membership organization for Conservative rabbis, said in a statement that the program equips rabbis with important skills to address the myriad challenges facing religious institutions with creativity and foresight.

“In today’s economy, it is more important than ever for rabbis to learn effective business models and management skills, ones guided by the deepest values of Judaism,” she said.

An initial cohort of 14 Conservative rabbis graduated last month following a year of activities and coursework. Participants came from across the country—as far away as Maine and Florida—for two in-person seminars. The rest of the curriculum was completed through videotaped lectures, paired-learning exercises and individual conversations with faculty.

Topics included leadership, supervision, board development, accounting, marketing, conflict management, budgeting, and development. These skills are needed now more than ever, Peretz said.

“In today’s world, organizations are having a rough time financially. There was a great need to gain an understanding of how to look at the financial picture and brainstorm ideas,” she said.

Ditto for issues of nonprofit management and helping clergy create healthy relationships with lay leaders, boards and volunteers.

Richard Siegel, director of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion’s School of Jewish Nonprofit Management in Los Angeles, said the importance of all of these issues becomes magnified as rabbis take on more responsibility in their congregations.

“In recognition of this, increasingly we’re encouraging rabbinical students to either take management courses with us or take the full graduate certificate [in Jewish nonprofit management],” he said. “We have found that those rabbis in the field who have participated in our program have found it incredibly valuable. It’s clear that this is something that will be even more relevant in the years ahead.”

Siegel said that creating a program similar to the one at AJU for rabbis who already have been ordained is on his agenda.

A number of changes already are in the works for the certificate, Peretz said. First, it will be opened up to rabbis of all denominations, not just Conservative ones.

“The truth is the issues are the same when we’re talking organizational management,” she said.

Web-conferencing technology will supplant the videotapes and allow for interactive lectures, and individual mentoring will be significantly increased. Additionally, the next cohort will begin in the fall instead of February, and the price will drop from $2,200 to $1,800.

Rabbi Mark Bisman, a veteran clergy member preparing to retire in May, signed up for the program more out of curiosity than necessity. He had been learning about similar topics in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he is rabbi at Har Zion Congregation, and it sounded like an opportunity to explore them in more detail.

What he ultimately got was insight into his synagogue that paid dividends quickly.

“I learned how to look at the books in a different way and that makes all the difference,” he said. “It certainly has been helpful to me in terms of understanding how we can put our house in order to [prepare] for the next rabbi. I’m much more secure in some of these matters than I would have been.”

It has proven particularly helpful in dealing with the challenges of a 220-family congregation that has seen its membership decline, the rabbi added.

“We’re reorganizing … and finding donors and lenders to help us. We have a plan laid out, and it’s going to work,” he said. “Certainly the education that I got through this program helped me be a better articulator of what the situations are and how to move them along.”

For Sela, being part of the program has empowered him to make a number of changes to a 315-family congregation with no executive director that has seen its membership and revenue decline in recent years.

“I wanted to be able to help the synagogue with some of the administrative functions, and I didn’t have the capacity [before],” he said.

Now he’s helped create a five-year programmatic plan and revamped the temple’s fundraising strategy. Instead of simply distributing envelopes and hoping they come back filled with checks, everyone receives a phone call or personal conversation from a member of the fundraising committee as part of the annual appeal. Already the change is showing results.

“We’ve raised more money this year than in past years even though we have a smaller membership,” he said.

Sela brought in the dean of AJU’s Graduate School of Nonprofit Management to work with Temple Ramat Zion’s board, reduce its size and discuss its responsibilities. And from a marketing perspective, the rabbi learned to expand the synagogue’s offerings outside of its physical structure.

“You have to bring it to the people,” he said.

That realization has led him to hold classes periodically at local coffee shops. That way, congregants who work in the area can drop by during lunch to study Talmud or other topics.

Who knows how many more changes may be on the way for Sela and his congregation, but the rabbi said it’s a great beginning thanks to the new certificate program.

“I recommend it to all of my colleagues, especially ones working in smaller congregations,” he said. “It was all new information that has helped me tremendously.”

Shul Business Read More »

Ice cream entrepreneur taps into the ‘spiritual aspect’ of business

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After Ben Cohen and business partner Jerry Greenfield completed a course on ice cream making, they established their first ice cream shop in 1978 and went on to build Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream ­—a $300 million empire and one of the largest ice cream businesses in America. 

Choosing ice cream over bagels as their vehicle to prosperity, they initially lacked location. “We figured if it was going to be ice cream, it should be a warm, rural college town,” Cohen noted. But their analysis revealed that competition had already beaten them to the hot spots. “So we decided to throw out the criteria of warm and ended up in Burlington, Vt.,” where cold and snowy winters are legendary. Cohen still calls Burlington home.

Cohen, preferring social activism to the daily business grind— a throwback to his hippie youth— resigned as CEO in 1995 but continued to serve as board chair and then on the advisory board because he believes strongly that business has a “spiritual aspect” that should be recognized by the business world. “There is a spiritual aspect to business just as there is to the lives of individuals. As you give, you receive. As you help others, you’re helped in return,” Cohen asserted. He didn’t come to this conclusion overnight. Cohen’s business philosophy evolved as the company grew.

Ben & Jerry’s faced many early challenges. Banks were wary about financing those who lacked business experience, collateral and credit histories. To get a bank loan, they needed a business plan. Without knowing how to prepare one, they used a template for a pizza parlor that sold pizza by the slice, simply plugging in “ice cream cone” wherever “pizza slice” was mentioned, and got their initial seed money.

They broke even in their first year, but two years later, things started changing. According to Cohen, “We were at the very end of our rope and losing money … and finally, in a last-ditch effort to survive, we decided to pack our ice cream in pint containers,” which revolutionized their business in the 1980s.

Entering Boston, their first major U.S. market, nearly brought their business to an end. Häagen-Dazs, owned by Pillsbury, was fierce competition, and Ben & Jerry’s’ distributor wanted to drop the Vermont-based company as a client. Ben & Jerry’s quickly printed banners and flew them around major Boston sport stadiums, and rented signs on Boston transit buses that featured two pudgy hands squeezing a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, saying, “Don’t let Pillsbury’s dollars strangle Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. What’s the Doughboy afraid of?” 

This proved a successful act of chutzpah. “Pillsbury was getting such a black eye from their tactics of trying to keep us out of distribution that they relented and allowed us to continue distributing our ice cream,” Cohen said.  

Annual sales rose into the millions, and the two spent most of their time hiring, firing and meeting financial advisers. “We felt like we were becoming just another part of the economic machine that tends to oppress a lot of people,” Cohen lamented.

Then a friend told Cohen, “If there’s something you don’t like about business, why don’t you just change the way you do it?” For Cohen, this was genius. Venture capitalists wanted desperately to invest. “We decided to use this need for cash as an opportunity to make the community the owners of our business,” he recalled.

In an unusual move, they held the first in-state Vermont public stock offering, which made many Vermont residents part owners of the company. A national public stock offering followed, with the formal creation of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation. The offering prospectus stated that the Foundation would be getting 7.5 percent of pre-tax profits, the highest amount of any publicly held company that gives to charity.

So many requests for help came in that only 5 percent of the applications could be funded, a common problem for foundations throughout the world.

How did Cohen react? He and Greenfield developed a new definition of business from “an entity that produces a product or provides a service” to “the combination of organized human energy, plus money, which equals power.” For Cohen, business was the strongest force in society, but unlike religion and government, whose purpose was to improve quality of life, “Business has never had that as part of its brief.”

Cohen believed that only if spiritual concerns are integrated with business, which possessed the resources to actually make a difference, could positive change happen.

He felt the very definition of success was an obstacle because it is measured “by profit, how much money is left over at the end of the month or at the end of the year.” Instead, Ben & Jerry’s decided to change the way success is measured by measuring success through a “two-part bottom line”—by how much the company has helped to improve quality of life in the community and how much money it has made. However, their managers had bad news: When company energy was devoted to improving the quality of life in the community, it took away from improving profits.

Cohen and Greenfield were astonished. They recognized that money is a means, not an end, but values combined with social purpose should be their focus, integrating social concerns with an eye on profits.

The company bought coffee from a Mexican cooperative, improving Mexican coffee farmers’ quality of life by purchasing their beans. It bought blueberries from a Native American tribe, which helped benefit them. It purchases $3 million worth of brownies annually from Greyston Bakery, which provides employment opportunities for those in need. Ben & Jerry’s recently committed to making all of its ingredients Fair Trade certified by the end of 2013.

According to Cohen, “Our actions are based on deeply held values, that it’s an integrated and holistic effort to meet another set of our customers’ needs—the need to solve the social problems of our day—and that it provides added value. It’s a unique selling proposition. It motivates our employees. It helps with recruiting, and it builds tremendous consumer loyalty that’s based on shared values.”

Cohen believes business should take responsibility for the common good rather than focus on self-interest. He believes that business, as a powerful social force, can integrate social concerns throughout its activities, while supporting service organizations in order to help people.

According to Cohen, “As your business supports the community, the community supports your business. We are all interconnected, and as we help others, we cannot avoid helping ourselves.”

Arthur Wolak is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.

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Young entrepreneurs earn gelt for the community good

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“We call these tchotchkes,” Keith Wasserman says, examining a snow globe. The 27-year-old founder and president of Gelt Inc. talks into a video camera as he walks around the furnished unit in a Bakersfield apartment complex, which the company purchased in 2009.

The video is featured on Gelt Inc.‘s YouTube channel, Gelt TV. In addition to videos, the company uses blogging to raise its profile and fulfill its commitment of transparency to its investors and clients.

“I’ve always been very entrepreneurial,” Wasserman said in an interview.

Gelt Inc., named for the Chanukah chocolate coins, wears its Judaism proudly and has made charitable giving an important part of its mission. In addition to Jewish charities, such as the Jewish Home, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, Gelt Inc. also supports charities that aid the communities it invests in, including Boys and Girls Clubs of Kern County and Court Appointed Special Advocates of Kern County.

The business plan for Wasserman’s San Fernando Valley-based company consists primarily of investing in 75-  to 500-unit distressed apartment complexes in California and Arizona and renovating them to add value before renting the units out to individuals and families. Founded in 2008 during the height of the recession, Gelt Inc. now owns 15 buildings, representing nearly 1,000 multifamily units.

Wasserman’s partners include Damian Langere, the company’s 31-year-old co-founder and Wasserman’s cousin, and Evan Rock, 26, its vice president. The three young professionals don’t have the purchasing power or the experience to pay for the buildings and run the business completely on their own; Gelt Inc. has investors. Wasserman and his partners take advantage of current low interest rates by borrowing from banks, and they brought aboard two “gray hairs,” Wasserman said, referring to Steve Wasserman, his father, a successful transactional attorney in Tarzana, and Adrian Goldstein, a 50-something commercial real estate maven.

“We have a good combination of youth and energy and new ideas, and we have Adrian and my dad, who bring the experience and wisdom,” said Wasserman, who grew up attending L.A. Jewish day schools.

Goldstein said that the members of the team complement each other, and he values the core members’ tech savvy.

“A lot of new technology for the business, new ways of communicating with our investors and with our consumers—whether it’s social media or new applications that help us keep track of our contractors, our bids, schedules—we have a seamless platform that is made all that much better by young people who grew up in the technology age,” Goldstein said.

Wasserman speaks excitedly about the way everyone works together. Rock is “more of our numbers guy—he oversees the new acquisitions, prices the deals, deals with the financing, the refinancing. … Damian, my cousin, he’s more on the ground, deals with the contractors, oversees the rehabs. … I’m more of the marketing, the networking and investor relations. Adrian oversees all of us, and he’s our mentor … and my dad just knows a lot of people.”

In April 2011, Gelt Inc. bought its largest building yet, a 415-unit, 257,000-square-foot apartment complex in Phoenix for $16 million. With the next acquisition, Gelt Inc. hopes to reach its milestone of owning more than 1,000 apartment units.

Wasserman said that the 2009 purchase of Vernon Vista, a 78-unit complex in Bakersfield, was the turning point for the company, which, for some time, had mainly acquired and renovated four-plexes, as opposed to larger complexes with dozens of units.

“It became more professional, more of a real business. We took it to the next level, going from $150,000 deals to $4 million deals,” Wasserman said.

The company’s rapid growth makes Wasserman hungry for more, and he’s thinking ahead—way ­ahead. Ten years from now, he would like to see the company running 10,000 units, with properties in Los Angeles as well as more in Phoenix.

Wasserman, who got his start running a successful eBay store out of his college apartment at USC, is serious about his commitment to his faith and using the business to serve the larger Jewish community.

“Going to a Jewish school since fifth grade”—he attended Stephen S. Wise Temple and Milken Community High School—“has really instilled in me a sense of pride about being Jewish. A lot of the organizations we support are Jewish organizations,” he said.

This love for the Jewish community also translates into support for pro-Israel organizations, including AIPAC, StandWithUs and the Israel Leadership Council.

Wasserman says he has heard complaints about the company name. His critics believe it feeds the stereotype of Jews “being money-hungry.”

He insists, however, that the name reinforces the company’s positive intentions.

“We want to have a platform of making money for the good,” he said.

Young entrepreneurs earn gelt for the community good Read More »

Elle MacPherson Is Passive Agressive, Not Anti-Semitic [AUDIO]

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The web is buzzing over whether supermodel Elle MacPherson made anti-semitic comments during her Howard Stern Show appearance.  She didn’t—but she did say something awful.

Howard asked her whether she had any photos of herself hanging in her house, and Elle said she did have one, a famous Herb Ritts image of her wearing nothing but a holster. Howard asked whether that wasn’t too provocative considering her sons are still teenagers.

MacPherson went on the offensive:

“Howard, I think you are just being absolutely Jewish!!!” she said.

“Why is that Jewish?” asked Stern.

“You’re being overprotective!” said MacPherson. “You sound like a nagging mother!”

Anti-semitic?  Nah—MacPherson was just comparing Howard to a “Jewish mother,” though it didn’t come out exactly right.  But as she explained elsewhere in the interview, she knows from Jewish neuroses—her two husbands and her first boyfriend—all Jews. 

It’s what happened right AFTER that exchange that reveals something way more messed up about Elle. 

“I once saw my mother come out of the shower,” Howard said,  “it traumatized me.”

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Elle shot back, ” if she looks like you.”

There it is: ouch.  Elle made a very cruel, superfluous dig at Howard’s looks—something he makes fun of, but something he—like anyone else—is very sensitive about.  And here is this supermodel basically telling him, “Feh!.” 

The old Howard would have laid into her right then and there, but the new Howard moved quickly past it and ended the interview all gentlemanly.

Howard took the high road, but had to be seething.  Listen to the audio.  Am i wrong?  Why would a woman known for her incomparable beauty feel the ned to denigrate Howard’s looks? A shrink would go to town on her for this: is her M.O. to take on powerful men then gain the upper hand by pointing out how much better looking she is? 

Forget the antisemitic B.S.—Elle MacPherson has deeper issues than that.  Listen and let me know what you think….

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Opinion: Iranian red line already has been crossed

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Much has been said lately about red lines for Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but the most important of those lines in the sand already has been crossed. Iran now has the know-how and the means to build nuclear weapons, and aerial attacks by the United States or Israel would not erase that capability.

The best result from an air attack on Iranian nuclear targets would be a delay in Iran building a working weapon. But no matter how long the delay, Iran would eventually attain its nuclear goal as long as its government remained in place and committed its resources to doing so. Putting the nuclear genie back in its bottle may not be possible.

There are no easy solutions and no guarantees, but because the status quo is unacceptable, we must look at options. As President Kennedy told the nation during the Cuban missile crisis, all paths are full of hazards, “but the greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.”

Time is the most important element of the debate about what to do about Iran. In proposing renewal of international talks about its nuclear program, Iran clearly is stalling for time. Tehran knows having working nuclear weapons provides insurance that its regime will continue and thrive and that no other nation would risk attacking it.

President Obama also has been arguing for more time, saying economic sanctions need time to succeed. The President has been saying we need more time since he took office more than three years ago, exactly what the Iranians want. Every day the Iranians are making further progress toward a nuclear weapon, as the clock keeps ticking.

It is ironic the Obama Administration has so far strongly resisted stronger sanctions, only to yield because of insistence by Congress. Yet the Administration is only slowly implementing the stronger sanctions Congress has authorized.

Congress continues to work on legislation to further tighten Iranian sanctions. Rather than resisting such legislation, as it has so often in the past, the Administration should embrace legislation to close sanction loopholes and fully implement it as soon as possible.

While Western sanctions have impacted the overall Iranian economy and made life more difficult for the average Iranian, the Iranian regime seems willing to let the population endure the brunt of the sanctions while the nuclear program moves forward unabated.

The Administration’s Iranian sanctions strategy was called into question again recently when its Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, testified before Congress that all the sanctions piled on Iran so far have not slowed Iran’s nuclear program one iota.

Most of the sanctions so far targeted the Iranian people. Clearly, we should target additional sanctions on the Iranian regime’s leadership and its Revolutionary Guards Corps, who have been left largely unscathed by past sanction efforts. There is legislation that does so which I cosponsored, H.R. 1905. This bill passed the House in December and is pending in the Senate.

Other apparently covert means seem to have delayed Iranian nuclear progress somewhat. These include industrial “accidents,” computer worms that targeted delicate Iranian nuclear centrifuges, and the assassination of prominent Iranian nuclear scientists.

An important option missing so far from U.S. policy is a strong effort to encourage the Iranian opposition to try to replace the current regime. Because we can only delay and not stop Iran’s nuclear program, changing the regime before it achieves a nuclear bomb may be our best approach and certainly is worth considering to avoid a larger war.

A new Iranian government not pledged to the destruction of Israel, the United States and its allies would not pose the same kind of threat to the world posed by the current regime.

Young people, born after the 1979 revolution, which make up the majority of the Iranian population, and non-Persian Iranians, who are about one-third of the total population, would be receptive to a regime change message.

Iranian young people are chaffing under harsh Islamic restrictions imposed by a revolution that occurred before most of them were born. Iranian minority populations resent the Persian domination of the Tehran regime and often feel repressed or ignored. Both groups would be receptive to a strong regime change message.

During the “Green Revolution” in Iran in 2009, when thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Iranian mullahs’ repression and a rigged election, President Obama failed to support them. Despite that failure, it is not too late for the United States and others to offer both material and moral support to those who want a new government.

President Obama recently declared that his Administration’s policy was prevention of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, not containment after the fact. If that’s the case, the Administration needs to try a new approach to the Iranian dilemma, with tighter sanctions aimed at Iran’s leaders and possible regime change as its focus.

Republican Rep. Elton Gallegly represents Ventura and Santa Barbara counties in Congress and is vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. He served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2003-2011.

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Is an annuity right for you?

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Grandpa’s fixed pension, that sweet and steady stream of income that started on the day he retired, is nearing extinction. Most Americans today will retire not on company checks, but on personal savings and Social Security. With interest rates low, the stock market jumpy and Congress pinching pennies, it is no surprise that 87 percent of Americans, according to one recent survey, worry about running out of money. 

That concern explains the popularity of annuities—financial products designed to generate steady cash flow, sort of like Grandpa enjoyed. But today’s annuities are different from yesterday’s pensions, says Christopher Jones, CFP, president of Las Vegas-based Sparrow Wealth Management. “Commercial annuities can certainly help some meet their retirement income needs, but these products can also be very expensive and complicated,” he said. “They certainly are not for everyone, and choosing the right one is crucial.”

Whether an annuity is right for you, and if so, what kind of annuity, can in itself be a complicated matter. Here are few guidelines to help you decide:

You are probably a good candidate for an annuity if you’ve determined that to pay your basic expenses in retirement—food, shelter—you’re going to need more money than you’ll get from Social Security, and more than you can take comfortably from savings. Say you crunched the numbers and calculated that you’ll need to tap $1,000 every month from personal savings, but that’s a bit more than your savings can handle.

“To ensure that your basic needs are covered, the annuity may be a good option,” Jones said. When you fork your money over to an annuity company, you guarantee yourself a steady cash flow. Bonds can do that, too. But you’ll get more cash from the annuity. That’s in part because of something called the ‘mortality premium,’ which is a polite way of saying that annuity providers will pay you more today because when you die, they, not your heirs, will grab your principal. The mortality premium gets larger for every candle on your birthday cake. The very best candidates for an annuity are 65 and older, and have expectations of living a long life. 

You are probably a bad candidate for an annuity if you have a good-size nest egg, are in little danger of running out of money and can stomach a bit of market risk.

“The return you’ll get on a diversified portfolio will very likely be much greater than what you’ll get on an annuity,” Jones said.

In addition, your heirs, not the annuity company, will get your money when you pass. The very worst candidates for an annuity are those who have lots of money, but suffer from health conditions that may lead to an early death. 

What kind of annuity to choose?

The fixed-income annuity is, by annuity standards, a fairly simple contract. You fork over a certain sum to an annuity company, and the company then agrees to give you X dollars a month for the rest of your life. For a guaranteed $1,000 a month, a fixed annuity today would cost a 65-year-old man roughly $165,000 (about $175,000 for a woman, because women usually live longer). You may choose to purchase various perks, such as a “joint-and-survivor” benefit, which allows your spouse to continue collecting if you die. Those perks reduce the cash flow.

The other kind of annuity is called a variable annuity. The variable annuity, unlike the fixed annuity, ties your cash payments to some underlying investments. It promises you both security and performance. But Jones warns that variable annuities, often pushed by aggressive salespeople, can be incredibly complex and expensive, and often don’t deliver as they promise. If you are considering a variable annuity, use “non-qualified,” rather than “qualified” money. In other words, use money you have in your taxable account to take advantage of the tax-deferral benefits of the annuity; don’t use money from an already tax-advantaged account, such as an IRA. 

How to annuity-shop wisely

Kerry Pechter, publisher of the online newsletter Retirement Income Journal, and author of “Annuities for Dummies” (Wiley, 2008), offers the following tips for buying any annuity:

  • Buy only from a strong company

    • You may be around for another several decades; you want a company that will be around, too. Choose only companies with the very highest credit ratings. The online shopping sources in the sidebar list company ratings. You can also find them on Web sites of the providers.

     

  • Comparison shop

    • Immediate annuity issuers change their prices frequently, and during any given month, the best deal might shift from one carrier to another.

    If you are worried about inflation (and you should be), don’t put all of your money into an annuity. Leave enough for a side fund to invest in stocks. Or buy an annuity with inflation protection. Or both.

    Since annuities pay you based on current interest rates, and interest rates are now very low, you might want to buy into your annuities over time. Put some money into an annuity today and consider another in a few more years. 

    You can start shopping annuities by looking on the Web. If you feel a bit lost, get an unbiased expert to help. Consider a fee-only financial planner. You can find one at napfa.org.

    Russell Wild, MBA, is a NAPFA-registered financial advisor who has written nearly two dozen books on finance, including “Index Investing for Dummies.”

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    Judea Pearl wins award for work in artificial intelligence

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    Judea Pearl, co-founder of the Daniel Pearl Foundation and an internationally renowned expert in computer science, will receive the Turing Award, known as the “Nobel Prize in Computing,” for his path-breaking innovations in artificial intelligence — the discipline probing the partnership between humans and robotic machines.

    Pearl’s selection for the award, which carries a $250,000 prize, was announced on March 15, in New York by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

    The award recognizes Pearl’s work, which “serves as the standard method for handling uncertainty in computer systems, with applications ranging from medical diagnosis, homeland security and genetic counseling to natural language understanding and mapping gene expression data. His influence extends beyond artificial intelligence and even computer science, to human reasoning and the philosophy of science,” according to the ACM announcement.

    Pearl’s specialty is the subfield of computer science that aims to discover the fundamental building blocks of thought, creativity, imagination and language — those elements of the mind that make us intelligent.

    A professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Pearl, at 75, devotes half of his working schedule to teaching a class at UCLA, guiding doctoral students, and his research.

    The other half is devoted to his work as president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, which he established with his wife, Ruth, following the 2002 kidnapping and murder of their son Daniel, a Wall Street Journal reporter, by Muslim extremists in Pakistan. Among the foundation’s projects are an annual worldwide music day and a fellowship program for journalists from Muslim countries. Pearl also is a columnist for The Journal.

    Pearl was notified of his selection for the Turing Award — named in honor of British mathematician Alan M. Turing — while preparing for a trip to Israel, where he will receive the Harvey Prize in Science and Technology at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology.

    That prize carries a $75,000 honorarium, which, Pearl said, he will divide in three equal parts and donate to the Technion, the Daniel Pearl Foundation and his own grandchildren.

    He and his wife have not yet decided how to split the $250,000 Turing Award money.

    Pearl’s major contribution to the two-way dialogue between man and machine has been, first, in the area of uncertainty, a constant in every human endeavor, and later in causality, the relationship between cause and effect.

    The research on uncertainty occupied Pearl for much of the first part of his career, and when it was finished in the late 1980s, he turned his attention to the theory of causality to further advance a robot’s learning process.

    Causality seems a fairly simple concept on the face of it. We step on the gas pedal and the car accelerates, but it’s easy to confuse this with the mere association between certain occurrences.

    For instance, the word “malaria” is a contraction of the medieval Italian “mala” and “aria,” meaning “bad air,” because people coming down with the disease had often been near a swamp and breathed its foul air. Only later was it discovered that it was not the air that triggered the disease, but mosquitos that bred in the swamp.

    “The rooster’s crowing does not make the sun rise and association does not prove a cause and effect relationship,” Pearl observed, but it took him years to transmit the concept to a robot.

    Although his research on causality and causal reasoning “have had a major effect on the way causality is understood and measured in many scientific disciplines, most notably philosophy, psychology, statistics, econometrics, epidemiology and social science,” according to the ACM citation, some economists and statisticians have criticized the approach. Pearl said he sees the Turing Award as elevating his current and future visibility and authority among computer science students.

    The Turing Award will be presented to Pearl on June 16 in San Francisco during the annual ACM banquet. Participants will include all past winners of the award, who will also mark the 100th anniversary of Turing’s birth. Turing is considered the father of computer science and is credited with devising the techniques for breaking the German code during World War II.

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    Opinion: The lessons of the Beren accommodation

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    On the morning of Feb. 28, 2012, Alyza Lewin of the law firm Lewin & Lewin invited me to participate in a conference call to discuss a burgeoning controversy involving the basketball team of the Robert M. Beren Academy, an Orthodox Jewish School in Houston, Texas.  Alyza and her father, the venerated constitutional lawyer Nathan Lewin, had been informed the preceding evening by Etan Mirwis, whose son is the Beren team captain, that Beren was on the verge of forfeiting eligibility for a Texas state championship slotted to be played over the upcoming Shabbat.  In 2009, I had enlisted the Lewins’ help to secure a scheduling accommodation for members of the mock trial team at the Maimonides School of Brookline, Mass., to participate in the National High School Mock Trial Championship (NHSMTC).  The Beren situation would mirror the Maimonides experience in many ways, with the Lewins ultimately instituting legal action that enabled the Beren basketball players to be accommodated.

    Many are proud that Beren competed, but the school publicly declared opposition to the legal action.  In 2009, Maimonides was also against a legal challenge.  In other words, both schools thought it inappropriate to pursue a forceful response, preferring only to make respectful requests but not to demand an accommodation.  Both schools recognized that, without the legal option, the students would not participate because the associations administering the competitions would not alter schedules — even minimally — unless ordered to do so.  The schools were, nonetheless, content, proud that their students had been taught to sacrifice for a worthy principle.  Although the students had worked hard and rightfully deserved to compete, the schools reasoned that forfeiting was a noble act of kiddush HaShem (sanctifying God’s name), accentuating that nothing — certainly not a game or competition — should compromise Shabbat.

    In both situations, however, the parents spearheading the accommodation campaigns focused as well on an additional value. Like Mirwis’ tireless efforts at galvanizing support for Beren, it was the father of the Maimonides team captain, Dr. Jeffrey Kosowsky, who spent countless hours energizing interest in the Maimonides story.  Both Mirwis and Kosowsky, successful graduates of well-regarded Modern Orthodox schools, deemed it imperative not just that the students appreciate Shabbat’s sanctity but that they internalize the lesson of inclusiveness fundamental to this country’s purpose.

    Mirwis and Kosowsky appreciated that others outside the Jewish community had been affected by the discriminatory policies and that change would be effected only through a forceful challenge. The mock trial controversy was a multiyear battle resulting in states, such as New Jersey and North Carolina, withdrawing from the national competition precisely because the national organization formally voted not to accommodate Saturday Sabbath observance.  Consequently, for a number of years, no school in those states — Jewish or otherwise — could compete in the national championship.  Because of the Lewin & Lewin legal strategy, not only did Maimonides compete, but the NHSMTC organization ultimately reversed its policy to allow for scheduling changes, and New Jersey and North Carolina rejoined the competition.

    Likewise, it was not just Beren or Jewish schools that were harmed by the intractable no-accommodation stance of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools (TAPPS).  The Burton Adventist Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist school, was excluded from competing in the TAPPS basketball championship three times because of Saturday Sabbath observance.  The former Burton players and coaches remained disappointed, wondering what could have been had they been able to compete.  They encouraged Beren to challenge TAPPS and were even willing to join a lawsuit. Mirwis would celebrate Beren’s semi-final win in the TAPPS championship while sitting together with new friends from the Burton Academy.  And it is Mirwis who is most eager to help TAPPS in the future adopt an accommodation policy.  TAPPS has, in fact, now issued a statement, seeking such assistance and acknowledging that: “[o]ur state is becoming more diverse.  Because of that, we are reaching out to leaders around the state.  We want to listen to hear their concerns, and most of all to hear their ideas.” 

    While Beren, Maimonides and other Modern Orthodox schools are right in emphasizing to students that religious observance necessarily involves sacrifice, we may be doing our children a disservice if we do not responsibly challenge discriminatory behavior that only we have the opportunity to fix.  In both the Beren and Maimonides cases, there was no compelling reason for NHSMTC and TAPPS not to accommodate, and the accommodations did not affect the competition or other contestants.  Indeed, in both, other teams were amenable to the accommodations.  Our children must appreciate that they are fully a part of an inclusive society, one that values their contributions and skills and that needs them to speak up when an imperfection must be rectified.  It is not being pushy or unbecoming to demand that this great country benefit from the wisdom and talents of all its citizens; it is a civic duty to press the case.

    In the early-morning hours of Feb. 29, 2012, as Beren resigned itself to forfeiting its rightful place in the TAPPS championship, I sent an e-mail to a friend, who is also a leading Beren administrator, encouraging the school to accept the Lewins’ guidance.  I wrote:  “As a lawyer, I can tell you that legal proceedings are serious business and deciding whether to pursue them should not be taken lightly.  But I can also tell you that sometimes legal proceedings are necessary, sometimes they right a wrong.”  I added: “Yes, we are proud and principled Jews.  But we are also proud and principled Americans and our boys and girls must understand that, where there is no compromise of religious observance at stake, they can and should participate in American society.  If you do not challenge, you teach them a lesson that they are not fully American and do not have the same rights as other citizens.  That would be a tragedy.”

    Of course, there was no tragedy, only great joy.  The Beren basketball players, some who are likely to become leaders in our community, savored the blessings of living in a country that wants them to realize their promise and potential while staying true to their personal religious beliefs.

    Daniel D. Edelman is a lawyer in New York City.

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