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Jewish Journal

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April 4, 2012

Letters to the Editor: ADL, Sex-Ed in Orthodox high schools

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Opinion /

Measuring Anti-Semitism
Rob Eshman dismisses the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) polling on anti-Semitic attitudes with one word — “junk” — and suggests that American Jews are deluding themselves about the level of anti-Semitism in society, which he would have us believe is virtually non-existent (“Again,” March 30). Yet the facts tell a far different story. 

Eshman may not agree with our methodology — and he has a right to his opinion — but it is irresponsible and misguided to suggest that we use our polling to stir up “fact-free hysteria” about a mythical anti-Semitism. In fact, through our periodic polling over the years we have found — and clearly reported — that anti-Semitism in the United States has dropped significantly, from 29 percent in 1964 to 15 percent today, and is nowhere near the levels we currently see in Europe.

Still, what continues is troubling. Our most recent poll of anti-Semitic attitudes in America, a national telephone survey of 1,754 adults conducted Oct. 12-23, 2011, found approximately 15 percent of Americans, or 35 million people, are infected with classical anti-Semitic beliefs. This represented an increase of 3 percent from the findings of a similar poll conducted in 2009.

These numbers are not pulled out of thin air, or based on junk science. In measuring anti-Semitic attitudes ADL relies on an index carefully developed in partnership with the University of California nearly 50 years ago. The index includes 11 questions that are used to gauge a wide range of anti-Semitic propensities. A respondent must agree with six or more of statements such as “Jews are more loyal to Israel than America,” “Jews stick together more than other Americans,” “Jews have too much power in the U.S. today,” and “Jews have a lot of irritating faults” in order to be deemed to have anti-Semitic propensities.

Recent events — among them the arrest of an avowed anti-Semite in the attempted firebombing of synagogues in New Jersey and the discovery of anti-Semitic graffiti on a synagogue in Chicago — are all the more reason not to be complacent.

We should rely on careful analysis — not flip generalizations — to bring us toward a greater understanding of this phenomenon. This is not “hysteria,” but a sober analysis of a hatred that continues to persist — even in America.

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
 
Rob Eshman responds:
Abe Foxman is a personal hero of mine, and the ADL performs critical educational and watchdog tasks throughout the world.

That said, my quarrel with the ADL’s survey of anti-Semitic attitudes is that, as Mr. Foxman explains, the survey is 50 years old. As I stated in my editorial, some of the questions that the ADL considers negative no longer read as such. In a post- “Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” world, in which a Jew won the vice presidential popular vote and Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz is the most trusted name in news, a world in which 82 percent of Americans believe Israel is “friendly” or an “ally ” (CNN Poll, May 2011), a world in which the vast majority of Americans report they would welcome a Jew into their family (Gallup, 2010), the ADL survey simply doesn’t pass the common sense test. It is due for an update.

If a reputable third-party survey finds American anti-Semitism at the levels the ADL claims, I would be happy to publish a full retraction and apology. If I’m right, I’ll settle for a nice lunch.

Sex Ed in Orthodox high schools
Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz certainly displays an enthusiastically liberal, if naive, viewpoint in his essay “Sex Education in Orthodox High Schools” (March 30). He begins by denying the link between “learning” and then “doing” that scares many parents and educators about sex education. Much, though not all, of his subsequent pitch for sex education is defensive and survivalist — a tack taken by many educators in efforts to persuade resistant subpopulations of the value of it. That approach stresses the importance of biology and physical health and well-being pre-eminently. It tends to be more elliptical where social, psychological and moral matters are at issue. He argues that the classroom should be a safe and sacred place for sex education as he closes his piece.

He fails to see that resistance to sex education exists on many levels, not just the learning-equals-doing association, and not just with teen populations and their parents. The roots of that resistance cannot be detailed in a short note, but an example may stimulate more thought and discussion. I have approached local Orthodox rabbis with a proposal of evening lecture/discussion devoted to enhancing sexuality in marriage for adult audiences in private homes or synagogue facilities. Not one such offer ever materialized. Suffice it to say there are many forces that conspire against sex education in the Orthodox community, particularly if the program involves any sort of public conversation.

Doreen Seidler-Feller
Licensed Clinical Psychologist
via e-mail

Letters to the Editor: ADL, Sex-Ed in Orthodox high schools Read More »

Opinion: Lost in translation

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Opinion /

“Our Passover seder is translated into Arabic,” I used to tell my friends in school. “Arabic?” they responded in bewilderment. “That’s so weird! How could you translate a seder into Arabic? Isn’t Arabic the language of the enemy?”

Growing up in a French-speaking Sephardic-Moroccan home in Los Angeles, my sisters and I were never taught that Arabic was the “language of the enemy.” That is, unless we considered our parents “the enemy” — they spoke it between themselves when they didn’t want us to understand what was being said.

I have vivid memories of Judeo-Arabic being spoken in my home. It was both a “private” language for my parents, as well as a form of cultural communication between my parents and their friends. In fact, there are several jokes for which, to this day, I don’t know the punch lines, as they started out in French, and just when the suspense was it its peak, the punch line rolled out in Judeo-Arabic. When my sisters and I would beg my father to translate, the answer always was, “I could translate, but it won’t be the same.”

I have come to understand my father’s principle of “I could translate, but it won’t be the same” to also mean that there are times when linguistic expression is often more powerful than the actual translation itself. Throughout my upbringing, the first chant at the Passover seder that really made it feel like Pesach for all of us around the table sounded like this:

Haq’da Qssam L’lah lb’har âla tnass l’treq ’hin khrzeu zdoud’na min massar, âla yed sid’na oun’bina Moussa ben Amram haq’da n’khrzeu min had l’galouth amen ken yehi ratson.

My father chanted this during yachatz, as he split the middle matzah. It was not a formal part of the haggadah. It was a text that stood by itself, and although none of us understood a word of what was being said, we all chimed in, and we all had our own images and perceptions of how this moment was speaking to us.

For me, in the truest spirit of Passover, this Judeo-Arabic chant represented a journey through my roots. In a language whose words I did not understand, but whose tone and music evoked deep emotions within me, this chant helped tell me the story of Jewish life in Morocco. On the night when we are mandated to “tell the story,” here came a chant in a language I did not speak, yet it told me the story of my Moroccan-Jewish heritage more vividly than any history book ever could. It evoked images in my mind of my great-grandfather Rabbi Yosef Pinto, sitting at his seder in Marrakech, dressed in a jalabiya with a scarf on his head, breaking the middle matzah and recounting the Exodus to his family in the same Judeo-Arabic. It transported me back to the Moroccan mellah (Jewish ghetto), a place I’ve only been to in my mind, but a place that I nonetheless could hear, feel and even smell, especially at that moment. “Haq’da Qssam L’lah” even reminded me — because it was in Arabic — that Moroccan Jewry once had positive and cordial relations with their Muslim neighbors, something we’ve painfully lost today.

As the seder journeyed on, it was peppered with other Judeo-Arabic chants. Examples include Had taam d’eef kleu zdoud’na fi ardi massar (Ha Lahma Anya — This is the Bread of Poverty) or Fkhrouz Israel mn masar (B’Tset Yisrael Mimitzrayim — When Israel Left Egypt — Psalm 114). These were the sounds at my seder — raw, unfiltered and deeply authentic. Hearing the haggadah in Arabic took us away from our first-generation American milieu and transported us back to a place where Judaism thrived in a deeply spiritual fashion, enriched by a cultural world that enjoyed an intimate bond with the cuisine, spices, music and language of North African Arab culture.

Although my parents are no longer alive, my family continues our Judeo-Arabic chanting at the seder. These chants continue to tell the story of Pesach — my Moroccan ancestors’ Pesach — to my children, in the original language of their ancestors. 

I am proud to raise my children to understand that, despite the ugly extremism of jihadists and fundamentalists, Arabic is still not the “language of the enemy,” and that Jews have a long-standing relationship with Arabic language and culture. It reminds my children that Jewish works of outstanding spiritual and intellectual stature, such as Judah Halevi’s “Kuzari” or Maimonides’ “Guide to the Perplexed,” were written in Arabic, and that nobody accused these great minds of writing in the “language of the enemy.”

After my father’s passing a few years ago, I found the translation of the text we read while breaking the middle matzah:

This is how the Holy One Blessed be He split the sea into twelve separate paths, when our ancestors left Egypt, through the leadership of our master and prophet, Moses son of Amram, of blessed memory. Just like God redeemed them and saved them from harsh labors and brought them to freedom, so, too, may the Holy One Blessed be He, redeem us for the sake of His great name, and let us say, Amen.

Sounds — and feels — so much better in the original.

Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the director of the Sephardic Educational Center, an international organization with a campus in the Old City of Jerusalem. He is currently launching Makor, a new gap-year program combining Jewish studies, contemporary issues, social action and Israeli culture. Learn more about Makor at makorjerusalem.org.

Opinion: Lost in translation Read More »

Opinion: L.A.’s Muslims, Jews must join against hate

Leave a Comment / News, Opinion /

To say that the past weeks have been unsettling for Muslims and Jews would be an understatement. The point-blank murder of Jewish schoolchildren and their teacher in Toulouse, France, can only be described as chilling and ruthless. The killer did not limit his hatred to Jews. His wrath also targeted Muslims in military uniform serving their country. 

More recently, violence came to our back door. Shamia Alawadi, an Iraqi Muslim woman, was beaten in her home in El Cajon, Calif., a suburb of San Diego, and later died from her wounds. Her 17-year-old daughter found Alawadi in a pool of blood, with a note suggesting that the heinous act was motivated by hate, though exactly what happened remains to be seen as the facts unfold. 

Reactions to incidents like these tend to fall into one of two categories. Some people claim these incidents are evidence of larger societal problems — rampant anti-Semitism and radicalization in the case of Toulouse, mounting Islamophobia in the case of San Diego. There is another camp that will claim that incidents like these are isolated events — tragic and sad, but not linked to any widespread phenomena. 

Each claim has its dangers. To paint these incidents as part of an ingrained social ailment can place guilt on those who hold no culpability. The greater Muslim community in France is nervously bracing itself for a backlash on account of the actions of one man. And no doubt, Californians will not want to be branded with a label of bigotry because of a horrific crime that happened on our turf. But to dismiss such violence as actions of lone-wolf extremists does little to quell our fear or explain the next incident that looks frightfully similar. 

So, the question for those of us, Muslims and Jews, who deplore hate-driven violence, is “How should we react?” What influence do we hold over violence we could never imagine perpetrating ourselves? We have found that our power lies in our commitment to engaging one another as Muslims and Jews living, working and raising our families in Los Angeles. Breaking out of the isolation of our self-created communities to understand “the other” chips away at the stereotypes and rhetoric that provide the foundation for extremist thinking. By modeling outreach and mutual understanding, we undermine the ability of extremists to claim that they speak for the larger community from which they come.

This spring, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills and King Fahad Mosque of Culver City have committed their communities to reaching across what is often seen as an impassible divide between Muslims and Jews. Ten members from each congregation are participating in a four-month fellowship designed to build lasting relationships, break down stereotypes and equip people with the skills to take the experience back to their larger communities. 

These 20 fellows make up the fourth fellowship cohort of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. Since 2006, NewGround has developed leaders and created opportunities for Muslims and Jews in Los Angeles to dispel the perception that our communities are natural adversaries by making strong, positive relations between Muslims and Jews the norm, not the exception.

Some will protest that such dialogue does not reach the violent outliers who are responsible for violent crimes. This is true. But this perspective underestimates the power of shifting the centers of our communities to take seriously intergroup engagement. By normalizing our relations with other groups, we further isolate the fringes that profess ideologies of supremacy and hate. There can be no believable claim that extremists speak for the larger community, because the larger community is speaking for itself.

Not even halfway into the King Fahad-Temple Emanuel Fellowship, the transformative connections are already forming. In the wake of the shootings at the Jewish school, one Muslim fellow wrote an e-mail titled “So Sorry to Hear About the Shootings in France.” It contained one simple sentence. “I extend my heartfelt sorrow and share with you, the Jewish community and humanity, the pain from the calamitous attack on the school in France.” And after learning of the fatal beating of the Shamia Alawadi, a Jewish fellow reached out to the entire group, saying, “Let’s do something.” 

These words are challenges to the prejudice that the fringe uses to rationalize their brutality. They are calls to action. They are evidence of the power of reaching out beyond ourselves and our comfort zones. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy to dismiss dialogue as a charming but ineffective gesture. When intergroup relations become the norm in our communities and not the exception, we no longer find ourselves in pockets of isolation, afraid of how the other sees us and what he might do. The prejudice, the stereotypes and the bloodshed are what become isolated.

Laura Geller is senior rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills. Usman Madha is director of public relations at King Fahad Mosque in Culver City.

Opinion: L.A.’s Muslims, Jews must join against hate Read More »

Opinion: The myth of the Iranian-American Jew

Leave a Comment / Gina Nahai, News, Opinion /

This one’s for our children — the teens and 20-somethings who were born in this country or who’ve lived here most of their life, who have no memory of Iran except what’s been passed on to them or what they’ve constructed with their imagination. The kids who speak Persian with an accent or not at all, crack up at the way their parents pronounce their w’s and th’s, become wide-eyed and incredulous when they discover that we grew up without frozen yogurt, nonfat milk and broccoli. And who, more and more these days, find themselves having to define and defend that tangled nexus of nationality and religion, of likeness and singularity, of being and becoming that is their Iranian heritage.

I am speaking, of course, of the uproar within the Iranian community in reaction to a certain reality show over the past few weeks. I don’t know about everyone else, but it pains me to see our young people cringe and shudder at the thought of what the rest of the country is going to think of us after having seen this show. They’re in a strange predicament, these children of hyphenated parents. Iranian-American. Iranian-Jew. Iranian-American-Jew. Already, they’ve had to walk the tightrope from one component to the other every hour of every day. But for too long they’ve also had to endure the harsh judgment of Los Angeles’ larger society, fight negative misconceptions, shrug off the myth of what Iranian-Americans are like because they feel they have little power to change it. Why else would they be so hurt and offended by the pitiful portrayal of a handful of Iranians on a less-than-second-rate television show?

Once upon a time, an army of rich, spoiled and ill-mannered Jews, having exhausted all the sources of glee and merriment in Iran, sat around and hatched a plan to conquer the idyllic city of Beverly Hills, destroy its library and public schools, and lay waste to adjacent Westwood Corridor and Sinai Temple. One bright summer day in 1978 they packed up all their jewels, cash and “attitude,” traveled some 7,581 miles, and descended en masse onto the unsuspecting inhabitants of said city. Overnight, they evicted, expelled and dislodged the rightful owners of Beverly Hills by paying too much for their land, paying all cash, opening short escrows. The natives who weren’t forced to sell by outsized offers sold anyway, perhaps out of fear of the jewel-slinging Jews and their all-night displays of libertinism on Shabbat.

Sound familiar? It didn’t start with the TV show; it started more than 30 years ago, within the “native” American community of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles.

Having planted their flag onto the “natives’ ” land, these Iranian Jews set out to expand their sphere of influence by infiltrating the four pillars of Beverly Hills’ community — the schools, synagogues, professional offices and Neiman Marcus. They spoke Persian to each other even when there were “natives” around. They invented shallowness, materialism, large houses and questionable business practices, and kept it all to themselves. All those unscrupulous bankers on Wall Street who rip off their own clients, the homeowners and real estate speculators who developed and built Brentwood Park and Holmby Hills, the international fashion houses and clothing stores that charge the equivalent of a midsize car for a wallet or a blouse — they must all be Iranian Jews. So must all the women prancing around this city with fish lips and Brazilian buttocks. And all the Americans who, no matter where they are in the world, speak English and expect everyone else to understand.

I shouldn’t have to, but I feel I must clarify that the above is, indeed, a myth. As with all myths, it has a kernel of truth buried somewhere within: Yes, a handful of Iranian Jews came to this country with a lot of money, though that’s hardly a crime; a few of their children own BMWs and drive too fast; a few come across as, or really are, impetuous and unpleasant.

But there are infinitely more rich, obnoxious, BMW-driving “natives” in this city than there are Iranians of that sort, and no one’s going around resenting their presence and blaming them for all the ills in the country. The difference is, when one of the “natives” commits a wrong, we blame him. When an Iranian commits the same wrong, we blame them all.

Sound familiar? It’s like what the world has done to Jews through the ages, except in this case, many of those wagging the finger and perpetuating the myth about the frightful Iranian-American Jew are — alas — “native” American Jews. At best, this is divisive and unhelpful.

So I’m here to tell you, lest it goes unsaid, that the real story of Iranian-Americans in Los Angeles is vastly different from the one that’s being told — on television and off.

The real story is that by far the great majority of Iranian Jews who settled in Los Angeles in the late 1970s and in the ensuing decade were anguished and traumatized refugees escaping the very real threat of extinction in a homeland where their roots stretched back thousands of years. Most got away with only the proverbial shirt on their back. What money they had made in Iran was the result of decades of hard work and ingenuity; whatever part of it they managed to bring to the United States, or to make here, helped contribute to the health and vibrancy of this economy.

The real story is that nearly no one, not even the most fortunate, was spared emotional loss and psychological hardship in the turmoil of migration. From the owners of the closet-size stalls on Santee Avenue who worked seven days a week selling quinceañera dresses, to the wives who took a job for the first time in their life because their husband couldn’t find one, and the children who were sent here alone to become the ward of a sibling, an aunt or a Jewish charitable entity — just about every Iranian here has earned whatever living he’s managed to make. To this day, most of them are not rich — not by Los Angeles standards. They don’t live in Beverly Hills, but in Pico-Robertson, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys and Northridge. Their kids don’t go to private school; they work nights and weekends, take loans to finance their higher education. That they manage to get into Ivy League colleges and succeed in medicine and art and law and technology puts the lie to the idea that they live and breathe to party, drink and spend their parents’ money.

They’re a splendid bunch, these young people who know, perhaps better than many “natives” of their generation, what a gift it is to wake up every day under the American sky. They take little for granted. They’ve learned to appreciate the salient parts of each piece of their identity and to tolerate the rest. That’s a gift they’ve been blessed with and a cross they’ll have to bear. But this other cross — being singled out as “foreign” by their fellow Americans, held to account for the flaws and failures of others, having the good in them overlooked and their faults magnified — this is a burden they’ve neither earned nor deserve.

Gina Nahai is an author and a professor of creative writing at USC. Her latest novel is “Caspian Rain” (MacAdam Cage, 2007). Her column appears monthly in The Journal.

Opinion: The myth of the Iranian-American Jew Read More »

When A Teenager Buys Iced Tea and Ends Up in a Grave

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

No greater tragedy can befall parents than having to bury a child. This is especially true when the child is killed and a perpetrator gets away with it. In this sense no American can but feel the double pain of the parents of Trayvon Martin.

On the other side of the equation, however, is the interview given by the father and brother of George Zimmerman, the shooter, who have spoken of a son and sibling who shot an assailant in self-defense but who is now being so pilloried and demonized that he cannot leave his home for fear of violence.

Who is right?

Well, we don’t yet know all the facts and it would be wrong to prejudge the outcome.

What is clear, however, is that a young African-American teenager, wearing a hoodie against the rain, died, seemingly, for carrying a can of iced tea and a bag of skittles. If that isn’t a tragedy than the word has no meaning. He was unarmed. Zimmerman was told by 911 that it was unnecessary for him to pursue Martin. So why did he continue to give chase?

Was it, as so many, especially in the African-American community, believe because Trayvon was black and thus racially profiled by Zimmerman as a menace? It seems impossible not to arrive at that conclusion. Whatever transpired after that – and Zimmerman is claiming that Martin assaulted him – the question remains why Zimmerman didn’t heed the advice of the 911 dispatcher he himself contacted and stand down.

Race continues to divide our great nation. Truth be told, I hate the very word. There is no white race and there is no black race.  There is only one human race that diverges into far more tangential considerations like ethnicity and skin color. Trayvon Martin was not a black teenager. He was an American teenager. He was our son, he was our brother. He belonged to all of us. And he died, seemingly, for no reason except that he was trying to protect himself from the rain with a hood on his head.

The hoodie got me thinking. When you speak of a hood in the context of race the first thing that comes to mind is the hood of the Ku Klux Klan which is used to allow Klansmen to appear frightening and menacing and to conceal their identities. That’s the kind of hood we should have a problem with, not a hood worn by a teenager against the rain.

I’m a Jew and I wear a hood. It’s called a Yarmulke, or a black Hassidic hat, and, like Trayvon Martin, it allows others to make snap decisions about what I represent. If the assumptions were only positive – Shmuley has a commitment to spirituality and ethics, he is open-minded and tolerant – I would be flattered. But often the assumptions are that I am a right-wing religious fundamentalist who looks down at non-Jews and is part of a religion that oppresses women. I hate when people judge me by my garb and not by heart and I understand why African-American youth would feel the same.

To be sure, just as there are things in the Jewish community that must change, there are things in the African-American community that should as well. In my community materialism can sometimes trump spirituality, as when a Bar Mitzvah or wedding becomes more about impressing guests than a holy celebration that brings us closer to G-d. Among African-Americans a 75% out-of-wedlock birthrate runs against the values of a community that is deeply religious and has always cherished marriage, family, and children. This is something must definitely be addressed. But wearing a hoodie is not.

Zimmerman may have fired in self-defense. We just don’t know the facts yet. But even that confrontation, if it’s accurate, came about because he saw a hooded black man walking through a neighborhood at night and immediately thought, in the words of Zimmerman himself, that the youth was ‘up to no good. He is on drugs or something?’

I live in a community comprised largely of orthodox Jews and African-Americans. People have a right to walk through a neighborhood and look at homes, which is what Zimmerman is alleged to have said of Martin. That’s why the dispatcher at 911 told him to stay in his car. What he was being told, in essence, is that Zimmerman’s suspicions alone were not sufficient to pursue the teenager. It was for the police, who were on their way, to make that judgment.

I am a white man. But I understand completely the feelings in the African-American community that this was the most senseless death predicated on the conjecture on the part of a neighborhood watch volunteer that a black man walking through a neighborhood presupposes ill intent. Neighborhood watch volunteer means just that. You watch. You study. You report. You don’t take the law into your own hands. You don’t become judge and jury as to a person’s intent. If it were a Jew murdered in similar circumstances for simply walking around a neighborhood at night with a bottle of Coke and a black hat I would hope that our community would likewise be up in arms. No doubt people with white skin can appreciate that when you have darker skin and you go out to buy some candy it’s outrageous for others to assume that you may be a criminal.

Then there is the Florida “stand your ground law,” which gives people wide latitude to use deadly force rather than retreat during a fight. Is it a just law? I am not a lawyer. But I am a Rabbi and I employ my Judaism and its values in determining justice. Jewish law is clear. One may only take a life when it is evident that an assailant has murderous intent. Could Zimmerman have reasonably surmised that Martin had murderous intent as he walked with a hood through his neighborhood? Certainly not. Did it happen later, when, as Zimmerman claims, Martin assaulted him? Perhaps. But once again, had Zimmerman left the matter in the hands of the police as he was instructed to do the confrontation would never have happened.

I want to repeat. George Zimmerman may be innocent of murder. I am not a law-enforcement professional and I do not know all the facts. Besides, he retains the presumption of innocence as justice and our legal system stipulate. One injustice does not deserve another. We have to wait for all the facts of the case to be made clear. But to say Zimmerman is innocent of bias – certainly as his actions of that terrible night indicate – seems a real stretch.

If I were Trayvon Martin’s parents I would feel an absolute obligation to go to the ends of the earth to demand justice. If justice determines that Zimmerman walk, then so be it. But who could fault parents demanding that they get to the bottom of why their son, who went to buy a can of iced tea, is now in a grave.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the international bestselling author of 27 books including his the acclaimed new bestseller “Kosher Jesus,” is a candidate for the United States House of Representatives in New Jersey’s Ninth Congressional District. His website is www.shmuleyforcongress.com. Follow him Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

When A Teenager Buys Iced Tea and Ends Up in a Grave Read More »

To everything — even your colors — there is a season

Leave a Comment / Culture, Fashion /

Spending five hours discussing your clothing, colors and style preferences may seem like a nightmare to some. But it’s all in a day’s work for Wendy Lehmann, a veteran professional image consultant from England who lends her passion for fashion to remaking your look in Israel. And while Pesach cleaning doesn’t usually mean editing your wardrobe, it’s as good a time as any to eliminate what doesn’t serve you. (Or at least contemplate it.)

Lehmann is the official representative of the United Kingdom’s leading image analysis company, the House of Colour, which recently opened its first branch in the Holy Land. Over the good part of a day, she shows clients how to create a personal brand. A recent immigrant from London to the Merkaz, in the central region of Israel, Lehmann caters to everyday individuals and groups as well as fashionistas, designers, celebs and public figures. Her clients are both men and women. 

Getting your “colors done” has never been a big business in Israel — until now. With infectious enthusiasm and flair, Lehmann runs the Israel branch of House of Colour as a one-woman operation from a new studio in B’nai Tzion, near Kfar Saba. For Lehmann, it’s a given that the color and style of what you wear can boost a mood, enhance natural looks and lend confidence to your style at work, home or play.

Her timing couldn’t be better. The country’s burgeoning fashion industry, which produces about $1 billion a year in exports, has won rave reviews. It generated significant media buzz over the first Tel Aviv Fashion Week in 25 years, held this past November. Representatives of leading fashion magazines from the United States and Europe, including Vogue, were in attendance. The guest of honor was designer Roberto Cavalli. He wasn’t the only name gaining recognition. Dodo Bar Or, Israel Ohayon, Tamar Primark and Mira Zwillinger were among the Israeli designers garnering media attention. 

All that was good news for Lehmann. And me. This past summer in Israel, I broke my leg in a hiking accident and ended up spending months recuperating. When I learned about the House of Colour’s new Israel’s operations, Lehmann and I were both game to guinea pig me and update my wardrobe beyond the trifecta I was eager to leave behind: wheelchair, crutches and cane. To delve into this British system, Lehmann suggested I bring along from Jerusalem a couple of pieces that I love and a few that I dislike. One more cardinal rule: no makeup.  

Once Lehmann positioned me in Israel’s House of Colour HQ, in front of a mirror in natural daylight, she instructed me to pull back my long hair and draped me in a white apron. I felt about as attractive as Lucy and Ethel when they bungled the chocolate assembly line. But instead of snatching up pralines, Lehmann armed herself with swatches of fabric in a wealth of colors. In seconds, she showed me how they seem to affect my naked complexion, lifting my appearance or draining it, making my eyes seem brighter or duller. The first step, which is the same for everyone, was to determine if my undertones were yellow or blue. It soon became apparent that Lehmann, whose undertones are yellow and who classifies herself as an “autumn,” knew exactly what she was doing. Her conclusion? Out of the four seasons, my undertones are blue. I am a “winter,” confirming a similar analysis I had done years prior in California. 

The House of Colour system, however, includes not only a prescription of the colors one should wear, but why and how. With that in mind, Lehmann then examined a wide spectrum, holding approximately 30 swatches next to my punim. Recording her findings in a chart I would take home, she ranked each color within my season, giving me easy-to-follow guidelines. “Wow” colors that work great from head to toe rank 100 percent. Those that lend themselves well to dresses and coats 75 percent. The best colors for tops are designated 50 percent and those for accessories 25 percent. My all-time best colors are rich, dark jewel tones: such as bordeaux, plum, deep green and navy, but I can also rock hot pink, every shade of gray, true white and barely-there icy pastels in pink, mint and faint blue. Relying on the top picks in my season could create what Lehmann calls a “capsule wardrobe” of minimal pieces in which every item works with every other. She also convinced me I could carry unusual colors I would have previously never considered for anything beyond a T-shirt, including a brilliant kelly green. Sold! 

Despite the popular opinion that everyone can wear black, in the House of Colour everyone actually cannot. Only winters can. And although we can all get away with more when we are young and dewy, it’s easy to see that over time, and for every season, black washes out complexions and makes the other seasons look too formal or stern. That’s one reason why Lehmann says she wishes she could make over Israel’s Charedi population. But there is good news, too. As Lehmann says, “The one color everyone can wear is true red.” 

In both individual and group sessions, Lehmann also offers personal style analysis, often in the company of other clients, in what becomes a riotously fun experiment in what looks wrong and what looks right. Group sessions are “demand led.” And Lehmann, who can easily entertain an audience, is clearly of the “more, the merrier” philosophy. 

As I did, each House of Colour client departs with plenty of tips for successful shopping and a style booklet, fashion guide and wallet full of color swatches to demystify the process when shopping. Makeup, scarves and other items are available online and from a handful of consultants working in the United States at houseofcolour.co.uk. The company also provides expert complimentary guides such as an electronic “what to wear” guide for every occasion. 

In addition to my colors, Lehmann made suggestions for my style of clothes, taking a look at my facial features, general proportions and preferences culled from a series of questions listed in the massive binder she referred to throughout the instructional part of our session. In the end, she deemed me a “natural romantic,” combining my love of natural fabrics and down-to-earth styles with my affinity for very feminine looks. She suggested I think of natural as the cap on my romantic pen, adding that I might best avoid sharp angles, on a jacket lapel, say, for unstructured softer edges instead. 

In the weeks since, I’ve turned to my House of Colour wallet of color swatches while shopping and experimented with Lehmann’s advice to edit my wardrobe. Besides drawing interest from fellow shoppers and shopkeepers, her tips have earned me heaps of positive feedback from the new combinations I’ve created from my wardrobe as well as the successful, though sometimes painful, letting go of things that just aren’t right. It’s a bit like letting chocolates pass you by on a conveyor belt. Sometimes the best answer is “No.” 

Five hours never passed so quickly.

When you go: 
Prices range from $130 for color analysis to $190 for personal style, with discounts for packages and groups. Discounts are available if people book both style and color consultation, and if they reserve as a group of three or more participants. Lehmann also offers personal shopping and wardrobe edits. For more information, call 011-972 (54) 427-2809 — within Israel, dial (054) 427-2809 — or e-mail wendy.lehmann@houseofcolour.com.

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Finding balance at the intersection of yoga and Judaism

Leave a Comment / Health, News /

Yoga means “union” or “union with the divine.” It doesn’t mean “contortionism,” “hippie commune” or “Lululemon.”

“Judaism” means “monotheistic religion [of the Jews]” or “belief characterized by one transcendent God.” It doesn’t mean “bagels and lox,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” or “big beard and black hat.”

And “Jewish yoga” certainly doesn’t mean “contorting my body to the shrill soundtrack of a Larry David monologue.” Nor does it mean giving up my Judaism.

Not even close.

My practice weaves yogic teachings and philosophies with Jewish teachings and philosophies. And while I don’t think such a practice is all that rare nowadays, it is sometimes dismissed by people on both sides without much understanding. Disapproving Jews say, “Feh! It’s a Hindu practice and it’s avodah zarah [idolatry].” Disapproving yogis say, “But how can you practice Jewish yoga? Yoga is for everyone!”

Here’s what I can tell anyone who holds either of those disapproving opinions: It works for me. I am part of a growing body of people who recognize deep, logical and undeniable links between yoga and Judaism.

By examining the basic tenets of yoga and Judaism separately, we can better see why so many people are drawn to “yoga with a Jewish twist.”

At its core, yoga is a practice that unifies practitioner with source, human with divine. While we are all human, yogis believe and revel in the notion that the common thread among all things — living and nonliving, animate and inanimate — is the divine. The asanas, or the actual poses, are just a tiny part of the much larger picture of the union that yoga explores.

In “The Yoga Sutras,” Patanjali illustrates the eight limbs of yoga; limb by limb, he spells out exactly what it means to practice — and it’s much more than downward dog and plank pose. In fact, the only real guidance on the actual poses that Patanjali gives is an admonition that they must be “steady, firm and comfortable.” Most of the text is devoted to extolling the proper virtues of a yogi (compassion, peace, honesty), and outlining specific ways to solidify the union with the divine (breathing, focusing energy on a single point, turning inward, following rules to live a pure, proper, balanced, non-disturbed life), with a huge emphasis on the importance of acknowledging, praising and ultimately melding with the divine.

At its core, Judaism is a religion based on the belief, eloquently stated by Maimonides, that “all existence depends on God and is derived from God.” It follows that in Judaism, while inhabiting this temporary body, we are obliged to perform tikkun olam (repairing the world) through the fulfillment of 613 mitzvot, or commandments. The mitzvot spell out exactly what it means to be an upstanding Jew: Recite prayers of thanksgiving for food, do not engage in hurtful speech, give charity, honor your parents, keep your word, don’t covet, etc. By following the commandments, performing acts of reparation and engaging in acts of loving kindness, we indeed become closer with God. And while “poses” are not at the crux of any Jewish practice, there certainly are specific movements that a Jew in prayer performs: bowing, standing, swaying — all in the name of creating oneness with Hashem.

Unfortunately, mainstream “Jewish practice” in the modern world is often understood to take place only in cavernous rooms with stained glass windows, filled with people clad in designer suits and dresses.

Similarly, the phrase “yoga practice” has become largely synonymous in the modern Western world with “asana movement practice.” It evokes images of ripped, toned 20-somethings sweating it out on rectangular rubber mats laid over pristine hardwood floors. In reality, one can practice yoga anywhere: on the bus, in the home, in the middle of that important meeting, during a conflict with a family member … especially during a conflict with a family member. That’s where kshama (patience) and daya (compassion) — two “non-asana” aspects of yoga — are truly needed. Yoga and Judaism, two ancient practices that seemingly share so much, have been narrowly interpreted to a fault. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

To be clear, yoga is not a faith. Yoga is a physical and spiritual practice, and not a religion. Practicing yoga does not mean it must be to the exclusion of practicing Judaism, or vice versa. 

While classes that talk about Ganesh and chant “Om Namah Shivaya” are nice, these themes are just not mine. They don’t tap into my deeply held beliefs as a Jew. What has made my practice more emotionally connecting, meaningful, comforting and enriching has been the introduction and exploration of text, Torah and Jewish prayer into my yoga practice. 

Practicing unity with the divine and fulfilling God’s commandments can (and should) be done simultaneously; if you’ve never done it, try it before you knock it. You might find that both experiences become more profound. Perhaps you’ll see that you can repair the world with a stronger intention and effect greater change. Plus, it just plain feels good.

So practice your vinyasa. Pray. Move. Meditate. Sweat. Study Torah. Keep Shabbat. Live the yamas. Clear your mind. Read “The Yoga Sutras.” Be healthy and prosperous, inside and out.

Namaste and Shalom.

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Heroines with no heart

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Holidays, Hollywood, Is Featured?, Mobile Sections, News, Opinion /

Do biblical babes still make the best heroines?

Take Queen Esther, for example — a noted beauty, savvy survivalist and the savior of her people.

She underwent a year of compulsory primping before ascending the throne; surely such resolve is worthy of admiration. Or what about Deborah, the multihyphenate hero who was at once judge, warrior and prophetess? She helped defeat a Canaanite army, aided by her blood-lusty foil, Jael, who speared the commander Sisera with a tent peg and a mallet.

Who says women can’t do it all?

And yet, a legacy of biblical female complexity has barely made a dent in contemporary cultural archetypes. Today, young girls are screaming for Katniss Everdeen, the kid-killing heroine of “The Hunger Games,” a film adapted from the best-selling trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Were Queen Esther alive today, no doubt she’d be competing with movie stars to swell the circle of her influence.

During a recent event at a New York City Barnes & Noble, hundreds of teenage girls waited in line to meet actress Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss in the blockbuster film (it scored the third-largest box office opening ever, earning $152.5 million its inaugural weekend). “I’m just going to cry,” one girl reportedly said to The New York Times.

The inspiration for this nauseating star worship is a character carved from unsentimental survivalism. In her review of the movie, The Times’ Manohla Dargis champions this rare bird, calling Katniss “[a] brilliant, possibly historic creation — stripped of sentimentality and psychosexual ornamentation, armed with Diana’s bow and a ferocious will.” Although the story does have romance, it is hardly the heroine’s main focus; the fierce Katniss prefers to fight, not flirt. And she does not, a gratified Dargis notes, need a man to save her.

But this invented heroine has no worldly peer. Even while venerating her, Dargis can’t seem to couch her squarely in reality: She is most like “an American Eve, battered, bruised and deeply knowing, [who] scrambles through a garden not of her making on her way to a new world.”

Looking to the Bible for a modern heroine, though, is slightly odd. Women of the ancient world did not possess the same rights to self-determination as do modern women. And in the texts that define them, their voices are often disguised, if not unheard, an inequity that has provided impetus for biblical reclamation and reinterpretation. Contemporary authors and scholars have tried to right the wrong: From Anita Diamant, we got “The Red Tent,” a novel that reimagines early Bible tales from the perspective of the matriarchs; and from Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, a distinct brand of Torah scholarship once hailed in this newspaper as “shining a light on biblical silences.” Zornberg even describes herself in the words of writer Maurice Blanchot, as one tasked “to keep watch over absent meaning.”

At commercial movies, meaning can be so absent, a biblical comparison serves. But something is amiss with Katniss’ single-minded survival. She is sometimes so strong, so invulnerable, it is a wonder she has any human needs at all.

“I like to write about women who are total women,” Valerie Weiss, the writer and director of the upcoming film “Losing Control” (in theaters April 13) said recently from her office on The Lot. For her debut feature, about a Harvard scientist who jilts her live-in boyfriend when he proposes, “I really wanted to create a character that was smart and driven professionally, but equally concerned about her personal life, knowing it was her personal life that gave her the energy to be ambitious. If you’re all about your career, it just drains you.”

Weiss could be speaking of herself, having studied molecular biology at Princeton, then biophysics at Harvard Medical School, before finally giving in to her artistic side and becoming a filmmaker. “My mom still says, when I’m feeling frustrated with Hollywood, ‘Maybe you could go back [to medicine] and be in your sister’s practice.’ ”   

Weiss’ husband, Rob, whom she met in graduate school, earned a degree from Harvard Law before deciding to become an actor. They have two daughters, 4 and 8 months. Weiss said she struggled with whether a woman’s achievement should precede having a family, another coincidental mirror of her protagonist, who struggles with the either/or conundrum. 

“In the beginning, she’s thinking, ‘Holy s—-! I haven’t achieved my goals, and I’ve been with this one guy and maybe he’s the problem,” Weiss said. “That’s what this feminist message is: ‘Be on your own; you don’t need a man.’ In the end, she learns that she can absolutely be independent and achieve professionally, but her heart wants love, too, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

In the “The Deep Blue Sea,” based on the play by British playwright Terence Rattigan, Rachel Weisz plays a woman whose sole ambition is love. “She is at once a sensible, capable, intelligent Englishwoman and a mad, keening martyr for love,” critic A.O. Scott wrote in The Times. Is she a less worthy heroine because her deep, primal need for attachment is so deluded and desperate she tries to take her own life? Watching her despair unravel, one vacillates between suggesting a good, brisk walk and wanting to join her for a cigarette.

Is she weak because her torment is internal and not externalized in some deadly dystopian wilderness? (As if physical strength is the only kind required for survival.) What to do with a woman who is no careerist, no Olympic champion, but rather, a woman you know.

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Politics on the Bimah: Pesach 5772

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Judaism, Torah /

“Keep the politics off the bimah.” We hear this in the synagogue whenever a rabbi speaks on a topic nearing the intersection of Jewish values and public policy. While argued most vociferously by those who disagree with the rabbi’s message, the critique itself that “politics has no place on the bimah” is a decidedly false characterization of the essence of Judaism and Jewish textual tradition. (Note: I am not speaking about endorsing a candidate for public office.)

Judaism speaks to every issue
Judaism has something to say (often multiple opinions) about any issue. The talmudic rabbis argued about everything — from commerce and capital punishment to property rights and personal behavior, to abortion, contraception and homosexuality. They took on poverty and hunger, distribution of wealth and health care. 

From our earliest incarnation as the faith of Abraham, our tradition has spoken truth to power. Who can forget Abraham preaching at God when the Holy One seemed to want to act wholly unjustly toward Sodom and Gomorrah? Later, as we became the Children of Israel, we accepted a legal tradition that set ethical standards for every aspect of our lives. Jewish tradition could not contemplate a separation between the personal and the public.

So when critics — Jews and non-Jews alike — argue that rabbis should be silent on matters of public policy, they are defying the essence of religion from the time of Moses and before. When complainers cry “politics” every time the rabbi speaks out against the status quo, they forget that we Jews have always been the agents for ethical living.

Moses, the ethical agitator
As Moses stumbled upon a bush that burned unconsumed, the character of the Jew was forever stamped in our souls. Out there in the wilderness, the personal became political. When Moses returned to Egypt to convey God’s message to Pharaoh to “let My people go,” he ensured that Jewish leaders would speak truth to power for generations to come. The life conditions of people — as individuals and a community — became a central concern of Jewish rabbinic leadership.

Who was Moses? Rambam characterized him as a rationalist religious thinker. Chasidic rebbes saw him as the ultimate tzadik (righteous person). There are those in every age who want to remake Moses in their image. But to reduce Moses’ influence to intellectuality or spirituality is to do revisionist history. Moses wasn’t content merely ministering to the broken souls of his people; he spoke out for a community oppressed. Moses wasn’t just a pastoral leader; he was an agitator, working for the freedom of his people.

So let’s stop trying to cleanse from Moses’ story — our story — the very essence of his leadership. Moses was a kind of visionary prophet. Like the prophet Nathan, who called King David on his unethical behavior, and Queen Esther, who went toe-to-toe with Haman, Moses saw reason for hope, and with deep faith spoke out against injustice.

This Passover, be Moses
To properly observe the Pesach seder, one must retell the story of the Exodus. One must recall a time when people were oppressed, and when Moses heard the call of the Divine and stood up to Pharaoh’s oppression. Passover is about bitterness sweetened and salty tears refreshed.

It is no accident that the Exodus features prominently in all movements for freedom and equality, from the anti-apartheid movement to the anti-slavery movement, from women’s suffrage to the American civil rights movement, to freedom for Soviet Jewry. The Exodus narrative, while profoundly spiritual and dripping with mystical insights, is at its root the story of injustice confronted.

Of course, to tell the story is to reimagine ourselves simultaneously as slaves moving toward freedom and also as Moses leading them there. Passover declares that inequities and injustices must be confronted and corrected.

Hear the call of the seder
So, next time your rabbi speaks up about public policy and Judaism — on economic justice or health care reform, marriage equality or Israel’s responsibility to work diligently for peace, our concern for the environment or our differing notions about when life begins — she is walking in the footsteps of Moses and Abraham, of Esther and the Nathan. Your rabbi is listening closely to the call of the seder, to stand up for the downtrodden and to cry out for the oppressed.

Hearing this call is often uncomfortable. But Passover is not about feeling good; it is about being ethical. Not about consuming good food, but feeding our hunger for righteousness. Pesach calls us to critique our world, our country, our homeland and our community. It pushes us to imagine a better way. It goads us to remake the world as it could be, as it should be.

So make your Passover meaningful. Hear the call to justice. And demand our leaders help bring it to fruition.

Rabbi Paul Kipnes is spiritual leader of Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas. He is co-editor of a CCAR Journal issue on “New Visions of Jewish Community.” He blogs regularly at rabbipaul.blogspot.com and Tweets @RabbiKip.

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