Dennis Spiegelman, “I Should Live to be a Hundred” [VIDEO] Leave a Comment / Culture, Mobile, Mobile Sections, News / JewishJournal.com <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103904/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Dennis Spiegelman, “I Should Live to be a Hundred” [VIDEO]</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103905 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-culture category-mobile_20111212 category-news category-survivor tag-buchenwald tag-german-village tag-holocaust tag-jack-julius-bendorf tag-ober-ramstadt tag-survivor tag-world-war-ii ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103905" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103905/" rel="bookmark">Survivor: Julius Bendorf</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103905/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/culture/" rel="category tag">Culture</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/culture/survivor/" rel="category tag">Survivor</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Jane Ulman" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/jane_ulman/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Jane Ulman </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p> The morning stillness was shattered in the German village of Ober-Ramstadt, as people started running through the streets, crying out that the synagogue was burning. Julius Bendorf, 23, could see the flames from his house. Later, around 1 p.m., a group of men broke into his father’s butcher shop at the front of the family’s house. The Nazis had already closed down the shop, as they had all Jewish businesses, but the intruders destroyed the counters, scales and other equipment. “These were men we knew really well, who bought meat from us,” Julius remembered. The men then entered the family’s living quarters, but Julius, his parents and brother had already escaped through the back door. The next day, the family returned to find their feather bedding shredded, their food tossed on the floor and the house in shambles. It was Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938, and, as Julius said, “It all happened so fast.”</p> <p> Julius was born on Jan. 4, 1915, to Josef and Dina Bendorf. His brother, Manfred, was born in 1919. Julius’ father owned the only butcher shop that sold beef rather than pork, though it was not kosher.</p> <p> Jew and Christians had always mixed easily in Ober- Ramstadt, but that changed in the early 1930s. Julius stopped going to public school in 1931, when professors began making anti-Semitic remarks. He found a job in a Jewish bank, and then in a second one, until all Jewish businesses were forced to close in March 1938.</p> <p> Julius continued doing sports, however. He excelled in gymnastics, as well as running and jumping. He even tried out for the 1936 Olympics, but after two weeks all the Jews were sent home.</p> <p> On Aug. 15, 1939, Julius and Manfred were arrested and taken to a labor camp in Paderborn, Germany. There they cleaned streets and harvested wheat, replacing city workers serving in the army.</p> <p> On April 23, 1940, the two were transferred to a labor camp in Bielefeld, where they built air-raid shelters and removed the debris from bombed-out portions of the city.</p> <p> Then, on March 3, 1943, the Bielefeld Jews were rounded up and packed into cattle cars. “They told us to bring suitcases, that they needed workers in the east,”</p> <p> Julius said. But two days later, when the train arrived at Auschwitz, the Jews were shocked as SS guards, according to Julius, “came down on us like an avalanche.” Julius and his brother were taken to Buna-Monowitz, initially a forced labor sub-camp of Auschwitz that then became Auschwitz III, which consisted of factories being built by the IG Farben Company to produce synthetic rubber and gasoline.</p> <p> Julius’ job was to help build a factory, by hand. His work included carrying cement and iron, and hammering cement to remove air bubbles. “You had to stay out of sight, so to speak, because they could shoot you at any moment,” he said.</p> <p> On June 1, 1943, Manfred injured his knee and was taken to Auschwitz. He was cremated soon after, though Julius did not know this for certain at the time.</p> <p> Beginning in August 1944, the Allies bombed Buna-Monowitz four times. As the planes approached, Julius and the other workers were chased out of the factories as the Germans turned on fog machines to obscure the targets. The Germans then ran for the air-raid shelters while the prisoners, confined by electrified barbed wire fences, sat outside. “We put our little metal food bowl on our heads,” Julius said.</p> <p> As the Russians approached, in January 1945, the prisoners were lined up and marched out. “It was snowy and cold. And we had to pull the wagons of the SS soldiers,” Julius said. After two nights, they reached Gleiwitz concentration camp. Julius’ group was shipped off to Buchenwald and then Holzen, a sub-camp, where he worked in an airplane factory tunneled into a mountain.</p> <p> As the Americans advanced, the group was returned to Buchenwald. Then on April 5, about 5,000 starving and ill prisoners were marched to Weimar and packed tightly on what became known as the “death train” to Dachau. The trip took three weeks as the train circumvented bombed-out railway tracks. Julius doesn’t remember arriving in Dachau, only waking up on a hospital cot and seeing American soldiers. He had been shot, sitting “most likely on a couple of dead bodies,” with his knees up when, he imagines, a drunken SS soldier opened the car door and randomly fired at the prisoners.</p> <p> In July 1945, Julius moved to the Feldafing DP camp, and in November 1945, as a free man, he traveled to Frankfurt. Through the American soldiers, he found a job at Frankfurt’s Reichsbank. He also learned via the Red Cross that his brother had been murdered at Auschwitz, as well as his parents and grandmother.</p> <p> In January 1948, Julius sailed to the United States and settled in Chicago, where he found work at the Revere Camera Company. He stayed 15 years.</p> <p> In 1961, he met Jeane Liewen, a divorced mother of two girls, Toni and Margo. They married and moved to Phoenix in 1963, and then to Los Angeles in 1968, where Julius worked for Scientific Data Systems, which was sold to Xerox. He and Jeane later separated, but Julius remains close to his daughters and five grandsons.</p> <p> Julius returned to Ober-Ramstadt in March 2010 with his entire family at the invitation of a high school teacher whose students every year research the history of Ober-Ramstadt Jews who suffered in the Holocaust. Julius spoke to the students and participated in a ceremony in which stolpersteine (stumbling blocks) — commemorative brass-covered concrete cubes — were laid in the sidewalks outside the Jews’ houses. Julius returned in June 2010 for Ober-Ramstadt’s 700th anniversary and was named an honorary citizen.</p> <p> Today, Julius, 97, lives in a second-story walkup apartment. He goes to the YMCA three times a week for aqua-exercises and spends Sundays with his family.</p> <p> Of the 73 Jews living in Ober-Ramstadt when World War II broke out, Julius is the only one who survived. “It was plain luck,” he said. “You had no power to do anything.”</p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103905/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Survivor: Julius Bendorf</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103909 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-is_featured_20110628 category-mobile_20111212 category-news category-opinion tag-auschwitz tag-forced-labor-camp tag-freddy-diament tag-hitler tag-israel-for-yom-haatzmaut tag-march-of-the-living tag-monise-neumann tag-poland ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103909" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/103909/" rel="bookmark">The right questions after the March of the Living</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/103909/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/is_featured_20110628/" rel="category tag">Is Featured?</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/commentary/opinion/" rel="category tag">Opinion</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Jewish Journal" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/aanoauthor/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Jewish Journal </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p>I’m standing with my back against a brick wall at Auschwitz. Monise Neumann points to an area just beyond her and tells a story.</p> <p>When Freddy Diament arrived at the forced labor camp, she says, he was stripped of his material possessions. That was, of course, what happened when Jews arrived at the Auschwitz camps. But Freddy managed to keep hold of one invaluable possession: his little brother.</p> <p>Hitler’s henchmen made a practice of public executions. When Freddy’s brother tried to escape, he met a cruel fate. “Freddy was forced to look, helplessly, as his young brother was hanged,” Neumann says, looking to her left and pointing. “Right over there.”</p> <p>Each year, the March of the Living brings thousands of Jewish high school students to visit Auschwitz and other sites in Poland, and on to Israel for Yom HaAtzmaut. Freddy — a long-time Angeleno — accompanied the trip for many years. Since his death in 2004, Neumann, head of the L.A. delegation, has perpetuated his memory by telling his stories to each year’s group.</p> <p>Today, the countryside to which that child tried to escape is lush and verdant. The stark contrast it presents between what now is and what once was cripples our capacity to grasp the Nazi atrocity. We visit Shoah sites to witness and understand, but connection and comprehension are difficult to achieve.</p> <p>When we visit Chelmno — where Nazis herded Jews into gas vans — white butterflies dance with eerie ubiquity. Along the road to Treblinka — where they exterminated 900,000 — the riverbanks overflow with life. Near Lublin — where city-dwellers had a clear view of Majdanek — the only shadows are from the branches, and the only echoes come from the birds.</p> <p>At each site, we strive to be witnesses. But when we can’t hear the screams of mothers or see the smoke rising above crematoria, what is there, really, to witness? As the sun spills out from each layer of twiggy woodland, aesthetic beauty sedates our heavy hearts.</p> <p>Still, raw emotional reaction is not entirely out of reach. It is when the grieving ceases to be for the “Six Million” and shifts toward the individual — when the gargantuan becomes the particular, and the past resurfaces in the palms of our own hands — that the bloodstains on that picturesque countryside come into focus.</p> <p>For me, that shift happens at Majdanek. The savage concentration camp’s several dozen barracks are still intact and house historical exhibits. Standing in those barracks, I can smell the Jews.</p> <p>The aroma is of something expired, moldy, vomitous. The sweat and bile of the Jews seeped into the wood, and crawled between the cracks and onto the beams, and perched themselves in the air inside the barracks. They have since stayed there, and I can smell them.</p> <p>I can smell the final “Shema Yisraels,” the final gemilut chasadim, the last conversations and desperate tefilot in that air. It seems that those in the barracks recognized that, tomorrow, they would trudge down the pebble road and into the chamber. So their stenches and memories and auras decided never to leave. It all still levitates above the floorboards, and reminds me that the wood underneath my feet is blotted with the terror and tradition of individuals.</p> <p>An awareness that the Shoah was the murder of a series of people, not just an unfathomably large group, powers my empathy: I find a tiny blue button in the soil of what was once a storage barrack; it occurs to me that my autistic younger brother would have fallen victim to Hitler’s euthanasia program; a survivor accompanying us on the trip breaks our silent visit to a mass grave, bursting out, “Why? Why?!”</p> <p>I leave Poland with an overwhelming sense of bafflement. I, like that survivor, want to ask “why?” But the lessons of the Shoah lie not within the crimes of the monsters who commissioned the Sonderkommando; they lie within the thoughts and choices of those who now visit and remember.</p> <p>Days later in Israel, gazing out the bus window in Jerusalem, I notice a stone wall emblazoned with graffiti, Hebrew letters that read: “Az?” — in English, “So?” The graffiti poses a more important question than “why?”: Now what? Judaism has invariably survived calamity. What comes next?</p> <p>During our visit to Birkenau a week earlier, the universe had answered that eternal question. The L.A. delegation had been seated on the grass as the sun began to set and the infamous brick entrance cast a shadow on the train tracks.</p> <p>Among the countless groups present was a delegation of nearly 200 officers of Mishteret Yisrael — the Israeli national police force.</p> <p>As we knelt on the grass, just when the air became frosty, I heard: “Smol, yamin, smol.” In English: “Left, right, left.” I craned my neck to spot the entire Mishteret Yisrael delegation, in full uniform, marching along the tracks leading out of Birkenau.</p> <p>Through my psyche flashed the painful notion that, had their organization (or the nation it protects) existed just 70 years earlier, history might have unfolded very differently.</p> <p>That was Mishteret Yisrael’s answer to “Az?”: to create a potent symbol of Jewish life within the most harrowing valley of Jewish death.</p> <p>If we are to plant our seed in what once was, the next step, in its glaring simplicity, is to practice vigorous Judaism. It is to not allow the Jews murdered in Majdanek to become merely odor; to say the Shema, to wear a tallit, to pray, and argue, and engage about Israel because there is a Jewish state. The next step is not only to march from the camps in memory of Freddy Diament’s brother, but also to emulate his holy defiance, and bring it to life.</p> <p><i>Amiel Fields-Meyer is student body president of Milken Community High School and founder and editor of Truth Be Told Politics (<a href="http://www.TBTPolitics.com" title="TBTPolitics.com" target="_blank">TBTPolitics.com</a>), a political blog and forum for teen writing and debate. Fields-Meyer is also a contributing writer to the Huffington Post. He will be attending Emory University in the fall.</i></p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/103909/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">The right questions after the March of the Living</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103888 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-california category-is_featured_20110628 category-mobile_20111212 category-news tag-community tag-donna-kreisler tag-good-deeds-day tag-ilc tag-ilc-care-program tag-israeli-leadership-council tag-los-angeles ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103888" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103888/" rel="bookmark">Israeli-Americans make good on giving back</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103888/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/california/" rel="category tag">California</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/is_featured_20110628/" rel="category tag">Is Featured?</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Jonah Lowenfeld" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/jonahl/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Jonah Lowenfeld </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p>On May 6, instead of sleeping late and spending the Sunday morning at home, Vered Nagar shlepped her son and daughter from Tarzana to the boardwalk at Venice Beach to help the homeless. </p> <p>“They were reluctant about doing it at first,” Nagar said, watching her 9-year-old daughter, Tal, hand a toothbrush to a tanned, bearded man whose teeth looked like they could use a good cleaning. “They weren’t sure how it’s going to be with the homeless people.”</p> <p>“As we talked about it,” Nagar continued, “they got excited about helping, and we’re here.”</p> <p>The Nagars were among almost 200 people who participated in the Israeli Leadership Council’s (ILC) first Good Deeds Day. </p> <p>“Our job is to find volunteer opportunities that people will be passionate about,” said Donna Kreisler, the director of the ILC-Care Program, an initiative aimed at encouraging members of Los Angeles’s sizable Israeli-American community to engage in volunteerism. </p> <p>Since its launch at a concert last November, when more than 5,000 attendees pledged to give a total of 22,000 volunteer hours, ILC-Care has marshaled volunteers for projects, including to help rescue 100 stray dogs in December and to run a pre-Passover food drive that helped feed 150 needy Jewish families over the holiday. </p> <p>The concertgoers, Kreisler said, have been among the most enthusiastic participants in ILC-Care programs. </p> <p>“Every single time we come out with something, they’re the first ones to register,” she said. </p> <p>On Sunday, in addition to the 50 volunteers stationed at two locations on the boardwalk in Venice, Israeli-Americans and others joined three other ILC-sponsored projects around the region. </p> <p>Nearly 45 volunteers went to the Shalom Institute in Malibu to plant vegetables that will help feed hungry clients at SOVA. (Two weeks earlier, as part of the international project J-Serve, more than 140 Jewish teenagers had tended those same beds.)</p> <p>Sixty others helped run a daylong party in Woodley Park in the San Fernando Valley for a group of cancer patients and their families identified by the Israeli-American organization StandWithUs. </p> <p>And, in a project coordinated with the region-wide volunteer weekend of Big Sunday, 10 ILC-recruited volunteers joined 15 other Big Sunday volunteers and 45 clients of the Substance Abuse Foundation of Long Beach to tour the Museum of Tolerance. </p> <p>A planned fifth project site, a cleanup effort at Compton Creek in partnership with Big Sunday and Heal The Bay, did not take place due to a lack of volunteers, Kreisler said.</p> <p>The ILC is one of hundreds of organizations of all types — nonprofit, corporate, religious, educational — that has partnered with Big Sunday over its 13-year existence. </p> <p>“I always feel like we’re bigger than the sum of our parts,” David Levinson, founder and executive director of Big Sunday, said. </p> <p>What started out with “300 good-hearted Jewish people at Temple Israel of Hollywood,” Levinson said, has now turned into a three-day festival of volunteering that attracted more than 50,000 volunteers last year. (The exact number of volunteers who joined one of Big Sunday’s 400 different projects this year was not available as of press time.) </p> <p>“Our target audience is everyone,” he said. “We have homeless people who volunteer and movie stars who volunteer.”</p> <p>Having partnered with many synagogues over the years, Levinson said, Big Sunday has attracted Israeli-Americans in the past, but ILC-Care gives that community a specialized outlet for volunteering. Across all four Good Deeds Day sites, 70 percent of the volunteers who participated were Israeli-American, Kreisler said.</p> <p>And Kreisler is hoping that, by planning more activities throughout the year, Good Deeds Day can build and grow. </p> <p>“It’s very contagious,” she said, noting that people who had not taken part were calling the ILC offices to inquire about future activities. “Even when it starts with a few hundred, we believe that, if we are consistent, we’ll be able to get it into the thousands.”</p> <p>In Venice, most of the conversation was in Hebrew among the 25 volunteers who took part in the first shift. None of them seemed to have been to the concert, and at least one of those present, who learned about the volunteer opportunity through an ad in this newspaper (which co-sponsored the Day of Good Deeds), hadn’t ever heard of the ILC. </p> <p>As is typical for the ILC, the group in Venice was working in partnership with another organization, the Send Me a Penny Foundation. The group’s founder, Anthony Perez, has been distributing food on the Venice boardwalk for six years; every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Perez and his volunteers provide close to 1,500 meals to homeless people on the boardwalk, serving food collected at the Heart of Compassion food bank in Montebello.</p> <p>“Other organizations will see us on the boardwalk and want to participate,” Perez said, taking a break from managing the ILC-recruited volunteers. </p> <p>And despite the cajoling it took for Nagar to get her daughter and son to the boardwalk, by midway through her shift, Tal Nagar seemed happy to be there.</p> <p>“At school, we talk about doing good deeds,” the fourth-grader said, standing behind a table full of toothbrushes, toothpaste and plastic combs. “It was a good feeling to give to people that don’t have these things.”</p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103888/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Israeli-Americans make good on giving back</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103911 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103911" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/uncategorized/103911/" rel="bookmark">Obama finally, unequivocally backs same-sex marriage</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/uncategorized/103911/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default">Uncategorized</span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Brad A. Greenberg" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/bradg/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Brad A. Greenberg </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p><img decoding="async" style="visibility:hidden;width:0px;height:0px;" border=0 width=0 height=0 src="http://c.gigcount.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.11NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEzMzY1OTMzNzk2MzYmcHQ9MTMzNjU5MzM4MjM3MiZwPSZkPSZnPTImbz**Y2MxNjdkNTg5NTc*YTZhYmVlY2RkOTYz/MDFiYWNlZSZvZj*w.gif <view-source:http://c.gigcount.com/wildfire/IMP/CXNID=2000002.11NXC/bT*xJmx*PTEzMzY1OTMzNzk2MzYmcHQ9MTMzNjU5MzM4MjM3MiZwPSZkPSZnPTImbz**Y2MxNjdkNTg5NTc*YTZhYmVlY2RkOTYz/MDFiYWNlZSZvZj*w.gif>” /></p> <p><object name="kaltura_player_1336592831" id="kaltura_player_1336592831" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowNetworking="all" allowFullScreen="true" height="221" width="392" data="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_35m4c81a/uiconf_id/5590821"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowNetworking" value="all" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000" /><param name="movie" value="http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_35m4c81a/uiconf_id/5590821"/><param name="flashVars" value="autoPlay=false&screensLayer.startScreenOverId=startScreen&screensLayer.startScreenId=startScreen"/><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com <view-source:http://corp.kaltura.com/>“>video platform</a><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/video_platform/video_management <view-source:http://corp.kaltura.com/video_platform/video_management>“>video management</a><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/solutions/video_solution <view-source:http://corp.kaltura.com/solutions/video_solution>“>video solutions</a><a href="http://corp.kaltura.com/video_platform/video_publishing <view-source:http://corp.kaltura.com/video_platform/video_publishing>“>video player</a></object></p> <p>After two years of “evolving” thoughts on same-sex marriage, President Obama today gave unequivocal support for legalizing gay marriage.</p> <p>In an interview with <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-comes-out-i-think-same-sex-couples-should-be-able-to-get-married/ <view-source:http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-comes-out-i-think-same-sex-couples-should-be-able-to-get-married/>” title=”ABC News” target=”_blank”>ABC News</a>, Obama said:</p> <blockquote> <p>“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.</p> <p>(skip)</p> <p>“It’s interesting, some of this is also generational,” the president continued. “You know when I go to college campuses, sometimes I talk to college Republicans who think that I have terrible policies on the economy, on foreign policy, but are very clear that when it comes to same-sex equality or, you know, sexual orientation, that they believe in equality. They are much more comfortable with it. You know, Malia and Sasha, they have friends whose parents are same-sex couples. There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents and Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and, frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”</p> </blockquote> <p>More <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-comes-out-i-think-same-sex-couples-should-be-able-to-get-married/ <view-source:http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/obama-comes-out-i-think-same-sex-couples-should-be-able-to-get-married/>” title=”here” target=”_blank”>here</a>.</p> <p>Obama’s comments, which many saw as long overdue, come on the heels of <a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/votes_in_on_nc_constitutional_amendment_banning_gay_marriage_20120508/ <view-source:http://www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/votes_in_on_nc_constitutional_amendment_banning_gay_marriage_20120508/>” title=”North Carolina voters passing a constitutional amendment” target=”_blank”>North Carolina voters passing a constitutional amendment</a> banning same sex marriage—the 30th state to adopt such a ban.</p> <p>On this one, <a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/why_i_voted_no_on_prop_8_20081028/ <view-source:http://www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/why_i_voted_no_on_prop_8_20081028/>” title=”I agree with Obama” target=”_blank”>I agree with Obama</a>. And religious folks should too. As I wrote after voting no on California’s Proposition 8:</p> <blockquote> <p>Yes or no I could find a Christian minister to support my vote. But on an issue like same-sex marriage, I don’t think it matters whether I believe God is bothered by homosexuality. Proposition 8 has to do with fundamental rights—limiting them, that is. Marriage, despite what we always hear, is not a religious convention. It is a cultural convention. And the words “sanctity of marriage,” to my mind, have more to do with tax breaks and hospital visitation than ordaining a relationship before God.</p> <p>As an evangelical Christian—as someone who, uncomfortable as it is to sometimes say this, reads in the Bible that homosexuality is a “perversion”—I don’t believe it is the job of government to legislate based on religion. We’ve seen how that works out.</p> </blockquote> <p>Simply allowing gays to marry is about equality—it requires only action by the state, not by ministers or others who are opposed to participating in gay marriage ceremonies.</p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/uncategorized/103911/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Obama finally, unequivocally backs same-sex marriage</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103912 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-mobile_20111212 category-news category-opinion category-rob_eshman tag-class tag-economy tag-greed tag-investing tag-occupy-la tag-occupy-wall-street tag-one-percent tag-opinion tag-warren-buffet ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103912" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/rob_eshman/103912/" rel="bookmark">Opinion: Occupy Ideas</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/rob_eshman/103912/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/commentary/opinion/" rel="category tag">Opinion</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/commentary/opinion/rob_eshman/" rel="category tag">Rob Eshman</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Rob Eshman" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/rob-eshman/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Rob Eshman </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p>It’s May. The grunions are running and so are the members of Occupy L.A. They wriggle up from the cold and dark, plant their tushies on the warm ground and squirm about frantically, desperate to get something accomplished, until a massive tide sweeps them away.</p> <p>And I’m not talking about the fish.</p> <p>Grunions, at least, mate during their annual appearance. The Occupy movement, if it follows the same course as before, is destined just to beach itself and die.</p> <p>Last year, when protesters camped from Wall Street to the lawn of Los Angeles’ City Hall, they made headlines and accomplished one significant feat: They focused national attention on the growing gap between the country’s rich and poor. </p> <p>Why, some of our wealthier readers may ask, is that anyone’s problem? Because stable communities, and resilient nations, are built on a strong middle class. That’s a truism economists of all stripes and parties agree upon — though our political class, of all stripes, seems incapable of acting on it.</p> <p>So the Occupy L.A. people put “We are the 99%” on poster boards and waved them in our faces, and for a while it worked. At least until they trashed the lawn outside City Hall and caused public safety employees to rack up endless hours of overtime, costing us middle-class taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. </p> <p>But that was all so 2011. When the Occupiers reappeared on May 1, the news media yawned, and the organizers themselves seemed, literally, directionless. </p> <p>A West Los Angeles contingent set out to join the May Day protesters downtown. They rode their bicycles down Santa Monica Boulevard, past the Beverly Hilton Hotel, and stopped to regroup in the parkway along Little Santa Monica. A small contingent threw an impromptu protest in front of the Prada store on Rodeo Drive — no doubt confusing the Chinese and Russians who could actually afford the stuff inside.</p> <p>Meanwhile, back at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, I was inside standing among a dozen men in suits shaking their heads in utter dismay as Occupiers rode past.</p> <p>“They really are clueless,” one said. “There’s billions of dollars of capital in this hotel, and they’re going to Prada.”</p> <p>That’s right, the men and women fighting for the 99 percent bypassed what may be the largest and most influential annual gathering of the 1 percent in the United States. </p> <p>How large? The annual Milken Global Conference brings together 3,000 attendees over four days to discuss finance, politics and the state of the world. The cost of entry starts at $6,000. How influential? One year, I ran into Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch and Alvin Toffler all in the same moment — in the men’s room. Those Occupiers need to fire their research department.</p> <p>The Global Conference combines graduate-level seminars on everything from equity formation to international policy with upstairs deal making and ferocious hallway networking. The attendees tend to be asset managers, investors, venture capitalists, corporate chieftains. They’re mostly men, in suits, clutching iPhones and BlackBerries. While people shake your hand, their eyes never leave the nametag on your chest. After a while I knew how Dolly Parton must feel. </p> <p>But here’s a greater irony: If the Occupy movement was clueless about what was happening inside the Hilton, the conference itself dedicated substantial time and attention to exploring the concerns of the 99 percent. This isn’t new or surprising: investor and philanthropist Michael Milken, who created the Global Conference in 1998, is driven by the idea that capital creates innovation and social change; that wealth, used in creative and aggressive ways, spreads wealth.</p> <p>So the vast majority of the sessions focused on how investments in innovative medicine, food, technology, education and communication can help solve the challenges the world faces in those fields, even as they increase returns. One entire track looked at how free-market innovations in Israel and the Arab world can increase political stability throughout the Middle East (more on that next week).</p> <p>At a luncheon debate titled, “What’s Happened to the American Dream?” historian Niall Ferguson and investor (and “car czar”) Steven Rattner agreed that rising wealth disparity and economic immobility hampers growth. They also disagreed loudly and brilliantly over what to do about it. Ferguson said we must focus on cutting back entitlement programs to prevent the growth of a motivation-sucking “transfer state,” where wealth is just given to those who don’t work. Rattner argued that the issue has to be tackled along with greater public investment and fairer tax codes. </p> <p>Not surprisingly, the one-percenters sided more with Ferguson, but at another panel titled, “Easy Money: Consequences of the Global Liquidity Glut,” it became clear that in Milken’s world, it’s just as big a shanda for capital as for people to be lying around doing nothing.</p> <p>The day the bike riders blithely rode past, I attended a morning session called, “Community Development: Investing in the 99 Percent.” Panelists examined innovative ways for investors, NGOs and government to work together to solve poverty.</p> <p>“There are 100 different interventions that work to prevent poverty,” said John Belluomini, founder and CEO of the Center for the Greater Good. “The number one killer in the country is poverty.”</p> <p>One possible approach is the Social Impact Bond, an experiment promoted by the “father of venture capitalism,” Sir Ronald Cohen — he was at the conference, too — to allow private business to invest in solutions to prison recidivism and chronic homelessness.</p> <p>“For a mainstream conference like Milken to focus on social impact investment underscores its importance in the marketplace,” panelist Sean Greene of the Small Business Administration said.</p> <p>Yet another discussion, “New Strategies for Financing Social Innovation,” featured Jonathan Greenblatt, director of Social Innovation in the Obama White House. The discussion focused on the need to change current regulations to allow foundations to count program-related investments as part of their disbursements — in one fell swoop this could free up billions of dollars.</p> <p>“You can go negative or go positive,” said Greenblatt, a co-founder of Ethos Water. “The fact that this conversation has infiltrated the mainstream shows the worthiness of these ideas. Capital holds promise to create the kind of communities we care about.”</p> <p>The Occupy movement may have served a purpose, but it appears to be out of ideas. The good ones were at the Beverly Hilton.</p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/rob_eshman/103912/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Opinion: Occupy Ideas</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103913 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-arts category-hollywood category-is_featured_20110628 category-lead_story category-mobile_20111212 category-news tag-celebrity tag-died tag-fashion tag-hollywood tag-storyblog tag-stylist tag-vidal-sassoon ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103913" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/103913/celebrity-stylist-vidal-sassoon-dead-at-84/" rel="bookmark">Celebrity stylist Vidal Sassoon dead at 84</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/103913/celebrity-stylist-vidal-sassoon-dead-at-84/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/culture/arts/" rel="category tag">Entertainment</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/culture/arts/hollywood/" rel="category tag">Hollywood</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/is_featured_20110628/" rel="category tag">Is Featured?</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/lead_story/" rel="category tag">Lead Story</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Jewish Journal" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/aanoauthor/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Jewish Journal </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p>Celebrity hairstylist Vidal Sassoon, who was committed to fighting anti-Semitism and fought in Israel’s War of Independence, has died.</p> <p>Sassoon died Wednesday in his Los Angeles home. He was 84. He had been battling leukemia, according to the Los Angeles Times.</p> <p>In 1982, he established the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He toured the United States to raise funds for the center.</p> <p><b>[Read our coverage of <a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/the_ticket/item/vidal_sassoon_the_movie_20110218/" title="Vidal Sasson: The Movie here" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">“Vidal Sasson: The Movie” here</a> OR read “<a href="http://www.jewishjournal.com/bloggish/item/vidal_sassoon_hero_of_the_jewish_people/" title="Vidal Sassoon—hero of the Jewish people" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Vidal Sassoon—hero of the Jewish people</a>”]</b></p> <p>Sassoon, a London native, from the age of 3 grew up in a Jewish orphanage after his father left the family. He left school at 14 to become an apprentice hairdresser. </p> <p>In 1948, at the age of 20, he joined the Haganah and fought in Israel’s War for Independence. In the book, “I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl,” a collection of memories and tributes from various notable figures, Sassoon wrote, “I am Jewish, humble yet proud of a heritage that has dignified me even as others have tried to destroy my race. I was twenty years old when the Palmach/Haganah accepted me as a soldier in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. The experience changed the course of my life. I am a Jew who believes that though small in numbers we have a powerful moral influence on the world and in the words of Hillel, ‘If not now, when.’”</p> <p>He opened his first salon in London in 1954, and became known for his modern and low-maintenance hairstyles that used geometric cutting and layers to achieve a sleek and natural look.</p> <p>Sassoon opened more salons in England and then in the United States. In 1973 he debuted a line of shampoos and styling products, gaining fame appearing in TV commercials using the slogan “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”</p> <p>His philanthropy included the Vidal Sassoon Foundation.</p> <p>Sassoon was married four times and had four children.</p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/103913/celebrity-stylist-vidal-sassoon-dead-at-84/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Celebrity stylist Vidal Sassoon dead at 84</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103914 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-mobile_20111212 category-news ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103914" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103914/" rel="bookmark">Davening Among the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes – by Rabbi Zev Farber</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103914/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Rabbi Zev Farber" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/zevf/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Rabbi Zev Farber </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p>Several months ago, a guest speaker visited our synagogue for a talk on current events in the Middle East. I enjoyed the talk and after services I asked my wife what she thought. She responded: “Did you notice that the speaker never once turned his face towards the women’s section? He had his face turned away from us the entire time, as if we weren’t even there.” </p> <p>I had to admit that I had not noticed this. Why didn’t this man, a modern person speaking about Israel, turn towards the women? He was a secular Jew, so it could not have been due to “extreme piety” of the ignoring-women variety. I am sure that there is no other speaking venue where he would distinguish between men and women in this way. </p> <p>Perhaps the placement of the podium in the room had something to do with it. Like most (not all) Orthodox shuls, our podium is situated in the men’s section, so naturally, the speaker faced the men. A slight angling of the body is all it would have taken for the speaker to face the women as well, but my guess is that he absorbed the subconscious message of the building’s logistics: “The people in the main section—the one opposite the podium—are the important ones. Face them.” </p> <p>Watching the Flintstones with my children one day, it struck me that our synagogues have an uncanny resemblance to lodge no. 26 of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, where Fred and Barney go to have a men’s night out. I say this in jest, but it is illustrative. The men of the LOWB wear a special garb, they have a special code and gestures which they use, and there are no women. Although our synagogues are a step advanced from the Stone Age lodge—we let our women watch—the resemblances are worth noting; only the men have the special garb, only the men know the secret handshake, and when the Grand Poobah speaks, his podium faces only men. </p> <p>To be fair, the synagogue I attend is quite modern and sensitive to women’s issues, and our rabbi is overwhelmingly so. In addition, the architectural plans for the new building include a fifty-fifty split with a podium in the middle. However, I think the anecdote is illustrative of the pernicious message which is unconsciously and unintentionally being sent to the women and girls in our community: “You are not really here.” </p> <p>Of course, the placement of the podium is only one way—albeit an obvious one—that Orthodox synagogues communicate to their participants that women are not really in the room. This message is also communicated by access to the holiest and most central feature of the synagogue, the Torah scroll, which is removed from the ark, inevitably by a man, during Shabbat morning services. The Torah is then handed to the man leading the services and carried around so everybody can touch it and kiss it… well, not everybody. </p> <p>It is true that in some Orthodox synagogues the Torah is either passed to a woman to carry through the women’s section or is carried through the women’s section by the man leading the services. However, in most Orthodox synagogues the Torah is carried only through the men’s section; the message being that access to the Torah is only for participants in the prayer services, not for onlookers. Some synagogues that are sensitive to the problem decide on the awkward solution of carrying the Torah slowly near the meḥitza (barrier). The women can then scramble to the meḥitza and vie for access in Darwinian fashion. </p> <p>Traditional garb is another way Orthodox synagogues send the message that the men are the real participants. Men’s ritual accoutrements, special prayer shawls around their shoulders or over their heads, and leather straps and boxes on their heads and arms, are significant ritually and spiritually. Needless to say, the average Orthodox woman does not wear tzitzit or t’fillin and has no ritual equivalent of her own. </p> <p>Other ways the second-class position of women in the synagogue is communicated are even more complex, as they appear hardwired into the halakhic system and changing or tinkering with them would be more than a little problematic for the halakhically observant. </p> <p>Firstly, for the prayer service to start, or at least for certain special prayers to be said, there needs to be a minyan (a prayer quorum) of ten men; women do not count. Without ten men services cannot be held, but services can run from beginning to end without even one woman present. This, of course, is in compliance with the halakhic rulings found in the Talmud; nevertheless, it is hardly surprising that women generally show up late, if at all. </p> <p>Secondly, women do not lead anything; not just the special minyan prayers (devarim she-be-qedusha) but activities that are not minyan-related at all, such as misheberakhs for the US government or the State of Israel, opening the ark to take out the Torah, or reciting birkot ha-shaḥar. </p> <p>Modern Orthodoxy is in a bind when it comes to women in the synagogue. In a world where gender roles are constantly shifting, it becomes rather difficult for a religious group that is both modern and Orthodox to navigate the many tensions that exist between traditional practices and modern egalitarian values. Sometimes these tensions express themselves around halakhic issues: women leading devarim she-be-qedusha, wearing t’fillin, counting for a minyan, or participating in the Torah-reading ceremony. Other times the issues appear more sociological: bringing the Torah through the women’s section, women holding or carrying the Torah, placement of the podium, or women speaking from the podium. </p> <p>The halakhic issues require textual analysis and remain extremely divisive and I am not suggesting here that Orthodox communities should make radical breaks with halakha. Rather my aim here is the underlying message that our synagogues are sending to women. We all want to remain true to halakha and create a synagogue environment where men and women thrive, but I fear that without addressing the underlying message of women not really being in the room, instead of creating a home for all Jews, we are creating a men’s club. </p> <p>In my opinion, wherever one falls out on the halakhic issues—and the spectrum is wide—none of our synagogues really want to be sending the message that women are only spectators. Therefore, I strongly suggest that we take a close look at the messages the structure and culture of our synagogues are sending to women. If the overwhelming message is LOWB-like, what changes can be made, commensurate with the halakhic views of the rabbi and the culture of the institution, to make women feel like they are part of the services and not just watching? Can the podium be placed more centrally? Can the Torah be brought to the women’s side? Can a woman carry it? Can she hold it after g’lilah? Is the meḥitza too tall or difficult to see through? Is there anything at all that a woman can lead or recite out loud during services so that a woman’s voice can be heard as part of the prayer experience? </p> <p>It is my hope that every synagogue will take this message to heart and think constructively about how to create an Orthodox synagogue experience loyal to halakha and welcoming of women; where women feel like participants instead of spectators. In her famous essay, “Notes Toward Finding the Right Question,” Cynthia Ozick wrote: “My own synagogue is the only place in the world where I am not named ‘Jew’.” I am sure that no Modern Orthodox rabbi or synagogue wants to send this message, and yet unconsciously—but systemically—we do. For the sake of our women, our girls and the health of our communities, the message needs to change.</p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103914/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Davening Among the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes – by Rabbi Zev Farber</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103915 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-culture category-family category-is_featured_20110628 category-mobile_20111212 category-news tag-family tag-kids tag-moms tag-mothers-day tag-motherhood tag-parenting tag-teresa-strasser ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103915" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/family/103915/" rel="bookmark">Learn to listen to your own kid, not the voices in your head</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/family/103915/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/culture/" rel="category tag">Culture</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/culture/family/" rel="category tag">Family</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/is_featured_20110628/" rel="category tag">Is Featured?</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Teresa Strasser" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/teresa_strasser/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Teresa Strasser </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p>There is some unwritten statute of limitations on how long one can whine about a crappy childhood, a negligent parent, a few too many chicken pot pies, summers with the grandparents, days spent on Greyhound buses and with dubious caregivers and creepy neighbors. There is just a moment in an adult’s life when the complaining and sad-sacking about how our parents got divorced, or lost custody, or bailed, or otherwise stank up the joint is just kind of pathetic. Let’s face it, that moment had come and gone for me. </p> <p>Then I had a child myself, and twinges of pain in that amputated leg known as my relationship with my mother started to send fiery jolts into my nervous system. I thought I would get a do-over (as opposed to my childhood, which was a do-under), but instead I got something unexpected: When my son was around 18 months old, I started to freak out. Whatever it is that made her look at the job of motherhood the way an angry teenager views a Friday night shift behind the Frialator, whatever she had, maybe I caught it. </p> <p>This is the day, I would think, driving my toddler to day care, or swinging him at the park, or slipping a Grover T-shirt over his giant, blond head, this is the day it happens. This is the day I start to suck at this. This is the day I start to hate it. This is the day of reckoning, when I realize that I’ve been judging my mom for not enjoying my company or any part of raising me, but I’m no better. And this is the day the symptoms start manifesting in me. This is the day I realize that while I see other mothers having moments of both great struggle and magical, indescribable delight, I will only experience the former, because there are just some bullets you can’t dodge.</p> <p>When I started to panic about my ability to be a parent, it wasn’t about physically being there or providing, it was about something else; it was about the ineffable ability to enjoy my child, because as sure as I won’t forget the phone number of Haystack Pizza down the street, or the smell of the back of a city bus during Indian summer, or the look of abject boredom on my mom’s face across the dinner table, I also won’t forget the feeling of being a tedious wretch, a burden that was ruining everything.</p> <p>Here’s where having an OK childhood rescues you. Most new moms, I gather, realize early on that the venture isn’t wholly exalted.</p> <p>They catch on to the reality that normal might mean 17 thrilling, awe-inspiring minutes in a 12-hour day of parenting. Kids can be annoying, they can dawdle, they can cry uncontrollably at what to us is nothing (the green cup is dirty, here’s the yellow one; see you in 27 minutes when you have come back from the brink of insanity). They can be scary, flying off couches and spiking high fevers. They can be, as a matter of course, a bit dull, unless watching the same video of a garbage truck dumping a bin of trash into its hopper repeatedly on YouTube is somehow gratifying for you.</p> <p>It was about a month into my panic when I turned the ship around. And by the ship I mean my Honda. My son, on the way to day care, uncharacteristically moaned from his car seat, “Don’t want to go to school.”</p> <p>We pulled over into the parking lot of an Albertsons. I stared back at him.</p> <p>“Want to ride train,” he said. A tear fell onto his puffy coat.</p> <p>That was the moment, wedged between a meth-head blasting classical music from his station wagon and a Mini-Cooper glinting in the sun, that I became not a women running from a fear that she will fail at parenting, but a woman running toward one simple day at the mall with her baby. And off we went to the indoor mall in Sherman Oaks with the Ladybug train that runs past the chain stores all day long. Phoning day care to say we wouldn’t make it, cancelling any plans I had for that day, I knew that nothing could make me happier, and in knowing that, I was at least partially free.</p> <p>If I love being with this boy, even just to share a Wetzel and ride a rickety indoor train for hours, if I love this more than anything else I could possibly imagine doing today, then I can stop worrying. If I had been playing tag with the bogeyman that was “turning into my mother,” this was one very small, yet somehow enormous, “NOT IT.”</p> <p>No one in my family is sentimental, and I think that’s OK. I don’t have a baby book for my son, I didn’t keep track of when he got his first tooth or tricycle.</p> <p>That’s why lately, pregnant with my second boy, when I have syrupy thoughts about the baby I can only just now feel moving and kicking, it’s like a million cars turning around in a million parking lots. I love you already, I think, as I rub my hand over my stomach. Sappy. However, when I find myself thinking that this little being is good company already, and enjoying him even now, before he is born, I feel myself turning and turning in the right direction.</p> <p>In a way, it’s not about my own mother anymore. I may not honor her, specifically, but as I think about that commandment I think the best I can do is to honor motherhood in general, and I can only do that by letting myself get better at it as I go. It’s on me now, as it has been for a very long time.</p> <p>It’s on me to know that sometimes it’s OK to be less than thrilled with the minutiae of motherhood, the ordering of diaper cream online, the scraping of uneaten carrots from an Elmo plate. It’s OK.</p> <p>As long as there are days, and they will come when I can’t predict them, when my main function in this life is not to drive my babies forward, but to turn them around. If I can find supreme usefulness in sitting on a train to nowhere, just staring at my baby as he stares into the world, just taking him in and letting the smell of his hair and the feel of his chubby hands fall into the pages of the baby book in my mind, I am not just avoiding becoming my mother, I am getting to stop at all the stations she missed. “All aboard,” says my son to the mall conductor. All aboard.</p> <p><i>Teresa Strasser is a Los Angeles Press Club and Emmy Award-winning writer and the author of “Exploiting My Baby: Because It’s Exploiting Me” (Penguin). She blogs at <a href="http://www.ExploitingMyBaby.com" title="ExploitingMyBaby.com" target="_blank">ExploitingMyBaby.com</a>.</i></p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/culture/family/103915/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Learn to listen to your own kid, not the voices in your head</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> <article class="post-103916 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-mobile_20111212 category-news ast-grid-common-col ast-full-width ast-article-post" id="post-103916" itemtype="https://schema.org/CreativeWork" itemscope="itemscope"> <div class="ast-post-format- ast-no-thumb blog-layout-1 ast-article-inner"> <div class="post-content ast-grid-common-col" > <div class="ast-blog-featured-section post-thumb ast-blog-single-element"></div><h2 class="entry-title ast-blog-single-element" itemprop="headline"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103916/" rel="bookmark">Playing Against Type</a></h2> <header class="entry-header ast-blog-single-element ast-blog-meta-container"> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="comments-link"> <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103916/#respond">Leave a Comment</a> </span> / <span class="ast-taxonomy-container cat-links default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/mobile_20111212/" rel="category tag">Mobile</a>, <a href="https://jewishjournal.com/category/news/" rel="category tag">News</a></span> / <span class="posted-by vcard author" itemtype="https://schema.org/Person" itemscope="itemscope" itemprop="author"> <a title="View all posts by Elliot Steingart" href="https://jewishjournal.com/author/elliot-steingart/" rel="author" class="url fn n" itemprop="url" > <span class="author-name" itemprop="name" > Elliot Steingart </span> </a> </span> </div> </header><!-- .entry-header --> <div class="ast-excerpt-container ast-blog-single-element"> <p> I find myself waiting to hear if I’m Jewish enough to play “the Jew” in a reality TV pilot. If I am not chosen, it’s all good. I think we already have enough Jewish stereotypes on TV. I ‘ve watched CNBC’s American Greed marathon. You’d think they could have spaced us out just a little bit. </p> <p>I’ve reached a point in which being Jewish is not my entire identity. I write a blog for the Jewish Journal and drink seltzer. That’s really about it. I park my car in the church parking lot. Father O’Malley sees that I park my Hyundai in between the lines. When the barista at Coffee Bean asks for my name I tell them it’s Christian. I’m the only Jewish male in my office and on my soccer team. And that’s the way I like it. There’s less competition, and my quirks are more unique.</p> <p>Amazingly, writing a blog for the Jewish Journal has made me less Jewish. The last thing I want is to be labeled a “Jewish Blogger.” I’d prefer Jewish over the term “blogger.”</p> <p>I don’t keep Kosher. In fact, I really like pork. And even though I used part of my Christmas bonus to renew my subscription for JDATE, I’m very happy dating a girl who isn’t Jewish. In fact, my lady friend graduated from The Mayfield Senior School of the Holy Child Jesus. When she first told me that the name of her school was the Mayfield Senior School of the Holy Child Jesus I repeated the name of her school back to her as, “The Mayonnaise Christmas School of the Sweet Christian Jesus.”</p> <p>I can’t fault her for attending a somewhat wordy and religious senior high school. Her religion only makes me more curious.</p> <p>“Do you pray to God or Jesus?” I asked her.</p> <p>“I pray to Jesus and God,” she said.</p> <p>“Are they on speaker phone?”</p> <p>“No,” She laughed. “It’s a conference call.”</p> <p>It’s refreshing to date someone who isn’t Jewish. Aside from religion, we have other things in common like sharing food when we eat out. And we love to sing and drink and play lottery scratchers. She is a wonderful person not to be Jewish with.</p> <p>If I was selected for the pilot I would need to take time off work just to be Jewish. With my lady friend, I’d prefer to take a vacation from being Jewish. I want to take her to Orange County. We’ll drink white wine and then go boating. Maybe I’ll even swim without waiting 30 minutes to digest my lunch.</p> <p>Together we are experiencing cultures different from our own. Perhaps not by coincidence, twice in the last two weeks we have seen a gay deaf black guy and his partner in Los Feliz. I guess it’s a sign of the times. That, and we hang out at the same spots as a gay deaf black guy and his partner.</p> <p>Recently at Pavillions I asked one of the employees where I could find the pistachios. She turned around and indicated that she could not hear and was in fact deaf. The only thing harder than opening pistachios is pantomiming opening pistachios.</p> <p>Stereotyping the hearing impaired is just as dangerous as stereotyping a Jewish blogger like myself or those who talk to God and Jesus at the same time. I guess it makes for good television, or an interesting blog. It’s for you to judge. </p> </div> <p class="ast-blog-single-element ast-read-more-container read-more"> <a class="" href="https://jewishjournal.com/mobile_20111212/103916/"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Playing Against Type</span> Read More »</a></p> <div class="entry-content clear" itemprop="text" > </div><!-- .entry-content .clear --> </div><!-- .post-content --> </div> <!-- .blog-layout-1 --> </article><!-- #post-## --> </div> </main><!-- #main --> <div class='ast-pagination'> <nav class="navigation pagination" aria-label="Post pagination"> <span class="screen-reader-text">Post pagination</span> <div class="nav-links"><a class="prev page-numbers" href="https://jewishjournal.com/date/2012/05/09/"><span class="ast-left-arrow">←</span> Previous</a> <a class="page-numbers" href="https://jewishjournal.com/date/2012/05/09/">1</a> <span aria-current="page" class="page-numbers current">2</span> <a class="page-numbers" href="https://jewishjournal.com/date/2012/05/09/page/3/">3</a> <span class="page-numbers dots">…</span> <a class="page-numbers" href="https://jewishjournal.com/date/2012/05/09/page/6/">6</a> <a class="next page-numbers" href="https://jewishjournal.com/date/2012/05/09/page/3/">Next <span class="ast-right-arrow">→</span></a></div> </nav></div> </div><!-- #primary --> </div> <!-- ast-container --> </div><!-- #content --> <footer data-elementor-type="footer" data-elementor-id="354962" class="elementor elementor-354962 elementor-location-footer" data-elementor-post-type="elementor_library"> <section class="elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-16ff2513 elementor-section-full_width printhide elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default" data-id="16ff2513" data-element_type="section" data-e-type="section" data-settings="{"background_background":"classic"}"> <div class="elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default"> <div class="elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-306cf8ff" data-id="306cf8ff" data-element_type="column" data-e-type="column"> <div class="elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated"> <section class="elementor-section elementor-inner-section elementor-element elementor-element-73c841ca elementor-section-content-middle elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default" data-id="73c841ca" data-element_type="section" data-e-type="section"> <div class="elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default"> <div class="elementor-column elementor-col-25 elementor-inner-column elementor-element elementor-element-41944ee6" data-id="41944ee6" data-element_type="column" data-e-type="column"> <div class="elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated"> <div class="elementor-element elementor-element-58f0ac64 rm20 elementor-widget elementor-widget-theme-site-title elementor-widget-heading" data-id="58f0ac64" data-element_type="widget" data-e-type="widget" data-widget_type="theme-site-title.default"> <div class="elementor-widget-container"> <h2 class="elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default"><a href="https://jewishjournal.com">Jewish Journal</a></h2> </div> </div> <div class="elementor-element elementor-element-29de7e30 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor" data-id="29de7e30" data-element_type="widget" data-e-type="widget" data-widget_type="text-editor.default"> <div class="elementor-widget-container"> Connect. 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