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July 5, 2012

No business like the news business: Aaron Sorkin on ‘Newsroom’

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Aaron Sorkin, the playwright, television writer and Oscar-winning screenwriter of “The Social Network,” is causing a stir with his new HBO series, “The Newsroom,” about the inside antics of a cable news show and its commentary on American journalism. Sorkin’s “The West Wing” and “Sports Night,” among others, have earned the veteran show creator a reputation for intense examinations of institutional milieus — government, sports and now the news industry. He’s also distinguished himself through his style of writing, famous for its prolix dialogue, withering wit and moral idealism, for which he ranks among the most literary of Hollywood writers. In an e-mail interview, Sorkin expounded on the journalism he trusts, how he copes with bad reviews and the unique rewards of having a daughter.

“The Newsroom” is an indictment, specifically, of cable TV news but makes broader commentary about the culture of American journalism. What led to your disappointment in news media or at least provoked you enough to want to write a show about it?

Aaron Sorkin: I believe that “The Newsroom” is no more an indictment of cable news than “The West Wing” was an indictment of the Clinton and Bush White Houses. The show is a very romantic and idealistic take on a group of people trying to figure out how to do the news well in the face of market forces as well as their own personal entanglements. I like to write fantasies set against the backdrop of the real world.

When you want to be informed, what sources do you rely on? What people or publications do you most trust?

AS: For breaking news, I go to CNN. I like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal op-ed writers. I’ll listen to Rush [Limbaugh] for a few minutes in the morning to try to figure out why half the country hates the other half so much, and I like the gang at MSNBC. I think all the Sunday shows are helpful and compelling, but if I was forced to only trust one person — and of course I’m not — it would be Brian Williams.

There have been some harsh reviews about “The Newsroom.” The New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum wrote, “ ‘The Newsroom’ gets so bad so quickly that I found my jaw dropping,” and Maureen Ryan wrote on Huffington Post that she found it “obvious and self-congratulatory,” “manipulative and shrieky.” But, these same writers use words like “Sorkinese” and “Sorkinian” to describe the show’s style, which indicates their perception that your writing has established a new film and television lexicon — a high compliment. At this point in your career, how seriously do you take reviews of your work? How do they affect you personally?

AS: My writing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I wish it was, but as Hiram Roth would say, this is the business I’ve chosen. One of the nice things about being on HBO is that the whole season is written and shot before the first episode airs. That schedule removes the temptation to adjust how you’re writing in order to change the minds of your critics — whether they’re professional critics or your brother-in-law.

Your work is noted for being high-minded, idea-driven and zeitgeist-y. But it also has romance and relationship. Which area interests or concerns you more: matters of the heart or the head?

AS: In “The Newsroom,” as well as in some other things I’ve written, matters of the head and matters of the heart are often the same thing. My characters tend to be hyper-communicative. There are exceptions — Mark Zuckerberg for instance.

During a recent interview on “The Today Show,” you talked about your early discomfort being in the public eye and how your arrest for drug possession forced you to be more open about your image. Do you still feel you have to play a certain role for your audience? Or have you become more comfortable allowing your public image to reflect your true nature?

AS: As a writer, it would be best if nobody knew anything about me. I don’t want to get in between the audience and what’s on the screen or the stage. But, as you point out, my addiction and arrest in 2001 was a bell I can’t un-ring. I’ve seen far worse consequences of drug addiction, so I’m not going to complain.

You told The New York Times, “If writing is going well, I’m happy. If writing isn’t going well, there is nothing that is going to make me happy. Except my 11-year-old daughter, who always makes me happy.” What has surprised you most about being a parent? Has having a daughter changed or deepened your understanding of women?

AS: Being a father is the only thing that lives up to the hype. Whether we’re doing homework, eating breakfast, playing Starburst hockey — just trust me — kicking around a soccer ball or anything else, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. As for understanding women, I go on the assumption that not all women are the same. I gave up trying to understand the women in my life a long time ago, and now I just try to please them. Much better results.

When asked about the Steve Jobs biopic you will soon write, you ruminated on the theme a bit and then said, “Now all I have to do is turn that into three acts with an intention, obstacle, exposition, inciting action, reversal, climax and denouement, and make it funny and emotional, and I’ll be in business.” Is your writing process more an adherence to structure or an innate, streaming sense of drama?

AS: I have to cling to the rules of drama — intention and obstacle. Somebody has to want something, and something has to be standing in the way of their getting it. If I don’t have that nailed down, I’ll be fingerpainting.

Aside from obvious things like wealth and that Oscar, in terms of your own self-understanding, what’s been the best benefit of success?

AS: With all respect to Lou Gehrig, I’m the luckiest man in the world. Aside from getting to be my daughter’s father, I get to earn a living doing exactly what I love doing. That’s winning the jackpot.

If you were ever to take a break from the Hollywood grind, how would you spend your time?

AS: Beating up fifth-grade boys who are checking out my kid.

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Growing the fruits of peace in El Salvador

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Don Israel speaks no English, and I speak almost no Spanish. But I understood him well enough to realize that, as I began to plant one of the mango trees that would be placed in his field that day,  he obviously thought I was doing it wrong. Our mutual patience eventually conquered our communication barrier, though, and with time, I learned and understood. We went on to plant about a dozen mango trees together that morning.

Don Israel’s small parcel of land is in a rural village in the Lempa River region of El Salvador. I was there as part of a delegation sent by American Jewish World Service (AJWS), consisting of 16 extraordinary young people training to be rabbis, educators or leaders of Jewish nonprofits. (I was honored to be the scholar-in-residence for the group.) For 10 days, we labored alongside our hosts, planting trees, digging irrigation ditches and building latrines. But it became obvious fairly early on that our primary mission there was not to work (we were, after all, a fairly inexperienced work bunch), but rather to learn and to understand, as human beings and as Jews. Patience turned out to be our most important asset, as the story of the Lempa River region took time to comprehend. And though there is still much more to know, I left with at least the outline of a story of war and peace, of exile and return, of anxiety and hope, and of human courage and nobility. It is a story that has enriched my religious life and has expanded my sense of religious duty.

The story begins with an event that I had been embarrassingly ignorant about, the vicious civil war that wracked El Salvador through the 1980s. And although I had done some reading about it in anticipation of this trip, the event was still remote and emotionally inaccessible. But this changed suddenly and dramatically on our very first afternoon, as we gathered beneath the thatched-roof courtyard just outside Chungo Fuentes’ home. Fuentes is the bearer of the story, the embodiment of the memory.

Fuentes’ part of the story is rooted in the political dissent that had been growing throughout the 1970s among El Salvador’s lower economic classes. The dissent was fueled by bitter resentment against the military-backed government under whose rule the great majority of the country’s land was owned by fewer than 20 wealthy families, leaving much of the population struggling for sustenance. The Catholic Church became a major organizer of the political protest movement, whose voice was thwarted through the government’s rigging of elections, and the military’s tactics of physical intimidation and violence. The 1980 assassination of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero, a highly influential figure in the protest movement, helped to spark an all-out civil war between leftist guerilla groups and the Salvadoran military. Many rural villages whose civilian residents were sympathetic to the guerillas came under attack at the hands of military death squads, who killed indiscriminately, and who, in December 1981, carried out a horrific massacre of civilians at the village of El Mozote. (“Report of the U.N. Truth Commission on El Salvador” is an excellent source of further information.)

As this was unfolding, Fuentes led a group of nearly 1,000 villagers across the border into Honduras, and from there to the mountains of Panama, where they were granted political asylum. As he recounts the story for us, Fuentes speaks of the faith they all had that this exile would be temporary, and that they would return to their homeland one day. That day came 10 years later, in 1992, when the two sides signed a peace accord in which the government, among other things, agreed to distribute land to the common people, including Fuentes and his fellow refugees.

It is worth noting that all of us in the group reflexively drew parallels between the story we were hearing and our own national story. It was only the following week that we realized that we were far from the first to make the connection. The massive mural in town depicting the story dedicates one panel to the oppression at the hand of the government. It prominently features an image of the Egyptian pyramids.

As dramatic as it was, though, it was not primarily a story of war that we had come to El Salvador to learn and understand, rather a story of how people recover from war. It took time and required patience for the details of this story to come together, but when it did, what we learned is that recovery only happens when people on the ground are able to summon up the very best of what makes us human, and when people from the outside bring their core moral and religious convictions to bear on the situation of strangers.

The peace accords were far from a panacea. Yes, men and women now came to the Lempa River region to claim their new parcels of land. But as many of these men and women had been on opposite sides of the fighting, distrust and the potential for further violence came with them. In addition to which, no one had money to invest in farming, and nobody was trained in modern agricultural methods. The area lacked even the most basic infrastructure — to this day, in fact, most of the roads are unpaved, streetlights are few, there are no sanitation or postal services, and the nearest hospital is an hour and a half away — and on top of all of that, the new landowners were living, without any evacuation plan, right next to a river that regularly overflowed its banks. I can still see Fuentes holding his palm to his waist when he described the devastating floods of this past October.

That people aren’t fighting and aren’t starving in the Lempa River region today is due to a small group of residents who convened right after the war, pledging to create a peace zone in which grievances could be aired, but also that a commitment to putting aside past differences in the name of community-building would prevail. They pledged to go from village to village to hear what people most needed and also to enlist them in a voluntary cooperative through which they would become trained in sustainable methods of farming and environmental protection. They also would agree to work collectively to market their agricultural output, thus maximizing profit for all. They drew up an evacuation plan for the next flood (last October they succeeded in evacuating 7,000 people, losing not one soul to the disaster). A parallel women’s group created an NGO that provided micro-loans for war widows, enabling them to purchase livestock. (Today it provides all kinds of economic and social services to the women of the region.) People, scarred by years of poverty and war,  with every reason to be untrusting and suspicious of one another, instead formed a democratic, self-governing organization to forge a better life for everyone. Two of the organization’s directors today serve in El Salvador’s parliament.

But this is only one half of the story.

The other part is that none of this could have unfolded without outside help. There was plenty of evidence on the ground of the impact of USAID, most dramatically in the person of our local guide, Chema Argueta, who was plucked as a high school senior from a poor fishing village on the Jiquilisco Bay, trained for two years in Portland, Ore., in the management of natural resources, and returned to his community where he today humbly leads the effort to preserve the bay’s mangrove ecosystem, thus securing the future for the bay’s fisherman and their families. And then there was the ubiquitous presence of the AJWS, which has been making grants for community organizations in the Lempa River region for decades. One group after another gratefully acknowledged AJWS’ impact. It’s difficult to describe, by the way, the sense of pride we felt each time AJWS was mentioned by people who otherwise would never have had any contact with Jews, but who now know us as a compassionate, smart and forward-looking humanitarian partner. 

And this is the other half of the story we had come to learn: that visionary outsiders empower visionaries on the ground. It can’t happen any other way.

Torah study was woven through our 10 days in the country. Within our group we learned and analyzed texts concerning the halachic responsibility to respond to human beings in crisis, the imperative to extend justice to the disadvantaged, the command to preserve the dignity of those who are receiving aid, and the very complex question as to where tzedakah directed toward the wider human community fits within our tzedakah obligation toward our fellow Jews. As leaders and future leaders of Jewish institutions, we all intuitively understood how important this latter question is.

The story of the Lempa River region is far from over. Next year, hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. economic development aid will flow into El Salvador through the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC). Local leaders are worried, though, that the MCC’s requirement that the recipient government invest the funds in a manner that will attract international private sector investment (not a bad plan in and of itself) might undermine their work by creating incentives and pressures on farmers to grow crops that will bring short-term profits but long-term soil depletion, or to sell their parcels to larger land owners, which will ultimately land them back where they were before the war. Good news might be bad news. Everything is complicated.

And of course, as the autumn approaches, everyone there will be keeping a wary eye on the water level in the Lempa.

On the plane ride home, I thought a lot about Don Israel, Chungo Fuentes,  Chema Argueta, and the many other men and women we met. I thought about the nobility of their common struggle, the fragility of their gains and the vulnerability of their livelihoods. And about the wise teaching of Rabbi Tarfon, who taught that while it is not ours to complete the task, we are not free to desist from it either.

For more information about American Jewish World Service, visit ajws.org.

Yosef Kanefsky is senior rabbi at B’nai David-Judea (bnaidavid.com), a Modern Orthodox congregation in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

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Teshuva in Liberia: Moving from ruin to reconciliation

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Sometimes, when you visit a place that is full of so much pain, the stories — and days — begin to bleed into one another. 

The stories of the people of Liberia, whose ferocious civil war ended only nine years ago, reveal horrifying trends through 14 years of fighting. Scant memories are shared nowadays of life before the war (not easy, but peaceful at least), many more of the terror as waves of rebel forces pushed their way through the country, massacring thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands, many never to return. There are stories of families torn apart, stories of unthinkable brutality, the constant and consistent terror of violence unabated, the devastation of social structures (all schools and medical centers in the country shut down, the private sector evaporated completely) and desperate food shortages for far too many years. 

Yes, all war is devastating, but the war in the West African nation of Liberia was characterized by a particular brutality — perhaps because it was orchestrated by a man with a compulsion toward the obscene, specializing in vicious and pervasive rape of women and girls as young as 3 years old, perpetrated often by boys and young men not much older than their victims. When this war made it to the headlines of the Western press, it was generally because of this noxious detail: the small boys who were abducted and initiated into Charles Taylor’s army by being shot up with drugs and forced to commit heinous crimes against members of their own villages — often their own families. This ensured that they’d dedicate themselves wholly to the war effort, having eviscerated all hope of returning home. Later, this tactic was taken up by Taylor’s enemies as well — warlords who attacked the same tired population in their own effort to wrest power from the powerful in Monrovia.

Toward the end of my time in rabbinical school, in the late 1990s, I began to study human rights and conflict resolution in earnest. At the time, Charles Taylor had become president of Liberia and was presiding over the second deadly phase of civil war there, while perpetuating the war in neighboring resource-rich Sierra Leone. Over the course of that decade, two lush and promising African countries were crushed by waves of senseless violence perpetrated against civilians — murder, rape, torture and, especially in Sierra Leone, amputations: arms, legs, breasts, ears. (It was his criminal acts in Sierra Leone that earned Taylor his recent conviction in The Hague, sentencing him to 50 years in prison.) As the fighting raged in both countries, I’d run between Talmud classes to the School of International & Public Affairs at Columbia University to watch video clips of these boy soldiers — some 10 or 11 years old — riding around the countryside on the backs of beat-up pickup trucks with their rifles, cigarettes and sunglasses. They clearly had no comprehension of the devastation they were causing, no sense that the atrocities they were committing would take generations to heal. I found myself wondering what would happen to the boy soldiers and their families when the war ended. This question haunted me, and I set out to determine whether the vast Jewish literature on teshuvah — reconciliation and forgiveness — might offer any insight that could help bring healing once the fighting ceased.

After a decade and a half of fighting, the war that transformed Liberia’s beautiful countryside into a post-apocalyptic nightmare reached a triumphant denouement. In 2003, as the conflict reached a fevered pitch with Taylor’s enemies closing in on the capital city of Monrovia, thousands of women came together proclaiming the simple message: “We want peace. No more war.”  WIPNET (the Women in Peacebuilding Network), a group of extraordinary women led by Leymah Gbowee, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, wore white T-shirts and scarves and sat in the blazing sun and pouring rain, refusing to move until the men made peace. “We were not afraid,” one of the women of WIPNET told me. “Either we will die from war or we will die fighting to make peace.” The women stared down generals, warlords and soldiers. Gbowee stood before President Taylor and proclaimed:

“The women of Liberia are tired of war. We are tired of running. We are tired of begging for bulgur wheat. We are tired of our children being raped. We are now taking this stand to secure the future of our children.  Because we believe, as custodians of our society, that tomorrow our children will ask us, ‘Mama, what was your role during the crisis?’ ”

And the women prevailed, ultimately bringing down the Taylor regime and disarming the rebels and militias on all sides. In the first free election after the war, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gbowee) was chosen to be the president of the new Liberia — a nation devastated by war and desperate for healing. 

I traveled to the region with Ruth Messinger of American Jewish World Service and a small cohort of Jewish thought leaders and philanthropists to see the country in the aftermath of conflict and disarmament. We set out to meet the architects of peace and the leaders of NGOs working toward women’s empowerment, social and economic justice, and sustainable development, and to hear perspectives on the possibility of reconciliation. A few years ago, Liberia began a truth and reconciliation process, but it was aborted midcourse when it became clear that high-ranking government officials would be implicated for wartime actions. As a result, talks of reconciliation have stalled, and while Gbowee and some others continue to plead for a reinvigorated reconciliation process, the people I spoke with talked mainly of moving on. “You must forget about it,” a young woman whose little brother was shot as he stood by her side, told me through tears. “Otherwise you’ll never be able to move on with your life.”

“Forgive and forget. It’s the only way to start living again,” a member of the hotel staff told me.

“We just want peace,” our driver, Mike, said. “Who did what, who didn’t do what — it doesn’t matter. As long as they’re willing to lay down their arms, that’s all that I care about.” 

Forgive and forget? Move on? These words made me tremble every time I heard them. Perhaps it is because of my Jewish bias for justice. The fact is, there can be no justice without, well, justice — which is why I see a reconciliation process as both a spiritual and political necessity. How can a society be rebuilt when the man in the market stall next to you killed your child or raped your sister? And even if it’s possible to forgive and forget, is that really a social value? 

A true reconciliation process in Liberia presents some serious challenges, not the least of which is the absurdity many perceive in investing money and resources into a lengthy reconciliation process at a time when the country is starving for basic services. Liberia’s heath systems were utterly destroyed in war, and there are now only a few dozen doctors serving a population of nearly 4 million people in decrepit and under-resourced hospitals and clinics. Maternal and infant mortality rates are among the world’s highest, and children commonly die for lack of basic medical care. (We saw a young girl walking around with an infected open sore on her leg, something that would have been treated easily in the United States. I shudder to think what will happen as that infection inevitably spreads and she loses her ability to walk.)  Because all of the schools were shuttered for 14 years, there is now an entire population of 8- to 30-year-olds who do not know how to read or write. The private sector remains virtually nonexistent, and foreign economic investment is often spent to the detriment of the Liberian people, as multinational corporations reap extraordinary profit from the land and sea and share little with the population. Only 2 percent of the country is on the electrical grid, and even in our very lovely hotel in the capital, there was no electricity or running water for much of our stay. And, as President Sirleaf shared with our group, rape remains a blight on the nation — she identifies it as one of the three greatest challenges the country faces. Teenage pregnancy is among the highest in the world; women have little access to contraceptives and therefore tend to have six to 10 children, etc., etc., etc.

And yet, I continue to wonder what chance this country — or any, really — has for recovery if it does not deal responsibly with its past. 

It is true that healing takes time, and it may be that in another five to 10 years people will be ready for a reconciliation effort that interests few today. Whether it is implemented now or in a decade, it is clear to me that, for people to recover from the devastation of war, a sincere and robust national reconciliation effort is essential. The rush to move on as soon as arms are put down is understandable, but it fails to adequately address people’s deepest wounds, thereby threatening to undermine an already fragile peace. Placing reconciliation, even forgiveness, in the heart of the political arena and making it a national priority can create space for the possibility of healing and rebuilding.

Every conflict is unique, and as a result, there can be no one formula for an effective reconciliation process. What worked in South Africa would not have been successful in Guatemala, Sri Lanka or Northern Ireland. Specific cultural and religious assumptions must be central to the construction of any postwar effort. Nevertheless, there are several elements of teshuvah, the Jewish process of return and reconciliation, that I believe could offer a framework for healing in Liberia and other post-conflict regions. The first is the presumption that transformation is possible, both for an individual and for a society: Who you were in your darkest moment, high on drugs and war, is not who you must forever be. Second, one can choose to engage the enemy with empathy and compassion without diminishing one’s own pain or letting the perpetrator off the hook. War is the ultimate in dehumanization; reconciliation is about people beginning to see humanity in one another again. Third, there are certain crimes that are beyond the scope of full teshuvah — complete return — including rape and murder, trademarks of this war, like most. Nevertheless, some things can be done to restore social harmony and help rebuild a country’s infrastructure at the same time.

Rabbi Sharon Brous is the founding rabbi of IKAR (www.ikar-la.org), an L.A.-based Jewish community working to reanimate Jewish life by fusing spiritual practice and social justice, tradition and soul, piety and chutzpah. This year, she was noted as the No. 5 rabbi in the country by Newsweek/ Daily Beast, and she was listed among the Forward’s 50 most influential American Jews three years in a row.

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Israel in the eyes of Harvey Pekar

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Ever since Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” won a Pulitzer Prize, no apologies need to be made for the aspirations of comic book artists to enter the realm of literature.  R. Crumb, for example, recently rendered nothing less exalted than the Book of Genesis as a graphic novel.  And Marjane Satrapi applied the same techniques to a best-selling work of memoir in “Persepolis.”

“Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me” (Hill and Wang: $24.95) is a ” title=”J.T. Waldman draws on Harvey Pekars Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me” target=”_blank”>J.T. Waldman draws on Harvey Pekar’s
‘Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me’]

Pekar, however, does not.  He acknowledges the role assigned to God in Jewish texts and tradition, but he’s not buying it.  Indeed, he challenges most of the pieties and true beliefs of Judaism and Zionism, and he frankly shows us how and why he was booted out of Hebrew school because of his oppositional ways. “Harvey, there’s a thin line between genius and crazy,” his exasperated teacher scolds him, “and you’ve crossed it.”

For Pekar, as for Abraham, Jacob and Moses, struggling with higher authority — and even the highest authority — is itself an authentic Jewish tradition. “I guess we’ve always been a thickheaded people who enjoy disagreeing with one another,” says Pekar, and Waldman is shown to correct him: “I believe the term is ‘stiff-necked,’” says the young man, putting air-quotes around the word.

The qualms and quandaries that afflicted Pekar, of course, are neither original nor profound, and the experiences he describes are common to his entire generation.  But Pekar and Waldman express themselves with a striking visual inventiveness that deepens and sharpens the story. When Pekar shows us the history of Judea during the Roman era, the illustrations are rendered in mosaic patterns; when he describes the emergence of Islam, the panels are drawn to resemble illuminated pages from the Koran, decorated only with calligraphical and geometrical patterns. And when he depicts his abortive effort at aliyah — he never actually makes it to Eretz Yisrael — the faces are blurred out as if to show how alienated he felt when he showed up at the Israeli consulate in Chicago.

“Well, maybe I could work on a kibbutz,” says Pekar. The consular official confronts him with the harsh truth: “They wouldn’t take you, and if they did, they’d throw you out.”  Explains Pekar, no less harsh and no less truthful:  “What the guy was saying was that I was a loser, and Israel had no time to rehabilitate shmucks.”

Pekar may not believe in God and Torah, but he definitely shares the Jewish habit of mind that allows many of us to see both sides of every question. “The Arabs have a legitimate beef,” he insists. “Ben-Gurion admitted it. Dayan admitted it. Sure, the Jews tell everyone that God provided them the land because they are his people. But every ethnic group thinks they are his chosen people.”

By the end of “Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me,” Pekar readily confesses that he is clueless about practical solutions — “Yeah, I know I’ve never been to Israel, but…that doesn’t mean we’re not entitled to an opinion” And he insists that he knows the difference between right and wrong. “I’ve got no idea how to resolve this thing,” he says, “but if the main issues — like Jerusalem, the right of return, and possible reparations — aren’t discussed, it’s hard to imagine any progress being made.”

So the book fits neatly into the literature of hand-wringing resulting from the current stalemate that has stalled the peace process and gridlocked the governance of Israel.  “I do not hate myself,” Pekar announces to those who pronounce him to be a self-hating Jew, “and Jews who criticize Israel aren’t necessarily mentally ill.”

Indeed, as he catches the reader’s eye from within a cartoon panel, Pekar comes across as thoroughly and authentically Jewish, a man who knows the weight and volume of tragedy that afflicts the history of his people but insists on aspiring to a better world than the one in which he finds himself.

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal.  His next book, “The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan, will be published under the Liveright imprint of W. W. Norton during the 75th anniversary year of Kristallnacht in 2013.  Kirsch blogs at books@jewishjournal.com.

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A 220 Year Old Lesson

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Last Friday, while on a family vacation in Philadelphia, my wife and I visited the new ” title=”To Bigotry No Sanction—George Washington and Religious Freedom” target=”_blank”>To Bigotry No Sanction—George Washington and Religious Freedom.” The exhibit centers on the August 1790 letter that Washington sent to the “Hebrew Congregation at Newport, Rhode Island.” The Museum recently acquired the original letter which had been hidden away for the past decade. Due to the delicacy of the original, it can only be on display three months a year.

It is an extraordinary document that is especially worthy of attention in the days surrounding July 4th.  The letter was handwritten by Washington shortly after he received a letter from Moses Seixas, the “warden” of the Newport synagogue. In the letter Seixas welcomed Washington to Newport and thanked God for having led the Jews to America:

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People…generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine….we desire to send up our thanks to the Ancient of Days, the great preserver of Men beseeching him, that the Angel who conducted our forefathers through the wilderness to the promised land, may graciously conduct you through all the difficulties and dangers of mortal life. And when, like Joshua full of days and full of honour, you are gathered to your Fathers, may you be admitted into the Heavenly Paradise to partake of the after of life and the tree of immortality.

In Washington’s response a few days later he laid out a vision of religious tolerance that likely had no historic precedent (the French legislation emancipating its Jews was not adopted until September, 1791).

In a few, terribly moving few paragraphs, Washington declares that, “the citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.”

In beautiful prose he invokes the words that Seixas had included in his letter that, “happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving on all occasion their effectual support.”

In what is a rather prescient view of societal dynamics, Washington makes clear that it is really not for one set of citizens to express “toleration” for another, acceptance is not theirs to give. Liberty is, after all, the exercise by the minority of their “inherent natural rights.”

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Dog ‘Guru’ Justin Silver puts owners on tight leash [SLIDE SHOW]

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When it comes to canines going to the dogs, trainer Justin Silver has seen it all: the pooch whose owner treated it like a baby, complete with diaper changes; the bulldog named Beefy who refused to take a walk unless he was schlepped down the street on a skateboard; the modeling agency owner who brought her fierce terrier mix to work every day, where it tried to attack everyone in sight. When Silver asked her how many times the mutt had bitten people, she replied, “Are you counting blood bites and non-blood bites?”

Training humans, as well as hounds, how to behave in an urban setting is Silver’s focus on CBS’ “Dogs in the City,” which will air its final episode on July 11 (previous episodes are available at CBS.com). It’s the latest take on how-to-fix-Fido shows, following the success of National Geographic’s “The Dog Whisperer With Cesar Millan” and Animal Planet’s “It’s Me or the Dog” with Victoria Stilwell. Silver’s angle is that he’s a guru for the more than 1 million dogs in New York City (there are 78 million dogs in the country) — and that owners are often to blame for canine malfeasance. “A dog’s behavior is shaped by the people in its life,” said Silver, who was raised with Shih Tzus in a Jewish home in Queens. “You’re always communicating to your animals, whether it’s directly or inadvertently, through your behavior.”

During a media event on a faux residential street at the CBS back lot in Studio City, the 30-something Silver came off as much like a Manhattan hipster as a canine maven, doling out advice on everything from doggie depression to how to use visual commands to retrain a bulldog who was going deaf. “Go ahead, write your name on the tree,” Silver, who is also a stand-up comic, joked as a Chihuahua relieved itself in front of a fake house. “Nobody lives here anyway.”

In an interview, he said he’s not entirely comfortable with the moniker he’s been given on the show: “I’d be a real moron if I walked down the street saying, ‘Hi, I’m The Dog Guru.” Even so, he’s spent thousands of hours training hundreds of dogs over the past decade, prescribing a range of techniques to train any particular pooch.

“The biggest mistake people make is they think dogs come pre-programmed — like, ‘My dog should come knowing what the word “sit” means,’ ” Silver said. “I’ll ask, ‘What do you do to teach it to sit?’ And they go, ‘I tell it, “sit!” ’ ” Silver said, laughing. The other big doggie no-no: “telling your pet what you don’t want it to do, rather than what you do,” he said. 

On the show, Silver helps fiances who were about to nix their engagement because their canine-blended family doesn’t get along.

Then there’s Elli, the owner of the modeling agency who brings her snarling terrier, Charlotte, to work — never mind that bite scars aren’t great for modeling careers. Silver tells her point-blank that the dog doesn’t belong in the office: “I do call people on their s—-,” he told me. When Elli insists, Silver explains that Charlotte feels stressed because the dog feels like she has to protect Elli, hence her penchant for threatening anyone who walks through the door. Elli needs to take on the “guardian” role, rising from her desk to greet visitors who enter the office, as well as keeping Charlotte tethered and rewarding the dog for saying put. Silver empathizes with Charlotte in an on-camera tête-à-tête: “You think I don’t know what it’s like to have a co-dependent mother?”

Silver was raised as a fussed-over only child by his mother and grandmother after his parents divorced when he was 2, which, he said, taught him about “unconditional love — and also how not to spoil dogs.” He has a tattoo that he describes as “a symbol” of his family: “two intersecting M’s that represent his grandparents, Murray and Martha Heller, Holocaust survivors who met when Murray smuggled food into Martha’s work camp.  Martha used to be terrified of dogs, because “the Nazis used to sic them on her,” but melted when she met Silver’s gentle pit bulls, he said; now she even cooks for them.

Silver’s journey to doggie mavenship began about 10 years ago, when he was working as a fitness trainer (for humans) as well as a comedian, but would come home from work at 4 a.m. “feeling a bit empty,” he said. “Nothing was on except these depressing animal commercials, and the next thing I knew, I had two rescue dogs and two rescue cats.” He started rehabilitating shelter dogs, learning every training technique possible in order to prepare them for adoption. By 2011, he was running his own training and pet-care company — and that’s when CBS came calling. One of his clients had referred him to producers looking for a personality for their new dog show, and Silver proved so charismatic that they picked him. 

“Whatever part of me that’s this neurotic Jewish New Yorker calms down when I’m working with animals; I get incredibly focused, like it’s a meditation,” he said. “I’m always talking about setting the tone, that you’ve got to give calm to get calm, but at the same time I’m thinking, I really should apply my own techniques to my own life.”

The final episode of “Dogs in the City” airs on July 11 at 8 p.m. The show also can be viewed at CBS.com.

Dog ‘Guru’ Justin Silver puts owners on tight leash [SLIDE SHOW] Read More »

This week in power: Shamir, Jobbik, Romney trip, Survivor pageant

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A roundup of the most talked about political and global stories in the Jewish world this week:

Shamir’s death
Yitzhak Shamir, an underground fighter and former prime minister of Israel, died at age 96 last weekend. How is he remembered? “In retrospect, Shamir’s cool, patient leadership style seems to have been far wiser than either Peres’ dreamy belief in the Palestinians’ desire for peace or those on the right who thought their rhetoric could persuade the West to see things from Israel’s point of view,” ” title=”http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/07/03/remembering-shamir-the-integrity-of-no/” target=”_blank”>said Danny Danon at The Algemeiner. “His leadership harkens back to an era in Israeli history where leaders were passionate Zionists who stood their ground and didn’t cede precious land to annihilationists and Jew-haters. How we yearn for such men,” ” title=”http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/06/28/3099441/jewish-leaders-mock-hungarian-far-right-politician-who-reveals-jewish-origins” target=”_blank”>reported JTA. But that didn’t change things for how people viewed Csanad Szegedi. Some even ” title=”http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/358976/20120703/nazi-jewish-hungary-szegedi-nf-uk-webster.htm#.T_NkdiM5ylw” target=”_blank”>said Palash R. Ghosh at International Business Times. “In the coming weeks and months, we may learn why he concealed his ancestry for so long – out of self-hatred or political expediency? It will also be interesting to see how his Jobbik comrades deal with this news.”

Romney to Israel
Former Gov. Mitt Romney is set to take a trip to Israel this summer to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in hopes of building up his Jewish vote, ” title=”http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2012/07/03/3099826/reason-why-romneys-trip-to-israel-is-interesting” target=”_blank”>asked JTA’s Ami Eden. But the person Israel really wants to see is President Obama, ” title=”http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/new-survey-brings-good-and-bad-news-for-jewish-community/2012/07/02/gJQAtwv1IW_story.html” target=”_blank”>identity and survival. And that rise may not be telling for the future, at the rate we’re going. “Property prices around the traditional Jewish suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne are spiralling out of control and are becoming unreachable for an increasing section of the ­community,” ” title=”http://gawker.com/5922295/israels-miss-holocaust-survivor-beauty-pageant-raises-eyebrows” target=”_blank”>Seriously. Organizers called it a “celebration of life” and said that the participants were in good spirits about the whole thing. Others, however, disagreed on the merits of the event. “The woman with the worst tale of woe and most engagingly pathetic air usually carried the day, weeping copiously as she was crowned,” ” title=”http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/06/29/miss_holocaust_survivor_pageant_why_we_shouldn_t_be_asking_who_suffered_more_.html” target=”_blank”>added Miriam Krule at Slate.

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Layla Lavan 2012 Report

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Layla Lavan had a different wrinkle this year as groups associated with the social protest movement—-which was so large…but not so successful last summer—staging counter events. Some artists and art galleries also declined to participate in reaction to the police treatment of protesters the previous saturday night.

But (literally) the show did go on. With stages with musicians and other performers…and large crowds up and downschild Boulevard. The place was filled with high schoolers making an all nighter of it wandering the streets of Tel Aviv .Apparently all congregated at Gordon Beach to hang and watch the sunrise. (yea just like in NY or LA),

I made by way up to Tsuk Beach in northern Tel Aviv—a beautiful not commercialized beach north of the nemal parallel to Ramat Aviv. It’s a great spot a totally different feel than the main Tel Aviv beaches and a place I have never visited. Amazing this kind of beach could be so close to the cacophony of the beach along the tayelet. Btw believe it or not there are now staff of the city of Tel Aviv who move those playing matkot (that paddle game which is pretty treacherous for the passerby) to a designated area on the beach…and even more amazing the Israelis comply.

But I digress

I got to the outdoor concert at Tsuk Beach a bit late ( 2 am ) to miss the opening act the great” title=”Karolina” target=”_blank”>Karolina who performs both solo and as part of ” title=”Dany Sanderson ” target=”_blank”>Dany Sanderson who got his start in Israeli pop music with the group Kaveret (Poogy). The concert closed at sunrise with Sanderson singing one of his most popular Poogy songs and baby boomers and their kids singing and dancing along thrusting their hands in the air screaming Yo Ya. As a fellow baby boomer I remember Poogy songs being favorites many years ago at Young Judaea’s Camp Tel Yehuda..