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Jewish Journal

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July 25, 2012

Lessons from a prophet on Tisha b’Av

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Torah /

A man visiting from Manhattan introduced himself after finishing a Shabbat afternoon class in Jewish ethics and told me the following story: In the early years of Lincoln Square Synagogue, when Rabbi Shlomo Riskin was the rabbi, he always wanted a certain leading member to serve as cantor for Neilah on Yom Kippur. Rabbi Riskin felt this man was the perfect choice for the role because he was a Holocaust survivor, a very kind and caring man, an observant Jew who raised a wonderful family, and he was blessed with an exceptional voice. This member always refused without offering any explanation. Finally, one year, Rabbi Riskin insisted that the man explain why he wouldn’t accept. The rabbi argued that it made no sense, particularly because the man always agreed to lead the service every other time he was asked.

The man finally told Rabbi Riskin: “You know I am a Holocaust survivor. When the war ended, I was very angry with God. For years, I was totally nonobservant. I violated the Shabbat and ate non-kosher foods. I was really angry with God. He took everything from me. My whole family was killed by the Nazis. But that all changed when I got married and had children. Slowly but surely, I returned to observance through my children. But I must tell you that every Tisha b’Av, 20 minutes before the end of the fast, I take a drink of water. This is my war with God.”

Rabbi Riskin listened carefully and then said: “That you have a war with God is totally understandable, but the one who leads Neilah can’t be at war with his fellow man. And therefore it is you that I want to lead Neilah.”

I wonder, was Rabbi Riskin right? Neilah on Yom Kippur led by a man who doesn’t fast the full Tisha b’Av? In order to answer this question, I reviewed the words of the prophet chosen for Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat preceding Tisha b’Av.

In the opening chapter of Isaiah, the prophet criticizes the Jewish people with the harshest words imaginable. In the name of God, the prophet screams, “Bring no more vain offerings; incense of abomination they are to Me; as for new moons and Sabbaths and the calling of assemblies, I cannot bear iniquity along with solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts My soul hates; they are a trouble to Me; I am weary of enduring them” (Isaiah 1:13-14).

The prophet declares that God is not interested in our prayers. Our sacrifices, we are told, are a farce. But what instigated such a terrible response from God? What caused God to reject our ritual service to Him?

Three verses later, Isaiah relates exactly why God was upset with us. “Devote yourself to justice; aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow” (Isaiah 1:17). And if that wasn’t enough, six verses later he announces, “Your rulers are fakers and cronies of thieves, every one avid for presents and greedy for gifts; they do not judge the case of orphans, and the widow’s cause never reaches them” (Isaiah 1:23).

What is God upset about? The prophet tells us we were ignoring those in need. The orphan and the widow, the two most vulnerable in society, are mistreated and ignored. The worst part of being a widow or an orphan is that no one pays attention to you. How often I have heard a widow cry to me that, without a husband, she is not only lonely but also ignored.

Rashi, the classical medieval biblical commentator, notes that the prophet was critical of us because the court system ignored the vulnerable and was concerned only with the wealthy and influential. When a community’s court system mistreats the vulnerable, it isn’t a single agency that bears the blame; rather the entire society is at fault.

So, in retrospect, I think Rabbi Riskin’s response was both apt and Jewish; one that is rooted in the message of our prophets and one that we all need to learn. The ritual law is important, but Judaism demands that it must be combined with a heart that cares for those who need us the most.

Rabbi Elazar Muskin is senior rabbi of Young Israel of Century City.

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Why counting counts: Who knows who L.A.’s Jews are?

Leave a Comment / California, Mobile, Mobile Sections, News /

Susan Goldberg, rabbi of Temple Beth Israel of Highland Park and Eagle Rock, grew up in nearby Echo Park.

“There were no Jewish families around when I was growing up,” Goldberg, 38, said. Now that these neighborhoods are being gentrified, and a young, creative crowd is moving in, the Jews are coming, too.

Some five years ago, Temple Beth Israel, a nearly 90-year-old congregation, counted 30 individual members. Today, she said, “We’re bursting at the seams with young families, parents in their 30s and 40s who are living here, in Mount Washington, in Highland Park, in Eagle Rock,” Goldberg said.

But for all the anecdotal evidence that Jews are moving eastward, no one knows exactly how many Jews comprise this trend.

“We know they’re out there, because when we have events, they come,” Goldberg said. “But it would be so, so tremendously helpful to know where they are, who they are, how many there are.”

Los Angeles hasn’t done a Jewish community survey since 1997, and with nothing concrete in the works, organizations are “flying blind,” in the words of one demographer.

“No other large Jewish community has been without a study for such a long period of time,” said Jacob Ukeles, president of Ukeles Associates Inc., a firm that helped conduct New York’s recently released survey.

And that can have serious implications for how effectively a community responds to needs.

“We need to know who lives where, what they do Jewishly, what diversity exists among Jews, what needs they have, what resources they have and what they think on a variety of issues,” said Sarah Bunin Benor, associate professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Los Angeles. “That’s my take on it, from the perspective of somebody who wants to help Jews have a better life.”

Jay Sanderson, president and CEO of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said conducting such a study is “rising to the top of our agenda.”

“We really need to do it. We know we need to do it, and I believe we will do it. We have to figure out the resources and how we’re going to pay for it,” Sanderson said in an interview.

A study of Los Angeles’ Jews, who are believed to number between 500,000 and 600,000, would likely cost somewhere around $1 million. In most cities with large and medium-sized Jewish populations, Federation pays for a survey once a decade. Los Angeles conducted community surveys in 1950, 1958, 1968, 1979 and 1997.

When Sanderson took office in 2010, no study was in the pipeline, and he said he had initially hoped to launch one quickly. But as the impact of the recession became more severe, Sanderson said, funds continued to be redirected to such programs as the Emergency Cash Grants, which has provided more than $2.6 million in relief to 5,350 recipients since 2009.

“Now, with everything we’re doing, we’re still trying to put a survey on the front burner,” Sanderson said.

Federation hopes to launch the process in the next year, Sanderson said — if he can figure out where the money will come from.

But the more time that goes by without a survey, the less efficiently the community is spending its dollars, demographers say.

“If you have a Federation that says they are the planning body of the community, where are they getting their information?” asked Pini Herman, a principal at Phillips and Herman Demographic Research. Herman was the L.A. Federation’s research coordinator for the 1997 survey; he has also worked on surveys in San Francisco, Houston and Seattle.

“The longer you don’t have a survey, the more you have to guess, and basically you’re snatching ideas and data out of thin air. And without any community study, there is no way to confirm or refute what they say,” Herman said.

Community leaders say they are eager to have current data.

“Synagogues call all the time, wanting to know where the Jews are moving. Are they moving into our area? Out of our area? Are we losing members because Jews are leaving this area, or for some other reason?” said Bruce Phillips, a principal, with Pini Herman, at Phillips and Herman Demographic Research and a professor of sociology and Jewish communal studies at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. Phillips has conducted or published research on more than 20 Jewish community surveys.

Other questions in Los Angeles also need answering. How many Iranian Jews live here, and what is there economic profile? Their Jewish identity? Their integration patterns?

What areas are people moving to and away from? Are nearby cities that are experiencing growth, such as San Francisco, Phoenix and Las Vegas, doing so at the expense of Los Angeles, or along with Los Angeles? How many French and Latin American Jews have moved into the area, and are they being served? Has the Orthodox population increased, and if so, in what sectors?

Anecdotal evidence about subpopulations can be deceiving, Phillips said, as it’s easier to count visible Jews who are frequent users of community resources — for instance, the Orthodox, or immigrant populations. The unaffiliated are more likely to go undetected if you rely on visibility or data from Jewish organizations.

A topic open to debate is how many Israelis are in Los Angeles. While some estimate there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis in Los Angeles, Herman says his own research points to a number closer to a maximum of 25,000, a figure corroborated by the official Israeli count of how many people have left their country.

The Los Angeles Jewish population, once concentrated on the Westside and in the San Fernando Valley, is migrating toward the East Side and north to areas such as the Conejo, Santa Clarita and Simi Valleys.

Several organizations are investing both money and resources in the East Side, including Federation, which has funded a new staff person at East Side Jews, a nondenominational Jewish community that has attracted hundreds of young, hip Jews to its irreverent monthly holiday celebrations and social events. East Side Jews recently became part of the Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center, an organization that is on a short list to receive significant Federation funding for a renovation and expansion project.

At the same time, Temple Beth Israel’s Goldberg said, Jews in the area remain underserved. When she needs to refer people for social services, she is often told that Jewish agencies don’t extend out to her part of town. In addition to leading Temple Beth Israel, Goldberg serves as rabbi-in-residence for East Side Jews, a position co-supported by Wilshire Boulevard Temple, which is also interested in being part of the East Side Jewish renaissance.

Indeed, Wilshire Boulevard Temple is in the middle of a $150 million project to restore and revitalize its historic sanctuary and campus in Koreatown. Before embarking on that project, the congregation commissioned its own demographic study of the area — roughly from West Hollywood on the west to Eagle Rock and Pasadena on the East, stretching from Adams Boulevard on the South up to Studio City and Glendale.

“I intuitively felt that young Jews were moving eastward, but intuition is not always right,” Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s Rabbi Steven Leder said.

Their study, which cost them about $25,000, found around 30 percent growth in the area over the last 10 years, with the most significant increases in the population of childbearing and -rearing age. That information convinced the synagogue’s leadership to buy up the rest of their square block to make room for more parking, an expanded day school, religious school and social service center.

Having data has also made it easier to approach donors, Leder said.

“It’s important to know that there is hard data to support your assumptions when you’re trying to raise money,” he said.

Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s study was based on Jewish surnames in voter registration listings — a method that may have left out Jews who have a non-Jewish parent or who are married to non-Jews, a population that, anecdotally at least, accounts for much of the growth on the East Side.

Why counting counts: Who knows who L.A.’s Jews are? Read More »

Jan Perry’s quest: Spirituality, pursuit of L.A.’s well-being

Leave a Comment / Bill Boyarsky, Mobile, News, Opinion /

I asked City Council member Jan Perry, a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles, if she was on a spiritual quest when she converted to Judaism. “Right,” she replied. “Your question is a good way to put it.”

Perry, whose conversation offers a mixture of the spiritual and practical politics, is perhaps the most interesting of those planning to run for mayor in 2013.  She’s Jewish, African-American, a woman and an articulate challenger of the insider old-boys club that runs City Hall. She currently is the only woman on the 15-member City Council, which another woman, Pat Russell, once led as president and where, in the past, other female council members have had considerable power.

I found her discussion of spiritual values intriguing, considering all her years in a city hall where standards are governed mostly by campaign contributions and political deals. Perry, who is currently in her third four-year-term representing Council District 9, has taken part in those deals and has both won and lost.

She was victorious in her efforts on behalf of the downtown projects of AEG, the entertainment giant, pushing through city financial aid and favorable zoning for Staples Center, subsidies for new nearby hotels, and her support was crucial to the development of the entire AEG L.A. Live complex of theaters and restaurants. She also won city financial aid for the company for its proposed National Football League stadium in the area.

But she was a loser earlier this year when she went up against fellow Council member Herb Wesson and voted against him for the council’s top job of president. Wesson prevailed, then, supported by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, had the council pass a reapportionment plan that stripped development-rich areas of downtown from Perry’s district.  Wesson obviously believes in the political adage, “Don’t get mad, get even.”

Perry and I talked over lunch at the Omni Hotel on Bunker Hill, one of the areas removed from her district in the reapportionment. She was friendly, relaxed and confident. Even when she was lashing out at the council’s ruling clique — my words, not hers — her voice was modulated and her manner calm. She doesn’t seem much different now than when I met her during her time as top aide to Rita Walters, the council member who previously represented her district. The mother of an adult daughter, Perry is divorced from her husband of 17 years. “We were friends then; we are friends now,” she said.

She’s the first of the potential mayoral candidates I’ll interview over the next several months. Best known among the others are City Council member Eric Garcetti, City Controller Wendy Greuel, radio talk-show host Kevin James, developer Rick Caruso and Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. Of these, only Perry, Garcetti, Greuel and James have formally announced their candidacies.

We talked about her journey from the Protestant home of her politically active parents in Cleveland to her embrace of Judaism while a student at USC about 30 years ago. Her spiritual quest took her to Rabbi Laura Geller, who then headed Hillel at USC. Perry said she was “on the hunt for something big. Why am I here? What is my purpose, my role as a woman, my role in society?” She also studied with Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Felder, director of UCLA Hillel, and then converted.

“The big moment for me in being Jewish was to be more community oriented in developing my observances, being part of a community,“ she said. For example, she said that on Yom Kippur, “When I was younger, I didn’t understand how important it is” on this day of repentance and atonement to pray “in a community,” among those who share her beliefs.

I can see something of her religion in her handling of one of her biggest and most complex issues, Skid Row, where she is following the Jewish imperative of reaching out and helping those in need. Politicians and the rest of Los Angeles avoids visiting the dangerous neighborhood, or even thinking about it. But, according to Jon Regardie, executive editor of the Los Angeles Downtown News, Perry has “spent more time addressing Skid Row than any other official had in decades.”

Skid Row, recently removed from her district in the reapportionment, is a wide area just east of the commercial heart of downtown Los Angeles, reaching eastward from around Main Street to near the Los Angeles River. It is filled with the homeless and other down-and-outers, many among them substance addicts, mentally ill, physically ailing and victims of the recession. Skid Row’s population also includes families with children, as well as a group of dedicated nonprofit organization workers who strive to provide housing, medical help, rehabilitation and other services, despite many obstacles.

Perry told me Skid Row should be a “recovery community,” where the homeless can find housing, make appointments with doctors, see therapists and drug counselors, a place “where they can rest” rather than live the risky life on the streets.

By coordinating efforts with the several nonprofit organizations in the area and helping them with the complicated task of obtaining public and private financing, Perry said she spurred construction of 1,200 units of permanent housing, with facilities for counseling and medical care. In addition, 5,000 units of low-income housing have been built within the boundaries of the area she represented in pre-reapportionment days.

As Perry sees it, Skid Row encapsulates the kinds of problems she would face as mayor. It’s poor. She dealt with conflict between property owners who want the homeless out of there, and with human-rights advocates who stand up for the poor and see her as a hard-hearted ally of business. She also worked with the Los Angeles Police Department, which tries to control the rampant drug dealing and other crimes on Skid Row, to enforce public health statutes and also comply with court decisions protecting homeless rights.

Also in her downtown district, Perry, in addition to supporting L.A. Live, is credited by council observers with helping developers build the condos and apartment houses that have upscaled parts of Skid Row and the areas around it. Critics have called her a handmaiden of AEG and other downtown developers, but she defends her support for the company, saying it’s a model for how to bring in more jobs and housing. She said she would “be a strategic job creator.” She wants more hotels downtown for conventions and would “promote jobs along transit lines and make sure housing is available.”

After our lunch, I wondered how she would do if elected mayor. Although I am more cynical than spiritual, I was impressed by her spiritual qualities, nurtured by her mentors, Rabbis Geller and Seidler- Felder, both of whom I respect. But being a student of practical politics, I was also impressed with her toughness. If she wins, the City Hall old boys may find out whether she, like them, follows the political rule of “Don’t get mad, get even.”

Bill Boyarsky is a columnist for The Jewish Journal, Truthdig and L.A. Observed, and the author of “Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times” (Angel City Press).

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The Cultural Connection: Part 3: Israeli Television

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

Although Israeli television has become a major source for material for US television, it loses all of its function as a window into Israeli society when it gets adapted to the US. Not so of course for the actual Israeli programs several of which can be found with English subtitles on DVD or on the web…and usually in the annual Israel Film Festival that tours several major cities each year.

Israelis are big on reality shows, they have their versions of top chef (including one version for kids), “American” idol and The Voice…also including one for kids, as well as Survivor and Big Brother. They are hugely popular. I have only caught the music shows and they can be interesting. Last year’s American idol (Kochav Nolad) winners were a young man of mizrachi descent and a young woman, a daughter of Ethiopian immigrants from Sderot. The family was rushed after Shabbat to prepare for the huge outdoor final. The father exclaimed that now he truly felt like an Israeli. Of course the entire town of Sderot was on the streets celebrating. Is she extremely talented ? yes. Was the fix on ? I’ll let you decide.” title=”eretz nehederet ” target=”_blank”> eretz nehederet a topical satire show…think Saturday Night Live with much sharper humor. Here’s their take on Birthright as you can see they can be pretty tough on their subjects.(the definition of birthright/taglit as propaganda trip” is not mine or one I agree with btw)

For those comfortable with the hebrew” title=”Full episodes in hebrew are here” target=”_blank”>Full episodes in hebrew are here

Avoda Aravit : the title itself is ironic, the term is used by Israelis to describe shoddy work regardless of who produced it. The series is a real breakthrough the story of Amjad and his family successful Israeli/Palestinian yuppies living in West Jerusalem among middle class Israeli neighbors and their dilemmas of fitting in while juggling their relationship to the family back in Amjad’s birthplace village. The other major characters are their friends, a couple: a successful Israeli/Palestinian and an Israeli Jewish photojournalist. The Arab characters speak Arabic, the Jews Hebrew. The satire is brilliant and hilarious. The show is also hugely successful it just completed its third season with an amazing…not so funny final episode. It is written by Sayeed Kashua—a serious novelist—and regular columnist for Haaretz with a satire column.

Here’s a short clip with english.