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Jewish Journal

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October 3, 2013

U.S. debut is homecoming for Klezmerson’s Shwartz

Leave a Comment / Culture, Is Featured?, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

Benjamin Shwartz wants to apologize for his English. 

The 38-year-old Mexico City-based composer and founder of the Latin-infused klezmer band Klezmerson can certainly be forgiven for his rusty skills, as he has never played a concert in the United States before. But now the popular band that has sold out concerts across Mexico and traveled as far away as Denmark to perform for thrilled audiences is set to make its U.S. debut at the Skirball Cultural Center on Oct. 5, and Shwartz is keen to make a good impression.

“I studied music in Los Angeles in ’93 or ’94, and it’s the first time that I’m going back,” Shwartz said happily during an interview via Skype. 

The last time he was in Los Angeles, Shwartz couldn’t have imagined where his career path would take him. He was still several years away from founding Klezmerson, and his tastes were more rock ’n ’ roll than Ashkenazic. But things changed for Shwartz when he began looking through old family photos, several of which showed people holding instruments. 

“My grandparents came from Poland and Lithuania,” he said. “I was studying music, and I tried to find a way to converge the Jewish identity with the Mexican identity.”

When Shwartz began his quest to revive the klezmer sound of his grandparents’ generation, he had no clue how big the scene in the United States had become. The Grammy Award-winning Klezmatics were totally off his radar. When he discovered the jazz-infused klezmer of the United States, he was inspired. 

“I was blown away by that, and I wanted to do my own version … my own Latin American version.”

It may not be widely known in the United States, but Jews have been in Mexico since it was colonized by the Spanish. Many Conversos — Jews forcibly converted to Catholicism during the Spanish Inquisition — and Crypto-Jews who converted in name only, sought refuge in the New World and established themselves there. These original Jewish Mexicans were Sephardi and eventually assimilated into Mexican society, disappearing due to religious persecution. 

Mexican independence, however, brought freedom of religion with it, and the 1880s saw a large immigration of Eastern European Jews to Mexico. This new, Ashkenazi community has remained in Mexico ever since, and today close to 50,000 Jews call Mexico home. Most modern Mexican Jews, like Shwartz, live in Mexico City. 

“It’s an amazing city to live in, and so many types of sounds and music are everywhere,” Shwartz said. 

Still, when Shwartz first put Klezmerson together, he had a bit of a dilemma on his hands. He and his bandmates were Latin American musical pioneers. 

“When we started, it was a little bit hard to try to explain what the music was and where it came from,” Shwartz said. “At the beginning we didn’t know where to play. We started playing at jazz clubs.” 

It turned out that the jazz club patrons were big fans of Klezmerson’s music, but the band didn’t really fit into the scene. It was too loud, too rock-influenced. It took time to find an audience, but as Klezmerson played around town, it began to develop a following, and now its shows draw crowds. 

“We played with [klezmer band] Golem from New York in a big show in Mexico,” he said. “[The attendance] was, like, 5,000 people.”

Still, things can sometimes be tough for a klezmer band in Mexico, despite the overwhelming support of the mostly non-Jewish crowds. 

“Some people have not good ideas about the Jews, so when they hear the music there are a lot of interesting reactions around here,” said Shwartz, declining to elaborate. But he hopes that Klezmerson can be an ambassador of Judaism through its music.

After its gig at the Skirball, Klezmerson has a show lined up at one of Mexico City’s premier cultural venues. 

“We’re playing in a big place here called Bellas Artes, which is a huge sort of palace in Mexico City,” Shwartz said. 

They also have to start work on a new album — they’re signed to John Zorn’s record label. For now, though, Shwartz is firmly focused on the band’s upcoming U.S. debut and is excited to be back in Los Angeles. 

“People there, I think, will understand more what we’re doing,” he said. “Rock ’n’ roll bands, and jazz, and the klezmer that I hear come mainly from the U.S.”

And Shwartz hopes that, above all, people will have a good time. 

“It’s like a trip to see the whole show, because the songs go so many places,” Shwartz said. “I hope they feel joy. I hope they enjoy themselves.”

Klezmerson will perform Oct. 5 at the Skirball Cultural Center. For tickets or more information, visit skirball.org/programs/music/klezmerson

U.S. debut is homecoming for Klezmerson’s Shwartz Read More »

About

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Hollywood /

My name is Jeff and I am an avid sports fan.

Follow my analytical, emotional and (sometimes) superticious thoughts on the sports you and I love.

FULL DISCLOSURE: This blog will often contain a West Coast (… well, Los Angeles) bias. I will be as fair as Bill Simmons (who claimed he wanted to name is son “Beckett” following the 2007 World Series).

About Read More »

In the family way: Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32)

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Torah /

Word went out from the congregation that a longtime member was nearing the end of her life. She has no partner and no children, but, on the day after Yom Kippur, 17 friends from the congregation came to visit her, including current and former clergy, and grown children she used to baby-sit.

“In whatever way it comes into our lives, we give thanks for the blessing of family,” we read each Friday night at our synagogue, after the candles are lit, part of our Shabbat blessing for family.

And in a congregation such as ours, where families take shape in a multitude of configurations — by birth (including surrogacy and sperm and egg donors); by adoption; by fostering; by shared parenting; by single parenting; by not parenting; bonded by choice, by coincidence or convenience; in loving pairs; in friendship groups; across generations; elders sharing housing — no one knows better than we do that there are many ways to create family, and that no bonds are stronger or deeper, more important or more sustaining. 

In Parashat Noach, God instructs Noah to bring all the animals onto the ark two by two, l’mi-nai–hu (according to their kind/their species) (Genesis 6:20). Noah, his wife, their sons and their wives, and all the animals dwelt on the ark for over a year, long past the 40 days and 40 nights of rain, through the flooding and then the drying up. Even after the dove had returned with the olive branch and then disappeared, Noah and company remained on the ark, finally leaving it only when God told them to do so (Genesis 7:24-8:19).

The commentaries and midrash writers ponder the obvious questions: Why didn’t Noah emerge sooner from the ark? Why did he wait so long, even though he knew the ground had dried and plants had once again begun to grow? Why did God have to instruct him to leave the ark? Some say it was fear that God might bring another destruction, evidenced by the fact that Noah’s first act off the ark was to build an altar and make a sacrifice to God. Or perhaps it was guilt that he had left so many to die in the flood? Perhaps it was post-traumatic stress disorder, signified by the fact that Noah, once again on dry land, plants a vineyard and gets drunk (Genesis 9:20-21). 

Let me pose a different scenario: Perhaps Noah liked it on board the ark, surrounded by his family. He knew what to do there. He had plenty of company. Despite the cartoon and movie versions, maybe everyone got along well, even the animals. After all, it wasn’t Noah alone who stayed on the ark. All the humans and all the animals stayed. 

The animals, Torah tells us, board the ark l’mi-nai-hu, “according to their kind,” but when they leave the ark more than a year later, we are told they leave l’mishp’choteihem (with their families) (Genesis 8:19).

Midrash Rabah, an early collection of midrash, and the 11th century commentator Rashi suggest that during the year on the ark they were forbidden to “be fruitful and multiply” (presumably to prevent overcrowding on the ark), and that leaving “with their families” tells us there was no intermixing of species. 

But suppose the opposite were true? Picture this: that the year on the ark was a very bonding experience for everyone on it, with lots of intermingling, not necessarily in a sexual way, but in a familial way. 

Imagine this: that as the humans and the animals spent a year together in close quarters, all sorts of rearranging went on, with lots of relationships — families — constructed in all sorts of ways. You’ve seen the photos on the Internet – animals cuddling with other species (leopards and chimps, lions and lambs, sheep and pigs, humans and dogs). Suppose it happened on the ark as well. Families constructed not just by who was born to whom — not that there’s anything wrong with that way — but also deliberately by choice, by affinity, by hearts opening through compassion and instinct, by love and attachment growing stronger day by day. In other words, by every which way today’s “modern families” can imagine (and are experiencing) families being constructed.

Perhaps God placed a rainbow in the sky after the flood not only as a reminder of God’s covenant (ot habrit) with every living creature, for all ages to come (Genesis 9:8-17), but also as a symbol of the brilliant diversity of God’s many creations, including the human and animal impulse to create an assortment of families with whom to bond and loving communities in which to dwell.

Lisa Edwards is rabbi of Beth Chayim Chadashim ( In the family way: Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32) Read More »

How to feed the hungry

Leave a Comment / California /

On the fifth night of Sukkot, a panel gathered in The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ Wilshire Boulevard headquarters to discuss how to handle hunger both at home and across the country. Rabbi Noah Farkas of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino explained that it was an auspicious date for such a conversation. 

Consider, he said, the lulav that is waved during the holiday. It is an aguda (bundle) composed of different plant species, each of which has a specific set of qualities: One has a taste, one a smell, one neither and one both. These are supposed to correspond to the people of the Jewish community, Farkas said, some of whom are versed in Torah and some of whom know justice, some of whom know both and some neither. 

“And the rabbis ask the question, then, why do you have this last group, the group of people who just don’t seem to have any worth?” he said. “[They answer] by giving the line from the Torah that we are to take up all four species together and to make them one aguda, which means for me that if we want to change the world … we have to bind ourselves to each other and cover for each other’s failing and work together through all of our differences.” 

This seemed to be the theme of the night, which brought together four diverse panelists doing work both in Los Angeles and across the globe, whose strategies ranged from short-term emergency food aid to encouraging grass-roots activism to lobbying members of Congress directly on issues of international consequence. The panel’s title was “The Second Harvest 2.0: Innovative Strategies That Address Hunger Locally and Globally.” Part of Federation’s Community Engagement Initiative, the Sept. 24 event drew about 50 people.  

Farkas, founder of the group Netiya, which works to help communities of faith plant urban gardens, was joined by Robert Egger, whose L.A. Kitchen aims to tackle food waste while creating jobs and feeding the elderly, as well as Paula Daniels, former chair of the L.A. Food Policy Council and senior policy adviser to former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Rounding out the panel was Jonathan Zasloff, representing the American Jewish World Service, where he volunteers, and moderator Abby Leibman, president and CEO of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger. 

The conversation covered topics from corn subsidies to international food aid, and it tended to focus on broad-based systemic thinking over immediate solutions to local issues. As Leibman remarked at one point, “A board member [once] said to me, ‘We’re not going to food bank our way out of hunger.’ ” 

Or, as Egger put it, “Sure, I want to fish the baby out of the water here, but who’s throwing the babies in the water upstream?” 

Hunger is a complex problem, the panelists agreed, and finding a solution to it is even more complicated. It doesn’t help that Congress passed a bill in September that, if enacted, would cut $40 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program over the course of the next 10 years. Leibman characterized this as “huge slap in the face … to all those who are struggling to recover from the terrible economy and to put food on the table for their family.” She also said that “as the nutrition safety net is being shredded … somebody, somewhere, somehow is going to have to pick up the slack.”

This means finding short-term solutions, like food banks, but also thinking long-term about creating systemic change. For Egger that means job creation, and his goal with L.A. Kitchen is to produce something that will feed the hungry today while also giving them the skills to look for work that will enable them to support themselves tomorrow. 

To that end, L.A. Kitchen will run a job-training program for people returning home from prison, pairing them with youth aging out of foster care and teaching them to prepare food in commercial kitchens. L.A. Kitchen will take seconds — produce that’s considered unsellable for cosmetic reasons — and turn it into meals for the city’s elderly. It’s an elegant system that creates, as Egger puts it, side-by-side learning and serving instead of a model that “emphasizes the redemption of the giver, not the liberation of the receiver.” 

Daniels looks at the issue from a civic angle. She said that Villaraigosa’s idea was to “use the market power of the city to influence what’s being produced,” creating a demand for healthy produce and then using a decentralized system of local food hubs to distribute it.  In effect, this means using the government dollars that purchase food for schools and hospitals to incentivize local production of that produce, and then creating a smaller-scale system to distribute it throughout the city — which means jobs in picking and packing, driving and distributing as well as preparing and serving. 

The issue, both in America and around the world, panelists agreed, was rarely that there weren’t enough calories; it’s almost always an issue of getting those calories into hungry mouths. 

Zasloff, who is also a rabbinic student at the ALEPH ordination program, closed out the panel by reminding the audience that charity is not a spectator sport, especially in Jewish tradition. He spoke of a blessing that thanks God for knowledge and awareness, and urged everyone in the room to acknowledge their own blessings, and to try once a day to think or do something about hunger.

“Do one thing every day, and that will make you more aware, it will connect you in with what else is happening, and it will begin to …  motivate you to do something and pursue your own path, that will allow you to link up with other people.”

How to feed the hungry Read More »

Poem: Mold

Leave a Comment / Poetry /

When Noah prayed
You sent him a flood
and charged him with the safety
of all animal life.

What I got was rain.
I forgot to wash my shirt
so it grew mold.

In every generation
the holy men we have
stand on different levels.
We all get the hero
we deserve.

On behalf of mold
— and on behalf of my wife,
who loves when I do laundry —
I will try
to be worthy.

Poem: Mold Read More »

Rouhani outreach rejected

Leave a Comment / Blogs, California /

Iran’s recently elected President Hassan Rouhani may have reached out to Iranian-American Jews during his visit last month to New York, but Iranian-American Jews aren’t returning the gesture.

Instead, they have responded with cynicism, declaring that recent comments made during Rouhani’s trip to address the United Nations General Assembly were mere attempts by Iran’s leadership to remove Western sanctions on their regime. 

“Iran is engaged in a thoughtful and extensive public relations and propaganda campaign to rebuild its image in order to persuade the easing of sanctions and to buy time for its nuclear weapons program,” said Sam Yebri, president of 30 Years After, an L.A.-based Iranian-American Jewish civic organization.

Sam Kermanian, a senior adviser to the Iranian American Jewish Federations (IAJF) in Los Angeles and New York, confirmed that while the Iranian mission at the United Nations invited members of both federations to a dinner reception with Rouhani during his visit to New York, no IAJF leadership attended.

“A number of factors went into the decision [not to attend],” Kermanian said. “Chief among them was the concern that such a meeting will be misinterpreted by our friends as an endorsement and serve to mislead them into believing that Iranian Jews no longer face any issues under the regime or have any concerns.”

One issue traced back to Rouhani’s perceived failure to strongly condemn the past Holocaust denial statements of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When asked by the media about his own views, Rouhani responded, “I am not a historian.” 

Likewise, officials with the IAJF said they were disappointed that the Iranian delegation brought with them Siamak Moreh Sedgh, the only Jewish member of the Iranian parliament. They said he is vehemently anti-Israel and only serves as a propaganda tool for the Iranian regime to claim that they are supposedly friendly to Jews.

Iranian-Jewish leaders and activists in the United States said Moreh Sedgh has little credibility in their eyes because of his sworn and blind allegiance to the regime.

“The main functions of a Jewish member of parliament in Iran are keeping the Jews in line and acting as a public relations agent for the regime, said Frank Nikbakht, an Iranian-Jewish activist who heads the L.A.-based Committee for Minority Rights in Iran. “If you read the official text of the oath of office by all members of parliament in Iran, including the Jewish representative, there is a statement that they must protect the Islamic Republic and Islam as a whole, and Moreh Sedgh is living up to that oath 100 percent.”

It is estimated that between 10,000 and 25,000 Jews still live in Iran. Those who remain live in constant fear for their lives and have a second-class status. According to a 2004 report by Nikbakht, at least 14 Jews have been murdered or assassinated since 1979 by the regime’s agents, at least two Jews have died while in custody, and 11 Jews have been officially executed by the regime. Just last November, a 57-year-old Jewish woman was brutally murdered — and her body mutilated — in the Iranian city of Isfahan.

For the past four years, Moreh Sedgh and other Jewish leaders in Iran have been banned by the Iranian regime from having any contact with Iranian-Jewish groups based in the United States, Kermanian said. Leaders of many of the Iranian-Jewish groups based in Los Angeles and New York have long avoided commenting on the status of Jews in Iran and do not openly criticize the Iranian regime for fear of reprisals against the Jewish community still remaining in Iran.

While IAJF leaders did not meet with the Iranian delegation in New York, the Journal has confirmed — by contacting Iranian Jews in New York who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue to the community — that a few individual Iranian-Jewish businessmen not affiliated with any specific group and living in New York did attend the Rouhani event. 

During Shabbat services on Sept. 21, Sinai Temple’s Rabbi David Wolpe informed his L.A. congregation, which has a sizable population of Iranian-American Jews, that Rouhani had extended a request to meet with several members of the area’s Iranian-Jewish community. However, he said, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) discouraged such a meeting.

“AIPAC was concerned that a meeting would be used for propaganda purposes,” Wolpe told the Journal on Sept. 25. “I was happy to announce that as AIPAC’s position, though I myself didn’t take a position.”

Leaders of various local Iranian-Jewish groups, including the IAJF and 30 Years After, said they were not pressured by AIPAC or other Jewish groups to boycott the Rouhani event and made the decisions on their own.

“It is normal practice for our leadership to consult with the leadership of the larger Jewish community and with other friends, for that matter, on a regular basis,” Kermanian said. “On this subject, too, there have been extensive consultations with the rest of the Jewish community, including AIPAC. The opinions and recommendations of all our friends, which we value tremendously, were gathered and considered, but at the end of the day it was up to our leadership to make the decision.”

AIPAC’s West Coast office declined to comment for the Journal when initially contacted on Sept. 25, and representatives of AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations contacted by the Journal did not return subsequent calls for comment on the Rouhani event. 

Other recent efforts by the Iranian regime — including Rosh Hashanah greetings to Jews across the globe via Twitter by the president and his foreign minister — have left Iranian-Jewish activists unmoved. 

“The Iranian regime’s leaders believe that Jews were instrumental in Obama’s election and are in control of U.S. policy, so they wanted to get the Jews’ support. Therefore the regime tried this PR stunt with Twitter to influence Jews in the U.S.,” Nikbakht said. 

Even if sincere, these efforts are the work of someone who activists see as a figurehead, as Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is ultimately the policymaker in Iran. And while Rouhani may be branded a relative moderate by some, local Iranian Jews said they have been skeptical of him because they followed his pre-election debates in Iran where he boasted about deceiving the West and buying time for the nuclear program as a past negotiator for the regime.

Ultimately, Iranian Jews in Los Angeles said they were not swayed by Rouhani’s outreach efforts last month and will wait to see concrete changes from the Iranian regime before changing their minds.

“In the last 34 years and from the dawn of the Islamic revolution, anti-Semitism and anti-Israel stances have been a fundamental policy of the Islamic regime,” said Bijan Khalili, an Iranian-Jewish activist living in Los Angeles. “Iranians as a whole mostly have been here in exile because of the brutality of the Iranian regime and the violations of human rights by this regime. Therefore, if there is nothing changed in the constitution or the behavior of the regime, then Iranians in the U.S. should not take the lead to communicate.”

For more about the Iranian-Jewish community’s reaction to Rouhani’s trip, visit jewishjournal.com/iranianamericanjews.

Rouhani outreach rejected Read More »

‘Fiddler’ makes the world richer

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment /

On a visit to Budapest earlier this year, my wife and I asked the concierge at our hotel for a restaurant where we could find authentic Hungarian fare.  As we took our seats in the bustling little place he recommended, I was encouraged to see a house band tucked away in the corner, and our meal was accompanied by what I assumed to be traditional Hungarian and Roma tunes.  About halfway through the meal, however, the musicians took a short break and then returned to start their second set with “If I Were a Rich Man.”

How a hit song from a Broadway musical entered the global pop culture is one of the wonder of wonders that is explored and explained with both charm and authority by theater critic, journalist and scholar Alisa Solomon in her wholly winning book, “Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof” (Metropolitan Books, $30).

Solomon tells the whole story of “Fiddler” from beginning to end, starting with the story by Sholem Aleichem in which Tevye first appeared in 1894, and showing us in suspenseful detail how  “Fiddler on the Roof,” created by Jerry Bock (music), Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) and Joseph Stein (book), reached the Broadway stage in 1964. In that sense, “Wonder of Wonders” is a rich and lively slice of theater history.

For example, Solomon points out that, even as late as the 1950s, “Broadway’s musical makers, though most were Jewish, were not yet putting overt Jewish characters front and center.” To be sure, Jewish audiences were afforded the opportunity to attend “Yinglish revues,” such as “Bagels and Yox” and “Borschtcapades,” but the Yiddishkayt of a character like Nathan Detroit in “Guys and Dolls” was encoded in a single line of the song he sings: “I’m just a no-goodnik. All right already. It’s true. So nu?”

No detail is overlooked. She reveals that the Sholem Aleichem family received a 4.8 percent royalty, but an enterprising producer who had tied up the theatrical rights to the stories demanded a royalty nearly twice as large. “From underwear to overcoats, [costume designer Patricia] Zipprodt used natural fibers that would have been available in 1905 for the 165 costumes she made.  But the makers of the musical were unwilling to make the show too authentic; by choosing the name for the character of Yenta the matchmaker, Solomon points out, “[Joseph] Stein made one of his book’s few concessions to the Yiddish language, which the authors had vowed to avoid.”

Solomon reminds us that “Fiddler” was not universally admired when it opened on Broadway. Irving Howe complained that the producers “discard[ed] the richness of texture that is Sholem Aleichem’s greatest achievement,” and Robert Brustein accused them of “falsifying the world of Sholem Aleichem, not to mention the character of the East European Jew.” But she also insists that director Jerome Robbins deserves to be remembered and praised for “labor[ing] mightily to burn away the schmaltz that for two decades had encased the world of the shtetl like amber.”

Robbins is also credited for the crucial casting decision that put Zero Mostel into the role of Tevye. “There would have to be some madness in his Method,” as Solomon playfully puts it. Among the actors in contention were Danny Kaye, Rod Steiger, Red Buttons and Eli Wallach. But there was much off-stage drama before Mostel accepted the role. Much of the tension was provoked by the fact that Robbins had named the wife of Jack Gilford — Mostel’s co-star in “A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to the Forum” — before the House Unamerican Activities Committee. “But it wasn’t just political bad blood that caused Mostel to call Robbins ‘that sonofabitch’ in place of his name,” Solomon explains. “Mostel was an unstoppable force, Robbins an immovable object.”

The author, of course, is fully aware that “Fiddler” is much more than a record-breaking Broadway hit and a celebrated Hollywood movie. She points out how “Fiddler,” like the earlier incarnations of Tevye on the Yiddish stage, has come to serve as a “Jewish signifier” for both Jews and non-Jews: “ ‘Now I know I haven’t been the best Jew,’ ” Homer tells a rabbi from whom he is trying to borrow money in an episode of “The Simpsons,” “ ‘but I have rented “Fiddler on the Roof,” and I intend to watch it.’ ” But she also shows how “Fiddler” came to be embraced and celebrated far beyond the Jewish world, which is yet another wonder of wonders. 

“[Tevye] belongs nowhere,” Solomon concludes. “Which is to say, everywhere.”

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of the Jewish Journal. His latest book is “The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris” (W.W. Norton/Liveright), published in 2013 to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Kirsch will be discussing and signing copies of his new book at Shaarey Zedek synagogue in Valley Village on Oct. 27; at American Jewish University on Oct. 30; at University Synagogue in Irvine on Nov. 1; at Stephen S. Wise Temple on Nov. 14; and at Sinai Temple on Nov. 21.

‘Fiddler’ makes the world richer Read More »

The value of summer camp

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

In 2007, my three daughters asked me if they could go to summer camp along with their school  friends. For the previous several years, I had always said no. It was far, it was costly. And summer was the only time I had vacation from work, and I wanted to spend that time with my children. I said I would think about it.  

That day at work I stopped in to see one of my colleagues and told her of my dilemma. She asked me if I had ever attended a Jewish summer camp as a child. I told her I had never been to a camp of any kind. She went on to explain what camp had meant to her growing up, and following her bat mitzvah, she said, it was the only thing that kept her involved in her religion, temple and Jewish community. I decided that there would be no harm in sending my kids for one summer, and we would get back to our normal summer plans the following year.  

What I did not realize then was that camp would indeed change their lives, and our days of long family summer vacations were over. It was a sacrifice I was willing to make once I realized the impact camp would have on their confidence and development over the next five years.  

My girls have all graduated from Camp Ramah, the eldest having just finished her second summer as a camp counselor, my two younger girls pining for their turns to become counselors as well. They have taken away from camp several important life lessons from their camp experience. The first is the importance of committing themselves to service within our Jewish community, in spite of living and going to school in a secular environment. My girls have participated in the Friendship Circle, working with Jewish children with special needs. They have been teaching assistants in our Talmud Torah Program, as well as active members of United Synagogue Youth. Most of their volunteer activities are within our Jewish community, and I believe this stems from the concept of tikkun olam, healing the world, which was emphasized and modeled so strongly at summer camp. My girls always told me that a big part of camp was learning the importance of the passing down of tradition, and providing others with the experiences they were privileged to have themselves.  

My girls learned that all Jewish kids do not come from middle-class, two-parent families. At camp they became friends with kids from varying backgrounds who had family problems including divorce, illness, financial stressors and mental-health issues. They met kids being raised by grandparents and kids who had been in foster care. They roomed with kids who were very wealthy and others who were financially challenged.  Everyone was treated equally, and most shared openly. When we had our own family stressors, camp became a safe haven for my girls and a place they could talk to friends and counselors, and receive unconditional love, support, understanding and plenty of healthy advice. In the last year my girls were at camp, our financial situation had drastically changed and we were unable to afford the expense. I explained our financial situation when I applied for financial aid. I was asked what I needed for them to attend and was granted that amount. I will always be grateful for the generosity shown to me and our family during our own time of need.

Each summer when I picked my kids up from camp I observed a maturity that had developed over the course of the month. When they came home to their own neighborhood and school, they were able to make good decisions for themselves in terms of who they chose as their friends and what they chose as their entertainment. I have never had to worry about what my girls were doing on a Friday or Saturday night when they were out with their friends. The foundation they received from home was the same as they received at camp. Camp prepared them for the many temptations faced by our teens. Their sense of right and wrong, moral and not, can be credited as much to camp as what we have tried to instill as parents.  

Jewish summer camp has made my children better people. There are only so many life lessons that a parent can impart. To experience goodness, kindness, learning and a commitment to Judaism, all on a grassy knoll and under tall pine trees, is more than I could have ever wished.  

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles is holding its first Tour de Summer Camps on Oct. 27. This community-wide cycling event is raising funds for Jewish summer camp scholarships, in support of Federation’s ongoing work ensuring our Jewish future. Riders can choose from one of three scenic routes of 36, 62 or 100 miles. To sign up, make a donation, become a sponsor or volunteer, visit TourdeSummerCamps.org.

The value of summer camp Read More »

Three ways to save American Jewry from extinction

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Opinion /

By now you’ve heard about the Pew Research poll, published this week, that concludes that American Jewry is on its way to oblivion. No need to wait for Hassan Rouhani of Iran to drop a bomb on us. We’re doing an incredibly fine job of destroying ourselves, thank you very much.

What all this shows is that what my friend mega-philanthropist Michael Steinhardt and I have been saying for years is unfortunately correct. Despite the untold billions that have been sunk into Jewish communal outreach for the last half century, it has barely made a dent in the rate of assimilation.

Here are three ways to give mouth-to-mouth to our dying community.

1. Stop creating a divide between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds.

Today’s model of outreach is fatally flawed seeing as it necessarily forces a choice on non-affiliated Jews to choose between the Jewish and mainstream worlds. So, a student at University who hangs out with his non-Jewish friends is encouraged to stop going only to mainstream University events and come instead to Hillel or Chabad. I’m not knocking that. We need Jewish organizations that invite Jews in to classes, religious services, lectures, social events, and debates. But far more effective is not forcing the choice on them in the first place. Bring Judaism instead to where they are at. On campus, do colossal events that bring Jewish values, teachings, and wisdom to all students so that young men and women are not forced to choose.

Last week, in collaboration with Rabbi Yehuda Sarna of Hillel at NYU, our organization, This World: The Values Network, staged a huge event of over 1000 Jewish and non-Jewish students that had me moderating a discussion on genocide between Elie Wiesel and Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda.

In a similar manner, bring Judaism to the culture via TV shows, plays, and music that are mainstream and intended for all audiences. Some examples include the new Shlomo Carlebach-based musical ‘Soul Doctor,’ produced by Jeremy Chess, that is currently running on Broadway, the music of Matisyahu, and the TV show I hosted on TLC called ‘Shalom in the Home.’ Like the Kabbalah movement, bring Judaism and Jewish values to everybody instead of just focusing on the Jews. We are not a proselytizing faith, but that is no excuse not to make the Jewish people a light to all nations.

2. Fix the broken and boring Synagogue service.

The overwhelming number of Jews who still step into a Synagogue do so for three days of every year and then swear they will never come back. Sometimes I think we should ban secular Jews from High Holy Day services and shift their attendance instead to Simchas Torah and Purim. But since that’s not going to happen, let’s take the focus off of cantorial recital yodeling, which makes congregants into spectators, shift the teachings away from dry sermons, and focus instead on having services engage the heart and mind. Carlebach-style services that make people sing real spiritual melodies rather than listening to opera is the way to go. Rabbis putting out moral questions between each of the seven readings of the Torah on Saturday mornings is a means by which to influence congregants to apply the lessons of the Torah to their everyday lives, making Judaism relevant rather than aloof. And don’t forget a fantastic Kiddush with fine single malt whisky. Can’t afford it? Build less elaborate buildings and have a more elaborate cholent and sushi.

3. Make the Rabbinical and Jewish day school teaching professions fashionable again.

You basically become a Jewish day school teacher or a Rabbi after your fifth rejection from Harvard Business School. There is no social clout in it and you get paid in cholent beans. How do we change all this? By having AIPAC, Federation, Birthright, and other prestigious Jewish organizations respect Rabbis at their major conventions rather than having them say the blessing on the bread. How do we ensure they can make more money? Take the ten smartest Jewish hedge fund managers and have them create a fund open only to Jewish activists where there money will be managed by the smartest people in the world so that a teacher in cheder will have enough money to marry off his children without having to moonlight as a bar bouncer. The more money Rabbis and teachers make, without putting strains on the communal purse, and the more clout these professions enjoy, the more talent we will attract to those professions that are supposed to be inspiring our youth.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the winner of the London Times Preacher of the Year Award and the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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Award named for Nobel laureate

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The wheel of history has come full circle for Otto Meyerhof (1884-1951), a biochemist who was once the pride of Germany as a Nobel laureate, then a Jewish refugee, and now rehabilitated and honored by his native country.

A particularly interested witness to this process is Burbank resident David Meyerhof, grandson of the scientist, who recently received a letter from the German Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

The letter announced that on Oct. 5, the society would confer a newly established monetary award on a young scientist in the name of Otto Meyerhof in recognition of the latter’s contribution to science and research.

Meyerhof’s most significant work was on the chemical reactions of metabolism in muscles, which pointed to an understanding of the source of energy in the body.

In 1922, Meyerhof was warded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, together with British scientist A.V. Hill.

The proud German government of the Weimar Republic appointed Meyerhof head of the country’s prestigious medical research institute in Heidelberg and later set up a special laboratory for him in Berlin.

The roots of the Meyerhof family in Germany went back some 400 years, and, like most German Jews of his background and standing, Otto Meyerhof was fully assimilated.

He had his three children baptized at birth, but his true religion was his scientific work, his grandson recounted in an interview.

Everything changed when Hitler came to power. The Nobel laureate was stripped of his teaching post in 1935, though, in view of his global reputation, he was allowed to continue as head of the Heidelberg research institute.

In that position, and despite attacks on him in the Nazi press, he was able to employ and protect young Jewish scientists on his staff.

But by 1938, even the most patriotic German Jew could sense that there was no future for him under the Nazis. One evening, Meyerhof prepared an elaborate experiment in his lab as a cover and the same night took a train to Paris.

Two years later, when the German army overran France, Meyerhof joined the desperate stream of Jewish refugees trying to escape. Thanks to the help of Varian Fry, an American journalist who famously set up an escape route across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, saving the lives of many noted artists, scientists and intellectuals, among others, Meyerhof and his family were able to reach Lisbon, Portugal, and catch a ship to New York.

He arrived in the United States in late 1940 and accepted a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania.

His then 18-year-old son, Walter, in the meantime had escaped from a French internment camp and made it to New York on his own, and went on to became a noted nuclear physics professor at Stanford University.

Walter’s son, David, was born in late 1950 in Palo Alto, Calif., some 10 months before the death of his grandfather, and growing up he knew little of his family’s history.

Indeed, David Meyerhof said, it wasn’t until he was in his 20s that his father told him about his grandparents and their escape from Germany.

After high school, David attended UC Santa Barbara and California State University, Los Angeles, and then for 33 years taught a sixth-grade honors class in math and science at the Florence Nightingale Middle School in Highland Park.

Most of his students were of Latino or African-American descent, and, he said, “I take great pride that most of them have gone on to fine colleges.”

Now retired, the 62-year-old Meyerhof has been researching his family history and their Jewish connections more intensively.

Although not religious, he and his wife, Carol, attend services on Jewish holidays, but his main interest is to talk to middle- and high-school students about the Holocaust and his family’s legacy.

Meyerhof has received many letters and e-mails from students in the Burbank Unified School District, and he particularly cherishes notes from students who declare that his talks have changed their lives.

He wrote a book of poetry, “Look Beyond,” which, he said, includes “60 poems of inspiration and affirmation, based primarily on my parents.”

For personal reasons, Meyerhof said he will not attend the prize award ceremony on Oct. 5, but he plans to go to Germany next year and join in observances marking the 130th anniversary of his grandfather’s birth.

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