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Jewish Journal

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October 16, 2013

How Converting to Orthodox Judaism is Like Being Transgender

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

I’ll start by saying I’m not converting to Orthodox Judaism, and I’m not transgender. So this whole blog post is written from an outsider’s perspective, and as a result, it may contain inaccuracies. I apologize to anyone who feels I have given an inaccurate picture of either the conversion or transgender experience.

I have read quite a bit of commentary by transgender people over the last couple of years, as well as by people who have converted to Orthodox Judaism. And it struck me how much these two groups of people have in common.

One thing both groups of people must contend with as they realize their situation and decide to pursue it is they have no idea how their friends and family will react. Both groups are likely to experience some resistance from at least some of the people who are closest to them. Both may experience feelings of rejection and hurt.

Families of both may feel like the convert/transgender person is rejecting them as well, even when they are not. They may think, “Why won’t the converting person eat in our home any more?” or, “Why won’t my daughter wear the beautiful earrings I bought for her?” Some of these issues may be smoothed over through conversation and attempts to understand the viewpoint of the other, but they may result in long-term confusion and hurt feelings.

In addition, both groups have to contend with doubts about their motives and sincerity. Both may run into people who think they’re not pursuing an identity that feels authentic to them, but may think they are “acting out” in order to get attention. Both groups are likely to run into people who believe what they are going through is “just a phase” and that they will go back to their “normal” life once they’re a little older and more mature.

Next, both groups have to contend with gatekeepers who test their sincerity and try to keep them out until they are able to “prove” that they belong. Both groups are asked to live the life they say they want to adopt, and neither group is taken as sincere until they have done so for some period of time.

Orthodox Jewish converts must meet with rabbis and possibly others who monitor their progress, just as transgender people frequently meet with doctors and mental health professionals who monitor theirs. Both groups are at the mercy of these gatekeepers, who may tell them that they cannot convert or, if they want reassignment surgery, they can’t get it.

Furthermore, even if the gatekeepers allow them in, they are held to a higher standard than others who were born into their adopted group, and there are always others who will continue to doubt their sincerity.

For example, those who are “frum from birth” may break the rules every once in a while, without anyone doubting their Jewishness. But a convert who is seen breaking those same rules will raise doubts about whether his or her conversion was sincere. In some cases, conversion has even been revoked.

Similarly, for example, females who are born with a male body are expected to always wear their hair and to dress in a feminine fashion, while females born with a female body are free to wear short haircuts and wear more “masculine” clothes without anyone doubting their gender or raising a fuss.

I’m sure there must be other similarities I haven’t mentioned. It just goes to show how difficult it can be when a person seems to be born into one group, but doesn’t fit into that group, and makes an attempt to be recognized as part of another group. I would like to see a world in which both Orthodox Jewish converts and transgender people could recognize their similarities, share their experiences with each other, and support each other.

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ChangeMaker Challenge: Change for the better

Leave a Comment / California /

A new initiative by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles aims to prove that it doesn’t take a lot of money to make a big difference. 

The ChangeMaker Challenge will award small grants to project proposals that demonstrate the greatest potential to make an impact in the areas of transportation, civic life, economic development, education and fighting hunger in this city.

“Maybe you’ve got an idea for an ongoing service project, or a grassroots initiative, or an art installation that will change the face of Los Angeles. … In the spirit of tikkun olam [repairing the world], we’re looking for innovative ideas that will make L.A. a better place for us all. If your idea is chosen, we’ll make it take off together!” read a statement released by Federation the week of Sept 29. 

The challenge will award grants ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, with a panel of L.A. community and civic leaders serving as judges. Jews and non-Jews, whether as individuals or as members of organizations or groups, are eligible to submit a proposal by Nov. 8. Winners will be announced Dec. 1.

“A key goal of the ChangeMaker Challenge is to build strong ties between the Jewish community and other communities across Los Angeles, so those applying from outside the Jewish community will be encouraged to partner with the Jewish community, and vice versa,” Federation’s Web site states. “The Jewish Federation will help applicants make those connections.”

The ChangeMaker Challenge is part of Federation’s Community Engagement Strategic Initiative.

For more information or to submit a proposal, visit jewishla.org.

ChangeMaker Challenge: Change for the better Read More »

Clothing redux: T-shirt to tank top

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

No matter how little money I had in my bank account at my poorest post-grad school point (I was very, very broke) I always found myself with an abundance of oversized t-shirts. Out of a mix of necessity, craftiness, and caffeine-induced mania, I decided to teach myself how to repurpose and recycle clothing–all without a sewing machine.

Today, I present to you a super-easy way to turn a too-large t-shirt into a cute and fitted workout tank. This is perfect for all those free t-shirts that come your way via life (5ks, concerts, sports games, family, thrift-stores…)

Clothing redux: T-shirt to tank top Read More »

Charedim acknowledge abuse

Leave a Comment / Judaism /

It was only when her sons came at her with knives that she realized keeping quiet was not going to work.

For nine years, her rabbis had told her not to speak up about her husband’s verbal, physical and sexual attacks. They assured her that the abuse would pass, that if she obeyed his every wish — folding his napkin just so or letting him do as he liked in bed — the attacks would end and he would stop telling their grown sons she was a bad mother.

But when her sons began to threaten her, she knew it was time to leave.

Taking her youngest children, she turned to Yad Sarah, a highly regarded Israeli charity founded by former Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski. The organization mainly focuses on medical services, but it also runs a domestic abuse division geared toward Orthodox Jews. A professional there directed her to Bat Melech, a shelter for battered religious women.

“It was amazing,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. “I was sure that I was not a normal person, and they were nice to me.”

The wall of silence surrounding sensitive domestic issues in the Charedi Orthodox community has long been seen as an impediment to successfully addressing them. Yad Sarah and Bat Melech have sought to change the situation — and their efforts appear to be bearing fruit.

A decade ago, Charedi community leaders rarely spoke openly about violence against women. Now leading rabbis are working with experts to fight abuse in the community.

“We’ve succeeded in that they talk about it publicly,” said Shlomit Lehman, a professor of social work who founded the Yad Sarah domestic abuse division. “There was always family violence, but they kept it secret. Our connection with the community and leadership is stronger. There’s discretion and professional care.”

Lehman started the division in 2000 with two therapists. Now there are 16 serving 150 patients a month, making Yad Sarah the second-most active domestic abuse center in Israel.

Bat Melech, founded in 1995, runs two shelters and is expanding its Beit Shemesh facility. The Crisis Center for Religious Women, which refers abuse victims to professional care, is organizing an international conference slated for December 2014 on preventing violence and abuse in the religious community.

Until recent years, experts say, Charedi rabbis would deal with cases of domestic abuse privately; only rarely would they make referrals to professionals or recommend divorce. Victims often were stigmatized, and their children had a harder time finding marriage partners.

“It’s easier to say that’s not in our community,” said Eitan Eisman, a Modern Orthodox rabbi who recommends Bat Melech’s services and advocates for its work. “That’s easier than looking at our sins. Some people deny reality, and some people think they can deal with the issues alone in the community. But more and more people are accepting this reality.”

Both Bat Melech and Yad Sarah have made rabbinic outreach a central part of their strategies. Yad Sarah launched a rabbinic committee with representatives of Israel’s major Charedi organizations. Those leaders in turn instructed communal rabbis to refer battered women to the two organizations.

Bat Melech founder Noach Korman says only a minority of Charedi rabbis still ignore domestic violence and most support his organization’s mission.

Still, discretion remains a paramount concern for Charedi rabbis, many of whom still refuse to advocate publicly for the two organizations. Leading Charedi newspapers will not run ads for Bat Melech and Yad Sarah, though online Charedi publications do cover them. Charedi schools also do not permit Yad Sarah to run seminars on domestic abuse for their students.

The culture of secrecy doesn’t bother Lehman, who sees an advantage in wielding the significant influence of Charedi rabbis.

“In the general population, public discourse is the way to deal with this,” Lehman said. “In the religious community it’s very different. The blessing comes from what’s hidden. It’s easier to deal with things in the Charedi community when you talk about it quietly.”

Charedi couples are more reluctant than their secular peers to choose divorce. Lehman considers a battered women’s shelter a last resort.

Instead, Yad Sarah encourages abusive husbands to seek therapy in parallel with their wives. Lehman says that for every 100 women who seek treatment, approximately 40 men come as well.

“The hierarchy between husband and wife in the Charedi world is a good excuse for the violence, but it doesn’t create the violence,” she said. Charedi communities “educate for respect in the family. The violence doesn’t start in the hierarchy or the biblical verse.”

Though growing numbers of women have sought treatment in recent years, Korman and Lehman say work remains to be done. Bat Melech at times has to turn women away — in part because of the high number of children that sometimes accompany them. The shelters have served 800 women and, Korman estimates, more than 3,000 children.

“People aren’t waiting,” Lehman said. “They come when they’re dating or in the first year of marriage, so there are more options. Their entire lives are ahead of them.”

Charedim acknowledge abuse Read More »

Fed Chief Janet Yellen’s gender bigger deal than faith

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Janet Yellen is soft-spoken, tough, methodological, flexible — and Jewish.

President Obama’s announcement last week that he had tapped Yellen, 67, to succeed Ben Bernanke as chair of the Federal Reserve made news in part because she would be the first woman in the top spot.

That very little was made of her Jewishness likely derives mostly from the fact that she would be not the first or second, but the sixth Jewish chair of the U.S. central bank and the third in a row, following Bernanke and Alan Greenspan.

For the first Jewish Fed chair, one has to go back to the 1930s, when the post was assumed by Eugene Meyer, better known perhaps as the patriarch of the family that ran the Washington Post for eight decades.

Yellen’s Wikipedia entry lists her as Jewish based on a reference to a 2001 profile of husband George Akerlof, then a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of California, Berkeley. The article noted that the couple attended the Reform Congregation Beth El in the Northern California city.

Beyond that, Yellen’s Jewish connections are not known. It’s not clear if she and her husband are attached to any Washington-area synagogue, and local Jewish religious leaders are unaware of any affiliation. The lone Jewish organization to note her nomination, the World Jewish Congress, made more of her gender than her faith.

Profiles quoting her classmates at Brown and Yale universities and at Fort Hamilton High School in her native Brooklyn, N.Y., depict her as a soft-spoken nerd.

Her parents were Jewish, but one classmate’s memory of her Brooklyn home evokes an upbringing focused on all-American traditions. Her mom, Anna Blumenthal, was a den mother to Cub Scouts, Rich Rubin told Reuters.

Yellen, who in the 1990s chaired President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, went on to become president of San Francisco’s Federal Reserve Bank from 2004 to 2010. Obama named her the vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve in 2010.

News reports about Yellen have focused on her similarities to Bernanke. According to a New York Times profile, Yellen intends to continue and expand his insistence on transparency in how the Fed arrives at its policies, and prizes precision in arriving at formulas to assess interest rates.

Yellen emphasizes unemployment over inflation and has said she is willing to adjust inflation rates above 2 percent to spur employment.

But some colleagues have noted her past embrace of “hawkish” policies. Peter Hooper of Deutsche Bank wrote in the Economist on Oct. 11 that in the 1990s, as a member of the Fed’s Open Market Committee, Yellen pushed to raise interest rates amid low unemployment.

“Ms. Yellen’s policy orientation has proven to be flexible and appropriate to the prevailing economic conditions,” wrote Hooper, who was a staffer with Yellen on the Fed’s Division of International Finance. “I have known her to be a straight shooter, someone whose views are governed by an objective assessment of the data within a reasonable analytical framework.”

Fed Chief Janet Yellen’s gender bigger deal than faith Read More »

Temple Judea event aims to clarify Health Care Act

Leave a Comment / California /

When Diane Vanette, a leader of the social justice coalition OneLA and member of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, appeared Oct. 13 on the bimah at Temple Judea in Tarzana and proclaimed, “We are committed to health care for everyone in Los Angeles County,” there was no question that she meant it.

The proof? An audience filled overwhelmingly not with Jews but Hispanics, some of them undocumented, wanting to learn about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

Organized by OneLA, the event featured lectures, workshops and PowerPoint presentations that aimed to educate a crowd of Angelenos who have been largely ignorant of how the specifics of the law — otherwise known as ACA or Obamacare — will work. 

According to Miriam Hernandez, manager of the Latino Health Promoters Program at the Providence Center for Community Health Improvement and one of about 300 people to attend the Sunday afternoon event, many people in the Hispanic community are unaware of what ACA means for them. For instance, among the undocumented community, there is the question of whether the mandate affects them.

ACA’s provisions, which have been going into effect on a rolling basis since 2010, include the expansion of Medicaid; the establishment of health insurance exchanges, in which consumers can shop for and compare prices of different insurance providers; and an individual mandate that makes it illegal to not be insured. On Oct. 1, the state- and federally run health insurance marketplaces, including Covered California, opened for business.

Hispanics with vague legal statuses are “very confused” about their health care and are asking themselves, “ ‘If I don’t have documents, is it mandatory to enroll or not?’ ” Hernandez said in an interview. (The answer, she added, is no.)

With all the confusion, part of Hernandez’s job is to learn as much as she can about ACA, so that she can pass on this information to others. This was why she attended the event at Temple Judea.

“For me, it’s very important to know about ACA and to provide this information to our health promoters and for our health promoters to provide this information to our community,” she said. 

The good news is that Hispanics “want to have health care,” she said. “They are worried about their health, and they are more educated than before.” 

The Spanish-only speakers in the audience, who made up the majority, wore headphones to listen to translations as the English-speaking activists and leaders spoke during the first portion of the two-hour event. Many came from the San Gabriel Valley, San Fernando Valley, South Los Angeles and metro Los Angeles areas.

Serving different ethnic and religious communities all across Los Angeles, OneLA (onela-iaf.org) comprises more than 60 congregations and other groups, including Temple Judea, Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, Temple Isaiah and Leo Baeck Temple. It has helped more than 3,000 individuals living in L.A. County sign up for public health programs under ACA, according to Ellen Israel, a board member at Temple Judea and leader with OneLA.

With more than 2 million people uninsured in L.A. County, OneLA has been working to make sure that Angelenos are aware of their options under ACA and take full advantage. 

“You need to present opportunities for education and opportunities for enrollment,” Israel said.

In a display of the interfaith spirit of the event, Israel co-chaired the event with fellow OneLA activist Carmen Cruz, a parishioner at Mary Immaculate Catholic Church in Pacoima.

Additional speakers included L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky; Herb Schultz, regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Robert Ross, president and CEO of The California Endowment; and Dana Howard, media and public affairs representative at Covered California. 

Yaroslavsky, who has long been a bridge between the politically progressive community and Jewish causes, spoke favorably of the progress that has already been made in the county under Obamacare. He estimated that 300,000 individuals here now have health insurance as a result.

Temple Judea’s Rabbi Joshua Aaronson provided spiritual reflections, connecting universal health care to religious values.

“There is no faith tradition that doesn’t support the right of everyone to have health care,” Aaronson said.

Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Leo Baeck and Rabbi Dara Frimmer of Temple Isaiah participated in the event, as well. 

OneLA leaders acknowledged that ACA is far from perfect, and not only because the law excludes undocumented immigrants from coverage. As has been widely reported in the media, the Web sites for the health insurance exchanges are full of glitches and unanswered questions.

But they also said it is a step in the right direction.

“This is just the beginning,” Israel said. “More work needs to be done.”

The work by OneLA to educate people and sign them up for health care will continue through November and up until Dec. 15, which is the final day for people to enroll in insurance through Covered California if they want their new plans to go into effect by Jan. 1. 

On Nov. 3, an event focused on Covered California will take place at Temple Emanuel,  and on Dec. 8, Leo Baeck will host an event to inform people about their health care options.

Temple Judea event aims to clarify Health Care Act Read More »

Private Bank of California: It’s not just about the money

Leave a Comment / Culture, Finance /

The signs of Richard Smith’s success precede him: His 25th-floor office on Santa Monica Boulevard overlooks Los Angeles Country Club’s golf greens to the north and the spread of the city’s business districts to the south. The dizzying height of his headquarters at The Private Bank of California is emphasized by floor-to-ceiling windows and the luxurious quiet that accompanies real money, the kind that pays for service so good it doesn’t rattle, only hums.

Smith says this is the secret to his career, and especially his success at Private Bank, which he co-founded in 2004 with partners that include Richard Pachulski, a well-known bankruptcy attorney, and Stuart Rubin, a real estate big shot. 

“It’s not retail,” he said of the work he does for high-net-worth individuals, business owners and others involved in business management, entertainment and real estate. No, The Private Bank of California is another level entirely: “It’s concierge.” 

Smith, 60, has had years to hone his philosophy and cultivate connections, which helped make The Private Bank of California attractive enough to be purchased last year by First PacTrust Bancorp Inc., which changed its name to Banc of California Inc. in July. Earlier this week, the entire company, including subsidiary banks, relaunched as Banc of California.

After receiving a degree in marketing and finance from the University of Denver, he spent two years at Manufacturers Hanover, a bank holding company then based in New York, before moving to California with his Los Angeles-born wife, Dana, in 1977.

It’s instructive to listen to Smith rattle off the list of institutions he’s worked at over the years, to hear the names of businesses created and swallowed by other businesses as a matter of course in the moneylending world. It is precisely the variability of the banking industry that excites Smith, who grew up in New York assuming that, like his grandfathers on both sides — and his father and his uncles — he would end up in the city’s garment industry. 

“But it wasn’t really that attractive to me, so as a [college] junior, I ended up meeting somebody in the banking business who convinced me that banking would be a good career,” he said. 

Smith was game, but he didn’t have high hopes. 

“I really thought I would be in it for a couple of years, and then I’d go work for one of my grandfathers,” he said. “Well, what are we now, 38 years later?”

Despite doing well in his college courses, he was initially pigeonholed back into the garment ghetto. 

“I did really well in my credit class learning how to be an analyst in the banking business, and I had the pick of the litter where I’d go,” he said. “And of all places, they found out I was Jewish and put me in the garment district!” 

Smith has never shied away from his Jewish identity. His wife works in Encino at Valley Beth Shalom in the Conservative congregation’s infant and toddler program, and the couple sent their children to Northridge’s Abraham Joshua Heschel Day School, where Smith used to sit on the board. Smith also serves on the Zimmer Children’s Museum board.

Smith credits his Jewish upbringing, which was Conservative but not particularly observant, for instilling in him some of the values that have made him such a successful businessman and boss. Although Smith is at work more often than not — asked for a number of hours, he responded only “a lot” — he said he believes strongly in giving his employees time to enjoy their private lives and get involved in their communities. 

“I want them to have another life. I want them to be close to their families,” he said. “I try to get them involved in boards, charities. I want them to be involved philanthropically in something. … Giving back is something that I’ve been taught from the time I could understand, and I try to encourage my employees to do it because I think that it makes them better employees, because they’re happier.” 

Smith will take this ethos a step further in his new position as Banc of California’s president of private banking. He’s excited that Banc of California has hired former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to manage relationships between the bank and the community. Villaraigosa’s role, as strategic adviser to Banc of California’s chief executive officer, is to help create a community banking strategy that focuses on expanding home ownership as well as lending to entrepreneurs and creating service opportunities in the community. 

As for Smith, the proud grandfather to four grandchildren, he hopes to keep working as long as he feels valuable.

“If I were doing it just to be wealthy, I probably never would have done it,” he said of banking. “The money was not the issue, for sure. I always liked learning about different things. … To this day, it’s still my passion.”

Private Bank of California: It’s not just about the money Read More »

Walk to Cure Diabetes: A mother’s prayer

Leave a Comment / Culture, Health /

This past Yom Kippur, as my 4-year-old son and I were walking into shul, I was explaining why Mommy and the other adults were fasting. I said: “And when you’re 13 …” 

And then I stopped, realizing that he will probably never fast on Yom Kippur. 

Two years ago, the day before his second birthday, Jonah was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. We were visiting my parents in Maryland. He had what we thought was a nasty stomach flu, but two days later, he was so sick that he was airlifted to D.C.’s Children’s National Medical Center. He was in full-blown diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), an acute, life-threatening complication of diabetes. Basically, his body had started to shut down. 

When they came to the pediatric intensive care unit and delivered the diagnosis, it was the happiest I’ve ever been … because it meant he was going to live. Little did I know then, sobbing with relief, that life, as we knew it, would never be the same.

Having a type 1 diabetic child is like riding on a relentless roller coaster ride every single day; sometimes he’s up/high, and just as quickly he can be down/low. It’s like being a tightrope walker, trying to balance that long pole and not fall … because there is no net. 

Or rather, I am the net. 

As Jonah’s pancreas no longer produces insulin, I am his pancreas. It is my job to calculate and administer the right amount of insulin to sustain him, to not let his blood sugar get too high — which, long-term, can lead to organ failure, blindness, etc. — while making sure it doesn’t go too low, which could send him into a seizure, a coma or worse. The only thing predictable about this disease is its unpredictability. And the fear.

Type 1 diabetes is a disease in which the immune system destroys insulin-producing cells. The 15,000 children diagnosed each year will never outgrow this dangerous and chronic disease. 

Yet other than the plastic tube running from my son’s tush to his insulin pump pack, worn on his waist, Jonah looks like any other healthy preschooler — tons of energy, enthusiasm and stubbornness. He’s an easygoing, sweet boy who loves construction vehicles, building forts, cutting plants, crashing into things, laughing his glorious laugh and snuggling in with me to read a book. 

But he is not like other preschoolers. I cannot drop him off for a play date. He cannot sleep over at a friend’s house. He cannot be a carefree kid. And I cannot be a carefree mom (not that I ever was).

In order to keep his blood glucose levels in range — or attempt to — his nanny, his preschool teachers and I (a single mom) check his blood glucose level via a finger prick about 10 times a day, on a good day. His little fingers, now covered with an ever-growing colony of tiny dots and callouses, have been pricked about 10,000 times since his diagnosis. Ten thousand times. He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t complain. He just holds out a finger, sometimes winces, then asks: “Am I high or low, Mommy?” 

Everything impacts his glucose numbers: what he eats, what he doesn’t eat, if he exercises, if he doesn’t get enough exercise, if he eats too many carbs, if he eats too few carbs, if he sneaks a few strawberries, if he refuses to eat after getting insulin, if I miscalculate and give him too little or too much insulin, if he has a growth spurt, if it’s hot out, if he has a cold, if he jumps around a lot and disconnects his tubing, if the needle doesn’t go into enough fat on his tush, if he’s at a birthday party and has a small piece of cake (with most of the icing scraped off).

And those glucose numbers impact everything. If he’s too high, he can become belligerent, cranky and thirsty. When he’s too low, he can be listless, shaky, ravenous. 

Because of these fluctuating factors, I strictly monitor his food intake — a tangerine, 10 carbs; milk, 11 carbs; graham crackers, 6 carbs; a slice of pizza, 40 carbs (and a night of crazy-high numbers) — with Jonah never knowing what it’s like to just eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Recently he said to his nanny, “Look, Mommy gave me a chocolate chip cookie. Now I’m just like the other kids.” And my heart broke just a little bit more.

At night, blood glucose numbers can go low (though sometimes inexplicably high, too), so every night for the past two and a half years, Jonah’s blood glucose gets checked at 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. Sometimes my amazing nanny stays over so I can get a good night’s rest, but Jonah has not had a night of uninterrupted sleep since he was diagnosed. I worry how this will impact him in the future when he goes to elementary school and beyond. 

Recently, Jonah told me he was hungry while we were driving. We were running late, and in order for him to eat, I would have needed to pull over and check his blood sugar, then give him insulin, via his pump, if he was high. Instead I asked him if he wanted to try and test himself. Since day one, he’s handled his diagnosis with inspiring grace and goodness, and he’s been helping to test for a while, but never unaided. 

“Sure,” he said, so I passed the diabetes kit back to him. I watched through the rear view mirror as my little boy cleaned his finger with alcohol, put the test strip in the meter, shook his finger to get the blood flowing, pricked his finger, pushed the tip of the test strip into the drop of blood and read the results: “1-1-3, Mommy,” he said. 

I teared up at that moment, proud of my son, but knowing that was just the first test of thousands he will give himself. Sure, high-tech devices like insulin pumps, continuous glucose monitors and, hopefully, in the next 10 years, an artificial pancreas, are breakthroughs that lessen long-term complications. But they are not cures — they just makes it possible to keep people like Jonah alive. 

That’s not good enough. We need to find a cure.

A few weeks after Jonah’s diagnosis, still reeling but determined to help rid my son of this disease, I formed Team Jomoki , and gathered friends and family to walk at the annual Walk to Cure Diabetes sponsored by JDRF (originally Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), the leading global organization funding type 1 research. To date, our team has raised nearly $100,00. And this year, on Oct. 27 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, I plan on adding to that amount. 

Type 1 diabetes is a nasty, confounding, insidious, inscrutable illness. But with continued research, maybe one day, in the not too distant future, there will be a cure. And then my son will fast on Yom Kippur and complain about it … just like all the other 13-year-olds.

For more information, to donate or to join the walk, go to http://www2.jdrf.org/site/TR/Walk-CA/Chapter-LosAngeles4041?team_id=131371&pg=team&fr_id=2454

Walk to Cure Diabetes: A mother’s prayer Read More »

UC Berkeley to open Center for Jewish Studies

Leave a Comment / Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

The Berkeley campus of the University of California announced on Oct. 16 the launch of a Center for Jewish Studies, enhancing the state’s reputation as a magnet for scholars and students in the field.

UC Berkeley has committed $1 million for the new center, and Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said, “The campus is fully committed to the center’s growth and success. The center will expand the breadth of Jewish studies scholarship here, connect more students to the wealth of Jewish studies resources across the campus, and enrich the university’s engagement with the Jewish community in the Bay Area and beyond.”          

The center will serve as the focal point for faculty and courses from various disciplines and departments, ranging from comparative literature and law to theater and dance.

Heading up the center are professor emeritus Robert Alter, a renowned scholar in Hebrew literature and the Bible, as founding director; architecture professor Jill Stoner as chair and director of graduate programs; and law professor Kenneth Bamberger as co-chair and responsible for undergraduate programs.

In phone interviews, Dirks, Stoner and Bamberger outlined some of the features of the center:

• Doctoral students in various disciplines will be able to take Jewish studies as a “designated emphasis,” or minor, in their major fields. For instance, someone studying for a doctorate in history could take Jewish studies as an area of concentration.

• For undergraduate students, the center hopes to establish a minor in Jewish studies, with the possibility of a major in the field in the future.

• Growing interaction with the Bay Area Jewish community through popular public lectures and other campus programs.

UC Berkeley has slowly expanded its Jewish studies offerings over the past century. Currently, there are programs in Israeli and Jewish law, the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, the Hillel student center and the campus library’s Judaica, Yiddish and Hebrew language holdings.

More than $8 million in current endowment funds underwrite three chairs in Jewish history, rabbinics and Hebrew Bible; post-doctoral and graduate fellowships; and two annual lectures.

The two other major Jewish studies centers in California, one at Stanford and the other at UCLA, welcomed creation of the third center at Berkeley.

Professor Steven Zipperstein at Stanford noted that “UC Berkeley has long enjoyed a reputation as a distinguished center of Jewish learning with among the finest faculty in North America in literature, the Bible, history, the Talmud and other fields.”

At UCLA, professor David Myers, chair of the history department and former director of the campus Center for Jewish Studies, noted that “Jewish studies has had a presence on the Berkeley campus for well over a century, since the arrival of the Semiticist Max Margolis in 1897. There has been a string of distinguished Jewish studies scholars ever since.

“But UC Berkeley has lacked a Center for Jewish Studies, a surprising absence given [the university’s] distinction and the exponential growth of the field over the past quarter century. Now that institutional anomaly has been rectified, and this is a good thing for Berkeley, for Jewish studies, and for the healthy competition between Berkeley and UCLA. With major centers in Los Angeles, Stanford and now Berkeley, California has fortified its role as an international power in Jewish studies scholarship.”

The International Directory of Academic Jewish Studies Centers lists 23 university centers for Jewish studies in the United States and Canada, and a much larger number of universities with related courses and programs.

At Berkeley, the new center will report to George Breslauer, executive vice chancellor and provost.

There are an estimated 3,000 Jewish students at Berkeley, making up roughly 10 percent of the entire student body, but students of all religious and ethnic backgrounds are enrolled in Jewish studies classes.

Dirks assumed the chancellorship at Berkeley last June, and in July he joined an academic mission to Israel, meeting with officials at Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University.

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