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Jewish Journal

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April 1, 2014

Germany’s Kiefer says Jewish collectors boosted career

Leave a Comment / Culture, Is Featured?, Mobile /

German artist Anselm Kiefer, many of whose huge canvases examine the legacy of the Third Reich, attributes much of his success to Jewish collectors in New York who latched onto his art early in his career when his fellow Germans were not all that interested.

Kiefer spoke on Tuesday at London's Royal Academy of Arts, which will mount the first British retrospective of the 69-year-old artist's work in an exhibition opening at the end of September.

“These were the first big collectors, who admired and made my career, it wasn't in Germany,” Kiefer said at a news conference to announce the works that will be in the exhibition.

They include art from private collections and some of the world's most prestigious museums.

Among them are canvases Kiefer painted in the early years of his career looking at the legacy of the Third Reich, including his paintings of spaces designed by Hitler's favourite architect, Albert Speer.

Others are paintings of Kiefer himself in his Occupations and Heroic Symbols series of the late 1960s and early 1970s which show him re-enacting the Nazi salute in locations across Europe.

Kiefer said that at the time he had thought it was important to show such scenes, because no one else in Germany was doing so, but to paint them today “would be redundant” because Germany is constantly re-examining what happened during the Nazi times.

He added that he did not think Nazism or its like could rise again in Germany because Europe is “much more together.”

“As long as we are in Europe this is really the key for peace,” he said.

Kathleen Soriano, the museum's director of exhibitions, said in a statement: “While particular segments of Kiefer's oeuvre have been shown at galleries in this country at intervals over recent decades, never before has a comprehensive overview taken place in spaces befitting the monumental character of many of his pieces.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to consider and re-evaluate the trajectory of Kiefer's practice and the importance of his innovations and contributions to the history of art.”

Editing by Angus MacSwan

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About

Leave a Comment / Community /

Milad Doroudian is writer, historian, and the Senior Editor of The Art of Polemics Magazine. He is currently working on a book on the Jassy Pogrom of 1941, and is an active contributor at the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Press and The Times of Israel. Despite his interest and on-going research on the Jewish community of Romania, he is also planning to attend law school.

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Rabbis to L.A. County: Fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants

Leave a Comment / California /

One day after the open-enrollment period for Obamacare health care exchanges ended, Temple Isaiah’s Rabbi Dara Frimmer was among those calling for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to live up to a promise it made to those people — many of them undocumented immigrants — not eligible for the new initiative.

County representatives have committed to funding a health care program for those not included in Covered California, the state’s new health insurance exchange, or Medi-Cal. Concern persists, however, about whether there will be sufficient money to provide care for everyone who needs it.

On April 1, this apprehension prompted OneLA, a social justice coalition comprising community organizations and synagogues such as Temple Isaiah, to hold a press conference calling on L.A. County to “fully fund a health program for the residually uninsured,” a figure OneLA says amounts to 1 million people. 

“Don’t be foolish, 1 million county residents left out of health coverage puts all Angelenos at risk!” the organization’s press release says.

Frimmer was the sole Jewish speaker at the 10 a.m. press conference that featured remarks by clergy and civic leaders. She echoed the call for equal access to health care regardless of legal status.

 “One million people not having access to basic health coverage affects everyone, including those of us on the Westside,” said Frimmer, whose congregation is located on West Pico Boulevard. “If we think about what type of city we want to live in and what type of city we want to build together, it should be a city that recognizes the basic human rights of health care for every person, regardless of who they are.”

Rabbi Rachel Timoner of Leo Baeck Temple also turned out for the press conference, which took place downtown at the entrance to the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration at Temple Street and Grand Avenue.

“I wouldn’t want anyone in my family to face a serious illness without preventative health care,” Timoner told the Journal. “But that’s what the uninsured in California face every day.”

OneLA provides community-organizing training to its members and fights for social justice on behalf of the marginalized. Additional Los Angeles synagogues that are part of the organization include Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills and Temple Judea in Tarzana.

Frimmer acknowledged in an interview that the demographic of Los Angeles County’s uninsured does not include many people from the local Jewish community, but she did say her congregation has “a few.” She said Jews have an obligation to extend a helping hand beyond the fold, however.

L.A. synagogues have shown an ongoing interest in health care issues that don’t directly impact Jews. Last year, an event at Temple Judea that educated people about how to sign up for health care exchanges drew mostly non-Jewish Angelenos.

Earlier in the year was a Yom Kippur event at Temple Emanuel, where community members, including those who would not be impacted by the implementation of Obamacare — otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act — posed questions to a panel of experts.

“We believe that we’re only as healthy as the person sitting next to us,” Temple Isaiah congregant Janet Hirsch said, explaining her interest in shedding light on the plight of the county’s uninsured.

Hirsch was among several Isaiah congregants who showed up to the April 1 press conference. Others included Susan Bartholomew, Amy Martinez and Nancy Reimer. Temple Isaiah rabbinic intern Jason Rodich attended, as well. 

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors includes prominent Jewish community activist Zev Yaroslavsky. 

Rabbis to L.A. County: Fund healthcare for undocumented immigrants Read More »

Polish home, about to be razed, found to have used Jewish gravestones

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Seven Jewish gravestones were discovered to have been used in the construction of a home in Poland.

The gravestones were used to build the ceiling of the basement of a home in Golina, TV Konin reported.

It is believed that the headstones came from the destroyed Jewish cemetery in the town. No gravestones remain in the cemetery, according to the report.

The disused home, which was about to be destroyed, was constructed during or after World War II.

The gravestones, which are etched in Hebrew and in good condition, were discovered late last month by local historian Krzysztof Grochowski, who had decided to photograph the building before it was torn down, according to the Virtual Shtetl website. The stones became visible when plasterwork covering the ceiling was removed.

The headstones will be included in a museum exhibit or be used to create a memorial at the site of the former Golina cemetery, the local monuments preservation office told the television station.

Polish home, about to be razed, found to have used Jewish gravestones Read More »

ADL audit: Anti-Semitic incidents down in U.S., assaults up

Leave a Comment / United States /

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States decreased by 19 percent in 2013, but physical assaults against Jews increased, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

In its Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, the ADL reported that there 751 incidents in 41 states and Washington, D.C. — among the lowest number since 1979, when the ADL began collecting data. The number of incidents has been steadily declining for the past decade.

The audit includes assault, vandalism and harassment targeting Jews and Jewish property and institutions reported to ADL’s 27 regional offices and the police.

“In the last decade we have witnessed a significant and encouraging decline in the number and intensity of anti-Semitic acts in America,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL’s national director, in a statement. “The falling number of incidents targeting Jews is another indication of just how far we have come in finding full acceptance in society, and it is a reflection of how much progress our country has made in shunning bigotry and hatred.”

The audit attributed the declining number of anti-Semitic incidents to “a relatively quiet year for anti-Israel activity in the public sphere.”

Despite the overall decline, the audit found a “significant” increase in “violent anti-Semitic assaults” — 31 assaults compared to 17 in 2012, although no assault was life threatening or required hospitalization.

“The high number of violent in-your-face assaults is a sobering reminder that, despite the overall decline in anti-Semitic incidents, there is still a subset of Americans who are deeply infected with anti-Semitism and who feel emboldened enough to act out their bigotry,” Foxman said.

Despite the overall decrease of incidents, the ADL reported increases in several states, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio and Texas. The states with the highest number of incidents were those with the largest Jewish populations: New York, California, New Jersey, Florida, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

The ADL does not count critiques of Israel or Zionism as anti-Semitic incidents, unless such criticism invokes “classic anti-Jewish stereotypes or inappropriate Nazi imagery and/or analogies,” the organization said in a news release. It does, however, count “public expressions of anti-Israel sentiments that demonize Jews or create an atmosphere of fear or intimidation for U.S. Jews.”

ADL audit: Anti-Semitic incidents down in U.S., assaults up Read More »

At ‘Jewish March Madness,’ Hillel students gather for basketball and kibitzing

Leave a Comment / Sports /

Dribbling blurs across four parallel basketball courts, the players who came for the Shabbaton that was the National Hillel Basketball Tournament filled a football field-size gymnasium in a marathon of games.

Forty-one teams and 300 players from colleges across the United States came to the University of Maryland campus last weekend for the tournament’s fourth incarnation in what also represented a homecoming of sorts: Back-slapping recognitions renewed acquaintances from summer camp and high school days.

The 30 colleges whose Hillels sent teams here included seven — Duke, Harvard, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas and UCLA — that qualified for the NCAA Tournament. And while the play here was hardly up to March Madness standards, it was plenty good and highly competitive.

The men’s title game, in fact, featured two athletes who have attained the heights of collegiate sports: Jacob Susskind, who plays for Maryland, and Anthony Firkser of Harvard — the Crimson’s football team, that is.

Maryland would win not just the men’s crown but the women’s, too.

Arriving at Ritchie Coliseum for the championship game – most contests were held at the larger Reckford Armory across the street – Susskind hobbled in, a function of fatigue from the nonstop hoops.

The Terrapins played in the National Invitational Tournament last spring, so Susskind could not compete in the 2013 national Hillel tourney. He said he was glad he came this time.

“It’s to help spread the word about Jewish people in basketball. It’s a cool concept: to come together with the same religious belief, and to do something everyone likes to do, which is play basketball, is a plus,” Susskind said on Sunday afternoon after his team, one of seven Maryland men’s and women’s clubs at the tournament, won a preliminary-round game.

Susskind, who attended the Golda Och Academy, a Solomon Schechter school in West Orange, N.J., spoke at courtside while watching Kansas play Massachusetts, and pointed to a guard wearing uniform No. 10 for the former.

“He came up to me the other day and said, ‘I know you.’ It was cool to see him,” said Susskind, explaining that the two played seven years ago at a Jewish day school tournament in Baltimore.

The Kansas player, Cory Gutovitz, in turn, said he had guarded one of Susskind’s Hillel teammates, Nachum Shapiro, at the same Baltimore tournament and stayed at Shapiro’s home.

“I was always active in Hillel, and I love basketball,” said Gutovitz, who graduated last year. “I didn’t realize how many people would be here until Friday night dinner, when I saw maybe 500 people.”

“It was Jewish March Madness. I’ve gone to Jewish tournaments in high school and had the same mind-set: that these Jewish kids can’t be that amazing. Here, I learned my lesson: It’s good, competitive basketball.”

It’s also a schmooze fest. Gutovitz and four other Kansans stayed at the campus apartment of Tara Feld, Shapiro’s girlfriend. Chatting in the building’s corridors late Saturday night, Gutovitz met a female student who had attended the wedding of his basketball teammate at Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in Overland Park, Kan.

Gutovitz also ran into two Maryland players who, representing their Yavneh Academy of Dallas school, he had met years earlier in New York at Yeshiva University’s Red Sarachek Tournament.

And so it went: a 48-hour festival of basketball and gabbing, with breaks for kiddush, havdalah and Shabbat meals.

“It’s like the Maccabiah Games — but everyone speaks English,” quipped Tal Brody, who played in the Maccabiah and starred as a professional in Israel, where he still lives, following an All-America career as a point guard at Illinois.

While a key player when Maccabi Tel Aviv captured the 1977 European Cup, Brody can’t boast of having earned the Kiddush Cup, the trophy the Maryland teams raised as Hillel tournament champions.

The women’s Most Valuable Player Award went to Paige Siegel, a point guard for the winning Maryland club. Watching was her cousin, Bruce Levenson, the owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks.

“I didn’t realize the magnitude of it,” Levenson said. “A lot of the players really have game.”

With basketball at its core, the event began modestly in 2011 with 20 teams and one goal: “to get Jewish kids from all over the country for a weekend of communal bonding as well as basketball competition,” said Joseph Tuchman, a Maryland sophomore who chairs the tournament.

Now it has a $60,000 budget, prestigious sponsors such as Gatorade and UnderArmour, and plenty of spectators — 1,000 attended Saturday night’s opening games.

The Jewish students at Maryland are buying in. Feld, the tournament’s coordinator of volunteers and a Maryland senior, said she had no problem lining up people to run the scoreboards and keep the scorebooks at each game. Forty Jewish students volunteered, and  seven members of the campus’ nonsectarian Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity lent a hand, too.

“It’s one of my favorite events at the school,” said Feld, who played forward at Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles.

“You’re all here for the same purpose — basketball — but there’s also the aspect of having Shabbat together. I’ve run into people from different parts of my life.”

And with that, she motioned to a Queens College player 20 feet away whose team was playing MIT. As a high schooler, Feld had met him at a teen leadership program in Israel.

The player, Mo Pariser, actually attends Binghamton University in New York but signed up for the Queens squad because his brother Ike was on the team.

Brotherhood and sisterhood, after all, were the weekend’s themes.

 

At ‘Jewish March Madness,’ Hillel students gather for basketball and kibitzing Read More »

Pat Robertson: Jews too busy ‘polishing diamonds’

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Televangelist Pat Robertson said Jews are too busy “polishing diamonds” to do weekend chores.

Conservative activist Rabbi Daniel Lapin appeared on the “700 Club” Monday with Robertson to discuss what makes Jews successful.

“What is it about Jewish people that make them prosper financially? You almost never find Jews tinkering with their cars on the weekends or mowing their lawns. That’s what Daniel Lapin says and there’s a very good reason for that, and it lies within the business secrets of the Bible,” Robertson said in introducing the rabbi.

Lapin was on the show to promote his book “Thou Shall Prosper,” which, according to his website, discusses “why Jews throughout the ages flourish economically,” and “how you can benefit from this Jewish wisdom.”

“When you correctly said in Jewish neighborhoods you do not find Jews lying under their cars on Sunday afternoons, no, I pay one of the best mechanics around to take care of my BMW, I’d be crazy to take my time doing it myself,” Lapin said during the interview.

Robertson followed Lapin’s explanation with the remark that Jews were polishing diamonds instead of fixing their cars.

Pat Robertson: Jews too busy ‘polishing diamonds’ Read More »

Does Adelson buying another newspaper imperil Israeli media?

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

What happens when one man controls three major Israeli news outlets?

That’s the question Israeli media experts are asking just days after Sheldon Adelson, the American casino magnate and Republican mega-donor, purchased the respected conservative weekly Makor Rishon for nearly $5 million.

On Sunday, a Jerusalem court approved Adelson’s purchase of the paper, which had acquired the now-defunct Maariv newspaper and its website, NRG.co.il, in 2012. Adelson already owned Israel Hayom, a free daily tabloid he founded in 2007 that is Israel’s most widely distributed paper.

With the new purchase, Adelson now has control of Israel’s major right-wing media outlets, as well as two of the country’s four major newspapers.

“Adelson’s purchase of Makor Rishon is sad,” said Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, head of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Media Reform Project. “It consolidates the media market, which is bad for content, but we shouldn’t mourn it. There are opportunities we haven’t seen yet.”

Adelson’s increasing hold on Israeli media has prompted concerns of increasing ideological conformity and less government criticism. A staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Adelson is widely seen as having used Israel Hayom to increase popular support for the Israeli leader. Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, the chairman of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, likened Israel Hayom to Pravda, the state newspaper of the former Soviet Union.

“The paper is the trumpet of one man, the prime minister,” Bennett told Galei Tzahal, the Israel Defense Forces radio station. “At every intersection, every point of friction between the national interest and the prime minister’s interest, it chooses the prime minister’s side. I very much hope that Makor Rishon will maintain an independent, nationalist position. “

The CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., with a net worth of more than $28 billion — the 11th richest American, according to Forbes magazine — Adelson has never been shy about using his wealth to advance his political interests.

In 2012, he was a generous supporter of the failed presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich. When Gingrich dropped out, Adelson threw his support behind Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee, donating $20 million to a Romney-supporting Super PAC.

Last week, a number of Republican presidential hopefuls gathered at Adelson’s Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas for what some were calling the “Sheldon primary” in recognition of the casino magnate’s power as a Republican kingmaker.

In Israel, there is little expectation that Adelson’s latest deal will augur the death of Israel’s free press. Israel’s other dailies — the centrist Yediot Acharonot and the left-wing Haaretz — are both critical of Netanyahu and remain widely read. Maariv, once Israel’s most popular paper, fell on hard times in recent years and ceased publication in March.

Still, some worry that Adelson’s purchase may narrow the parameters of public discussion. Last month, in an effort to maintain competition in Israel’s media market, Knesset members from seven parties — including the right-wing Jewish Home — proposed a law that would require readers to pay for Israel Hayom.

“There can be two right-wing papers that think differently,” said Tamir Sheafer, a professor of communications and journalism at Hebrew University. “There can be a right-wing paper that criticizes the prime minister from the right. But if Sheldon Adelson has a favorable attitude toward Netanyahu, will Makor Rishon criticize Netanyahu from the right?”

A Makor Rishon reporter who wished to remain anonymous acknowledged that political correspondents are “a little worried,” but said the Adelson deal will allow the staff to continue its in-depth reporting and analysis from a right-wing perspective.

“For us as journalists, it was very reassuring to know people like the paper and want to buy it,” the reporter said. “They see the importance of holding on to this type of paper. I would always joke that if I wrote the same article for Maariv and Makor Rishon, I would dumb it down for Maariv and keep it intellectual for Makor Rishon.”

The closing of Maariv, along with recent financial struggles at Haaretz and across Israel’s print media landscape, raise the question of whether a country of 8 million people can sustain four daily papers in the age of the Internet.

“The market in Israel is very small,” Altshuler said. “Its ability to sustain three papers or three TV stations, that’s something people don’t pay attention to. It was clear that one of them needed to close.”

Altshuler sees a potential boon for Israeli media in the growth of online journalism. But Tal Schneider, who writes the Plog, a well-respected Israeli political blog, says her work cannot replace the staff of a large newspaper.

“On my blog, we are not 100 reporters — we are a two-person business,” Schneider said. “We cannot provide the [same] extent of coverage. I cannot replace Maariv or Makor Rishon.”

Despite the worry, few see Adelson’s growing control of Israeli publications as an immediate threat to the country’s free press. But should the rise of digital media continue to erode the financial viability of traditional publications, that could change.

“I don’t think this specific deal will create irreparable damage,” said Sheafer. “But we need to make sure it doesn’t expand such that every media that gets into trouble goes to Sheldon Adelson.”

Does Adelson buying another newspaper imperil Israeli media? Read More »

Israel’s “Fourth Sector”

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Integration into the Israeli job market is difficult not only for asylum seekers, Arabs and Haredim, but also for those with disabilities, including individuals with mental illness. Typically, the disabled are pushed out of the job market and into 'supported employment' positions that provide reduced hours, reduced wages, and reduced self-importance. Often the work is menial packaging and folding positions. So “Enosh”, an organization for the advancement of mental health services, joined forces with an entrepreneur to create TLV Marketing, which employs twenty workers providing telephone services to a variety of customers. This is a business initiative within ‘supported employment’ to prepare them to re-enter into the current job market.

Ovad Levi, CEO of TLV Marketing explains: “Every month the individuals are consistently advancing, more and more. Unfortunately in a normal business, that is not always possible as they would be sent home for not producing results.” He describes the potential integration of disabled into tech and telephone services as a “fourth sector”. Watch the report and learn more about TLV Marketing and hear from employees about their quality of employment.