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Jewish Journal

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May 14, 2014

Making the cut

Leave a Comment / Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, Celebrations/Simchas, Culture /

If you thought compiling your wedding guest list was tricky, just wait until your first child has a bar or bat mitzvah. 

Last year, when we started planning the bar mitzvah of our oldest son, Daniel, my husband and I decided we would try our best to keep the guest list reasonable — and the body count at 150. Considering the last time either of us had dealt with a guest list was 17 years ago for our wedding — an event of about the same size — we were a bit out of practice. 

The venue this time around, a country club in Santa Clarita, was large and could easily accommodate as many as 200 people, so we had a bit of wiggle room with the numbers. That still didn’t help. 

My husband, Ian, wasn’t terribly interested in the process, but he did want veto power. He’s a finance guy by profession, so he was more concerned with the numbers rather than the names. The trick was to balance my desire to invite everyone we could with Ian’s fiscal requirements. 

The first problem: Who to invite? 

It was Daniel’s bar mitzvah, but we were paying. How do you balance the mitzvah child’s list with that of the parents? And how do you balance the obligatory invites with the people you truly want to share in the celebration? 

Good questions. After a lot of revisions, we finally came up with a workable solution. Sort of.

When I made the initial list, I jotted down everyone and anyone I could possibly ever want to invite. I also told Daniel to make a list of the friends he wanted to include. Daniel’s list came to about 60 kids. Mine? About 140 others. We agreed that he could invite as many friends as he liked, which meant I had to cut. 

This is where the problems began. Lots of the names I had listed were my friends. Sure, I’d known some of these people for decades, but they didn’t really know Daniel. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this was Daniel’s day, not mine (or my husband’s). If someone had never expressed an interest in getting to know my son, why should Daniel have to invite that person to his bar mitzvah? That revelation cut off about 12 people. 

When it comes to family, you have to decide upfront how extended you’re willing to go. We opted to stick strictly to cousins, aunts and uncles, along with some second cousins who live in-state. 

One challenge for me came from the fact that our family has lived in our home for 15 years, and we are lucky enough to have an amazing set of neighbors who are like family. We invited six families from our ’hood, but we had to exclude a few people. I was uncomfortable at first, but then I recognized that this is an important event, and it needed to be done.

To keep things organized, I started by entering information into a Word document, then we transferred everything to a spreadsheet so we could account for kids and adults and meal choices for the adults (the kids/teens had a buffet). There are plenty of other ways to go about doing this, though; you could go old-school with a spiral notebook or new-age with an online guest-list manager.

Unfortunately, completing the guest list didn’t mean an end to my worries — there were still all the possible ramifications. Consider the blessing (and curse) of social media. Nearly everyone posts happy information on Facebook, but, I realized, that meant I could be faced with loads of people who believed they should be invited to the bar mitzvah — even though we had no intention of including them. 

As a result, certain acquaintances that I’d rather not invite had to be “blocked” from status updates. My advice: If you can simply un-friend people you want to exclude from your celebration, do it. Either that, or refrain from posting absolutely anything about the event on Facebook. (Sure, like that’s going to happen). 

Unfortunately, certain people might make an issue of being dumped from social media, so I went with the good old “hidden status” update. This might sound trite, and it might even make you (or me) feel like you are back in high school, but it did help minimize the drama.  

It’s been a month since the big day — we ended up with 130 people in attendance, and everyone in our household was happy with the outcome — and (knock on wood) I haven’t heard any complaints from people who were not invited. Believe me, I expected at least one nasty note. But it hasn’t arrived and I’m figuring we have passed the statute of limitations on that one. At least I hope we have.  

Everyone has people they feel obligated to invite, but when push comes to shove, you have to decide if you really want to spend the day/evening/morning (and the cash) on them. 

If the answer is no, leave them off the list.  

Making the cut Read More »

Weiner talks the societal reality mirrored in his ‘Mad Men’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Hollywood /

“It’s got to be clear that I do not control what people think about the show in any way, and can’t obviously,” Matthew Weiner said recently during an interview in his downtown Los Angeles office. The creator of “Mad Men” had just been discussing the relationship between Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Jewish department store heiress Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff) in the show’s first season, when he felt the need to offer that qualifier. Only minutes earlier, he’d joked that while he’s a regular reader of the Jewish Journal, he can’t call himself a subscriber, because he usually picks it up at his favorite fro-yo place.

Weiner, quick-witted, passionate and funny, at times speaks about his characters as if they’re alive, and for viewers of the critically acclaimed show, now in its seventh and final season, that might not be such a surprise. “Mad Men” has always felt like it had a certain authenticity to it, like it could actually have happened, an effect that is only bolstered by the décor of Weiner’s offices. Don’s typewriter sits under a framed LP of Megan Draper’s (Jessica Paré) “Zou Bisou Bisou,” which shares wall space with Don’s ad from The New York Times decrying cigarette advertising.  

Perhaps more than anything, though, it’s the show’s ability to make its characters seem like real people, even like real Jews, that makes it so vivid, and according to Weiner, that’s completely intentional. 

“I went out of my way to make Rachel Menken Jewish, to give her a Jewish name, to make her a Russian Jew and not a German Jew,” he said. “I have all kinds of little hairs that were split there that I thought were fresh, and a little bit defiant, and the network was just thrilled with the specificity,” he said. “They did not want me to name her Magnin, because it was a real store, and they had an heiress and we could have been sued, so as soon as I made a fictitious store with a fictitious heiress, everybody was happy — right down to the German shepherds on the roof.

“I’m very interested in ‘the other,’ ” Weiner said. This applies, in particular, to how outsiders have adjusted to life in America. “We’re a melting pot, but also, at a certain point, we’re completely expected to give up all ethnic identity in trying to become a white male, a WASP, as Don is also trying to do.”

And while some of the “others” on “Mad Men,” notably manic copywriter Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman), chafe under the rules imposed by WASP society, Weiner believes that they, too, secretly long to fit in. “There’s something about being a white minority that really makes you notice the difference, and I think Don is that kind of person also, but it doesn’t mean that they’re not aspiring to be like everybody else, they just may not be able to do it. And Ginsberg is a lunatic; there’s nothing Jewish about that.”

“Mad Men” seems far away from the time television was dominated by, as Neal Gabler once called them, “non-ethnic ethnics,” characters like “Seinfeld’s” George Costanza, who, though clearly Jewish in so many ways, was made out to be Greek. As for why networks now seem open to allowing people to be overtly Jewish, Weiner puts it simply: “Dumbest answer ever: The times changed.  

“I know that there are people in the world who still want to kill people for doing these things, for being Jewish, for interracial romance, whatever, but the generation right after me … does not give a crap. They do not care. … They are embarrassed by racism,” Weiner said. “My kids, they are completely race-blind, they are colorblind, they are religion-blind, and they are offended by anything that smacks of real prejudice. It’s an embarrassing thing, not a position of power to be caught being a racist, even if you’re 80.”

Marten, the oldest of Weiner’s four sons, played a pivotal role in the early seasons of the show as Glen Bishop, a neighbor’s son who has a crush on Don’s first wife, Betty Draper (January Jones). It is a role that almost didn’t come to pass, according to Weiner. “It was suggested by Tom Palmer, who was the co-executive producer at the time. I asked him [Marten] if he wanted to audition, and I was actually warned by my casting directors, by Carrie Audino and Laura Schiff, not to cast him, not because he didn’t audition well, but because you don’t want the pressure of your kid screwing up the show.”

Weiner was not deterred. “Honestly, I didn’t think the show would go on for more than a season,” he said. “I love the way he was as that character, he was so not TV. He was so not a TV kid.

“He was really good, in my opinion,” Weiner added. “I think the scene in the first season, with him and January in the car, in the finale — I just sort of look at him in there and think, ‘That’s a real kid on TV. And this makes me happy.’ ”

And while Weiner has a few regrets about casting Marten, most notably some nasty comments on message boards that he hopes Marten won’t ever read, he said he’s happy to have had a chance to work together with his son, who will soon be heading off to college.

And as Weiner copes with that departure in real life, he’ll also be letting go of Don Draper, whose story will end this season. Draper was put on leave from the ad agency at the end of Season 6 but wormed his way back in after the first few episodes of Season 7, though not without a price. “He was definitely stripped away at the end of last season,” Weiner said of his protagonist. “He’s now broken.” 

In this season’s fourth episode, “The Monolith,” written by Erin Levy and directed by Scott Hornbacher, Don is put in the former office of Lane Pryce (Jared Harris), the office where Pryce so memorably hung himself in the fifth season’s penultimate episode.  

To make matters worse, Don reports to Peggy (Elisabeth Moss), his former secretary, and is barred from bringing in any new business or making his own decisions. “Is it a low point to have your character tested? Weiner said. “Yeah, if you’re of low character. We’re finding out what he’s made of.”

The episode, which features the installation of a computer at the agency’s office, also has a biblical theme, Weiner said. “One of the fun things about that last episode … was that the computer guy comes in, and he’s like the devil to me, he’s the mysterious stranger, and he is offering Don new business, which he’s not allowed to have; he’s offering wisdom, he’s enthusiastic, and he’s a guy putting in the computer — we love them so much now, how could we forget the fact that they’re a double-edged sword? As is all wisdom. Right? That’s the tree of knowledge.”

So will Don be able to make amends and be reinstated in the firm? “I just hope people understand that as far as Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Peggy are concerned, the wake of destruction that this guy [Don] put on the firm last year, in 1968 — not just losing Jaguar, which Joan literally sacrificed her body to get, costing her a lifetime of financial security when he ruined their chance to go public, ruining Peggy’s relationship, forcing her back into the agency … ” Weiner trailed off. “Just because you say you want to change doesn’t mean anyone else gives a crap.”

“Mad Men” is all about truth and lies and their consequences. “You know who’s truthful all the time?” Weiner asked. “People who are mentally ill.

“We always talk about the idea of doing somebody a dishonest kindness, where you tell them the truth because you want to hurt them … Joan’s mother does it to her a lot,” Weiner said. “The truth will not set you free, it will usually get you in more trouble. Apologizing is a big part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and it has to be from your heart. But in the Bible, it’s all about reparations. Words are cheap, give me my cows. Or let me kill your cows.”

Weiner acknowledged that Don has now found himself in a life-or-death situation, but whether he’ll live or die is something the audience will have to wait to find out.

“When you look at infinity, it is awesome and it is terrifying, because you don’t go on forever, and anything that reminds people of that is scary,” he said. 

“Anything that distracts people from that is a successful ad campaign.” 

Weiner talks the societal reality mirrored in his ‘Mad Men’ Read More »

Four rules of Israel engagement

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, Opinion /

This past March, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a strategic partnership agreement, they weren’t just aiming to facilitate collaboration between Israeli industries and Californian counterparts. They were strengthening the robust web of overlapping connections and ongoing exchanges that connect different elements of Southern California society with Israel. 

It’s just one of the engagements with Israel that we at the consulate have been hard at work on this past year. This week, as Los Angeles marks Israel’s 66th Yom HaAtzmaut, we wanted not just to celebrate what we’ve achieved, but also share a bit about what we’ve learned in the process. 

1. Engagement starts at home. Jewish continuity and connection to Israel are two, interdependent sides of the same coin. Cognizant of the importance of developing dialogue with all members of Klal Yisra’el, the Jewish people, we have worked to proactively initiate new channels of communication with organizations and community groups from all denominations. We attribute great importance to exposing Jewish communities to the dynamism and religious renewal coursing throughout Israel, and believe that fostering this kind of open and variegated dialogue is vital to ensuring a vibrant, healthy connection between the Jewish community and Israel. Even contentious issues, such as prayer arrangements at the Kotel, already have benefited from the increased understanding and openness.

2. Tell Israel’s story — to everyone. The cultural mosaic of Los Angeles has opened tremendous opportunities for deepening the ties between Israel and diverse local communities. As an immigrant society that has undergone a very successful and rapid process of social and economic development, Israel presents a valuable model for diverse communities throughout Southern California. For example, we have established educational projects for Latino and Jewish youth in San Diego and the San Fernando Valley, which draw on social innovation models developed in Israel. We have connected cutting-edge Israeli health experts with local organizations in the African-American and Asian-American communities on areas of mutual interest. We regularly engage with senior pastors and religious leaders throughout the region, speaking in churches and helping to promote visits to Israel. We have brought key community leaders together for inspirational moments, such as Fiesta Shalom at Sea, in which the commonalities among all of our diverse communities have come to the fore. We look forward to duplicating and expanding these efforts all over the region.

3. To stop BDS backers, we must Build, Develop and Sustain. Powering Israel’s “startup nation” are Israel’s outstanding academic institutions, and we have worked very hard to foster collaboration among Israeli universities and their local counterparts, with formal agreements, student and faculty exchanges and joint research projects blooming in all the significant universities in the region. We are currently working on establishing a scholarship fund in cooperation with the University of California to increase opportunities for California students of all backgrounds to benefit from the vibrancy and excellence of Israel’s universities. In recent years, UC Irvine has signed more than 10 agreements with five different Israeli universities. Meanwhile, almost all attempts to pass divestment resolutions at local universities in recent months have failed, underscoring that the best antidote to the tactics of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is to Build, Develop and Sustain. We have answered calls to boycott by building scientific collaboration. We have responded to calls for divestment by developing significant research and exchange opportunities. And we have countered calls for sanctions by sustaining ever-expanding academic cooperation with Israel. This is not only in the proper spirit of Israel’s positive ethos. It is also manifestly proving itself, by dwarfing an increasingly marginal divestment movement with unstoppable creative energy.   

4. Israel plays well with “the industry” — and nearly every other industry, too. Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, is bursting throughout the year with Israeli performers and artists sharing Israeli music, literature, dance, film and visual art with local audiencesm and at prestigious festivals and other venues. Israeli creativity has spawned hugely successful Hollywood productions, such as the Emmy-winning “Homeland.” Israeli wine and cuisine, very highly regarded internationally, are making tremendous inroads among local connoisseurs. 

The strategic partnership agreement between Israeli industries and Californian counterparts mentioned above has established a framework for an unprecedented deepening of Israeli-Californian technological and industrial cooperation, especially relevant in such crucial fields as water management and alternative energy, where Israeli innovations hold promise of being able to assist in confronting acute challenges currently faced by California. Such cooperation portends tremendous mutual benefit. We are working very hard with local stakeholders inside and outside of government to translate this framework into tangible projects. 

When Israel’s founding fathers forged the Jewish state from the postwar turmoil, they could not have envisioned how fast or how remarkably diverse the nation’s astounding success would be. What they had, above all else, was a vision and a determination to breathe life into the biblical prophecies that foresaw an Israel that would truly be a “light unto the nations,” both in terms of the values it was to embody and the contributions to humanity that it held the promise of generating. 

From the perspective of 66 years — a mere twinkle of an eye in the annals of the Jewish people — we can already look with heart-stirring awe at the extent to which Israel has lived up to these lofty aspirations. The consulate remains committed to bringing some of this magical feeling to the people and communities who make up the wondrously diverse social landscape of this beautiful land. We do so with the knowledge that the special relationship between Israel and the United States will continue to serve as the sturdiest and most reliable of anchors in an increasingly turbulent world.

Chag Atzmaut Sameach!

David Siegel and Uri Resnick are, respectively, consul general and deputy consul general of Israel to the Southwest United States.

Four rules of Israel engagement Read More »

The making of a real spy

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment /

Our idea of what spies actually do is deeply tainted by a century or so of novels and movies, some better than others but all of them fictional. “The Good Spy: The Life and Death of Robert Ames” by Kai Bird (Crown, $26), by contrast, is the real thing.  And yet, for all of its careful attention to facts, “The Good Spy” is fully as colorful and compelling as the very best imaginary spy stories on the bookshelf or the screen.

A Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer (“American Prometheus,” co-authored with Martin J. Sherwin) and a gifted memoirist (“Crossing Mandelbaum Gate”), Bird allows us to see how the real-life exploits of CIA clandestine agent Robert Ames figure in the vast and tumultuous history of the modern Middle East. With a novelist’s eye for the telling detail and a scholarly commitment to telling the whole truth, Bird has produced a masterpiece.

The story opens on the day in 1993 when President Bill Clinton welcomed Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat to the White House lawn for the signing of an historic (if also ultimately futile) peace accord. “It had all started decades earlier when a young CIA officer named Robert Clayton Ames had cultivated the first highly secret contracts between the United States and the Palestinians,” Bird explains. “Ames paved the way for the peace accords — and for his dedication to his spy craft and his work as an intelligence officer, he’d been murdered in Beirut on April 18, 1983, in the first truck bomb assault on a U.S. embassy.”

The making of a spy, as it turns out, is more akin to the subtleties and contradictions of a John Le Carré plotline than to the stylish fantasies of Ian Fleming. “[Ames] was self-effacing and not afraid to speak up, a cynic and an idealist, a good old boy and an intellectual, a moralist and a problem solver,” one diplomat who knew him said. “Put it together and he was one of the best spooks I ever met.”

Among the insights Bird provides is how little a real-life spy resembles James Bond.  Ames was a married man with young children at home, and he shunned the carnal temptations of the exotic places where he was stationed, “[preferring] to spend his free time either practicing his Arabic in the souk or doting on his girls.” He declined the 9-mm Browning pistol that was offered to field officers in the CIA station in Aden: “If they get you here,” he wrote to his wife, Yvonne, “it is in the back or when you’re not looking, and a gun wouldn’t do much good.”

Then, too, Ames excelled at what really counts in espionage, which has little or nothing to do with gadgetry or derring-do. “Getting to know the right people was the definition of good spy craft,” Bird explains. “It was all about getting close to influential or powerful actors. … Good spying was all about empathy.”

Bird is capable of making distinctions between a “Palestinian patriot,” a “guerilla fighter” and a “terrorist,” even when he applies all three terms to the same man — Ali Hassan Salameh, chief of intelligence for the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Force 17 and a leader of Black September. (Readers of “Crossing Mandelbaum Gate,” which describes Bird’s childhood as the son of an American diplomat in East Jerusalem, will understand the origins of his point of view.)  Indeed, “The Good Spy” reveals how Ames, who was “ambivalent about Israel,” acted on his own initiative to open a channel of communication with some of the most consequential figures in the PLO. “You Arabs claim your views are not heard in Washington,” was the gist of Ames’ message. “Here is your chance. The president of the United States is listening.”

Bird is frank about Ames’ perspective on the Middle East. At best, Ames was “ambivalent about Israel,” according to Bird, but the author also quotes a source who thought Ames “had an overt pro-Palestinian prejudice.” Bird also acknowledges that Ames’ admiration for Salameh is “hard to explain.” Writes Bird: “He knew Salameh had done some terrible things.” But Bird credits Ames with an earnest and principled support for Palestinian nationhood: “When I see some of these so-called ‘nations’ in Africa like Uganda and Idi Amin, I don’t think it is fair,” Ames wrote. “Here a very educated people are denied a home, while the Ugandese eat each other and have a vote at the U.N.!  Something’s wrong somewhere.”

More important, Bird insists that Ames’ success in opening a clandestine back-channel to the PLO was regarded as “an intelligence coup” at CIA headquarters in Langley, even if Nixon and Kissinger “blew hot and cold” on the initiative. The endgame, Bird argues, was the opening of direct negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis for a peaceful solution to the conflict, and the whole point of “The Good Spy” is that Bird regards Ames as one of the American visionaries who made those negotiations possible. 

Yet, the overtures Ames made to his contacts inside the PLO were especially treacherous at the time. The Palestinian activists were adopting ever more violent tactics, including a civil war in Jordan and the creation of Black September, “a clandestine force to bring the war to the West.” Salameh was both the intelligence chief of the PLO’s Force 17 and an activist in Black September, and Ames tried to caution him against “carry[ing] out operations in our territory.” The caution did not prevent Black September’s notorious operations, including the murder of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Nevertheless, Bird asks us to regard both Ames and Salameh as peacemakers at heart.

 “Arafat could see that the channel that went through Bob Ames to the CIA leadership and ultimately to the White House, offered him the potential opportunity to gain America’s recognition for both the PLO and the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination and nationhood,” Bird argues. “In this sense, Ames and the CIA had planted the seeds of a peaceful settlement.”

Not surprisingly, neither Ames nor Salameh lived to see even the first doomed shoots from the seeds of peace that Bird describes. Mossad, which had tried and failed to assassinate Salameh on previous occasions in revenge for the massacre at the Munich Olympics, finally caught up with him in Beirut in 1979. (Bird’s account of the mission is fully as suspenseful as anything we’ve seen on “Homeland.”) And Ames, who was regarded as “Mr. Middle East” and “the ghostwriter of the Reagan peace initiative” during the early 1980s, died in the terror bombing of the American embassy in Beirut in 1983, which is attributed by Bird to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. 

Not every reader will regard Robert Ames as a hero. After all, he cultivated some of the PLO’s most bloodthirsty terrorists as contacts and sources. But Bird makes a good case that “Ames’ calculation was a moral one.” As Bird puts it, “Dealing with bad guys is part of the spy craft.” Ames himself is the best example of the price that sometimes must be paid in doing so. 

The making of a real spy Read More »

Protest structural racism, not just Donald Sterling racism

Leave a Comment / Mobile, News, Opinion /

When I heard the tape recordings of Donald Sterling, I, like many of you, felt outrage and disgust. 

I would like to believe that Sterling is an outlier, that his sentiments are not representative. But as the days go by and I hear about the fervor with which the community has been reacting, there is a part of me that can’t help but notice how much easier it is to be outraged by his comments than by the racial inequity of the society in which his comments were made. 

While our society’s laws no longer explicitly say that people of color aren’t allowed in public places, or that children of color can’t play in the sandbox of success, our country is rife with policies and systems that effectively negate upward mobility and racial inclusion. 

Last year, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which meant states no longer needed federal approval before making changes to their voting laws. This led to 3 million people in North Carolina, primarily people of color, subsequently losing their ability to vote, and with it, their voice. How will we respond?

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest school district, Latino and African-American students are still graduating less than 70 percent of the time — well below the national average. How will they earn the tools to get good jobs that allow them to escape the vicious cycle of poverty? And how will we respond?

Like most in our city, I want to shake my fist at Sterling and give him a bar of soap to put in his mouth. I applaud NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and his decisive action in banning Clippers owner Sterling for life and fining him $2.5 million. I agree with the Los Angeles City Council’s resolution backing the decision and asking the Los Angeles Times not to run Sterling’s property ads.  

But it’s not enough.  

Right now, City Council is reviewing Mayor Eric Garcetti’s first budget for Los Angeles. Let’s encourage them to allocate the city’s federal revitalization dollars to South Los Angeles, a community that has long been underfunded. Let’s use this moment and advocate for the kind of equitable and affordable housing that landlords like Sterling have fought against. Let’s turn our outrage into progress on education equity and living-wage jobs for all Angelenos. 

These are the real problems in our city.  Let’s go beyond finger-wagging and fist-shaking. Let’s continue the momentum against racism toward solutions that lift up our whole community. 

“We are one,” is a beautiful sentiment. It was true this past week. Let’s keep it true in a year, in a decade, and in every neighborhood of our city.

Serena Zeise is the Southern California regional director of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice.

Protest structural racism, not just Donald Sterling racism Read More »

Celebrate Israel Fest brings Jewish homeland to its people

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Nachum Peterseil misses celebrating Yom HaAtzmaut in Israel, where he grew up and annually got caught up in the spirit of the country’s Independence Day. 

The lead singer of the Los Angeles band Automatic Toys hopes to catch some of that excitement this weekend, when he and his band perform at Celebrate Israel, the annual Yom HaAtzmaut festival in West Los Angeles. The May 18 festival is expected to draw thousands of people to Cheviot Hills Recreation Center (Rancho Park) in honor of Israel’s 66th birthday earlier this month.

Peterseil is not alone in pining for such celebrations, which is one reason the Israeli American Council (IAC) has been presenting the festival since 2012. 

“If we cannot bring people to Israel, we bring Israel to where we live,” festival chair Naty Saidoff told the Journal by phone. 

The festival is the flagship event of the IAC, an umbrella organization for Israelis living in the United States that provides education resources, volunteer opportunities and more. The Los Angeles-based organization has offices across the country. 

The IAC spent more than $700,000, according to IAC Chairman Shawn Evenhaim, to make this event something that even Israelis back home will appreciate. 

“This is a connection that will last a lifetime,” he said. “For me, walking around the park and seeing a mass of people celebrate Israel — all this will be reported later in Israel, and the people of Israel will know that their brothers and sisters abroad support them and celebrate their independence. It means a lot to them. I know when I grew up in Israel, it meant a lot to me.”

Nearly 150 organizations, including the Jewish Journal, StandWithUs and Westfield Group, are participating in the event. It will take place 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. under the leadership of festival director Adee Drory.

Israeli music ensemble The Idan Raichel Project is headlining the event at 5 p.m., but there will be much more than music. Thirty stations set up across the park are intended to create the feeling of being in Israel, consistent with this year’s theme, Tour of Israel.

The Jerusalem pavilion will house a 32-foot-long version of the Western Wall. Attendees will be able to write notes and leave them inside the wall. These notes will make their way to Jerusalem, festival organizers said. 

Nearby, the Negev and Arava pavilion will house a Bedouin tent, camel rides, drum circles and desert art. Kids can build their own kibbutz at the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) pavilion or play in the sand at a mini beach at the Tel Aviv pavilion. For the first time, the event will offer only glatt kosher food. Observant attendees of past festivals complained about the lack of kosher options, according to Evenhaim.

Organizers are hoping this is the biggest Celebrate Israel yet. In 2012, its inaugural year, the festival drew 15,000 attendees, while last year saw a drop-off in attendance to 10,000. Dikla Kadosh, the IAC director of community events and volunteering, said during a phone interview that changes made in response to feedback will push the number of attendees back up. 

One change festival-goers will notice immediately is lower ticket prices. Advance-purchase tickets, available online at celebrateisraelfestival.com, cost $5. The price at the door is $10. Children under 3 are free. Tickets were about double that price last year, Evenhaim said.

Before the gates open at 11 a.m., a commemorative walk, organized by StandWithUs, will kick off the day’s activities. After assembling at 9:30 a.m., participants will march at 10 a.m. from Pico Boulevard and Motor Avenue, an intersection adjacent to the park, to the intersection of Roxbury Drive and Pico Boulevard and then back again. Kadosh said the walk is an important component of the festival. 

“That’s really to show the rest of the city that we stand with Israel,” she said. 

Throughout the festival itself, there will be performances by a host of talent from local schools as well as clergy. These include the Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy Choir; the Milken Community Schools Choir; Israeli folk- dancing teacher David Dassa; Cantors Marcus Feldman (Sinai Temple), Nathan Lam (Stephen S. Wise Temple) and Nathaniel Barham (Young Israel of North Beverly Hills); and the Milken Community Schools Dance Team. 

From 2:50 to 3:05 p.m., make sure to look skyward for the Tiger Squadron Air Show. The Jewish Community Children’s Choir, under the direction of Michelle Green Willner, accompanied by the Sinai Akiba Academy Orchestra, under the direction of David Brown, will sing the U.S. national anthem and “Hatikva.” 

Yiddish theater actor Mike Burstyn will be master of ceremonies, serving as the audience’s guide through a slew of appearances by elected officials, including Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, and through performances by the bands. 

Although his band writes American music exclusively, Peterseil and Automatic Toys plan to play a special set for the festival, made up exclusively of Israeli covers — from Israeli rock artists spanning from the 1960s to the present.

Kids’ activities will be taking place on a separate stage. A marionette show, a reptile show and performer Rinat Gabay are a few of the highlights. As with previous years, an amusement park, complete with a Ferris wheel and more, will entertain young children. Teens can take part in rock climbing, bungee jumping and other activities.

Evenhaim said one highlight will be the festival’s high-tech pavilion, where Israeli university students will deliver TED-style talks every 30 minutes. 

In the days leading up to the festival, organizers and supporters emphasized how important it was to them that this year’s festival be a success and bring in a large turnout.

“We want the experience to be memorable and special,” said Saidoff, who personally donated more than $300,000 toward the cost of the festival, making him and his wife, Debbie, the single-largest contributors to Celebrate Israel. 

In order to deal with the expected high volume of automobile and pedestrian traffic in the area, there are five nearby parking lots available that organizers said are walking distance from the festival, which is located across the street from Fox Studios and adjacent to Century City. Shuttles will transport festival-goers to and from the grounds all day long, as well. 

Kadosh said that because Yom HaAtzmaut and supporting Israel are important causes for American Jews and Israeli-Americans, the festival should be a time of unity.

“It should be the one time in the year when our community comes together. … One thing we can all agree on and the one thing we can celebrate at the same time, all together.” 

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The early Israel-to-L.A. wave

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In 1965, at just 16, Edna Botach (now Lee) packed up her memories of living in tents with 12 brothers and sisters, and moved from Beersheba to Los Angeles. When she arrived in the Fairfax area and moved in with her brother’s family, she spoke only Hebrew and Farsi, the language of her parents, Iranian Jews who immigrated to Israel in 1950.

“My older brother had married an American. They had four young children, and my parents wanted me to go and help them out,” said Lee, who remembers missing the flavor of the “lechem shachor” (rye bread), the price of which was subsidized by the Israeli government. “Something about that bread never leaves you,” she said recently.

Lee was part of an early wave of Israelis immigrating to Los Angeles, a group that some in Israel and Los Angeles pejoratively called yordim, a word derived from yerida that means “descent,” the opposite of aliyah, or “ascension.” She came here long before the opening of Israeli markets, the L.A. institution of celebrating Yom HaAtzmaut with Israel festivals, and the pita-everywhere environment to which Angelenos, Israeli or otherwise, have grown accustomed.

“Those were difficult years, when there were no Israelis,” Lee said. “Everybody thought I was Greek or Italian. After the Six-Day War, people became more aware [of Israelis],” she added.

She was by no means among the first to come, however. Decades earlier, a migration trail from Israel to L.A. had been blazed by Mandate-era Jews, including Shlomo Bardin, who moved to the United States in 1939 and founded the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley.

After Israel became a state in 1948, more Israelis followed, including Jona Goldrich, who came in 1953 and started a company that cleaned up construction sites, leading to a career in real-estate development and construction, and Dani Dassa, an Israeli-born choreographer and legendary folk-dance teacher, who came in the late 1950s and opened Cafe Danssa, a meeting place for Israeli dance on the Westside, founded in 1966.

Soon after arriving in L.A., Lee enrolled in Fairfax High School, and her acculturation began by taking an English as a Second Language course, along with about 12 other students, including a couple of other Israelis.

“I did not make a lot of friends. The Americans, if they were not religious, I could not connect. In values, philosophy, we were so different,” said Lee, who today affiliates with the Modern Orthodox movement.

After high school, she attended L.A. City College, eventually matriculating to California State University, Los Angeles, where she graduated with an education degree.

While in college, Lee found work at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on Fountain Avenue. At the time, TVs were not standard in hospital rooms, and Lee got a job from an outside vendor renting them to patients. She recalled wearing a “cute little uniform” and going into hospital rooms to drum up business “with my funny accent,” she said.

“There were a lot of Jewish patients,” one of whom introduced her son to Lee, and the two eventually married in 1971.

Many Los Angeles Jews, like Rabbi Bob Golub, who grew up at Valley Beth Shalom and is executive director of Mercaz USA, the Zionist organization of the Conservative movement, recall that the first Israelis they ever met were teachers in their Hebrew-school classrooms. In fact the study “In Our Footsteps: Israeli Migration to the United States and Los Angeles,” published in 1981 by Pini Herman and David LaFontaine, found that around 66 percent of Israeli immigrants were working in professional and technical positions, including as teachers, medical professionals and engineers.

Lee went into real estate, and after a successful career as a Realtor — knowing Hebrew made her Israeli clients comfortable with the knowledge that she “would put them in a good place”— she now owns a shop on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks called Aunt Teek’s, where she sells pieces of the past.

 In the 1960s, once work or school was done, Lee and other Israeli immigrants like Rivka Dori would go to a cafe on Sunset Boulevard called Sabra to meet up with other Israelis or catch up on news back home.

It was “one of the first establishments my husband, Reuben [Reuven], and I visited,” remembers Dori, who came to the United States from Israel in 1966.

“This was the place to meet other Israelis, speak Hebrew, listen to Israeli music and eat Israeli food,” said Dori, director emerita of Hebrew Studies at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR).

Another outpost of all things Israeli in the Fairfax area in the early 1970s, serving up a reminder of the flavors of home to a growing Israeli population, was a falafel stand called Me & Me. Located on the corner of Fairfax Boulevard and Rosewood Avenue, it was a place where many non-Israelis had their first falafel — and tested their limits with the accompanying hot sauce.

According to several sources, Me & Me was named for an Israeli restaurant called, in Hebrew, “Mi v’ Mi” or “Who is Who.” Transliterated into English, the name became Me & Me.

Mark Pahlow, who worked across the street at Lose the Blues Bookstore, describes Me & Me on his blog: “The proprietors were loud and brash, with shirts unbuttoned and hairy chests puffed out. ‘American Woman’ by The Guess Who was usually blaring out of the establishment, and the staff was singing along, loudly and off-key.” 

The “Footsteps” study also found that, like Lee, “Most of the Israelis are living in areas of high Jewish population density,” with the majority in the early 1970s located in the city’s Metro region (roughly from Hollywood to Westwood), along with a growing number living in the San Fernando Valley. As the decade progressed, the Israeli community increasingly began moving into the Valley, including Lee’s family, who relocated to Studio City in 1975. By 1980, the number of Israelis calling the Valley “home” surpassed that of the Metro area.

However, as the number of Israeli immigrants grew, estimated in the study as between 10,000 and 12,000, but by others as the much-debated number of 120,000, a divide was growing in the L.A. Jewish community, over how to welcome them, with some disapproving of granting traditional resettlement aid.

So, in the early 1980s, a commission was formed. According to Gerald Bubis, the founding director of the School of Jewish Communal Service at HUC-JIR, it was Jerry Weber, director of the Council on Jewish Life, who was instrumental in bringing together elements of the community to create a commission on Israelis.

“The community was changing so rapidly,” Bubis said. People were asking, some “who never made aliyah themselves, ‘Why would they want to come?’ ” Bubis said.

A 43-member commission was chaired by Herbert Glaser, and included Bubis and Herman as well as ex-officio member Benyamin Navon, consul general of the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles. And after many months of meetings, which Bubis recalls as “always civil,” it issued a report in 1984.

It was a victory for those who favored a more inclusive approach, because the report, in addition to recommending that “demeaning terms such as yordim” not be used, suggested that community synagogues, Federation agencies and Jewish community centers should be “sensitized to their responsibilities” to the needs of Israeli immigrants. The report also recommended that “all eligible Jews residing within Los Angeles are entitled to participate in the programs and services of the Jewish Federation Council and its agencies.”

Lee, for one, always maintained ties to the local Jewish community — when she was younger she joined Yavneh, and when older, temples, and she sent two of her children to Jewish day school. On many Shabbats, acting as her own agency, she still invites guests to her home. “My home has been open to the world,” she said.

Have a lead for an L.A. Jewish history story? Contact Edmon Rodman at edmojace@gmail.com

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Pedaling for a cause

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What do competitive cyclists, Israeli technology and Africa have in common? 

On June 14, approximately 200 cyclists will leave the northern San Diego County city of Oceanside, to ride 3,000 miles, through 12 states, to Annapolis, Md., in the 33rd annual Race Across America (RAAM). 

These cyclists have nine days to complete the journey, though the fastest teams will finish in closer to five days. Four of the riders, including Los Angeles-based Kurt Broadhag, are riding on behalf of Innovation: Africa, a 6-year-old nonprofit that brings Israeli technology and ingenuity to Africa. 

To date, Innovation: Africa has completed 76 solar and agricultural projects in Africa, impacting more than 650,000 people, according to Rachel Ishofsky, managing director of the New York-based organization. The bulk of these involve the installation of rooftop solar systems at schools and medical clinics in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi, among them one community in Uganda whose electricity was sponsored by the Los Angeles-based congregation IKAR. 

In addition, more than 300,000 life-saving medicines and vaccines have been issued from Innovation: Africa’s solar-powered refrigerators. The nonprofit also has done work in Ethiopia and South Africa and is currently expanding to the Democratic Republic of Congo at the invitation of Congolese-American NBA legend Dikembe Mutombo.

Broadhag, 44, a gym designer and personal trainer, hopes he and his team, which includes about a half-dozen crew members, will be able to raise $200,000. He’s off to a good start toward that goal, thanks to Los Angeles-based venture capitalist Art Bilger and his wife, Dahlia, both longtime clients of Broadhag, who are not only sponsoring Team Innovation: Africa, but also have offered a $100,000 matching-fund challenge in hope of motivating other donors.

“From a messaging standpoint, it’s a terrific way to get the name Innovation: Africa out there in important circles,” Bilger said. “A lot of organizations have events and get some singer to come. This is so unique, it will capture your attention.”

Bilger met the founder of Innovation: Africa, Israel native Sivan Borowich-Ya’ari, two years ago. The organization’s mission resonated with him in multiple ways. “One is doing good in Africa,” said Bilger, who, along with several family members, visited Ethiopia a few years back with the founder of Charity: Water, another organization he supports.

“Separately, I have been very interested in Israel and the importance of the messaging of Israel,” said Bilger, who is also a board member of TRIBE Media Corp., parent company of the Jewish Journal. “There is so much more that comes out of Israel that benefits the entire globe in terms of innovation.”

Finally, there was Borowich-Ya’ari’s compelling vision and the relative youth of Innovation: Africa. “In my day job, I do venture capital investing, so the concept of startups, young entrepreneurs building something or hoping to build something of significant value, runs through much of what I do,” Bilger said.

Bilger and Broadhag had talked about RAAM in the past. After all, Bilger also used to cycle long distances, though he never seriously considered participating in the race himself, and Broadhag is a competitive cyclist. In fact, the day Broadhag spoke to the Journal, he had ridden 80 miles in the early morning as part of his formal training and had plans to do 50 more in the afternoon. This year, the stars aligned, and when Broadhag told Bilger he thought he could put together a four-man team for Innovation: Africa, Bilger signed on.

The solo version of RAAM — yes there are a few brave souls who attempt it alone each year — has been called the world’s toughest bicycle race. So it held a sort of mythical intrigue for both men. Even for team riders, it is known as a beast. For a bit of perspective, consider that the Tour de France is approximately 2,300 miles and takes place over 21 days with a couple of rest days. Riders sleep at night and are able to draft, which conserves energy. In RAAM, though, generally only one person per team rides at a time, usually for very intense, very fast 10- to 30-minute intervals, 24 hours a day. Drafting is prohibited.

The current plan is for Team Innovation: Africa to rent two vans for the riders, crew members and equipment. The four riders will eat and sleep — albeit not much — in the vans, when they aren’t in the saddle. Supporters and the simply curious will be able to follow their progress on the team’s website (iaraam.com) as well as RAAM’s website (raceacrossamerica.org). Broadhag expects they will have cameras on their bikes and maintain a blog as well.

Although the cause and fundraising are the No. 1 priorities for Broadhag, he’s talking about Team Innovation: Africa winning the race, coming in at 5 1/2 days or less.

“We can do it in eight days and party,” he said. “Or we can seriously suffer and play mental games for five days. It’s a big mental game.”

Does Bilger care if Team Innovation: Africa comes out in front? “Kurt and I know each other very well,” he said. “I like backing winners.” 

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Happy Birthday, Batman!

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

This past weekend, I happened to drive through my old hometown on Long Island. It passed by the house of the kid in my neighborhood who put a sheet around his shoulders, climbed onto his roof, and would have jumped off had his mother not intervened. 

Like every other kid in America, I loved superheroes. Superman's 75th birthday has been the occasion for a number of books and articles (In particular, I recommend Larry Tye’s excellent Superman: The High-Flying History of America’s Most Enduring Hero Superman had Jewish “roots.” His birth name, Kal-el, contains the element el, which is one of God’s names. He was adopted as an infant, and we know nothing about his childhood or teen years until he becomes a superhero – in many ways, like the Moses stories. His motto – “truth, justice, and the American way” – echoes the classic Jewish triad of truth, justice, and peace. Some suggest that Superman was modeled on the classic golem legend.

In fact, the entire comic book industry was a Jewish production, and a quintessentially American one, at that. (Check out Michael Chabon's classic The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay). So many of the early comic pioneers were Jews: Will Eisner, Shuster and Siegel, who created Superman; Bob Kane, who created Batman (more on him later); Stan Lee…and just this past week, we mourned the loss of Al Feldstein, one of the creators of Mad magazine, which would ultimately have a greater influence on my life than even Superman and Batman. These cartoonists were all guys who grew up in immigrant neighborhoods, and who expressed their longings for belonging in the form of costumed heroes.

But my favorite superhero was not Superman. Rather, it was Batman, and this month happens to be the 75th anniversary of his first comic book appearance.

And just as we “made” Superman Jewish, it is time for us to reclaim Batman as a character in modern Jewish literature. 

What made superheroes Jewish? Not their super powers (which, let the record note, Batman lacked). 

No. They had secret identities.

The whole idea of a secret identity is bizarre. You actually have two separate identities, two distinct people. Batman, in particular: millionaire Bruce Wayne, and his ward, Dick Grayson, who was Robin, his sidekick. 

Bruce Wayne: I loved the mansion, at least the way that it looked on the admittedly cheesy Batman television series. You needed to be a millionaire to pull off what Bruce Wayne had to do in order to do his Batman stuff. The Batcave (who dug that cave? Or was Wayne Manor simply built on top of it? How do you even get a building permit for that?).

The Batcar: only a rich man could do that. Was Bruce friends with John DeLorean? In the comic books, Bruce and Dick descended to the Batcave through a secret pathway behind a grandfather clock. The television show had them slide down poles, like firemen. Why not just stairs? And how, please, are you supposed to get back up the poles to the mansion?

It used to fascinate me: Batman/Bruce Wayne. At any given time, how do you know “who” you are? Did Bruce Wayne ever do “Batman” stuff when he was Bruce Wayne? Could he go down to the Batcave and simply hang out, just as Bruce? How does one manage two separate identities? Long before it became fashionable to talk about the conflicts between home and profession, and the conflicts that various roles bring to us, Batman and Bruce were having that inner monologue.

In truth, however, the whole notion of the secret identity is laughable. How incredibly stupid could the people of Gotham City or Metropolis have been? Was it really that difficult to figure out who Batman was? True, he wore a mask, but when it came to Superman and Clark Kent, the only facial difference was that Clark Kent wore glasses. Seriously? And no one was supposed to know who he was?

Perhaps they were all simply pretending that they didn't know who Batman or Superman really were. Perhaps it was all an elegant charade. 

And this is precisely what makes those works so Jewish. Back to Bob Kane. Kane, according to various accounts, was a true Jewish assimilationist. While he knew that he was Jewish, that was not the face that he wanted to present to the world. (Note, please: the Hebrew/Yiddish word for face, panim, is in the plural form. Which means that by design we present a multitude of faces to the world). And, as many German Jews discovered in the 1930s, you can wear your gentile disguise all you want to, but the world knows your secret identity. 

So, the entire notion of having a secret identity is a quintessential modern Jewish way of looking at the world, and being in the world. Come to think of it, it’s much older than that. In the book of Genesis, Jacob disguises as Esau. Leah disguises as Rachel. Joseph disguises himself before his brothers. Moses disguises (whether he knows it or not) as an Egyptian prince. David disguises himself as a Philistine. Esther disguises as a “regular” Persian girl.

It's not only Jews who have secret identities, pretending that they are gentiles. Think about gays and lesbians who are not yet out, and who have to maintain a collection of fictions just in order to get through their lives. 

There is something else that Superman and Batman have in common, and it is also very Jewish.

Superman emerges from horror; his home planet, Krypton, has been destroyed, and he is an orphan. Young Bruce Wayne witnesses his parents being murdered in a robbery; that is what compels him to fight crime.

Both Superman and Batman, then, are the children of trauma. The current series of Batman films makes this reality even deeper and more present to audiences.

Children of trauma. Survivors of primal horrors. As is this generation of Jews, coming to maturity almost seventy years after the Shoah, but never allowing its memory to fade away.

Survivors, compelled to make the world better. 

And so, happy 75th birthday, Batman. Yom huledet sameach!

And may I say, on behalf of all your fans: may you live to be a hundred and twenty.

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Fast cash from Israel Bonds

Leave a Comment / Community, Israel /

The next time violence erupts between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East, Israel Bonds CEO Israel “Izzy” Tapoohi is not going to run to major banks and mutual funds if the government needs emergency cash.

Forgoing Wall Street in favor of the likes of “Mr. Cohen” — his term for the thousands of American Jews who buy from Israel Bonds, a private Manhattan-based company that underwrites securities issued by the State of Israel in the United States — Tapoohi told the Journal during a recent visit to Los Angeles that “I can probably raise within three months another $1 billion for the Israeli economy.”

To illustrate, the 68-year-old CEO raised the following scenario: “If I now sit with a large bank, most likely if everyone in Israel is sitting in bomb shelters, he will say to me, ‘Izzy, it’s nice to know you. Is there any possibility to get an early redemption on my bond?’

“But if I go to Mr. Cohen, and I say to Mr. Cohen, ‘Israel is for the moment under a war situation. You bought $10,000 recently; do you mind buying another $10,000?’ I guarantee he’ll say, ‘Yes.’ ”

Reaching out to the Mr. Cohens of the world, Tapoohi believes he could raise $1 billion at an interest rate of just a few percent (current Israel Bonds rates range from about 1 percent to 4 percent). Reaching out to the global market? Tapoohi thinks it would be closer to 10 percent if Israel were under siege.

“In the emergency time, Wall Street is ruthless,” Tapoohi said. “Wall Street would downgrade. S&P [Standard & Poor], Fitch would downgrade Israel immediately.”

Since 1951, Israel Bonds has raised more than $36 billion, much of which has funded Israeli infrastructure projects, technology development and immigrant resettlement. In 2013, bond sales to Americans exceeded $1.1 billion, a company record.

Tapoohi, who has led Israel Bonds since 2011, emphasized that Americans should view Israel Bonds not only as a pro-Israel investment, but as a strong financial instrument. 

The possibility of war may seem ever-present, adding risk to doing business there, but Israel’s economy has actually performed head-and-shoulders above many Western economies since the beginning of the 2008 recession, growing at  nearly a 5 percent clip in both 2010 and 2011 and just under 3 percent in 2012. The United States, meanwhile, has struggled to eclipse 2 percent during that period.

And the shekel is performing so well relative to world currencies that Israel’s central bank is concerned about it becoming too strong, which would make it more difficult for Israel to export its goods. 

Despite these positive indicators, though, Tapoohi is predicting another global economic downturn, albeit not comparable to the one in 2008. He thinks that central banks around the world will increase interest rates sooner or later rather than risk feeding unsustainable bubbles. The real question, as Tapoohi framed it, is whether Israel’s economy crashes or makes a soft landing when interest rates go up. He’s betting on the latter.

“Israel never gave its people borrowing rates at 90 percent like it was in America,” Tapoohi said. “We have never allowed in Israel refinancing of your house and using it for spending.”

Tapoohi has experienced the highs and the lows of Israel’s economy. Born in 1946 in what would become Israel, but raised in Australia, Tapoohi moved to Israel for good in 1979. Since then, he has been an executive at multiple Israeli companies, weathered Israel’s 1983 financial crisis and served as chairman of the board for Bezeq, Israel’s largest corporation and communications provider.

The businessman also has a close relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He served as an economic liaison during Netanyahu’s first term in the late 1990s and as a member of his “100 Days” economic advisory team in 2009, when he helped prepare economic guidelines in his second term. 

Since Tapoohi took the helm at Israel Bonds in October 2011, the company has, in an effort to reach a younger demographic, launched an online portal through which users can purchase bonds. In less than three years, online sales exceeded $55 million, with nearly half of that coming in 2013, according to an Israel Bonds spokesman. A mobile app is reportedly in the works, too.

Regarding the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is attempting to gain a foothold in the United States, Tapoohi said it doesn’t scare him. But that hasn’t stopped Israel Bonds from using its threat as a rallying cry for pro-Israel Americans. (The headline on its website reads, “Israel Bonds are a strong response to BDS advocates.”)

Of more concern to him is that individuals, pension funds and governments continue to see Israel Bonds as a smart financial investment. According to the group, states and municipalities have invested more than $140 million in Israel Bonds since Jan. 1, and there are commitments for another $50 million.

“Whether you like it or not, most companies like to do business,” Tapoohi said. “And they couldn’t give a damn who they do business with.”

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