June 4, 2014

Amnesia, not admiration for Israel’s 1964 soccer heroes

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

Fifty years ago this week, a group of mostly blue-collar workers and army conscripts led Israel to its only senior international soccer title, winning the 1964 Asian Cup in front of rapturous home crowds.

The achievements of those amateur players, who would skip work to train for the national team, was part of a golden age of Israeli football that culminated in the country's solitary World Cup appearance in 1970, yet is largely forgotten at home.

The collective amnesia over the 1964 victory followed the 1973 Middle East war and Israel's expulsion from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) a year later.

Instead, Israelis now look to Europe, where the country is ranked 36th out of 53 UEFA members, while the 50th anniversary of the Asian Cup win comes days after Palestine qualified for the tournament from which Israel was forced from.

Israel had been Asian Cup runners-up to South Korea in 1956 and 1960 and the same duo were favourites for the 1964 tournament, for which Israel were hosts.

Hong Kong and India were other teams in the final group, which would play a round-robin format, while Arab and many Muslim countries had refused to play Israel following its formation in 1948.

“The players were very excited – for most of us those were our first official appearances in the national team uniforms,” said Itzik Visoker, Israel's goalkeeper, who was 19 at the time.

For local fans, it was a chance to see the national team against their continental rivals four years before the country's first television station began regular broadcasts in 1968.

“There was a completely different attitude – even now it's a young country, can you imagine 50 years back?” said Mordechai Spiegler, 69, Israel's record international goal scorer.

“We heard a lot about football in the world, but didn't have a real connection – we could only hear it on the radio. The game was popular, but we knew there were more important issues. To play football, it was not a profession.”

The entire squad played for domestic clubs, with the bulk of the 15 players appearing from three outfits – Maccabi Jaffa, Hapoel Petah Tikva and Hapoel Tel Aviv.

DIFFICULT TIME

They were a mixture of local and foreign-born Jews, some from families whom had fled Europe before, during and after World War II and the Nazi Holocaust.

Former centre-back Gideon Tish, 75, was born in Israel after his family emigrated from Poland in the early 20th century.

“It was a very difficult time, the family was living in one room – the parents and four brothers,” Tish said.

Most players were manual workers or in the army and they trained three afternoons a week.

“We just got small presents like to go to a restaurant and eat for free,” 70-year-old Bulgarian-born former central defender Moshe Leon said. “We played with the heart, not for the money.”

Israel's coach, the late Yosef Merimovich, a Cypriot-born Jew, took charge of his first match – a 4-0 defeat to an England under-23 side including future World Cup winner Geoff Hurst – nine days before the tournament.

“He was a wonderful man, very straightforward, one of the idols of Israeli football,” Spiegler said of Merimovich, who died in 2011. “He was somebody for whom the flag meant a lot.”

Against Hong Kong in the tournament's opening game on May 26, Israel dominated in front of a 25,000 crowd at Tel Aviv's National Stadium, but struggled to make a breakthrough until Spiegler bundled home with 14 minutes left.

Three days later, Israel beat India 2-0 with Spiegler netting a penalty before Yemen-born forward Yohai Aharoni drifted in from the right wing to finish from close range and delight the 22,000 crowd at Jaffa's Bloomfield Stadium.

That meant Israel needed just a draw against South Korea on June 3 to be champions and the National Stadium was a 50,000 sell-out. All matches were played in the afternoon as floodlights were not yet available.

“We were confident we were going to win – they were about the same level as we were,” said Tish, a then bus mechanic.

Defensive pair Leon and Tish put Israel 2-0 up by halftime, the former beating several players before finishing from distance and the latter dispatching a 20-metre free-kick.

In between those goals, South Korea had a player sent off and although the outgoing champions pulled a goal back, Israel held on to win 2-1 and spark raucous celebrations.

“It was a carnival, a festival,” said Asher Goldberg, an Israeli football historian who attended Israel's three matches.

Israel was among the dominant forces in Asian football in the 1960s, winning four straight under-19 championships from 1964 to 1967 and finishing third at the 1968 Asian Cup in Iran.

“It was the first step to get into world football – they (the fans) were very proud, but in those days the football wasn't so important because we were always busy with the wars,” said Amatsia Levkovich, then a 26-year-old midfielder.

“In my life I've passed through seven wars. We still don't know if there will be another one. It was important to represent the country, to hear Hatikva (the national anthem) in Asia.”

Spiegler said Israel's senior Asian Cup triumph was the springboard for it to reach the 1970 World Cup, although he was one of only three players along with Visoker and defender David Primo from 1964 to be in what was a youthful squad in Mexico.

NOMADIC EXISTENCE

Israel led a nomadic football existence following its expulsion from the AFC in 1974 until joining UEFA in 1994.

This exile from football's regional confederations meant Israel sometimes went four years without a competitive senior fixture, while it did not play a single game in 1982, the year of Israel's invasion of Lebanon.

Israel has not qualified for a major tournament since 1970.

“Now we belong to Europe, I don't think we have a chance,” said Levkovich, who was Israel's assistant coach in Mexico, where the team earned draws against Sweden and eventual runners-up Italy and lost 2-0 to semi-finalists Uruguay.

“The level of football in Asia has developed, but it doesn't belong to us.”

Spiegler said it was not a lack of talent that had prevented Israel from making more of a mark internationally.

“Good players are talking football but they don't bring it to the field, they don't know the difference between individual and collective sport,” said Spiegler, who emigrated to Israel from Russia's Ural Mountains in 1949 and played for Paris St Germain and New York Cosmos, where Pele was a team mate.

“We were a national team, but played as a club. We took away ego, worked hard.”

Yet despite those memories, the surviving 1964 squad members do not plan to mark the 50th anniversary of their triumph.

“It was a moment of happiness, of glorious celebration, a moment we take with us forever,” added Spiegler.

Reporting by Matt Smith in Dubai; Editing by John O'Brien

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Theodore Bikel: A man in full

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Mobile, Opinion / David Suissa

[July 21, 2015] I just heard the sad news that Theodore Bikel passed away. This is a column I wrote about him last year. He was a man in full, like no other.

In theory, I was supposed to meet the great Theodore Bikel because of the tribute concert celebrating his 90th birthday coming up on June 16 at the Saban Theatre. But while I was interested in the concert, which will feature a cast of musical and theatrical stars who have shaped Bikel’s legendary career, I also had another agenda.

I wanted to apologize.

I felt I’d been a little harsh in a column I wrote a few months ago, in which I rebuked Bikel for the way he’d characterized the Israeli government’s plan to resettle Arab Bedouins in the Negev desert. His analogy to czarist Russia may have been overkill, but I didn’t need to play “gotcha.” It was too easy.

Had I done some research, I would have found examples of Bikel fighting heroically for Soviet Jewry or defending Israel in a way that would make any right-wing Zionist proud. But I only saw one part of him — the part that annoyed me. I didn’t see the man in full.

The man who met me for lunch at Pat’s the other day accepted my apology with grace, then jumped right in with a story. Bikel does this very well — he jumps in with stories.

Of course, he has spent 90 years creating and living out these stories. His real talent in life, he said, is to “dive in,” especially when it comes to anything musical or cultural.

In his early years, he immersed himself in Jewish-Austrian culture, until, in the spring of 1938, he stood next to his father as Hitler and his troops marched into Bikel’s beloved native city of Vienna. Within a few days, Theodore and his fellow Jewish students were targeted for bullying, with the explicit endorsement of the school’s headmaster.

Because his father was a staunch Zionist who had seniority in the movement, the Bikels were able to get British papers to immigrate to Palestine, which they did before World War II broke out.

In this new land, Bikel had to dive into a whole other culture, that of kibbutz life.

“I’m not the agricultural type,” he said, “but I really believed in the socialist ideals of the kibbutz movement.”

These socialist ideals long have co-existed with an artistic career that has spanned the kaleidoscope of the performing arts — from theater to opera to music to movies and television. He’s best known for playing Tevye the milkman in more than 2,000 stage performances of “Fiddler on the Roof,” and for his many years as a Jewish folk troubadour singing for peace and justice — but what most intrigued me were Bikel’s offbeat acting choices.

In particular, I wanted to discuss his part as Sheriff Max Muller in the 1958 Stanley Kramer film “The Defiant Ones.” The role, which earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor, is as far from Tevye as Don Corleone is from Cinderella. Bikel plays a sheriff in the Jim Crow South leading a posse to catch two fugitives chained to one another — a white man (Tony Curtis) and a black man (Sidney Poitier).

Bikel wouldn’t have taken the role, he told me, if the tough sheriff didn’t have a redeeming feature, in this case, a sense of fairness at a time when little fairness was shown toward blacks. Once he embraced the role, he dove right in and perfected the persona of the sheriff, southern drawl and all.

Another of his roles we discussed was Zorba in the theatrical production of “Zorba the Greek.” Again, his socialist ideals came into play.

“What I loved about Zorba,” Bikel said, “was that he had the extraordinary freedom that comes from not owning things. He knew that if you own things, they could end up owning you.”

If there’s one thing Bikel owns, it is the legacy of bringing joy and meaning to millions of people.

From the concert halls of Europe to the early cultural life of Tel Aviv to the stages of Broadway to the film and television sets of Hollywood to the folk festivals of the American heartland and the protest sites of social justice, Bikel has spent a lifetime creating moments of human artistry that people are compelled to remember.

These days, what brings him the most joy is his recent marriage to Aimee Ginsburg, a Jewish writer and journalist who previously lived in Israel and India and who joined us for lunch.

After his previous wife passed away in 2012, Bikel feared he’d “live out the rest of my days as half a person.” But, as fate would have it, he met Ginsburg at a Shabbat dinner while she was visiting Los Angeles. Ginsburg knew there was something special when, while they were oceans apart, “We couldn’t wait for the next Skype session.” They’ve been in bliss ever since.

For a man who values human experiences over material belongings, this is bliss that probably comes naturally. Bikel may have been blessed with an oversized talent, but perhaps his biggest blessing is simply an extraordinary love of life — a love that will be on full display at his June 16 concert.

It is this great love of life, with all of its possibilities and complications, that has “owned” Theo Bikel and made him a man in full.

David Suissa is president of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal and can be reached at davids@jewishjournal.com.

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Survivor: Frida Berger

Leave a Comment / Culture, Survivor / Jane Ulman

“You have to go to the synagogue,” the mailman announced, banging a drum as he stood outside the house Frida Berger (née Isac) shared with two sisters and two brothers in Comlausa, Romania. It was 7 a.m. on the day after Passover in 1944. Two Hungarian soldiers accompanying the mailman marched the Isacs a half mile to the synagogue, which was quickly filling up. Soon the town’s entire Jewish population, about 120 people, was locked inside, with no food or water and a bucket for a toilet. “We couldn’t believe what happened to us,” Frida recalled. She was almost 19.

The next day, soldiers led Frida and her 13-year-old next-door neighbor, Chaim Ber, back to her house, proceeding to confiscate valuables from both their homes. Suddenly, a soldier began beating Chaim with a piece of wood, shouting, “You have money because your father is in America.” Chaim cried as blood spurted from his body. Frida watched and cried. The soldiers then took Frida and the boy to the local school, confining them in a large room with other Jews whose homes had been searched.

The following evening, a Hungarian tax collector — a tall, heavy-set man — took Frida to retrieve bedding from her home. But, instead, he led her to Chaim Ber’s house, which was dark inside. “I want to take you,” he told her. Frida raced around a large, round table, trying to protect herself. “Shoot me, but you can’t touch me,” she screamed. Finally she darted out the front door and returned to the school, to which all of Comlausa’s Jews had been transferred.

Frida was on born on April 24, 1925, to Lebe and Margaret Fuchs Isac in Comlausa, Romania, in the region of Northern Transylvania.

Lebe was 34 and a widower with four children when Margaret, then 17, married him in 1913. She bore him an additional nine children — three girls and six boys. Frida was the sixth.

Their family was both wealthy and very religious and lived in a large house on 4 acres, growing crops and raising sheep and other animals. Lebe also had a glass business, and Margaret ran a small grocery store.

Frida rose at 5 a.m. to milk the cows. She also helped her mother with other chores, becoming adept at cooking and baking, as well as knitting, crocheting and embroidering. Margaret also taught her to share. “When a poor person comes to the house, don’t let them go without giving them money or food,” Margaret instructed.

Frida attended public school from age 7 to 15. At 14, she studied with a rabbi, who taught her to read and write Yiddish.

In April 1935, Lebe died of pneumonia.

In June 1940, Frida graduated from the gymnasium and worked as a caregiver. After her mother died of tuberculosis in September 1941, she continued caregiving and also bought and sold textiles.

Life continued relatively normally for Frida and her family after Hungary gained control of Northern Transylvania on Aug. 30, 1940, a result of the Second Vienna Award by the Nazis and fascist Italy. Then Germany occupied Hungary in March 1944, and persecution of the Jews accelerated.

Several days after being imprisoned in the school, the Comlausa Jews were loaded onto wagons and driven to the Sevlus ghetto.

Frida and her siblings Elka, Sara, Isidore and Sam lived in one room with 16 other people. Frida was in charge of procuring food, usually some bread and soup. “We were hungry plenty,” she recalled.

Toward the end of May, Frida and her siblings were loaded into boxcars — “like the cattle,” she said — and transported to Auschwitz. Frida and Elka were quickly dispatched to the right side, their brothers to the left, and Sara, 14, to the crematorium.

Frida and Elka were herded with the other women to a large room, where they were ordered to strip. Their heads were shaved, and they were given shoes and a striped uniform.

They were first sent to Block 19, which held 1,000 women, and later to Blocks 28 and 16. There was no official work, but they were awakened at 3:30 every morning and forced to stand in appel (roll call) for hours. Food was meager.

One day, Frida saw a mother and daughter conversing through the electrified wire fence. Suddenly a shot was fired, killing the daughter. After that, Frida and a friend voluntarily policed the area, warning people away from the fence.

In late September, Frida and Elka were enclosed in a large room with 3,000 young women and ordered to undress. “We were afraid they were going to turn on the gas,” Frida said. Instead the women were taken outside, where Dr. Josef Mengele selected about 2,000, including Frida and Elka, to be sent to Bergen-Belsen.

The sisters remained at Bergen-Belsen for two weeks, sleeping outside on the ground, before being shipped, along with 500 other young women, to Salzwedel, a subcamp of Neuengamme, to work in a munitions factory.

When they arrived, in October 1944, a German guard requested 10 strong girls. Frida immediately volunteered, assuming she would be assigned to the kitchen. But she was given “the hardest job,” shoveling heavy piles of bullet casings into a machine that cleaned them. She worked 12-hour shifts, rotating days or nights every two weeks.

After two months, unable to keep up the grueling pace, Frida wrapped one foot in a rag and faked a limp. She was given a desk job. But three weeks later, forgetting to limp, she was sent back to her old job.

Once, on a night shift, Frida spied extra soup in the pot after everyone had received their portion. “Can I have a little more, please?” she asked. The German guard promptly struck her twice across the face, sending her falling to the floor. “I saw stars,” Frida said.

In February, American planes began bombing Salzwedel. In March, the factory was bombed so badly the women couldn’t work. Instead, they cleared rubble at the train station, which had also been hit.

By April, work ceased, and the women were confined to their barracks. Soon the German personnel disappeared, except for the camp commander, who declared that he would hand over his 3,000 girls to the Americans rather than kill them. Then, on April 14, 1945, American troops liberated Salzwedel. “We couldn’t believe it,” Frida recalled.

Frida and Elka eventually made their way to the displaced person’s camp at Bergen-Belsen, arriving in June. In October, Frida left with a transport for Romania, taking three weeks to reach Comlausa. There she found her family home empty except for a notebook she and her sisters had filled with Hungarian and Yiddish songs, poems and horoscopes.

Frida learned that her brother Isidore was hospitalized in Bucharest, so she traveled there to care for him. He died on July 24, 1946.

She returned again to Comlausa, where she met Herman Berger. They became engaged on Oct. 26, 1946, and then married at Bergen-Belsen on Oct. 21, 1947.

Afterward, they traveled to Belgium, where Frida was reunited with her brothers Sam and Martin. She attended an ORT program, learning to design men’s shirts and pajamas, and Herman became a furrier. On Jan. 1, 1949, their son Leo was born.

On April 20, 1950, Frida and Herman immigrated to Montreal. Their daughter Esther Malka was born on Nov. 25, 1954, and son Benny on July 29, 1964.

On March 1, 1966, the family moved to Los Angeles, where Frida’s brothers were living. Here, the climate was better for Herman, who had been in poor health since contracting tuberculosis after the war.

Frida and Herman bought Mehadrin Kosher Meat Market on Beverly Boulevard in 1969, which they ran until selling it in 1996. Herman died on Oct. 6, 2006.

Frida, now 89, frequents her health club several times a week, likes to cook and bake for others, and visits the sick. She also stays in close touch with her family, which now includes 16 grandchildren and 23 great-grandchildren.

All her life, Frida has adhered to her mother’s advice to reach out to others in need — even in the camps.

“I helped, whatever I could do, and I believed in God,” she said.

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Moving and Shaking: Stephen S. Wise Temple turns 50, David Geffen honored

Leave a Comment / California, Mobile, Moving & Shaking, News / Ryan Torok

Stephen S. Wise Temple’s 50th anniversary jubilee gala on June 1 at the Orpheum Theatre was a reminder of how far the community has come since its founding in 1964.

“It was [Zionist leader] Stephen S. Wise who said you cannot have a good congregation unless you have good people in it. And you are the people who for 50 years came along with me as we built the most remarkable temple in the whole country,” founding Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin said, addressing a crowd of approximately 800 clergy, board members, educators, families and other guests.

The hilltop Bel Air Reform congregation is one of the largest in the nation.

A concert in the downtown venue followed. Stephen S. Wise’s Cantor Nathan Lam participated in an array of musical numbers. Lam joined the congregation in 1976 and also is the founding dean of the cantorial school at the Academy for Jewish Religion, CA.

Stephen S. Wise Temple founding Rabbi Isaiah Zeldin spoke. Photo by Rick Williams

Joshua Nelson and the Kosher Gospel Singers offered Jewish music sung in gospel style. Wearing a sequin-studded robe, Nelson, who is Jewish and black, led a program that included a rendition of “Hine Ma Tov” set to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The crowd rose to its feet more than once, clapping along. Two backup singers, a bassist and a percussionist accompanied the pianist-vocalist-bandleader.

Musical collaborations continued through the night. To the delight of parents with children in the temple’s day school, students in costume performed numbers from “Fiddler on the Roof,” including “Tradition.” The final number featured Nelson’s band, Lam, Cantor Magda Fishman and the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus.

Stephen S. Wise Temple Senior Rabbi Eli Herscher served as master of ceremonies.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti presented an award to the synagogue on behalf of the city.

David Geffen talks about his lengthy association with UCLA, its medical school and students. Photo courtesy of Geffen School of Medicine

Philanthropist and entertainment mogul David Geffen was awarded the UCLA Medal, the university’s highest honor, during the Hippocratic Oath Ceremony for Geffen School of Medicine graduates on May 30.

Presented by UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, who described the prize as “super-select,” Geffen became the latest addition to a diverse list of recipients that includes Bill and Hillary Clinton and architect Frank Gehry.

Accepting the award, Geffen told the 200 graduates assembled on the lawn outside Perloff Hall, “I went here, too — sort of …”

Thus began a witty recounting of his life and career. He recalled the time he first visited the UCLA campus, where Geffen’s brother was a second-year law school student. It was just after his own 1960 high school graduation.

“I remember walking around this campus wishing I had worked hard enough to attend this school,” Geffen said.

Not that the future mogul would let a trifling acceptance letter get in his way. On the application to work in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency, one of his first entertainment jobs, Geffen lied and said he had graduated from UCLA.

“Every single day I came in [to work] early, waiting for the letter that would reveal to my boss I was not a college graduate,” he said. Geffen eventually intercepted the letter confirming his absence from the UCLA student database.

“I stuffed it in my pocket, saved it and framed it,” he said proudly, knowing his mischievous tale is now the stuff of Hollywood legend. “So, you can see, from the very beginning of my career, UCLA was very important to me!”

The prestigious medal, created in 1979, served as a tribute to Geffen’s entertainment career as well as his philanthropic achievements. In 2002, Geffen made history when he announced the largest single donation ever to a U.S. medical school, a $200 million unrestricted gift to the UCLA School of Medicine, which was swiftly renamed the Geffen School of Medicine. A decade later, he gave an additional $100 million to fund merit-based scholarships covering the entire cost of medical school, enabling an estimated 20 percent of future students to graduate debt-free.

Whether out of sheer generosity or penance for his rascally past, Geffen told the crowd, “Now I am in a position to repay UCLA.

“It is not possible for me to exaggerate how proud I am to have my name associated with this incredible institution,” he said in closing. “My mom always told me, ‘If you have your health, you have everything,’ [and] it turns out, she was right.”

— Danielle Berrin, Senior Writer

Samara Wolpe with her father, Rabbi David Wolpe.

Samara Wolpe was presented with the 2014 Woman of the Year award by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society at its May 31 Grand Finale Gala at the Skirball Cultural Center.

Samara said the gala was “wonderful, such a special experience.” Her friends and family all attended to cheer for her as she stood with the other nominees. “I was nervous because I’m the only person under 18 who was nominated,” she later told the Journal.

The organization presents the Man and Woman of the Year titles to whomever raises the most money for research in 10 weeks, with every dollar counting as one vote.

Samara, a junior at Milken Community Schools, found out when she was 9 that her father, Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, had non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He is currently in remission.

In honor of the help this research gave her father, the younger Wolpe fundraised enough money to win the competition locally. She will find out on June 30 how she did in the national competition and can’t disclose how much she raised until then.

“If I don’t win the national competition, that’s OK with me. I still did a good thing,” she said.

Collectively, the 20 Los Angeles candidates raised more than $1.16 million, according to the organization’s website.

Lauren Plichta, an adviser for the Man and Woman of the Year campaign, said about 500 people attended the event, which was hosted by comedian Andy Kindler. The Man of the Year was Christopher Wilno.

Samara, 17, couldn’t have asked for a better response when she won: “My dad jumped out of his seat! It was really sweet. He did so much for my campaign; he really fought for me,” she said.

Her father has been in remission for seven years, thanks largely to the drug Rituxan, which researchers discovered with the help of funding provided by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

On her fundraising page, Samara recounted the story of when her father first told her, “Honey, I have cancer,” and the horror she felt at facing her father’s mortality as a child. She continued online: “I want to be part of a story where no child has to hear those words again, unless they are followed by these: “Don’t worry, honey. There’s a cure.”

— Cora Markowitz, Contributing Writer

Moving and Shaking highlights events, honors and simchas. Got a tip? Email ryant@jewishjournal.com.

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Seeing Seville

Leave a Comment / Culture / Elyse Glickman

In Spain’s fourth-largest city, Seville, the Juderia (Jewish quarter) is a vibrant maze of brightly painted buildings, vest-pocket-sized parks, sidewalk cafes, flamenco-show venues and boutiques.

While this should come as no surprise — it is the area’s social and commercial epicenter — all of the paint, flower boxes and souvenirs conceal a darker history that, over time, nearly rid the city of Jews entirely.

According to the Bible (I Kings 10:22), Jews were in contact with southern Spain during the days of Solomon. Historical records, however, suggest the time of their introduction in Seville — now capital of the autonomous community called Andalusia — was between the fifth and seventh centuries.

When the city came under Moorish rule in 712, a Jewish guard was formed for its defense, making a harmonious period during which Jews, Moors and Christians co-existed. In the Middle Ages, Seville’s Juderia was a bustling Jewish community that was second largest after Toledo. At its peak in the mid-13th century, an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 Jewish families lived in the area.

During those times, Jews were engaged in banking, law, commerce, medicine and the dyeing industry. After the 1013 Berber conquest, Seville served as a refuge for Jews escaping from persecution in nearby Córdoba.

The protracted decline of the Jewish community started in 1378 — more than 100 years before the final expulsion from Spain in 1492. Following a Christian reconquest of the city, a local archdeacon, Ferrand Martinez, launched a campaign of violent sermons against the Jews, and, according to Stephen Birmingham in “The Grandees: America’s Sephardic Elite,” led an armed mob in 1391 that “massacred more than four thousand Jews, looted and burned their houses.” Although many Jews converted, the Jewish problem became the Converso problem.

Today, about 130 Jews are trying to restore Jewish life and tradition to Seville. According to local tour guide and historian Moises Hassan-Amselem, the Orthodox community (consisting of Moroccan Jews and more closely resembling the American Conservative denomination in practice) was created officially in 1966. Although some Moroccan-Jewish families had lived there for a couple of generations, others arrived in the 1960s and ’70s to attend the local university.

This community — about 30 families— stages services for Shabbat, even though getting a minyan can prove challenging. There also are services for the High Holy Days.

The Reform community (beitrambam.es), which also identifies itself as Progressive, was organized a few years back by Jews from Andalusia seeking an alternative. Its 25 to 30 families include expats from the United States and elsewhere in the Americas, converts and other members of mixed marriages. They celebrate Kabbalat Shabbat once a month, but do not have a permanent shul, instead using offices and hotel rooms around town as needed. A member of the community teaches Hebrew once a week to children of both congregations.

The Centro de Interpretacion Juderia de Sevilla, a museum in Barrio Santa Cruz, one of the sections that make up the Jewish quarter, houses artifacts from the Juderia’s glory days and downfall. But Hassan-Amselem (jewishsevilla.com) prefers telling Jewish history by hitting the streets.

“I take my clients to small corners of the quarter where they can see a piece of history that provokes conversation about how Jews live in Spain today,” he explained upon our meeting at the Hotel Las Casas de la Juderia. “My job is to let people know that the strong historical roots of the Jewish community are still important. I want to connect Jewish history to the present and prove to visitors that it is still possible to live a Jewish life here, even if it can be challenging.”

Although the hotel lobby is quite beautiful, Hassan-Amselem is quick to point out the building is not representative of the Juderia as it existed 600 years ago. Our tour takes the form of a scavenger hunt, tracking down finds hidden in and around Barrio Santa Cruz, Barrio de San Bartolomé, Calle Santa Maria la Blanca and remnants of the quarter’s wall originating from Calle Conde de Ibarra.

Our first stop is the Church of Santa María la Blanca, where one wall section embellished with vividly colored and gilded Christian imagery is peeled back to reveal the spare architectural hallmarks of a medieval synagogue. Although there is no signage to point out the building’s former use, the architectural contrast stands as a visual reminder of how Martinez galvanized his flock to erase any trace of Jewish presence.

Later, as we walked through a beautiful garden park, Jardines de Murillo, Hassan-Amselem told me it was once the site of a Jewish cemetery. And inside the Church of San Nicolás, he showed me its most visited shrine, memorializing a child, whose signage was changed around 2005 to remove a declaration that the boy was killed by Jews. (Local historians believe, according to Hassan-Amselem, that the story was a myth planted by clerics to support pogroms.)

In addition to these larger landmarks, there are small Hebrew inscriptions posted in random walls and archways around town that remain enigmatic centuries after they were placed. Hassan-Amselem said they may have been written by non-Jews — one captions a picture of the Virgin Mary stepping over a snake, reading “hu yeshufecha rosh” (“[S]he will strike you in the head,” from Genesis 3:15, a reference to the enmity that is said to exist between humanity and the snake after the incident in the Garden of Eden).

Essential sites beyond the Juderia include the Castillo de San Jorge/Spanish Inquisition Museum in the Triana neighborhood; Plaza de España (built for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929); Jerez, the cradle of sherry production; and the Tio Pepe bodega, known for its acclaimed kosher sherry.

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From Russia, with Love

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Mobile, News, United States / Danielle Berrin

I admired her gumption.

Sofia Gelman’s very first email to me got straight to it: The 83-year-old Russian-born immigrant to Los Angeles had led a very colorful life — the child of shtetl Jews, she was forced to flee her home as an adolescent to escape the Nazis, suffered hunger, deprivation and disadvantage before attending medical school and becoming a neurologist; then prospered as a career-driven wife, mother and grandmother before conditions in Russia (and anti-Semitism in particular) compelled her family to immigrate to the United States in 1992 — the details of which she had compiled into her book, “Jids,” and could I please help her find a Hollywood producer?

“In the book there [are] so many thrilling moments that you [won’t be able to] stop reading it,” Gelman wrote to me with her trademark aplomb in strained but legible English.

She had that classic Hollywood conviction that her story was worthy of the screen, and she was eager to make her pitch. “I want to work days and nights with a screenwriter to make all the details more interesting, because my English is still poor,” she added. “My book is the best source to make a movie.”

I admired her certitude. But when I received the book, I placed it on the shelf and left it alone. Gelman refused to accept my indifference.

For two years she wrote me letters, sometimes including a poem she had written, or a reflection on the war, or even a letter to the editor. She was tireless, unrelenting. Last January, out of the blue, she sent me a 28-page document detailing her work as the chief neurologist of Batumi, Georgia, where she had lived and practiced medicine for 30 years (“I was like an icon,” she later said with surprisingly endearing immodesty. “The people worshipped me.”)

Her missives were always passionate, painstakingly detailed, filled with references to Judaism and God, but her basic English precluded her from the fullness of articulate expression. And so I would read her words, reply politely and move on.

But Sofia Gelman, I would come to learn, is as indefatigable as she is adorable. And she had toppled obstacles far more intransigent than a reluctant journalist.

So, one day, as I had just finished speaking at a Jewish Federation event aimed mainly at young Jews, an effervescent octogenarian with snowy white hair, cerulean eyes and a petite frame that hardly seemed to contain her personality approached me with a note and a poem.

“Sofia!” I exclaimed, knowing it had to be her.

She hugged me and kissed me and handed me a scrap of paper on which she had scribbled a movie idea promoting Jewish values and achievements. “Zis,” she declared in her thick Russian accent, “is my mission.” She was so irresistible and radiant, I told her it was time we talked.

Three months later, I arrived at the two-bedroom West Hollywood apartment she shares with her husband of more than 60 years, Elya. When she opened the door, she offered a lavish greeting, grabbed my hand and promptly showed off the Baroque-style furniture Elya had crafted by hand. “He is very, very handy man,” she boasted. Then she sat me at her dining-room table, where a Georgian feast awaited — gefilte fish made with the fresh-caught carp Elya had hooked in a nearby lake, and which she had prepared according to her mother’s recipe; shredded cabbage salad salt-and-peppered with savory croutons; a green bean and carrot cassoulet with caramelized onions; and warm fried rolls with the chewy texture of doughnuts — all prepared solely for me.

“Fersst, you eat,” Gelman insisted. “Zen ve talk.”

But by the time I got through three servings of the spongiest, juiciest gefilte fish I had ever eaten, Gelman had to be at a West Hollywood City Council meeting, where she was being honored with a women’s history banner for her decades of community service. After arriving in L.A. from Georgia in the early ’90s, Gelman immediately went to work founding an afterschool teen center in her neighborhood and serving on the city’s Senior Advisory Board. I went with her to the meeting, where it became obvious that Gelman is one of WeHo’s best-loved senior citizens (the original painted banner from the event will be on display on Santa Monica Boulevard next year). Irrepressibly gracious, she accepted her honor by reading her latest poem, an ode to West Hollywood, to the city councilmembers.

We decided to reconvene two weeks later.

Again, there was gefilte fish. For the next two hours, Gelman shared her story, delving into deep, rich details about her childhood — fleeing Ukraine from invading Germans, hiding inside a train during an air bombardment, being separated from her mother, who left in search of bread, the factory manager who saved them, the military exploits that stole away her father, the starvation, the shoe-lessness, the anti-Semitism, the near-death illnesses, the medical school miracle, the five miscarriages and painful pregnancies, her idealized mother, her illustrious husband and her two sons, who now work as doctors at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai. Every step of the way, her stories were so vivid and captivating that, an hour and a half in, Gelman was still steeped in 1940, and I had to remind her that in the same conversation we had to make it to 2014.

But when you have lived as many lives as Gelman has in a lifetime, through a war-ravaged childhood, Soviet Russia, the creation of a family and professional life only to start all over again in a foreign place, every little story deserves its due.

“Everything concerns me so much that I cannot sleep!” she tells me at the end of our interview.

“You know, Sofia,” I say. “Your life would make a very good movie.”

From Russia, with Love Read More »

‘Intersection’ at the Breed Street Shul

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Jonathan Maseng

The heavily Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights might seem an odd place to hold an art show that appeals to Jews, but for many native Angelenos who are familiar with the neighborhood’s history, it makes perfect sense.

Boyle Heights, the onetime home of most of the city’s Jewry, has a long Yiddishe history — continued today at the Breed Street Shul. A pair of buildings in the center of Boyle Heights, the shul has been partially restored and now serves as a cultural center helping to bridge the gap between Jews and Latinos. Through June 8, it is holding its first art exhibition, “Intersection,” which organizers hope will bring in Jews from across Los Angeles to the neighborhood.

“I’ve been really wanting to do something with art,” Breed Street Shul executive director Sherry Marks said by phone about the exhibition. “We’ve done film, we’ve done books, we hope to be doing theater at some point, we’ve done lectures. … One thing that we have not done is art.”

“Intersection” is open noon to 5 p.m. daily, or by appointment.

The idea for the exhibition came about when Jewish philanthropist Annette Shapiro came across an artist named Mike Saijo, who had donated a painting of the Breed Street Shul for an auction at an event Shapiro attended. She told the folks at Breed Street about Saijo, and he and Marks soon connected.

Saijo offered to donate a painting for the shul’s annual fundraiser, and the work was auctioned off for several thousand dollars. Marks thought holding a show at Breed Street would make a wonderful event, and Saijo agreed. He brought together artists Siegfried Knop and Lori Shocket, a father-daughter team, and Fabian Debora to create an exhibition that would explore the artists’ reactions to the shul and surrounding communities.

“I realized pretty quickly that I’m not an art curator,” said Marks, who hired her friend Michael Chagnon, an art historian, to curate the exhibition, which contains works that touch on everything from the internment of Japanese Boyle Heights residents to actual depictions of the shul itself.

At the first meeting about the show, Marks was confronted with a surprise by one of the artists. Debora, who grew up in the area and now works in a gang-member rehabilitation program, stood up to make an announcement.

“I feel like I should let you know that this is not the first time I’ve been in the shul,” she recalls the artist saying before he pointed to photos of a graffiti-covered pre-renovation Breed Street Shul. “You see those photographs over there? That was my first artwork in the shul.”

Marks was amazed by Debora’s revelation. “I just got chills,” she said. “Here’s this man who was a gang member, used drugs and turned his life around, and is now a nationally recognized artist who is coming back to this place to create pieces reflecting on the shul and the community.”

When Breed Street Shul first reopened, according to Marks, “anytime we did an event, it was always kind of a Sunday afternoon because we wanted to encourage people to come to Boyle Heights.” But this time the show’s opening was May 31, a Saturday night.

“There’s a lot of negative perception about Boyle Heights. … We didn’t want people not to come,” Marks said.

However, now that people have come to the neighborhood for other events, she’s hopeful they see the neighborhood as more inviting. She also thinks that, for many young Jews living in Echo Park and Silver Lake, the Eastside isn’t such a no-man’s land.

“We’re anxious to have people come and enjoy the work,” Marks said. “Now that we have a building that’s usable and that we can actually do programming in … we’re very excited about bringing new things to the neighborhood and being a gathering place.

“Underneath all that is our desire to be promoting dialogue and relationship between Jews and Latinos.”

“Intersection” is open through June 8 at the Breed Street Shul, 247 North Breed St. The Shul will be open from noon-5 p.m. every day for showings, which also are available by appointment. For more information, call (323) 881-4850.

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Turkey’s Islamists protest, Gezi Park rioters draw police

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Simone Wilson

A growing divide between secular and religious factions in Turkey was starkly illustrated by two crosstown protests in Istanbul on May 31.

The first, covered minute-to-minute by the international media, was held to mark the first anniversary of Turkey’s historic anti-government uprising.

The protest commemorated riots that drew hundreds of thousands of angry locals to Istanbul’s central Taksim Square, after police took brutal measures to disperse a group that had gathered peacefully to oppose the development of nearby Gezi Park. Under a strict crackdown ordered by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, police ended up killing 12 protesters and injuring thousands more — mostly from wounds caused by tear gas canisters and plastic bullets.

The 2014 anniversary protest was a similar scene: Police tackled protesters to the ground, kicking and beating them with batons, and fired tear gas and plastic bullets at close range.

The second event, held only a few kilometers away on the opposite shore of the Golden Horn, was an anti-Israel rally marking the four-year anniversary of Israel’s deadly raid of the Mavi Marmara, a Turkish ship that attempted to deliver aid to Gaza in May 2010.

A largely Muslim crowd marched from the heavily touristed Sultanahmet Square down to the Sarayburnu port, where they crammed onto the decks of the run-down Marmara and the dock below. Ten larger-than-life photos of the Turkish “martyrs” killed by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the raid hung from the side of the ship. Rally-goers waved a sea of Palestinian flags alongside ones from Turkey, Syria and Egypt. Their cheers and slogans — including “Zionists you will see, Palestine will be free” and “God is great” — echoed across the water.

Media reports put the Gezi Park protest turnout in the hundreds or low thousands, while the march to the Marmara apparently attracted more than 10,000. Yet not a single policeman could be spotted in the immediate vicinity of the latter.

“The mere fact that anti-government protest is deemed illegal and anti-Israel protest is deemed legitimate is a disconcerting image,” Gabriel Mitchell, Israel-Turkey project coordinator for the Israeli foreign-policy think tank Mitvim, wrote on his blog.

In the days leading up to the Gezi protest, Erdoğan had warned protesters of the Taksim Square area: “You will not be able to come to those places like you did last year. Because the police have taken absolute orders, they will do everything [to drive you out].”

He stayed silent, however, on the anti-Israel march and rally across town.

Both crowds appeared to carry a renewed passion for their cause — perhaps having to do with the fact that, in another coincidence, both 51-year-old Uğur Süleyman Söylemez, a Turkish activist aboard the Marmara, and 64-year-old Elif Çermik, a Gezi protester, finally succumbed to their injuries the week before the protests, after suffering long-term comas.

The Marmara rally, also called “Anti-Zionist Day,” has become an annual event thrown by the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), the same Turkish NGO that originally sent the Marmara to Gaza. The IHH is often criticized for its close ties with the Turkish government. A columnist from the Hurriyet Daily News, a left-wing Turkish newspaper, once called it a “ ‘GNGO,’ in other words a ‘governmental-non-governmental-organization.’ ”

Speaking to the Journal on the streets of Istanbul, various Gezi protesters said they saw the Marmara fanfare across town as a government-supported ploy to distract the Turkish citizenry from unrest at Taksim.

Although Erdoğan didn’t publicly condone the anti-Israel rally, members of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) reportedly attended and spoke at the event. One woman in attendance wore a full-length cape printed with Erdoğan’s face. And many others wore sweatbands printed with “R4BIA,” or held up four fingers, a symbol of support for Egypt’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, to which Erdoğan also has close ties.

Another red flag for anti-Erdoğan secularists was that the Marmara event overlapped with a Muslim protest outside Istanbul’s most popular tourist attraction: the stunning Hagia Sophia. Thousands of protesters gathered at the site that same day to demand that the former cathedral — converted into a mosque by a 15th century Sultan, then to a secular museum by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern-day Turkey — be reverted back into a place of Muslim prayer.

Mitchell of the Mitvim think tank explained in an interview that the message Erdoğan sent on Saturday was that “when it comes to IHH and its agenda with Israel, that’s OK. And when it comes to the pressure to make Hagia Sophia into a mosque, that’s OK. But if you are rallying against the government, that is definitely not OK.”

Atatürk’s radical early 20th-century modernization of Turkey is revered by the Gezi crowd; Erdoğan, on the other hand, is seen as an increasingly authoritarian ruler imposing his Islamist values on the country.

The prime minister isn’t a big fan of his detractors, either. Today’s Zaman, an English-language newspaper in Turkey, reported that, on the eve of the Gezi anniversary riot, Erdoğan claimed protesters had “killed people with Molotov Cocktails, attacked our head-scarved sisters, mosques [and] burned Turkish flags.”

Nervana Mahmoud, a popular Egyptian blogger and Middle East commentator, tweeted on the morning of the protest: “On Gezi’s anniversary, Erdoğan is more powerful, but also more paranoid, smug and delusional.”

To the outside world, Turkish-Israeli relations, which collapsed after Israel’s Marmara raid and have remained delicate ever since, appeared to be on the verge of a breakthrough this spring.

However, an IHH lawsuit brought against the four Israeli commanders who ordered the raid may be preventing the final steps of reconciliation. On May 26, Istanbul’s 7th Court of Serious Crimes ordered Interpol to arrest the IDF commanders and force them to appear in court — a highly political move that only added more fuel to the Marmara rally. Bright red posters being waved at the event showed the Israelis’ faces under the heading, “WANTED.”

Erdoğan has distanced himself from the IHH’s ongoing Marmara battle. “The court case opened by families of our martyrs or of our wounded ones is not an initiative of ours,” he said at a recent press conference. “We cannot influence that.”

A scathing piece on the Turkish court’s decision in Foreign Policy Magazine pointed out that while “strategic and economic interests may nevertheless pave the way for a loveless Israeli-Turkish rapprochement … under an Islamist leadership that offers an anti-Israeli narrative for every domestic crisis, Turkey has become a hostile environment for Israel.”

Even if Erdoğan didn’t directly back the anti-Israel rally, he has much to gain from it.

A 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 86 percent of Turkish voters had a negative view of Israel, while only 2 percent viewed Israel in a favorable light. Turkish politicians, Erdoğan included, have been known to piggyback off this popular anti-Israel sentiment in order to win elections — like the one coming up for Erdoğan in August.

Most recently, when outrage swept the country anew last month after a coal mine caught fire and killed more than 300 miners, Erdoğan was quoted by local media as calling one protester “Israeli spawn.”

Said Mitchell of the Turkish prime minister: “He has made plenty of statements that are closing in on that derogatory, disgusting language. Even in Turkey itself, to refer to someone as Israeli or Jewish, these things are derogatory terms.”

While the Gezi diehards clashed against Erdoğan’s police barricades up the hill at Taksim Square on May 31, the sounds of an IHH promotional video boomed out over the Golden Horn.

“Since its establishment, the State of Israel has played the role of the world’s spoiled child and has built walls of shame, with the intention to protect its lands and to dissociate itself with the outside world,” read the narrator. Two young Turkish boys in the crowd whooped their support, one of them waving a big sign that read, “DAMN ISRAEL.”

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Kerry says U.S. to work with, monitor new Palestinian government

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Mobile, United States / Jewish Journal

Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday the United States would work with the new Palestinian unity government “as we need to” but would be monitoring its commitment to continued cooperation with Israel.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a government of technocrats on Monday in a reconciliation deal between his Fatah movement and the Islamist Hamas, which advocates Israel's destruction.

“We are going to be watching (the government) very closely, as we said from day one, to absolutely ensure that it upholds each of those things it has talked about, that it doesn’t cross the line,” Kerry said.

Kerry said Abbas had told him that the new government would be committed to principles of non-violence, negotiations with Israel and existing accords including cooperation on security.

Kerry, who oversaw peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians that stalled in April, said he had spoken over the last few days with both Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned on Sunday against any international rush to recognise the new Palestinian government.

Netanyahu has condemned Washington's decision to work with the unity government. But Kerry stressed that Washington did not recognise the new Palestinian government.

“Let me be very clear: the United States does not recognise a government with respect to Palestine, because that would recognise a state and there is no state,” Kerry said. “This is not an issue of recognition of a government.”

Israel froze U.S.-brokered peace talks with Abbas when the unity deal was announced on April 23 after numerous unsuccessful attempts at Palestinian reconciliation since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip from Fatah forces in fighting in 2007.

The United States views Hamas as a “terrorist” organization and the U.S. Congress has imposed restrictions on U.S. funding for Abbas's Palestinian Authority, which typically runs at $500 million a year, in the event of a unity government.

Kerry said the U.S. law on assistance to the Palestinian Authority specifically states that the administration makes a judgment about “undue influence by Hamas in any way”.

“At the moment, we don't have that, and so we are looking to see as we go forward on a day-to-day evaluation – we will measure the composition (of the new government), we will measure the policies of the new technocrat government, and we will calibrate our approach accordingly,” he said.

“I’ve had several conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Kerry said, playing down reports of a rift with Israel. “We’re completely talking about this on a day-to-day basis. Israel is our friend, our strong ally.”

Reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Mark Heinrich

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