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Jewish Journal

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November 11, 2015

Aviva plans for an inclusive future

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

As of October of this year, when Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill granting all transgender children in foster care the right to placement consistent with their gender identity, regardless of the sex listed in government records, California’s social service agencies were obliged to rewrite policies to plan for a more inclusive future. 

A few agencies, however, among them Hollywood-based Aviva Family and Children’s Services, had anticipated that sweeping changes were imminent and were already in the midst of careful self-assessments and interagency discussions on how to better meet the needs of LGBTQ clients. 

“Here we are, in the heart of Hollywood. This is an area of huge diversity and acceptance, and we need to be stepping up and showing that we are really welcoming,” Regina Bette, president and CEO of Aviva, said during a recent discussion at the agency’s offices. 

Aviva currently is at the forefront of local organizations working to prepare the entire youth social services system to navigate LGBTQ issues in the coming years.

Founded in 1915 as an adoption center and residential facility for single women in the Jewish community, Aviva has developed into a nonsectarian, comprehensive agency covering four main areas of service: residential care for adolescent girls, foster care and adoptions, wraparound care and community-based mental health.

“We have to be open to serving people where they are, and serving them as they are,” said Jeffrey Jamerson, vice president of programs and services at Aviva, calling transgender issues “the next platform of transformation.”

A 2014 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, funded by the Los Angeles LGBT Center’s RISE initiative (Recognize, Intervene, Support, and Empower), found that approximately one in five foster youth in Los Angeles — home to the largest population of foster youth in the country — identify as LGBTQ. 

“That’s a huge segment of our foster care system that are not getting their needs met,” said Bette, who was previously on the RISE leadership committee. “They are not going to be prepared to go into adulthood, they are not going to feel good about themselves, they may not even make it.”

The Williams Institute study served as a call to action, Bette said. 

About a year and a half ago, Aviva began sending its staff and prospective foster parents to training sessions with the RISE initiative, a pioneering project backed by the federal government tasked with creating a service model for LGBTQ youth in the foster care system, including combating heterosexism and transphobia, and working to reform policies and best practices. 

And, for the first time, Aviva is receiving calls from county agencies looking for foster placement specifically for transgender youth, said Karina Souquette, Aviva’s assistant vice president of foster care, adoption and intensive-treatment foster care.

Last month, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation awarded Aviva’s Foster Family and Adoption agency its “All Children-
All Families” seal of recognition in acknowledgement of the organization’s commitment to serving LGBTQ youth and families. 

At the start of the process, Aviva used an HRC survey to assess its staff’s preparedness, using the results to conduct a year’s worth of training sessions.

The seal is awarded to agencies that demonstrate their commitment to addressing LGBTQ cultural competency and inclusion by meeting 10 benchmarks covering policy, staff training, and inclusive language, among other areas. To date, the HRC has awarded the seal to over 50 agencies.

In addition, Jamerson is Aviva’s representative to an ongoing “Transgender Needs” collaborative workgroup convened by the Los Angeles County Probation Department to prepare new policies for the county’s group homes. 

According to the group’s leader, Lisa Cambell-Motten, director of the probation department, Aviva is one of four group homes in the county that are ahead of the curve. 

“But the kids are ahead of all of us,” Cambell-Motten said.

One of the issues is that the agency’s license specifies that its residential treatment center is for girls only. 

“I don’t really know if it is all-girl, to be honest,” Bette said. “It’s youth. I don’t know whether we have any biological girls who identify as male. Now we are trying to use ‘youth’ more, but it is really an evolution.

“We are coming up to speed to accept youth in our programs based on what they identify as, but our licensing … they are not fully up to speed yet, but I think they will be there soon,” Bette said. 

The licensing organization, Community Care Licensing, also is participating in the workgroup, and Cambell-Motten said she expects the organization’s certifications to change as a result. 

But there are difficult issues that the workgroup still needs to resolve, including “the possibility that a [self-identifying] girl could become pregnant with her roommate.”

Cambell-Moten said she expects the group to continue meeting throughout the next year. 

In the meantime, Bette and her staff are in the process of updating their program statements to account for gender fluidity. 

“We are evolving as an organization. We are doing it in what I hope is a very respectful and natural way. We are building on the strengths and interests of our staff and helping them to move forward,” Bette said. 

Aviva plans for an inclusive future Read More »

Waking life: Triple Art at UCLA a celebration through creation

Leave a Comment / Culture /

The start of the new school year inevitably means a series of artistic journeys for visitors to UCLA Hillel. So it goes for the fall quarter, when Hillel’s annual Triple Art Exhibition takes visitors inside the mind and around the world.

At locations throughout Hillel’s Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts, guests experience the metaphysical landscapes of Judith Liebe, scenes of Eastern European life from the camera of Yale Strom, and Ann Krasner’s depictions of visionary Jewish artists of Russian descent who changed the world. 

The Triple Art Exhibition is not a theme exhibition, but the common denominator between these very different artists is not difficult to pinpoint, according to Hillel’s artistic director Perla Karney, who, with this exhibition, has displayed the works of 85 professional artists and hung more than 600 pieces of art by students in 12 years.

“All three of them have gone on a Jewish journey as artists,” said Karney, who followed the careers of the three artists and subsequently recruited them to display at Hillel. “They explore the Jewish identity, which is reflected in their art.”

“From the very beginning of the Jewish tradition, we recognize and record God affirming what’s good for us,” Rabbi Aaron Lerner, Hillel’s executive director, added. “Judaism embraces things like sexuality and food and art. What I see that is similar in all three of these exhibits tonight is that there’s an embrace of life.”

Gathering at Hillel for the exhibition’s opening, Strom, Liebe and Krasner gave presentations and discussed elements of their work. Liebe and Krasner are based in Los Angeles and Strom lives in San Diego, where he is an artist-in-residence in the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University. 

To assemble “Fragments,” Strom drew from his archive of photographs taken of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the last 30 years. A klezmer musician, writer, playwright, filmmaker and photographer, Strom initially traveled throughout Eastern Europe in search of music. What he found were Jewish communities reminiscent of prewar shtetl life, prompting him to record what life had been like for Jewish communities and what it became after the Berlin Wall came down. The black-and-white images shot in the 1980s look like they captured community life of a far earlier time. 

“I wanted to meet survivors,” said Strom, whose works were previously displayed at the Anne Frank Center in Manhattan. “This was more than people just singing or playing me a tune. All the variances of life and culture somehow survived the Holocaust and Stalinist years. That really opened my eyes and imagination.” 

When he first went to the former Eastern Bloc and visited small communities, Strom discovered he possessed a unique item that facilitated his research: his violin. Residents would notice the violin and, given he had schlepped it all the way from America, ask Strom to play a tune. And he obliged.

“So I’d start to play, and they’d sing or they’d get an instrument or call other people and start to tell stories,” Strom recalled, “and I would eventually put the violin down and start to take pictures.” 

Liebe, another well-traveled artist and the daughter of a filmmaker and an actress, grew up in Germany and studied in Munich and Paris. The striking images in her exhibition “Far Away” line the staircase of the Dortort Center. Carrying titles such as “Desire” and “Utopia,” the works celebrate the artist’s sense of security.

“Growing up in Germany, I have not experienced safety at all times,” Liebe said. “The world around us is in turmoil, and peace seems far away. It is my strong desire through my art to remind us of the magnitude of this world and the peacefulness that is contained within it.” 

In “Jewish Visionaries in the Arts,” Krasner’s bustling cityscapes, elongated stick-like bodies and brash colors celebrate the accomplishments of immigrant artists like Marc Chagall, George Gershwin and Mark Rothko. Those artists were able to reach great heights for the same reasons that Krasner could — because they had talent and because their new homeland received them with open arms. 

Krasner’s 25 works include depictions of friends and family members as well as celebrated thinkers and artists. Many of the collage-like works include lengthy quotations from the subjects on their philosophies about life and art. 

“America was open to outsiders, and with its incredible growth of new competitive industries, Jewish immigrants were ready to jump in,” said Krasner, who came to California from Russia 27 years ago. “Their talent was more important than who they were at that time. All of this created amazing opportunities for Jewish immigrants to succeed.”

Krasner, who has degrees in mathematics and computer science, noted with some irony that she had never painted until her husband gave her a brush and canvas for her 30th birthday. Four months later, she was winning competitions and exhibiting around the world. 

Her work also examines immigrants pushing their children to achieve great heights. Krasner can relate. Her 15-year-old son, Benjamin, who performed at the opening, is an accomplished pianist who has already won several international competitions and studies at Cal State Northridge. 

The Triple Art Exhibition is on display through the end of December at Hillel at UCLA, 574 Hilgard Ave. For more information, visit uclahillel.org.

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Calm amidst the violence in Israel

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Susan Freudenheim /

On the day the world was parsing Bibi Netanyahu’s suggestion that the notoriously anti-Semitic Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Amin Al-Husseini, was responsible for Hitler’s Holocaust, I was among a group of journalists touring Jerusalem’s Waldorf Astoria hotel, which had just been named the top luxury hotel in the Middle East by Condé Nast’s Readers’ Choice Awards. 

This hotel, in fact, was once the mufti’s own prize hotel.

It reopened last year following a seven-year, $50 million expansion and renovation, but to Israelis it’s known as having been built by the mufti as his crowning achievement in luxury, his Palace Hotel. Al-Husseini opened the hotel in 1929 with great fanfare — it had an elevator! — but the business was crushed five years later when the King David Hotel opened just around the corner. 

The Palace Hotel, opened in 1929 by the Mufti of Jerusalem, was renovated and expanded into the Jerusalem Waldorf Astoria. Photo is public domain

The British took over the building for a while, then after Israel’s independence in 1948, it served as Israeli government offices. It even housed a tax museum for many years, and you can imagine what an attraction that was. 

Today, the crystal-chandelier-clad Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem that beat out Qatar for glam is owned by the Orthodox Canadian Reichman family and is glatt kosher throughout, so many of its guests are Orthodox. I witnessed several shidduchs-in-progress in the grand courtyard.

Take that, mufti. 

I was in Israel at the height of the knifing terror, a guest of Israel’s Ministry of Tourism and the Hilton Hotels of Israel, of which the Waldorf Astoria is a showpiece. It was a trip full of juxtapositions: The news screamed of conflict. Life in Israel continued apace.

I saw great luxury on this trip — including on a tour of the “presidential suite” at the Waldorf, which has not yet housed a U.S. president but does lay claim to former House Speaker John Boehner having slept there. (Still less presidential, but perhaps more glitzy, the hotel has also hosted Hollywood celebs Sarah Silverman and John Turturro.) I also witnessed the insistence of Israelis to proceed with life, even when life threats are rupturing any sense of equanimity.

Israel is a place where your most helpful waiter will wear a nametag identifying him as Mohammed; where business partners sometimes live on opposite sides of partition barriers; where trust is a necessity, even when at every turn your bag is examined to check for weapons. Caution is a bylaw, but so is the insistence on normality. I took my cue from the Israelis and walked the streets, went to bars at night, visited the museums and shuks and ate in the restaurants. 

During this time of “the situation” — long the Israeli equivalent of the Irish term “the troubles” — there was great sadness but also a deliberate decision to move on. Some people stayed home — restaurants that might have been packed were, in many cases, only partially full — but others went out. Jerusalem’s Old City was not shy of tourists, especially the Christian pilgrims visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was filled to the brim. The Western Wall, normally a major attraction, was especially quiet, however, and the Mamilla mall, a beloved attraction of Arab and Jew alike, looked like half its clientele was staying home — the Arab half.

In Tel Aviv, however, crowds were far closer to normal. I attended a gala event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Hilton Tel Aviv that served as a benefit for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of conductor and pianist Yaron Gottfried. Every seat was filled in the cavernous ballroom. And a visit to bars and clubs late one night showed no signs of revelers tapering off. Just try to tell Tel Aviv to stay home, and see what happens.

In Israel, as in the U.S., people blame a lot of any situation on “the media.” Too much talk of violent protests here? Blame the media. Too much talk of knifings there? The same. And what blew that story out of the headlines? Rain. (Sound like home?) A giant storm hit just as we were leaving Tel Aviv for a visit to Eilat, with brief stops planned at Masada and the Dead Sea. (Who says you can’t see all of Israel’s highlights in an afternoon?) Given the downpour, our veteran guide, Nathan Shapiro, had to decide how to navigate soaked roads to get us to a shuttered Masada mountain — not even the cable car was running — and to the Dead Sea, which was beautifully framed by a rainbow, and then on to Eilat. 

If there was a moment of exponential tension on the trip, it came as Shapiro decided whether we would be able to take an alternate route from the one everyone normally takes from the healing waters of the Dead Sea to the southernmost Israeli resort of Eilat, normally about a two-hour drive. The direct highway was closed by flooding, and the alternate route involved cutting over to the southwestern border and traveling alongside the Sinai. The road that night was dark, entirely unlit, and for most of it, we were completely alone. If you looked over to the right, you could see only border fence, and an occasional Egyptian guard post. This was before the Russian plane was downed, likely by a bomb, but even then I was very aware that ISIS might not be too far off.

And yet, carrying his merry band of journalists, Shapiro proceeded in good humor, and we approached Eilat watching a lightshow of lightning outside our windshield. The next day bloomed bright. Business as usual. Witnessing the Israeli resolve to move forward through “the situation” — and the rain — shows how chutzpah can override worry, and Israeli life will never be undone.

Susan Freudenheim is executive editor of the Jewish Journal.

Calm amidst the violence in Israel Read More »

$4 million matching grant aims to engage L.A. Jewish teens

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

With the support of a more than $4 million matching grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, along with financial assistance from the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles is developing the Los Angeles Jewish Teen Initiative as part of an extensive outreach effort to Jewish teens who otherwise would not be involved in Jewish life. 

“The goal is to engage 2,000 to 3,000 local Jewish teens in meaningful Jewish experiences,” Josh Miller, senior program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, said in a phone interview.

The L.A. grant, which was announced last February, represents a ramped-up effort by the Jim Joseph Foundation to fund youth organizations. According to the foundation’s website, it has awarded more than $37.3 million in seven communities for community-based Jewish teen education initiatives.

Miller said the foundation hopes to help Jewish teens explore “what it means to be Jewish today, and what it means to be Jewish in the future.”

Many share Miller’s enthusiasm. Ben Schillmoeller, 25, the program coordinator at the Shalom Institute, was among approximately 30 people representing various nonprofit organizations who attended a Nov. 2-3 retreat held at American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Campus in Simi Valley, which focused on developing ways of engaging youth. The Federation organized the retreat.

After a morning spent brainstorming under the guidance of a representative of Upstart, a San Francisco Bay Area-based consulting service, Schillmoeller told the Journal he believes outdoor trips are one way to make teenagers excited about being Jewish.  

“Teens don’t really get the chance to go out and see the wilderness as much as they used to,” Schillmoeller said in an interview. 

Ronnie Conn, assistant executive director at the Westside JCC, said he thinks expanding the popular Maccabi Games program for youth is also important for teen engagement.

Although the majority of teen programs are still being developed, one is already underway: Federation launched a community internship program for high school students last summer as part of the initiative. Twenty-seven teenagers worked at various Jewish organizations across Los Angeles, including at the Jewish Journal, in internships that not only offered work experience for their résumés, but also were intended to help engage them in Jewish life. The program will continue next year.

Representatives of BBYO, formerly B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, Camp JCA Shalom, Moving Traditions, JQ International, Shalom Institute, Stephen S. Wise Temple Freedom School, Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles and the Westside Jewish Community Center are among the first organizations included in this effort. The Federation will have worked with more than 20 organizations by the time the entire initiative concludes in nearly five years. 

“We were looking for diversity,” Shari Davis, director of Jewish education and engagement at Federation, told the Journal. “We were looking for diversity of organizations.”

Each of the organizations will receive between $25,000 and $50,000 from the Jim Joseph Foundation matching grant, according to Jessica Green, director of the L.A. Jewish Teen Initiative.

“The ultimate goal of everything we are doing is to engage as many under-engaged teenagers in some form of Jewish life [as possible],” she said. “And we are doing this from a variety of different tactics. One is expanding the programmatic landscape for teens. … Another is working with teen educators, ensuring they are as highly resourced and trained as possible to meet the diverse needs of teens themselves, and the third is nurturing the L.A. ecosystem, attempting to bridge existing gaps that exist in a city as geographically wide and culturally diverse as this is.”

Shira Rosenblatt, senior vice president of Jewish education and engagement at Federation, said the initiative hopes to counteract the drop-off in Jewish engagement that so often follows a teen’s b’nai mitzvah experience. 

“Many of them see the bar and bat mitzvah as an opportunity for a perfect exit out, and we lose them,” she said. “And we really do believe that a connection to Jewish life — in the broader sense, a connection to community — can offer resources and insights and support for teens in a way that can be tremendously beneficial to them.” 

The funds also are being used to train leaders in Jewish organizations to become more effective teen educators and to engage the teens themselves to become participants in the conversations about Jewish life. 

Conn, for his part, said that the mere convening of Jewish leaders is important for the larger effort of engaging youth.

“It is creating in L.A. a network like we have never seen, in terms of how we can better serve teens across the city.”

$4 million matching grant aims to engage L.A. Jewish teens Read More »

Is EU discriminating against Israel by labeling settlement goods?

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Lead Story, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

To Israel and many of its supporters, the new European Union regulations requiring separate labeling for settlement goods are discriminatory measures reminiscent of Europe’s long history of institutionalized anti-Semitism.

In a harshly-worded statement Wednesday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said that by ignoring other territorial disputes around the world, the EU is discriminating against Israel. EU officials dismissed that complaint as emotional and irrelevant, saying the guidelines are merely a reflection of longstanding European policy and are aimed at protecting a consumer’s right to know whether a product was produced within Israel’s pre-1967 borders or in disputed territory.

In making their case about Europe’s double standard, Israeli diplomats have found an unlikely ally: Activists for self-rule in Western Sahara, a disputed territory in North Africa claimed by Morocco. The territory’s government-in-exile claims it is under foreign occupation.

The United Nations General Assembly endorsed that view in 1979, declaring Morocco an occupying force in the former Spanish colony and affirming the “inalienable right of the people of Western Sahara” to independence. In 2005, the EU called for a resolution to the conflict that would ensure the “self-determination of the people of Western Sahara.”

But despite formal objections in recent years by the Netherlands and Sweden to labeling Western Saharan produce as Moroccan, the EU has issued no labeling guidelines comparable to those it released Wednesday, which require that certain goods produced in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights be marked to indicate whether they were made by Israeli settlers or Palestinians.

A demonstration in Madrid in support of Western Sahara’s self-determination on Nov. 11, 2006. Photo from Wikimedia Commons

“When it comes to products from Palestine and Western Sahara, there is a clear double standard in the European Union’s behavior, and it’s eroding its credibility across the board,” said Erik Hagen, a Norwegian geographer and activist and former chair of Western Sahara Resource Watch, an advocacy group.

Trade agreements signed in 2000 and 2012 between Morocco and the EU include no mention of occupied land. Yet in 2012, the EU Foreign Affairs Council issued a blanket guideline requiring that “all agreements between the State of Israel and the EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.”

Products from Western Sahara are sold with a “Made in Morocco” label in the same Danish supermarkets where products from the West Bank are marked as originating in Israeli settlements, according to Morten Nielsen, a Danish journalist active in efforts to raise awareness about Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara.

Denmark, Belgium and the United Kingdom are currently the only EU member states with special labeling for West Bank products, which, according to estimates cited by the EU, account for less than 1 percent of the total annual trade volume of $32 billion between the union and Israel.

Israeli officials have claimed such measures are merely a prelude to a wider boycott of Israel and have repeatedly drawn comparisons to the boycott of Jews during the Holocaust. “We have historical memory of what happened when Europe labelled Jewish products,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in September. In April, Former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said “Europe might as well label Israeli products with a yellow star,” referencing the stars Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe were required to wear.

But despite such heated rhetoric, the number of countries labeling settlement products is expected to grow following the publication of the new guidelines, a senior European diplomat who spoke to JTA on condition of anonymity said Tuesday.

The guidelines are limited to Israel, the diplomat said, because they came in response to a letter by 16 EU foreign ministers urging the European Commission to implement a decision it made in 2012 to label Israeli and Palestinian products.

Western Sahara is not the only territorial dispute that has failed to prompt demands for European labeling. Goods produced in Chinese-ruled Tibet, Indian-controlled Kashmir and northern Cyprus, which is occupied by Turkey, do not merit special labels in Europe.

The “unequal use of legal tools owes to the fact that the Israeli-Palestinian profile, because of its historical connotations, is incomparable to others in the level of interest it draws and its visibility in media and politics,” said Hagen. But such factors “cannot explain unequal application of international law, which is being eroded.”

Daniel Rosario, an EU Commission spokesperson for trade and agriculture, told JTA that territorial disputes over the West Bank and Western Sahara “are of a completely different nature.”

“E.U. considers Morocco as the ‘de facto administrator of the territory of the Western Sahara’,” Rosario wrote in an email. ”In this role, the activities linked to the exploitation of natural resources by an administrative power in an ‘non-self-governing territory’ are not illegal, provided that they take into account the needs, interests and benefits of the people of this territory.”

But to Hagen, such legal hairsplitting is merely a smokescreen.

“You can apply any politically expedient definition you like,” Hagen said. “But as long as the European Union applies different standards to issues, instead of a uniform standard based on international law, it will not have any credibility when its representatives speak of facilitating peace and solidarity.”

Is EU discriminating against Israel by labeling settlement goods? Read More »

‘Smoke and Mirrors’ creator has magic touch

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment /

The day may arrive when writer-actor Albie Selznick declares his magic-infused theatrical performance “Smoke and Mirrors” a finished product, but audiences probably shouldn’t hold their breath. Given that Selznick is a self-described perfectionist and workaholic — and because there are always new illusions to learn — “Smoke and Mirrors” could continue to evolve as long as its creator is willing to tinker. 

“It has been a constant rewriting, working, rewriting, working,” he said. “It’s just never good enough. I keep seeing ways it could be better. But I feel like this is the closest it has ever been to being as good as it can be.” 

Imperfect or otherwise, the autobiographical show has been embraced by audiences and critics alike, earning Critic’s Choice laurels from the Los Angeles Times and L.A. Weekly. The current version, directed by David Schweizer, is back at the Odyssey Theatre through Dec. 20 after playing there earlier this year from January through March.

The seed of “Smoke and Mirrors” was developed in an acting class with coach-to-the-stars Larry Moss approximately 15 years ago. In 2010, Selznick took an early version to the Hollywood Fringe Festival and subsequently produced it at Theatre Unlimited in North Hollywood. Engagements followed at the Santa Monica Playhouse, the Promenade Playhouse and a yearlong run at the Road Theatre, where Selznick has been a member and frequent performer. 

Concurrent with the Odyssey engagement, Selznick has instigated Magic Mondays. For five Monday nights during the run, some of his celebrated illusionist friends from the Magic Castle — where Selznick is a lifetime member — will take the stage to perform their own feats. Selznick said that several of these performers are, like him, Jewish. 

“I’m generalizing here, but magicians tend to be nerdy kids and introverts. They’re usually not athletic,” Selznick said. “On the outside, they’re scary and powerful, like the Wizard of Oz. On the inside, they’re these nerdy little kids trying to cover up the fact that they can’t get the girl. I think Jewish people like that either become comedians, Hollywood producers or magicians.”

As he relates in “Smoke and Mirrors,” Selznick was a frightened, introverted little boy who turned to magic after the death of his father, Sheldon Selesnick, when he was 9. The older Selesnick gave Albie a magic kit. Feats of wonder became not simply an escape, but possibly a way to help keep his father alive or maybe even bring him back. 

“I’ve never been good at relaxing,” Selznick said. “When I was a kid, if I wasn’t doing four magic shows a week at birthday parties, I didn’t think I was doing enough. It could be a possibility that I was trying in some ways to make up for the fact that I didn’t have a dad, or to get him, subconsciously, to come back if I was a good magician.” 

“Smoke and Mirrors” contains plenty of illusions, sleight of hand, escapes, live birds and “how did he do that?” kinds of tricks. But the show also has an undercurrent of darkness as well. In addition to assistance from a giant rabbit; Harry Houdini’s widow, Bess; and a spooky oracle who guesses the secrets of audience members, “Smoke and Mirrors” offers Selznick ruminating on themes of life, loss, fear, mystery and death. 

A magic show that is just tricks and no story is far less effective, according to Selznick, as the audience will spend all its time trying to figure out how the tricks work. 

“I love magic with a purpose,” he said. “When you see a really good magic show that has some kind of hook to it, I think you can sort of suspend your disbelief and be in that place when you were a kid, when everything was possible.”

Trained across an array of disciplines, Selznick co-founded the juggling circus trio The Mums, which opened for a number of bands in the 1980s and 1990s. He was a tightrope walker in the Olivia Newton-John movie-musical “Xanadu” and took to the wire again as a daredevil Mercutio in Deaf West Theatre’s production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

He has worked steadily as an actor in commercials, film and TV since the mid-1980s. He played a detective turned villain on “The Young and the Restless” and had a recurring role as Rabbi Ben opposite Brooke Shields for two seasons on the sitcom “Suddenly Susan.” 

When Selznick enrolled in Moss’ acting class in the mid-1990s, Moss was not aware of any of Selznick’s other skills — until he assigned the students the task of taking a profound incident from their life, relating it and then putting it on stage. Selznick recounted the story of a poignant encounter he had with a little boy named Nigel while performing in New Zealand. In telling the story, Selznick includes magic, and lo these many years later, Nigel is the climax of “Smoke and Mirrors.”

“I think everybody in the class was very excited by his abilities as a magician and by the story that came out of him,” said Moss, who saw the completed “Smoke and Mirrors” many years later. 

“It was a beautiful juxtaposition between humanity and vulnerability with an expertise of his technique. It was a wonderful balance. You feel a thrill when you watch your students succeed with something that is really valuable artistically.”

“Smoke and Mirrors” continues 8 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 20 at the Odyssey Theatre.  smokeandmirrorsmagic.com.

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‘Black lives matter’: it requires more than rhetoric

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

Everyone agrees that “Black lives matter.” The question that persists and transcends the rhetoric is how to minimize those deaths. A new study is critically important to understanding the events that have animated so many across the country.

Although the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement argues that the problem is inherent police bias and racism, a new paper suggests the real problem is far more complex and that race bias plays little, if any, role in the disproportionate number of African-American deaths at the hands of law enforcement.

Black Lives Matter has purveyed a narrative that “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise.” That belief leads not only to activism but to a rejection of “respectability politics” (their words).

So entrenched has its worldview become that BLM adherents have no compunction about shouting down presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, both liberals, to evidence their displeasure. One of their spokesmen accused the L.A. mayor of having “neglected, disrespected and abused the Black community for far too long” as it disrupted his presentation at an African-American church.

Ever since the death of Trayvon Martin (which gave birth to the movement) and the later deaths of Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and Michael Brown, there has been virtually universal acceptance of the notion that cops are out to target and kill Blacks — daring to suggest that all lives matter is considered heresy.

If you doubt the pervasiveness of their viewpoint, try convincing a millennial that the situation is more complex than BLM presents it. Try suggesting that anecdotal evidence of six or 10 cases across a country of 350 million people with about 34,000 arrests per day does not tell a complete story — it’s a tough slog.

The reality is that data that would support the claim that law enforcement is targeting Blacks for “demise” are woefully inadequate. Neither the FBI nor the National Center for Health Statistics keeps consistent reliable data; their “totals can vary wildly,” according to The New York Times. As the Times reported in 2014, “Whether or not racial bias is a significant factor in police homicides is very much an open question.”

Despite that uncertainty, the protests continue and the given wisdom remains given.

But recently, Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan published a thoughtful, data-driven article that seeks to divine what the official data don’t by themselves reveal. He extrapolates from what is known and draws conclusions.

Mullainathan concludes that, indeed, Blacks are being killed by cops at a disproportionately higher rate (about two and a half times their percentage of the population) but it is likely not the result of bigotry on the part of the police.

Although bias may enter the equation, the fact that Blacks have such a disproportionately higher number of encounters with police results in multiple problems. Every police encounter contains a risk: The officer might be poorly trained, might act with malice or simply make a mistake, and civilians might do something that is perceived as a threat. The omnipresence of guns exaggerates all these risks.

Such risks exist for people of any race — after all, many people killed by police officers are not Black. But having more encounters with police officers, even with officers entirely free of racial bias, can create a greater risk of a fatal shooting.

The article reveals that the percentage of Black arrestees (28.9 percent) and the percentage of descriptions (by victims and witnesses) of suspects who are Black (30 percent) is sufficiently close to the 31.8 percent of the police shooting victims who are African-American to suggest that “if police discrimination were a big factor in the actual killings, we would have expected a larger gap between the arrest rate and the police-killing rate.”

He deals with the possibility that Blacks may be arrested disproportionately to other groups because of racism but suggests that the more likely reasons are the higher percentage of descriptions of suspects (noted above) who are Black and the deployment of police to high-crime areas that tend to be poor and disproportionately Black — two reasons not ascribable to racism by individual cops.

Mullainathan does not argue that police bias might not play a role in the death of African Americans at the hands of police but rather that even if one eliminated “the biases of all police officers [it] would do little to materially reduce the total number of African American killings.”

He does not despair that there is nothing that can be done, but rather he asserts that the focus should be on drug laws and their enforcement. Those laws are among the main reasons that Blacks are more frequently arrested.

If the laws did not so heavily target drug sellers and the disparity between the punishment for crack cocaine (more widely used by African-Americans) and powder cocaine (by whites) were reduced, Black arrest and incarceration rates might decline. If society can reduce the number of encounters that occur between cops and Blacks, the likelihood of bad things happening will also be reduced.

Congress, in one of the few areas of bipartisan agreement, is likely to reduce drug crimes and incarceration rates this year in an attempt to make them fairer, more effective and less costly.

Clearly, this is a complex phenomenon with multiple moving parts — there are no simple answers and there is much work to be done. But what seems equally clear from the data is that cops are responding to the laws that are on the books, and the actions they see and that are reported to them — they are not a collection of bigots out to abuse, disrespect and murder the Black community.

David A. Lehrer is the president of Community Advocates Inc., a Los Angeles-based human relations organization chaired by former L.A. Mayor Richard J. Riordan. For 27 years, he served locally with the Anti-Defamation League, as its counsel and regional director. Joe R. Hicks is a political commentator and vice president of Community Advocates Inc.

‘Black lives matter’: it requires more than rhetoric Read More »

Jewish man with Nazi-raised identical twin dies at age 82

Leave a Comment / Culture /

A Jewish man who as an adult reunited with a long-lost identical twin raised as a Nazi died at age 82.

Jack Yufe, who with his twin Oskar Stohr was featured in the 1997 German documentary “Oskar and Jack,” died of stomach cancer Monday in a San Diego hospital, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Born in Trinidad in January 1933, Yufe and Stohr were separated at 6 months old when their parents divorced. Stohr moved to Germany with their Catholic mother, and Yufe stayed in Trinidad with their father.

According to the Times, Stohr, at the directive of family members, kept his Jewish ancestry a secret and joined the Hitler Youth “out of self preservation.”

Meanwhile, Yufe, the Times said, “didn’t feel the weight” of his Jewish identity until, at age 15, he moved to Venezuela to live with an aunt, the only European relative on his father’s side to survive the Holocaust. At her urging, Yufe moved to the fledgling State of Israel the following year, serving in the Israeli navy.

In 1954, before joining the twins’ father in the United States, Yufe traveled to Germany to find Stohr.

The two spoke no common language and were unable to communicate well. Yufe told the Times in 1979 that Stohr avoided letting anti-Semitic family members know Yufe was Jewish and had been in Israel.

Despite their differences, the two discovered they had very similar habits, mannerisms, hairstyles and style of dress.

“We had identical clothes. I got mine in Israel and he got his in Germany. Exactly the same color, with two buttons,” Yufe recalled in the 1999 film, according to the Times.

The two did not meet again until 1979, when Yufe learned about a University of Minnesota study about twins and wanted to participate.

“Jack and his brother clearly have the greatest differences in background I’ve ever seen among identical twins reared apart,” Thomas J. Bouchard Jr., the University of Minnesota psychologist who headed the study, told The Times in 1979.

Bouchard discovered the two were “strikingly similar in temperament, rate of speech and other characteristics,” according to the Times.

“I always thought I picked up my nervous habits from my father – like fidgeting with other people’s rubber bands and pads and paper clips—until I saw [Oskar],” Yufe said in The Times. “He’s the same way.”

Stohr, who had worked in coal mines, died of lung cancer in 1997.

In addition to “Oskar and Jack,” the twins were featured in other films about twins, according to the Times.

While participating in the twins study, Yufe told Cal State Fullerton psychology professor Nancy Segal that he did not blame his brother for participating in the Hitler Youth.

“Children have no say in what they are taught,” he told Segal. “If we had been switched, I would have taken Oskar’s place for sure.

Jewish man with Nazi-raised identical twin dies at age 82 Read More »

To be young, Palestinian and gay in Israel

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment, Film /

The issue of gay rights has become front and center in Israeli politics. The country’s Supreme Court will consider legalizing same-sex marriage in the wake of a petition filed earlier this month by an LGBTQ rights group, despite the fact that marriage in Israel is regulated by the rabbinical courts and that Jewish law forbids homosexuality. On the same day, a Charedi Orthodox leader called the murder of a young couple by Palestinians a punishment from heaven for the gay pride parade in Jerusalem.

Tel Aviv has become a destination for gay travelers from around the world, but its LGBT-friendly reputation has been tested by recent violent attacks against gays and lesbians. For a small community of gay Palestinians living in Tel Aviv, that sense of danger feels especially acute.

The new documentary “Oriented,” which screens at the Arab Film Festival in Los Angeles on Nov. 14, tells the story of three gay Palestinian-Israeli friends as they navigate the personal and political fault lines of daily life in a conflict zone. First-time British filmmaker Jake Witzenfeld follows the men over 15 months — through the conflict in Gaza in 2014 — as they date, go to nightclubs, make dinner together, visit the villages where they grew up and seek normality while struggling to define themselves against a backdrop of violence.

Khader Abu-Seif, 25, is from Jaffa and came out to his parents when he was 15. He writes an online column on gay Arab life and is considered a leader in the gay community. His long-term Armenian-Jewish boyfriend, David, jokingly accuses Abu-Seif of using his minority status to get out of doing the dishes. 

Naeem Jiryes is 24 and describes himself as “Palestinian, atheist, vegetarian, feminist.” He grew up in Kafr Yasif, a village in northern Israel, and moved to Tel Aviv to study nursing. But his family doesn’t know that he’s gay and they pressure him to return to the village. Jiryes insists that he is happy and free in liberal Tel Aviv but feels suffocated in conservative Kafr Yasif. 

“If he’s 100 percent happy there, why can’t he be 90 percent happy here?” his father asks. Jiryes’ sister responds: “Why can’t you sacrifice that 10 percent so that he can be happy?”

Fadi Daeem, 26, is the most politically outspoken of the trio. Originally from I’billin, another Arab town in northern Israel, he reflects the complexity of being a gay Palestinian living outside the West Bank and Gaza Strip. 

“I have an Israeli passport but I don’t define myself as Israeli. I would like to define myself as a Palestinian, but I don’t think I have the right. I don’t physically feel the occupation, because I don’t live in Ramallah or Gaza,” Daeem says in the film.

Witzenfeld discovered the three young men in January 2013 after seeing a music video they made in tribute to the song “La Mouch” by Yasmine Hamdan, a Lebanese singer. The video features an Arab woman smoking a cigarette behind her black veil and men wearing dresses — a visual interpretation of their agony of staying hidden because of negative public opinion.

“Growing up in a British, Jewish, traditional world and then challenging that, and studying Middle Eastern studies at university and being surrounded by narratives about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, I’d never come across something as live as this, that spoke of Palestine through the lens of LGBTI [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex],” Witzenfeld said in a phone interview. “These three guys share a very strong and unique friendship because of the identity conflicts they all share.”

As Witzenfeld sees it, the subjects of his film live with at least four major conflicts every day. There’s the issue of LGBT equality in Israel; the issue of being an Arab in a Jewish state (Arabs make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population); “white Palestinian guilt” from sitting in the comfort of Tel Aviv while a war is happening; and the problem of not fitting into the international narrative of what it means to be Palestinian. 

Abu-Seif recounts the time a BBC journalist called him for his story as a suffering gay Palestinian. When Abu-Seif interjected, explaining that his parents love and accept him, Abu-Seif recalls the journalist saying, “Oh. Perhaps you can find us another Palestinian who did suffer?”

There’s also the challenge of not feeling completely accepted by Tel Aviv’s gay community. In one scene, Daeem agonizes over his crush on Benyamin, a Jew who had served in the Israeli army. 

“I”m falling for a Zionist,” he tells a friend. “I’m in love with the enemy.” She replies, “Fadi, life is not just an ideology.” At the end of the film, Daeem falls for another Israeli man, Nadav. The two currently live together.

Near the end of the film, Abu-Seif and David spend a month vacationing in Berlin to escape the pressure of feeling out of place in their home countries. They have since broken up, though the two have maintained their friendship and have moved to Jaffa, the mixed Arab-Jewish city that borders Tel Aviv.

“I still have hope to change my reality and my community,” Abu-Seif said in a phone interview. “It’s not about changing the Jewish community or the Israeli community. It’s about educating Palestinians about sexuality.”

In today’s climate of fear and hostility, Abu-Seif said Israel has become an even more uncomfortable place to live. When he recently ordered a pizza for delivery, the person who answered the phone told him they don’t deliver to Jaffa, because it’s dangerous.

“And I went crazy, of course, and said, ‘What do you mean? If you don’t want to do delivery, don’t do delivery all over the country, because right now, all over the country it’s dangerous,’ ” he said. “I’m not afraid, because I got used to it.”

The young men in “Oriented” have to live with the uncertainty of the future in a place that doesn’t accept them. There are no easy solutions offered, only the necessity of continuing to demand their rights and make their presence known.

“My grandmother still has the key to her house. To an extent, I envy her because she lived in the Palestine of the past. She knows what she longs for, she knows what she wants, unlike myself. I don’t know,” Daeem says in the film. “If there will ever be a Palestinian state, or a state for everyone, I don’t know if I feel like I’ll belong.”

For information about the screening of “Oriented” To be young, Palestinian and gay in Israel Read More »

Filling the gap: The case for a post-high school year in Israel

Leave a Comment / Education, Israel /

Although the notion of taking a year’s break between high school and college appeals to many young people, parents often think a year abroad is a luxury of the privileged. However, counselor Phyllis Folb argues that a gap year can be an essential component of a young Jewish adult’s higher education.

Folb, a college and gap-year counselor at Find Your Right Direction, is a passionate advocate of Jewish teens spending a gap year in Israel. Since 2012, the mother of two adult daughters has created and produced  gap-year fairs, which inform students and their parents about educational programs in Israel that U.S. students can attend before college. 

“Long before ‘gap year’ was a buzzword, the Jewish community knew the importance of sending their kids to Israel,” Folb said. “It was never meant to be extravagant. While there is tuition, in many cases it is far less than what a parent would pay for either school fees or extracurricular activities. The investment made is paid back in huge dividends in students’ Jewish learning and ability to navigate their Jewish future.”   

This year’s Los Angeles Israel Gap Year Fair, presented by Masa Israel Journey and co-sponsored by various local high schools and eight area synagogues, will take place Nov. 16 at Shalhevet High School.

The 2014 Israel Gap Year Fair welcomed hundreds of students and parents to interact with representatives from more than 30 Israel gap-year programs ranging from traditional learning programs to community and army service. The 2015 fair will accommodate more than 40 gap-year programs. 

Israeli Consulate representatives will provide information on what to expect during the year abroad, as well as offer practical information on student visas and other expat concerns. Presenting sponsor Masa Israel Journey will be providing funding for thousands of students to attend these programs over the course of many years, and will be on hand to process applications for funds.

There will also be representatives from Yeshiva University, Touro College Los Angeles, Binghamton University and American Jewish University to discuss the Israel gap-year options at their schools. Folb believes the programs offered by the U.S. schools are attractive options for many families because they provide support, such as academic counseling, to optimize the transition from the gap year to U.S. universities. 

Folb said a gap year offers students a competitive edge in college and beyond; employers tend to perceive gap-year students as worldly, global citizens, able to function well with a variety of people in the workplace. 

According to Folb, many parents of gap-year students say their teens became more focused and goal-oriented, got better grades and had a better fix on their major as a result of their year away. 

“I prefer to think of this gap-year program not as a ‘gap’ but an opportunity for young people to have a ‘fill-in year,’ in terms of filling their time with valuable experiences that will impact the rest of their lives,” said Lawrence Platt of Pico-Robertson, whose three adult children (Joshua, 35; Adeena, 32; and Ari, 26) did gap years in Israel before attending college. Although he describes his family as religious and Zionist, he points out that the fair highlights programs for religious and nonreligious students.

“Each one of my children had a different experience” Platt said. “Joshua, my oldest, went during the Second Intifada, which not only influenced his direction in life, but also helped him maintain his religious outlook as well as [gain] a deeper understanding of the land, culture and history of Israel. Ari missed a minyan at yeshiva because he woke up late, but went out to the Kotel and joined the minyan there. Where else can you get an opportunity to do things like that on a daily basis, as well as meet and study with people both native to Israel and from elsewhere?”

Ilana Drubach, 22, took a gap year before getting her degree in psychology from Touro College Los Angeles. Drubach, who lives in North Hollywood and works at Valley Torah High School Girls Division, said one of the most important things she gained from her gap year was taking greater responsibility for her personal, academic and religious life. 

“The gap-year program introduces you to a different style of learning,” she said. “When I was in high school, even though I was on the honors track, there were always teachers around to help. In seminary, the responsibility to learn was entirely up to me. I had to learn how to rely on myself to best manage my time and find study techniques that worked for me. “ 

Current gap-year participant Mati Hurwitz, who is 18 and studying at Yeshivat Har Etzion, said attending the Israel Gap Year Fair last year was instrumental not only in his decision to go but also in helping him know what to expect.

“I suggest people going to the Gap Year Fair this year come with an open mind, as you never know what programs or opportunities will catch your eye or, perhaps, change your entire life,” the Valley Village resident said. “As a religious Zionist, this was something very important for me to do — learning about the history of the land and our people, and studying from ancient texts that our Jewish brothers and sisters have learned from over the course of thousands of years … and in the holiest place in the world. It’s a true gift, and it is an obligation for me to really embrace this opportunity.”  

The 2015 Israel Gap Year Fair will be held Nov. 16 from 7 to 10 p.m. at Shalhevet High School, 910 S. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles. For more information, visit this  Filling the gap: The case for a post-high school year in Israel Read More »