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Jewish Journal

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February 25, 2016

Right of return: Prominent east coast artist on coming home

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Kenny Scharf’s homecoming welcome to Los Angeles is stretching into its 17th year.

“When I moved back here in ’99, people would be, like, ‘When are you going back to New York?’ And I’d be, like, ‘I live here. And I’m actually from here, born and raised,’ ” the painter and multimedia artist said. He established his reputation alongside his dear friend Keith Haring and a boundary-busting crew back in the 1980s New York art scene, and he hasn’t stopped working since. “Then, I swear, five minutes later in the conversation, they’d say, ‘So, when are you going back?’ ” 

He mocked his own sarcastic irritation in responding to such exchanges. “‘I live here! I’m from here! Sorry, I made my name in New York!’”

Despite the passage of time, the impression of him as a New Yorker hasn’t entirely dissipated, which is partly why the Hammer Museum reached out to the Valley-raised, Oakwood School and Beverly Hills High School alum to paint a temporary installation mural in the museum’s street-level project space as part of its “Hammer Projects” series. 

“Pikaboom.” 

“Another Oil Painting.” 

“Kenny’s an interesting artist because he’s lived in L.A. a long time, and he’s well-known internationally, but he hasn’t really shown in institutions in L.A.,” curator Ali Subotnick said. Yet, she said, “He’s got public projects all over; you see things in Culver City and Pasadena,” including murals in the Pasadena Museum of California Art’s parking garage and another at the West Hollywood library. “Everyone knows him and recognizes him, but it’s just not been in this context.” 

Scharf’s lack of L.A. museum representation makes some sense, given the artist’s populist leanings, pop culture sensibility and multimedia background. Plus all those years he spent in New York in the 1980s and Miami in the 1990s. 

But with the Hammer commission, as well as a forthcoming exhibition at the Nassau County Museum in Roslyn Harbor, N.Y., and more to come, Scharf continues to straddle the outsider-insider art world divide — even as he literally makes work both outside and inside. 

Subotnick said she and her fellow curators at the Hammer all agreed “it’s time” Scharf get more attention from museums here, so they allowed him free rein in painting the walls of the soaring Westwood museum lobby, adjacent to the staircase leading to the upstairs galleries. Continuing through May 22, his kinetic style runs wild within the expansive room. 

His roots are as a street artist, and he has covered every kind of surface — from buildings in New York City to cars and T-shirts — with his now-iconic faces and cartoon-like images inspired by midcentury space-age futurism. “He knows how to deal with this space,” Subotnick said, referring to the Hammer lobby. The often-ephemeral nature of his projects means he understands not to get overly attached to a single work, too. This project came with some limitations, mostly from areas that scaffolding couldn’t access, resulting in more white space than usual with Scharf’s densely packed, fluid figures and space-age imagery.

During a weekday afternoon interview at his West Adams studio, Scharf fielded questions while he worked on a new lithograph he’s collaborating on with L.A. icon Ed Ruscha and master printer Ed Hamilton’s Venice-based Hamilton Press. 

Scharf’s turf occupies a series of low-slung, formerly commercial 1920s spaces, with ideal indoor-outdoor flow at the rear. (He finally gave up a studio he was renting in Brooklyn last year.) Outbuildings are covered in toys and various objects he’s gathered all over the world. Primed and completed canvases are everywhere, along with other pieces such as TV backs he’s been painting since the 1970s. 

“That thing of crap hanging is a Hurricane Andrew piece,” Scharf said, gesturing to a mobile he made soon after moving to Miami in the early ’90s. Parked inside is a golf cart that belonged to his dad. Scharf customized it with a tail and giddily grinning face and has driven the cart in L.A. and Manhattan “art parades.”  

Scharf has even taken his spray paint cans to his trash bins.

Born in 1958, Scharf made a break from his middle- to upper-middle class Valley upbringing and his shmatte business-entrenched family in 1978 to fall in with the post-Warhol community that was taking off in the East Village. Before then, his L.A. Jewish childhood and adolescence meant becoming a bar mitzvah at the Valley JCC, going to Israel on an Ulpan trip at the age of 14 and attending Camp Alonim. (His grandparents made aliyah, but wound up coming back to the States.) He absorbed mass cultural visuals and specifically L.A. vernacular symbols all around him, from Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters to 1950s Detroit-made car design to Googie coffee shop architecture. 

He enrolled at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) after spending two years at UC Santa Barbara. Haring, a fellow SVA student, became his roommate in a sprawling loft downtown. Along with neo-expressionist Jean-Michel Basquiat, they made waves and mixed seamlessly with the hip-hop and punk artists of the era, including Fab Five Freddy, Debbie Harry and the B-52s. Interdisciplinary, anti-purist and pluralistic creative currents ruled. 

In the spirit of Warhol’s legacy, these artists’ mix of street art and high art led to extremely popular and successful commercial projects, working with fashion designers and representation from big-name galleries. Then came AIDS. 

“I got a big education in the streets. It was very vital and very important,” Scharf said. “And then everybody died and moved away, and then it was, ‘Well, that’s kind of over,’ ” he shrugged with the residual sadness and resignation that comes with years of distance — and the blessing of a flourishing career and family life. The Honor Fraser gallery in Culver City currently represents Scharf locally. 

He said he’s unfazed by the recent wave of ’70s- and ’80s-New York nostalgia, though he doesn’t avoid talking about the now-influential period in which he was a key player. That said, it must be odd for a young rebel to become an elder statesman of sorts. But his L.A. roots seem to keep him grounded but moving forward. 

“I don’t want to disparage New York in any way, but I really don’t miss it. It’s not really the same city,” he explained. “In my old days, I would walk out in the street, and there would be everyone I knew — on the block.” The East Village, where he lived, was also home to seminal venues, such as Club 57 on St. Mark’s Place. 

The Culver City resident still goes east to visit one of his daughters in Brooklyn, where “I’m like the old guy,” he joked. His other daughter lives near him and has a family of her own. If an official distinction existed for the Coolest Grandfather, he’d be a high-ranking contender. He also regularly visits his mother, who lives near Palm Springs. 

“See how much work I’m getting done while we’re talking?” Scharf said as our conversation was ending. Despite what seemed to the untrained eye to be a decent amount of black paint applied to paper, it wasn’t clear whether he was kidding or not. 

“No, it’s great! I’m really getting a lot done. I’m gonna finish this,” he said.

Scharf’s work ethic, creative drive and ability to work wherever he happens to be are not in question.

“I like it here,” he repeated. “I’m really addicted — to being an artist.”

“Hammer Projects: Kenny Scharf” continues through May 22. For more information, visit hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions.

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“Please Let Me Know Your Ways…” A Commentary on Ki Tisa

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As I've done on a few occasions before, I'm utilizing this blog space to post some thoughts about this week's Torah portion–thanks in no small part to a gentle push from my friend Rabbi Ruth Adar, the “>13 Attributes of God with their emphasis on the Diviine capacity for forgiveness:  “HaShem! Hashem! God, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to anger and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, willful sin, and error, and Who Cleanses (but does not cleanse completely, recalling the iniquity of parents upon children and grandchildren, to the third and fourth generations)” (34:6-7).


Meanwhile, Moshe’s brother Aaron, the High Priest had the task of serving the people below.  Moshe has learned that Aaron the Priest would be given a sanctioned way to provide the people with spectacle and ritual, tangible symbols of God’s sovereignty.  He will preside over sacrifices, resplendent in a gorgeous robe, headdress and diadem, so highly costumed that the individual man’s face will almost disappear into his role.  Aaron is well-suited to this task, but he has not been invested yet. Already, though, he seeks to translate the Infinite into a set of metaphors and symbols that the human mind can grasp.  Aaron accedes to the people’s demand for a physical representation of God and assists them in making the egel.


The danger in Aaron’s way is that it risks idolatry, a confusion of a symbolic representation with Divinity Itself.  Nachmanides (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, b. Spain d. Eretz Israel, 1194-1270) suggests that, at first, the people knew that no statue made from the gold of their own earrings could be God.  What they yearned for, this commentator says, was a symbol of God’s might which had brought them out of Egypt.  The people forgot that the way to get closer to God is by observing God’s commandments, and that physical representations of the Divine had already been expressly forbidden.  Eventually, the distinction between the symbol and Who it was supposed to stand for became confused and, says Nachmanides.  The people began sacrificing directly to the egel.  Ritual observance was divested of meaning and moral content.  It was no longer an expression of a mutual relationship with God, but superstitious magic meant to ward off fear.


Our parashah teaches that Moshe’s level of intimacy with God represents an aspiration, not a reality, for most of us.  Moshe was so close to God that he became isolated from other people, even his own family.  He was so filled with the fire of God’s presence that his face emitted an uncanny glow.  The prophet who was not permitted to see God’s face got close enough to be forced to hide his own visage from his community, to remain veiled and separate.


Our Rabbis were not prophets, and those among them who were priests had no temple in which to officiate.  They chose to know God through studying revelation, through that understanding of Torah which revealed itself to them in conversation with one another. (For example, as they and their successors constructed our holy day liturgy, the 13 Attributes are chanted: “HaShem! Hashem! God, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to anger and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, willful sin, and error, and Who Cleanses. While the observation that the mideeds of previous generations wound their descendents is psychologically astute, the theodical implications of the text have been removed from those prayers which emphasize personal atonement and responsibility.)


Midrash Rabbah teaches that:
Another explanation of “And God spoke all these words saying…” Rabbi Isaac said: The prophets received from Sinai the messages they were to prophesy to subsequent generations; for Moses told Israel: But with he who stands here with us this day before the Lord our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day, etc. (Devarim 29:14). It does not say ‘that is not here standing with us this day’, but just ’with us this day’-these are the souls that will one day be created; and because there is not yet any substance in them the word ' standing ' is not used with them. Although they did not yet exist, still each one received his share [of the Torah]… Not only did all the prophets receive their prophecy from Sinai, but also each of the Sages that arose in every generation received his [wisdom] from Sinai…”


This means that the soul of every Jew—those who choose Judaism and those who are born to it—contains a particular spark of revelation, a bit of Torah that only each one of us can bring into the world. Generations removed from prophecy, denied the spectacle of the Temple, our Rabbis exemplified devotion to the revelation at Sinai by interpreting and acting on Torah through storytelling (aggadah) and adjudication (halachah). When they made Kiddush, when they gave tzedakah, when they made an honest deal in the marketplace, and when they were struck by a new understanding of a text they had read many times before, they were living their connection to the Holy One—and, thus, so can we.

“Please Let Me Know Your Ways…” A Commentary on Ki Tisa Read More »

Honoring Native American Voices: Recognizing Tragic History and Praising Brave Spirits

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In 2013, while watching the film Broken Rainbow at a film festival, I learned something shocking as they talked about the Long Walk of the Navajo, which was the 1864 deportation and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the U.S. government.  I learned that Hitler had been deeply inspired by the treatment of the Native Americans by the U.S. Government.  Following the film, I immediately began my research.

In the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Toland’s classic, definitive biography of Adolf Hitler, he notes, “Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history.  He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa and for the Indians in the wild west; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination—by starvation and uneven combat—of the red savages who could not be tamed by captivity.”

Toland also noted,”He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government’s forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations is hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large ‘reservation’ in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease.”

  

Burying the dead in mass graves at Wounded Knee; Bosque Redondo internment camp.              

I was incredibly perplexed by how I had never heard about Hitler’s admiration, and had decided to write the article, Hitler’s Inspiration and Guide: The Native American Holocaust.  Since then, I have learned about several other sources of inspiration for Hitler within the U.S. and around the globe, including the American Eugenics Movement‘s campaign for ethnic cleansing.

Native American Response

It has been such an honor how several Native Americans have reached out as a result of the article. Timothy Hunts-in-Winter from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, shared with me how an Israeli Holocaust survivor became his father figure after his biological father died.  I learned about Solomon Bibo, a Jewish immigrant and son of a Cantor, who had married a Pueblo woman and lived among their people, and even became governor of Acoma Pueblo.  I learned how Hitler sent scientists to Arizona, to visit the Gila River Indian Reservation in a town called Blackwater, to prove they were inferior peoples.

Solomon Bibo

Meeting Sarah

Last December, I received an email from a woman named Sarah Schmasow, who identified herself as a member of the Rockyboy Chippewa Cree Tribe of Montana.  She lives in Yuma, AZ, and works for Indian Health Service (IHS) as a Public Health Education Specialist at the Fort Yuma Health Center.  Most of the administrators at the federal health centers are run by every ethnicity other than Native American.

Sarah had wanted to talk about the ongoing genocide of her people, and that there is a dire need for culturally-based healing from grief, loss, and Intergenerational Trauma.  She shared solid examples of how poverty is systemic, rooted in economics, politics and discrimination.

What I learned: American Indians and Alaska Natives have the highest age-adjusted prevelance of diabetes among all U.S. racial and ethnic groups; Native Americans are five times more likely to die of alcohol-related causes than whites, according to the U.S. Surgeon General; native youth suicide rates are at crisis levels; native youth have the lowest achievement scores and graduation rates of any subgroup; the shameful exclusion within the school system of Native American teachers, the lack of current Native events or challenges within the curriculum, and the white-washing of history; the racial group most likely to be killed by law enforcement is Native Americans; how an estimated one in three Native American women are assaulted or raped in their lifetimes; and how U.S. law prohibits Indian tribes from prosecuting non-Indians who are “strangers” to their sexual assault and rape victims.  It seems to not be hard to come up with a pretty long list of the ways in which Native Americans have been mistreated and abused by this country’s government.

“The first Americans have become the last Americans.”
– Aaron Payment, of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan

Sarah shared how she has been working really hard to bring a beading program to the Fort Yuma Health Center that would integrate Native American customs as a healing intervention.  It has been an absolute battle for Sarah to get funding for the program.

A student at the Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU), wrote a letter on her behalf.  “Disbanding the program is an ill-advised and shortsighted decision with long-lasting and debilitating effects on morale and organizational productivity.”   Some of the benefits of the program include: it addresses cultural competency of the service providers; offers a communications platform and device for cultural integration; creates a sense of belonging and relationship within the community; and allows for cultural integration by allowing new non-group members the chance to learn about and participate in the culture.  The letter ended with, “Sarah Schmasow has shown great initiative and serves as an inspiration to students like myself to imagine new and resourceful ideas that can make a long-lasting and powerful impacts in Indian Country.”

It makes complete sense to me why it is crucial to have culturally competent therapeutic practice at IHS, and quite frankly, I’m baffled by how programs like this aren’t prevelant at IHS centers across the nation.

Sarah is incredibly strong, but there are days when she feels defeated and alone in her battle.  She keeps on going because she deeply believes in the program, and deeply believes in justice for her people.  I find her dedication and strength to be inspiring.

“Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbour.” -Leviticus 19:16

Judaism teaches us the dire importance of actively repairing the world through Tikkun Olam.  For me, a very crucial step was learning about the long history and current reality of the systematic destruction of Native Americans in this country.  In studying their history, I also developed a greater understanding of Jewish history.

Through acknowledging the past and the present, we allow a greater chance for healing the future.  And then you keeping taking the next step…

 

Suggestions for taking steps:

Honoring Native American Voices: Recognizing Tragic History and Praising Brave Spirits Read More »

A millennial in the modern business world

Leave a Comment / Business, Culture /

While still in her 20s, L.A. native Elana Joelle Hendler had already fulfilled one of her dreams: She created a successful luxury lifestyle business, EJH Brands, based on her artwork. Hendler produces candles, home décor accessories and wildlife-themed art prints that have drawn accolades from Forbes (“10 Companies Crushing it in Art and Fashion”), Los Angeles Business Journal (“20 in their 20s”), FOX News and other media outlets.

The starting point for Hendler, now 30, was her longstanding passion for making art. The Milken Community Schools alumna creates her images in striking black and white. “My art has never been about color. … [A]rt started for me as a child doodling shapes in my notebook with pencil or pen,” she said. “I think I was subconsciously exploring how shapes relate to each other [on] a two-dimensional surface and finding a sense of movement between those shapes. Art was always a personal exploration for me.”

Although some of the animals depicted on her canvases are not native to Southern California, Hendler said they are nonetheless inspired by her “experience of growing up in Southern California.” From her many visits to the San Diego Zoo to family trips to the beach, Palm Springs and Arrowhead, she was inspired by the variety of landscapes and wildlife she encountered, as well as learning about culture at local institutions such as LACMA and The Getty.

“There’s something eternally fresh and inspiring about learning to appreciate art and nature in Southern California,” Hendler said. “I try to reflect that in my work, which extends to the eco-friendly materials used in my products. … I like to think there is a natural flow of the artwork into the texture of the materials. My collection is an extension of my exploring what it means to be a Californian.”

Chimp Decorative Throw Pillow 

Hendler said her family and Jewish upbringing helped her find her path from among her many interests, which included acting, music and, later, art history, in which she earned her degree. 

“All of my upbringing has influenced my identity as an artist as well as my identity as a woman, a Jew and a Californian,” she said. “My mother’s parents — who are of European descent and immigrated first to Mexico and then to Los Angeles in the 1950s — brought their cultural heritage with them. My [maternal] grandmother, a concert pianist in the 1940s, brought music. My [maternal] grandfather, an engineer, entrepreneur and religious Jew, brought education and a love for learning. These roots, emphasizing bettering yourself through knowledge and asking many questions, [were] bolstered by the nurturing influence of my mother, who studied design at UCLA.”  

Hendler’s family encouraged her natural curiosity; she described her younger self as a creative, expressive person who could do many things. But, she said, it was difficult for her to “pick one specific thing, in fear of isolating or losing track of the other skills.” At 24, like many other millennials, she asked herself, “Now what?”

“I come from a very entrepreneurial family. Following my grandfather’s lead, I asked myself … if I could pull together my interests and talent to create something that is mine. I then realized I still very much love to draw and write, and those interests transitioned into creating my own brand.”

Signature Collection Eucalyptus & Mint Sage Candle.

Hendler knew that building her own business would not be easy. “It was a moment when I had to be brave, and I just went for it,” she said. “This meant allowing myself to be vulnerable, learn, try and make lots of mistakes. One of my biggest challenges was learning how to work with manufacturers. It’s not always easy for a friendly, eager 24-year-old to work with older, more experienced manufacturers, especially men. I am sure I was taken advantage of in areas like pricing, but I was sort of expecting that to happen.”

A millennial in the modern business world Read More »

Mendel Tevel released from N.Y. jail, returns to Beverly Hills

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

Seven months after being sentenced to a one-year jail term for sexually abusing a minor, Mendel Tevel, who once worked at a local Jewish youth center, has been released on parole from a New York jail and has reportedly been seen in Beverly Hills, where he was arrested in October 2013 on sex offense charges.

Tevel, who is 32 or 33, pleaded guilty in April 2015 to two counts of a “criminal sexual act in the third degree,” which, under New York law, constitutes anal or oral sex with someone who is a minor or is otherwise incapable of providing legal consent. This was after pleading not guilty to 37 counts of sexual abuse, most either in the first or third degree, upon his arraignment in 2013.

Tevel is the son-in-law of Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, the founder and director of the JEM youth center in Beverly Hills, where Tevel worked until his 2013 arrest.

Tevel’s wife and daughter continue to live in the Los Angeles area, and on Feb. 12 the Beverly Hills Courier published a photo showing him in the city. He does not currently appear on California’s Megan’s Law sexual offender registry, which is maintained by the state’s Department of Justice. The law requires certain sex offenders to register with the state’s Megan’s Law database within five working days of moving to California, giving the public vital information on sex offenders, including their home address.

Brenda Gonzalez, a spokeswoman with the state’s DOJ, said she cannot comment on any specific case, but said the five-day registration requirement applies to offenders “who are registered in other states.” Tevel does not appear on New York’s online sex offender registry; according to the New York State Unified Court System’s website, he is scheduled to have a sixth and possibly final “risk level assessment” hearing related to his status as a sex offender on Feb. 29.

A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office told the Journal that the hearing will clarify Tevel’s sex offender registration requirements — which could range from 20 years to life — and that until then he’s not required to register. While a sex offender’s designation is typically established before release from prison, the spokesman said there was a technical error in Tevel’s case and the judge had to grant Tevel’s attorney’s request for a re-evaluation.

On Feb. 18, Sgt. Max Subin of the Beverly Hills Police Department confirmed that police are aware of Tevel’s presence in California.

“We are monitoring the situation and will take appropriate action if necessary and in accordance with state law,” Subin wrote in an email. “If he is found to be in violation [of registration requirements], our Detective Bureau will take appropriate action.”

When the Journal called the JEM Center on Feb. 18, this reporter identified himself and asked Illulian, who answered the phone, whether Tevel was at the center. Illulian said Tevel “is working with children, little children,” and then made clear he wasn’t being serious. He said Tevel hasn’t been to the JEM Center for more than 2 1/2 years, and criticized the Journal’s coverage of the case.

“All your articles are not true,” Illulian said. “Everybody knows [the truth] except the people who like to get headlines.”

The Brooklyn district attorney’s charges against Tevel in 2013 came two months after the Journal published an investigative report in which four of Tevel’s alleged victims described sexual abuse they said occurred from about 1995 to 2004, when their ages ranged from 6 to 14. Allegations against Tevel first became public in October 2012, when Meyer Seewald, founder of Jewish Community Watch (JCW), listed him on the group’s online “Wall of Shame,” the organization’s list of people it believes are sexual predators in Jewish communities. All of the alleged abuses cited in the Journal’s article took place in New York and Pennsylvania.

Tevel’s arrest and JCW’s activism have shed light on a divide within Orthodox communities over how to deal with sex offenders and other potentially dangerous members of the community. In November, the five-member board of the Pico-Robertson Chabad Bais Bezalel unanimously adopted a list of “Child & Member Protection Policies & Procedures.” Those policies allow the synagogue to ban any sex offenders from its property and events, and state that lashon hara prohibitions (which govern forbidden speech) cannot be used “as a means of silencing survivors, or those aware of abuse, who appropriately report abuse, or seek aid, therapy or comfort.” The synagogue’s president, Yonatan Hambourger, said the new policy wasn’t a response specifically to Tevel’s case but was necessary because of the number of people who come in and out of the synagogue during the week.

Prior to Tevel’s guilty plea, he would sometimes attend Bais Bezalel. When Hambourger was made aware, he asked Tevel to leave. Tevel hasn’t since returned. So far, Hambourger said, there’s hasn’t been any blowback to the Child and Member Protection policy.

“It’s a difficult issue for us to address because, on the one hand, we’re a Chabad shul, and we want to be open, but the stark reality is there are a lot of really, really potentially dangerous people,” he said.

On Feb. 10, Bais Bezalel’s board sent an email stating that, per its guidelines, it was advising the community of Tevel’s release from prison and assuring people “that Mendy Tevel is not welcome at Bais Bezalel.”

Mendel Tevel released from N.Y. jail, returns to Beverly Hills Read More »

Hollywood should engage with Israel

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

The BDS campaign (Boycott, Divestment Sanctions) is against a lot of things.  It is against the Jewish State of Israel, its government, institutions and civil society.  It is against engagement and dialogue with the people of Israel.   And it is against other people experiencing the beauty, contradictions and complexities of Israel first hand. 

These are the motivations behind the current effort by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and Jewish Voice for Peace, prominent leaders in the BDS campaign who are against Oscar nominees accepting an Israeli invitation to visit Israel.

While each recipient of this gift bag will decide whether to take Israel up on the offer, they should not decline it because of what those who only stand “against” say.

In their demonization of all things Israel, and the spurious and incendiary labeling of Israel as “apartheid,” this campaign is presenting one extreme view of Israel.  Yet as anyone who has traveled anywhere in the world knows, seeing the on-the-ground reality with your own eyes offers insights that underscore how superficial and simplistic second hand reports – and allegations – are.

Travel to Israel, China, India, Spain, or even the United States does not represent an endorsement of every policy of that country’s government.  Tourists are able to get the perspectives of the locals they meet in cafes and bars or in the back of a taxi — and as we have all experienced, much of it critical — and through this  gain insight into the politics and realities of the place.

The most memorable Oscar-winning films and performances are those that offer the audience a new and personal way of looking at a story, predicament or event.    It opens people’s mind to different perspectives.  So too does personal engagement with Israel.

A few months ago, British cultural figures published an open letter calling for cultural bridges, not boycotts, to bring about Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation.  As these luminaries, including Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling wrote:  “Open dialogue and interaction promote greater understanding and mutual acceptance, and it is through such understanding and acceptance that movement can be made towards a resolution of the conflict…Cultural engagement builds bridges, nurtures freedom and positive movement for change.”

It is this message of openness and engagement which Hollywood – even those who are not Oscar nominees – should get behind.

Amanda Susskind is the Pacific Southwest Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League

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Hebrew word of the week: Miriam

Leave a Comment / Culture /

Thanks to Miriam, Moses’ sister, the prophetess and singer-dancer, as well as Mary, the mother of Jesus in the New Testament, this name (with its varieties) is one of the most common in the world. The name’s origin seems to be Egyptian, meaning “wished-for child,” derived from myr (“beloved”) or mr (“love”).

More traditional explanations (as by Rashi) include the Hebrew mar (“bitter”) or meri (“rebellion”), signifying the bitter slavery in Egypt and the wish to rebel.

Variations of the name include Maryam (Greek-Christian; Arabic-Islamic), Maria (Latin), Maliah (Hawaiian), Mary (English, Christian, but occasionally Jewish, as well), Mira/Miri/Mimi (Israeli), Mirele (Yiddish) and combinations such as Marianna, Mary Kay, etc. Even Mayim (best known for actress Mayim Bialik) is a variant of Miriam.

Yona Sabar is a professor of Hebrew and Aramaic in the department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA.

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Who’s playing God now?

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

Actor Sean Hayes, playing God, flippantly describes why He created the universe: He had been hovering in zero-dimensional space for, oh infinity or so years, when he got bored. “I was God but I wasn’t really godding,” he breezily explains. “I wasn’t creating or destroying or judging anybody.”

And so, He tells us in “An Act of God,” an almost entirely solo comedy currently at the Ahmanson Theatre, God whipped up the world in six days, molding the sun and the moon, for example, so they could create eclipses and stir up His “two all-time favorite humans emotions: panic and awe.”

As for destroying the world in the biblical chapters about Noah’s ark, He intones, like a parent administering punishment, “The Flood drowned me more than it drowned you.”

But the primary reason God is inhabiting Sean Hayes’ body is to deliver a new version of the Ten Commandments, since he’s grown weary of the old ones — “the same way Don McLean has grown weary of American Pie.”  Among His new edicts:  “Thou shalt not kill in my name.” God thinks that’s patronizing. He can kill quite well by Himself, thank you very much.

And please, please, He implores, stop calling out His name during sex.

The creator of this hilariously blasphemous take on God is David Javerbaum, 44, a multiple Emmy-winning former head writer and executive producer of “The Daily Show With John Stewart,” who was equally wry and irreverent during a recent interview at a Santa Monica coffeehouse.

David Javerbaum Photo by Andrew Eccles

So how did this atheist raised in a Conservative Jewish home in New Jersey land the gig as the Divine’s ghostwriter? After, he quipped, “God came to me in my office. He appeared as a burning couch, and He spoke out of the burning couch and He said, ‘I hear you’re looking for a new job; I’m looking to write my memoirs, and I need some comedy punching up, because I’m not very funny.’ ” Javerbaum admits he did feel some pressure to accept God’s proposal — actually to prevent some heavenly smiting, so “it was an offer I didn’t feel I could refuse.”

And so Javerbaum got the Almighty a book deal (Javerbaum’s 2011 tome, “The Last Testament:  A Memoir by God”), which turned into a Twitter account (@TheTweetofGod, which had nearly 2.3 million followers before he shut it down in mid-February with the final tweet: “Out of here. Done with you.”). And now there’s the play, which premiered on Broadway with Jim Parsons last year.

OK, Javerbaum admits, so the aforementioned story isn’t actually how his God writings went down. In the beginning — actually five years ago — Javerbaum was inspired to write “The Last Testament” (now published under the title “An Act God.”) “I’ve always been interested in religion — just sort of seeing what makes people do bad things to each other,” he said. “But one day, I remember I had a moment where I just thought that no one, as far as I knew, had done a book about a parody of God and the Old Testament, and there’s really funny stuff to be mined there. It’s like low-hanging, forbidden fruit.

“The character of God as presented in the Old Testament is very cruel in a funny way. From my point of view as a writer, I just kept the same God voice that appears in that part of the Bible — which is angry, unjust, very crotchety — the cosmic equivalent of a guy on your lawn going, ‘Get off my lawn!’ ” Javerbaum said, sounding just like Jon Stewart doing his Borsht Belt Jewish comic style shtick on “The Daily Show.”

“He’s also a funny archetype — an angry old man, like George Costanza’s father on ‘Seinfeld.’ ’’

Accordingly, God onstage riffs on the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, adding that Lot went back to lick his wife after she turned into a pillar of salt, which was the first time he had done so in 27 years of marriage. 

When the archangel Michael (who appears along with the angel Gabriel as the two other characters in the play) asks the Creator where He was during the Holocaust, and on 9/11, and in the making of the last five Adam Sandler movies, God responds that He made mankind in His image, and, “I am an ass—-.” The Creator recognizes what a jerk He is as He recalls how He asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

The story fits the classic coming-into-self-awareness arc of the typical celebrity memoir, Javerbaum said. Not that God makes any real effort to change His curmudgeonly ways over the course of the play.

It’s a harsh assessment, but, Javerbaum said, “You should take a look at what I left out of the play.” In the Bible, after Lot’s wife dies, for example, Lot’s daughters get him drunk, have sex with him and get impregnated. “What’s that doing in the Bible?” Javerbaum asks, incredulously.

In his book “The Last Testament,” “I have a lot of good jokes and points of view about Moses,” Javerbaum continued. “The overall take is that Moses led a small cult into the desert to start a new world — so Moses is Charles Manson,” he said. “He got a ragtag group of people together and committed Helter Skelter.”

Some aspects of the show seem as if they could have come right out of the left-wing politics of “The Daily Show”: God is pissed off, for example, about people saying they have a “God-given” right to own guns — since where in the Bible does it ever refer to AK-47s? God, moreover, says He “f—— hates Sarah Palin, and archangel Michael (David Josefsberg) wonders why Donald Trump is allowed to roam the world.

From left: James Gleason, Sean Hayes and David Josefsberg in “An Act of God.” Photo by Jim Cox

“I do think, looking back, in all seriousness, that there’s probably one or two many jokes in the play that are the classic, usual targets of liberals,” Javerbaum said.

However, he takes some stands that, however liberal, are his own. For one, God in the play also goes out of His way to say, several times, that He is not homophobic.  Gay, straight, black, white — everyone is smitable in His eyes. “I couldn’t bear to have God be anti-gay, even ironically,” Javerbaum said. Equal rights for gays and lesbians, “happens to be the issue right now, in which people are trying to have that become a normal, accepted thing, and I support that. And the fact that religion is used so much [to condemn homosexuals] is truly upsetting and unfortunate.”

So far, only gay performers have portrayed God: Parsons (“The Big Bang Theory”) on Broadway and Hayes (“Will & Grace”) in Los Angeles. But, Javerbaum insists, that’s not a prerequisite. “The part is not limited to likable, late 30s, early 40s gay sitcom actors,” he said. “God can be a woman, black, Hispanic, anybody. I want the show to be different in each incarnation.”

Javerbaum describes religion in his childhood home as “suburban Judaism”: You celebrate the major holidays, go to religious school for a few years, have a bar mitzvah and “that’s the degree of your immersion.” He doesn’t remember his bar mitzvah Torah portion, only that he wrote a speech that “I’m sure at the time I thought was funny.”

He did have great respect for his childhood rabbi, Jehiel Orenstein of Temple Beth-El in Maplewood, N.J., who “was a very spiritual, sympathetic, intelligent man, regardless of whether he was a rabbi or not,” Javerbaum recalled. It’s not that Orenstein made sense of the Bible for Javerbaum; he was just a great guy.

The rabbi officiated at Javerbaum’s wedding some years ago, which incorporated all the usual Jewish traditions. “We did the basic stuff because, why not?” Javerbaum recalled. “My wife and I are both Jews; it was just a ritual anyway, so I was fine with it.”

When asked if he and his wife are raising their two daughters, now 8 and 11, with any particular kind of spirituality, Javerbaum promptly replied: “Television. That’s been everybody’s God for half a century now.”

Javerbaum majored in government at Harvard University, where he also wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. A friend from high school later got him a job writing for the satirical publication The Onion, and he worked as a scribe on “Late Show With David Letterman” before the same friend, by then the head writer on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” hired him as a writer on that show in 1999.  

Of Stewart, Javerbaum said, “The more I got to know him, the more I saw what a decent, honorable, fair fellow and great boss and collaborator he was.

“I think our world views are extremely similar; mine probably molded to his very much on the show. I’ve aspired to be as reasonable and rational as he is.”

Javerbaum and Stewart also shared a perspective on Judaism: “Jon does have some ambivalent feelings about being Jewish, as I do, but he’s also a very proud Jew,” Javerbaum said. “And he’d always do his accent of the Jewish old man — that was a go-to comedy voice for Jon.”

Javerbaum was also quite involved in Stephen Colbert’s recurring “Daily Show” skit “This Week in God,” where “We’d explore religious news stories, and just anybody that struck us as hypocritical,” Javerbaum said.  “We’d do things about the Vatican or a corrupt synagogue or mosque or whatever.”

But when Javerbaum began writing “An Act of God” a few years ago, he knew he would eschew treading on the toes of Islam. “It would’ve been a lot more controversial had I gone there, and it also didn’t seem necessary, because I wasn’t going for that audience. I was going for an audience of Christians and Jews,” he said.  And he realizes he’s preaching to the converted — religious extremists of any faith aren’t going to see the play.  

Has anyone condemned Javerbaum for his blasphemous show? “Nope,” said Javerbaum, who is also a Tony-nominated lyricist whose work includes the Broadway musical “Cry-Baby.”

Javerbaum said he researched the book and the play by rereading the Torah and also the four gospels of the New Testament; the play is quite respectful when it deals with the Christian savior. “I was just going by the Book,” Javerbaum said. “The character of Jesus is portrayed as a really good guy, a really nice fellow. He seemed to care about other people and to have a message of peace and love. And he seemed to genuinely not want you to judge other people too much — which has nothing to do with how Christianity is practiced in reality. I respect Jesus’ character as portrayed in the New Testament. My take in the play was that Jesus died not for peoples’ sins, but for His Father’s.

“I think when you go after Jesus, people get very upset,” he added. “But it’s different when you go after God, because he’s so abstract and the fact that he’s such a d—.” 

The Deity hasn’t deigned to comment to Javerbaum on the play. “I’ve gotten neither feedback nor — and this is far more important — royalties from God for the show,” the author joked. “God is extremely cheap and when He does pay, He still pays in shekels, which is extremely inconvenient.”

For tickets and information about “An Act of God” at the Ahmanson Theatre, click here.

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Marvin Kalb discusses the U.S.-Russian game of chicken

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture /

The voice of Marvin Kalb, deeply familiar to any baby boomer, is calm, measured and authoritative.  He was one of “Murrow’s boys” — the young reporters mentored by iconic broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow — but he was dubbed “the Professor” because he had been recruited to join the CBS News team from a doctoral program in Russian history at Harvard in the 1950s. Over the next four decades, he continued to bring both wisdom and gravitas to television news.

Now, Kalb is re-entering the public conversation with a timely and wholly fascinating book about a man and a country that have seized our attention even during the wackiest moments of the presidential campaign. “Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine and the New Cold War” (Brookings Institution Press) is a book for the ages, to be sure, but it could also be a briefing book for our next president.

In “Imperial Gamble,” Kalb drills deeply into Russian history, a subject that is as timely as a news crawl at the bottom of the television screen. “Putin’s gamble in Crimea (and it was a gamble) was reckless, even dangerous,” he explains. “Why had he acted so impulsively, so Russianly?” The answer lies in the roots of Russian history, but it casts a shadow over the world in which we live now: “If there is a Putin doctrine, hidden somewhere in his rhetoric, it would be that people who consider themselves Russian, no matter where they live, cannot and will not be abandoned by Moscow.” 

The crisis in Ukraine, as Kalb sees it, marks the re-emergence of Russia as America’s strategic adversary and a decisive player in world geopolitics: “Putin is not the reckless, unorthodox, swaggering Kremlin chief usually depicted in the West, but rather one operating in the mainstream of Russian policy for the last 100 years and more… [l]ike Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Brezhnev, Stalin, and Lenin before him.”

I was privileged to hear Kalb’s memorable voice in a conversation about his remarkable career, his new book and what it means for America’s future.

Jonathan Kirsch: Let me start with the notion that you are the last of “Murrow’s boys.” Do you look on what passes for television news nowadays with some despair?

Marvin Kalb: Yes, very much so, but I am also aware that, just as Murrow represented a significant change in the way in which the American people picked up their information about the world, today there are other journalists working with a totally different technological advantage in the way in which they accumulate information and pass it on to the American people. The danger there is that the technology not end up fashioning the message. [When] I had to do an important story on Russia from Russia, I would be shooting footage, I would then have to get the footage to New York, which would give me a day or two to think through what I wanted to say that would be the voiceover for the film. I didn’t have to be an instant analyst.  Today, everything is instantaneous, and we have to be mindful of the incredible responsibility on every reporter to be a great genius in an instant. 

JK:  You write that for some Russians, including Putin, Ukraine has never really been a separate country of its own, which puts me in mind of the argument that is made about the Palestinian Arabs, not to mention Syria and Iraq. Does it really matter whether Ukraine or Palestine have ever been countries in the past, if that’s how they think of themselves now?

MK: The Jewish people in prayer have always said: “Next year in Jerusalem.” Why? Because a couple of thousand years ago, we were there. And so you want to recapture something. From the point of view of modern-day nationalism, if you have the opportunity to recapture something from the past, you seize that opportunity.  These days the Ukrainian nationalists, in order to strengthen their claim, state that the core of their country goes back to a place called Kievan Rus in the 10th or 11th centuries. That would be fine, except that the Russians, including Putin, say exactly the same thing about the starting point of Russia.

JK: You write that Putin represents an insurmountable problem for Ukraine, but that, in a larger sense, “Ukraine is Ukraine’s biggest problem.”  What is that problem and how can it be solved?

MK:  Sure, the problem can be solved, but probably not for another 50 years, and that’s taking an optimistic view. Since 1991, Ukraine has been an independent country. Fine, but then you have to act like an independent country. You have to do something about the corruption in your state, which has paralyzed the Ukrainian economy. The people who run it know exactly what has to be done, but they can’t do it because they live in the midst of Slavic sloppiness combined with communist ineffectiveness. It is a disaster.

JK: You write that Putin wants the world to see him as “a cool, modern intellectual and not just a powerful Russian leader.” How do you see him?

MK: Putin is a Russian nationalist leader without any fixed ideology except a belief in the effectiveness of raw political and military power.  Putin agrees with the expression that we hear in the Middle East about establishing facts on the ground.  Putin believes that if you establish a fact on the ground, the world will have to adjust to it.  In the face of what he regards as a direct existential threat to Russia — the rise of a Western, nationalist, democratic Ukraine — he is prepared to put boots on the ground.  His question to Obama is: “Are you?”  And the answer is clearly, “No.” So Putin says to himself, “Thanks very much, I am going to do what I want to do.”  And he is.

JK: You write that Putin “is without doubt the strongest Russian autocrat since Stalin, but oddly the most vulnerable.” What is his greatest vulnerability?

MK: The greatest problem that Putin has stumbled into is that he has made himself the leader of a Shiite group taking on the Sunni part of the Islamic world in Syria.  Russia is now a country of 142 million people. Twenty-one million are Sunni Muslims. Two million Sunnis live in Moscow. If you go down to Dagestan, south of Chechnya, on any Friday or Saturday, you will hear clerics giving sermons absolutely comparable to what you would hear in an ISIS mosque in Syria right now. There is a great danger of an explosion of Sunni wrath, disappointment and anger at the Russians.  And Russian leaders from Lenin on have always been concerned about it. In my judgment, it’s something that Putin will pay a price for. 

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of the Jewish Journal.

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Rubio hits Trump over ‘neutral’ stance on Israel

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, United States /

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio shifted gears in the race for the Republican nomination on Wednesday.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Texas, following a second-place showing in Tuesday’s Nevada Caucus, Rubio highlighted his policy differences with the current front-runner, Donald Trump, by criticizing his recent comments on Israel.

“We have a frontrunner in this race, Donald Trump, who says he’s not going to take sides on Israel versus the Palestinians,” said Rubio. “He wants to be an honest broker. Well, there is no such thing as an honest broker in that because the Palestinian Authority, which has strong links to terror, they teach little kids that it’s a glorious thing to kill Jews. They turn down deal after deal after deal. They don’t want a deal. They’ve already said, ‘We want to destroy Israel.’”

Rubio was referring to Trump’s comments during a town hall event last week, in which he suggested that he would take a ‘neutral’ approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We will not be an impartial advocate when it comes to the issue of Israel,” Rubio stressed. “When I’m president, we’re going to take sides. We are going to be on Israel’s side.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Trump somewhat walked back his comments, stating, “I am with Israel one hundred percent.”

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