fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

May 11, 2016

‘Dollar’ coffee shops a positive change for Israelis

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Israel /

For a modern happy meal, many Israelis these days are forsaking golden arches and looking to a chain of coffee shops where mere pocket change can buy a sandwich and a hafuch (Israeli cappuccino).

It turns out that the Israeli franchise Cofix offers more than the promise that every item — soups, juices, sandwiches, deserts and TV dinners — will be priced at 5 shekels each (currently about $1.30); it offers hope that Israelis don’t have to feel short-changed, literally.

Rising prices in Israel — from groceries to housing — made headlines in 2011 during the “cottage cheese protest,” spurred by a social media call to boycott the dairy product when it reached 8 sheckels per 8.5-ounce tub. People took to the streets to protest the high cost of living in the Jewish state; cover stories were written, government committees were created. 

But Avi Katz, who considers himself a social entrepreneur as much as a businessman, decided to take the matter into his own hands. He developed Cofix based on a concept of a “dollar” coffee shop that he conjured back in 2002 when he stopped at a convenience store at a major highway intersection.

“At that time, driving from Ashdod to Netanya, you couldn’t buy anything anywhere, just there,” Katz recalled. “I went out with my partner to the convenience store. We bought two coffees, cake, gum — we brought only 50 sheckels (about $13.25 today) with us; we didn’t carry our wallet. We had to go back to bring 12 sheckels ($3). An elevator technician was parked next to us. He said: ‘Crazy! You’re also bringing more cash?’ I said: ‘If I have a Mercedes and own 40 stores and this hurts — what does he feel?’ ”

It took 10 years for Katz’s idea to come to fruition — and it was long after this king of discounts brought the concept of a retail dollar store to Israel in the 1990s, catering to the influx of Russian immigrants who sought to make a home quickly and affordably. He sold toys, school supplies and knickknacks at competitive prices with the Kfar Sha’ashuyim toy store chain, which he subsequently sold. 

“My business philosophy was to identify a need — not to see an interesting business idea and do it, but to identify a need and apply that interesting idea to it,” Katz said, a knitted kippah topping his tall frame during an interview at his Petah Tikva office where he runs Keren Hagshamah, an investment firm catering to middle-class Israelis.

His daughter, Hagit Shinover, Cofix’s vice president of purchasing, left a career in cosmetics retail to work with him. Together, they convinced hesitant suppliers to package cafe items in such a way that they could still make a profit at 5 sheckels. 

“There’s the idea and there’s the execution,” Katz said. “The execution is accomplished first and foremost by presenting attractive, good, quality products at the right price. If you don’t have that, the idea won’t work.”

Today, several copycats exist across the country, forcing the cost of hafuch down even at major cafe chains. Cofix menus are constantly updated with seasonal items. Dim sum, Greek salad, quinoa and cranberry salad, and vegetarian shwarma (since Cofix is dairy kosher) recently joined the compact shelves filled with focaccias, tuna and cheese sandwiches, sodas and freshly squeezed orange juice. Cofix Bar is a “deluxe” version serving beer, wine and liquor shots in addition to everything else. 

Last year, following the success of Cofix, came Super Cofix, an everything-for-5-shekels supermarket, selling everything from brand-name cold cuts to produce to, of course, cottage cheese. It’s like a 99-cent store (or $1.30, depending on the exchange rate), but with carefully curated items, sold in an urban chic space that is meant to create a sophisticated consumer experience.

“There is a whole sector of the population — about 30 percent of the market — that can’t use the tools the market gives to lower prices,” Katz said, explaining the reasoning behind Super Cofix. “That’s singles, senior citizens and young couples. They don’t need buy-one-get-one-free. They don’t need to buy in bulk.”

Katz grew up knowing financial hardship. His father died when he was 7, leaving his mother to manage her ultra-Orthodox Bnei Brak household. After discovering secular novels, Katz left the Charedi fold, served in the Israel Defense Forces and went on to raise a family of seven in a religious Zionist household; love of the “common people” drives his work, and customers feel that.

“Cofix made Israel a much more livable country,” said Eliezer Simonovsky of Jerusalem, a 25-year-old immigrant and student from Queens, N.Y., and a Cofix regular, in response to a Facebook post soliciting opinions on Cofix. “First off, it makes a cheap option for a snack or a drink. Even better for me is the Cofix Bars. Alcohol in Israel is very expensive, and with Cofix my friends and I can take a few shots before going out to the pubs. This saves me tons of money.”

Chaya Tal, a student and educator who lives in Gush Etzion, also weighed in. “It has turned into my almost one-and-only alternative for fast food. I mean coffee, tea, baked goods. I’m very glad it opened the market for similar initiatives like [copycat] Cofizz, and I believe this woman, or whoever did it, did a big chessed [act of kindness] to the public.”

‘Dollar’ coffee shops a positive change for Israelis Read More »

Latina Jews put stories onstage

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment, Theater /

During a recent Jewish Women’s Theatre (JWT) rehearsal, a young actress reads a solo scene from a show that’s about to open. She plays the role of a woman who steps into an old-fashioned New York hardware store and is suddenly flooded with warm memories of a similar store run by her late grandfather when she was a child. 

It’s a powerful moment for the storyteller, transporting her back to a time when she was part of a Jewish community, in a foreign land, that had, to a large degree, integrated into the life of the country while retaining its separate identity — its shuls, its social clubs and its own way of life. 

The country and the Jewish life that the storyteller remembers with such visceral clarity is not Poland or Russia of a century ago, and it’s not Iran or Syria in modern times. 

It’s Venezuela.

In the hands of actress Marnina Wirtschafter, the scene evokes laughter and tears. But for the piece’s writer, Deborah Benaim, the look and smells of the hardware store do more than evoke the nostalgia felt by many uprooted immigrants; in her case, the longing is not only for her abuelo’s hardware store, but also for the Latin American life she’s left behind.

“The Ferreteria [hardware store] in Caracas” is one of a dozen pieces that comprise “Chutzpah & Salsa,” a JWT production opening on May 15 and running through May 24 at various locations in Los Angeles. 

Like most JWT presentations, “Chutzpah & Salsa” is composed of stand-alone stories centered around a central theme. Most of the pieces in this show are slice-of-life vignettes written by Jewish women whose families — after leaving (or escaping from) Europe or the Middle East — emigrated to Latin America and, after several generations, found their way to the United States.

Ronda Spinak, JWT’s co-founder and artistic director, said what’s attractive to her about “Chutzpah & Salsa” is that it brings the Latina Jewish immigrant story to life and helps the audience “see the universality of it.” 

Susan Morgenstern, the production’s director, pointed out that for most people, if you say “Jewish immigrant,” it conjures up images of Tevye leaving a Russian or Polish shtetl and arriving, finally, at Ellis Island. But many Jews who migrated from Europe and the Middle East in the late 19th and early 20th centuries went to Latin America instead, and this is “equally the Jewish immigrant story,” she said.

Suzanna Kaplan, who is producing “Chutzpah & Salsa” with Spinak, is from Mexico City and has been JWT’s literary manager since the company’s second year. “Ronda asked me if I thought I could put it together, and I dove right in and found people to help and guide me, people in the Latin American-Jewish community who are doing amazing things,” Kaplan said.

The writers include Sonia Nazario, who won a Pulitzer Prize when she worked for the Los Angeles Times; Cuban-born poet Ruth Behar; novelist and academic Barbara Mujica; and Fulbright scholar and author Ivonne Saed. 

“The writing is by people, mostly women, who have a background in different parts of Latin America, from Argentina to Mexico,” Spinak said. 

Other pieces are by writers who were born and grew up in Cuba, Venezuela and Chile; the stories cover a wide range of ages.

“We wanted to make sure that we’re balancing the stories so that they’re all fresh,” Morgenstern said. “We want humor, of course, and some romance, but mostly we want the dramatic, profound, heartfelt stories that have as one of the underlying themes: escape and finding your new home.”

“In one piece, Barbara’s piece, you find out the uncle and the brother left Germany right before the war because of an incident that happened, an incident that people will understand and recognize,” Spinak said. “What they will be surprised by is that a similar incident happens again in Chile. … And that’s laid into the larger story being told, which is whether the second generation feels accepted in Chile.” 

Another story, “Can’t Take the Mexi Out of the Jew,” performed by the woman who wrote it, Erika Sabel Flores, is about her physical and spiritual journey after leaving her home in Mexico. The story describes her time with New York Jews — who, it seems, weren’t observant enough for her — to a spiritual awakening in Israel, to living with Chabadniks in Florida, to eventually finding a Mexican area near Miami where she felt comfortable.

“Machatunim” (“in-laws” in English), written by Maureen Rubin from a story by JoLynn Pineda, is different from the other tales in “Chutzpah & Salsa.” It’s about an American non-Jewish woman — her father is Latino, her mother a fair-skinned Midwesterner — who had always been unclear about her ethnic and racial self-identity. As an adult working in finance, she falls in love with a Jewish man and decides to convert to Judaism. Her struggle in the piece is how to inform her parents, especially her Latino father, about her conversion. 

“What drew me to JWT in the first place,” Morgenstern said, “is that on our stage, there’s always a mixture of Jews and non-Jews, young and old. … It’s all about the embrace, the welcoming, and the audiences range from the secular to the Orthodox. And I love that the community is not a club that’s keeping people out, but in both our art and in our way of life [we’re] embracing in, and that’s very much represented in this particular show.”

At The Braid in Santa Monica, JWT’s home, “Chutzpah & Salsa” will have a companion art show opening on May 22. 

“What we always do, every time we have a new theme in the salon, we have a new art show, so that people who come to The Braid have this combination of art and dramatic performance that mesh,” Spinak said. “So it will be a very, very full experience of fine art and performance art. The idea is to be immersed in the art.”

“Chutzpah & Salsa” runs from May 15 through May 24 at various venues in Los Angeles, including Jewish Women’s Theatre’s home, The Braid, 2912 Colorado St., Santa Monica, No. 103. For information and tickets, call (800) 838-3006 or go to Latina Jews put stories onstage Read More »

Hindenburg sign comes down at Crescenta Valley Park

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

The Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation has removed a sign from Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park, a Los Angeles county park near Glendale, that read “Welcome to Hindenburg Park.” 

The Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys, among others, had demanded the sign be taken down, arguing the sign paid tribute to the former German President Paul von Hindenburg, who appointed Adolf Hitler to be chancellor of Germany and whose sudden death in 1934 resulted in Hitler consolidating power and declaring himself Fuhrer.

The nonprofit German-American cultural organization Tricentennial Foundation paid $2,500 for the creation of the Hindenburg sign, which was installed in February with the cooperation of Los Angeles County. The group had intended it to honor a section of the park formerly owned by the German American League, which was known as Hindenburg Park in the 1930s. 

The German American League sold Hindenburg Park to Los Angeles County in 1957, at which time it was folded into the Crescenta Valley Communtiy Regional Park and renamed.

The removal on May 4 followed a vote two days earlier by the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission at which nine of the 15 members voted to approve a motion calling for the sign’s removal, according to the Los Angeles Times. One member abstained. The meeting was held at the Los Angeles County Community Senior Services headquarters.

The commission also approved the creation of a new sign to honor the German-American heritage of Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park and the creation of an ad hoc committee, which has 30 days to develop a sign that will not include the name Hindenburg but that acknowledges both the positive and negative elements of the history of the park, which was a site of both German-American cultural events such as Oktoberfest and also for rallies by the German American Bund, an American Nazi organization, in the 1930s and ’40s. 

The commission’s vote was a victory for critics of the 6-foot-high wooden sign, which stood at the entrance of Crescenta Valley Community Regional Park, at Dunsmore and Honolulu avenues. 

“The sign is gone and that resolves what a lot of people thought was an offensive thing, and that’s good,” Eagle Rock resident Mona Field, who is Jewish, said in a May 9 phone interview.

Field was among those in attendance at last week’s vote. She also attended a meeting in April that drew more than 100 attendees and featured both opponents and supporters of the sign expressing their sentiments about it. 

Other attendees at the April meeting included La Canada non-Jewish resident Nalini Lasiewicz, a Dutch native who expressed in a phone interview this week that she was disappointed with the commission’s vote. 

“I think there was a misplaced grievance in response to this particular sign,” she said. “And I think there is value in exploring the historical facts but that it should be done with sensitivity to all parties involved.”

Hindenburg sign comes down at Crescenta Valley Park Read More »

Torah portion: Loving your spouse as yourself?

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Torah /

The imperative to “love your fellow as you love yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) is so lofty, so sublime, that thinkers of many different ages doubted that it could actually be accomplished. 

Sigmund Freud objected to this biblical command, asking, “Why should we do it? What good will it do us? But above all, how shall we achieve it? How can it be possible? My love is something valuable to me which I ought not to throw away without reflection. Indeed I should be wrong to do so, for my love is valued by all my own people as a sign of my preferring them, and it is an injustice to them if I put a stranger on a par with them.”

Centuries earlier, Nachmanides, too, doubted that the command could be fulfilled — or even meant — literally (and in the process, pointed out that Rabbi Akiva had preceded him in this opinion). “Love your fellow as yourself is an exaggeration,” Nachmanides wrote, “for a person’s heart is not capable of loving his friend as he loves his own life. In addition to which, Rabbi Akiva has already taught that a person must insure his own life before saving the life of another.”

Perhaps with these very doubts and questions in mind, the sages of the Talmud largely redirected this most well-known of mitzvot toward one very specific human relationship, where they felt that it could indeed be fulfilled in its pristine literal form. In Tractate Kiddushin, after acknowledging that in pure legal terms, a man and woman could become betrothed to marry without ever meeting each other face to face, the talmudic sages then proceeded to forbid this practice, lest the blindly betrothing couple later discover they detest each other, and would then be in violation of “love your fellow as yourself”! 

The application of this mitzvah specifically to the marital bond continues in the Talmud’s formulation of the “Seven Blessings” that we recite beneath the chuppah. Using the exact (and rare) biblical word for “fellow” (rey-ah) that is used in the famous mitzvah, the wedding blessing proclaims, “Greatly rejoice beloved fellows (rey-im)!” And a third point in the pattern comes in the foundational rabbinic instruction — an obvious paraphrase of the biblical mitzvah — that “a man should love his wife as himself, and honor her more than himself.” The talmudic sages believed that within at least one human relationship — the marital relationship — this lofty, sublime, but oh-so-difficult mitzvah could find literal fulfillment. 

Loving one’s spouse as oneself can, of course, express itself in a variety of different ways. The most obvious is in the spousal willingness to sacrifice for the other, to forfeit the fulfillment of personal desires in order to facilitate the fulfillment of the other’s. (Though, as I always counsel couples that I will soon be marrying, each spouse also bears the responsibility to know and understand what sacrifice his or her spouse must not be allowed to make, no matter how lovingly it is offered, for that particular sacrifice would damage the very core of that spouse’s identity.) 

A less obvious but no less important way of loving one’s spouse as oneself can be borrowed from the way Nachmanides ultimately understands the biblical verse’s intention. Nachmanides posits that what the Torah is actually asking us to do is to fully rejoice in the other’s good fortune. To genuinely desire the very best of everything for our fellow, to not hold back in terms of what we hope he will achieve, or of what blessings she will attain. To not be impeded by any kind of secret desire that her blessings fall, at least a little bit, shy of our own. This is the meaning, realistically, of “love the other as yourself.” 

But when we broaden Nachmanides’ idea of complete emotional investment in the other to encompass other aspects of the human emotional experience, his instruction becomes extraordinarily important to a healthy marriage and constitutes an incredibly wise piece of marital advice. For a spouse can — and needs to — not only fully rejoice when his spouse is rejoicing, but also to feel the frustration when his spouse is frustrated. A spouse can — and needs to — experience excitement when her spouse is feeling excited about something and mournful when her spouse is feeling a sense of loss. 

This is not always easy, as people who are married don’t always readily understand their spouse’s emotional reaction to particular events or developments. Yet the commitment to love one’s spouse in the way that you would yourself like to be loved requires making a maximal effort to understand, to emotionally participate, to be in position to empathize.  

“Rejoice greatly beloved friends,” we say to every couple as they stand beneath their chuppah. For marriage requires that husband and wife be the very best of friends — the kind that can realistically fulfill the imperative to love each other just as they love themselves. 

Rav Yosef Kanefsky is rabbi at B’nai David-Judea, a Modern Orthodox congregation.

Torah portion: Loving your spouse as yourself? Read More »

Coping through absurdity

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

“I have seen what a laugh can do. It can transform almost unbearable tears into something bearable, even hopeful.”

— Bob Hope

When I picked up my son’s high school graduation announcement cards from Fairfax High School last week, it reminded me of other graduations, and I found myself thinking back to 1985, when I graduated from the double master’s program at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in what was then called “Jewish communal service” (now nonprofit management), and also at USC, in public administration.

Graduate school was a heady time. I was working almost full time as press secretary to a Los Angeles City Councilmember and squeezing in classes in the evenings, on weekends and two mornings a week. Classmates were landing interesting and well-paying jobs, sometimes with multiple job offers. Friends were getting engaged and married, and my parents were both alive and figuring out their post-retirement lives. When I looked ahead into the future, I saw almost boundless opportunities for myself and for my peers. We just needed to make good choices. Life seemed predictable, orderly and rational, with the biggest challenges centered on falling in love, getting married and figuring out how many kids to have.

I was fortunate to find a good and loving husband and then blessed with giving birth to two healthy, beautiful redhaired children, first a girl and then a boy. But then things got complicated. When our son, Danny, was 2 months old, he developed a bad cold, which moved very quickly into a high fever, a bad cough and then he had trouble breathing … RSV pneumonia. He ended up staying five long nights in the pediatric ICU at UCLA hospital, hooked up to electronic leads, a pulse oxygen monitor on his tiny forefinger. 

When we took Danny home, we noticed that has wasn’t moving around much, but during his well-baby visits to the pediatrician, I was told, “Every baby develops at his own pace.” Then, at 6 months, both he and his big sister came down with chicken pox, and he stopped meeting developmental milestones. At 10 months, he still wasn’t crawling, could say only vowels and was unable to hold his own bottle. After many medical appointments, he was eventually diagnosed with non-specific cerebral palsy (CP)/developmental delays. Boom. Suddenly, we had pivoted from reading books with titles such as “What to Expect When You Are Expecting” to “How to Take Care of Your Child With Special Needs.”

In those pre-Internet days, I went to the local public library and starting reading the shelf of books on the subject of special needs and developmental disabilities. Experts in the field stressed how important it was to develop “coping strategies,” which ranged from informal to formal support networks, to taking up yoga and daily mediation. Parents, I read, needed time alone together and should avail themselves of “respite services.” Siblings could also be negatively impacted by so much parental attention going to the child with special needs.

One group of academic researchers studying the topic of parenting children with CP reported in the journal Pediatrics that “although caregiving is a normal part of being the parent of a young child, this role takes on an entirely different significance when a child experiences functional limitations and possible long-term dependence. … Consequently, the task of caring for a child with complex disabilities at home might be somewhat daunting for caregivers. … It is not fully understood why some caregivers cope well and others do not.” 

Nothing I read talked about the need to sit back, laugh and simply accept the absurdity of life as a parent of a child with special needs. Such as when Danny, at around 10 years old, was having frequent nosebleeds and we went to a Halloween carnival. At first, some people there thought the nosebleed was part of his costume when I kept asking bystanders to bring us tissues and wet paper towels. As usual during a nosebleed, Danny would not keep his head still and was yelling, “No, no, no.” Then someone stepped forward to help and said he was a doctor. He tried to stanch the blood flow, but to no avail; I had to eventually thank him and send him away.

Other times, I have had to come up with creative solutions to bureaucratic roadblocks and end up laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation. There was a time when we needed a certain nutritional supplement that the state-funded regional center could purchase for us but couldn’t get funding until we had received denials from our private health insurance company. The problem was that our health insurance was dragging its feet to issue the denial letter. I found myself in my car, yelling at the customer service representative on my cellphone, “I need that denial letter, and I need it now.”

From reading the blogs of other parents of children and adults with special needs, I know I’m not alone in taking comfort in black humor and laughing at the crazy situations of our everyday lives. Parents of children with special needs quickly bond in own little “tribe” with our own inside jokes. There’s the towering 22-year-old guy with autism who still loves to watch “Sesame Street,” the teenager who will refuse to eat anything unless it is cut into tiny cubes, and the nasty stares from strangers when your kid throws a tantrum. There’s also the scary reality of knowing your child will need help for the rest of his or her life.

And there’s a solution, too: We can take a step back, dig deep to find the absurdity of what we are facing, and make the choice to take to heart the words of that famous philosopher Mel Brooks: “Life literally abounds in comedy if you just look around you.”

Michelle K. Wolf writes a monthly column for the Jewish Journal. Visit her Jews and Special Needs blog at jewishjournal.com/jews_and_ special_needs.

Coping through absurdity Read More »

Middle East artists depolarize politics in USC class

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

On a recent weekday morning, nearly 20 USC freshmen gathered for a seminar that looked at the contemporary Israeli and Palestinian experience through literature, poetry, film and television. But instead of highlighting the differences between the two groups, as is so often the case, this semester-long class, which ended the last week of April, focused on what they have in common.

“Exile and Identity in Modern Israeli and Palestinian Culture” was taught by Yaffa Weisman. Weisman, 64, is director of the Frances-Henry Library at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR), which is located near the USC campus. She is also an adjunct associate professor at HUC-JIR’s Jerome H. Louchheim School for Judaic Studies, which has been offering Jewish studies courses to USC undergraduates since 1971, the year HUC-JIR moved to its current location. 

In the past, Weisman, whose specialty is comparative literature, has taught the “Literature of Resistance,” a class she described as “dealing with how various cultures and societies deal with repression,” also through the Louchheim School. But the exile and identity class was the first time she offered a class focusing solely on modern Israelis and Palestinians.

“In my ‘Literature of Resistance’ class, I have been careful about not teaching literature about the conflict, talking myself into the idea that I may be too biased,” Weisman said. “But then I realized it doesn’t matter where I go. I am still going to be an Israeli.

“My own politics are of reconciliation and peace,” added Weisman, who grew up in Ramla, Israel, in a peaceful neighborhood of Jews, Christians and Muslims. “I didn’t know this was an ideal picture. Jews and Arabs lived together in my life, so I started looking into ways to convey that idea in nonpolitical ways: the idea that there is or should be hope, and there are points of reconciliation, and that there are more points of commonalities than differences between Palestinians and Israelis. I wanted to show how both cultures express ideas and feelings about the situation. But it felt too broad. So I started focusing on two concepts: the ideas of exile and identity.”

Weisman, who has a background in theater, was inspired to create the class, in part, by conversations she had with friends. “I have not lived in Israel for 35 years,” she said. “But I am very tuned in when it comes to collaboration. I have heard from a lot of my colleagues in Israel about work that is being done in theater and realizing there is a whole world of coexistence. Poets talk to each other, writers talk to each other, filmmakers.” 

Her goal, she said, was “to have the students see that this particular conflict is more than the sum of news headlines, and that creative expressions of Israelis and Palestinians shed light on the human aspects of the conflict.”

Among the works the students examined in Weisman’s class were poems by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai and Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. They saw several films, including the 1964 satire “Sallah,” generally considered the most successful film in Israeli history, as well as Palestinian director Elia Suleiman’s semi-autobiographical 2009 film, “The Time That Remains.” They read short stories by Israeli Benjamin Tammuz and Palestinian Ghassan Kanafani and listened to the national anthems for both Israel and Palestine. Of course, Weisman was limited in her choices; she could use only those works that had been translated into English.

“I tried very much not to be one-sided,” Weisman said. “I didn’t shy away from what for me are very painful descriptions of Palestinian refugees in 1948. I chose texts that show both the pain and the hope, the aspiration.” 

The works that were the subject of the most spirited classroom discussions, according to Weisman, were two interviews. One was a lengthy interview of Darwish by Helit Yeshurun, an Israeli poet. In it, Darwish says, among other things: “Do you know why we, the Palestinians, are famous? Because you are our enemy. Interest in the Palestine problem comes by way of interest in the Jewish problem. … You have given us defeat, weakness and publicity.” In the other interview, from Amos Oz’s 1983 book, “In the Land of Israel,” the Israeli writer sits down with three Palestinian men in Ramallah. They bond over cigarettes and Coca-Cola and talk about power, peace and war.

Based on conversations she had with students and reflection papers they wrote, Weisman considers the class a success and plans to teach it again next spring. “Some of [the students] are at least willing to consider two things: that art can change the world and that there is an ongoing dialogue. And once you open yourself to listening to the other side, or both sides, you get a different perspective on the conflict and I think a little more hopeful perspective.”

Noah Etessani, 18, found the class enlightening. “All the exposure I have gotten on this topic has been very one-sided: just pro-Israel, not really giving voice to the Palestinians,” said Etessani, who grew up in Beverly Hills and is Jewish.

Now, he said, “I have a lot more sympathy toward the ordinary Palestinian people, not the people in charge, [but] the people just born there, trying to live their everyday lives. I definitely came out of [the class] feeling different.

“At the end of the day, I really realized that the vast majority of people on both sides are ordinary people trying to live their lives normally.”

Another student in the seminar had a more personal takeaway. Jess Jun, 18, who was born in Korea and came to the United States when she was 6 — her family lives in Orange County — said she now has a general understanding of the situation in the Middle East and the inner workings of the Israeli and Palestinian people. 

But, Jun added, “I myself, as an immigrant, had trouble determining if I was Korean or American or Korean-American. But taking the class and seeing what Israelis and Palestinians felt made me think about how I should be thinking about the issue. I know [my] issue is very incomparable to what they are going through. But I do think I was able to relate in some way.”

Middle East artists depolarize politics in USC class Read More »

Big names share big ideas at Milken Conference

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

In his final appearance at the prestigious Milken Institute Global Conference as consul general of Israel in Los Angeles, David Siegel focused on the big picture — the really big picture.

Like how Israel has entered into agreements with state and local officials in the United States to help them save water, enhance cybersecurity and fight HIV/AIDS.

“If you take this vision globally, this is about Israel providing solutions to the world,” Siegel said, referring to Israeli water-saving technologies, including desalination and drip irrigation during an invitation-only May 4 panel titled “California-Israel Global Innovation Partnership.”

Siegel was joined on the panel at the Beverly Hilton by the likes of L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield and Glenn Yago, the senior director of the Milken Innovation Center at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, which seeks to find market-based solutions to the greatest challenges facing Israel.

“This is pretty much what the consulate is doing today,” Siegel said, referring to recent partnerships that include a 2014 memorandum of understanding signed by California Gov. Jerry Brown and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fight water scarcity and more; a 2015 agreement between Israel and L.A. County focused on taking on their respective water crises; a 2014 agreement between Israel and the City of West Hollywood that resulted in the forming an HIV/AIDS Task Force; and a 2015 agreement between Israel and the City of Beverly Hills centered on issues like water and cyber-security. 

“We believe this is where we need to be,” Siegel said. 

He also drew a connection between these agreements and the current California state legislation that would, if passed, prohibit the state from entering into contracts with companies that participate in a boycott against Israel.

“What we’re also showing through these platforms of engagement is that these also become the partners that help us fight that phenomenon in city halls, in state governments,” Siegel said. “California is in the process of looking at passing an anti-BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] resolution. It would be the first of its kind coming from a progressive coalition in the United States, and I think that says a lot about the value of these partnerships and what we’ve all brought to the table.”

The May 1-4 conference organized by the Milken Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, featured high-ranking politicians, past and present (Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, former Vice President Al Gore and retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal) and high-powered celebrities (Tom Hanks, Russell Simmons, Jessica Alba, Goldie Hawn, Cher and Seth Rogen) discussing Hollywood, geopolitics and other large-scale topics.  

The overarching theme of the conference this year — which featured 700 speakers in 200 sessions — was “The Future of Humankind.” 

Gore discussed how Florida, Spain and other regions are suffering due to climate change. He praised countries like Chile, which has had exponential growth in the solar power market. He said humans need to continue to show commitment to coming up with solutions to the climate crisis.

“The will to change, the will to act, the will to survive is itself a renewable resource,” Gore said during a presentation titled “Investing in the Sustainable Economy.” 

Lew spoke with Jared Bernstein, economic policy fellow at the Milken Institute, regarding the financial collapse of 2008 and the need for tax reform and infrastructure development.

“You go back to those days and you look at what the mood in the global financial marketplace was, it was high anxiety,” he said of the period after the Great Recession. “There is an expectation in the United States that it will govern itself in an orderly way. When that expectation is unsettled, it causes a great deal of nervousness.

“Now, I think we’ve done quite a bit better in the last few years,” Lew said. 

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair talked about “ISIS and Global Terrorism: What It Will Take to Defeat Them,” alongside U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“Until you defeat the ideology, you will never defeat the violence,” Blair said.

Closer to home, Graham criticized presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s rhetoric in denouncing U.S. activity in regions such as Iraq and Libya. 

“You want to be leader of the freaking free world and you’re yearning for dictators to come back? You reject democracy as a good thing? I’m a Republican. My party has lost its way in terms of ‘The Donald,’ ” Graham said.

Retired Navy admiral and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen said he supported the Iranian nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions against Iran in exchange for that country curbing its nuclear program for 10-15 years, but that he mistrusts Iran in general. 

“There is a path there possibly for a peaceful outcome in Iran and in that part of the world, [but it is a] very, very difficult path and it is a tough issue,” he said, appearing on a panel with McChrystal. 

The conference drew more than 3,000 attendees, including Milken Institute associate members, contributing members and council members, who pay $12,500, $15,000 and $25,000 for membership, respectively, as well as members of the Milken Institute Young Leaders Circle.

Daniel Hakimi, a member of the Young Leaders Circle, head of operations at telecommunications company CyberNet Communications and a 2003 graduate of Milken Community Schools, was among those who turned out. 

“Learning from all these great panelists will help me become a decent businessman,” he said, speaking in between panel discussions in the lobby of the hotel. 

Meanwhile, Milken Community Schools students Ashley Yeshoua and Elliot Sina also attended, with the latter saying the conference was an opportunity to learn about a lot of subjects. 

“Anything we can pick up I feel is valuable,” Sina said.

Big names share big ideas at Milken Conference Read More »

Urth Caffé faces anti-Muslim discrimination suit

Leave a Comment / California /

Seven Muslim women, of whom six regularly wear the hijab, or Muslim headscarf, are suing Urth Caffé, alleging they were forced to leave its Laguna Beach location because of their religion. 

The May 2 lawsuit against the artisanal coffee shop, which has five Southern California locations, asserts the cafe’s management ejected the women from a prominent spot near the entrance to hide the presence of Muslim clientele following a series of nearby allegedly Islamophobic crimes, including a tire slashing and an egg-throwing incident.

An attorney for the restaurant, which is owned by Shallom and Jilla Berkman, who are Jewish and Muslim, respectively, claims it is the target of a lawsuit motivated by an international Muslim political agenda.

The incident in question took place on a Friday evening, April 22, when the seven women were asked to vacate their tables in accordance with a “45-minute policy” the restaurant maintains to clear tables for waiting customers during peak hours. Police officers called to the scene by a security guard escorted the women out.

“What began as a night out with some friends ended as a painful and embarrassing reminder of what it is like to be visibly Muslim — even in liberal California,” Sara Farsakh, the lead plaintiff, wrote in a Facebook post that quickly went viral.

A video she posted to the social network shows a number of tables were unoccupied, both outdoors and inside, while the women were being ejected.

“Rather than take proactive steps to ensure that Muslim clients felt welcome at their location, Urth Caffé appeased the taunters, egg-throwers, and tire-slashers by attempting to cleanse the location of the visibly Muslim Plaintiffs,” the lawsuit alleges.

Laguna Beach Police Department Capt. Jason Kravetz said the police have no evidence the incidents referenced in the lawsuit leading up to April 22 were racially motivated. He added that outside those events, the city hasn’t experienced any alleged hate crimes.

Nonetheless, the case quickly developed political overtones. On April 26, the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement saying it is “investigating the matter and is very concerned about the possible bias motive involved in this incident.”

Meanwhile, Urth Caffé’s pro bono attorney, David Yerushalmi, is a conservative activist known for combatting the influence of sharia, or religious Islamic law, in the United States. He’s also the co-founder of the American Freedom Law Center, a conservative public interest law firm.

Yerushalmi, an Orthodox Jew, called the lawsuit a frame-up motivated by Islamist politics, pointing out Farsakh’s connection to the pro-Palestinian movement.

“This was a manufactured, fraudulent lawsuit from the get-go,” Yerushalmi said.

He added, “It’s part of the Muslim Brotherhood political manifesto to get involved in the West, to utilize the laws that we have for anti-discrimination and free speech and to leverage them against what they consider to be their enemies.”

He said Farsakh is involved with the group Al-Awda, which says on its website it supports the “rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands of origin, and to full restitution of all their confiscated and destroyed property.”

Daniel Stormer, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said Yerushalmi’s decision to investigate Farsakh’s “completely lawful and legitimate First Amendment activity” reveals his anti-Muslim bias. 

The Pasadena-based attorney called Yerushalmi “probably the leading anti-Muslim activist this side of Donald Trump.” Stormer said Urth Caffé’s decision to retain him supports his clients’ allegations that the chain engaged in anti-Muslim profiling.

“They have a right to hire whatever lawyer they want,” he said in an interview. “But in my experience, likes attract. In my experience, you go to people who think like you, who have friends that think like you.”

In an email to the Journal, Shallom Berkman said of Yerushalmi, “We don’t consider him anti-Muslim — we believe him to be pro-justice.”

“We hired David because he has a wealth of experience in these types of issues; because he has an excellent success rate; because he is a passionate and intelligent advocate for our business; and because he understood our issues and had great insights and compassion,” he wrote.

Yerushalmi also vehemently rejects the claim of Islamophobia.

“If I were anti-Muslim, why would I represent Jilla Berkman?” he said of the chain’s Muslim co-owner.

The conservative litigator said he hopes to prove in court that the lawsuit is part of a broader agenda to put forward a Muslim “victimization narrative.”

“The court of law has a level playing field and they’re not going to be able to manipulate the facts in court like they can in the media,” Yerushalmi said.

In a letter to customers posted at the Laguna Beach location, Shallom Berkman echoed the allegation that the suit is politically motivated. 

“We find this incident both sad and frustrating in that they chose one of the most welcoming and diverse businesses in the area to target with their political agenda,” he wrote, speaking for himself and his wife.

He added, “These accusations are absolutely false and we remain confident that when the whole truth is known, we will be completely vindicated.”

In the email to the Journal, Berkman attached a picture of what he said was a handwritten note left at the Laguna Beach location on the evening of May 6, signed simply, “A Muslim woman from the Middle East.”

“You brought a piece of the Middle Eastern culture here,” the note reads. “I just wanted to say that I experienced nothing but respect.” 

Urth Caffé faces anti-Muslim discrimination suit Read More »

A dinner to discuss the end of life

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles /

When people gather around a table with food, in most instances conversations tend toward lighter or topical issues, like gossip or politics. But if that’s too depressing, here’s another idea as a conversation starter: mortality and our inevitable demise. 

What happens to your soul when you die? What regrets would you have if you knew you were approaching the end of your life? Is death something you fear? Such questions often seem off-limits, especially with strangers. Concern about the prevalence of our fear of facing our mortality has led Michael Hebb, a Seattle-based entrepreneur and former restaurant owner, to launch an international movement called Let’s Have Dinner and Talk About Death.

In 2012, Hebb met two doctors in the dining car of a train traveling between Portland and Seattle. They spoke to Hebb about the end of life and presented Hebb with a startling statistic: Nearly 75 percent of Americans want to die at home, yet only 25 percent of them do. That’s when Hebb realized the failure to have these conversations creates an incredible burden on the health care system in the United States.

Hebb wanted to do something about it, so he enlisted the help of his graduate students at the University of Washington. They designed a website and recruited doctors and spiritual leaders to join the cause. As a result, thousands of so-called Death Over Dinner parties have been held since Hebb first made his call to action.

Michael Hebb explains why he created the movement called Let’s Have Dinner and Talk About Death. 

Last month, a Death Over Dinner party took place at Dudley Market in Venice, a hip gourmet restaurant owned by chef Jesse Barber and his wife, Celia, both longtime friends of Hebb’s. They served an eight-course, family-style meal. Before it began, about four dozen attendees mingled, introducing themselves while sipping wine.

“I’m a little scared,” said Amanda Katz, a local artist and curator. “I lost someone this year, an uncle. He was like a father figure.”

But, Katz said, she was looking forward to the dinner.

“It’s an opportunity to practice your boundaries and how to move through the world as an open and porous person” while also protecting yourself, she said.

This was not fashion entrepreneur Ethan Lipsitz’s first “death dinner.” He had hosted one at home with family and a few close friends.

“It’s this thing we don’t talk about, but once we start, it flows,” he said. Death is “a daily experience. We experience death constantly, and to become more comfortable with it is important to me.”

Jews remember the dead in reciting the Kaddish prayer at Yizkor services held four times a year and during yahrzeit commemorations. But Judaism emphasizes life on Earth rather than the afterlife, said Rabbi Carla Howard, founder and executive director of Jewish Healing Center-Los Angeles, who was one of the dinner’s attendees.

“Most of the time, when people need to find out about death, it’s at the moment that they need it,” Howard said. “You’re not always in the right frame of mind to read text or approach it intellectually or make decisions when you’re forced to. So the idea is that dealing with end of life is something that should be part of our entire life spectrum.”

Hebb welcomed the attendees, then introduced Ira Byock, a physician specializing in palliative care. Byock has written extensively about end-of-life matters and serves as chief medical officer of the Providence Institute for Human Caring.

Byock “has stood for a care model, an empathic model, and just a presence and a complete turning toward what it means for our culture to do this well,” Hebb said.

“We’re all very diverse people, but the commonality that we have is that we’re mortal. And in facing the fact of our mortality, life paradoxically becomes more rich,” Byock told the group.

Hebb called the death dinner “actually just a well-disguised conversation about life and what we want. Death, for me, is this great mirror. Looking at it, and thinking about it, is one of the best ways, maybe the best way, to get access to how you want to live.”

After that preamble, the attendees at each table lit a memorial candle while sharing the name of someone who is no longer alive and had a positive impact on their lives. I talked about my grandmother, Masha Landesman, a Holocaust survivor with a fiery personality who prepared traditional Polish feasts and seemed to know everyone in Ashkelon, the Israeli city where she raised my father and aunt. Tembi Locke, an actress sitting at my table, also remembered her grandmother, who was born in 1911 in the segregated South.

Each table was given a list of questions meant to prompt conversation. The first was, If you could have someone (living or dead) sing at your funeral, who would it be and what would they sing?

One of my tablemates, Frank Kozakowski, principal at Loyola High School, said he would want his favorite high school coach, Mike Lynch, to sing “Amazing Grace.” 

A young woman sitting next to me, Carla Fernandez, said she’d want a Spanish lullaby, the same one she’d sung at her father’s funeral. 

Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR said she officiates a lot of funerals and struggles with how they are conducted. She said she was inspired by President Barack Obama singing “Amazing Grace” during a eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, the South Carolina state senator and pastor murdered along with eight others at a Charleston, S.C., church in 2015. 

 “It felt like that’s what we needed,” Brous said. “I don’t want words, only singing. I just want it to be a beautiful, wholehearted song.”

Locke said she’d want “Hallelujah” sung on the way to her funeral and “Fly Me to the Moon” performed afterward, in the tradition of a New Orleans jazz funeral.

The next prompt asked, What would you want your epitaph to be? “He tried to make the world a better place,” Byock suggested. “Igniting the Fire of Love,” Locke said. “Go home,” Kozakowski offered, explaining that people should spend their days among the living, not the deceased. 

Byock’s wife, Yvonne Corbeil, is also a palliative care professional. She said she’d want her tombstone to say, “She strove to live in the eternal now.” 

Fernandez said her father’s tombstone is inscribed with the musical notes to Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” She had thought of it as a joyful song, but after he died, she realized the lyrics are much darker.

The prompt that inspired the most discussion was: If you were injured in an earthquake or other natural disaster and knew you had only three minutes left to live, what would you worry you’d left undone?

Jennifer Kozakowski, Frank’s wife, who serves as executive director for the Providence Institute for Human Caring, said she’d be worried about not seeing her kids’ milestones. 

“If you miss opportunities to tell people how you feel about them, you’re young and think you’ll get to it,” she said. “In our society, to look someone in the eye and tell them you love them, it’s very unnerving and countercultural. I refuse to bow to that. You need them to appreciate how you feel.”

Byock turned to Corbeil and said, “I’ve never given you enough flowers.”

Corbeil recounted her own brush with death — a near-drowning experience a few years ago. 

“I knew I was drowning, but it felt peaceful,” she recalled. “I put it in my calendar every month to remember. There was no fear, no panic. It was like a dress rehearsal for death.”

Locke remembered being at her husband’s deathbed and asking him to fill out birthday cards for their then-7-year-old daughter to give her every year until her 18th birthday. 

“He couldn’t do it. He asked if he could do it later,” she said. “I kept the cards for two years after his death. I feel ‘current’ with all the adults in my life, but not with my daughter. She asks me, ‘If you die, I’m an orphan, right?’ I told her I plan to be around to see her grandchildren get married.”

Fernandez mentioned that she’s recently adopted a dog and wonders who would take her dog if she died suddenly. “My friends and I talk about our Tinder dates and how we’re unhappy in our tech careers,” she said, but asking a friend to inherit her dog feels like too much to ask.

The final prompt was, Where do we go after we leave this life? That sparked a discussion about the soul and its existence outside the body. 

Brous discussed the confounding cross-cultural similarities in the afterlife. Children who have had near-death experiences similarly describe a white light at the end of a tunnel and a person they loved and had died standing at the end with open arms.

“Our lack of understanding is not an excuse to not wrestle with it and engage with it,” Brous said. 

Byock, who was raised Jewish, described his vision of the afterlife as more Buddhist. 

“The energy which becomes matter can be interpreted as love,” he said. “What may not persist is individuality. I do think there is mind without brain, as the Buddhists would say.”

“Having faith certainly gives you a leg up” when facing death, Byock said. “There’s a difference between faith and belief.”

“If you have faith in the what will be, that’s enough to carry you over the threshold,” Corbeil added.

Fernandez asked the group, “How can we create more space in our lives for the irrational, for things we can’t comprehend?”

After Fernandez’s father died, she co-founded a nonprofit for 20- and 30-somethings who had lost a parent. That group, The Dinner Party, has helped organize potluck dinners in more than 80 cities around the world.

“It feels like there’s an opening in the last five years to talk about death,” Fernandez said. “If I can be more open and transparent about what it’s like to lose someone, it shows friends that when their parents get sick, there’ll be a safety net. We put our heads in the sand when it comes to death, and there are really tragic ripple effects because of that.”

In closing, Hebb recounted an unusual birthday party his friends had organized for him. When he turned 40, they held a living funeral. While he lay in a casket and listened to his friends eulogize him, he said, “the hardest part was accepting love. We don’t get any training for that.” 

The dinner ended with each attendee turning to the person to their left and sharing something they appreciated about that person. I acknowledged to Fernandez that it must have taken a lot of courage and compassion to found an organization that helps others get support they need to mourn. Sharing that compliment was harder than I expected. It is rare to talk so openly with a stranger. 

Since the dinner, I have found myself thinking more about how I prioritize my life and considering what matters most if I live with awareness of my mortality — spending time with family and friends, talking openly with people I love, doing work that feels rewarding. 

As Hebb said at the dinner, death is a mirror for life. By thinking about how we want to die, we learn more about how we really want to live.

A dinner to discuss the end of life Read More »

Israeli TV Thriller ‘False Flag’ to Open This Year’s L.A. Jewish Film Festival

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

In Israel’s hit television series “False Flag,” a chemist named Benny wakes up one morning to find his face all over the TV news. Iranian’s defense minister had been drugged and kidnapped in Moscow, and Russian authorities had discovered that Benny’s passport was used by one of the Mossad agents allegedly responsible for the crime.

Benny protests his innocence, as four other Israelis are simultaneously connected with the kidnapping via their passports.  All have dual citizenship with another country:  Benny has a Greek passport; there’s a Russian-born kindergarten teacher; a French bride on her wedding day; a new immigrant from England; and an American-Israeli who had travelled to India after his army service. Turns out all five were out of the country at the time of the kidnapping.  Even as Israel denies any involvement with the abduction, these five characters are arrested and interrogated by the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service.  And all five soon seem far less innocent than they first appear.

“False Flag” was the highest-rated series on Israeli TV when it premiered last October.  It went on to screen at the Berlin International Film Festival; to share the Audience Award at the Series Mania Festival in Paris, along with the HBO miniseries “Olive Kitteridge”; and to be snapped up for an American version by Foz.  It’s the latest of myriad Israeli TV shows to be adapted for United States audiences, including “BeTipul,” a series about a psychologist and his patients that became the acclaimed HBO show “In Treatment.”

“False Flag” will get its North American premiere when the first two episodes screen during the opening night gala of the 11th annual Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills on May 18.  Festival founder Hilary Helstein said she included the series to honor Israel’s Independence Day; the festival will also show other Israeli fare, such as the documentary “In Search of Israeli Cuisine” (see related story on page 50) and a 50th anniversary screening of the comedy classic “Shnei Kuni Lemel.”

“Our theme is ‘From Israel to Hollywood and everything in between,’ ” Helstein said of the 27 shorts, feature films and documentaries in this year’s festival. The Tinseltown offerings will include the documentary “Children of Giant,” as well as an opening night tribute to the Laemmle Theatres (see story on page 44).

“False Flag” was conceived around 2010, when Israeli producer Maria Feldman (“Fauda”) was musing about the buzz over the spy thriller “Hatufim,” a show about returning prisoners of war that was adapted into the American hit series “Homeland.”

“My husband and I were discussing why it had been so successful,” Feldman, 38, said in a telephone interview from her home in Tel Aviv. “We thought it was the combination of the security issues it explored, together with the fact that the heroes were just ordinary citizens.”

Feldman was reminded of an international scandal from 2009: Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, was assassinated in Dubai, reportedly by spies who used the passports of innocent Israelis to complete their mission. The agents had placed their own photographs on the filched passports.

What if, Feldman wondered, the pictures of the innocent civilians had been released?  What if those people woke up one morning to see their photos on TV?  How would their lives be turned upside down?

“I decided there was an appeal to doing a show about security and espionage where the heroes, at least at first, look like regular people,” Feldman said. “We wanted this feeling like it could happen to you. … But we didn’t want the heroes to be Mossad agents, because there are already so many stories and TV shows about spies.  The Americans do it much better than us; they did James Bond, and you can’t beat James Bond.”

To write the series, Feldman teamed up with Amit Cohen, co-creator of another Israeli TV spy thriller, “The Gordin Cell.” Cohen was a natural fit for “False Flag” because he’d had 10 years of experience as the Palestinian and Arab correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Maariv.  During a recent interview at a Beverly Hills cafe, Cohen described covering everything from the Second Intifada, to the death of Yasser Arafat, to the Arab Spring.

Cohen, boyish at 42, had learned fluent Arabic from his father, an Iraqi Jew. “I was never afraid of the organizations like Hamas or Islamic Jihad, because they respected journalists,” he said of his job at Maariv from 2002 to 2012.  “It wasn’t like ISIS or Al Qaeda today.”

Cohen was well aware he risked being kidnapped, however, as he covered the first launching of mid-range rockets in Gaza.  In Ramallah, his car was once surrounded by a mob that might have killed him had they discovered he was Jewish.

But for the most part, Cohen felt relatively safe as he interviewed terrorists, Palestinian intelligence officials and mercenaries, among others.  “But I didn’t tell my wife a thing,” he admitted of his more dangerous work.

In 2009, a Palestinian intelligence officer told Cohen that Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was responsible for kidnapping and killing two Israeli soldiers.  Mabhouh was also the head official behind the arms-smuggling operation into Gaza, Cohen discovered.  “So I wanted to write a profile about him,” Cohen said. But the Israeli military censorship bureau promptly nixed the piece. 

Not long thereafter, Cohen learned that Mabhouh had been abducted and assassinated in Dubai, and that Mossad agents were believed to be responsible. The agents had used the passports of ordinary Israeli citizens to accomplish their mission.

Because the agents had embedded their own photographs onto the stolen documents, the true Israeli owners of the passports were never revealed. Those Israelis gave a few telephone interviews to the media, and then disappeared from public view, Cohen said. “They went on with their lives.”

When Feldman contacted Cohen about using the Dubai incident as a jumping-off point for a new series, the former journalist was intrigued. He agreed with Feldman that the show should focus on what happens to ordinary citizens when their privacy is violated.

“We also wanted to talk, in the background, about some issues in Israeli society,” he added.

Cohen had previously co-created “The Gordin Cell,” an Israeli TV series about a Russian-Israeli family pressured to return to work for the KGB.  That show was adapted into the short-lived NBC series, “Allegiance.”  With “False Flag,” Cohen again sought to examine themes of national identity and loyalty.

“Through our British expatriate character of Emma, we wanted to talk about the difficulties of a European immigrant who makes aliyah,” Cohen said.  “Israeli society can be tough; it can just grind you down if you’re not used to it.  It can seem fast and rough, impolite and aggressive.  So with Emma, we wanted to create someone who is really fragile and doesn’t really fit in.

“We also wanted to explore the idea that everything can be taken away from you in a second,” Cohen added.  When the accused Israelis are taken in for questioning by the Shin Bet, for example, they learn that, by law, they cannot hire an attorney to represent them for at least 10 days.  

“Previously, the authorities did this mostly to Palestinians, but now that’s happening to Israelis, too,” Cohen said.  “I’m not saying they do this to innocent people, but they do it, which is problematic.”

Even before the first episode of “False Flag” aired in Israel, the program’s producer, Keshet International, had sold the project to Fox.  Cohen and Feldman are involved in the production as consultants, but they believe it will be set in the United States with an agency like the CIA in place of the Mossad and Shin Bet.

“The Israeli version was really Israeli,” said Cohen, who has relocated to Los Angeles to work in American television. “But you have brides everywhere, as well as married men like Benny, who are in the middle of a midlife crisis.  So I think these characters are really universal.”

The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival runs from May 18-25.  For tickets and information, visit lajfilmfestival.org.

Israeli TV Thriller ‘False Flag’ to Open This Year’s L.A. Jewish Film Festival Read More »