August 4, 2016

What is the thinking when supporting Trump?

Leave a Comment / Opinion / Mitch Paradise

One can argue back and forth, Trump or Hillary, but in the Jewish Journal post “10 reasons Persian Jews support Trump,” by Afshine Emrani, what is most alarming is the willful ignorance of events that accompanies much of this list. Susan Esther Barnes attempts a point by point rebuttal, but she sinks too often into politically convenient arguments that miss the sorry state of the lack of underlying evidence or historical proof behind much of the original message.

Obviously, Emrani does not claim to speak for all Persian Jews, and he readily admits that his sampling is anything but scientific. But apparently he’s questioned some Trump supporters in his community and the list is the result of that investigation.

Let’s begin with his Number Three, the gist of which is that Trump will deal more forcefully with radical jihadists, that he’s strong where Clinton is weak. Then he recounts: “Clinton’s policies led to the rise of ISIS. She led the invasion of Libya.”

What? Which policies of Clinton’s? First of all, Hillary Clinton never made policy. She was a Senator when the Iraq War was begun by President George W. Bush, and a Secretary of State under Obama, five years later. Not only is it pretty clear now that it was the breakup of the Iraq Army, the banning of all Ba’ath Party members from military service – Bush policy – that gave rise to ISIS, but…wait for it……there was no invasion of Libya. Actually, the first person I heard to allude to this was Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, and a graduate of Harvard and its Medical School (so supposedly fairly informed), who spoke of Hillary Clinton’s getting us into “the war in Libya.” There was no invasion of Libya. No American soldiers entered Libya. There was a limited amount of air cover and support given to the breakaway government in the East to prevent a massacre of them by Khaddafi. But no invasion.

Moving on to Number Four. “Clinton owes Arab countries so much that she can’t be trusted.” Since there is not one sentence of reputable reporting that indicates or intimates that any Arab government has given money to Hillary Clinton or her campaign, I’m assuming this refers to the Clinton Foundation, which, is not Hillary Clinton. However, sooner or later, I suspect Hillary Clinton is going to stand up and say, hey everyone, part of the mission of the Clinton Foundation is to get sovereign states to participate in worldwide philanthropy: (“We convene businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change.”) Golly, Clinton Foundation. Nice.

Number Five. After 2,500 years of apparently fairly benign and tranquil living, it was Carter’s policies that forced Jews to leave Iran, and “Carter directly caused Iran to become an extremist Islamist country…” By this I suppose that Carter directly influenced Shia doctrine, but more specifically, was so great a religious and philosophical influence on Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, that the poor Imam had no choice but to institute a draconian Islamic State once he returned from exile in Paris to power in Iran. It’s a shame that the Ayatollah never publically credited Carter with this influence. His successor could at least have edited Carter’s Wikipedia entry to reflect this guidance.

Number Eight. “Lower taxes mean more economic stimulus.” You kinda want to put this one in 24 point type and make it bold and add some color. You wonder how many times this has to be historically discredited before it will finally die the ignominious death it deserves. Does the phrase “trickle down” ring a bell, anyone? Bill Clinton and Obama, collectively created 36 million jobs. As Stan Lee might opine, “Nuff said.”

Number Nine. Number Three was really my favorite until I got here. `”Trump knows how to manage groups and will build teams of excellence.” Trump is independent and will not be bought by any special interest groups. Trump started with some $300 million and turned it into $4.5 billion. He understands capitalism and business.’

In fact, if there’s a go it alone guy in the big business world, not only is it Trump, but Trump quite obviously wants it to be Trump. I’ve always wondered by his plane doesn’t say, “I, Trump” instead of just “Trump.” But the real meat is in the big numbers.

I’m sure there are scions who inherited huge fortunes and blew it all to hell. But just to put some perspective on it, if you take $300 million and put it away at 6% compounded for 40 years, you wind up with a bit more than $3 billion. And you don’t have to know crap about business. But the real point is nobody, not me, not you, dear readers, and certainly not the Persian Jewish community has any idea what Trump is really worth. He says billions. Mark Cuban, another billionaire who found himself interested enough to run some numbers on his own, says less than $200 million. “Talking Points Memo” says he may in fact be in debt to the tune of $600 million and is being propped up by Russian oligarch investment, which means, in effect, Vladimir Putin. The point is, we don’t know; we have only Trump’s word for it, the same word that said he got a letter from the NFL decrying the conflicting scheduling of the debates with NFL games, a letter the NFL said doesn’t exist and was never sent.

Now I know personally, in varying degrees, a number of Persian Jews, and I’ve had a number of them in class. Frankly, they’ve always seemed to me to be as smart or not as any other Jew. I’d be the last person to malign them as a group, and maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Emrani to post an editorial headlined as it is. And it is most definitely true that there are lots of Jews, from all walks of life and backgrounds, that are supporting Trump. In fact, a close rabbi friend tells me, regarding the Orthodox, in his best Brooklynese: fuhgedaboudit, they’ll never support Hillary. Do they agree with Emrani’s chosen sampling. Who knows. What I do know, is in many ways it just makes no sense. It seems to be all about what they wish and hope was and is true. And to me, that’s scary, because we’re talking about electing the most powerful person in the world, and these opinions, one hopes, would have some basis in fact and knowledge.

Mitch Paradise is a writer, producer, and teacher living in Los Angeles.

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Sex with Jews is fun — just ask Kellen Kaiser

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture / Eitan Arom

When she started writing in about 2005, Kellen Kaiser had planned to call her book “How to Plan a Gay Kosher Wedding for 250.” Instead, her relationship with the story’s male lead unraveled.

In May, Kaiser published “Queerspawn in Love: A Memoir” (She Writes Press), an allegorical, even cautionary, tale of Jewish love.

Over bibimbap at a Koreatown strip mall, Kaiser, who was in town for a July 7 reading at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, delivered her one-liner on what the book is about: “What happens when the daughter of a quartet of lesbians falls in love with a guy serving in the Israel Defense Forces.”

Kaiser’s circumstances are unusual to the point of being singular: Raised with an abundance of motherhood by four lesbians, she was called upon at a young age to act as a precocious spokesperson for “queerspawn,” the children of gay parents.

Hers has been a life examined. Kaiser knew during her youth in Berkeley that she was growing up as a test case of a “small pioneering demographic.” Today she’s a companionable 35-year-old with a wide smile and little in the way of a filter.

“Part of having gay parents is that people talk to you about sexuality at a much younger age than average, because they talk to you about your parents’ sexuality, and sexuality in general,” she said. “So, like, when I was 5, I had reporters ask me if I’d ever been molested by my parents.”

But Kaiser belongs to an even smaller demographic than queerspawn — she is, as her transatlantic love story impresses beyond a doubt, Jewish queerspawn.

“Queerspawn in Love” is the story of how Kaiser, before she was old enough to buy booze, fell in love with Lior Gold, an American-born IDF recruit, and embarked on a long-distance relationship that survived an intifada and an invasion of the West Bank only to flounder back in the States.

The IDF is rarely as sexy as in the scene where Kaiser for the first time undresses her lover from his army uniform.

“He took off his M16, removed the ammunition and locked it somewhere separate from the gun, then checked the empty chamber and put the rifle away,” she writes. “Finally, I could undress him.”

Kaiser is well suited to the task of dissecting Jewish sexual mores, a large part of what she does in the book.

Her Jewish credentials run deep. She spent a year on a kibbutz in Israel before college and taught Sunday school at a Reform synagogue after graduating — all this in spite of the fact that she is not, in a technical sense, Jewish.

Her dad was Jewish, and a Cohen, no less, but also a one-night stand in Paris who was more or less duped into conception. Kaiser has puzzled over the ethics of this situation even while at the same time half-seriously considering the same course of action in Israel (“Watch out, boys,” she said over lunch).

Kaiser’s biological mother, Nyna, is not Jewish, but she married a Jewish woman during Kellen’s childhood, and they celebrate Jewish holidays. Kellen is, by her own telling and according to her long Jewish C.V., “a very Jewish person.”

Her brother has the opposite situation: a Jewish biological mother, a non-Jewish father and little attachment to the faith.

“And we’re like the classic sort of reactions to it, where I was bat mitzvahed, grew up in a labor Zionist youth movement, went to Israel, worked for Hillel,” she said. “My brother did none of it. None of it! And he’s like, ‘I’m a Jew.’ ”

Wherever Kaiser finds herself, she said, she seeks out Jews and gays.

During a five-year stint in Los Angeles after the events in her book, she flirted with the Jewish community here, but her tryst through the city’s multitude of Jewish singles events was a qualified success.

“They got me laid, but I’m still single,” she said with characteristic candor.

“I think it was mainly geared toward conservative Sephardi Westsiders, some of whom were ridiculously good looking,” she went on. “They were some of the prettiest Jews I’ve ever seen in my life. Beautiful, beautiful Jews.”

Kaiser now lives in Mendocino County and works as a sex education teacher and part-time cattle farmer on a ranch belonging to one of her mothers. But her book makes her a de facto spokesperson for Jewish sex positivity.

According to her research and experience, “Jews just have a much more healthy sexual culture and philosophy than Christians do, generally speaking,” she said over lunch. “Jews are much more sex positive than Christians. They don’t have the same dynamics in terms of shame.”

As evidence, she pointed to the “preponderance of Jewish lesbians.”

“I have zero data on that,” she said. “But I just know so many Jewish lesbians.”

Kaiser is well groomed for the role of Jewish sex evangelist: “I have always loved having sex with Jews,” she said.

Her romantic experience has been Semitic from the moment of her first kiss, which took place at her LGBT synagogue during the waning minutes of Yom Kippur when she was 13.

“It was right at the break-fast,” she recalled. “We were hanging out by the giant tables of food, and at the time my crush was like, ‘I’m going to eat something.’ And I’m like, ‘You can’t — there’s not three stars in the sky yet, it’s not time.’ He’s like, ‘I’m going to do it.’ I’m like, ‘You should kiss me instead.’ ”

Cheesy, sure, but effective — he kissed her.

The only thing missing from Kaiser’s Jewish love story is an ending.

She’d imagined her wedding as a place where all her different crowds — queer, Jewish and otherwise — could come together in all their kaleidoscopic color. That hasn’t happened. But her book tour has been something of a consolation prize, she said.

On July 7, Kaiser was the last in a group of six women authors brought together by her publisher to read in front of a crowd of some two dozen in a narrow, book-lined space looking out onto Sunset Boulevard.

The reading went well, the audience laughing at the proper moments. Afterward, the authors adjourned to a table in front to sign books, with cookies and wine on offer.

Kaiser quickly found herself with a line of callers, while the other authors chatted idly with one another. Asked if they were fans or friends, Kaiser barely needed to glance at the line.

“Entirely friends,” she said.

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Why progressive Jews mustn’t give up on Zionism

Leave a Comment / Blogs / Rabbi John Rosove

It matters that we progressive Zionists respond whenever American Jews give up on Zionism and the state of Israel. Not only can we not abandon Israel ever, especially in difficult times such as these, but we cannot cede exclusive influence in the United States on matters of vital importance and interest to American Jews and Israel itself to supporters of the most right-wing government in the history of the state of Israel. Rather, we believe it is our duty to articulate as clearly as we can to as many Jews as we can what are our liberal Jewish and Zionist values and why we continue to love and support Israel as the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people.

Earlier this week, Professors Hasia Diner and Marjorie Feld published what can only be characterized (from the perspective of American Zionism) as an alarming op-ed in Israel’s daily Haaretz entitled “We’re American Jewish Historians. This is why we’ve left Zionism behind” (http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.734602?v=0EEB085E26B05596787A40B19C818497).

The Haaretz op-ed states, among other things: “the exponential growth of far right political parties and the increasing Haredization of Israel, makes it a place that I abhor visiting, and to which I will contribute no money, whose products I will not buy, nor will I expend my limited but still to me, meaningful, political clout to support it.”

Rabbi Joshua Weinberg, President of the Association of Reform Zionists of America (ARZA) and I, the national ARZA Chair, joined together with Gideon Aronoff and Ken Bob, CEO and National President of Ameinu, the American progressive Zionist movement that is aligned with Israel’s Zionist Union political party, in a shared response to the above op-ed that was posted today on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) site (August 3).

Our piece – “Why progressive Jews mustn’t give up on Zionism” – can be read here – http://www.jta.org/2016/08/03/news-opinion/opinion/why-progressive-jews-mustnt-give-up-on-zionism

Please forward this blog to those whom you believe might benefit from reading our progressive Zionist statement and especially to millennial American Jews (ages 16-35) that surveys suggest are drifting from their engagement with and support of Israel.

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Doing dad’s bidding in Argentina’s ‘Tenth Man’

Carrying Bernstein’s baton

Leave a Comment / Culture / Tom Tugend

The multitalented Hershey Felder estimates that he has personified Leonard Bernstein some 600 times in “Maestro,” and, he jokes, “I am actually beginning to know my lines.”

Audiences will be able to check on Felder’s claim when “Maestro” opens Aug. 10 at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts for an 18-day run before heading to New York.

Even those who have previously seen Felder’s tribute to the brilliant conductor and composer — in Felder’s trademark concert/play form — will find different nuances and characterizations in the upcoming presentation.

“The tone of each performance depends on the reaction of the audience, so my job never gets easier, only harder,” Felder said in an interview, but the hoped-for result, he said, is “a more realized piece.”

Some six years ago, when “Maestro” ran at the Geffen Playhouse, one stunning moment came when Felder, as Bernstein’s alter ego onstage, and the conductor himself on a large screen in an old film clip, joined in a seamless piano duet from Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”

The fusion between the historic Bernstein and Felder’s stage characterization was so complete that when talking to Felder about his own family background, a Journal reporter unwittingly transferred Bernstein’s childhood reminiscences onto Felder.

However, there are some actual resemblances between the two men. Both grew up in Yiddish-speaking households, sons of Eastern European immigrants and in tight-knit Jewish communities; Bernstein was from the Boston area and Felder is a native of Montreal.

“Maestro” works on various levels. One is as a biographical tour of Bernstein, the musician, from precocious youngster to Harvard graduate (part of the 10 percent Jewish quota), to assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic.

There is the historical date of Nov. 14, 1943, when, in a pure Hollywood fantasy, a hung-over Bernstein is awakened by a phone call telling him that conductor Bruno Walter has suddenly fallen ill and that he, the 25-year old Lenny, must wield the baton at 3 p.m. that very day.

Bernstein, of course, triumphed, and the rest is history.

“Maestro” introduces the great conductors who influenced Bernstein, each infused by Felder with a distinct personality and different European accent.

We meet the likes of Walter Damrosch, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Fritz Reiner (“with the permanent expression of a man who had sex once and didn’t like it”), Walter, and, above all, the beloved Serge Koussevitzky.

On another level, there is Bernstein the composer, whose works such as Symphony No. 1 “Jeremiah,” “Dybbuk Suites” and Symphony No. 3 “Kaddish” reflected his deep Jewish roots.

A world-famous classical conductor, Bernstein also turned to the musical stage, with works ranging from “On the Town” to “Candide” and the triumphant “West Side Story,” the latter a modern version of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” (Originally, Bernstein cast the warring clans as Jews versus Catholics, but cooler heads prevailed, “so we threw out the Jews and brought in the Puerto Ricans,” Bernstein is quoted as saying.)

On the third level, there is Bernstein, the complex and conflicted human being. He was happily married to his beloved Felicia, the mother of his three children, but he took few pains to hide his various liaisons with men.

“Maestro” opens with Bernstein on his deathbed, and Felder believes that for all the worldly acclaim, the celebrated musician pronounced a harsh judgment on himself. Perhaps his greatest sorrow was that he never composed the one masterpiece that would immortalize his name, Felder said.

In his later years, “Bernstein also suffered from strong feelings of guilt,” Felder believes. “He shoved [his affairs with men] down Felicia’s throat, and he didn’t care how devastated she was.”

“Maestro” runs nearly two hours without intermission, and the sheer physical stamina required for the one-man play is astonishing. Even more so because Felder throws himself into the role with unreserved physical and emotional passion, which stops just short of going over the top.

In addition, Felder provides an important educational service to his audience by transmitting a real feeling for the creative processes underlying the arts of conducting and composition.

Over a span of 19 years and some 4,500 stage performances, Felder has also interpreted the lives and works of Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Beethoven, Chopin and Liszt, in addition to presenting his own works, including the concerto “Aliyah,” the opera “Noah’s Ark” and “Love Songs of the Yiddish Theatre.”

Next on Felder’s intense schedule is his musical and biographical homage to “Our Great Tchaikovsky,” which will touch down in San Diego, Laguna Beach and Los Angeles next year.

“Maestro,” directed by Joel Zwick, will benefit the Wallis on Aug. 10, opening night, inlcuding a pre-show supper and post-show toast with Felder. The show runs Aug. 10-28 at The Wallis, with Felder interspersing “The Great American Songbook Sing-Along” on Aug. 22.

For show times and ticket information, Carrying Bernstein’s baton Read More »

Wrestling with angels (and demons) at the Getty Museum

Leave a Comment / Culture / Jewish Journal

Is there something about being Jewish that can bring artists together? It’s a question that arises when considering four of the six painters whose work is on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center as part of a new exhibition, “London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj.” The Getty is usually not the city’s go-to place for Jewish art so much as its nearby neighbor, the Skirball Cultural Center, but the Getty, along with London’s Tate Museum, which loaned most of the works to the exhibition, has nevertheless unwittingly created a show that leads us to ask whether being Jewish, even for those who do not seem particularly so, plays a role in their affinities.

The show presents the work of six painters of what has been called the “School of London,” who have, since World War II, according to the catalog by Elena Crippa and Catherine Lampert, “consistently explored the appearance and frailty of the human form.” One gallery is devoted to each artist, and it is easy to see that during a period when art was heading toward territories less figurative, even pop, this group, especially Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, reveled in the intense examination of human geography, from head to toe and all the fleshy regions in between.

Walking through the show, the Jewish connection among Freud, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and R.B. (Ronald Brooks) Kitaj does not jump out at you like a rainbow tallit. Only the work of Kitaj, as presented here, depicts anything recognizably Jewish. Yet, looking into their families, experiences, proclivities and the times they inhabited, a Jewish picture does begin to form.

“Self-Portrait” (1958) by Frank Auerbach. Photo courtesy of the Daniel Katz Gallery London

The exhibition catalog points out that the six were connected during their lives and careers by “mutual admiration,” but beyond that, two of the four Jewish artists shared an escape from almost certain death at the hand of the Nazis. Auerbach was born in Berlin in 1931 and escaped from Nazi Germany to England in 1939 via transportation arranged by writer Iris Origo. His parents later died in a concentration camp. Freud, a grandson of Sigmund Freud, escaped the Nazis in 1933, moving to Britain with his family.

Adding to the four’s war connection, Kossoff, born in London in 1926 to Russian-Jewish immigrants who ran a bakery, served during World War II in Europe, in the Royal Fusiliers. Kitaj (pronounced kit-EYE) was born in 1932 in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, near Cleveland; was in high school during the war; and by 1950 became a merchant seaman. During his career, he repeatedly painted a character he named Joe Singer, who served as a stand-in for those who survived the Shoah (“Joe S” can be seen near the top of one of his pieces in the show, “Cecil Court, London W.C. 2. (The Refugees, 1983-84).”

“Girl With a Kitten” (1947) by Lucian Freud. Photo courtesy Tate

It’s not easy to imagine this group sitting down to study Torah or Talmud, but as students of the human form, some of their work with the human figure can be viewed through Judaism’s sometimes matter-of-fact, and even graphic, approach to the human body. In the morning prayers, Jews praise God for “fashioning the human body in wisdom,” including “opening, arteries, glands and organs,” some of which appear prominently in Freud’s work.

Going psychologically deeper and darker, the introspective moods represented in Eikhah (Lamentations), chanted on Tisha b’Av with references to sick hearts and the wounded, and prophesies of “delusion and deception,” connect with these artists’ painterly expressions of love, pain and loss, and dark mood.

Their ease at going against the crowd is also something they share. Before the early 20th century, Jewish artists had to be rebels to paint the human form, because the Torah describes painting and sculpture of the human form as idolatry. The Russian painter Chaim Soutine (1893-1943), after drawing his town’s rabbi, was severely beaten for doing so by the rabbi’s son. It’s interesting to note that although these four painters in the Getty show were long removed from that prohibition, they continued to rebel by painting people and places during a post-war period when many artists’ eyes were drawn to geometric forms, shapes and color.

With the story of Jacob’s dream of wrestling with an angel as a cultural touchstone, Jews have tried to come to grips with expressing their humanity, and these four fit into that tradition. Auerbach paints himself (“Self-portrait,” 1958) seemingly staring inwardly. Kossoff paints a “Father Resting” who could be either in mourning or in prayer, and Freud shows his mother in a saddened moment.

But it is Kitaj who wrangles the group together, connecting them through a setting taken from the Jewish life cycle. After the death of Elsi Roessler, his first wife, Kitaj, who had returned to the United States from London in 1965, moved to Hollywood and taught at UCLA. When he returned to London in 1972, he increasingly gave expression to his Jewish heritage. In the late 1970s in Los Angeles, he met an American artist, Sandra Fisher, and they were married in 1983 at the Bevis Marks Synagogue in London, which is Sephardic. (Built in 1701, it is the oldest synagogue in Great Britain.)

In “The Wedding, 1989-93,” we see Kitaj — who studied the works of German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, as well as Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka (in 2008, posthumous shows of Kitaj’s Jewish art and writing were mounted at UCLA’s Archive of Jewish Culture and at the Skirball Cultural Center) — wearing a tallit and kippah standing under a huppah with Fisher, his bride. According to a description by Kitaj, Lucian Freud is standing on the left, Auerbach in the middle, Kossoff is shown poking his head in from the right and, for those who have ever wondered what David Hockney, Kitaj’s friend and best man, looks like in a kippah, here he is, wearing a nice blue-and-white one.

Unfortunately, the union represented on canvas as a kind of colorful kinetic simcha was not to last, as Fisher died in 1994, followed by Kitaj in 2007 in Los Angeles, and Freud in 2011. Caught in the frame of the picture, however, the figures and friends, and the expression of humanity they created, remain together.

“London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj” continues at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, through Nov. 13.

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“Why is everybody wrong except me?”

Leave a Comment / Israel / Jewish Journal

“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote American founder Thomas Paine.

Our own times are more likely to try people’s patience than their souls. We can’t stop shouting at each other. If it’s not about the presidential election, it’s about Israel. If it’s not about Israel, it’s about Ukraine. If it’s not about any of those things, it’s about who gets to use which bathroom.

Many people today are full of passionate intensity, and not only, as William Butler Yeats said, “the worst.” Good people, educated and reasonable, disagree about issues of consequence. In the most tragic cases, argument descends into bitterness. Friendships and family relationships are sundered.

We cannot eliminate disagreement, nor should we try. But if we understand why we disagree, we can minimize the bitterness and become more tolerant of others.

Consider an example that’s on many people’s minds: Who should be elected president? There are two main choices. Choosing one requires assessing the candidates’ personal character, the merits of their proposed policies, and how accurately they understand the world.

Most of us rely on the campaigns’ carefully fabricated images and sound bites to assess the candidates’ character. We assess their policies based on what we think is desirable, moral, and achievable. We decide the latter mostly through memes and mental images, but also with one eye on what our peer group regards as acceptable opinion.

In the best case, you and a friend disagree. You both respect evidence, respect each other, and sincerely want to discover the truth. You both start with unreliable information, simplified mental pictures, and biases about issues of which you have little or no first-hand knowledge. Your most fundamental beliefs are so much a part of you that you don’t even realize you hold them.

Think about it. Is Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump a good person? A bad person? Given that a small army of propagandists stands between you and them, how sure can you be? Should you support policy X? Making that decision requires you to understand policy X, know the relevant facts, predict reliably about X’s results, and assess its morality when all factors are considered.

If you have a day job — or even if you don’t — you probably can’t do it. At best, you can learn a few things to support what you believe on instinct. And what you believe on instinct is influenced dramatically by your brain.

The troubling fact is that human intelligence didn’t evolve to analyze and evaluate complex political or economic issues. It evolved to help us survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. Period.

Biologists call it “the evolutionary legacy principle:” Our brains evolved to cope with prehistoric and pre-technological situations. We use essentially the same cognitive methods to cope with modern situations, and it often works poorly for them.

The biggest single flaw in our cognitive machinery is “us versus them” thinking.

In small primitive tribes, it was helpful to cooperate with “us” and to be hostile or suspicious toward “them” — that is, toward outsiders who weren’t members of our group. Compassion was reserved for other members of our own group, since compassion toward outsiders could get us or other group members killed.

In modern societies, it’s much more difficult and much less useful to decide who is “us” and who is “them.” But our caveman cognitive machinery still putters along as if nothing had changed. If we feel that people who believe X or support candidate Y are “them,” then we tend to disbelieve anything they say. We consider them so despicable or morally unworthy that their feelings and welfare are unimportant. Then we are in danger of becoming cruel and vindictive, as are they.

Our best option is to remember that all of us have flaws and biases, but none of us deserves to be presumed evil and unworthy of consideration.

Let’s listen to each other, pay attention to each other’s concerns, and respect even those with whom we strongly disagree.

“Why is everybody wrong except me?” Read More »

Recruiting For Good with Carlos Cymerman

Leave a Comment / Travel / Lisa Ellen Niver

Carlos Cymerman is a self-proclaimed “old-school kinda guy” out to change the life paths of others. He made the move from Mexico City to Israel then the United States when he was just 12. Travel had always been a large part of his upbringing and it continues to influence his adult life. At the age of 40, Carlos has pretty much crossed off every item on the bucket list: six Summer Olympics, several World Fairs and both the 2004 Euro Soccer Championship and World Cup 2006.

Carlos has managed to do what many of us strive to do: unite our passions and our jobs; through What are your three main goals?

1.) Create experiences; giving new experiences to at least 100 people a year would make me happy.

2.) Making jobs more about a relationship, not money.

3.) Impacting communities positively.

How long have you been doing this?

I've been in recruiting for over 20 years with technology-based placements being my speciality. I have a liberal arts degree and originally was going to be a therapist. I started Recruiting For Good because, in part, I saw how little focus our society placed on work-life balance. Now, I can really make a difference in the lives of others.

How does the Travel Rewards Program work? We Travel For Good?

We are trying to encourage travel while finding excellent placements for qualified individuals. Instead of giving money or gift cards as an incentive for referrals, we give an experience:

So every professional referral you provide that leads to a permanent placement will get you savings on your travel destination of choice.

If you introduce Recruiting for Good to a family or friend who happens to be a person with hiring power at a company looking for fresh talent, Recruiting for Good will endeavor to find a suitable employee; when we earn the “Finder's Fee” a portion of that is donated to your favorite school or cause and save you $4500 on a trip booked through a partnering travel agency.

How does Recruiting For Good help people?

It rewards travel, exploration and of course more work-life balance. Your job is an ongoing relationship, if something is wrong you have to look at it and decide if you're going to fix it or live with it.

Who's your main inspiration?

Virgin, for their innovation and focus on leisure. It's about having balance in your life, not about making the most money. People need more vacation for that to happen.

What is a memorable moment from your career in recruiting?

Helping people go where they really want to go is so rewarding. I had a client call me saying his daughter was studying fashion and wanted so badly to experience Travel Fashion Week. I found a way to get her there and she couldn't have been happier.

Carlos hopes that joining recruitment and travel becomes a new wave with other companies outside Southern California. In the meantime, he continues to shed light on the importance of enjoying life and helping others find the best ways to do just that. If you want to chat with Carlos about Recruiting For Good and/or the Travel Rewards Program, contact him at carlos@recruitingforgood.com

Stay up-to-date with WSGT for more interviews and global adventures via our ” target=”blank”>Facebook,” target=”blank”>Instagram, ” target=”blank”>youtube channel!

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Betting on winners at benefit for autism

Leave a Comment / Culture / Evan Henerson

Within Ed Asner’s family, you don’t just play the hand you are dealt; sometimes you take risks.

Asked his customary maneuver when dealt a hand of 15 in blackjack, Will Asner, the actor’s 14-year-old grandson, answers without hesitation: “Hit” — even though drawing a card higher than a six will result in an automatic loss.

“He’s aggressive,” said Will’s father, Matt.

Ed Asner, the family patriarch, likes the game of poker. Inspired by his close relationship with his grandson, who is on the autism spectrum, Ed Asner has gone all-in supporting a celebrity poker tournament and casino night that bears the Emmy-winning actor’s name. Proceeds from the fourth annual Ed Asner & Friends Poker Tournament — to be held Aug. 6 at USC Tower at South Park Center — benefit the Southern California chapter of the nonprofit advocacy group Autism Speaks.

Ed Asner has long been an advocate for and contributor to many autism-related events and organizations — one of his sons, Charlie, also is on the spectrum. Five years ago, when Matt gave up his career as a TV producer to become the executive director for the Southern California chapter of Autism Speaks, he dreamed up a creative way for his famous father to lend a hand.

Matt Asner, director of corporate development for Autism Speaks, dreamed up a poker tournament fundraiser as a way for his father, Ed, to help the cause.

“I thought about what does my dad like to do? He likes to play poker,” said Matt Asner, who is now the director of corporate development for Autism Speaks. “What better way of kind of celebrating him and making a contribution than a poker tournament?”

The tournament, now in its fourth year, started out small but has grown in number of players and dollars raised, with the 2015 event bringing in more than $50,000. For the Aug. 6 event, which also will feature silent and live auctions, Autism Speaks is hoping to break the $100,000 mark. Actors Dylan McDermott, Ed Begley Jr., Michael McKean and Rosie O’Donnell are among those confirmed to attend.

Actor Don Cheadle playing in the Ed Asner & Friends Poker Tournament.

Ed Asner, who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Kansas City, Kan., fully expects a certain amount of this year’s proceeds to come out of his losings.

“Probably by the third hand, I’m looking at about half of what I came in with,” he said. “People get so enchanted by the clumsy way that I lose.”

Because this is for a cause close to his heart, perhaps he might be losing not only creatively but maybe even deliberately? The 86-year old actor shot his interviewer a deathly stare at the suggestion.

“I’m not that stupid,” he said. “I’m stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”

There is a certain amount of his TV character Lou Grant’s gruffness, bluster and salty language in a chat with Ed Asner. Non-family members might be intimidated, but, according to Matt Asner, young Will has long been able to negotiate the crankiness of the man he calls zayde.

“Will doesn’t take his [nonsense]. He hands it right back to him,” Matt Asner said. “He has this uncanny ability to know when my dad is joking and when he’s not. Will has a way of completely transforming him from that gruff, angry person to this soft teddy bear, and it’s a wonderful thing to behold.”

When the subject turns to autism, Ed Asner is both philosophical and humorous. Charlie — Matt’s half-brother — was diagnosed 21 years ago at age 8. At the time, Asner knew nothing about the autism, and battled to understand unusual elements of Charlie’s personality as he tried to find the right school environment and help for his son. Charlie eventually earned a college degree. He lives in Connecticut and is trying to find a steady job.

“There are hang-ups and there are piss-offs, but he’s a refreshing individual,” the actor says of Charlie. “And a frustrating individual. Refreshing and frustrating, the two ‘fr’ words.”

Where Charlie has found some educational success and can function in a work environment, Will — who is less high-functioning than his uncle — may face greater challenges. Ed Asner observes the boy interacting with his siblings and cousins and notices Will’s isolation.

“While his cousins are roaring through the house creating mayhem, Will keeps his piety,” Ed Asner said. “He creates his own mayhem, too, but it’s not communal, and he’s alone. You see the alone. The alone is the state of the autistic, and that’s what kicks the [stuff] out of your heart.”

Matt Asner says that a long-term goal is for Will to get vocational training, and he is hopeful that Will eventually finds a partner to share his life. He frequently likens autism to an unending quest to find a key to a locked door. Once that door is opened, another locked door is revealed, and you have to try new keys. Will, who was diagnosed at age 4, is part of a blended family that includes two stepsiblings who also are on the autism spectrum.

“The great thing about Will is that he has this incredible attitude about life,” Matt Asner said. “Most of the time, he’s the wisest man in the room. He’s not an angry person. He’s just a sweet, gentle soul who is really kind of trapped behind some locked doors.”

After nearly 30 years of watching the outside world relate to people with autism, Ed Asner counsels patience and understanding.

“The world is filled with people with quirks,” he said. “Most of them find a way to finally live with society, but many autistic people don’t know how to perfect it. Our job — I guess anybody’s job — is to make people realize how many quirks there are out there. We try to preach tolerance, and tolerance of autism and quirkiness is certainly one of the leading areas that can be improved upon.”

For more information about the fourth annual Ed Asner & Friends Poker Tournament to support the Southern California chapter of Autism Speaks, click Betting on winners at benefit for autism Read More »

Clinton camp: No plans for Israel trip

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, Israel, Jewish Insider / jacobk

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is not planning to travel to Israel during the campaign, ABC News “Don’t get any hopes up for a photo-op of Hillary Clinton at the Western Wall in Jerusalem,” ABC reported, based on conversations with the Clinton campaign.

“To date our assessment has been that it just does not ever make sense to do that given the amount of experience she has on an international stage and in international security,” Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri told ABC News. “So, if we had more time, it might be something that we would do. But at this point they haven’t found it to be worth how much time we would lose here.”

Instead, the campaign is exploring the idea of sending vice presidential candidate or former President Bill Clinton on Hillary’s behalf.

In her AIPAC speech in March, the Democratic nominee The Clinton campaign did not respond to several requests for confirmation.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has so far said that he has no plan to travel to Israel before November. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” Trump told reporters last month when asked if he’s planning to travel to Israel after canceling a planned trip last December. “I haven’t set my schedule yet. It could happen.”

A recent Netanyahu is President Barack Obama — in 2008 — and Mitt Romney in 2012, traveled to Israel during the presidential campaign.

Clinton camp: No plans for Israel trip Read More »

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