February 14, 2018

Man of Micro Greens

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles / Jessica Donath

A micro-crisis unfolded at the Beverly Hills Farmers Market in late January. It pitted loyal customers of Westside Urban Gardens, a small micro greens farm, against one another. The
losers had to leave the Sunday market without some of their favorite greens, such as the coveted pale yellow leaves of Ethiopian mustard.

Farmer Nate Looney had experienced a significant crop failure a few weeks earlier.

“Because there was a limited amount, people who are regular customers really wanted their micro greens,” he says. “It was a huge balagan.”

The 33-year-old veteran turned to farming after graduating from American Jewish University with a degree in business. A class on the economy and sustainability during his senior year flipped the switch.

Looney has been practicing Judaism since he was 13. A conversation with a classmate sparked his interest. He converted in 2012.

“I’m a fifth-generation farmer,” he said. “My family has a farm in Louisiana that has been in our family since my grandmother’s grandfather started it. This is kind of like returning to my roots.”

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Looney started Westside Urban Gardens in 2015. He spent the first year learning about the technology behind growing micro greens.

Then he took out a $10,000 Kiva loan, rented greenhouse space and began experimenting. Now he grows 20 kinds of seasonal miniature crops.

The retired U.S. Army sergeant sees many similarities between farming and his old life as a military police officer.

“In the Army, you got to get up in the morning and make the mission happen, and with a business that’s a farm, you got to get up in the morning and make things happen or the crops don’t grow,” he said.

Currently, he grows his micro varieties of arugula, broccoli or radishes hydroponically: The plants grow in nutrient-rich water. Looney does use soil for stability and to display the uniform trays.

Soon he wants to incorporate a tank of tilapia, a fish commonly used in aquaponic farming. The fish excrement would provide nutrition for the plants.

“Tilapia like really warm weather, so if it’s too cold, they don’t eat enough and if they don’t eat enough, they don’t poop enough and you don’t have enough fertilizer,” he said.

If it’s too warm, you run the risk of cooking the fish. Looney’s current greenhouse is not climate controlled and reaches up to 125 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer.

Looney specializes in micro greens for their high value and minimal space usage, but full-size lettuces, tomatoes and broccoli are also grown aquaponically. The technology uses up to 90 percent less water than traditional methods and the plants grow faster.

“My current system is 4 feet by 60 feet and I’m able to produce enough for five farmers markets,” he said. A 1-ounce container sells for $7.

Judaism and Jewish values also influence how Looney runs his growing business.

“The way that I grow indoors and limit my water usage for sure is tikkun olam because I’m doing my part to preserve and save water and provide healthy nutritious food to people,” he said.

Looney has been practicing Judaism since he was 13. A conversation with a classmate sparked his interest. He converted in 2012.

You won’t find Westside Urban Gardens at one of the popular Saturday farmers markets. The business is closed on Shabbat.

“To say, ‘No, on Saturdays we’re shut down’ — it’s a significant sacrifice to do that but it’s very important to me,” he said.

Looney also enjoys the relationship between farming and the Jewish calendar. He predicts that his micro greens might make an appearance on some of his customers’ seder plates.

“The Ethiopian mustard tastes like wasabi and I foresee people using that instead of horseradish,” he said.

For those who can’t wait until Passover at the end of March, Westside Urban Gardens’ micro greens are on the menu at République, a modern French restaurant in Los Angeles.

Jessica Donath is a freelance journalist who lives in Pasadena.

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IKAR Readies Its Next Chapter

Leave a Comment / Los Angeles / Ryan Torok

After operating for nearly 15 years in temporary rental spaces, IKAR has purchased a permanent home.

On Jan. 22, the progressive egalitarian spiritual community closed escrow on a property on South La Cienega Boulevard, between West 18th and Airdrome streets, IKAR Board Chair Yoni Fife said in a Feb. 2 statement.

IKAR paid $6.9 million for the 21,000-square-foot storefront property, according to figures obtained by the Journal.

As the IKAR community prepares for a capital campaign to fund the construction and anticipated operating costs of its future home, IKAR also has begun the process of hiring an associate rabbi who would join the clergy team of IKAR Senior Rabbi and co-founder Sharon Brous and IKAR Associate Rabbi and Director of Community Learning Ronit Tsadok.

“We are looking for someone who can teach, preach and be a part of the IKAR community,” IKAR co-founder and Executive Director Melissa Balaban said.

Fife said IKAR has been searching for a permanent home since the fledgling days of the organization.

“It’s something we have been thinking about frankly since pretty close to Day One, giving ourselves a sense of permanency and long-lasting stability,” Fife said.

And Balaban said the purchase would serve IKAR’s longtime goal of becoming a center for progressive Jewish life in Los Angeles.

“We always had the idea of building something beyond a traditional shul — a hub of civic engagement, art and culture, and spirit.” — Melissa Balaban

“We always had the idea of building something beyond a traditional shul — a hub of civic engagement, art and culture, and spirit,” she said.

Founded in 2004 by a small group of Jewish leaders who were frustrated with the status quo in the local Jewish community and wanted to create a place that would accommodate experimental expressions of Judaism, the nondenominational, social justice-oriented community has operated in rented facilities since its establishment.

The Westside Jewish Community Center housed IKAR until it relocated to Shalhevet High School, its current home, in 2015.

Two IKAR families, which IKAR leaders declined to identify, donated the lead gifts to the community toward the purchase of the property.

The property includes several vacant buildings on three parcels of land. The only current tenant is Vanos Architects, now a tenant of IKAR. The property is located on the western side of South La Cienega Boulevard.

It could be years until IKAR moves into the building, but on Feb. 2, 65 people affiliated with Tribe, IKAR’s young professionals group, attended a Shabbat dinner at the purchased site, gathering in an empty warehouse on the northern end of the property. When the Journal visited the property several days later, a table with IKAR signs hanging above it remained inside the warehouse near the front entrance.

The congregation is conducting a study of construction costs and needs with the help of capital campaign consultants, board members and mentors, including Uri Herscher, founding president of the Skirball Cultural Center, Brous said.

“We want to be careful how we go about this massive fundraising effort,” Brous said. “Ultimately what matters is we’re able to run our community, our organization, our program for this space.”

Community support will be necessary for a successful fundraising campaign, Fife said.

“We now have a lot of work ahead as we move to the planning phases of a campaign to raise the funds we’ll need to design and construct a new building at the site,” Fife said. “We will need the full support of our community to make our dreams a reality.”

Even as IKAR, once a scrappy startup-like organization, grows, Balaban said IKAR would continue to commit itself to the qualities that have made it unique among Jewish organizations today.

“The fortunate thing of building something from scratch is you can put all your values into it, whether environmental, inclusion, etc. We can think through all of those aspects literally from the ground up and a lot of places don’t have that luxury because they are starting from something that already exists,” Balaban said.

One reason for the choice of location is it is geographically desirable for many IKAR members in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood who are Shabbat observant and do not drive on Shabbat.

“We drew a striking zone of about a two-mile radius from the heart of the Jewish neighborhood [when searching for a property],” Brous said. “We have a combo of walkers, who all live in that neighborhood.”

The new property also will allow IKAR to consolidate its operations in one location. Currently, it holds services and religious school at Shalhevet, has offices in the Mid-Wilshire district and runs an early childhood center on Venice Boulevard.

“There are a lot of pieces of the overall vision we haven’t been able to fully realize because we have been in multiple rental properties,” Brous said. “I think this will give us an opportunity to more fully manifest our dreams and visions for this organization.”

The move to a new home means Brous will be dedicating more of her time to fundraising than she has previously. And the evolving nature of Brous’ job, coupled with Tsadok taking on responsibility for IKAR education programs last year, has necessitated the hiring of an additional clergy member, Balaban said.

IKAR is seeking someone who has more than four years of experience for the clergy position. IKAR Vice Chair Rachel Waranch is leading the search committee.

“We’re putting it out to networks, to people in different fields,” Balaban said. “The Jewish rabbinic community is smaller than one would think.”

IKAR is also in the process of interviewing individuals to succeed its two-year Jewish Emergent Network rabbinic fellow, Rabbi Nate DeGroot, whose fellowship concludes this year.

IKAR’s membership comprises more than 600 households. Among them are Dan Messinger, who runs a kosher café on Pico Boulevard, and his wife, Deena, a Pressman Academy teacher, who live in Pico-Robertson with their two sons. The family walks more than 35 minutes to attend IKAR services at Shalhevet, located at West Olympic Boulevard and South Fairfax Avenue.

IKAR’s move to its new location will reduce the Messingers’ walk by more than 20 minutes, he said.

“They are moving a few blocks from where I live, so I feel like everything is working out according to my master plan,” Messinger said.

While his older son, Max, 11, will likely have his bar mitzvah at the current IKAR site, Messinger said he anticipates his younger son, Isaac, 8, will become a bar mitzvah at IKAR’s new home.

“There is always a long time between when the announcement is made and when the ribbon is cut, so to speak, but it is great for IKAR,” he said, “and I think it will be great for L.A.”

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Eat Real, Be Real, Feel Real

Leave a Comment / Yamit's Table / Yamit Behar Wood

January and February — I think I can speak for many of my fellow chefs when I say we don’t enjoy you very much. After the force-fed gluttony from September through December, I don’t think I’m the only cook who hears the words “detox” and “juice fast” a hundred times a day during these months. Like clockwork, each year I see dazed customers, men and women, confused by all the hype thrown at them from the multibillion-dollar diet industry that feeds on our insecurities about not being good enough if we aren’t a vegan marathon runner.

I watch our customers stare at our menu as if frozen, wondering what in the world they are going to eat for breakfast and lunch, trying to make sense of all the contradictory rules and regulations the USDA has thrown out in any given year: be a vegetarian, eat more grains, eat no grains, gluten free, meat free, egg free, nut free — it never ends.

After working in the food industry for more than 15 years, I can tell you that often these ridiculous starvation practices that include “all natural” powders and potions inevitably result in double helpings of doughnuts and chocolate cake. As much as I love the profit margin on fruit smoothies, unless you enjoy being in the gym two-plus hours a day, spiking your blood sugar with pure fructose is probably counterproductive, to say the least, and is almost guaranteed to have you looking for another hit of sugar by 3 p.m.

I don’t want you to think I’m not a team player. I’ve chased some dogma down the street in my life, so far be it from me to be self-righteous about our ever-expanding diet culture and waistlines. But here’s the rub: Like clockwork, all the stress, anxiety and deprivation of this annual hysteria invariably make my sales of sweet indulgences increase markedly by Valentine’s Day. While my café in the American embassy may not be a controlled laboratory environment, my casual studies into human nature suggest that if you tell people they can’t eat something, often they start wanting it — more than anything.

My casual studies into human nature suggest that if you tell people they can’t eat something, often they start wanting it — more than anything.

What should we do about this conundrum before mid-February strikes and all you dieters out there, nutrient deprived and sugar spiked from fruit and lack of protein, eat your weight in leftover Halloween candy from two years ago and those super chalky Valentine hearts? I’m no expert, but how about we take a word from our wise Jewish ancestors and just start eating real food again?

If I think back on my childhood, how my mother cooked, as well as my aunts and cousins, I see a definite pattern that almost without exception led to good health until old age. Until the advent of boxed convenience food, people cooked and ate unprocessed food with little to no additives. I’m still amazed by how energetic and youthful most of my family members in Israel are despite busy, frenetic lives and irregular exercise habits. Sure enough, sit-down meals are the norm in Mediterranean cultures. In Israel, most people still observe the Friday night meal with family as a fixed appointment on the calendar every Shabbat.

If you do have a New Year’s resolution to “get healthy” — and by that, we all know you mean to lose weight — it is utterly imperative that you learn how to prepare a small rotation of quick dishes at home. People who eat real food enjoy many benefits beyond weight loss. Taking the time to nourish yourself, even if it’s 15 minutes, to sit down at a table and eat a healthy meal you prepared yourself, is not that much more taxing than going out to dinner. Consciously stopping to select what you want to eat, what your body is craving (and I don’t mean sugar), is a deliberate choice. Don’t tell me you are too busy — life today is more convenient than ever before. If I can prepare something after a 12-hour day cooking in Uganda, no Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s or even any other decent grocery store in sight, I know you can.

Maybe it’s time to stop getting food out of boxes and bags and take a break from the restaurants for a bit. Even if the only thing you can think of making for dinner is reservations, I promise that if you take a little time to rethink your food habits, you will discover new and exciting things to eat: food that will make you feel better and may give you greater mental clarity and more stable blood sugar — without having to struggle through an unsustainable diet or juice fast.

Here is my recipe for a revitalizing Bulgarian staple that most everyone in Israel makes on a regular basis. It’s usually thought of as a refreshing summer dish, but I eat it year-round as a starter or as a side dish with fish dishes such as tasty Sephardic salmon cakes, roasted zucchini and tahini (next week’s recipe) or even as a light supper with a side of scrambled eggs.

TARATOR (BULGARIAN YOGURT SOUP)
2 cups thick, plain yogurt, unflavored (Greek or Bulgarian)
2 cups Persian or English cucumber, or any firm cucumber, peeled and medium diced
2–3 cloves fresh minced garlic, or to taste
1/2 cup fresh herbs (dill, parsley, mint or a combination), finely chopped
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
(optional or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon salt or to taste
Cold water
3 tablespoons chopped walnuts (optional)

Mix all ingredients (except walnuts) with a fork, and thin with cold water to desired consistency — for my preferred consistency, I add ¼ cup of cold water. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or up till overnight. Serve in chilled bowls and garnish with chopped walnuts, if using.

If you would rather have a thicker, more dip-like consistency to eat on the side of a fish dish, leave out the water, or you can strain the mixture through a cheesecloth or coffee filter to make it thicker still. If you want to use this as a side dish for grilled chicken, beef or lamb kebabs, use unflavored coconut yogurt, which is a delicious alternative to dairy-based yogurt.

Makes 4 servings.

Yamit Behar Wood, an Israeli-American food and travel writer, is the executive chef at the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, and founder of the New York Kitchen Catering Co.

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To my unborn daughter (age 20)

Is Bibi in Trouble?

Leave a Comment / Israel, Rosner's Domain / Shmuel Rosner

Feb. 12 was not a good day for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He was slapped on his right cheek by the U.S. administration — “reports that the United States discussed with Israel an annexation plan for the West Bank are false,” said the White House. But these were no “reports,” it was Netanyahu bragging to Likud Party members about his supposed discussion with the administration.

He was then slapped on his left cheek by Israel’s Supreme Court. There is no reason, the court said, to prevent the police from publicizing the conclusions it handed the attorney general in the Netanyahu legal investigation. The police do not have the power to decide if Netanyahu will be indicted. They do have the power to humiliate him and complicate his life by making the findings against him public.

Thus, a week that Netanyahu began as a leader, an orchestrator of bold military action, a statesman talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, a restrained yet determined prime minister, appeared destined to deteriorate into a week he would end as a petty politician — chattering irresponsibly to party activists and stumbling into an unnecessary hitch with a friendly administration.

Then came Feb. 13. The police recommended that Netanyahu be indicted for taking bribes. Within three days he turned from statesman to petty politician to suspected criminal — from Prime Minister Netanyahu to Bibi the Huckster.

Netanyahu believes his coalition will survive the first round of bad publicity from the police findings.

Netanyahu had to deal with each of these developments separately. To the Americans he quickly apologized, clarifying that he did not really mean what he said, or maybe didn’t say what he meant. What he wanted to say was, in fact, a responsible thing: This is not the time to discuss and advance the annexation of West Bank territory, and he is not going to allow it. But since saying such a thing in such a blunt way is politically tricky — the prime minister needs to keep his right-wing flank quiet while dealing with his legal troubles — he utilized the Trump administration to make his position sound less dovish. Clearly, this was a miscalculation.

His legal troubles are another matter. In a long and hearty TV appearance on the evening of Feb. 13, Netanyahu rejected each of the allegations against him. The details are quite tedious: Did he support this or that legislation for this or that reason? Did he give favors in exchange for cigars? The one worthy piece of news from the evening was the fact that Netanyahu’s main political rival, Yair Lapid, is a key witness in the case against him. Netanyahu is likely to utilize this fact to his advantage, as any suspect would.

Netanyahu believes his coalition will survive the first round of bad publicity from the publication of the police findings. No party has reason to rock the boat, and no party will gain from having a new election. In fact, the opposite is true: Most of the parties can only lose. They lose if they have to renegotiate what they already have — because of a similar election outcome. They lose if they have to contend with a less friendly, less coherent coalition. So for the time being, while the attorney general ponders Netanyahu’s legal future, the prime minister seems politically safe.

It is impossible to know at this stage if Netanyahu’s coalition can survive until the regularly scheduled elections two years from now. The attorney general is expected to decide on Netanyahu’s case by the middle of this year. The prime minister could decide to pre-empt such a decision if he were to call for a new election and get re-elected. After all, in such a scenario he would be elected when the public would already be aware of his supposed crimes and would still want him as its leader. Preempting the legal process could mean a decision on a new election in early spring, and the actual vote in early 2019.

Or, Netanyahu could decide to withstand a decision to indict him and remain at the helm while standing trial. This has never been done before, and political pressure on his coalition partners could prove it futile, but Netanyahu believes it would be legal (only the Supreme Court could thwart such a belief) and maybe even manageable. Like him, the other parties read the polls and see that another election would apparently give the current coalition more than half the seats in the Knesset and would make it highly complicated for other coalitions to form.

Shmuel Rosner is senior political editor. For more analysis of Israeli and international politics, visit Rosner’s Domain at jewishjournal.com/rosnersdomain.

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Mystical Teachings From the Stock Market

Leave a Comment / Alicia Jo Rabins / Alicia Jo Rabins

The wild fluctuations in the stock market last week, and Americans’ fear response, has me thinking about our spiritual relationship to change.

I know it’s a little nontraditional, but the truth is, I often like to think of the stock market as a sort of mystical teacher that reflects spiritual realities about human desires and the inevitability of cycles.

This theory of mine began during the Great Recession. I happened to have an artist residency on Wall Street at the time, and this proximity made the financial world seem less irrelevant to my scrappy artist life; I began to read the newspaper’s financial section for the first time.

And then the Bernie Madoff scandal broke. At first I was interested in Madoff as a sort of modern version of the Emperor Who Has No Clothes. But as more information came out, I began to be more interested in the nuances of what happened.

In physics as in stocks, in spirituality as in lasting love, we’re reminded that what goes up must come down.

His returns, in fact, were nothing special. What was extraordinary were their consistency, a straight line going up without the jagged peaks and falls of the real market. There was a general sentiment that his investors must have been extraordinarily greedy, but this is largely unfair to his victims. I began to think that instead of reflecting his investors’ greed, Madoff’s decades-long fraud reflected something essential about the American dream, and, in fact, our human longings.

People were not necessarily looking to get rich. They just wanted a safe place to put the money they’d worked so hard to save — a safe harbor, buffeted from the ups and downs of the market, of life.

But this is impossible.

In physics as in stocks, in spirituality as in lasting love, we’re reminded that what goes up must come down. And then, most likely, it will go up again. In the words of my favorite Buddhist sutra, “It is the everlasting and unchanging rule of this world … that everything changes, nothing remains constant.”

Change is not just a basic fact of life — it’s the basic fact of life. And yet with the exception of a few dopamine-loving thrill seekers — some of whom can certainly be found on the floor of the stock exchange — we humans are generally known to resist it.

Change is destabilizing; it makes us feel unsafe. Even a relatively small shift can strike fear in our hearts. The markets plunge and investors rush to sell, even though all the experts advise against it. Not a single person is in any physical danger, yet the news is on the same sort of high alert reserved for earthquakes and train crashes.

My favorite Jewish teaching on change comes from the mystics, who envision an endless back and forth (or perhaps up and down) as the basic state of existence. They believe that the state of being alive — of being itself — is ratzo v’shov, running and returning. The world is in a constant state of transition, shuttling back and forth between divine energy and worldly matter.

Our spiritual lives echo this motion, as well. We run to God, our souls drawn to the fire of transcendence, of holiness, to change our lives and find our best selves. And then we return to our own limited self, because we must, to remain alive and in one piece. And then the process begins again.

This is how we love one another, too. Studies show that although babies thrive on being close to their mothers, they need to break eye contact after a certain period of time; if the mother does not turn away, the baby will. This continues into adulthood; although times of alienation can feel like awful emergencies, they are in fact part of the fabric of love. We run to each other, to love each other; we make ourselves anew, forgetting everything that came before. And then we return to ourselves, back home to our own particular body, our story, our limits, our needs.

Ratzo v’shov, run and return, bull and bear, sacred and mundane, coming together and coming apart and coming together again. This is what it means to be alive.

Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician and Torah teacher who lives in Portland, Ore.

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Blessings of Missile Defense

Leave a Comment / Larry Greenfield / Larry Greenfield

Iran broke the seal on its conflict with Israel last week. Instead of using one of its many terror proxies to attack Israel, it went solo, mano a mano, by launching a probing, unmanned drone into Israel that the Israel Defense Forces were forced to take down. An Israeli jet was destroyed in the skirmishes that followed. This is an ominous escalation of a growing, tense conflict between Israel and Iran.

With Iran so embedded on Israel’s border, Israelis must prepare to defend against not only medium-range missiles fired from mountain bunkers in Syria, but also the potential threat that Tehran might directly join the assault on the Jewish state with its own longer-range arsenal.
So, while American defense planners concentrate on rising tensions with “the loco in NoKo,” the IDF has its hands full as Iranian allies Syria and Russia provide air defenses against prospective Israeli air force strikes on deeply buried underground sites launching missiles into Tel Aviv.

The answer to that challenge is the ever improving success of missile defense.

President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative 35 years ago, challenging the immorality of the policy of “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) of any nation whose government launched a first-strike nuclear attack against the United States or our treaty allies. The MAD doctrine threatened millions of civilians under tyranny, likely deterring U.S. counter-strikes, not the Soviet “Evil Empire.”

Instead, Reagan proposed a more prudential course to deter war and to increase our national security capability, via an integrated and layered architecture of networked sensors and ground- and sea-based detection radars and interceptor missiles seeking “hit to kill,” or explosive blast fragmentation, of enemy warheads.

Liberal critics mocked Reagan’s vision as “Star Wars,” proclaiming “a bullet cannot hit a bullet.” They were wrong. And they continue to fret that missile defense is “flawed, imperfect and expensive.”

But decades of startling scientific and technological advancements have resulted in ballistic missile defense elements now operated by United States military personnel at U.S. Strategic, Northern, Pacific and European commands and U.S. Forces Japan.

Detractors rarely note that Israelis sleep under the proven protection of the Iron Dome.

Missile defense doesn’t promise perfection. But detractors rarely note that Israelis sleep under the proven protection of the Iron Dome, and the steadily developing David’s Sling and Arrow missile defense systems funded, developed and tested in cooperative ventures with the United States.

U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities track rocket and missile threats proliferating from a dangerous array of national and nonstate terror actors projecting power in regional and strategic contexts and featuring potential new countermeasures such as hypersonic glide vehicles and varying trajectories to make short, medium, intermediate and intercontinental range missile threats more complex, survivable, reliable and accurate.

Defense analysts consider Iranian and North Korean missile accuracy, range and lethality of particular concern.

Iran threatens maritime activity throughout the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz and has famously inscribed the slogan “Death to Israel” on missiles featured at military parades. Iran’s progress on space launch vehicles provides Tehran with the means and motivation to improve their submunition payloads as they continue to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

North Korea has expanded the sophistication and range of its ballistic missile forces with an unprecedented level of nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches. When a state employee in Hawaii accidentally created a false alarm, citizens and tourists experienced the existential threats humanity faces from rogue regimes such as North Korea, which might blackmail the West with threats to shut down the American electrical grid with an EMP attack over the U.S. continental homeland.

In the age of missiles, robust, operational and position-optimized missile defense systems are mandatory for the U.S. and Israel to deter and defend against any potentially imprudent, irrational or ideological adversary.

Larry Greenfield is a fellow of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship & Political Philosophy.

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Who’s a Jew? Who Decides?

Seduced by the Light of Los Angeles

Leave a Comment / Karen Lehrman Bloch / Karen Lehrman Bloch

In a magnificent, glassed corner office I visited on my trip to L.A. last week, I watched the setting sun create layers of golden, coral and magenta light. The delicate, ethereal light felt close and intimate, as if I was surrounded by thousands of radiant Shabbat candles.

In New York City, my home, one is lucky to catch a glimpse of sunlight in winter. Indeed, long stretches of Manhattan streets often are devoid of light and cellphone service. The quiet beauty of the elegant townhouses can compensate for the lack of natural light during the winter months — but only for so long.

It traditionally has been believed that greatness comes from struggle, that pushing against challenges and restraints helps an artist or thinker to master their craft. The Torah defines a righteous person not as someone who has succeeded but as someone who has persevered. “A righteous man falls down seven times and gets up,” wrote King Solomon in Proverbs. L’fum tzara agra — according to the effort is the reward, says Rabbi Ben Hei Hei in “Ethics of the Fathers.”

The same has been said about the weather — that parts of the world where sun and warmth reign year-round tend to be less creative than those that wind through the seasons.

There is logic to this theory. Both truth and beauty wrestle with darkness and light — one needs to be able to feel the darkness to create the light.

But my trip to Los Angeles made me less sure whether that perspective should be interpreted so literally.

The light of L.A. is layered and imperfect, just as we are. Let it seduce you and inspire you.

Each morning the brilliant sunshine nearly burst into my hotel room, intent on energizing whatever it touched with its rays. No doubt the seduction of sunlight induces some people to create nothing more than cozy settings on the beach, or to run and rollerblade in pursuit of physical perfection.

But L.A.’s light isn’t vacuous. It’s steeped with all the essential attributes of the universe. Or at least that’s how it felt to me.

I left New York City on a snowy, dark morning and returned on a rainy, dark night. Yes, living through winters here is a rather immersive, dark experience — one that has spawned thousands of richly drawn poems and paintings.

But if one doesn’t have the luxury of hibernating in a candlelit room for five months, the cold, the wind, the harshness all become stressors, deflators. Sure, one can use the opportunity to rummage through one’s soul, to peel away layers of inauthenticity and find the melancholy of a world that often appears insane.

But that is not the whole truth. Darkness needs to be entwined with light, with hope.

The distinctive, dreamy haze of Los Angeles’ light gave life to the movie industry and continues to define the city in art and literature. And yes, ironically, the air pollution lends the light a particular shimmer.

And so I say to you lucky residents of Los Angeles: Engage with this multifaceted, often mysterious light in ways that resonate emotionally and spiritually. Let it take you to a place where you can see and feel the complexity of the world, the controlled chaos, the particular dance of darkness and light that leads to curiosity and self-reflection.

The light of L.A. is layered and imperfect, just as we are. Let it seduce you, inspire you, infuse your world with poetry and passion, but also with the dignity of restraint. Let it lead you to the shadow of darkness, but come away with the light of wisdom.

When I returned to New York City, I brought with me a gift from the Women’s Guild of Cedars-Sinai — a blue crystal butterfly. It now sits enchantingly on my desk, attempting to impart L.A.’s scintillating light into the complicated, animated, yet ultimately gloomy NYC winter.

Every time I look at it, I think of the lyrics of my son’s favorite song: “I believe I can fly. I believe I can touch the sky. …”

It is the light in our hearts, I will teach him, that will retain that spirit through many winters to come. Or, we can just move to L.A.

Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic and author of “The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex & Power in the Real World” (Doubleday).

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Compassion Is Part of Treatment

Leave a Comment / Israel / Natalie Solomon

For most of us, dental work is not at the top of our wish list. But for patients treated by Dr. Ihab Mansoure through Yad Sarah, a visit from the dentist could just be their greatest wish.

Mansoure, 56, who specializes in geriatric dentistry, attends patients throughout the southern region of Israel, from Be’er Sheva to Ofakim, Ashdod to Arad. But she doesn’t have an office — she brings the office to her patients.

A Christian-Israeli Arab from the old city of Akko, Mansoure performs critical dental work on the homebound on behalf of Israel’s well-known health and humans services organization. With her massive army-grade gray suitcase, her Romanian driver, British dispatcher and Russian dental hygienist, she shleps around the largest region of Israel with her mobile dental clinic. She has extensive equipment, from X-rays to drills, and can perform a vast array of procedures in-home, except for oral surgery. A dental MacGyver, she never says no to a patient in need, even if she has to rig a supportive procedure-ready chair out of a broom and a couch cushion.

She estimates about 99 percent of her patients are elderly, an often forgotten or neglected demographic. With an otherworldly empathy, Mansoure doesn’t treat only her patients’ mouths, she treats their overall condition.

She recounted some of the challenges she has experienced firsthand in watching her parents age. “I remember the first time I had to put my father’s socks on, he cried,” she said. “He didn’t say anything. He just cried.”

She intimately understands that her patients are struggling to accept their limited independence and myriad of health issues. She knows that this respectful understanding is the key to her success. As she says, “It starts from the mental state. If the head and heart don’t accept you, they won’t accept your help and treatment.”

“I always said, if every person gives a little, everything would be totally different.”— Ihab Mansoure

So how does a Christian-Arab female dentist from Akko who studied in Romania end up working for Israel’s premier health and welfare nonprofit in Be’er Sheva? She listened to the radio and to her heart. Fresh out of dental school, Mansoure was driving from Akko to Jerusalem when she heard the ad that would change her life. Yad Sarah, well known for its rehabilitation services, was opening a new dental services initiative and looking for volunteers. She called immediately, and for more than 20 years has been an integral part of the Yad Sarah dental program.

Mansoure started with Yad Sarah as a volunteer. One day a week, she would close her dental clinic in Rahad, a Bedouin town near Be’er Sheva with a population of 70,000, and jump in her Yad Sarah mobile clinic and serve patients throughout the south. After 10 years as a volunteer, she joined the organization full time. Today, she spends three days a week based in Be’er Sheva traveling around the south, two days at the Yad Sarah dental clinic in Jerusalem and her weekends at home in Akko.

Compassion, healing and volunteerism are obvious to her, an innate and significant component of her being. Mansoure repeats her life’s mantra: “I always said, if every person gives a little, everything would be totally different.” Yad Sarah is the last stop for those navigating services in Israel’s health care sector. Mansoure knows these are the people she is meant to serve: “I grew up in a house that emphasized the interplay of whomever haves versus whomever needs.”

As Mansoure recounts story after story of the special patients she has met along the way, one can start to feel a bit of what it must be like to be visited by this angel of healing. The respect she has for each individual, the empathy for each situation, and the care and compassion to solve someone’s problems is something that can’t be taught in dental school. Beyond the white lab coat and dental drill is a sensitive woman who looks you in the eye and listens to your soul. Mansoure is the rare dentist who patients look forward to seeing again and again.

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