January 2, 2019

We’re Divided, but Been Here Before

Leave a Comment / Columnists / Dan Schnur

For the haters of President Donald Trump among us, and there are many, 2018 was a difficult year. It also wasn’t a great year for haters of Trump-haters, who often make up in passion what they lack in numbers.

Where does all the hatred come from? It comes from fear. Each side of the divide is afraid of losing its stake in the American dream. Fear begets anger, which begets intolerance, which begets divisiveness and polarization and blame-laying and scapegoating — as demonstrated in abundance in 2018.

The question being asked with increasing frequency by frightened and angry Americans is: Has our country ever been this divided?

Overlooking the Civil War, in which more than 750,000 Union and Confederate soldiers were killed, would, of course, require a particularly acute case of recency bias. But even by limiting our focus to the modern era, we can look back 50 years to the events of 1968:

• The assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and the likely Democratic presidential nominee, Robert Kennedy

• Urban riots that devastated the cities of Detroit, Newark, Washington and other major metropolitan areas.

• Egypt, Jordan and the Palestine Liberation Organization launched the War of Attrition against Israel in an effort to regain territory lost in the Six-Day War. Palestinian terrorists also hijacked an El Al flight, holding the passengers and crew hostage for 40 days, bombed the Tel Aviv central bus station and attacked another El Al flight preparing to leave Athens.

Healing involves reaching out to those on the other side of the divide.

• The Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia. The United States suffered its greatest losses of the Vietnam War as a result of the Tet Offensive. North Korea captured and tortured 83 U.S. Navy servicemen aboard the USS Pueblo.

• Open conflict and violence between police and anti-war protesters broke out on the streets of Chicago during the city’s hosting of the Democratic National Convention.

In other words, we haven’t been here before. But we’ve been here before.

Such is the message delivered in the best book of 2018, Jon Meacham’s patiently reassuring and quietly inspirational “The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels.” Meacham makes clear that the hatred and divisiveness corroding our public discourse have existed in this nation even before we were a nation.

But in recounting past episodes of intolerance and fanaticism, Meacham not only walks us through these periods of ugliness but through the nation’s efforts to overcome them. We hear about the scoundrels and demagogues who divided us, as well as the leaders and heroes who brought us back together. In the process, we are both comforted and challenged. He reassures his readers with accounts of how these schisms can be repaired, but he throws down a gauntlet to us, as well.

Meacham makes it clear that we don’t overcome these animosities as a result of good karma —expecting an inevitable triumph of good over evil. Rather, society is held together when brave women and men stand up against the forces that divide us, and few societal breaches are healed when one side demands complete capitulation from the other. So, healing involves reaching out to those on the other side of the divide to find even a small patch of common ground, and it means recognizing that progress cannot be achieved until advocates on both sides of the debate are willing to pause from condemning the supposed shortcomings and misperceptions of others in order to consider their own.

The early signs are that 2019 will be just as exhausting, divisive, angry and fearful as 2018. But Meacham reminds us that looking back at past successes and failures can help us chart the path forward, and that, at best, our nation is still a work in progress.

Dan Schnur teaches political communications and leadership at USC, UC Berkeley and Pepperdine. He is the founder of the USC-L.A. Times statewide political survey and a board member of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust.

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My 2019 Jewish Bucket List

Leave a Comment / Columnists / Debra L. Eckerling

When I started writing for the Jewish Journal last spring, I found myself drawn to the variety of different Jewish events I attended and the Jews from across the spectrum I interviewed that were doing interesting and meaningful things. For the first time since I moved to Los Angeles several years ago, I realized that there were lots of cool things for Jews to do in Los Angeles and I wanted in.

Raised Conservative in the Midwest, I went to Hebrew school and had a bat mitzvah. We celebrated every major Jewish holiday and some of the minor ones. We still do. But since moving to L.A. I really hadn’t immersed myself in Jewish activities.

Over the years I attended Sinai Temple’s Friday Night Live singles mixer a few times. I occasionally attended services at different synagogues, but there was nothing consistent.

However, over the past year, thanks to my work with the Journal, I discovered that the more I am exposed to Jewish experiences, the more I crave them. I don’t want to just write about them, I want to be immersed in them. So, at our last editorial meeting of the year, I mentioned that. I spoke of how I’d always wanted to learn Yiddish and perhaps I could do an article about it. Maybe even a column.

“OK, Deb,” David Suissa said. “Do it.”

Then I mentioned how I also wanted to immerse myself in more cultural Jewish experiences and with the New Year upon us it would be the perfect time to try new things. I revealed I had always wanted to learn how to bake challah.

To which David replied, “Well, if you’re going to do two things, you may as well do a dozen. One a month in 2019.”

I discovered that the more I am exposed to Jewish experiences, the more I crave them. I don’t want to just write about them, I want to be immersed in them.

And just like that, my 2019 Jewish Bucket List column was born. Over the next 12 months I have committed to delving into a new Jewish experience each month, which I will share on these pages.

In my other life, when I’m not freelance writing, I’m a coach who helps individuals and businesses achieve their goals. The accountability piece is perhaps the most powerful. Once you tell people you plan to do something, the more likely you are to do it. I excel at holding others accountable. And now you, our readers, can hold me accountable.

However, as I embark on these 12 months of 12 Jewish experiences, I would love your input on suggestions for me to expand my Jewish horizons in Los Angeles.

I have ideas for three of the months, but I need nine more:

Take a Yiddish class
Bake challah
Take an Israeli folk dancing class

Beyond these assignments, I’m looking for suggestions. What do you consider a cultural Jewish experience in Los Angeles I should try? Is there something you take part in that you think I will enjoy? What would you like me to experience on your behalf? Off the bat, I think we can safely say at least a third of these will be food-related. We are, after all, Jewish.

Please send me your ideas for my Jewish bucket list to deckerling@gmail.com, or comment on this post.

Debra Eckerling is a contributing writer to the Jewish Journal and a goal coach.

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Writers, Gone but Not Forgotten

Leave a Comment / Columnists / Larry Greenfield

2018 saw the passing of a sweeping and diverse variety of important and admired writers.

Tom Wolfe, America’s most celebrated chronicler of our age, invented such neologisms as “New Journalism,” “The Me Generation” and “Radical Chic,” his takedown of the affluent for championing radical causes for fashion’s sake.

Wolfe’s novels and essays included “In Our Time,” “From Bauhaus to Our House,” “Hooking Up,” “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and “The Right Stuff.” He died May 14 at 88.

He was one of a kind: an elegant, iconoclastic personality, a wit in white suits, and an observer whose prose inspired Hamptons social chatter and Hollywood movies.

Stan Lee died Nov. 12 in Los Angeles at 95. The co-creator of popular superheroes Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther and the X-Men, Lee became a comic-book legend and an active personality in promoting literacy.

Six other noteworthy writers and thinkers of particular interest to Jewish readers died this year.

Philip Roth challenged American Jews to confront their neuroses. Initially shunned by rabbis and other establishmentarians, his controversial novel “Portnoy’s Complaint” annoyed but eventually lasted as iconoclastic. Roth, who died May 22 at 85, rose to the top of the literary world, with a prolific outpouring of commentary on the American dream as well as troubling American reality.

Scholar Richard Pipes (died May 17) was the dean of American Sovietologists and a respected counselor to policy makers and analysts alike. His son Daniel has applied similar talent to documenting the Middle East.

A foremost thinker on the politics of Islam, Bernard Lewis, died May 19. Brave and brilliant, Lewis wrote prolifically on the variety and volatility of the Arab world.

More easily accessible to the general public was Charles Krauthammer, who offered erudite political commentary in The Washington Post and on Fox News. A former speechwriter for former Sen. and Vice President Walter Mondale, Krauthammer (died June 21) became enamored of Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential campaign.

Krauthammer asserted that classical liberalism (as opposed to creeping socialism or “Blame America First” leftism) was now better found in the GOP than the modern Democratic party.

Overcoming an injury while in medical school that left him in a wheelchair, Krauthammer advocated with civility, innate dignity and steadfast principles. He could disagree with President George W. Bush’s stem-cell research funding ban or with President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in a way that added light, not heat, to modern politics.

His 2013 autobiography was titled “Things That Matter.” Indeed.

Sharp comic relief was always welcomed in the plays of Neil Simon. Generations of Jewish and general audiences enjoyed his take on urban and urbane America.

Born July 4, 1927, Simon received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other playwright. He died Aug. 26 at 91.

A child of the Depression, and of parents who had a tempestuous marriage, Simon wrote of human relationships, and of likable and real people, finding humor in sad situations. Generations of audiences enjoyed “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Odd Couple,” “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” “The Sunshine Boys,” “Plaza Suite,” “California Suite” and “The Goodbye Girl,” among his many other Broadway productions.

Amos Oz, Israel’s most famous literary author, was born in Jerusalem in 1939. His mother committed suicide when Amos was 12. Deeply literate, Oz wrote short stories, fiction and nonfiction to wide acclaim and honors. His works included “Black Box,” “In the Land of Israel” and “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” a 2002 memoir that was also adapted into a film.

Oz (died Dec. 28) was a kibbutznik, an Israel Defense Forces veteran and a professor who became deeply active in left-wing Israeli political causes, advocating for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also harshly criticized Hamas for being a fanatical organization and was appalled at the use of “human shields” by terrorists.

Other notable deaths in 2018 included famed physicist Stephen Hawking, celebrated Mexican author Sergio Pitol, British novelists Evelyn Anthony and Penny Vincenzi, horror writer Jack Ketchum, science fiction writers Harlan Ellison and Ursula K. Le Guin, best-selling novelist Anita Shreve, popular children’s author Richard Peck, dynamic food writers Anthony Bourdain and Jonathan Gold, TV titan Steven Bochco, screenwriter William Goldman, and Walter Skold, founder of the Dead Poets Society of America.

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

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Portraits of Faith

Leave a Comment / Columnists / Karen Lehrman Bloch

Unexpected things can happen when you pull your back out on Christmas Eve.

First is the acute realization of the obvious — the centrality of the spine to one’s mind, body and spirit. In some ways, the spine is a metaphor for faith: Many of us take it for granted until something goes wrong.

The pain began while we were prepping for the arrival of some special friends. Three hours later, I couldn’t lift their precious 21-month-old baby. Joy quickly turned to despair — how was I going to take care of my own 9-year-old son, Alexander?

When our friends left, I nearly passed out with an ice pack. “I’m going to need you guys to clean up,” I mumbled to Alexander and Reese, our neighbor.

If I had been standing and smiling, I’m not sure that sentence would have elicited the same response. But I was quite literally a damsel in distress — and the boys reflexively took that as a cue to switch to warrior-cleaner mode.

What happened next was even more miraculous: Dr. Alexander took over. He propped up my pillows just so. Suddenly, I had six blankets and something to eat and drink. He made every effort to soothe me. Essentially, he became a different person. He was in control — and loving every minute of it.

The next morning, when I told him I was feeling better, he almost got teary. “But I’m not done yet,” he said. Genderists (my new name for anti-feminists) want to turn males, especially alpha males, into females. If only they tried for a nanosecond to understand evolutionary psychology and had some faith in its ability to continue to evolve.

My back was still creaky but I felt well enough to execute my Christmas Day plan to take our Yemenite neighbors to the Jewish Museum.

As soon as we walked into the elegant 1908 mansion, Saya exclaimed: “Why isn’t there an Islamic Museum?” There are, of course, museums of Islamic art and design, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, just down Fifth Avenue, has a magnificent collection. But when Saya was growing up, both in Yemen and the Bronx, the beauty of Islam was never focused on — it was all about the rules. I promised her this would be our next excursion.

Meanwhile, Saya was mesmerized by both the beauty and edginess of our very special Jewish Museum. It strikes a rare balance: pride in Judaism and Israel combined with an insatiable desire to show what’s innovative and brilliant. For me, the museum conveys the universality of beauty — how beauty can connect humanity.

In the Archeology Zone, the kids donned Middle Eastern attire, sipped tea and threw fake pomegranates at each other. Saya, taught since birth to see Jews as aliens, couldn’t get over feeling so at home.

“I keep telling you, we’re cousins,” I said, as she teared up.

In 2019, I’m not going to so easily lose faith — in my friends, my family and myself. I’m going to focus on the miracles.

We were on a mission to find a piece of Yemenite jewelry when we were both struck by a large-scale triptych by Touhami Ennadre called “Prayer,” which depicts a pair of Ethiopian Jews, a Christian man at the Vatican and a Muslim woman after Sept. 11. “In a time of global religious conflict,” the text read, “the artist’s comparison of three spiritual practices emphasizes their human similarities rather than their doctrinal differences, merging into a single portrait of faith.”

The poignant piece confirmed our plans to co-curate an exhibition. At the museum store, I bought Saya a card that said “Besheret.” We, too, are soulmates, destined to discover the many layers of our bond.

As we were about to leave, Alexander let out a “MOM!” He had found a Lego bar mitzvah boy, reading from the Torah. “Please, this is just so coooool!” I looked at the price and began to shake my head. But here is my son, whose love of Judaism tends to get hidden, calling a nerdy boy reading from the Torah “cool.” How could I say no?

I bought it for him, with a promise to myself: In 2019, I’m not going to so easily lose faith — in my friends, my family and myself. I’m going to focus on the miracles, understanding that there can be no light without darkness, that light is more apt to radiate from a strong foundation, that ultimately what connects the mind, body and soul is both besheret and very much in our control.

Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic living in New York City.

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