September 9, 2021

Nothing to See Here — A poem for Parsha Vayelech

Leave a Comment / Judaism, Poetry, Torah / Rick Lupert

Then Moses wrote this Torah
-Deuteronomy 31:9

It takes us a year to read the Torah
and not even all of it.

Three years or more to read every word
as it’s assigned, if we even bother.

Who has the time when brunch calls out
on Saturdays, and we

rarely observe market days anymore?
Odds are we’ll never read

the whole Thing, I mean I will, but
it’s taking me seven years.

I think I read the whole Thing once
and maybe I wrote a book about it

but that was a few years ago now
and as our accomplishments get

further and further away, it gets
harder to brag about them.

Like all those bands who wrote that
one song we all know, and love

but never did anything else that
we were compelled to remember.

So in five words Moses writes
This entire Torah, and then moves on

as if that wasn’t a super-human thing to do
described in one of the shortest

goings-up we have to read.
He’s somehow writing this Torah

while we’re reading it.
All these meta questions are

forming in my head, but
before they’ll get answered

someone’s going to hit the
reset button and all of this will

start over as if
nothing has happened.

God Wrestler: a poem for every Torah Portion by Rick Lupert Los Angeles poet Rick Lupert created the Poetry Super Highway (an online publication and resource for poets), and hosted the Cobalt Cafe weekly poetry reading for almost 21 years. He’s authored 25 collections of poetry, including “God Wrestler: A Poem for Every Torah Portion“, “I’m a Jew, Are You” (Jewish themed poems) and “Feeding Holy Cats” (Poetry written while a staff member on the first Birthright Israel trip), and most recently “The Tokyo-Van Nuys Express” (Poems written in Japan – Ain’t Got No Press, August 2020) and edited the anthologies “Ekphrastia Gone Wild”, “A Poet’s Haggadah”, and “The Night Goes on All Night.” He writes the daily web comic “Cat and Banana” with fellow Los Angeles poet Brendan Constantine. He’s widely published and reads his poetry wherever they let him.

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Rabbis of L.A. | Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn: Learning to Become the Wounded Healer

Leave a Comment / Rabbis of LA / Danielle Berrin

In late July, the synagogue leadership of B’nai David-Judea approached Alissa Thomas-Newborn, their community’s Rabbanit since 2015, and suggested she take a leave of absence.

The gesture wasn’t intended as punishment, but as a gift.

Thomas-Newborn’s father, Blade Thomas, had fallen severely ill with a chronic and life threatening illness. As his eldest child, Thomas-Newborn — who also happens to be a board certified chaplain, experienced in delivering palliative, psychiatric and end of life care in hospital settings — seemed the natural choice to oversee her father’s medical needs. She flew him from his home in Royal Oak, Michigan to Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, where she could sit by his side and serve as his advocate.

But no amount of education or experience could have prepared her for the difficulty and intensity of watching her parent suffer.

“I’ve had the privilege of being the spiritual care provider at someone’s bedside before,” Thomas-Newborn said during a phone interview, her voice tender with emotion. “I’ve also been the patient. But I haven’t been the family member, so this has been surreal.”

Within a month, Thomas underwent six or seven surgeries, Thomas-Newborn told me. She couldn’t remember the exact number because she stopped counting. Back in Michigan, the doctors were so baffled by her father’s condition, “They basically discharged him home to die,” she said. “One doctor said to me, ‘Your questions are better than any answers we have.’”

The situation was dire enough to compel Thomas-Newborn away from her family, which includes her husband, Akiva, and two-year-old daughter, Ella, as well as the community she loves to serve, in order to devote herself full-time to her father’s care.

“I keep thinking it’s going to get better and I’m going to get back to work,” she said. “But each week, a new issue comes up.”

There are days when her father is alert and days he slips into a distant realm of consciousness. Days when he is stable and days of excruciating pain. Sometimes they watch the news. More times they’ve said the Viddui.

“I find that in the hospital setting, where we are feeling the highs and lows of life, come moments that are the most holy, and where I’ve personally felt God.”

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster,” Thomas-Newborn said. “But I find that in the hospital setting, where we are feeling the highs and lows of life, come moments that are the most holy, and where I’ve personally felt God.”

She said she feels this every time she and her father pray the Mi Sheiberach — Judaism’s healing prayer — first in Hebrew, because she’s Orthodox, and then in the Debbie Friedman melody, because her father is reform. She also described hours spent reading to her father as an act of prayer. They chose “Man’s Search for Meaning,” psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s account of living as a prisoner in a Nazi concerntration camp.

“It’s been really meaningful to be reading these words to him, which describe everything my Dad is fighting for right now,” she said. “How do you find meaning and the will to live and God in the absolute toughest moments of life? It reminds me of why I got into this field.”

Though she hasn’t been to shul lately, her shul has been with her: the B’nai David community, located in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, has organized meal trains, said her father’s name at minyan, and supported her the way that she has supported them. “That’s what tefillah b’tzibur — prayer and community — is all about. Jewish tradition teaches that God’s presence descends upon a community that has a minyan.”

And yet, there is an unavoidable loneliness to this ordeal.

“The hospital is empty,” Thomas-Newborn said, citing a COVID policy that permits only one visitor per patient at a time. Because of pandemic restrictions, she has witnessed hospital staff step into less boundaried roles, often serving as patients’ surrogate families.

For Thomas-Newborn, too, the familiar boundary between personal and professional has dissolved: At her father’s bedside, she is neither rabbanit nor chaplain; she is his child.

“It can be debilitating,” Thomas-Newborn said of the emotional toll. “There’s a point of exhaustion. I’ve certainly felt at times like ‘How am I going to keep going? This was such a painful day. How am I going to be there for my daughter?’

“When you’re in survival mode, you can’t deny the pain you’re experiencing. You have to give yourself a chance to break.”

Distanced from her normal routine, Thomas-Newborn has seized on Abraham Joshua Heschel’s idea of “praying with your feet.” Instead of the mitzvot she usually fulfills by rote, caring for her father has imbued her religious obligation with more awareness and intention. She referenced Henri J.M. Nouwen’s book, “The Wounded Healer,” and said she will now better serve her congregation by ministering from her own wounds.

Throughout this destabilizing process, Thomas-Newborn said she felt anchored by the Jewish calendar.

“This year I’ve felt the uncertainty and fragility of life in an acute way,” Thomas-Newborn said. “This is the time of year we think about ‘Who will live and who will die,’ when we call upon the liturgy to put into words what we sometimes lose the ability to say. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are so rich in all of these feelings. Turn to any page of the machzor and it describes all of what we’re talking about.

“There’s a reason why spiritual care is part of the interdisciplinary team in a hospital setting,” she added. “Because healing includes the soul.”

Fast Takes with Thomas-Newborn

DANIELLE BERRIN: What’s currently on your night table?
ALISSA THOMAS-NEWBORN: A candle, an aromatherapy oil diffuser, my phone and a book by Jonathan Krakauer.

DB: Last show you binge-watched?

ATN: “Clickbait”

DB: Your day off looks like…

ATN: Hanging out with my Mom and my dog, and doing something relaxing, like sitting by the beach and getting a drink.

DB: Favorite thing to do in Israel?

ATN: Going to the Kotel and archaeological digs.

DB: Something about you most people don’t know?

ATN: My Dad taught me to surf and skateboard.

DB: Most essential Torah verse?

ATN: V’chai bahem — that you should live through the mitzvot. That from them you should get life, vitality.

DB: Biggest challenge facing the Jewish world?

ATN: Coming together; the struggles that come with divisiveness.

DB: Guilty pleasure?

ATN: I definitely have guilty pleasures… hold on.

DB: Favorite Jewish food?

ATN: Latkes

DB: If you weren’t a rabbanit you’d be…

ATN: When I was a kid I was a musical theater performer but practically speaking, a therapist.

Rabbis of L.A. | Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn: Learning to Become the Wounded Healer Read More »

DIY Jonah and the Whale Photo Frame Refrigerator Magnet

The “Many Faces” of the Jewish Immigrant Experience

Leave a Comment / Books / Jonathan Kirsch

Born 102 years ago in Jerusalem, Nehemiah Persoff was the son of two founding members of the first Hebrew-language theater company in pre-state Israel. “[H]ardly a place to prepare one for the strains and stresses, the need to compromise one’s dignity and especially in a career as an actor on Broadway and in Hollywood,” the centenarian writes in “The Many Faces of Nehemiah Persoff” (Autumn Road Publishing). It’s an endearing and revealing memoir that pulls back the curtain on a deeply familiar face, one that we have seen in more than 200 movies, plays and television programs ranging from “Some Like It Hot” to “Yentl” and from “Magnum P.I.” to “Gilligan’s Island.”

Persoff’s father, an instructor at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, was sent to America in 1923 to promote the artwork that was being made by its students. By the age of ten, Nehemiah and the rest of his family had joined his father in New York. “I think I cried myself to sleep for about two years before I began to accept the fact that America was my new home,” he writes.

A comic scene from adolescence allows us to understand that Persoff was destined to become an actor. The family was not observant, but it was agreed that a bar mitzvah would be appropriate. “I recited the portion I knew by heart and I ad libbed,” he explains. “I double-talked the rest, thinking that chances are the people did not understand Hebrew.” He was wrong, and one old in the congregation could be heard to ask: “What? What did he say?” Another congregant replied: “Sha, the boy is from Jerusalem, this is the real Hevreet from Yerushalayim.”

Persoff charts his metamorphosis from a greenhorn into an American — and from an aspiring engineer into an accomplished actor — with the evocative scene-setting and story-telling that fleshes out the saga of the Jewish immigrant experience in America.

Persoff charts his metamorphosis from a greenhorn into an American — and from an aspiring engineer into an accomplished actor—with the evocative scene-setting and story-telling that fleshes out the saga of the Jewish immigrant experience in America. “My devotion to the ideals of the Zionists and the dignity of work with me constantly,” he writes. “I didn’t want to be a burden on my family by being an unemployed actor.” But he found himself equally devoted to his calling as a performer. He attended one class as a freshman at Cooper Union, and then enrolled in acting school.

His fate was sealed when he was invited to impersonate Karl Marx at a Communist party rally at Madison Square Garden. It was a walk-on role with no lines, but the charged-up crowd of 20,000 cheered for fifteen minutes. Clearly, they were applauding Marx, not Persoff, but it was enough to hook him on the pleasure of public adulation.

Persoff studied the Stanislavski Method with Stella Adler, and his hopes were elevated after his performance in a well-reviewed production at her school, the Dramatic Workshop. “The next morning, I got an invitation from Uncle Sam directing me to join the U.S. Army for a guaranteed long run,” he notes. After the war, he joined the Actor’s Studio, where his fellow actors included Montgomery Clift, Marlon Brando and John Garfield.

The break-out moment in Persoff’s acting career came when Charles Laughton produced “Galileo” on the New York stage but was unable to persuade Marlon Brando to appear in the play. Persoff auditioned seven times before Laughton announced: “I can work with this actor, sign him up.” Recalls Persoff: “Next to becoming a member of the Actor’s Studio, this was the best thing that happened to me in my career as an actor and as a person.” Yet Laughton himself was unimpressed by Method acting: “Don’t pay attention to the crap they teach you at the studio,” he advised the young actor.

History intruded again and again into Persoff’s life. When the State of Israel declared its independence in 1948, Persoff told himself “if a war broke out, I would be fighting shoulder to shoulder with my Israeli brothers.” Yet he decided to “follow this dream, so close to becoming a reality.” Years later, when he worked as an actor in Israel, his fellow actors did not condemn him. “Yet,” he writes, “nothing can wipe out the pain and shame of the selfishness that I carry with me to this very day.”

One of the delights of the book is the inevitable name-checking of actors whom we know and admire. Persoff, for example, lost the money he had saved up to buy a refrigerator when Sidney Poitier invited him to join a poker game.

One of the delights of “The Many Faces of Nehemiah” is the inevitable name-checking of actors whom we know and admire. Persoff, for example, lost the money he had saved up to buy a refrigerator when Sidney Poitier invited him to join a poker game. It was Rod Steiger who proposed Persoff for what turned out to be his first role as a featured player in a Hollywood movie, “The Harder They Fall,” which turned out to be Humphrey Bogart’s final film, “Nicky, you’re on film now,” said the director, Marc Robson, after he lingered on the set after his first take. “Go home.” Nicky, as it happens, is Persoff’s nickname, but he also reveals that James Cagney who grew up near a Jewish neighborhood – preferred to address him as “boychik.”

But what Persoff does best of all is to infuse his memoir with ironic humor. When he auditioned for the role of a mohel in an episode of “L.A. Law,” for example, he told the director that he actually was a mohel when he was not acting.

“First, I practiced on a pea pod, then on a cucumber and slowly worked my way up to the real thing,” Persoff explained. “I’m sure you know that I am an actor; but I can’t always make a living at it, so I make up for that by doing some ‘moheling’ on the side.”

Needless to say, and just as he did on so many other occasions, Nehemiah Persoff got the part.

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

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New Netflix Film Focuses on Lawyer Ken Feinberg’s 9/11 Mission

“Tango Shalom” Examines Chassidic Life and Dancing

Film / Tom Tugend

If you saw a Hollywood film around the middle of the last century, you would be quite sure that all the leading actors — whether of Jewish, Italian or Greek descent — portrayed clean-limbed and straight-nosed Anglo-Saxon types.

Fortunately, times have changed, as witness “Tango Shalom,” which is populated by bearded Chassidim and their voluble spouses — not as caricatures or exotics, but as three-dimensional characters facing life’s dilemmas and joys.

The protagonist in “Tango Shalom” is Rabbi Moshe Yehuda (Jos Laniado), who labors at a Hebrew school on the edge of bankruptcy in the Chassidic neighborhood of Brooklyn’s Crown Heights, teaching the boys the wisdom of the Torah and how to dance the Hora.

Desperate for money, by a twist of fate — or plot line — the rabbi encounters the lithe dancing instructor Viviana (Karina Smirnoff), who is looking for a male partner to enter a tango contest promising large amounts of money for the winners.

There is only one catch. Like any strictly Orthodox Jew, the rabbi is forbidden to touch a woman not his wife.

What to do? Rabbi Yehuda consults the local rabbinic sage, who admonishes him that as a married man the petitioner cannot even make eye contact with another female.

Not a man to give up easily, Rabbi Yehuda decides to seek counsel from spiritual leaders of a different cloth, first a Catholic priest, then a Muslim iman and finally a Hindu spiritual leader.

All are surprisingly sympathetic to the rabbi’s dilemma — perhaps having been tempted in their own past lives — but in the meanwhile the rabbi’s apparently scandalous relationship has been discovered and he is at risk of losing both his job and his wife.

Just in time, the odd dancing couple discovers a kosher way to dance without any physical contact — which I am not at liberty to divulge — they win a prize for innovative dancing, and all ends well.

Admirers of the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” will notice some of the same ethnic complications and sheer joy of living running through “Tango Shalom.” That is no coincidence since Joel Zwick, who directed “Greek Wedding,” also produced “Tango.”

The latter film’s director is Gabriel Bologna, who is well suited for the assignment as the son of a Catholic father, Joseph Bologna, and a Jewish mother, Renee Taylor.

“I consider myself 100 percent Italian and 100 percent Jewish.” — Gabriel Bologna

“I consider myself 100 percent Italian and 100 percent Jewish,” Gabriel Bologna observed at the beginning of our hour-long interview.

He cast his father as the Catholic priest, and dedicated “Tango” to him after the father died during production of the film. The younger Bologna, 52, has worked as actor, director, writer, producer and cinematic graphic designer in 37 films, starting in 1973.

Making “Tango” took some six years, from 2015 to the present, due to the pandemic and other uncontrollable factors, on a budget of $1.42 million. The relatively low cost — by Hollywood standards — was made possible because all the required locations — whether Jewish, Catholic or Sikh houses of worship — were provided by the respective congregations free of charge, as were the headquarters of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Practically all the outdoor scenes were filmed on the streets of Crown Heights, while the climactic tango contest was immortalized in Los Angeles.

Bologna described “Tango” as an “ethnic comedy” though he needed to be aware of the sensitivities of the various religious branches. In general, though, he said that “the more specific (in detail) such a film is presented, the more universal it becomes.”

There have been no complaints about the depictions of their faiths by the gentile and Jewish participants, Bologna said, although the Muslim congregation in which a segment of the film was shot, asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions.

Overseas, the film has been well received in the countries of the former Soviet Union and has won audience awards in Morocco and India, Bologna said.

“Tango Shalom” is currently presented at the Town Center 5 in Encino through Sept. 16, and will open on Sept. 10 at the Newhall in Santa Clarita. Additional theaters screening the film this weekend in the Los Angeles area are The Landmark, Town Center 5 in Encino, AMCBurbank 8, AMC Orange 30, AMC Promenade 16 Woodland Hills and Regal Irvine. After Oct. 29, the film will be available on all streaming and cable platforms and on DVD. For up to date information on screenings visit www.tangoshalommovie.com.

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Will the World Finally Realize the Brilliance of Comedian Al Lubel?

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Daniel Lobell

Having been a standup comedian for 17 years, it is not uncommon for other comedians to ask me if I am related to Al Lubel, since my last name is Lobell. As far as I know, we are not related (aside from the fact that we are both Jewish), but I do have a strong connection to him.

Lubel was the first comic I ever saw perform in a comedy club. I kept looking for more comedians like him, because he was so funny. There were none. His jokes were just so much smarter than everyone else’s.

Finally, the world is going to learn how much of a comedy genius Lubel is; he’s the star of a new documentary, “Mentally Al,” which follows him on his gigs, shows a glimpse into his personal life – like visiting his elderly mother in a nursing home in Florida – and features interviews with his contemporaries like Sarah Silverman, Judd Apatow, Kevin Nealon and Andy Kindler. Silverman talked about how Lubel was the first alternative comedian before alt comedy even existed.

The movie is directed by Joshua Edelman, and produced by Edelman and Daniel Marino (who is, fun fact, Miami Dolphins legend Dan Marino’s son). It’s being distributed by Comedy Dynamics and is available on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Comcast, Spectrum, Apple TV and Google Play.

Despite the respect of his peers and his many career accomplishments, the whole theme of the documentary, Lubel said, is, ‘Why is this very funny guy not more successful?’

Despite the respect of his peers and his many career accomplishments, the whole theme of the documentary, Lubel said, is, “Why is this very funny guy not more successful?”

A former lawyer, Lubel never became famous, despite his winning a $100,000 grand prize for “Star Search,” and then going on to do sets on late night shows.

In the film, Lubel recounts a fellow comedian asking him a question that he found hurtful: “If you could do it all over again, would you still do comedy?”

Lubel explained that the question implied that he is a failure because this comedian wouldn’t ask that to Jerry Seinfeld. Though he is not a financial success, he said he does not see himself as a failure. He got to stop being a lawyer to do comedy. Every day that he’s a comedian and not a lawyer, he says he is a success.

Lubel is a sharp joke writer. One of my favorites goes something like this: “I don’t vote because I don’t think my vote counts. My friend said, ‘Al, what if everyone didn’t vote because they thought their vote didn’t count?’ Well, then my vote would count.” It’s a circular logic that he often uses.

One thing I love about the film is that it really makes you think. But then again, you’d be thinking without the movie. So to be more accurate, it’s the kind of movie that really makes you think about Al Lubel. And if there is one thing Al Lubel loves, it’s people thinking about Al Lubel.

As he says in the movie, his audience is people who don’t know about him. If they did, they would love him and come see him, but in a given crowd, there are often only some that love him but they are usually only just finding out about him then.

The comic, who is endlessly self-deprecating, can’t resist relating this story to me: “The director’s ex-girlfriend is a psychologist and she watched [the film] twice. She said ‘Al really intellectualizes everything.’ And I think that’s true. That’s a way of putting it. I didn’t like hearing it actually because it explains me and I think I am unexplainable. Is that all I was doing is intellectualizing? I thought I was more interesting than that.”

He continued, “I analyze everything to death and then don’t do everything. And that’s my excuse for not doing anything. Doing nothing is something, but at least it’s easier.”

Daniel Lobell is a comedian and podcaster living in Los Angeles. He is the author of the Fair Enough comic book series and hosts the Doctorpedia podcast.

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Repentance is Re-Creation

Leave a Comment / Poetry / Gershon Hepner

Repentance requires re-creation;
the fact it’s possible implies
that within every person lies
the power of his liberation.

The shofar sounds reflect the fact
that all of us are free to be
what we should be, our jubilee
occurring every time we act
with the freedom we are given,
teqiah and shevarim-truah
proclaiming that when we’re truer
to ourselves we’ll be forgiven.

Turning into mulligans the errors
that we have made, teshuvah re-
creates them with repentance, free
of unetanneh toqeph terrors,
just like the vows in Kol Nidrei
Jews may replay, as God did, too,
not punishing the sinners who
a golden calf chose to obey.

Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik, in Halakhic Man, discussing teshuvah, which is commonly translated as “repentance,” claims that “repentance, according to the halakhic view, is an act of creation – self-creation.” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks pointed out that the rationale for the recitation of Kol Nidrei, a legal formula recited immediately before Yom Kippur begins, allowing the revocation of past and future oaths, is because it is by means of such a revocation of an oath that God Himself “repented” of His decision to destroy Israel after the sin of the golden calf, (Exod. R. 43:4, discussing Exod. 32:11). I think that this is also why God accepted the “repentance” of the inhabitants of Nineveh in Jonah 3:4-10, described in the book of Jonah, which we read on Yom Kippur afternoon, about twenty hours after hearing Kol Nidrei.

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.

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Baseball Player Goes to Bat for Wildfire Victims

Leave a Comment / Community / Brian Fishbach

Ryan Braun is one of the most decorated Major League Baseball players of the last two decades. He is only the fourth Jewish ballplayer to be named Most Valuable Player in the history of Major League Baseball. (Sandy Koufax received the honor in 1963, Al Rosen “the Hebrew hammer” in 1953, and Hank Greenberg in 1935 and 1940.)

The last time Braun played for a baseball team in California was in 2002 with the Granada Hills High School Highlanders. And even though he has played his entire career with the Milwaukee Brewers, he hasn’t lost sight of his Southern California roots. He’s shown it every day with a charity he co-founded three years ago—California Strong.

November of 2018 was a rough time in southern California. There was a horrific mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks on November 7. That was immediately followed by the Woolsey Fire that would rage for the next two weeks. Both events wreaked havoc on the residents of the western San Fernando Valley and Ventura County.

But out of those dark times came California Strong, and that charity continues to raise money for wildfire and tragedy victims to this day.

The charity’s origins began with a text thread between Braun and his fellow Southern Californians on the Brewers Christian Yelich (a Westlake High School alumnus), Mike Moustakas (a Chatsworth High School alumnus), Brewers executive Mike Attanasio (a Harvard-Westlake alumnus) and California native (and then-Los Angeles Rams quarterback) Jared Goff.

“My co-founders and I were in a group text checking on each other, quickly realizing the fallout from these events,” Braun told the Journal. “We wanted to do our part to help. It’s evolved into something far better than any of us could have dreamed of.”

California Strong has already raised over $2.6 million that has been distributed to more than 1,400 survivors of tragedies.

“It started with the fires and the shooting,” Braun said. “And it turned into just trying to support people in our state after tragedies and natural disasters. Unfortunately and inevitably those things will continue to occur, whether it’s a fire, a shooting or [an] earthquake.”

California Strong also raised funds for the families of victims of the 2019 Conception boat fire near Santa Barbara that killed 34 people.

The California Strong website has a straightforward application for victims to seek relief. Their current outreach is for wildfire survivors only at this time. But when it comes time for the distribution of funds, the founders have personally handed the checks to relief-seekers, in partnership with the Southeast Ventura County YMCA.

Their largest fundraising events have been star-studded celebrity softball games at Pepperdine University in 2019 and early 2020. The 2019 edition featured Adam Sandler, Jamie Foxx, Mira Sorvino, Rainn Wilson and Robin Thicke all taking the field. Even UCLA alumnus and Basketball Hall of Famer Reggie Miller proved to be a stellar first baseman.

After the 2020 celebrity softball game, the pandemic made fundraising efforts much more difficult for the charity. But they continued to raise funds through merchandise sales.

This past year, during what seemed to some as a safer gathering time, California Strong hosted a drive-in movie night in Malibu. It was well-attended and had a family-friendly atmosphere featuring the screening of the film “Major League.”

The most touching moment of the movie night was a testimonial by a family who had been displaced by the Woolsey fire and received relief funds from California Strong.

Although Braun has not played baseball since the shortened 2020 baseball season, he remains busy as a father of three in Malibu. But Braun and fellow co-founder Attanasio are still actively creating fundraising campaigns.

“It’s fire season throughout the state of California,” Attanasio said in a video post on social media with Braun. “We need your help to donate funds directly to victims as soon as possible.” The charity continues to point out frightening statistics about why their contributions are so important.

“California has averaged 5,500+ annual fires over the past five years, affecting around 400,000 acres yearly. In 2021, there have already been 6,574 fires, affecting over 1.3 million acres,” the charity posted on Instagram.

Attanasio told the Journal that there are some recipients of relief checks who tell the charity that California Strong was the first to deliver aid. It’s a testament to the importance of charity as a social safety net for fellow Californians, and the haste at which the charity can act. While any given tragedy will result in cash disbursements from the government, and from insurance claims, those can take months, if not years to arrive and be put to use by victims.

“We’re doing this so we can be prepared for when the next thing happens,” Attanasio said. “And it will happen again, unfortunately. It’s fire season. When that next fire happens, we will be ready as soon as it happens to help with financial relief for those who need it.”

And indeed it is happening again right now. The Caldor Fire in Northern California has already destroyed almost 500 buildings and burned over 300 square miles of the area just west of Lake Tahoe. As of September 5, it is only 43% contained.

The charity sent out a message soliciting donations and advertising merchandise sales, saying, “Our state is going through another devastating fire with the Caldor Fire in NorCal.” Even though they aren’t hosting any in-person fundraising events due to the Delta variant surge, they are going to keep doing all they can to support survivors throughout their home state.

What had just started as a simple group text and determination to make a difference for fellow Californians in need has now turned into something much bigger.

What had just started as a simple group text and determination to make a difference for fellow Californians in need has now turned into something much bigger.

“We just want to be able to support people emotionally and financially,” Braun said. “We’re so grateful for the support and it’s had a far greater impact than we could have hoped for.”

Brian Fishbach is a music journalist in Los Angeles.

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Friends of ELNET President David Siegel Discusses State of Israel-Europe Relations

Leave a Comment / Community / Aaron Bandler

David Siegel, President of the pro-Israel group Friends of the European Leadership (ELNET), discussed the latest regarding Europe’s relationship with Israel and how European countries are combating antisemitism in a sit-down interview with the Journal.

Siegel, former Counsul General of Israel in Los Angeles, began by saying that what’s currently happening with the Taliban re-taking the country will have a ripple effect throughout the Middle East “for years to come” depending what action the West takes. He warned that the Arab nations could “feel very exposed” against a reenergized Iran thus be pressured into Iran’s orbit or be encouraged to join a stable, regional coalition with Israel, the West and the Arab nations that formed peace agreements with the Jewish state under the 2020 Abraham Accords. Actions in the Middle East can easily spillover into European nations, Siegel said.

“If you look at the streets of France today, you will see that what whatever happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East, but it directly affects that part of Europe,” Siegel said.

“If you look at the streets of France today, you will see that whatever happens in the Middle East doesn’t stay in the Middle East, but it directly affects that part of Europe,” Siegel said. “So radical Islam, political Islam, is a major issue in France. It rivals COVID-19 and its economic impact because these are enormous issues at stake for the future of France and other countries in Europe. The role of Turkey, the refugee issue, and now the added refugees or immigrants from Afghanistan that will flow into Turkey… Turkey will likely use this as leverage vis a vis European countries.”

Siegel argued that “Europe is moving and converging toward Israel because the fallout from the Middle East is affecting them directly” including the myriad terror attacks that have occurred in various European countries over the past 15 years. ELNET taking various members of European countries’ parliaments, including the French parliament, on trips to Israel has had an effect on policy,” Siegel said, pointing to the French government’s recent actions of adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. “These are significant achievements,” he said.

Following the spate of antisemitism worldwide during the Israel-Hamas conflict in May, Siegel pointed out there were “very, very unprecedently strong government response[s]” from European countries, such as barring people from holding demonstrations against Israel. “We saw much fewer demonstrations in the streets. We saw 20 European countries that publicly stood up for Israel, some of them for the first time.” He pointed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressing support for “Israel’s right to respond massively to the Hamas terror attack” as well as the Austrian government refusing Iran’s then-Foreign Minister’s Javad Zarif’s demand that they take down the Israeli flag from their government building or else he wouldn’t come and meet with them. “We’re seeing reactions in Europe that are reflecting this change… and this is only the beginning,” Siegel said.

ELNET and other organizations have been actively working to stem the flow of money from the European Union (EU) parliament and individual European countries’ governments for Palestinian Authority (PA) textbooks that incite hatred against Jews and Israelis and organizations that “encourage hatred and radicalism,” according to Siegel. “In several key cases, we’ve seen several key politicians in Europe stand up against their own governments and challenge them, and say, ‘Why are we supporting this or that organization that are involved in radicalism?’” Members of the French parliament, for instance, have stopped government from money from being funneled to such organizations, and the past couple of years there has been action taken in the EU parliament to stop funding PA textbooks. “We’ve seen clear success on this, but a lot more clearly needs to be done,” Siegel said.

ELNET and others have also been working toward getting European nations to designate Hezbollah in its entirety, not just its military wing, as a terror organization.

ELNET and others have also been working toward getting European nations to designate Hezbollah in its entirety, not just its military wing, as a terror organization. Siegel said that the decision by various European countries to designate only Hezbollah’s military wing as a terrorist organization is political, as even Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said there’s no difference between Hezbollah’s wings, but the prevailing argument among such European nations is the distinction is necessary in order engage with Lebanon. “We never accepted that,” Siegel said. “Many Europeans admitted to us privately at the time that it’s inaccurate and it’s fiction and it needs to change.”

In 2014, the Netherlands was the first European nation to designate Hezbollah as a terror organization in its entirety; in 2019, both Britain and Germany followed suit. Siegel said that Hezbollah had been using Europe as a base for money laundering, drug trafficking, and arms trafficking; ELNET also took various German politicians on trips to Israel, where they received a tour of various Hezbollah terror tunnels. The German government eventually raided various Hezbollah offices in the country and shut the terror group’s German operations down for good.

“What Germany did… was a huge moment because that created momentum for other countries to follow,” Siegel said, adding that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a statement praising ELNET’s efforts on the matter. Today, 12 European countries have decided to entirely ban Hezbollah.

“We know that Iran is concerned about this, and Hezbollah is certainly concerned about this because we’ve shut down a third of the continent,” Siegel said. “And they’re going to the other countries where they’re not designated yet, and that’s where they’re shifting their operations.” He added that ELNET is “on the prowl” to get more countries to ban Hezbollah.

“This is one way that we as a community can really have an effect on Iran,” Siegel said. “We don’t have to wait for world powers to decide on the outcome of negotiations. We can put pressure on Iran directly by shutting down Hezbollah.”

On the Iran nuclear deal, Siegel argued that the “clock is ticking” because the Iranian government is ramping up its nuclear enrichment and advanced centrifuges in violation of the deal. While most of the world understands the danger of Iran developing a nuclear bomb, Israel understands that the danger lies in Iran becoming a “threshold state,” meaning that they’re “on the cusp of military nuclear capacity and it’s in your hands to decide when you’re going to turn on the switch or not,” Siegel said. “Israel cannot tolerate that stage of their program, but many governments around the world unfortunately can, and that’s where the gap is that needs to be addressed.”

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