November 24, 2021

Avia Yosef, 17, originally joined the volleyball team during her freshman year at Venice High School because she thought it would be a fun extracurricular activity that would teach her teamwork and leadership. 

Now a senior, it’s turned out to be so much more. She’s part of a team that defeated Palisades Charter High School, which previously had a winning streak of 130 consecutive Western League victories. Additionally, the team was the first in the school’s history to win a City Section upper division volleyball championship against Granada Hills, a six-time champion, and they’re going to the state finals.

“I was fortunate to play with these girls,” said Yosef. “Our coach, Raul Aviles, was really amazing with teaching us everything we know to this day.” 

There are 17 girls on the team, some who had never played before they joined in ninth grade. Yosef is one of two Jews on the team. “Volleyball keeps me healthy and fit on a daily basis,” she said. “It also helps my mental health, because for two or three hours of practice, I get to forget about everything.”

During game season, Yosef and her teammates would practice every day of the week. This year, her position is opposite, and in her sophomore year, she was captain of the team, which fans can follow on Instagram through their @venicevolleyball account.  

The girls wouldn’t let anything stop them from continuing to improve – even COVID. During the worst times of the pandemic, they played in front of the school while wearing masks. They’d have to get regular COVID testing done as well. 

“It wasn’t the same until we got back into the gym and were able to get our groove back,” said Yosef. “We were fortunate enough to get back in July, which is when we started our summer training.”

Along with playing on the volleyball team, Yosef started a Jewish culture club at her school, where they have meetings and participate in activities like learning about the importance of Shabbat.

Along with playing on the volleyball team, Yosef started a Jewish culture club at her school, where they have meetings and participate in activities like learning about the importance of Shabbat, eating challah bread and hummus and bringing in guest speakers. So far, 12 members have joined. 

“I wanted to have a safe community for those who are Jewish to go to,” she said. “Going to a public school, there aren’t a lot of other Jewish kids, so it’s good to have a little community.” 

Yosef is also part of Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles, where she’s had a “big sister” for three years. Together, they roller skate, have picnics and go to the beach. “It’s a great support system and I have things in common with her,” she said. “It’s like having a big sibling. You can feel comfortable telling them anything. You know you have an older influence.” 

Since Yosef’s father is Israeli, she’s been to Israel five times to visit family and tour the country. “I absolutely love it there, aside from the crazy hot weather,” she said. “I don’t speak Hebrew, but I love to connect with a whole different culture and feel a part of it. I just feel very welcome there.” 

Next year, Yosef plans to go to college. Right now, she’s in the World Languages and Global Studies magnet at Venice, but she plans to major in psychology, nursing or STEM. No matter what she ends up doing, she can use the valuable lessons she’s learned from volleyball to guide her.

“Volleyball teaches you how to stay motivated and keep persevering,” she said. “Even if you hit the ball into the net a bunch of different times, you just learn how to make strategic decisions really fast and adjust quickly. You have to keep striving to do better.”

Around 20 rabbis from across the religious spectrum convened on November 17 to make a commitment to learning more about mental health – for their own sake and the sake of their congregants. The event, “Briyut HaNefesh (Health of the Spirit): Mental Wellness Clergy Cohort,” was led by Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn of B’nai David-Judea Congregation 

“We are meeting to build a network of clergy who are invested in mental health, who have an investment in self-care for themselves and those they serve,”  Thomas-Newborn told the Journal. 

The 250-member Board of Rabbis of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and B’nai David-Judea are co-sponsoring the ongoing project. 

“COVID has pushed the need for mental health support to the forefront of our minds and hearts,” Thomas-Newborn and the Board’s Vice President of Community Engagement Rabbi Ilana Grinblat said in a joint declaration. “Addressing this need is a crucial part of cultivating healing and wholeness going forward.”

They described their goal as building an interdenominational network of rabbis in L.A. who are invested in this holy work and can refer to and support each other. The rabbis plan to build Jewish mental health programming like Shabbatons, Torah learning groups and support groups, with the goal of amplifying sensitivity and education while reducing stigma. 

“The cohort will also connect with interdisciplinary professionals and organizations in the field so that rabbis know where to turn when a congregant is in need,” they said. “They will feel supported as spiritual first-line responders.”

Grinblat told the Journal that Thomas-Newborn reached out to the Board of Rabbis about this project five months ago. “We were excited, because the goal of the Board of Rabbis is to support the rabbis,” Grinblat said. 

She recalled that when Vice President of American Jewish University Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson was working with the Board of Rabbis, he wrote a piece titled, “Who Heals the Healers?” 

“That is the most distinct description of what the Board of Rabbis is for: You are healers for the community, and we are here to bring healing and support to one another,” said Grinblat.

Thomas-Newborn and Grinblat said the nearly two dozen committed rabbis will meet at least three times and receive ongoing virtual resources to implement at their discretion. Members have committed to run one mental health and wellness event in their communities in the coming year.

Thomas-Newborn told the audience, who were on Zoom and at Temple Beth Am, that she connected to the concept of the wounded healer. 

Thomas-Newborn told the audience, who were on Zoom and at Temple Beth Am, that she connected to the concept of the wounded healer. 

“Part of the work that we are going to do happens within ourselves, to be honest about how we face it,” she said. “The truth is, our world is very broken. Our hearts are very broken in many ways. I was speaking earlier with someone who said to me, ‘As a public leader, you must feel you have to keep it together all the time, make everyone feel it’s always good. That has to be really hard for you.’ I [said], ‘That’s not how I function.’ That would not be a healthy model for me. People would think I was lying. And I would be if I acted like everything always was fine.”

Despite the challenges rabbis and their congregants face nowadays, the rabbis are hopeful that they can make a positive impact on their communities. 

“In good times, we build relationships with one another and give each other inspiration,” said Grinblat. “This is especially true in hard times when we need one another even more. During the 21 months of the pandemic, our support for one another has been more crucial.”

Early on a typically noisy, traffic-heavy weekday afternoon along Pico Boulevard, one scene   was certain to go unnoticed, as intended. Up a steep set of stairs to the second floor of a large yellow building, around a corner and inside a small office sat a scion of an illustrious Moroccan dynasty, the Pinto family, dating back more than a thousand years.

The youthful Rabbi Moshe Pinto was at his desk learning Torah. He is soft-spoken and talks exclusively in the plural, never the self-referential “I.” He opened the Moroccan congregation Beit El at 8660 West Pico Blvd less than a year ago; it is four blocks west of the Pinto Center, founded by his revered father, Rabbi Yaacov Pinto, in 1984.

Around 2017, after six years of learning in Israeli yeshivas, the younger Pinto had a career decision to make.

“Our work really started in Eretz Israel,” he said. “We were about to sign a lease, and our father called us in Ashdod. He said, ‘Look, you are going to have to make a decision whether or not you stay in Eretz Israel.”

It seemed a difficult call for Pinto because “we had hundreds of people coming to our classes,” he said. “There is a different mentality in Israel. Almost every shul has one day of the week when it holds a big class. It is common, not something extra.

“Only in Los Angeles,” Pinto said, “did we find that it is not common for people to have this motivation to all come together in the middle of the week for a class. This exists almost all around the world, but especially in Eretz Israel.”

His father explained to him the need for learning in L.A.

“Our father said, ‘Where do you want to put your work? In Israel, people are coming to your classes… There is a lot of work here, a lot of potential.’”
— Rabbi Moshe Pinto

“Our father said, ‘Where do you want to put your work? In Israel, people are coming to your classes. If you leave, they will go to someone else’s classes.

“‘Here,’ our father said, ‘there are no classes. There is a lot of work here, a lot of potential, potential to make changes in people’s lives that doesn’t exist anywhere else.’ So that is why we came here in the first place.”

When the rabbi arrived in L.A. four years ago, he gave classes in homes and his father’s shul. “That was very successful,” he said. “We had this dream: to build a community, like a shul, a yeshiva, a school, where people would be able to live the way they live in Panama. In Panama, there is community. In Mexico, also, there is community, where they pray together, their kids go to school together, they have dinner together, they go to events together. Everything together. Here, this does not exist. School is separate from the shul, [and] the shul is separate from the kollel.”

The younger Pinto spent almost two years leading the Baba Sali community in the Fairfax district. 

“Then the corona came,” he said. That’s when Pinto started Beit El. It has already outgrown its quarters, a room with high ceilings and long tables. The shul has a daily kollel that’s in its beginning stages, and there are two to four daily classes. While some are mixed, most classes are for men only.

Shabbat services are the main attraction, and crowds have been hefty. “The number varies because we are a very young community,” Pinto said. 

There aren’t many older congregants because the synagogue is on an upper floor. Also, there isn’t a kids’ program, so families aren’t coming. 

“Our congregants generally are between 25 and 39, mostly couples,” he said. “A bad week would be 90 people here for Shabbat, a good week 180. But the size of the turnout depends. When we have an event, we could draw 300 people.  The reality is we outgrew this room.”

He continued, “That is why we also are looking to move. To move or to acquire.”

Dr. Jonah Cohen, the Communications Director for Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Research and Analysis (CAMERA), explained how one should respond to an antisemite in a social situation in a November 18 webinar.

The webinar, the third in a three-part series on antisemitism, was hosted by the Massachusetts-based Congregation Or Atid. Cohen began the webinar by highlighting a September piece in Alma, a feminist Jewish culture publication; the author, Irish actress and writer Susan Getz, explained how she experienced antisemitism when she took her husband’s last name. Getz recounted how when she told a co-worker that her husband’s last name is Jewish, the co-worker ranted “about how all Jewish people were destroying the world through the conflict in the Middle East, that they used the Holocaust as their excuse for murder, and if he were me, he would be ‘very careful’ about having children with my new husband.” “I stood frozen in shock and anger,” Getz wrote.

Cohen said that Getz was in a “tricky situation” and that it’s “hard to know what to do when so many social and societal factors” are at play in situations like that. Cohen posited that antisemites use “rhetorical techniques” to make such conversations “unnerving” for Jews, calling it the “Antisemitic Three-Step.” These three steps involve taking the moral high ground, ascribing motivations to Jews for their viewpoints, and force the burden of proof on Jews, not themselves. As examples, Cohen pointed to how antisemites accuse Israel defenders of supporting “crimes against humanity” and provide stories about the power of the “Israel lobby” over Congress.

Cohen’s solution is his own three-step process, which he has dubbed “The Gadfly Method”: to simply ask questons. 

“When [the antisemite] applies the antisemitic three-step against you… you only have about a 10-second window to respond when he has seized the moral high ground,” Cohen said, adding that otherwise the response will be “awkward” and “forced.” Cohen’s solution is his own three-step process, which he has dubbed “The Gadfly Method”: to simply ask questons. He suggests starting off by gathering information through asking questions like, “What do you mean by that?” After the antisemite answers that question, you should then ask questions like “Why do you think that?” Finally, you should eventually start asking leading questions to expose flaws or inconsistencies in the antisemite’s argument. 

As examples, he pointed to PBS’ “Firing Line” host Margaret Hoover’s line of questioning to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) about her views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2018. Ocasio-Cortez had lamented the Israeli “occupation of Palestine,” prompting Hoover to ask what she meant by that. Ocasio-Cortez responded she was referring to the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank; when Hoover pressed her to expand further, Ocasio-Cortez admitted that she is “not the expert” on the matter. Cohen said that he felt like Ocasio-Cortez has been “unjustly” maligned over the interview since “admitting one’s own ignorance is a virtue” but the interview shows the “power about this seemingly simple question” of asking someone to elaborate on their claims.

Another example he pointed to was Axios reporter Alexi McCammond’s questioning of Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield in an October 10 interview. After Cohen and Greenfield defended the company’s decision to withdraw from the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” in July, McCammond asked them why they don’t boycott Texas or Georgia over their recent laws on abortion and voting rights. Ben Cohen responded by pausing, shrugging and then saying, “I don’t know. It’s an interesting question.” Dr. Cohen argued that the McCammond interview is an example of “exposing the moral inconsistencies in a person’s worldview.” “What you’re doing is recalling conflicting propositions in the conversation and making your partner pick one,” Dr. Cohen said.

“Whenever you want to inform or to persuade… you try to do all that by using questions,” he added. “That way you get your ideas into the conversation while keeping the burden of proof on the other fellow.”