January 11, 2023

I was about nine years old yet I remember it as if it were yesterday.

My parents had a kosher grocery store in the heart of the business district in San Jose, Calif., where we lived. San Jose in those days didn’t have a lot of Jews who kept kosher, but just enough to keep the business going.

Down the block was a “five and dime store,” the precursor to Walgreens or CVS. Those of a certain age remember the ubiquitous “dime stores” that sold assorted sundries – items that grocery or department stores didn’t carry.

On many Sundays I would spend the afternoon at the store to kill time. Part of the routine was my dad would give me a coin to go to the dime store and buy a candy bar or a tchotchke (Yiddish for cheap piece of junk) to occupy myself until we went home. 

One Sunday I bypassed the candy and went to the toys instead. They sold for either a nickel, dime or quarter. My budget was a dime, which in those days was real money. 

I chose a toy and brought it to the counter. Behind the register was the store owner, an older gentleman who I had seen a million times and who never smiled. As I waited in line, I noticed that the owner mistakenly left a dime on the counter from the customer ahead of me. Immediately my criminal scheme took shape. When it was my turn to pay, if the owner saw the dime and assumed I had put it there, he would take it and I would walk out with a free toy. If he remembered it was his, I would just give him my dime and pay for the toy. The perfect crime.

It worked. He took the dime and I walked out with my free prize. I was proud of myself that I had gotten away with the crime of the century. I was so proud I couldn’t contain my enthusiasm and did something really stupid. 

I told my father.

Upon hearing the story my dad looked into my eyes with a stare I had never seen from him before. He immediately took off his butcher’s apron and tossed it on the counter. He then proceeded to lock up the store mid-day and marched me back to the dime store.

My father didn’t know the dime store owner personally. But they had a common bond. Both were hard-working storeowners just trying to make a living. My dad made me stand in front of his fellow merchant, confess what I did, apologize, and pay for the toy. The merchant didn’t say anything, but I could see the disappointment in his face. His look, with my dad at my side, was punishment enough that I never again entered his store and my life of crime ended then and there.

This childhood memory returned to me while watching the new Netflix docuseries “Madoff The Monster of Wall Street.” We all know the Madoff story so no spoiler alerts are needed. However, the reenactments of the actors and interviews with those who worked on Madoff’s secret 17th floor office where his crimes took place, makes the show a must see. 

When the Madoff scandal blew up everybody knew what a Ponzi scheme was, but Madoff was different. How could he perpetuate the crime of the century virtually single handedly and in plain sight? How could he keep the scam going for decades? Most intriguing, a good part of the show focuses on the fact that the SEC audited Madoff several times and found nothing irregular. This gave people peace of mind that he could be trusted, which should be a crime in and of itself.

At the time I was ashamed for what I did, but have grown grateful that I can sleep at night because my dad taught me right from wrong at an early age.

As I watched the program, I thought about that kid in the dime store. At the time I was ashamed for what I did, but have grown grateful that I can sleep at night because my dad taught me right from wrong at an early age.

Bernie Madoff died in prison in 2021 so we’ll never really know how he slept at night with the knowledge that his crimes were devastating the lives of so many people and institutions. And Netflix offers no explanations.

Something tells me he slept just fine.

Harvey Farr is a local community reporter for the Jewish Journal.

For most of American history, our vice presidents received little attention and were given no real responsibilities. Theodore Roosevelt did not even have a vice president for his first term in office, and several 19th century presidents never got around to filling the position at all. It wasn’t until Walter Mondale took the job under Jimmy Carter that the second-ranking official in government was entrusted with identifiable duties. 

Similarly, the spouses of presidents in this country have generally maintained low profiles on public policy matters, preferring to offer their advice to their husbands in private. Eleanor Roosevelt was the first and most obvious exception and Hillary Clinton famously took on a historic role for her husband’s health care agenda with mixed results. But since then, first ladies have been content to limit their public roles to decidedly non-controversial matters.

The wives of vice presidents have been even less noticeable. Tipper Gore and Lynn Cheney were both lightning rods for their work on polarizing issues during their husbands’ tenures, but the undoubtedly laudable projects that Barbara Bush or Jill Biden took on before their husbands were promoted, or to which Muriel Humphrey, Marilyn Quayle or Karen Pence devoted themselves, were largely overlooked.

But for the first time, our country has a Second Gentleman, and for reasons having nothing to do with his gender, it appears that Doug Emhoff is breaking new ground in a position that has previously received little attention from the nation’s political ruling class, news media and voters. And it couldn’t have come at a better time. In addition to the history he has made as the first male spouse in this role, Emhoff is also the first Jewish spouse of either a president or a vice president. As such, he has chosen to prioritize the fight against antisemitism as his signature issue, stepping into an urgent and contentious debate that has taken on greater political relevance given the unacceptable level of rhetoric and violence against Jews in this country and elsewhere around the world.

Last month, Emhoff hosted a high-profile White House event designed to draw public attention to the dramatic spike in the number of antisemitic incidents that have occurred in recent years. He has hosted other, less visible meetings and strategy sessions, has written on the topic, and has spent time privately with survivors of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue attack. Later this month, he will visit Germany and Poland to speak out against antisemitism in countries where the worst atrocities of the Holocaust occurred in order to raise the issue to a global audience.

Emhoff is also taking on more traditional roles for someone in his position. He is teaching a course at Georgetown Law School and has become involved in various legal aid efforts, recently hosting a roundtable with Attorney General Merrick Garland on the subject. He has also embraced the ceremonial aspects of his religious heritage, hosting a Hanukkah celebration and virtual Seder and hanging a mezuzah on the door of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the vice president’s official residence.  

But as acts of antisemitism have continued to rise, Emhoff’s profile as the Biden Administration’s most visible surrogate on this issue has drawn far more public and media notice. Late last year, Biden established an interagency task force to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia that will be led by National Security Council and Domestic Policy Council staff. And there has been talk of establishing a domestic counterpart to Deborah Lipstadt, the Biden Administration’s special envoy on antisemitism to highlight the challenge in this country.

But Emhoff’s role is different. He is not a government employee or a trained academic expert in this field. By his own admission, he is not even a particularly devout Jew. But he cares enough about his heritage, our culture and our religion to devote his time and energy to making sure that the ongoing fight against antisemitism receives the attention it deserves. If nothing else, that is an admirable example for the rest of us and represents an important step toward defeating this menace and its sponsors.

Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. Join Dan for his weekly webinar “Politics in the Time of Coronavirus” (www.lawac.org) on Tuesdays at 5 PM.

Editor’s note: First in a series

When my grandmother was still alive, I would recite the words on Yom Kippur, “Al Tashlicheni b’et zikna. Do not cast me out in my old age. I never gave them a thought that they could ever possibly be about me. 

In my late thirties, during my years in the hip ad biz, I created a campaign for the L.A. Jewish Federation. I wrote those words as the headline of a brochure honoring the Jewish elderly. I never even gave a thought that at the height of my career,  those words could apply to me. 

When my parents were alive in their nineties, and I would recite the words on Yom Kippur, I began to give the words more credence that they may one day apply to me. But not a lot. 

This year on Yom Kippur, at age 71, those words were now for me.  

When I show my little grandchildren pictures of a younger me, they squeal, “Oh, that can’t be you.”

Standing on a crowded bus in Tel Aviv this last November, people kept getting up to offer me their seats. I realized they saw me as an old man. And I wanted to sock them. 

Standing on a crowded bus in Tel Aviv this last November, people kept getting up to offer me their seats. I realized they saw me as an old man. And I wanted to sock them. 

In the blink of an eye, I have arrived. 

Several friends, cousins and classmates are dead. A new generation looks at me as irrelevant. In the face of all this, I have no interest in listening to my peers still claiming their status, money and regaling me with only stories of their good life. At this age, we have all faced so many challenges, disappointments, victimizations and losses, there should be no shame in sharing our difficulties as well.  

I often find myself calculating how many good years I have left. And I know I’m both obsessive and sanguine. When in yoga, the class begins with a recitation of a long, vibrating group “OM,” I instead recite the “Shehechiyanu.” I thank God that my body can still do this, for the health and productivity of my wife, children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins and friends, for my ability to keep learning and growing, and for my personal creativity which I believe is as essential as exercise, family and friendships are to my continued forward movement.  

I think about the vulnerable, thin string upon which we all dangle. 

I am particularly proud of having walked away from my former professions and the status I gained, having made the hard decision to do something completely different in my seventies, and finally dedicate my time to what I always wanted. Write. I take classes, workshops, and hire editors to teach me to raise my craft to levels of excellence.  I’m in a writers’ critiquing group where I get alternately praised and smashed. At times, I find myself paralyzed for days.  One of my workshop leaders said to me, “This is your next profession. If you don’t write every day, willing to expose yourself, you will never become the writer of excellence you are imagining for yourself.” When I write like this I am once again young and experimental, writing like time is not disappearing, writing and writing. And I am also writing as if tomorrow I may be demented or dead — writing with a vengeance. None of my professions have ever been as challenging and all-consuming. 

Recently a new challenge has arisen — the recognition of shrinkage. I’ve lost about ten people who were part of my everyday life.  I am no longer at the center of global nonprofit and Jewish issues as I had been for so long, as a prominent marketing, communication and team creativity professional. My Jewish community has again become local, rather than the big national and international and Israeli one.  I am no longer teaching at USC, exposed to a new generation, students from across the world, and the environment of scholars. 

I’m struggling to determine how much of this shrinkage is acceptable to me. And how much I will I make the LA writers’ community and the local Jewish community an integral part of a new expansive experience in this later period of my life. 

Al tashlicheni b’et zikna. Do not cast me out in my old age. I’m not only making this plea to God and the people in my life. I’m making it to myself.

Gary Wexler woke up one morning and found he had morphed into an old Jewish guy.