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Jewish Journal

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February 7, 2025

Tikkun Olam: Restoring Palisades School Libraries, One Book at a Time

Blogs, Commentary /

The recent fires in Los Angeles have left many feeling overwhelmed, struggling to process the devastation and wondering if their efforts can truly make a difference. But in moments of crisis, individual action has the power to spark real change.

Zibby Owens, owner of Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica and a Palisades resident, knows this firsthand. After her own home was impacted by the Palisades fire, she quickly mobilized to help others. She organized a pop-up clothing drive, rallying over 50 brands to donate essentials for more than 800 families who lost their homes. Now, she’s taking her efforts even further—committing to rebuilding the school libraries for four Palisades schools destroyed in the fire, where many students are also facing the devastating loss of their homes.

To further support the community, Zibby’s Bookshop in partnership with Scholastic and LitWorld gave away 1,000 children’s books for World Read Aloud Day, ensuring that young readers affected by the fire can still find comfort and inspiration in stories.

Her story is a powerful reminder: even in the face of overwhelming loss, action matters. The question isn’t just can you make a difference—but how you will.

WATCH ZIBBY TALK ABOUT THIS PROJECT: CLICK HERE

 

Let’s Rebuild School Libraries. Together.

Zibby’s Bookshop is launching a campaign to help Palisades schools that have been destroyed by the fire. Please help.
ease help.
Zibby Owens
Feb 04, 2025

Donate

Hi everyone,

As you may know, I’m the owner of Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica, CA and a (part-time) Palisades resident who has been deeply affected by the fire. I’ve just finished organizing a pop-up clothing drive for 800+ families who lost their homes with items donated by 50+ brands.

Now, I’m committing to rebuild the school libraries for four Palisades schools which have been destroyed by the fire. Many of the students at these schools have also lost their homes.

 

Please consider what it would feel like if you were in this situation, if your school library (and school) had burned down. Think about what books you loved reading growing up. The librarians. The cozy nook where you fell into a book that changed your life. Or think about the power of school libraries for your kids. The books they’ve brought home and begged you to read. The chapter books they couldn’t put down. The times you volunteered to read to the class.

Now imagine losing all of it.

I know so many people want to help families who have been affected by the fires but just don’t know how. Here’s one specific way you can help.

Donate

Please contribute to the Zibby’s Bookshop campaign to rebuild the school libraries of

You can contribute at any level.

$0 – $20: Helper

$21 – $50: Great Helper

$51 – $100: Super Helper

$101 – $250: Awesome Helper

$251 – $500: Incredible Helper

$501 – $1,000: Amazing Helper

$1,001 – $10,000: Fantastic Helper

$10,001 – $100,000: SUPERSTAR Helper

$100,001 – $800,000: UNBELIEVABLE Helper

Every donation helps. In addition to donating yourself, please, please forward the drive to all your friends and family who might consider joining you in this effort. Give others the opportunity to make a tangible difference in someone’s life.

We will try to put personalized bookplates in all the donated books with your names (or whoever you’d like to honor, perhaps your kids!) or will find other specific ways to acknowledge your generosity.

Let’s get the schools their books again. It’s the least we can do.

Donate

(Note: please no used books or individual book donations at this point. The schools have specific catalogs that we will be replacing so while the thought is lovely, please don’t send or offer books you’ve written or have in your own library. Thank you!)

Tikkun Olam: Restoring Palisades School Libraries, One Book at a Time Read More »

Woman Fatally Shot in Encino; Husband Allegedly Responsible

News /

Linda Farzan-Kashani, 54, was shot to death on Wednesday, Feb. 5. at 7:25pm in the 5100 block of Hesperia Avenue in Encino. Her death has been ruled a homicide, and police have arrested her husband, Shaharam (Sean) Farzan, 64.

According to close friends of the wife, it was a tragedy waiting to happen.

A few minutes before the shooting, Linda was visiting the home of Rabbi Bijan Zangan and his wife, Natalie. The couple had been helping her for months. Rabbi Zangan, who leads a small Iranian-Jewish synagogue, Kol Eliezer, in the back of his house, told The Journal that Linda, used to visit them often. That night, she visited the coupe with her 13-year-old son whom she used to homeschool.

According to friends of Linda Farzan, she wanted to divorce her husband and filed for divorce in November 2022, seeking spousal and child support.

“Just two minutes before it happened, she was in our house,” said Zangan. “When she left, I heard pew, pew, pew. I thought maybe it’s just construction, and then all of a sudden, my heart dropped. After I heard the gunshots, I went outside, looked around and saw the son running toward me screaming, he went in the house and we locked the door. After a few seconds I went back outside and saw her lying on the street with her face down.”

Some eyewitnesses saw a man running away; he was apprehended two blocks away on Ventura Blvd and was identified as the woman’s husband.

Zangan said his wife, Natalie, was very close to Linda and had been offering her support. “She is very devastated by what happened.”

The Farzans, who lived in Santa Monica, have two more children who are now staying with their grandparents in Woodland Hills.

Shaharam Farzan is being held on $3 million bail.

The Chesed Fund had opened a GoFundMe to help the three children with the goal of raising $300,000.

https://thechesedfund.com/icaretocareinc/help-three-children-after-horrific-loss

Woman Fatally Shot in Encino; Husband Allegedly Responsible Read More »

Following in Miriam’s Footsteps

Judaism /

Hatikvah is an unusual national anthem. Its author, Naftali Hertz Imber, had many detractors, and was a plagiarist, drinker, gossip, and freeloader; the tune for Hatikvah was taken from a Romanian folk song about an ox-drawn wagon.

Theodore Herzl despised Imber, and disliked the Hatikvah. This anthem was too simple and unsophisticated for Herzl’s tastes; and as a consequence, he was constantly searching for an alternative. Ironically, it was Herzl who cemented Hatikvah’s status as the unofficial anthem of the Zionist movement.

The Sixth Zionist Congress in 1903 is known as the “Congress of Tears.” Herzl shocked the delegates by presenting a plan to create a Jewish Homeland in the British colony of Uganda. It was just four months after the Kishinev Massacre, and Herzl was desperate to find a way to protect the Jews in Czarist Russia; he was even willing to compromise on the return to Zion. But the plan ran into furious opposition; and the Russian delegates in particular were insistent that the Jews return to their historic homeland. One delegate, Heinrich Rosenbaum, gave an impassioned speech and said:

We shall persevere in our efforts. We shall continue to fight. Our ancestors gave their lives while crying out ‘Shema Yisrael.’ We, their descendants, will not cease to fight for our beloved land….We shall continue the struggle with suffering and patience, and as long as there is breath within us, we shall proclaim: ‘Our hope is not yet lost!'”

The words “our hope is not yet lost” is the Hatikvah’s title phrase. Hatikvah’s lyrics speak of how the Jewish soul continued to yearn for Zion throughout 2,000 years of exile; and this dogged determination to return to the Land of Israel stood in stark contrast to Herzl’s Uganda Plan. At the conclusion of the Congress, after ten days of infighting, a large group of delegates spontaneously sang the Hatikvah. Right then and there, the Hatikvah became the unofficial Jewish national anthem.

One has to have sympathy for Herzl’s position. He recognized, well before anyone else, that the  Kishinev Massacre was merely the beginning, and that the lives of European Jewry were in danger. Being practical meant looking for a safe haven anywhere possible; and being practical made sense right then. Even so, Herzl was rejected by many of his former allies because he had lost hope in returning to Zion.

Many philosophers see hope as irrational and even dangerous. In early Greek thought hope had a negative reputation, a foolish attitude that confuses the gullible. Spinoza connects hope to naivete and superstition. Nietzsche saw hope as “the greatest of evils,” because it blinds man to the reality of life, and motivates them to “keep on making themselves miserable.”

Jews take a very different view of hope. After miraculously splitting the Red Sea, Moses leads the Jews in a song of joy and triumph, which begins with the words “I will sing to the Lord, For He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and its rider He has thrown into the sea!” At the end of the song, the Torah adds:

Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with flutes. And Miriam responded to them:

 

“Sing to the Lord,

For He has triumphed gloriously.

The horse and its rider

He has thrown into the sea!”

 

Commentators struggle to explain what exactly the women sang. The Midrash says Miriam led the women in a parallel recital of Moses’ song. The Biur and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch say that Miriam and the women were the chorus, repeating the first line of the song each time Moses read a new stanza. The Netziv says that Miriam composed her own song for the women, which shared the same chorus line as Moses’ song.

But the larger question, which is only addressed indirectly by the commentaries, is: why do we need to know about Miriam’s song?

The Malbim offers an approach that answers this question. He explains that the women asserted themselves, and took their rightful role at the Song of the Sea, because the entire Exodus “occurred only in their merit.” (The Talmud says that it was “in merit of the righteous women in Egypt that the Jews were redeemed.” These women heroically continued to have children, despite the crushing burden of slavery.) The Kli Yakar takes this idea in a different direction, saying that at the Red Sea, women were considered the equals of men, singing in parallel; and that this equality is the goal, and will return again with the future redemption.

Rashi offers a new look at the women’s song. He explains that “the righteous women in that generation were certain that God would perform miracles for them, and so they brought timbrels with them from Egypt (to celebrate).” With this added background, we can understand why the women’s song is so important; the women deserve a special mention because they were the first ones who believed there would be miracles. These righteous women packed hope in their suitcases while everyone else worried about the journey.

A passage in the Talmud gives further details about Miriam’s vision. It explains that when Pharaoh decreed that all male children be thrown into the river, Miriam’s parents decided to stop having children. Why would one want to have a child if there’s a 50% chance they will be killed? Yet their young daughter Miriam had a different view. She argued with her parents, and explained that they must continue to have children; to stop having children entirely would only enable Pharaoh to destroy the Jewish people more quickly. Miriam’s parents listened to her, and had another child, Moses. (Afterwards, Miriam prophesized that this baby would redeem the Jews.) When Miriam’s parents are forced to throw Moses into the river, it is Miriam who stands vigilantly on guard, continuing to hope against hope that there will be a miracle.

Miriam and the other righteous women teach us what hope is about. It doesn’t make sense to shlep musical instruments across a desert in hope of a future miracle. It doesn’t make sense to have children in the misery of slavery. It doesn’t make sense to imagine that a defenseless baby tossed into the river will be the future savior of the Jewish people. And yet they had hope anyway.

It is the very absurdity of hope that makes it valuable. The rational perspective sees the world as it is; this perspective is pragmatic, and is shaped by the facts on the ground. And that is the very weakness of the rational perspective; it automatically enshrines the status quo as “reality.” But there are times when the status quo is unacceptable. We cannot be pragmatic when living as slaves under Pharaoh in Egypt. In such situations, one must imagine something better. And that’s where hope comes in.

Hope isn’t how one understands the world; it is how one changes it. By embracing the greater vision for the future, a person transforms themselves; sharing the vision with others can transform a community. Eventually, if the vision is shared widely enough, one can transform the world.

To dream of a different reality is the first step in making it happen.

These timbrels of hope transformed the Jewish people. Without Miriam, there wouldn’t have been a Moses. Without the Jewish women, there wouldn’t have been another generation of Jews. And now at the Red Sea, the women sing and dance; and this is a dance only they could have dreamt of, a dance that only they knew would happen.

The delegates at the 6th Zionist Congress were Miriam’s heirs. They too embraced a quixotic hope at a time when it seemed absurd. But it was their faith in the future that helped create the State of Israel.

Today, after 15 months of a bruising War, the Jewish people need to learn how to hope again. When I speak to some of my friends in Israel, they cannot even imagine the war ending. It seems impossible to dream of hope after the nightmare of the last 16 months.

But hope is exactly what we need right now. We need to imagine a better future.

We need to follow in Miriam’s footsteps.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

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Armed and Divided – Shabbat Thought – Torah Portion Beshalach 2025 (revised from previous versions)

Seeking the Good /

 

Armed and Divided

Shabbat Thought Torah Portion Beshalach 2025 (revised from previous versions)

 

In the Torah portion this week, Beshalach, we are told in Exodus 13:18 that the Israelites arose from Egypt “chamushim,”  “armed.”  This translation, “armed,” is correct, as we can see from how this word is used in other parts of the Bible. It seems the Israelites came out of Egypt with swords at their sides, ready for battle.

 

Some ancient rabbis playfully interpreted the word “chamush,” “armed,” to mean “a fifth” from the Hebrew word “chamesh,” “five.” According to this interpretation, only a fifth of the Israelites came out of Egypt. The other four-fifths stayed in Egypt, afraid, ambivalent, and undecided.

 

I would like to offer a more inner life, psychological approach. The division into fifths was within each Israelite, referring to our divided selves. Each person was divided, but in each person, one aspect of the divided self came to the fore.

 

Only a fifth of each person, so to speak, wanted out of Egypt and to live by God’s teachings. This fifth of each person was armed (to fight the Yetzer Ha-Ra, the destructive forces within) and ready to move toward that purpose. The remaining four-fifths of each person had other things on their minds.

 

The second fifth of each person was terrified, frozen.

 

The third fifth of each person wanted to be free from Egypt, but not to use that freedom to be of service to the Divine.

 

The fourth fifth of each person resented being terrified and blamed Moses, Aaron, and God for bringing them into this impossible situation.  This fifth of the self thought, “God brought us out of Egypt because God hates us. God brought us out here to the desert to kill us!” God hated us, a part of us thought, so a fifth of each part of us hated God in return. The hatred was kept private.

 

The final fifth in each person also resented being terrified and felt hated and felt hatred in return. But in this fifth, the feelings were expressed in defiance and rebellion.

 

That first fifth inside each person that wanted to be free was just enough of a force in the population to follow Moses out Egypt. The Egyptians were hounding them, about to pounce. The sea opened and the Israelites ran panting toward the other side. Once there, the first fifth inside each person celebrated their having escaped with their lives.

 

There was that second fifth in each person, and therefore in the population, who stood at the banks of the Sea of Reeds, frozen with terror, not able to move. Those people controlled by the fright within them couldn’t understand that this was the time to choose – to enter the sea and trust God. This fifth was jostled along by those who chose freedom and service.

 

The other parts of each person were quiet, for a while.

 

Once through the Sea of Reeds, other parts within people began to dominate the Israelites. We see these other parts of the self, manifesting in Exodus 16.

 

The third fifth of each person was not paralyzed; this group was terrified of God. They saw what God had done to the Egyptians. They knew that if you got on the wrong side of this God, you could be struck down with terrible plagues. Egypt had been devastated, but, at least from the Egyptian perspective, the devastating force of the Hebrew God was gone from Egypt.

 

The God of Israel, for the Egyptians, was a thing of the past. That force of fury and devastation was now with the Israelites. The God of the Hebrews was no longer interested in Egypt. “Maybe we should go back to Egypt,” some fifth of each person thought. “It’s safe there now. God has left. And the food was pretty good.” Metaphorically, a fifth of the Israelites want to go to Egypt, where they would be safe from God.

 

There was that fifth within each person, that took over a fifth of the population, who focused their ambivalence onto Moses, who seemed to be a petty tyrant replacing the depredations of Pharaoh. Why was he in charge? Moses hadn’t even been in Egypt with them. He was a poser, speaking for and to people that he barely knew. Admittedly, he was a Levite, but there were many Levites around.  And he stuttered. And his Hebrew was not very good. And he had anger issues. And he had a foreign wife, from Kush of all places. One fifth of each person was fixated on Moses, finding fault as a way not to look within.

 

Some part of each person just wanted out of Egypt, “Sure, why not?” But this all happened too fast. Some people controlled by ambivalence just wanted to walk around, pick up sticks, and ponder.

 

All of us have separate parts of the self, vying in the unconscious for control. If we are conscious of our inner lives, we can be aware of the disparate parts within. If we are connected with the authentic self, the best parts of us, the noblest parts, can assert their leadership. We can’t get rid of the other parts, but from the perspective of the higher self, those wayward parts should be listened to, but shouldn’t be in control.

 

We try to live one day after the next in our lives with some consistency. We live our lives on the surface of things. This “consistent self” is the persona we must bring into the world. This surface persona life, where we put one foot in front of the other and march on, can feel strange. Ideally, a force from the higher-self, an inner “tutelary spirit,” is trying to lead us.  But often in our lives, alternate forces from the unconscious ego-self are leading us. Events in life can bring those hidden forces to the fore. The other “four-fifths” begin to symptomize.

 

The soul has many, many dimensions, many chambers, and one chamber is the repository of the armed and divided self. Parts of the self are alternately courageous, centered and wise, but at times fearful, frozen, ambivalent, accusatory, self-doubting, desperately seeking freedom, and want to regress into old ways of being. We try to live on the surface, with consistency, as if there is no ambivalence, no second-guessing of what and who we have become, but nonetheless, those divisions in the self live on within us.

 

I think there are two ways forward. There are many versions of these two ways, but at the core, there are only two ways forward. Repress and symptomize, or enter into the realm of the soul and work with what we find there.

 

When we enter the realm of the soul and unlock the chamber of the armed and divided self, there can be disruption. We recover forgotten prayers, unrealized hopes, and thoughts never concluded. Things can get worse before they get better.

 

A few years ago I taught, “stop hoping, stop praying, and stop thinking.” This idea came from teaching virtue. I find that many people hope, pray, and think in ways that help them avoid reality. I taught that it is far better to face reality within the container of virtue, and then let the inner work begin. Don’t focus on what you want life to become, for a moment. Deal with what is and accept it and then work for change. We need to remember: A life of virtue only stops the symptomizing; a virtuous life does not address the deeper battles being waged within. Dealing with the battle within requires wisdom and depth.

 

It is true, though: For a time, we should stop hoping that we and others will change, because hoping for change can have destructive consequences. That hope within oftentimes causes us to batter others or ourselves towards an unachievable change for which we are hoping. Stop praying for the universe to take care of you. The universe might be taking care of someone else right now. Kabbalistically, God is relying on you to do the repair.

 

Stop thinking and rethinking the rules of life that you have arrived at. We achieve clarity at great cost and then our ambivalence has us constantly undo our conclusions and rethink ourselves into a morass.

 

For a life of virtue, for restraining the symptoms of inner discord, we should “stop hoping, stop praying, and stop thinking.” Start by facing reality. I would simply add to those teachings that once we can behave with restraint and mindfulness, despite the battles within, we can then enter the dark territory of the soul, including the chambers of the divided self. It is there that we might discover the love and grace of God.

 

A life marked with some degree of virtue and consciousness can care for the wounds stored in the soul. With virtue and consciousness in place, we can discover and cultivate a sense of purpose that is deeper than our ambivalence.

 

A mind calmed can discover that for which we can authentically hope. A mind calmed can discover the stillness of true prayer and cultivate the joy and awe in knowing God. A mind shaped by virtue can think well and clearly about what has been, what is now, and what to do next.

 

We come out of Egypt divided. We can use our trek in the desert, and the epiphanies that we encounter, either as a marred journey of the symptomizing divided self, or we can use that trek as a path to purpose, and even to occasional bliss.

Armed and Divided – Shabbat Thought – Torah Portion Beshalach 2025 (revised from previous versions) Read More »