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Filing His Claim

Leave a Comment / Community, Old Stories, Rob Eshman /

A payment slip from 1927, part of the documentary evidence to support Freddy Jackson’s claim.
Sitting in the Fairfax Avenue deli where he worked for four decades of his life, Freddy Jackson reflects on his chances of getting the millions of dollars due him.

“A lot of people don’t have anything,” he says. “At least I have the numbers.”

And he does. They are written in a long-ago hand, in Czech, on pieces of wrinkled, yellowed paper. They are the file numbers of two hefty insurance policies that Jackson’s father took out in the early part of the century.

Since his father’s death, Jackson has tried in vain to collect on the policies. The interest on the premiums alone, which amounted to more than $18,000 annually in current dollars, would be more than $1 million, Jackson estimates.

However, since 1949, one of Europe’s largest insurers has steadfastly refused to honor his claim. Why has the case dragged on so long? Because Jackson’s father, Joseph Jakubovic, was killed in Auschwitz.

“On the way to the camp,” Jackson says, “my father said to me, ‘If you get out, you’ll never have to work again.”

More than 50 years after Jackson’s parents and most of his family were killed in Nazi concentration camps, his father’s prophecy may finally come true.

Last month, Jackson joined a class-action suit filed by three New York law firms charging that seven major European insurers have robbed Holocaust survivors and their heirs by refusing to honor life-insurance policies purchased by Jews and other victims of Nazi persecution prior to World War II.

Eventually, some 10,000 individuals are expected to join the suit. Lawyers are seeking to recover assets estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

Jackson joined the suit after reading about it in The Jewish Journal. What makes his particular case unusual, says Linda Gerstel, an attorney for Anderson Kill & Olick, one of the co-counsels, is that Jackson has produced so much documentary evidence to back up his claim and the history behind it.

We were four brothers and one sister,” Jackson says. “In March 1944, they took us to Auschwitz.”

Jackson survived the selection that claimed his parents’ lives. He was transferred to several camps and was constantly beaten and tortured by guards. A scar remains where a German soldier rammed a bayonet down Jackson’s mouth and out his chin.

Jackson eventually was put in the Death March to Dachau. As the American 3rd Army advanced, the German guards took the remaining prisoners into a field to be shot. In the chaos that ensued, Jackson fled for his hometown. Of the 18,000 Jews deported from Uzhorod, says Jackson, between 80 and 100 had survived.

The war over, Jackson returned, first, to his family’s house. “My father was a multimillionaire,” he says, “a builder — bridges, buildings, pavement. You can go there today and see our family name on the paving stones and cornerstones.”

Though others had taken over the home, Jackson went down to the basement. (“Everything valuable had been taken out. They took everything.”) What remained was a box containing some small family photos and a sheaf of insurance documents, showing that Joseph Jakubovic had paid his last premium in November 1939. Jackson took them.

After emigrating to the United States, Jackson filed for a claim with the Italian-based insurer Generali. The company wrote back that, since the war, all Czech accounts had been turned over to the government there.

The Czech government told Jackson that all funds had been transferred to Generali’s branch offices in Hungary. Hungarian officials told Jackson that he had to apply to the company’s headquarters in Italy. In a letter dated Oct. 11, 1994 — Jackson’s last in the matter– Generali informed him he would have to apply to the Czechoslovakian State Institute. But Jackson’s receipts do show that his father’s payments were made to the Generali office in Trieste, Italy, not Czechoslovakia.

“They lie,” Jackson says, pointing to the years of correspondence. “They all lie.”

This cycle of explanations continued through letters for decades. Jackson says that a lawyer he hired to represent him in Trieste took his $2,000 retainer and disappeared.

Denied the money that would have set him up for life, Jackson carried on, regardless. He started Freddy’s Deli on Fairfax, just north of Beverly Boulevard, and ran it for 42 years. He sold the deli but still owns the building it’s in, as well as other real estate. A resident of Beverly Hills, Jackson has two sons — a pediatrician and a cancer surgeon — and five grandchildren. With a simple shrug, Jackson dismisses the notion that he may yet see any of the millions due him. “Maybe my children,” he says.

But Gerstel is a bit more optimistic. Last month, the giant German insurer Allianz Lebenversicherungs announced that it would “use minimum red tape” to process the claims arising from the suit.

“Everybody’s taking a lesson from the Swiss banking case,” says Gerstel. “They want to stay out of the press.”

Although Generali has yet to respond to the suit, Gerstel says that the Allianz position is “a good starting point.” “We’re happy to see they’re taking responsibility for their history, which they legally have to,” says Gerstel.

Even were he to finally settle with Generali, Jackson would not be done with the company, which has hundreds of branches from Italy to San Francisco. It turns out that Jackson’s current insurance broker took out a new policy on the building housing Freddy’s Deli. The insurer is…Generali. “Can you believe it?” says Jackson.

Filing His Claim Read More »

f.y.i. / local report Good Hearts

Leave a Comment / Health, Old Stories /

Steven S. Cohen was a hard-working businessman, a good friend and the father of two young girls, ages 2 and 5, when he suffered a massive heart attack during a game of weekend basketball and died. He was 35.

His friends channeled their shock and grief into helping to discover how and why such a young, healthy man could die so suddenly, and without warning.

Cohen, who, at 5 feet 10 and 210 pounds, was a vigorous and powerful weekend athlete, had had a complete physical just two months before he died on Dec. 7, 1995. His blood-cholesterol level had been normal — 200 — and he had no family history of heart attack or stroke. But an autopsy revealed that Cohen had 90-percent occlusion in two arteries. So the good friend and loving husband became a statistic, one of some 250,000 Americans under 40 who die of sudden cardiac arrest.

A bypass could have saved Cohen, but the stress test that would have disclosed the occlusion is not routinely given to people his age. “Who, at 35, thinks they’re going to die of a heart attack?” asked his closest friend, Mark Litman.

Cohen ran a successful diamond business but quit after being held up at gunpoint and pistol-whipped outside a Beverly Hills jewelry store. “We always said he had nine lives,” Litman said.

Cohen then became a part owner of Doheny Travel in Beverly Hills. In his free time, he played basketball twice each week at the Mid Valley Athletic Club. “He worked hard and he played hard,” Litman said.

Just prior to collapsing, Cohen complained of a tingling in his arm and asked friends to call 911. By the time paramedics arrived, he had died.

Now painfully aware that such things happen, Cohen’s friends have created the Steven S. Cohen Heart Fund to support and promote Cedar-Sinai Medical Center’s ongoing research into the detection and prevention of early heart disease in adults, ages 20 to 40.

Supported by a charitable networking group of 15 San Fernando Valley businessmen, named the Boardroom Associates — to which Cohen belonged — the fund is underwriting the research directed by P.K. Shah, M.D., who is exploring ways of uncovering and treating early heart disease.

One promising development is the ultrafast CT scan, which uses MRI-like technology to take a cross-section view of the arteries. Another project is studying the presence of calcium deposits in coronary arteries as a marker of the early stages of heart disease.

Neither the research nor its fruits comes cheaply (Litman said that a superfast CT scan machine costs $2 million), but the Boardroom Associates have taken on the task to raise whatever is needed.

The Steven S. Cohen Heart Fund’s first annual fund-raiser will be held on May 10 at the Grand Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Los Angeles Clippers stars Jerome “Pooh” Richardson and Darrick Martin, the Indiana Pacers’ Mark Jackson and the Portland Trail Blazers’ Mitchell Butler are expected to attend. The $175-per-plate dinner will also feature a silent auction.

“It’s going to be an upbeat and fun event,” Litman said.

And that, he said, goes a long way toward describing Cohen himself. — Robert Eshman, Associate Editor

For more information on the Steven S. Cohen Heart Fund and its first annual fund-raiser, call

(818) 225-8783

The House of Lehman

It would be fair to say that German historian and newspaper editor Roland Flade has more than a passing interest in European Jewish history, particularly that of Jews in his native Bavaria. Flade, a Catholic, wrote two dissertations on the subject. The second work, published in 1987, caught the attention of U.S. Ambassador John L. Loeb Jr., who bought it in a Hamburg bookshop. Loeb was surprised to find no mention of his prominent Jewish family, so he telephoned Flade to inquire if there was a way to uncover his ancestors’ early German history.

That inquiry resulted in Flade’s newest book, “The Lehmans” (Königshausen & Neumann), an absorbing tale that begins in a Bavarian village prior to the French Revolution and concludes in the glittering stone canyons of Wall Street. What lies in between are the various fortunes and dramas of the legendary Lehmann banking family, whose members — whether through blood or marriage — read like a who’s who of finance, government and philanthropy. Occupying places on the family tree are Seagram’s CEO Edgar M. Bronfman Jr., New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and former New York Governor and Senator Herbert Lehmann, who managed to save dozens of relatives and others from the Holocaust.

Born in 1785, Abraham Lehmann lived in the village of Rimpar, but his sons left to seek their futures in America. After they emigrated to Montgomery, Ala., in the mid-19th century, they founded the Lehmann Brothers banking firm. As real estate investors, cotton merchants and advisers to the burgeoning retail world of department stores, Lehmann Brothers was already a force to be reckoned with by the early 20th century. The firm took a leading role in financing and advising retail giants Sears & Roebuck and F.W. Woolworth Co., as well as Jewish-owned outfits such as R.H. Macy & Co. and Gimbel Brothers.

Today, the family name graces everything from a wing of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to a high school in Dimona, Israel. What’s striking about this book is that although the Lehmanns move in a rarefied and affluent world of rainmakers, in important respects, their trials and successes mirror the larger European-Jewish immigrant experience in all its forms — merchants, victims, immigrant peddlers and, ultimately, pillars of the American establishment. –Diane Arieff Zaga, Arts Editor

Copies of “The Lehmans” may be ordered from the Madison Avenue Bookshop at 800-535-4912.

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Lost and Found

Hanna and Walter Kohner had one of the few Holocaust stories that ended happily. The two were childhood sweethearts in Czechoslovakia before the war, with big plans for the future. But, as Hitler’s armies closed in, Walter managed to get to the States, where he had brothers. Hanna was captured and survived internment in four concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

After the war, Walter heard that Hanna was alive from an American sergeant who helped liberate her (52 years ago this May 5). The couple reunited and settled in Los Angeles, where Walter became a theatrical agent. Hanna wrote their amazing story in a book, “Hanna and Walter, A Love Story” (Berkley, $5.99), which has been recently re-released.

Their daughter, Julie, 41, carries on their legacy by telling the Kohner story to school and community groups throughout the Southland. Her presentation, “Voices of the Generation,” has won raves from rabbis and educators. Julie recounts the story, shows a video about her parents that originally aired as an episode of “This Is Your Life” in 1953, and answers questions about her parents and the Holocaust. “What I’m doing,” she says, “is carrying on their legacy.”– R.E.

For more information on “Voices of the Generations,” call (310) 472-9283

The Grapevine

This week’s news off the grapevine is that Rabbi David Wolpe has been offered the post of senior rabbi at Sinai Temple. Wolpe, author, lecturer, and recently new father, will head west from his current post at the Jewish Theological Seminary…. And Sari Goodman has replaced Shaun Herschel as director of the Temple Isaiah Day School.

Wachtler Returns

I’ve never been a brilliant, drug-addicted judge with exacerbated manic depression, so I wasn’t sure what to make of the first chapter of Sol Wachtler’s memoir, “After the Madness” (Random House, $24). In it, the former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York describes the uppers, downers and depression that led him to stalk a former lover. Do the drugs and disorder excuse his crime? No, Wachtler makes clear; he accepts all the blame and offers sincere apologies for his actions.

Wachtler served 13 months’ hard time in a medium-security federal prison for his offenses. The heart of this book is his diary of prison life. It is disturbing, shocking, revealing, painful, frightening and frustrating. Wachtler, whom Alan Dershowitz once described as the nation’s finest judge, lived in the hell he had, without remorse, consigned others to. That near-fantastic turnaround gives him insights into a system that, he now believes, locks up far too many people with little benefit and at great expense. Not for nothing does Wachtler, who grew up as a beleaguered Jewish kid in mostly rural American towns, begin his book with a quote from the great sage Hillel: “Do not judge a person until you have been in his position — you do not understand even yourself until the day of your death.”– R.E.

f.y.i. / local report Good Hearts Read More »

Strumming, Fiddling at the Skirball

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What is there about klezmer music that sends feet flying and excitement levels of certain Jewish audiences soaring? Nostalgia for the past or a just-found fondness for a “new” music”? Whatever it is, when the klezmer band struck up a “Freylach,” almost instantly, a woman in a red baseball cap jumped to her feet, raised her arms to the sky and began bouncing joyfully to the music. She was quickly joined by someone in a jaunty straw hat and a T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Danceaholic.” Soon, there was an impromptu circle of happy bouncers — young and old — stepping lively under the warm California sun.

So began “KlezFest at the Skirball,” a celebration of klezmer music and its role in Yiddish culture. The event, which took place on Sunday, April 13, in the courtyard of the Skirball Cultural Center, attracted some 250 participants, from octogenarians to 8-year-olds.

I was there with my husband and teen-age son, instruments in tow. Bernie, my husband and the trumpetmeister, has long been a mainstay of our synagogue’s official band, Close Enough for Klezmer. Jeffrey, our son, who plays classical and jazz clarinet, is also a Klezmer wannabe. Over the last decade, this home-grown band has brought its members both inspiration and aggravation, but, musically, it has grown a bit stale. So six band cronies (and their offspring) showed up at KlezFest, looking for new ideas.

Other folks had other agendas. Nancy Carroll, who’s taking a Yiddish-literature class at Los Angeles Valley College, signed on for KlezFest because this “is a perfect illustration of what we’re studying.”

Joyce Hart, raised in a Yiddish-speaking household in Canada, is so passionate about the mamaloshen that she used to make weekly treks to Fairfax just to listen to people speak. KlezFest enabled her to sing in Yiddish, hear talks on Yiddish folklore, and applaud Yiddish-theater songs belted out in the style of Second Avenue.

A young man named Richard, who’s getting married in September, came to KlezFest in search of hints on how to integrate his Eastern European Jewish heritage into an American Jewish wedding. The fact that the day was to climax in a mock wedding ceremony made KlezFest, for Richard, the place to be.

One especially distinctive presence was that of Joy Krauthammer, dressed in flowing purple and chains of silver amulets. She proudly displayed the large African buffalo-skin drum she’d adorned with ribbons and snapshots of past mentors, including “my number one teacher in the world, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.” In attending the KlezFest-sponsored concert at the Wadsworth Theatre, Krauthammer had found an excitement that bordered on the spiritual: “I was doing Shabbos at the concert.” Now she was primed to learn how to bring her African and Middle Eastern percussion skills into the Klezmer idiom.

While the Yiddish-culture enthusiasts enjoyed lectures and a dance workshop, the 50 aspiring klezmorim present were sent off for in-depth master classes with members of The Klezmatics and Klazzj. These professionals gave solid and specific advice. Violinists were told to forgo vibrato, and got tips on how to incorporate that distinctive klezmer “sob” into their sound. Brass players were initiated into the mysteries of the Freygish Scale. There was a special section for accordionists and (high on the hill above the Skirball) one for wailing klezmer clarinets. Guitarists joined forces with a classical mandolin player and the owner of a Turkish oud to learn about plucking and strumming, klezmer-style.

After lunch, the instrumentalists were melded into ensembles for some ad hoc music-making. Close Enough for Klezmer found itself in a basement room, where a maven from The Klezmatics gave pointers on how to rearrange an old tune from the repertoire for maximum impact.

Nor was energy in short supply in the courtyard, where the promised wedding procession was about to start. The KlezFest organizers had supplied 12-foot puppets representing a giant-sized khosn (groom) and kalle (bride). There was also a billowing chuppah, made by the children in a crafts workshop while their elders strummed and fiddled. A long-bearded shtetl rabbi dramatically read off the items the groom had promised his chosen one — 200 silver zuzim, feather pillows, a brass bed and a Stairmaster. After the groom, his huge fingers fluttering anxiously, lifted the veil from his shy bride’s punim, KlezFest participants of all ages joined the celebration by waving multicolored banners and dancing along to the strains of the very haimish Ellis Island Band.

At last, happily sated with Yiddishkayt, the participants drifted out to the parking lots and back to their Southern California lives.

As for Close Enough for Klezmer, its members were blissfully close to overload. So much music, so little time.

Beverly Gray writes about education for The Jewish

Journal from Santa Monica.

All rights reserved by author.

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Renewal and Restraint

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Renewal and Restraint

By Edward Sanders

I went to Israel last month as someone who is a supporter of the peace process; as someone who believes in exchange of land for peace; as someone who is dedicated to peace with security for Israel; and as someone disturbed by the construction at Har Homa and the opening of the Hasmonean tunnel. Over the course of many years, I have supported Israel’s peace movement and have worked to promote a just peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

When Binyamin Netanyahu was elected by the Israeli people as their prime minister last May, I was disappointed. I did not think that he would, or could, effectively continue the peace process that was initiated by former Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. I have been concerned about the proposed law of conversion, and now there is the additional problem of a politically wounded prime minister.

When I met with Prime Minister Netanyahu in his Jerusalem office last month, I related to him all of my concerns. Subsequently, after seeing the situation on the ground and being among the people of Israel, I found that my long-standing emotional commitment to Israel was reinvigorated, and I once again clearly understood the centrality of Jerusalem.

For Israel and the Jewish people, there has never been a capital other than Jerusalem over the course of the last 3,000 years. Jerusalem is mentioned 657 times in the Hebrew Bible (though not once in the Koran) and has been, and continues to be, the focus of Jewish prayer and thought. Although Jerusalem is revered by other faiths, its centrality to Judaism and to the Jewish people is unique. Even to secular Jews, Jerusalem has a mystical power that unites the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

In contrast to all of Jerusalem’s previous rulers (the Jordanians, the British and the Turks, in this century), Israel has maintained unprecedented safeguards for religious freedom within the city. Since Israel reunited the city in 1967, hundreds of thousands of Moslems and Christians — many from countries that remain in a state of war with Israel — have come to Jerusalem to visit their holy places.

When the city was last under Arab rule, from 1948 to 1967, non-Moslem holy places and observances were, at best, restricted and, at worst, desecrated. Christian schools were forced to include Moslem teachings, and the Christian population dropped by nearly 60 percent. Jewish synagogues and cemeteries (that were not outright destroyed) were converted into latrines and chicken coops, and access was denied to the Western Wall and all other Jewish sites.

These are the memories that Israel has of the last time Jerusalem was divided. Israeli negotiators bring this painful chapter of the city’s history with them during every negotiating session with their Palestinian partners. Israel ensures the religious and cultural rights of any and all who want to visit the Holy City. However, the issue of sovereignty is not open for debate.

While Israel has made certain commitments to the Palestinians through the accords that it has signed, none of these commitments has even mentioned Jerusalem. Israel does not have, and never had, any intention of dividing or sharing its eternal capital. For this reason, the status of the city was consciously omitted from all signed agreements. Any building that will take place in the Har Homa neighborhood of East Jerusalem, or anywhere else in the city, does not violate the accords.

When I visited Jerusalem, I saw a vibrant, growing city, whose residents, both Jewish and Arab, need additional housing. Israel’s plan to build for Jews in Har Homa and for Arabs in 10 Arab neighborhoods should be taken at face value. There is no reason an international crisis needs to erupt every time a Jerusalemite requires a bigger apartment. And such construction is certainly no justification for the terrorism that occurred when a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered three young women and injured scores of others at a Tel Aviv outdoor cafe. Israel cannot be expected to negotiate under the gun.

It is absolutely clear that the overwhelming majority of the Israeli people want peace with security, and no one with whom I talked can conceive of a divided Jerusalem.

I pray that the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis comes to a just and peaceful resolution. But the division of Jerusalem is something that the overwhelming majority of Israelis will never accept. On this issue, there is unity. For peace to succeed, a creative solution will need to be implemented that satisfies Palestinian needs while the city remains under Israel’s sovereignty.

I also came home with the firm conviction, now reinforced by the political turmoil in Israel, that this is neither the time nor the occasion for the American friends of Israel to urge the Clinton administration to do any more than energetically play its historic role as an honest broker. Any other course of conduct can backfire and further harm the already fragile course of peace. This is no time to pile on.

Edward Sanders is a former president of the Jewish Federation Council for Greater Los Angeles and former senior adviser to President Carter on the Middle East.

All rights reserved by author.

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Thai Tikvah

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While that may sound like an old Jewish joke, it's an arrangement that well suits a community which feels at home in this overwhelmingly Buddhist nation but keeps a low profile.

The three synagogues serve as a rough guide to the makeup of the permanent and transient Jewish community here.

Worshipers at the showpiece Bet Elisheva synagogue tend to be wealthier suburbanites. The three-story building serves as community center and houses the sanctuary, the meeting and recreation rooms, the mikvah, and the living quarters of the youthful Rabbi Yosef Kantor and his family.

There are daily preschool classes for six children, and a Sunday school for older kids is in the planning stages. The preschoolers are taught by two young women, still in their late teens, who arrived two months ago from Kfar Chabad in Israel.

Bangkok, as the gem-trade capital of the world, has attracted a large number of Israeli businessmen. They, along with tourists staying at the more expensive hotels, pray at the appropriately named Even Chen (Precious Stone, in Hebrew) in the center of the city.

Serving the lower end of the economic scale is the Ohr Menachem synagogue, which, with a kosher kitchen, is part of Bet Chabad. It caters to the stream of backpackers, an estimated 15,000 a year from Israel alone, who stay at the nearby cheap hostels and guest houses.

Rabbi Yosef Kantor, with wife, Dvorah Leah, and son, has been spiritual leader of the Bangkok Jewish community for four years. Photo by Tom Tugend

The first contingent of Jews arrived in Thailand at the turn of the century, mainly from Middle Eastern countries.

These Sephardic Jews were joined in the 1920s by groups of Ashkenazim, said “Jacob,” whose father arrived here from Russia, via Italy, in 1920.

Jacob, who requested that his real name not be used, represents what is now the oldest Jewish family in Bangkok. He is president of the Jewish community, as his father was a generation earlier.

Besides the Israeli businessmen, the community includes a sizable segment of American Jews. The men, mainly lawyers, got to know Thailand while serving with the U.S. military or the Peace Corps, liked what they saw and decided to stay.

Jacob's request for anonymity is grounded in his sense of vulnerability to terrorist attacks. In 1973, the Palestinian Black September group seized the Israeli Embassy here — although Thai authorities were able to defuse the situation without bloodshed.

Four years ago, Jacob says, police apprehended a terrorist “by a stroke of luck. He had enough explosive material to level everything within a mile radius in the heart of the city.”

Surveying his constituency, Jacob notes that, “basically, all of us are Orthodox; we have no Reform or Conservative Jews here.” The community gets together for Purim and Chanukah parties, and, during the past year, celebrated one wedding, one bris and a few bar mitzvahs, and welcomed one young Thai woman as a convert.

As for the burden of the presidency, Jacob confides that “just because it's a small community doesn't mean it's an easy one.”

What attracts Jews to live in Thailand?

“It's a nice country with friendly people. All religions can function freely, and there are good business opportunities,” says Jacob.

There is also no anti-Semitism, perhaps because “the Thai have no idea what Jews are,” as one resident put it.

In the past, the community had a hard time attracting and then keeping rabbis. “We had one who stayed for a year, and then a second one who left after six months,” says Jacob.

Four years ago, community leaders turned to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who dispatched Rabbi Kantor. The 28-year-old native of Australia has “done a terrific job,” according to Jacob.

Kantor and his wife, Dvorah Leah, who hails from Los Angeles, are now well-settled and are raising a family. He relies primarily on e-mail to stay in touch with Chabad headquarters in Brooklyn and with the rest of the world.

Some things about Thailand, though, are hard to get used to, including the extremely hot and humid weather. “Sometimes, I dream of just taking a pleasant walk, like in Los Angeles,” says the rebbetzin. “Now [in February], it's the middle of the winter, and the temperature is 100 degrees.”

Mindi Gerlitzky, one of the two young teachers recently arrived from Kfar Chabad, is struck by other phenomena.

“I was shocked to see so many Israelis here,” she says.

Israeli tourists now flock to Thailand at the rate of 50,000 a year, according to Yaakov Avrahami, the No. 2 man at the Israeli Embassy.

Besides the 15,000 backpackers, there are some 35,000 mostly middle-aged visitors, attracted by cheap package tours and the regular El Al flights between Tel Aviv and Bangkok.

The Israeli Embassy was opened in 1957, but the Thai reciprocated in opening an embassy in Tel Aviv only last year. One reason for the latter move was to serve the estimated 20,000 Thai nationals now working in Israel, mainly in the agricultural sector.

Trade between the two countries runs at $500 million a year, with the balance almost 2 to 1 in Israel's favor. Thai exports are mainly in diamonds and gemstones, and imports from Israel include machinery, electronics and communication equipment.

Diplomatic relations between Thailand and Israel function smoothly, says Avrahami, and, judging by the three English-language dailies in Bangkok, Thailand's people and government seem well-disposed to the Jewish State.

Entrance to Bet Elisheva, one of three synagogues in Bangkok which also serves as community center. Photo by Tom Tugend

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UJ Layoffs

Leave a Comment / Community, Old Stories, Rob Eshman /

The last days of the Passover holiday brought a shocking message to 14 faculty and staff members at the University of Judaism: They’re laid off.

Among those whose contracts will not be renewed this June are Rabbi David Ackerman, associate dean of the Fingerhut School of Education; Dean of Students Jill Landesberg; and Director of Student Jewish Life Betty Brasky.

At press time, The Jewish Journal could not confirm the names of other employees whose contracts will not be renewed.

The layoff, substantial at an institution with fewer than 100 faculty and staff members, came against a backdrop of continuing money problems for the school.

Several weeks ago, the administration circulated a message to staff, informing them that the university had a $2 million deficit. Department heads were asked to cut their budgets by 10 percent, and officials held an open meeting to discuss other cost-cutting measures at the 200-student school.

“We had known there were serious budgetary problems, and we were told there would have to be layoffs,” said Ackerman. “I just didn’t expect to be one of them.”

Four years ago, a similar round of layoffs, also the result of a budget crisis, provoked outrage within the university as well as in the larger Jewish community.

The current round was met with a much more subdued response. Those laid off were informed of their termination in meetings with Vice President, Administration, Mark Bookman on the Thursday or Friday before the long holiday vacation that included the Sabbath and the last two days of Passover. (Many were still unreachable as The Journal went to press).

Rabbi Daniel Gordis, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, and University President Dr. Robert Wexler were not in town at the time of the layoffs.

Bookman had not returned The Journal’s calls by press time.

When asked Wednesday morning to comment on the layoffs, the university’s PR department said that it hadn’t heard of any taking place.

The University of Judaism, long a center of Jewish learning in Los Angeles, is home to an undergraduate liberal arts program and graduate schools in rabbinic studies and education.

Those affiliated with the university acknowledge that laying off valued staff is always a last resort.

“It’s always perceived as anti-Jewish not to take care of your own,” said University Regent Alan Bloch. But, said Bloch, the drastic measure was a “matter of survival.”

At least one person associated with the school was openly critical.

“A Jewish institution that believes it teaches Jewish values has to act in accordance with those values,” said Rabbi Jane Litman, who has taught at the Bel Air campus.

In a telephone interview, Litman took the UJ to task for laying off well-regarded staffers in the midst of the Passover holiday and well into the academic year.

“I don’t think it shows much sensitivity,” she said. “They are decent people, and they feel very betrayed.”

But others, including some of those laid off, said that they understand the university had little choice.

Although the school made headlines last year, when it received a $22 million donation from the Ziegler family for its rabbinical school, administrators say that money is being allocated at $2.2 million per year over 10 years — not enough to get the university through its crisis.

“I guess they had no choice,” said Brasky, one of those laid off.

Statement on the Budget

By Dr. Robert Wexler

The 1990s continues to be a decade of downsizing at many private colleges around the country. The primary cause is the precipitous rise in expense budgets during the past 20 years, accompanied by tuition costs that have increased at a pace much beyond the rate of general inflation. Students and their parents complain that they are no longer willing to accept the burden of underwriting the continual expansion of campus programs.

Colleges are becoming leaner and more cost conscious. In this regard, the University of Judaism is no exception. In order to reduce our expenses, we have embarked on a rigorous program of self-examination and cost-cutting. This includes a reduction in the size of our administration, accomplished through the consolidation of several staff positions. We have also instituted a variety of financial controls intended to limit spending.

We deeply regret the fact that downsizing inevitably causes hardship to employees whose jobs are eliminated and to their families. We will do whatever we can to ease their transition, while recognizing the personal unhappiness that regrettably results.

The board of directors and the administration of the University of Judaism understand their responsibility to our students to provide them with a quality education while keeping tuition at the lowest level possible. We also consider ourselves the guardians of the funds provided by our donors and acknowledge our duty to use those funds as wisely and efficiently as possible.

Dr. Robert Wexler is president of the University of Judaism.

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L.A.’s Kabbalah Learning Center seems to attract many searching Jews, but criticism of it is widespr

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Mike Gold* had a successful small business, a nice home, a wife and two kids when he began to wonder about his soul. Questions about life’s meaning, about God and spirituality and his Jewish heritage would not go away. “I started studying Judaism by myself, and I realized,” he said, “I didn’t know anything.”

That’s when Gold cracked opened a book he had purchased months earlier. Some young men had approached him at his business and convinced him to buy it. They were from the Kabbalah Learning Center.

“It touched me deeply,” said Gold. “It was way above any reading I’d ever done.” He started getting up at 3 in the morning to pore over the book’s teachings. He began attending classes and services at the center’s Los Angeles headquarters on Robertson Boulevard. The center, his new friends told him, had changed their lives, and it would change his. As Gold readily acknowledges, they were right.

The place really wows you,” said Gold, about his first impressions of the Kabbalah Center. Evidently, he is not alone. Located just south of Olympic Boulevard, where the Orthodox Pico-Robertson neighborhood kisses the hem of Beverly Hills, the center is perhaps the fastest-growing and most far-reaching Jewish institution in Southern California.

Thousands of people take its classes, buy its books and tapes, and participate in services. Any Sabbath morning will find the 350-seat sanctuary of the handsome Mission-style building filled to capacity by mid-morning. A great many of the congregants are Israeli, Iranian and unaffiliated young American Jews such as Gold—the kind of Jews more established congregations have tried to attract but with little success.

Celebrities have raised the center’s cachet even more. Comedian Sandra Bernhard is a regular, Madonna takes classes—and personal advice—there, and Roseanne takes a whole row for herself and her entourage during Yom Kippur services. Laura Dern, Diane Ladd, Merv Adelson and Evelyn Ostin, the wife of entertainment mogul Mo Ostin, have also taken classes.

While many Jewish organizations are barely scraping by, the Kabbalah Center, which is based in New York, has flourished financially. The Los Angeles branch was founded 13 years ago in a one-bedroom Westwood apartment. Two years ago, it purchased the Robertson building, a former youth center, for about $2 million. The center’s 1994 federal tax returns, provided to The Jewish Journal by Jerusalem Report correspondent Vince Beiser, show current net assets of $14.3 million. Last month, the center began a search for larger Los Angeles headquarters.

The Los Angeles center’s success is matched worldwide. The Kabbalah Center recently moved into $4.5 million headquarters in downtown Tel Aviv, from where it oversees branches in four Israeli cities that serve some 10,000 people, according to Rabbi Moshe Rosenberg, a teacher at the KLC there and a center trustee. In New York, South America, Canada, France and Mexico, the center is constantly expanding, attracting thousands of young Jews.

That a Jewish institution has met with such success would—or should—normally be the cause of much rejoicing in the Jewish community. But if a golden touch blesses the center, a cloud of rumors, investigations, lawsuits and exposés shadows it. “What they’ve done is taken Kabbalah and twisted it out of shape for their own purposes, and it’s very destructive,” said Congregation Neve Shalom’s Rabbi Steven Robbins, founder of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles’ Cult Task Force. “This is not Judaism. This is not kabbalah. This is narshkeit [nonsense].”

But supporters hail the KLC as a salve for all the ills of the modern soul. The center survives on and solicits contributions like any synagogue, they say. And adherents are no more loyal than Chassids are to their rebbes. Said Michael Berg, the son of the center’s founder, Rabbi Philip Berg: “We teach kabbalah; we wear white on Shabbat. Is it a cult or is it a group that is different from what you’re used to?”

Men in White

For Mike Gold, who was raised in a nonobservant Fairfax-district Jewish home, the experience was different, and powerful.

On Sabbath, the synagogue fills with men and women, almost all dressed in symbolic white clothes. The service follows Orthodox tradition, with the sexes separated, a sermon in English and the prayers—along with additional phrases unique to the center—chanted in Hebrew. There is a level of intensity and participation rarely found in most congregations.

Gold began spending Sabbaths away from his family in order to attend. He also drove back and forth from the San Fernando Valley twice a week for the 6:30 a.m. minyan. Like most adherents, he took several of the classes that were available on such topics as “The Judaic Process of Reincarnation” and “Meditation I.” He bought 250 of the center’s tapes and books.

Gold’s home, business and bank account had been ravaged by the Northridge earthquake. He and his wife, Ellen, argued constantly about the amount of time and money he was spending at the center. Eventually, though, she joined him there “for the sake of saving my marriage,” she told The Journal. “I got swept up. These people had the answer, and no one else did.”

The couple flew to New York to attend huge holiday services. “It was like a rock concert,” Gold said. ““Neilah” [the concluding Yom Kippur service] was so powerful, you’d think John Lennon rose from the dead.”

But Ellen Gold’s full exposure to the center only confirmed her suspicions. When her husband refused to decrease the money or time he spent there, Ellen Gold thought she had no choice. “I kicked him out of the house,” she said.

Out of the Corners

Long shunted into the corners of Jewish life, kabbalah is resurfacing as the way into Judaism for a generation of seekers who are uninspired by more standard Jewish teachings and who are eager for the Jewish take on New Age concerns such as astrology, meditation and past lives. Of the many synagogues and institutions offering courses on kabbalah, the center, despite the controversy that surrounds it, is packing in the biggest crowds.

“I felt like I wasn’t getting spiritually what I needed from Conservative or Orthodox Judaism,” said a middle-aged woman who became involved in the center several years ago. Like this woman, who declined to be identified, several of the people interviewed for this article had followed other so-called New Age practices. The center, they said, was answering a similar need, but Jewishly. “It was the first time I’d seen Judaism from a more spiritual point of view,” said one activist.

Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz of the Chai Center doesn’t doubt that the KLC’s numerous Jewish celebrity supporters have had similar paths. “They’ve gone the Deepak Chopra-Shirley MacLaine route, and now they’ve come full circle,” he said.

Haifa-born Rafi Feig, the owner of Closets-By-Design, said that Israelis like him are attracted to the center because many “are looking for answers. It’s not about being a religion. It’s about the spiritual side.”

Rabbi Philip Berg’s take on kabbalah stresses submerging the ego to bring “the light of the Creator” into one’s life, said Michael Berg.

For people such as Feig, the teachings have deeply enriched their lives. Milt S. (not his real name), a Simi Valley businessman who prefers anonymity, said that he was raised Conservative and had gone to synagogue “maybe 15 times in the last 20 years.” Berg’s teachings, he said, provided “the first time I’d seen Judaism from a more spiritual point of view. It helped me understand how to commune with God. He’s given modern language to kabbalah.”

The question that critics have is whether Berg, who has greatly succeeded in channeling this new awakening to kabbalah, is kabbalah’s most authentic teacher.

An Inferior Product?

Dr. Rabbi Philip Berg was born Feivel Gruberger in New York in 1928. Ordained in an Orthodox seminary in Queens, he was a successful insurance salesman before a 1962 visit to Israel brought him in contact with kabbalist Rabbi Yehudah Zvi Brandwein. Berg, who Hebraized his name upon moving to Israel, drew close to Brandwein, married the rabbi’s niece, and began distributing Brandwein’s books in the United States.

After Brandwein’s death in 1969, Berg declared himself the heir to the kabbalistic dynasty of Brandwein and Brandwein’s teacher, Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, and he founded the Kabbalah Learning Center. Sometime later, he divorced his wife, with whom he had 10 children, and married Karen Berg, who leads the KLC with Rabbi Berg.(Over the years, he has refused to divulge to journalists the source or the field of his doctorate.) The yeshiva of the late Rabbi Ashlag has issued a statement, disassociating itself from Berg. According to Tel Aviv magazine, Baruch Horenchick, the late Rabbi Brandwein’s aide, said that, “the rabbi never acknowledged [Berg].”

In reply, Michael Berg told The Journal that he is editing a book of correspondence between Brandwein and his father, which will prove their close relationship. Journalist inquiries about the center are directed to the Berg’s two sons, Rabbis Michael and Yehuda Berg, who, with their parents, travel the world to teach and manage the KLC’s affairs.

An activist core of about 75 people make up the Los Angeles center’s teaching and support staff. Many live together in KLC-provided housing around Pico-Robertson and volunteer at the center, selling books door-to-door, answering phones, even staffing an information and book-selling table on the Venice Boardwalk.

But critics contend that what Berg teaches, and what these hevrei spread, is not kabbalah at all. “It’s an inferior product,” said Rabbi Jonathan Omer- man, who teaches kabbalah at the Metivta Center for Jewish Wisdom, which he founded.

Many of the center’s harshest local critics, such as Robbins, Schwartz and Omer-man, teach their own kabbalah classes, none of which draws the crowds of the KLC. But, said Robbins, their criticisms are “not sour grapes. If they, in fact, were doing what I believe to be beneficial, I would ask to be a part of it.”

In any case, the local rabbis are not alone. The KLC has been denounced in documents circulated by the Orthodox rabbinical councils of Queens and Toronto, by Jerusalem’s highest rabbinical court, and by Sephardic Rabbi Itzhak Kadouri of Jerusalem, widely considered the world’s greatest living kabbalist. In a statement issued by his yeshiva, Kadouri maintained that kabbalah can only be taught to “Jewish men who have completed full study of the Talmud.” Anyone who supports Berg, he stated, “is endangering his soul.”

“Politics,” said Michael Berg, claiming these same rabbis supported Berg until his popularity increased. In any case, said Michael Berg, “worse things were said about the Baal Shem Tov than about the center.”

Sore points for the critics include:

* “Scanning,” a KLC practice that means looking over the pages of the Zohar, the five-volume central kabbalah text, even though some can’t read the Hebrew it’s written in. “The Hebrew words are channels through which light is transmitted,” said Michael Berg.

“It’s like an Evelyn Wood thing,” said the Chai Center’s Rabbi Schwartz. “This is so anti-intellectual, and we are the People of the Book.”

* Teaching that the victims of the Nazi Holocaust chose or provoked their fate. Inflammatory as this subject may be, the conclusion is inevitable considering the center’s approach to kabbalah. “We should all remember this,” wrote Karen Berg in a recent issue of Kabbalah, the KLC’s magazine. “If it happens to me, I must deserve it.”

“If you look at it in the big picture, the Jews were, in some way, the cause,” said Michael Berg. The KLC’s promotional video, “The Power of Kabbalah,” states that Ashkenazic Jews were slaughtered and Sephardic Jews were saved because only the latter studied kabbalah. “That’s ridiculous,” said Dr. Alex Grobman, national director of the American Society of Yad Vashem. “The Sephardim were simply not in the Nazi’s line of fire.”

* The lack of traditional Jewish instruction. “Real kabbalists were also Talmudic scholars,” said a local Orthodox rabbi. “People can’t have a full spiritual experience without putting in the work.”

The Orthodox particularly abhor the KLC’s non-halachic approach to Jewish learning. “They’ll sell you a Zohar before they sell you a mezuzah,” said Schwartz.

But most KLC participants, said Eitan Yardeni, a senior teacher at the Los Angeles center, have “never been involved” in Jewish learning. For them, learning observance is secondary to learning spirituality and kabbalah.

* Teaching love, preaching intolerance. Rabbi Berg emphasizes the importance of “causeless love” among Jews. But at least one public utterance seems to fall short of that. At one Shabbat service, which The Jewish Journal attended, Berg, who was in town, sermonized that rabbis who oppose the center “don’t want you to know the truth. They want you to live in chaos. They are the enemies of enlightenment.”

Kicked out of his home, Michael Gold moved in with some hevrei in a townhouse near the center. He stayed there four months. During that time, he claims, an activist repeatedly tried to convince him to divorce his wife, Ellen. The activist, now in Israel, denied this.

One evening, while Gold was home visiting his children, Ellen asked him if he wanted to see documents originally compiled in 1993 by Rachel Bernstein, then coordinator of the Cult Clinic of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. The documents—newspaper articles, rabbinical decrees and tax returns, all shared with The Journal—paint a highly critical portrait of Berg and his center. Gold agreed to look through them. “I’m not sure you’re ready for it,” his wife said. “Yes, I am,” he answered.

$1,571 and a Sheep’s Head

Most former KLC activists say that the constant pressure to give money is what finally drove them out. “At first, we had fun; we were getting into it,” said one Israeli woman formerly involved with the center. “After that, we felt everything changed. I felt they were after our money. They said, ‘As much as you give, God will give you a better income.’” Two years ago, the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, donated $1,200 to have a Zohar printed in memory of her father. She has yet to see it, she said. KLC staffers told her—and several others with similar stories—that when the personalized Zohars are printed, she would have to purchase a copy. Michael Berg said that a copy is given free to those who pay for their dedication.

The center, points out Feig, charges no dues. Services, including those during the High Holidays, are free. Its sole means of support is through the sale of books (the KLC charges $350 for a set of Zohar with commentary, which retails at religious bookstores for about $130), ritual objects and tapes, class tuition, and donations. Donations are its lifeblood, said Feig, as they are at any other congregation. “They’re not asking; they’re suggesting,” said KLC supporter Milton S. “It’s a good cause. People who aren’t giving are not going to get good things in life.”

Gold estimates that he gave close to $11,000 over a period of four years. “There was a constant push to give money,” he said. What grated, he said, was not the giving. Mainstream synagogues often solicit and receive much larger amounts from their members. What upset Gold, he said, was the center’s implication that talismanic powers were attached to his contributions. When a teacher at the center suggested Gold write a check for $1,571 because it was “a special number” for him, Ellen asked her husband, “Can’t we just give $15.71? Why should God care about a decimal point? I’m sure He wouldn’t care if we gave $15,710.”

When Gold wondered why their donations hadn’t protected them from bad things, as he was led to believe they would, the intense, Israeli-born Yardeni, 33, provided a rationale: The devastation wrought by the Northridge quake provided Gold an opportunity for growth. “You can stick Eitan out in the middle of the forest, and the next morning, he’ll have a minyan,” said Gold. “He can explain anything in terms of kabbalah.”

But Gold had another question.

“I went back to the townhouse and asked the hevrei I was living with, ‘If Rabbi Berg asked you to jump off a building, would you?’ They said, ‘If Rabbi Berg promised I’d be safe, then I would.’”

That was it for Gold. He returned home, leaving the center for good. “Most of the people there I like a lot, but I’m just pissed off,” he said. “When you divide families, what kind of spiritual thing is that?”

A KLC congregant close to Gold said that his friend just overreacted to some misunderstandings and that Gold’s wife unduly influenced him. “She’s one of the most negative people I’ve ever met,” said the congregant.

Like many of the people contacted for this article, Gold is worried about speaking publicly against the center. In fact, of the half dozen former activists interviewed by The Journal, only the Golds agreed to let their full stories—though not their names—be used. “I was told terrible things have happened to people who leave the center,” he said.

Several rabbis and leaders of Los Angeles’ major Jewish organizations also refused to speak on the record.

Michael Berg and Yardeni call such fears absurd. Rabbi Abraham Union disagrees. His story, whether it implicates the KLC or not, carries the force of myth in the community. When rabbis and Jewish leaders refused to speak about the center to The Journal, they often pointed to Union’s story as reason enough.

During Passover 1992, Union, the Rabbinic administrator of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council of California, telefaxed some colleagues a letter circulated by Toronto rabbis criticizing the KLC. In his fax, Union suggested the RCC send the letter out to all Southern California rabbis. When Union arrived at the RCC offices at 1230 S. Bedford the following day, he found a severed sheep’s head at his doorstep. Several young men appeared at his home that evening and asked, in Hebrew, “Did you get our message?”

Union said that he was certain the men were from the center. He filed a police report, and detectives visited the KLC. They found no evidence of wrongdoing. Union interpreted the incident as a threat to his life. “Of course, [Rabbi Philip] Berg didn’t put it there,” he said. “There’s no proof anybody from the Kabbalah Center put it there. But we never sent out the letter.”

Michael Berg and Yardeni deny that the KLC had any involvement in the incident.

Critics of the center cite the experience of Rabbi Dr. J. Immanuel Shochet of Toronto as a reason for keeping their opinions to themselves. In 1993, when Shochet, a world-renowned kabbalist, denounced Berg and his followers, the KLC sued him for $4.5 million. The case has yet to be settled.

In any case, Rabbis Robbins, Omer-man and Schwartz, who contend that, each year, they counsel dozens of people with problems about the center, say they feel compelled to speak out. “It needs to be an issue in the community,” said Robbins.

Meanwhile, the KLC seems only to grow. Yardeni said that they plan to open centers in the San Fernando Valley and San Diego. The Los Angeles center plans to open a full day school.

Celebrities still flock, mostly for private classes. “There’s a big awakening among stars,” said Michael Berg. Madonna, he said, sought advice from Yardeni on when to deliver her child. Yardeni suggested on the day of the New Moon, which was when she delivered, said Berg.

“There have been bad articles about us for 20 years,” said Rosenberg. “People come even if it’s negative publicity. Any publicity is good publicity. If you knew the place and knew the people, you’d see the truth.” A highly critical exposé in a Tel Aviv newspaper, said Rosenberg, served only to attract dozens of curious newcomers.

But Mike Gold won’t return. “When I joined the center, my life fell apart,” he said. He’s slowly dipping his feet back into religious life, hoping to find a synagogue with the fervor of KLC. So far, he hasn’t.

Indeed, the inability of more mainstream Jewish institutions to address the spiritual needs of a new generation will continue to strengthen groups such as the KLC, said Robbins. On that, he and Michael Berg agree. “The Orthodox community and the Reform can have the 5 percent [of Jews] who are still committed,” said Berg, “and we’ll go after the 95 percent who aren’t.” *

*Not his real name

[SIDEBARS]

The Kabbalah Comeback

Dating back to the 12th century, the Jewish mystical tradition known as kabbalah combines elements of astrology and numerology with speculation about the creation of the Universe, God and the soul.

In a world where people feel increasingly insignificant and irrelevant, said Rabbi Yitzhak Adlerstein, director of the Orthodox Jewish Studies Institute, the study of kabbalah offers the promise of insight into the immutable order of the universe.

In Los Angeles, mainstream yeshivas, synagogues and the University of Judaism have found their courses on kabbalah among their most popular offerings. “There’s absolutely more interest,” said Adlerstein. “They’ve chipped away at Talmud courses and added kabbalah.” *

The Rabbi’s Critics

Much of the controversy surrounding KLC focuses on Dr. Rabbi Philip Berg himself.

Among the most persistent allegations:

* Several former activists told The Journal of incidents where the rabbi disapproved of an impending marriage. When one couple decided to marry anyway, an activist told them to boycott the wedding. “People come to him for marriage advice like they go to any rabbi,” said Michael Berg. KLC trustee Moshe Rosenberg said: “In general, Rabbi Berg doesn’t tell people to get married or not to get married. He likes to give people a choice.”

* Why, his critics want to know, has Berg invested at least $3 million of KLC funds in Artra Group Inc., a struggling Chicago-based holding company for costume jewelry and packaging? Michael Berg said that investment on behalf of the center is legitimate.

* In documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service, several former congregants have challenged the KLC version of its IRS statements. Michael Berg said that his father lives a frugal, peripatetic existence, drawing only a $60,000 annual salary. With tired familiarity, the polite and engaging 24-year-old rejects his father’s critics. “How can they be so negative if they haven’t met Rabbi Berg?”

L.A.’s Kabbalah Learning Center seems to attract many searching Jews, but criticism of it is widespr Read More »