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Thursday, August 31, 2017

The night Elvis died

Gina Nahai

My mother’s sister and her husband met us at the airport and drove us to the Holiday Inn on Sunset Boulevard near the 405 Freeway. We already had a house in L.A., purchased a few years earlier, but you don’t move in to a new place after dark, or buy a car, or make any major decisions — it can be bad luck — so we stayed at the hotel instead.

In the morning, my aunt and uncle strode into the room — he lighthearted and ebullient as a kid on a new bicycle, she forever playing the part of the adult. The sun was out and the freeway beneath our window went on endlessly to the north and south.

The only thing wrong with the world was that Elvis had died during the night.

That was 40 years ago this past Aug. 16. My parents had planned to leave Iran for many years before the revolution. They were barely out of their 20s then, too young to really plan for their future. They had come because the present here was more appealing to them than what they had in Iran.

My aunt and uncle had been living in Pasadena for a good many years. After we moved here they became — and remain — our family’s favorite people. They introduced us to the precious few other Iranian Jews already living in Los Angeles. The women took English language classes together; they had dinner parties all the time, and invited all the families. On Saturdays, they met at Clifton’s Cafeteria in the Century Square Shopping Center in Century City and ate chicken potpie and green Jell-O. On Sunday nights, they all went to Ships Coffee Shop at Wilshire and Westwood, with a toaster at every table and coffee refills all night.

They told my parents where to buy furniture for the house, which dentist to go to. Someone recommended a cleaning lady — a statuesque Chinese woman with kabuki-type hair and makeup who insisted we call her Auntie Mary. She was allergic to dust and detergents, so she stayed in the kitchen having Persian tea and cake while the rest of us ran the vacuum cleaner and did the dishes. She finally quit when one of us forgot to called her “Auntie” one too many times.

It’s different, you see, when you leave before you have to. The vast majority of Iranians in this country, and certainly Iranian Jews, escaped the place in 1978 and thereafter. In those early years after the revolution, most of them would have liked nothing more than to safely return to their previous lives.

But for those families, like ours, who had gone looking for the gambit; who had been brave or reckless, visionary or desperate enough to take that great, terrifying leap of faith — for them every day in this new home was a test of the correctness of their decision. So we tried. We tried to get it right, to leave behind our old selves, to shed the shadow of our grandparents. Mostly, I think, we tried very hard to hold on to the optimism that had made our move possible.

My uncle, who announced the passing of Elvis, had left Iran at age 14, alone and with no money, and somehow ended up in Los Angeles. He had worked in a hamburger joint and slept in a church attic, moved up to working the ticket booth at the horse races track, and eventually become a banker. He had married my aunt on their third date, and bought a house sight unseen, at night, only to find the next morning that the roof was missing. He palled around with B-movie stars and had his own booth at Perino’s and a fancy new Cadillac with a permanent Barry Manilow/Neil Diamond soundtrack. Every third sentence he uttered was a variation of, “Don’t worry about it; it’ll work out.”

You have to have grown up in an old world to understand the potency and strangeness of those words. It’s a common saying here, but for my parents and the other pre-revolution settlers in Los Angeles who came from a culture where worry was a given, sorrow was hereditary and every misstep would follow you to the grave, a carefree mind and the ability to believe that things will indeed work out were extraordinary concepts.

For a while there, before life’s inevitable disappointments evoked the old habits, I think we got it right. That hollowness you feel in your chest and stomach as the plane lifts off and begins to ascend, that lightheadedness of the first few seconds of awakening from a beautiful dream before reality sets in — I believe my parents did get a good taste of that dizzying euphoria of weightlessness in those first few years after the death of Elvis. I know they managed to give their children some of that native commodity of this new world, that confidence that the present can be better, the grass can be greener, if only you dare follow that highway beneath your window.


GINA NAHAI’s most recent novel is “The Luminous Heart of Jonah S.”

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Letters to the Editor: Drug addiction, Jews who support Trump, Ben-Gurion and reparations

Drug Addiction and the Damage Done

Your opioid epidemic article did not tell us anything we don’t already know (“Even Nice Jewish Boys and Girls Are Caught in Opioid Epidemic,” Aug. 18). We are losing our children daily to substance abuse. It was not a solution-based article.

I’ve been sober 11-plus years because of a higher power and a daily regimen focused on recovery. And still, there is no guarantee I will remain sober. Scary, right? But it’s the truth. I relapsed after 10-plus years of sobriety.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, there are no concrete solutions to the drug problem, but our schools need to be more aware of what’s going on and become more involved in helping, instead of doing nothing.

Stuart Feldman via email


Why Some Jews Still Support Trump

I remember being told in cheder in Newark, N.J., by teachers who had numbers tattooed on their arms that some Jews had supported Hitler.

I had the same sense of “What were they thinking?” that I do now when I read about Jews still supporting Trump (“For the Trumpteenth Time: We’ve Got His Back,” Aug. 25).

How can any rational Jew support a political leader who fails to condemn (and don’t tell me that he did condemn them, when his spontaneous remarks showed his true feelings, which his later prepared comments tried to hide) neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan?

Daniel Fink, Beverly Hills


Ben-Gurion Was Right About Reparations

Shmuel Rosner wrote that “David Ben-Gurion cast aside morality as prime minister when he decided to accept reparations from Germany. … To his fierce opponent Menachem Begin, this was the beginning of absolution for the Germans” (“Israel’s Response to Charlottesville: On Morality, Leadership and Unity,” Aug. 25).

History has vindicated Ben-Gurion. Germany has rejoined the family of nations, denounced its Nazi past, raised two generations with democratic and humanistic values, supported Israel and its own growing Jewish community. And if the first reparations were the beginning of absolution, 65 years later we can be certain Germany has sought no such absolution — it is committed to remembering the Holocaust, including denouncing Nazis and neo-Nazis — but it has demonstrated the power and possibility of repentance.

Ben-Gurion’s decision was not only pragmatic, nor even desperate, but visionary and brilliant — the truest form of morality.

Rosner owes Ben-Gurion’s memory an apology. As he often did, Begin fiercely expressed Jewish anger but offered no way forward.

As to the rest of his argument, if I understand Rosner correctly, the morally courageous prime minister of Israel is right to remain closed-mouth in the face of neo-Nazism as long as it is good for Israel. 

So much for Zionism being a bulwark against anti-Semitism.  

I await the prime minister’s new campaign ad for Donald Trump: He’s bad for Jews, but he’s good for Israel.

Michael Berenbaum, Director of Sigi Ziering Institute, American Jewish University


Constitutional Rights Cover Us All

I agree with President Donald Trump that there was wrong on both sides and, as much as some hate the beliefs of the far right and, I equally, the far left, both sides have the right in this great country to march and express their views without being attacked. As the Supreme Court has ruled over and over: Hate speech is protected speech. Unfortunately, it seems to me the Journal has forgotten that the laws that allow it to print its brand of “fake” news also protect Nazis and the KKK. If we infringe on one group’s rights, we eventually infringe on all. 

David Mayer, Los Angeles

One group to the left of me. The other group on the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle: a Jew.

Kati Baltimore via email

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Here’s how to fix the Jewish community

Today, the collective strength of the Jewish people may be greater than at any other time in our history. We have an independent Jewish state with a booming economy and one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The American Jewish community has reached the heights of success in politics, business, arts and culture, and science, becoming perhaps the most influential Jewish diaspora community in history.

Yet, despite our strength, the challenges facing global Jewry are growing and multifaceted—in some cases posing an existential danger to our future as a people. Anti-Semitism is rapidly rising on the right and the left. Assimilation and intermarriage threaten to dramatically shrink the global Jewish population in the diaspora. The now infamous Pew Study, titled “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” found that approximately two-thirds of American Jewish millennials do not feel a strong connection to Israel, and a recent Brandeis University found that fewer than half of Jewish college students could correctly answer even the most basic questions about Israel. The American Jewish community and Israel—the two great centers of global Jewish life—face an increasingly complex and in some cases, strained relationship.

In the last decade, a new force has come roaring into the Jewish world that has shown the potential to be a game-changer in advancing solutions to each of these challenges: the Israeli-American community. As an American organization rooted in a profound and rich connection to Israel, the Israeli-American Council (IAC) is able to unlock many of the doors that separate Jewish Americans from their connection to Israel, through a multifaceted and rich concept we call “Israeliness.”

Israeliness incorporates many elements. It’s Israeli culture, Jewish values, and Hebrew, the language of our religion for thousands of years. It’s tremendous pride in Jewish tradition, our history, and Israel’s ability to overcome overwhelming odds—from wars and political conflicts, to a lack of wealth and natural resources. It’s the courage to take risks, learn from failures, and move on to success. It’s a deep belief in Zionism. And it’s a commitment to the idea “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh lazeh,” “All the people of Israel are responsible for one another.” Sharing our rich tradition with the next generation will further help them connect to Israel.

How can Israeli-Americans and the broader idea of Israeliness be leveraged to advance solutions for the Jewish people? This is the question that Rabbi Ed Feinstein, Jewish Journal/Tribe Media President David Suissa, and I will discuss at an upcoming panel on Sept. 6.

There are at least three ways that Israeli-Americans and Israeliness can be—and already are—game-changers.

First, Israeli-Americans can be leveraged as a bridge—both within the American Jewish community and between Israel and the American Jewish Community. The fact that we speak both “Israeli” and “American” has positioned us as a translator and facilitator of dialogue between the two communities. A prime example of this is the IAC National conference in Washington, D.C., an event where top civic, political, and business leaders from both countries come together every year.

Too many within the Jewish community take news media about Israel at face value— internalizing the negative stereotypes about our homeland and the Israeli people—which often leads to an inability to see the necessity of a Jewish state. Israelis then react to Jewish Americans’ disregard in a typically Israeli way: declaring that they do not need Jewish Americans and stubbornly refusing to engage in a gentler, American-style discourse. Israeli-Americans can bridge the gap.

Second, Israeliness can be used as a tool for the crucial task of engaging the next generation. Israeliness opens up a whole new world for young American Jews, many of whom have been conditioned to believe that Jewish identity must be centered on attending Jewish schools and synagogues. In discovering the people and culture of their homeland, young Jews are able to discover a piece of themselves.

The great success of many programs, such as Masa Israel, Gap Year, and in particular, Birthright—with its half a million alumni—illustrate how visiting, exploring and experiencing the people Israel makes a transformative difference in their lives. The best possible follow-up for these programs is to help their alumni reconnect with Israeliness through integration with the Israeli-American community.

Furthermore, Israel’s success is rooted in the young country’s willingness to take risks—in an understanding that failure is nothing shameful, but merely an opportunity to learn and move on to your next success. Being able to bounce back after failures is a crucial skill for young people to develop to handle life’s many challenges. The next generation can learn much from Israeliness.

Third, Israeli-Americans and Israeliness can be a powerful tool in fighting anti-Semitism and the BDS Movement. Israeli-Americans defend Israel by drawing on personal experience. Moreover, Israeliness means being proud to be who we are—and having the courage to stand up for what we believe in. We must communicate to the next generation that tremendous pride and willingness to stand up, speak out, and when necessary, fight back to protect ourselves when our faith, our values and our homeland are under attack.

The challenges facing the Jewish community are complex. Israeliness is a secret sauce that can help ensure that our people will not only survive, but continue to thrive.

Adam Milstein is the Chairman of the Israeli-American Council, a real estate entrepreneur, and the president of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation. 

On Sept. 6, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, David Suissa, and Adam Milstein will discuss the untapped potential of Israeliness on September 6, 2017 at 7:00pm at the IAC. This event is free for IAC Supporters and those registered to attend the IAC National Conference. The general public can buy pre-sale tickets for $10 at http://ift.tt/2wm8Yzc, or pay $15 at the door.

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Wednesday, August 30, 2017

How we should teach about Israel

As a Jewish educator deeply committed to religious Zionism, what keeps me up at night is the fact that Jewish American youth are both disengaged from, and ignorant about, Israel.

The numbers that tell the story of this divide are as startling as they are troubling. For one, Alex Pomson’s research shows that Jewish high school students’ connection to Israel generally is not grounded in knowledge of contemporary Israeli life. Some 57 percent of students said they had little to no confidence discussing contemporary Israeli culture, and only 18 percent of students responded that they were very confident to discuss daily life in Israel. This lack of knowledge about Israel is compounded by the fact that young American Jews are significantly less emotionally connected to Israel. A Pew Research Center Report in 2013 found  that among Jews between the ages of 18 and 29, just 32 percent said that caring about Israel is essential to their Jewish identity; whereas 53 percent of Jews over age 65 said Israel is central to their Jewish identity.

So, what can we do to ensure that our young Jewish-American students are more informed, connected and committed to Israel? How can we educate and enlighten our students to cultivate a passionate relationship with Zionism without sacrificing empathy for the other?

With the school year upon us, I want to offer three ideas on how Jewish educators can bridge this divide.    

1. Schools need to make the bold decision to spend time learning about Israel. Time is a precious commodity in Jewish day schools, yeshivot and summer camps, where educators face the daunting task of choosing what to teach. Yet, the question of Israel education is one that depends on the institution’s overall educational and religious approach.

For instance, some schools may choose to provide a Gemara-rich diet to their student body. There certainly is value in this, but the upshot to this way of thinking is that it becomes what we at Shalhevet High School call a “religious Atkins” of sorts and does not allow for students to have a well-balanced Jewish educational diet. If one’s mission statement describes the school as “religious Zionist,” it needs to mean much more than dancing on Yom HaAtzmaut. It means carving space within our busy days to teach Zionism, its history, its issues, its meaning, its implications in depth. It means learning about the richness of modern Israel and the complexities of having a modern, democratic Jewish state.

2. We also need to actively engage with Israel. This modern miracle is about so much more than the Arab-Israeli conflict, and we should stop boiling down Israel to “conflict.” Students should spend time studying the religious implications and tension points of the state. We need to develop an intimate, I-Thou relationship with Israel.

Israel education ought to be about civic engagement with the state, where our students have an authentic relationship with her songs, culture and overall society. For example, students should spend time unpacking the lyrics of “Matanot Kitanot by Rami Kleinstein and consider its relationship to Natan Alterman’s “Magash Hakesef.”They should learn about the food, the army culture and the interests of their Israeli peers. We ought to enter our students into the same conversation as Israelis so that our students can empathize with our brothers and sisters across the Atlantic.

3. We also cannot sideline the Arab-Israeli and Palestinian-Israeli conflict and we must withstand the pressure to reduce this complex situation down to advocacy one-liners. Although advocacy surely has a place in the Jewish community, we need to give our students more credit than this without whitewashing our history. Schools often hear from alumni who have spent substantial time in Israel or on American college campuses that the mythologized version of Israel they were taught was a lie. A lament we often hear from alumni from various Jewish day schools is that the current norm of Israel education romanticizes Israel.

If these institutions exposed students to some of Israel’s real struggles, those students would be better equipped to engage in tough debates on campus. Students sniff out the intellectual dishonesty when we embark on a defensive project regarding every single decision made by Israel. There are multiple perspectives within Israel’s own Knesset. Let’s teach those perspectives and let’s honor our students by having the courage to not hide ideas and perspectives from them.

The time for a proper Israel education is now. We need to teach that a nuanced approach and an affection for Zionism are not mutually exclusive. We need to teach that “my” perspective on Israel is not the only one, that being united about Israel does not mean having one uniform view of Israel.

Let’s push our organizations, schools and shuls to have a mature view of Israel and to spend time learning about Israel, struggling with Israel, wrestling with Israel, and yes, loving Israel. This is what it has always meant to be part of the Jewish story.


Noam L. Weissmanis the principal of Shalhevet High School and wrote his dissertation on Israel education at USC.

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The Basel Congress’ unexpected result, 120 years later

One hundred and twenty years ago, on Sept. 3, 1897, a Viennese journalist named Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary: “In Basel I founded the Jewish state.” He then added a curious note: “If I were to say this out loud today, everybody would laugh at me. In five years, perhaps, but certainly in fifty, everybody will agree.”

This was two days after he returned from Basel, Switzerland, where, against all odds, he managed to put together the First Zionist Congress — the event that symbolizes the Jewish claim to self-determination.

Herzl had good reasons to feel elated about Basel: 208 delegates from 17 countries, the elite of European press, all dressed in solemn tuxedos, packed Basel’s casino to discuss his proposed solution to the “Jewish Problem.”

For three days, delegates listened to fiery speeches, debated and finally came up with as clear a definition of Zionism as one can possibly articulate: “Zionism seeks to establish for the Jewish people a publically recognized, legally secured homeland in Palestine.”

Sure enough, upon returning to his office at the Neue Freie Presse newspaper in Vienna, Herzl’s co-workers greeted him with obvious mockery, as the “future head of state.” But that was the least of the problems Herzl had to face; skepticism, sarcasm and opposition loomed all over the world. The Vatican issued a letter protesting the “projected occupation of the Holy Places by the Jews.” (Sound familiar?)

The Ottoman authorities had their suspicions aroused and began to restrict the manner in which Jews were acquiring land in Palestine, especially near Jerusalem.

But the worst opposition came from fellow Jews. Orthodox rabbis condemned Herzl’s attempt to hasten God’s plan of redemption, while Reform rabbis saw it as interference with their vision of becoming a moral light unto the nations by mingling among those nations.

Baron Edmond de Rothschild, the French philanthropist who supported Jewish agricultural communities in Palestine since the 1880s, was adamantly against efforts to obtain international legitimization of Jewish national claims. He feared (justifiably) that such efforts would lead to tougher Ottoman restrictions, and that Jews like him would be subject to charges of dual loyalty.

Ahad Ha’am, the most influential Jewish intellectual of the time, wrote about his time in Basel that he felt  “like a mourner at a wedding feast.” His motto was, “Israel will not be redeemed by diplomats, but by prophets.” He could not forgive Herzl for luring the world jury with false hopes of a diplomatic solution.

But the cleavage between Herzl and Ahad Ha’am was much deeper. Ahad Ha’am claimed it is futile and possibly harmful to argue the Jewish case in diplomatic courts when the Jewish people are spiritually unprepared for the task. What must be done first, he wrote, is “to liberate our people from its inner slavery, from the meekness of the spirit that assimilation has brought upon us.”

Herzl, on the other hand, understood that the very act of bringing the Jewish question to the international arena, regardless of its outcome, would change the cultural ills of the Jewish masses and rally them to the cause.

In retrospect, he was right. There were several forerunners of Jewish self-determination (for example, Moses Hess, Yehuda Alkalai, Leon Pinsker, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and Ahad Ha’am himself), but their writings were directed inward,  toward the intellectual cliques in the Jewish shtetl; their overall impact was therefore meager.

Bringing the Jewish claim to an international court created the cultural transformation that Ahad Ha’am yearned for — the shtetl Jew began to take his own problem seriously and the Zionist program became one of his viable options.

History books make a special point of noting that Herzl’s predictions were miraculously accurate. Israel was declared a state on May 14, 1948, 50 years and eight months after Herzl wrote: “In Basel I founded the Jewish state.”

However, I believe Herzl in effect founded the Jewish state much earlier. True, Herzl’s specific plan to persuade the Ottoman sultan to allocate land for a Jewish state was sheer lunacy and led to painful disappointments. But transforming Jewish statehood into an item on the international political agenda was a monumental achievement — it maintains this position today.

Moreover, the idea that Jews are reclaiming sovereignty by right, not for favor, completely changed the way Jews began to view their standing in the cosmos. It transformed the Jew from an object of history to a shaper of history.

This new self-image was the engine that propelled history toward a Jewish statehood already in the early 1900s. The 40,000 Jews who made up the Second Aliyah (1904-1914) were different in spirit and determination from the 35,000 Jews who came earlier with the First Aliyah (1882-1903). At their core, they knew they were building a model sovereign nation and that Zionism is the most just and noble endeavor in human history. They established kibbutzim, formed self-defense organizations, founded the town of Tel Aviv and turned Hebrew into a practical spoken language. This spirit of hope, purpose and immediacy emanated from the Basel Congress, not from the utopian “in time to come” Zionism of Ahad Ha’am.

The diplomatic efforts that led to the Balfour Declaration and the subsequent ideological immigration of the Third Aliyah (1919-1923) all were direct products of the Zionist movement and made statehood practically inevitable.

The miracle of Israel was planted indeed in 1897.

If I had to choose the single most significant impact that the Basel Congress has had on our lives here, in 2017 Los Angeles, I would name one forgotten statement that Herzl made in his first speech at the Basel Congress. On the morning of Aug. 29, 1897, after 15 minutes of wild cheering, Herzl took the stage and said, “Zionism is a homecoming to the Jewish fold even before it becomes a homecoming to the Jewish land.”

As I observe how the miracle of Israel is becoming the most powerful uniting force among our divided communities, and as I witness the excitement of our children, grandchildren and college students as they internalize the relevance of Israel to their identity as Jews, Herzl’s statement about “homecoming to the Jewish fold“ stands out perhaps as more visionary than his prediction about Israeli statehood. It was the future of the Jewish people, not just of Israel, that was forged there in Basel, 120 years ago.


JUDEA PEARL is Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

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News unfolds at a fever pitch

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that a disaster or tragedy strikes so often just before the High Holy Days. The Munich massacre, 9/11, Katrina, now Harvey — is that the Universe’s way of driving home the words of the Unetanah Tokef prayer?   

On Rosh Hashanah it will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur it will be sealed —
how many will pass from the earth
and how many will be created;
who will live and who will die;
who will die at his predestined time and who before his time;
who by water and who by fire,
who by sword and who by beast,
who by famine and who by thirst,
who by war and who by plague,
who by strangling and who by stoning.
Who will rest and who will wander,
who will live in harmony and who will be harried,
who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer,
who will be impoverished and who will be enriched,
who will be degraded and who will be exalted.
But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity annul the severe Decree.

It could be that August and September were as tough on our ancestors as on us: months when the earth burns under unrelenting sun or floods in Noah-like storms. So they figured God was telling them it was time to think existential thoughts.

This year, I was laid low in August. I went home after work on Aug. 22 feeling a bit off, and woke up the next day as if I had just gone 10 rounds with McGregor and Mayweather. Not one or the other — both. Every year I get a flu shot, so it’s been years since I experienced a full viral knockout. This one caught me with my guard down and laid me out for a week.

I was still able to read, keep up with work via email, catch up on shows I’d been missing (“Red Oaks,” “Fleabag”— both engaging, almost flu-worthy), and, of course — of course — keep up on the news. Because I rarely left our spare bedroom for fear of being Patient Zero to the rest of the household, I subjected myself to an unhealthy amount of news.

On the night of Aug. 25, before Hurricane Harvey made landfall, Hurricane Trump pardoned former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The 85-year-old disgraced convict was one of those people I always suspected karma or the law would catch up with, and it was a good day when he was found guilty. Not for abusing and humiliating prisoners, targeting random Latinos for arrest, or trafficking in racist lies against a sitting president — Arpaio was convicted of contempt of court. Just like many gangsters, it was the stuff he never thought twice about that took him down.

The lesson of the High Holy Days is that redemption can come with repentance. But President Donald Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe not because he showed remorse or repentance, but precisely because he didn’t. By standing up to minorities, courts and critics of the left and right, Arpaio made himself a hero to Trump. If he had apologized, he’d be doing time.

Repentance, says the High Holy Day prayer, can save our souls. How sad we have a president who last week taught this lesson to our children: Repentance is for losers.

Then came the flood. CNN told the story of a couple who slept on their car roof for two nights in the pouring rain, inches above the floodwaters, until rescuers arrived. The rescuers were volunteers who had towed their boat from two hours away just to help out. President Trump’s response was helpful and efficient. The flood was unrelenting, but so was the relief.

Nothing can stop Americans from springing into action to help or donate to those in immediate need. But that same wondrous empathy goes dormant if the emergency is less than in our face. We’ll carry a cold baby over our heads to safety, but vote for the guy who wants to take health care away from that baby’s mom. We’ll dive into floodwaters for search and rescue, but refuse to fund the science showing the link between a 1-in-500-year flood and climate change. We’ll donate blankets and food to a teenager in a relief center, then support the guy who wants to deport him.

Charity, says the Unetanah Tokef, can avert the severe decree, but how do we get people to expand their idea of charity?

I’m not neglecting the other news — Jared Kushner took a field trip to the Middle East; the Israel Defense Forces demolished two Palestinian schools on the eve of the new school year, alleging they lacked permits; there was some boxing match. Then, just as my fever broke and the flu rented an Airbnb inside my lungs, North Korea shot a missile over Japan and North Korean President Kim Jong Un promised the next one would be in the direction of the U.S. territory of Guam. After that, your guess is as good as mine. What can be done?

Prayer, says the Unetanah Tokef, will “avert the severe decree.” Come the High Holy Days, I recommend it. And a flu shot.


ROB ESHMAN is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email
him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism
and @RobEshman.

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Rob Eshman, long-time Jewish Journal Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, to leave post for writing projects

Rob Eshman

Rob Eshman, longtime editor-in-chief and publisher of the Jewish Journal, has announced he will be leaving his position on September 26.

Eshman, who has written and sold two movie projects while at the Journal, said that after 23 years at the paper, he wants to switch the focus of his career to full-time writing. He will be working on a food book—Eshman writes the blog “Foodaism”—and another movie project.

“I couldn’t be prouder of what the Journal has become,” Eshman said. “And I am honored and grateful to have been a part of it. I will always love this paper, its staff and this community.”

Peter Lowy, chairman of TRIBE Media, which produces the Jewish Journal, said that current President David Suissa will be stepping into Eshman’s role.

“Rob has been integral to the Journal and the Jewish community,” Lowy said. “He brought curiosity, intellect, and a sense of humor to his work.  Most of all he cares passionately about journalism and Judaism—and he showed that every week.”

Lowy said Eshman approached him in late July to begin discussing the move, and together with Suissa they worked toward a smooth transition.

“What makes the Journal great is a great staff, its board, and the community we serve,” Eshman said. “Those will remain the constants of the Jewish Journal.”

The Journal combines news of the 600,000-person LA Jewish community –the third largest in the world after New York and Tel Aviv–with commentary, features and national and international news.  It publishes 50,000 print copies each week in Los Angeles, and updates jewishjournal.com, one of the world’s most widely-read Jewish news sites, throughout the day.

In 1992, Eshman arrived at the Journal after working as a freelance journalist in San Francisco and Jerusalem. The paper’s founding editor, Gene Lichtenstein, hired him as a reporter. At the time the Journal was a print-only publication. The Journal was independently incorporated but distributed via the Federation membership list.

Eshman became Managing Editor in 1997. In 2000, then-Chairman Stanley Hirsch named him Editor-in-Chief.

As editor, Eshman expanded the reach of jewishjournal.com from 4000 unique visitors to upwards of 4 million today. He brought on a greater mix of political and religious voices. He also overhauled the print circulation model, completely dropping Federation distribution and making the Journal a free weekly, distributed throughout the city. Then-chairman Irwin Field was instrumental in seeing these changes through, Eshman said.

“I wanted to reach every Jew,” Eshman said, “especially those who weren’t connected to the organized community. I realized a good Jewish paper was the easiest way into Jewish connection, and I wanted to make it even easier.” 

In 2009, the Journal, like most newspapers in the country, fell into dire financial straits. Eshman turned to Lowy, CEO of Westfield Corp. to rescue the company and help steer it through the double blow that the Internet and the recession dealt the industry. With a handful of other philanthropists, Lowy formed a new board and came on as Chairman. A year later, Eshman tapped Suissa, formerly the founder of Suissa/Miller Advertising and editor and publisher of OLAM Magazine, to run the Journal’s business side. At that time, Eshman was named Publisher as well.

In the process, Eshman chose a new name for the company –TRIBE—to reflect the its growing multi-media nature and broader mission. These moves ensured the paper’s survival, and eventual growth.

“David Suissa brought his passion and creative genius to the paper, and has been an invaluable partner,” Eshman said.

While Eshman leans left and Suissa right, the two wrote often-opposing columns and the Journal came even more to reflect—and combine—strongly divergent voices that would otherwise stay secluded in separate media bubbles.

During the 2016 Iran nuclear deal, which Eshman supported and Suissa opposed, their ability to spar publicly while maintaining a close friendship and partnership drew media attention.

L.A. Jewish Journal’s heads spar over Iran deal, but stay friendly,” read a headline in the Times of Israel.

Under Eshman, the Journal has won numerous press and community awards. It has expanded across other media platforms, including video. Its livecast of the Nashuva congregation’s Kol Nidre service draws 75,000 viewers each year, making it the world’s most-watched High Holiday service.

Asked to name highlights of his tenure, Eshman pointed to two. In 2015, Islamic terrorists in Paris massacred the staff at Charlie Hebdo magazine for printing cartoons they found offensive. The Journal renamed the Jan. 16 masthead of the paper, “Jewish Hebdo,” and ran the offending cartoons inside.

A year later, Eshman oversaw the first poll of American Jewish opinion during the Iran nuclear deal. It found most American Jews supported a deal that the vast majority of Jewish organizations, as well as Israel’s Prime Minister, opposed. The results reverberated internationally, and the White House acknowledged the Jewish Journal as “One of the most widely read Jewish publications online.”  

“To go from a small locally-circulated newspaper to a media company that reaches millions around the world, and has an impact on the great debates of our time while still serving its core readers with the kind of independent journalism that serves and builds community–that’s very gratifying,” said Eshman. “But it wasn’t at all just me. It was us.”

Eshman credits his past managing editors Amy Klein and Howard Blume, former executive editor Susan Freudenheim, and current managing editor Ryan Smith—as well as a slew of talented writers—as instrumental to the Journal’s editorial accomplishments.

Eshman, 57, is a native of Encino, CA and a graduate of Dartmouth College. He is married to Rabbi Naomi Levy, an author and founder of Nashuva. They have two children, Adi and Noa.

During his tenure at the Journal, Eshman, a member of the Writers Guild of America, wrote and sold a feature film screenplay and a multi-part television project. He also created the food blog, “Foodaism,” named one of L.A.’s best food blogs, and created and taught “Food, Media and Culture” at USC Annenberg School of Communication, where he will continue to teach. He has served on several non-profit boards, including, at present, The Miracle Project.

“We wish Rob well and look forward to an exciting future with David building off the base that Rob and his team has built,” said Lowy.

Eshman pointed out that there has been at least one Jewish newspaper in Los Angeles since the first one was founded in 1870. 

“I was so honored to serve this community and be part of that history,” he said. “And it goes on.”

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Arpaio pardon is a travesty of justice

Since biblical times, reverence for the rule of law has fueled our community. When Moses was given the law on Mount Sinai and then presented it to our ancestors, a great tradition was born, one from which a profound adherence to justice has never wavered. President Donald J. Trump’s pardon of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio breaks from the basic tenets of democracy and the premise and promise of our nation’s history.

The president, of course, has the constitutional authority to issue such a pardon. But we argue that he cannot do so with moral impunity, and his actions must not be met with silence — again — on the part of Jewish communal institutions, which too frequently have chosen fiscal discretion over ethical valor.

This pardon, issued on the eve of a massive natural and human catastrophe, is but the latest in a series of assaults on civil liberties, civil rights and a free press. It is but another example of the president’s evident disregard for the rule of law and his willingness to reward political friends despite their history of attacks on our constitutional protections. Accordingly, when a symbol of racism is honored by this administration, which seems so intent on dividing rather than uniting our country, we raise our voices in protest, in the name of a Jewish community that is increasingly vocal in its criticism of this administration.

What Arpaio did was to engage in evil and anarchy. He used his position of authority as sheriff toward unconstitutional, racially discriminatory ends. The Phoenix New Times reported that, for the past two decades, many judges have criticized Arpaio’s practices as being “unconstitutional and abusive” and in violation of a range of antidiscrimination laws.   Arpaio’s racial preferences happened to disfavor Latinos who, irrespective of whether they were suspected of committing a crime, were detained in what Arpaio called “concentration camps.” Arpaio’s sinister conduct and the president’s sanctioning of that conduct erode the very foundation of our Constitution.

This travesty of justice and its implications for our democracy should send shivers up and down the spine of every American Jew. 

This is not a subtle point. The president of the United States blessed a sheriff’s refusal to accept that the Constitution required him to keep his racial prejudices and categorizations at bay and, further, blessed that sheriff’s refusal to accept the legitimacy of a court order. A sheriff endangered and harmed the very people he was entrusted to protect, and this year he was found guilty of contempt of court. And for this, Trump called Arpaio “a great American patriot” and rewarded him with a presidential pardon. Republicans and Democrats alike certainly can agree that a person in a position of authority who, as Arpaio has done, degrades and humiliates inmates, places inmates in subhuman conditions of extreme heat and extreme cold without adequate supplies of water and food, and is racially biased as he executes his job, is anything but a patriot. Alas, he is a criminal. And by pardoning such a criminal, the president has abused his power, thereby promoting division, bigotry and cronyism.

This travesty of justice and its implications for our democracy should send shivers up and down the spine of every American Jew. 

In addition, this pardon sets a dangerous precedent for other reasons. It could frustrate the investigations of the president and his administration that are now underway, if witnesses and persons of interest believe they need not cooperate because the president could absolve them of criminal culpability by pardoning them. It could keep the American people from knowing the extent of possible abuses of power and obstructions of justice. Although James Madison wrote that abuse of the authority to pardon would be grounds for impeachment, we fear the opposite — that this president could use it to preserve himself in office.

It must offend our core values as Americans and as Jews that this president has evidently bartered fundamental constitutional rights and protections for personal political gain.

The pardon Trump issued — late on a Friday afternoon as Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas — usurps a system that protects all of us. Left unprotested and unchecked, this pardon threatens to wash away our history, to undermine our democracy, to upend due process and to erode the rule of law.  And, as Jews, this disregard of the rule of law should bear special meaning.

The Hebrew prophets warned against the absolute rule and rapacity of kings. The people ignored them in the name of political convenience, and suffered the consequences. We refuse to ignore this travesty of a pardon, which is no less than an attack on justice itself.


JANICE KAMENIR-REZNIKis co-chair of Jews United for Democracy and Justice (JUDJ); and MEL LEVINE, a former congressman, and ZEV YAROSLAVSKY,a former Los Angeles County supervisor, are members of the executive committee of JUDJ, a grass-roots movement of citizens dedicated to the principles of Torah, justice and democracy.

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Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Billy Joel wore a yellow Jewish star. Thanks, but the trend should stop there.

Few artifacts of the Holocaust move me like the yellow star. Homely and seemingly innocuous, they sit in museum cases either by themselves or still attached to a jacket or blouse, the stitching rough and the lettering surprisingly crude. They are almost comically, cartoonishly blunt, a child’s idea of how to single out and shame an enemy. And in their bluntness and homeliness they make vivid the obscenity that was Nazism, the way a single bloodstained feather on the sidewalk conjures a vision of the violence that produced it.

So it was more than a little shocking to see Billy Joel wear a yellow star on his jacket during a concert a week after the violent white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville. After all, Joel is not the first artist who comes to mind when you think of bold or provocative political gestures. It’s been his luck and his curse to be wildly popular while rarely courting controversy or inspiring deep critical analysis or respect. The critic Chuck Klosterman wrote famously that Joel “has no extrinsic coolness. If cool were a color, it would be black — and Joel would be kind of a burnt orange.”

His wearing the star should have been the wrong thing to do in so many ways. Jewish groups are always worried about appropriations of the Holocaust and carefully designate the boundaries of acceptable Holocaust analogies (that is, none). The same week that Joel wore his yellow star during the encore at one of his regular Madison Square Garden gigs, the fashion house Miu Miu discontinued a clothing line that featured a yellow star that was only reminiscent of what the Jews were forced to wear (the World Jewish Congress had complained). Earlier this month, the Donald Trump mouthpiece Jeffrey Lord lost his commentary job on CNN essentially for calling one of Trump’s liberal critics a Nazi (and presumably casting Trump’s defenders in the role of the Nazis’ victims).

But if any Jewish group had a complaint about Joel’s gesture, I haven’t heard it. The singer’s gesture came across as sincere and pointed, not tasteless.

Although he didn’t say why he wore the star, his ex-wife, model Christie Brinkley, took to social media to write that the star symbolized the “painful, no excruciating, memories of loved ones who wore that star to their death.”

“Thank you, Billy for reminding people what was … so it may never ever be again,” she added.

Although Joel has never made much of his Jewish background, he has talked of his father, a German-born Jew who, according to Joel’s biographer, had vivid memories of the Hitler Youth and SS training near his childhood home in Bavaria, and who lost relatives in the Shoah.

Joel’s gesture was more interesting, and more meaningful, precisely because his Jewish involvement, as he once put it, peaked at his bris. The star seemed to be saying to the neo-Nazis who gathered in Charlottesville — and the political figures, ahem, who seemed unable to fully condemn them — that even he, a secular celebrity and multimillionaire, would still have been a victim of their perverse ideology. The Nazis made the Jews wear the yellow star so they couldn’t hide. The stars on Joel’s lapel and back seemed to say “I’m not hiding. I can’t hide. Come and get me.”

Nev Schulman

Nev Schulman wearing a yellow star at the MTV Video Music Awards, Aug. 27, 2017. (Rich Fury/Getty Images)

Contrast that with another celebrity’s decision to wear the star this week. When Nev Schulman, star of MTV’s sort-of reality show “Catfish,” wore a yellow Star of David at MTV’s video awards show on Sunday, the gesture, while well meaning, seemed forced. I don’t think anybody wants the yellow star to become this year’s AIDS ribbon or Livestrong bracelet. The wearing of the yellow star seems the kind of gesture that can be made once, or sparingly, lest you diminish its shock value or begin to insult the experiences and memory of the people you are purporting to identify with and honor.

But at least Schulman, like Joel, is Jewish. I can’t think of a non-Jewish celebrity who could get away with wearing the star. They’d be accused, rightly, of appropriation, the way the artist Dana Schutz was excoriated by black folk after her painting of the mutilated face of Emmett Till — a 14-year-old who was lynched by white men in Mississippi in 1955 — was shown at the Whitney Biennial in March. Critics of Schutz’s painting said the circumstances and symbolism of the black teenager’s death are still too raw to be translated by a white woman into art.

That’s not to say (or at least I wouldn’t say) that only members of a particular ethnic group or religion can depict their own suffering. (What is widely considered the most powerful anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit,” was written by a Jew, Abel Meeropol, although it was Billie Holiday who made it iconic.) But certain gestures of interethnic solidarity — “Anne Frank, c’est moi” — are landmines. Writers from William Styron to Yann Martel have been accused of cheapening the Holocaust through allegory or by universalizing the Jews’ suffering. Jewish artists like Art Spiegelman or Agnieszka Holland are given the latitude to depict the Holocaust in ways that might seem misguided or offensive if done similarly by a non-Jew. Authenticity can be earned, although it’s a lot easier to be born with it.

History’s most famous appropriation of the yellow star, meanwhile, turns out to be a myth. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum states flatly that “there is no truth” to the story that Denmark’s King Christian X wore a yellow star in solidarity with the Jews. Instead, the museum tells us, the king was heard to say to his finance minister, “Perhaps we should all wear it.”

If this were 1941, the answer would be yes — everyone should wear it. In 2017, everyone should at least imagine what it would be like to be persecuted because of their race, religion or nationality, and what it might feel like to be literally marked for death. I think that’s the kind of empathy Joel tried to inspire.

Very cool.

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A Prayer for Victims of Hurricane

Are You watching, God?
Have You seen the innocent swept away?
Are You listening God?
Have You heard their cries?

Be with them, God.
Be their strength and their comfort.
Let them know You are near.

Work through us, God.
Teach us to be Your messengers on earth.
Wake us up, God,
Show us how to help.
Use us, God, shine through us,
Inspire us to rebuild the ruins.
Open our hearts so we can comfort the mourning.
Open our arms so we can extend our hands to those in need.
Shake us out of our complacency, God.
Be our guide,
Transform our helplessness into action,
Our generous intentions into charity,
Turn the prayers of our souls into acts of kindness and compassion.</span>

Amen.

Rabbi Levy is the author of To Begin Again, Talking to God and the forthcoming Einstein and the Rabbi: Searching for the Soul (Macmillan) and the spiritual leader of Nashuva in Los Angeles.

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Monday, August 28, 2017

From Rome to Charlottesville, a statue is never just a statue

French historian Pierre Nora spent his life describing and explaining “places of memory,” sites commemorating significant moments in the history of a community that continue to resonate and transform from generation to generation.

For the French Republic, the Arc de Triomphe is one such “place of memory.” Begun by Napoleon and completed in 1836, the Arc is a place of French pride and memory, where war dead from the Revolution to the present are recalled and military triumph exalted.

Part of the power of this central place of memory resides in the architecture itself. The Arc de Triomphe is a larger version of another triumphal arch, the Arch of Titus. This arch, located on the Sacred Way in the ancient center of Imperial Rome, commemorates the victory of the Roman general Titus in the Jewish War of 66-74 C.E.

Built circa 82 C.E., its deeply carved reliefs show the general, soon emperor, parading through Rome in a triumphal procession. The spoils of the Jerusalem Temple, including its menorah, are borne aloft by Roman soldiers. Napoleon and those who came after him borrowed the design of this Roman triumphal arch, transferring the glory of Rome to the French nation.

Subsequent events have complicated the meaning of the arch, which was intended to commemorate French military prowess. French victory in World War II, for example, was hardly unequivocal. Hitler did, after all, celebrate his own victory there, and France did not exactly emerge victorious by its own power. One of the more enduring photographs of the liberation shows American troops marching under the arch.

The Arch of Titus, too, is a complex monument whose meaning shifted over time. Titus had not defeated a foreign power but put down a pesky rebellion by a small province. For Christians, the Arch became a place to celebrate Christian triumph over Judaism and the imperial power of the Catholic Church. For Jews, the arch was a symbol for their own defeat and exile, even as some took solace by claiming that its magnificence was proof that Israel had once been a “powerful nation” and formidable foe.

In modern times, the Arch of Titus became a symbol both of newfound Jewish rootedness in Europe and a place of pilgrimage where Jews, religious and not, could proclaim, “Titus you are gone, but we’re still here. Am Yisrael Chai.” Or as Freud put it, “The Jew survives it!” Where once Mussolini had celebrated the Arch as part of the heritage of fascism, Jews after the war assembled there to demand a Jewish state. Others imagined exploding the Arch and thus taking final retribution against Titus for his destruction of Jerusalem. Instead, the State of Israel took the Arch back unto itself, basing the design for its state symbol on the menorah carved into its surface.

I tell these stories of Paris, Rome and Jerusalem as parallels to debate that has been intensified following the horrible events in Charlottesville. The sculptural tributes to the Civil War, North and South, are still living places of memory. Whether in the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Brooklyn, also modeled on the Arch of Titus, or in the thousands of statues across America, the Civil War is very much with us.

Each place and time since then has thought about and reimagined the war — “The War of the Rebellion,” to many Northerners, “The War of Northern Aggression” to some in the South —  in complex and differing ways. The meanings of these places of memory are not stable. They shift and transform as essential elements of our social fabric and civil religion from generation to generation. Conflicting visions often inhere in the same sculpture, much as Jews and Classicists often “see” very different messages in the Arch of Titus.

In a pre-civil rights era, a statue of a Confederate general was seen by many as a tribute to military bravery and regional loyalty. Today the tide has shifted, and a consensus regards them as reminders of a racist past and an ignoble cause.

Tearing down a place of memory is a serious matter. The act of iconoclasm, of tearing down or transforming a place of memory, is never neutral. The list of such events is long and includes the Maccabees’ destruction of idols in the second century BCE; the midrashic account of Abraham breaking the idols; late antique Christians and Muslims smashing Roman religious images (and burning synagogues); Orthodox Christian iconophobes destroying sacred icons during the eighth century; Protestants ravaging Church art during the Reformation; Nazis torching synagogues during Kristallnacht; the Taliban destroying giant sculptures of the Buddha; or Eastern Europeans tearing down sculptures of Lenin and Stalin after the fall of communism.

Such transformations of our visual cultures mark major transitions and often culture wars. They are attempts to change our memory by obliterating or shifting what we see and expect on our social landscapes, to change how we relate to our places of memory.

The ceremonial — the liminal — moment of removing a place of memory is always laden and significant. It is a shorthand,  a summary statement and dramatic enactment of the ways that those present understand the place and encode its memory.

The march of the neo-Nazis, the texts they recited, the torches and flags they carried, and the violence they instigated are essential to understanding who these people are and what values they see in the statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville.

Reading this event, one can tease out their entire worldview — and it is horrifying.

In the meantime, each community and locale will act and respond as we play out this distressing  drama and rehearse the repercussions of this tragedy in our lives.  Some Confederate statues will come down — as in Baltimore and at the University of Texas, Austin. Some will be contextualized or moved.  Others, alas, will be left undisturbed and continue looking down on us contemptuously. These once mostly forgotten monuments are again potent and complex places of memory.

Faced with similar provocations, Talmudic rabbis would avert their eyes from Roman imperial sculpture, placed in the cities of ancient Israel as tools of control. Some would spit in their imperial faces. When they could, others would tear down the statues of the hated emperors and their colonial regime. In modern times, Jews avoided walking beneath the Arch of the Evil Titus.

Charlottesville is now a place of bloodshed. Perhaps it will begin to heal once the statue of Lee comes down. Nevertheless, the statue will continue to cast a shadow for decades, perhaps centuries, to come.

(Steven Fine is the Churgin professor of Jewish history and director of the Center for Israel Studies at Yeshiva University. He is director of the Arch of Titus Project.)

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This is your brain on Trump

Do you ever find yourself wondering what the story is with those thrilled faces behind Donald Trump at his rallies?

Unlike us, they’re not spies in a house of horrors.

That sea of Make America Great Again hats doesn’t give them the creeps. When Trump cues them, as he did in Phoenix on Aug. 22, to jeer John McCain, no ambivalence about belittling a war hero battling brain cancer tempers their contempt. When Trump whines and whinges about the coverage his Charlottesville rant got, they realize, and don’t care, that he’s rewriting what he said — they heard him confer moral equivalence on neo-Nazis and anti-Nazis. But his act entertains them, and their complicity in his edits adds a perverse pleasure to the press hatred he rouses in them.

Who are these people?

They can’t all be the 9% of Americans who believe that holding white supremacist or neo-Nazi views is acceptable.

But there’s a decent chance they’re among the 62 percent of Trump voters who think millions of illegal votes won Hillary Clinton the popular vote; the 54 percent of his voters who say the most oppressed religious group in America is Christian; the 52 percent who believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya; the 46 percent who believe Clinton ran a satanic child-sex ring in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor; the 45 percent who say the racial group facing the most discrimination in America is white people; and the 40 percent whose main source of news is Fox News.

I get that Trump’s base feels marginalized, left behind by a minimum-wage economy, powerless to control their futures, dissed by urban elites. I know why they’re fed up with partisan gridlock (I am, too); I see why they’d favor a business brand over a political name as president. They’re disgusted by the corruption in Washington (ditto); no wonder they’re drawn to a bull who’d break some china and a bully who’d break some heads.

But after seven months of lying, sleaziness, impulsiveness, laziness, vengeance, arrogance, ineptness, ignorance, nepotism, self-love and Putin love, how can 3 out of 4 Republican voters still be sticking with him? How come those faces I see on TV don’t see the nightmare I see? (I don’t mean that bizarre “Blacks for Trump” guy; I mean the rest of them.)

That’s what I’m wrestling with. Here’s what I got:

It’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because they’re human. It’s not because they’re so different from me. It’s because they’re so much like me.

But here’s what makes that hard to swallow: I can’t muster the humility to believe we’re both wrong, and I can’t summon the relativism to believe we’re both right. But believing that I’m right and they’re wrong, as I do, gets me laughably crosswise with everything I know about human cognition.

Homo sapiens have refined a method of study and understanding — science — that’s reaped powerful knowledge about the world. But the more we’ve used science to study ourselves, to probe the neurobiology of how we think and what we feel, the more inescapable it’s become that “rational” is too flattering a term to describe what makes humans tick, even when we’re at our best.

It’s not pretty to admit, but no matter how practiced we are at critical thinking, how hip we are to the social construction of reality, how savvy we are about manipulation and framing, we still conflate what we want to be true with what actually is true. Our minds unconsciously invent retroactive rationales — we reverse-engineer justifications — for what our bodies already have made us think, say and do. What we call reason turns out to be a byproduct of our addiction to feel-good chemicals like dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin.

Human cognition is a captive of confirmation bias: We seek out and believe information that reinforces what people like us already believe. Confronted by evidence that contradicts what we think, we double down; confronted by chance, we confect necessity. Instead of changing our minds, we tell ourselves stories and cling fast to our tribal identities. A universe that’s run by luck is terrifying, but a good narrative imposes causality on randomness, finds patterns in chaos and purpose in lives. Our hunger for knowledge isn’t as strong as our yearning to belong, to defeat fear and loneliness with affiliation and family. We may call the baskets into which we sort facts “true” and “false,” but at bottom they’re euphemisms for “us” and “other.”

And yet my awareness of the limitations of logic, my appreciation for the ways human hardwiring privileges feelings over facts — they don’t inoculate me from maintaining that Trump is objectively unfit for office. I can’t let neuroscience discount my claim to truth-value: I don’t think calling Trump a liar illustrates confirmation bias at work. The reason the people I see at Trump rallies on my TV screen believe the psychopath at the podium is telling the truth may well be their membership in Tribe Trump. That explanation may nudge my empathy for them upward, but it doesn’t dampen my conviction that I’m right and they’re wrong, and it doesn’t make their belief in the falsehoods he spews any less scary.

Science may be humbling, but humility doesn’t make me feel like a dope when I call out dopiness when I see it.


MARTY KAPLAN is the Norman Lear professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Reach him at martyk@jewishjournal.com.

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In the middle of our national breakdown, Harvey shows up

“I have covered as many as five wars on two continents,” Houston resident and reporter Clifford Strauss wrote on Aug. 27 in The New York Times, “but nothing prepared me for when the big story collided with me and my family.”

Strauss was recounting the harrowing experience of confronting the storm Harvey in his leafy Houston suburb of Bellaire:

“As I write this, the home that I saved my entire career to buy is flooding fast and my wife, Paola, our 12-year-old daughter, Emilie, and I have moved to the second floor with some of our valuables, food, water, and of course our three-year-old cockapoo, Sweetie, who is now barking frantically out of fear.

“It’s only a matter of time before our piano is ruined. One of our cars looks completely flooded, and the other is blocked in the garage, so it looks like we will be staying put for a while.”

Just when the country seemed to be going into meltdown after seven of the most chaotic and divisive months in U.S. presidential history, Mother Nature shows up to remind us that Donald Trump is not the only force of nature we can’t control.

I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to be trapped in an epic flood– roads turning into rivers, family rooms into shallow pools, stable lives into emotional wrecks.

The first question must surely be: Are our lives in danger?

I remember thinking about survival a few summers ago when I was awakened one Saturday morning in my Tel Aviv hotel by a shrieking siren. It was in the middle of the Gaza War. A missile had been launched by Hamas, and a man’s voice came over the hotel’s public address system telling us to proceed immediately to the bomb shelter or the emergency stairs.

During the 30 minutes or so that I huddled with a group of other hotel guests, it was the evil of human beings that was on my mind. Those missiles were coming from human beings with hatred in their hearts and Jews in their sights.

There was something oddly comforting about fighting human evil. At least we knew where they were. We could predict what they would do. We knew who to blame.

It’s much harder to blame Mother Nature. What does she know? Her earthquakes and hurricanes and monsoons and mud slides don’t come from hatred or evil. They come from the natural order of things.

But there’s a silver lining to the hell unleashed by Mother Nature. Because we can’t blame other humans for the disaster, there is a tendency to bond with other humans. In the middle of rescue missions, no one cares whether you voted for Trump or Clinton, whether you’re antifa or nationalist, whether you’re black or Hispanic or Jewish, whether you’re transgender or redneck.

When Mother Nature attacks, we are all created equal. We are all neighbors.

Krauss says his family are the lucky ones: “For the moment, I don’t think we are in any danger, and the three of us are keeping calm, gaining strength from the sturdiness of our neighbors.”

In a few months, neighborly love will probably take a back seat to finger pointing and politics. Harvey will take its place in Nature’s hall of fame of calamities, along with Katrina and many others, and we will go back to complaining about other humans.

It’s still worth noting, though, that for a brief moment at least, Harvey has brought the nation together. By storming Houston, he made us all Houstonians. He has replaced our political anger with compassion, our partisan animosity with solidarity.

Yes, it’s a shame that it takes such disasters to bring out the better angels of our nature. Maybe, then, if we want to truly honor the victims of Houston, we will allow those angels to stay awhile.

Pull quote: I can’t begin to imagine what it must feel like to be trapped in an epic flood– roads turning into rivers, family rooms into shallow pools, stable lives into emotional wrecks.

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What the Eclipse Taught Me About the High Holy Days

Every year my family and I go on a summer road trip. This year we chose to travel to Casper, Wyoming to experience the Totality of the Great American Solar Eclipse, 2 minutes and 26 seconds when the moon totally covers the sun. The temperature drops, the birds go silent, night falls, the stars come out and you have a 360 degree panorama of sunset. It is nothing less than a physical encounter with God.

We viewed the eclipse with a gathering of both veteran and amateur astronomers. These astronomers taught my family more about the universe’s planetary system in three hours than we could have otherwise learned in a lifetime.

The tension was mounting as we counted down the seconds to experience the unimaginable. With 80 percent of the sun being covered by the moon, we could feel the temperatures dropping and the wind picking up. At 90 percent we could sense the sunlight growing weaker like a winter day in the late afternoon. With a minute to go until Totality we noticed the western horizon darkening as a giant shadow raced towards us. It was impossible to see the leading edge of the 1720 mile-an-hour moon shadow as it engulfed us.

And then all at once the crowd roared “ooh” and “aah” as the moon completely covered the sun in the most spectacular sight I have ever seen in my life.

The moon, physically invisible up until now, was perfectly positioned over the sun as white wispy streams of light poured out of the entire 360° circumference of the sun beyond the edges of the darkened moon. It seemed as if it took up the whole sky.

The stars came out, along with Venus and Saturn. We were living Totality! It was the fastest and most spectacular 2 minutes and 26 seconds of my life.

We didn’t want it to end. Like the shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur Day at the Neilah service when you just want to forever hold onto your breakthrough to God and His loving embrace.

It was a paranormal experience. Despite all my preparation for this instant, it was totally surreal. Everyone around us was in an altered state. Stunned. Euphoric. Holding onto the moment. Even the veteran eclipse chasers were overcome with awe. I felt like I was getting a glimpse of God revealing His presence on Earth.

The astronomers told us that before you go into Totality you have to have a plan. How would you make the most of the 146 seconds? What are you going to see, record, and think? Everybody had to know how to budget their time. Do we do that in life every 146 seconds? Shouldn’t we? Most of the time we don’t use our time this planned out, assuming for sure we will get another 146 seconds, hours, days or months.

I wish I could always be in this state of mind of total reality. No one was daydreaming. Smart phones were out of view.

I also made it a point of saying the Shema. I wanted to lock in this moment forever and anchor it to my relationship with God. I looked at my children and wife, Rochel. They were in their own world trying to process this.

We wanted to grab this for eternity. I will never let this moment go and will always thank God for it. But in truth God gives us Totality every second with all the blessings that fill our lives if we would just stop and consider.

Today God gave us a rare gift from on high. I hope to take it with me to Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, into my Sukkah, and for the rest of my life!

I want every day to be Totality with my Creator. I want to be aware. I never want to daydream, rather to be excited by life always. I want to be striving for things that are so important and meaningful that pettiness and disappointment have no space in my mind.

The eclipse taught me that you can have the sun, moon and earth on different orbits and in a rare synchronistic moment, they create a phenomenon that seems beyond probability.

So too in our lives when we are challenged and trying to solve so many dilemmas. After much effort the moving pieces all come together in a harmonious solution that is beyond our imagination. In fact, sometimes we look back on our lives and come to realize that certain situations have resolved themselves, eclipsing the issue we were so worried about.

Isn’t that the ultimate message of the Days of Awe? At-one-moment – atonement! May you too reach Totality in your life.

Rabbi Aryeh Markman is Co-Director, The Western Wall Experience and Executive Director, Aish LA. Reprinted with permission from aish.com.

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Thursday, August 24, 2017

Jewish Mother 2.0

My teenage son would not be excited about my writing this at his desk, or my being in his room at all. But he started high school last week and I can’t believe it.

Ours is not an empty nest, but I know how soon it will become one, and I just wanted to sit with his stuff around me. I’m lying about that last part. There is no way I could long for my son’s “stuff” because it’s everywhere: the sneakers, the headphones, the endless stream of water glasses he fills to the top with ice, sips and abandons.

No, I am sitting in his room because I am hoping to be inspired. I am sitting in the exact spot where my desk used to be before we ripped out my office to put in his private lair — I mean bedroom. I did a lot of writing in this small corner of our house over the past decade, including a book about the need for laughter in marriage.

Dumb, dumb, shortsighted, dumb.

It’s not that we don’t need to laugh in marriage; we most definitely do, but a mere few years later I see now I was focused on the wrong family dynamic. The relationship you really need to pull out the clown car for is the one with your teenager.

I first heard the phrase “family dynamic” in a therapist’s office in Connecticut, circa 1975. I remember all four members of my family squeezing onto a couch across from an ancient-looking woman, probably 40, dressed in soft separates and nodding a lot. We had just moved from New York City, a decision only my father was happy about. I was still young enough to roll with it, but my mother, a native New Yorker like the one Donna Summer was singing about in her top-40 hit, was eating scrambled rage and toast for breakfast, and my sister was in the middle of her 13th year, already hit by the hormonal wrecking ball of being a teenager.

That was, I have no doubt now, the straw that broke the Klein camel’s back.

To date, our family dynamic is healthy enough without an outside ringleader, mostly because we find laughing together as therapeutic as my mother found spending her Saturdays at Loehmann’s. The unit is fine, but as the school year kicks off, I’m the one who’s feeling meshugge. Not just because I can’t stop the march of time, but also because I can’t seem to find the line between concerned parent and overbearing Jewish mother, a cliché I am deathly afraid of becoming. If you’ve seen any Woody Allen movie made before he married his girlfriend’s daughter, you would be too. He always features at least one loud, nagging, unattractive Jewish mother who is eating something greasy while telling her children to “stand up straight,” “do something about the pimples” and “marry rich.” In fact, I go out of my way to behave quite the opposite as a mother: I proudly aspire to be  “underbearing,”

The boys are back in school this week, which means I am privy to a lot more parenting conversations that I often feel I have to slowly back away from for fear of exposing my laissez-faire style.

“What do you mean you don’t read your son’s texts after he goes to bed?” one of the moms I know from temple asked me recently.

“I mean I don’t read my son’s texts when he goes to bed.”

“But … but … ” she looked at me like there was a burning bush in my house that I was ignoring.

“I’m not going to walk in his room and grab his phone after he’s asleep,” I added.

“Walk in his room? You let him keep his phone in his room at night?” another one chimed in.  “Haven’t you seen ‘Screenagers’ ”?

“Um … no. And yes. He keeps it in a charger by his window.”

“I’ll bet he does,” the first one said.

“What kind of a Jewish mother are you?” No. 2 added, tossing her highlighted hair back and laughing.

“A lame one, I guess,” I said, half-jokingly while heading to my car, breaking a non-peri-menopausal sweat.

Will my fear of becoming a Jewish cliché be my son’s undoing? Leaving him vulnerable to cyberpredators? To a debilitating lack of sleep as he scrolls endlessly in the wee hours of the night? To a stream of naked selfies from girls that he forwards to his friends — and then gets caught and arrested for trafficking in child porn?

I suddenly found myself looking back fondly to a simpler time when being a Jewish mother meant worrying that your precious child was going to get sick from snot-nosed kids on the bus, or that he didn’t get enough lox on his bagel. Or praying to God silently — sometimes not so silently — for him to find a nice Jewish girl to marry.

That’s how I ended up at his desk, you know, to write, of course. And, perhaps, to take a more “CSI: Teenager” approach to my Jewish mothering.


Dani Klein Modisett is a comic and writer, most recently of the book “Take My Spouse, Please.”

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I used to be an ‘impure’ Jew, too

Last week, an Israeli family vacationing at the Aparthaus Paradies hotel in Arosa, Switzerland, came upon a sign at the entrance of the hotel pool that read:

“To our Jewish guests

Women, Men and Children

Please take a shower before you go swimming and although [sic] after swimming. If you break the rules, I’m forced to cloes [sic] the swimming pool for you.”

Another sign on the refrigerator in the hotel lounge addressed “our Jewish guests” and stated that the refrigerator would be open only from “10 to 11 a.m. and from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. I hope you understand that our team does not like being disturbed all the time.”

It did not take long for news outlets ranging from The Jerusalem Post to CNN to report the incident and a flurry of outraged social media posts from Jews worldwide to decry that the signs were clearly anti-Semitic. Some people did not initially believe that the story was real.

Addressing various Swiss and Israeli media, hotel manager Ruth Thomann insisted that the pool sign was misunderstood, explaining that she had put it up because “some of these guests went swimming with clothes on, with T-shirts, and didn’t take a shower.”

I can only assume that she was referring to more observant Jewish guests who entered the pool wearing T-shirts in observance of their modesty restrictions.

As for the note, Thomann added that since the establishment regularly accommodates Jewish guests who wish to keep their own kosher food in the hotel’s refrigerator, she was only trying to clarify matters for the kitchen staff.

“I used the wrong words,” she concluded, boasting, “We have lots of Jewish guests, and they have been coming here for 40 years. I would not take Jewish guests if I had a problem with them.”  

Her attempted clarification could have been more comforting if not for that last assurance.

The signs have since been taken down, and Thomann said that she understood why they sparked accusations of anti-Semitism, saying, “I made the [pool] sign without sensitivity and now I am paying for it dearly.” Still, she promised, the hotel “will have lots of Jewish guests next year.”

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely called the incident “an anti-Semitic act of the worst and ugliest kind.”

I am not certain of either Thomann’s innocent intentions orthat the signs displayed anti-Semitism at its “worst,” and that is only because I was born a Jew in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Identity is a filter, and I read and process every news story related to anti-Semitism, whether in Switzerland or Virginia, through the lens of an Iranian Jew. And like most Iranian Jews, I know about the concept of impurities, or nejasat, and specifically, of Jewish impurity, because it has existed in Iran, whether as state law or in the ugly psyche of an anti-Semitic citizen, for centuries.

I have always found the physical concept of the literal dirty, impure Jew to be much more stinging than other anti-Semitic notions, because it paves the way for very real physical humiliation, separation and, in many cases, violence. No one wants to walk the earth as a seemingly contaminated or polluting force.

In a chapter titled, “The Impure Jew” in the acclaimed book “Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews,”Hooshang Ebrami expounds on a series of nejasat laws against the Jews of then-Persia beginning in the 16th century that included the following unbelievable restrictions, most of which are unknown to Jews around the world today, including American Jews in Los Angeles who never may have asked their Iranian-Jewish friends or co-workers about anti-Semitism in Iran. These restrictions included, but were not limited to:

• Jews were not allowed to use public baths.

• Jews were not allowed to open shops in the bazaar or city streets.

• Jews were not allowed to leave their homes on rainy days, lest their impurity mix with the water and touch a Muslim’s skin.

• Jews were not allowed to purchase fresh fruits and certainly were not allowed to touch any goods at Muslim bakeries.

• Jews were forbidden from painting their homes white, because the color signified purity. They were also forbidden from riding white donkeys.

• The street-facing doors and the walls of Jewish homes had to be shorter than those of Muslim homes, so that Jews literally had to crouch in a humiliating fashion when they entered their dwellings.

It is important to note that violations of these restrictions were punishable by death.

Most American Jews today also are unfamiliar with the tremendous impact that European anti-Semites, most of them spies who were disguised as citizens ranging from merchants to teachers and had entered Persia in the 16th century and beyond, had on convincing thousands of Muslim Persians that Jews were physically contaminated.

Ebrami notes that the impact of Spain’s Inquisition and “Purity of Blood” movement, which focused heavily on the impurity of Jews, was “unquestionable” regarding the Jews of Iran, “because in the period when European agents were extremely active in Iran, the most repulsive set of anti-Semitic regulations was issued by the Shiite clergy — regulations that drove the ‘impure’ Jews into progressively more wretched living situations.”

Of course, no religious or ethnic group with such seemingly dirty traits would have been totally free to live among and mingle with the general population, which explains why the Jews of most cities, including Tehran and Shiraz, lived in their own Jewish quarters, although some of them inevitably lived there even before the nejasat notions began because they understood that separation from Muslims also would aid their safety and survival.

At the beginning of the 20th century and the constitutional revolution of Reza Shah Pahlavi, laws relating to Jewish impurity diminishedand the Jewish quarters of various cities shrank in size as more and more Jews felt a relative sense of freedom and mobility to climb social, educational and economic ranks. The last person in my family to live in the mahaleh, or those Jewish quarters, was my great-grandmother. Today, they are but mere narrow alleyways that echo the pain of memory and injustice. How I wish that I could return to Iran and visit the old mahaleh in Tehran carrying a Book of Tehillim and my precious American passport.

Yet, the concept of the najis, impure Jew was an idea difficult to remove from the minds of many Iranians, even as decades passed and Iran modernized under the shah’s son, who was ousted during the 1979 Islamic revolution.

As a 5-year-old in 1950s Golpayegan, a city in the province of Isfahan, my father once stood in the outdoor bazaar and ran his small hands over some supple grapes. When the shopkeeper saw this, he asked my father not to touch any fresh fruit or produce. When my plucky father asked, “And why not?” the man responded, “You know why not, boy.” It was a small community and most everyone knew who was Muslim and who was Jewish.

Twenty years later, while studying in the United States during the late 1970s, just before the revolution, my father lived near campus with a fellow Iranian who was a Shiite Muslim. Based on a hunch that the man was uncomfortable sharing physical space with a Jew, my father deliberately threw his “impure” status all around the apartment. In fact, each time that his roommate would step out of the shower in his towel, my father would give him a friendly slap on the back and ask him how he was doing. This would send the young man back into the shower to decontaminate himself. When he re-emerged, another “brotherly” slap awaited him, until he had showered three or four times. This happened on a monthly basis.

By the time I was growing up in Iran and entered the women’s public bathhouses with my mother in Tehran in the 1980s, no one bothered to ask whether we were Jewish, although I did notice that some merchants at the local bazaar seemed very uncomfortable when my mother squeezed the persimmons and apricots. The more they grimaced, the more she squeezed.

My parents are fantastic.

Of course, after the Islamic Revolution and as if on cue, the Ayatollah Khomeini made official statements regarding Jews and Christians, otherwise known as “People of the Book,” by decrying that “non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najis.

As mentioned, most Iranian Jews are familiar with the concept of najasat. In her April 7, 2017, column for the Journal, author Gina Nahai recalls how in the 1980s in Los Angeles, she was seated next to an old, Iranian Muslim woman, who gathered her coat and tried to inch as far away in her seat from the contaminated Jew as possible. She goes on to say that in the 1990s, during a book talk in Portland, Ore., one female Iranian Muslim — a dentist, at that — confirmed that Jews were actually najis. They also have small tails, she declared, without repudiation from a single soul at the event.

The connection between Iran and Switzerland is not lost on me, although I am less interested in the authenticity of Ruth Thomann’s explanation and more energized by the outrage of the Jewish community. Ultimately, the incident in Switzerland points to a very real, valid and heightened sensitivity on the part of Jews worldwide against even the seemingly smallest acts of anti-Semitism, whether in Europe, the United States or most anywhere else, with the exception of the Middle East, where anti-Semitism is a sad given.

A part of me wants to believe Thomann, although I would be more convinced if, by next Rosh Hashanah, she actually set up a structure near the hotel pool that featured a kosher mikveh for the visiting Jewish men and women.

As for me, I am moved and relentlessly grateful for the little things, such as living my existence in America, running my hands over as many cucumbers as I like at Whole Foods, and walking tall and upright through the doorway of my home after a relaxing afternoon ride on my snow-white mule.


Tabby RAfael lives, writes and walks in the rain in Los Angeles.

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