Letters to the Editor: Survivor Story, Taxes, Jerusalem and Linda Sarsour

Inspired to Share Her Own Survivor Story

I was quite moved by Jane Ulman’s story on Mina Wilner (“Mina Wilner: Saved by a ‘Remarkable Woman,’ ” Nov. 3).  I was first attracted to the photo — it looked vaguely familiar, a bit of my own face. I was born in Warsaw and lived in Poland for 18 years. I am a bit younger. I was actually born in the Warsaw ghetto.

After my mother perished there, my father was trying to think how to save me. At about 15 months old, I was tiny, severely undernourished. He wrapped me in an old blanket and packing paper and threw me over the ghetto wall.  Yes, he did have some contacts on the outside and there were a number of people who promised to deliver me to Brwinow, not too far from Warsaw, where the Ursuline nuns were running an orphanage — but not for Jewish children, as far as I know. For a very long time, my father didn’t know if people did come to pick me up, get me on several trains, though the distance was small. My guardian angel must have been close on that night. I did survive (and my father took part in the Warsaw Insurrection with other surviving Ghetto Fighters.) The Ursuline nuns have a tree in Vad Yashem now.

Anne P. Warman via email

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Don’t Forget What Paying Taxes Gets You

Even assuming that everyone receives some temporary benefit from the GOP tax bill, we see little attention given to the reason we pay taxes in the first place. The pursuit of happiness our Founding Fathers promised us means that we have access to health care, education, public safety and the myriad benefits of living in a democracy. Despite President Donald Trump’s claim that we are the most highly taxed nation, in fact we rank 33rd out of 35 developed nations in the percentage of taxes we pay.

Americans need to connect the amount of taxes we pay to the public services we have learned to expect.

Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said, “Taxes are the price of civilization.” The Republican bill will further eliminate funding for the institutions and programs that provide what Americans most treasure. I’ll continue to hate paying my taxes but I want to continue to enjoy what they support.

Barbara H. Bergen, Los Angeles

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‘Judaism and Jedi-ism’

In his column (“Judaism and Jedi-ism,” Dec. 22), Eli Fink equates the burning of the Jedi temple with the burning of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. However, Yoda, in saying the books [of Jedi wisdom] were unimportant, was more like the Christians who eliminated the need to follow all the Jewish laws. Rey is more like Yohanan ben Zakkai, who started a school in Yavneh. He saved the books.

After all, we are the people of the book.

Carol Levine via email

FROM FACEBOOK …

I absolutely agree with your take. Judaism is moving to a decentralized model. What that will look like, who knows? But I suspect Mussar and personal ethics may be part of the answer. Thanks for writing.

Greg Marcus

I loved this! I’ve seen the movie [“Star Wars: The Last Jedi”] five times and found so many incredible themes.

Christy Marshall

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‘A Diaspora Is Born in Nebraska,’ Dec. 22:

I am happy that [the Yazidis] are safe and sound, and sad that in order to achieve this, they had to leave the land of their birth. Welcome!

Rosalie Paul

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‘Why a Jewish Hospital Has a Christmas Concert,’ Dec. 22:

“I have a little problem with a Jewish hospital, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, serving its patients and employees with a Christmas concert, but this story’s writer, Rabbi Jason Weiner, speaking as a rabbi, is just wrong about what Judaism asks of us.

Saying, “Honoring other faith traditions is an integral part of what it means to be a Jewish hospital” is ridiculous. Allowing them the right to worship as they please is one thing, but “honoring”? His statement is a brilliant political move, but that is what it is: politics. Celebrating (or should I say, “honoring”) others’ religions is specifically forbidden repeatedly by the Torah.

Gideon Jones

Music brings joy to one’s heart and I see nothing wrong with that. Perhaps if we shared more music with our fellow man, it would be a better world.

Joan Feldmann

Great story! Rabbi Weiner, whom I have had the pleasure to meet, has both warmth and an unassuming manner (humility), which comes across when you speak with him. Both the hospital and the community are lucky to have him. This article reflects that.

Tzvi Binn

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‘My Reform Colleagues Were Wrong on Jerusalem,’ Dec. 22:

I can’t help but wonder what the response would have been if former President Barack Obama had declared the embassy will be moved to Jerusalem.

Dotty Weisberg

Actually, and with all due respect, I believe the original response of the North American Reform organizations to President Donald Trump’s declaration on Jerusalem was the correct response to make. In the absence of any final status peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, openly supporting Trump’s politically and manipulatively motivated statement (which he made primarily to appease and shore up his support among many right-wing, Christian evangelical supporters) would have been the wrong approach for these Reform organizations to take.

Craig Mankin

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‘Jerusalem Move Blows Up Mideast Myths,’ Dec. 22:

Why do we always seem to forget the 1956 Suez campaign? Is it because part of the reason was that the British and French were trying to restore colonial control of the Suez Canal? Israel, on the other hand, was threatened and attacked by the same kind of fedayeen raids that were part of the cause for the 1967 war as well as conventional Egyptian forces on her borders.

John Fishel

This mantra is useless. Rational people don’t buy this nonsense. For a peaceful future, there is one solution: a shared capital, east for Palestine, west for Israel.

Wahid Awad

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‘On Goddesses, Doormats and Linda Sarsour,’ Dec. 22:

It’s kind of amazing how ideologically polarized we’ve become. When people are questioning an incident that calls out some of the horrible management practices — covering up sexual assault in the workplace — of one of the most vocal anti-Semites in America today, in a Jewish magazine nonetheless, and people don’t believe it because it was first reported by a conservative news site, we really have lost our common consensus on the basis of reality and politics has trumped Judaism.

Pamela Fleischmann

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Meet the Fosters

Twelve seconds. That’s how long it took for my wife, Shawni, to respond to a text asking if she wanted to put our name on the list of families willing to foster a newborn baby.

To put this into perspective: It takes Shawni three months to commit to buying a T-shirt (and another two months to return it). Our son’s bar mitzvah album arrived just in time for his 14th birthday. We’ve been shopping for bedroom furniture since we moved into our house four years ago.

But when a good friend told us that a baby needed a Jewish family to foster him so he could have a bris, Shawni immediately said yes.

To be clear, lots of people are looking to adopt babies, but we are not among them.  We’re in the “How long until the kids are in college?” stage. But we had no choice.

You see, when we bought a house we couldn’t really afford, I made an agreement with God. “If you do your part and pay the mortgage, we’ll always keep a space at our table for anyone who needs a Shabbat meal, and our guest room open for anyone who needs a place.”

Since then, we have put up guests about 40 weekends annually — including a 20-year-old woman I met in Toronto and invited to stay for six months. (That’s another story and why I’m not allowed to travel by myself anymore.)

Shawni’s first question about the baby was whether we would be his best possible option. We’re both 50-something, and it turned out this kid needed a lot of help. The family situation was complicated, with daily plot twists: surprise court appearances, paternity tests.

My wife did what she does before every life-changing decision: She davened. She spoke to God for an entire spinning class — 45 minutes, including arms!

“If this is meant to be the best thing for the baby,” she said, “please let it happen quickly and easily. If not, please let him find the proper home.” When she got off her bike, she received a text: “The other families dropped out — you got him.”

Then it sank in: We would have a new baby for the first time in 14 years! The plan: We would keep him 3 to 6 months, until the mom got her act together. We’d fill his body and soul with the sounds and smells and warmth of a Jewish home — careful to not get too attached, since we knew he was not ours.

The reality: Shawni brought him home from the hospital and said, “I love him!” We invited 40 people for his first Shabbat to offer blessings before his bris. There never has been a baby more surrounded by love. Shawni snuggled with him constantly, my kids changed and fed him, and I vowed to “get it right this time.”

Then, a week later, the unthinkable happened: We had to give him back. In a third-act twist, the biological father had learned of the son and wanted custody. It hardly seemed fair — “We’re not done with him!”— but the court thought otherwise.

So, together as a family, we waited for the “real” dad to show up. Shawni offered a blessing that the baby always would know he is loved and have a strong connection with God and a love of being Jewish.

Then it sank in: We would have a new baby for the first time in 14 years! The plan: We would keep him 3 to 6 months, until the mom got her act together.

When the dad finally showed up, the resemblance was undeniable. He had a natural bond with the baby — and a shock of thick black hair that we could never provide. I adjured my family not to cry. (“He was never ours.”) Then, when the baby left with his dad, who couldn’t have been kinder or more grateful, my eyes exploded as I sobbed, “Our baby!”

People had warned us that saying goodbye would be the hardest part. In fairness, most people, including us, thought we would have him for longer than a week. But that one week was powerful — for all of us.

Interestingly, Shawni, who has never made it through an episode of “This Is Us” without blowing through a box of Kleenex, didn’t shed a tear. As she requested in the beginning, “If this is meant to be the best thing for the baby, please let it happen quickly and easily.” And so it was.

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Jeff Astrof, a television writer and producer, is the creator of “Trial & Error.”

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Can Running Be a Jewish Practice?

It happened by accident. Late one night, after scrolling through dozens of inspiring photos of friends running in the New York City Marathon, I idly typed a status update: “I’m 40 and I’ve never run more than three miles. Should I run a marathon?”

I expected to hear that I was too old, or training would destroy my knees. Instead, a series of heartfelt, secular-but-profoundly-spiritual testaments of people’s running journeys began to pour in. They told their stories and they told me to go for it.

Some of these people were Jewish; most were not. To my knowledge, only a few publicly presented themselves as people of faith. Yet, to a person, they wrote from a deeply intimate place of questing, in a personal voice we rarely hear in public discourse these days. They wrote without irony or judgment, full of kindness, encouragement and a palpable sense of joy.

Our Jewish culture, our understanding of the Divine and the human spirit — these live in us.

Social media as a tool for heartfelt, profound conversation about the spiritual journey? If this was what marathons brought out in people, I wanted in.

And so my journey began — and with it, a new spiritual practice.

Even a month in, it seems odd to me that I’d never thought of running as a spiritual practice before, since I’d been jogging casually for decades. After all, the point of noncompetitive running is to show up, to connect, to transcend the noise of everyday life. And as with so many forms of spiritual practice, although I don’t always want to do it, I always feel better afterward.

I love how the secularity of running crosses religious borders, but since much of my own spiritual life takes place in a Jewish context, I also have been considering how running lines up with Jewish practice.

For example, I think about how running in different parts of the day — a morning grounding, a midday reset, an evening cleansing — echoes the three Jewish prayer services.

Or I consider jogging as a mini-Shabbat in the middle of my day. Running clears my mind, calms my anxiety and puts the workday life in perspective — a hit of the most sacred Friday night services, available at noon on Tuesday.

Or I experience new understanding of the kabbalistic concept of balancing chesed (kindness) and gevurah (judgment) as I search for that razor-thin zone of pushing past comfort while listening to my body.

Curious about others’ experiences, I took a second poll, this one geared toward my Jewish friends who are runners. I asked, “Is your running a Jewish practice?”

Here are some of my favorite answers, all from Jewish marathoners:

A law professor: “Running does for me what prayer is supposed to do, but prayer never quite gets there in the same way. Before we had prayer, Jewish worship was physical — pilgrimage, food, sacrifice. Being in synagogue in a suit will never get me to the place that moving through creation, feeling life and strength flow through me and feeling more alive with each step does.”

A Jewish professional: “My Jewish practice has become synonymous with my work. And so, running is ‘me’ time. I use running to just be by myself. I try to push all work-related stuff out of my head. I breathe, become mindful and on those long runs I strive for ‘flow.’ ”

A teacher: “The marathon is my taste of the World to Come, a world where strangers support each other and feel a kinship despite the many differences that might usually keep them apart. It also allowed me to finally treat my guf [body] as a gift, to be cherished and seen as able rather than not the right size or unable.”

Our Jewish culture, our understanding of the Divine and the human spirit — these live in us. They are alive through us. They find us exactly where we are. And we find them, too, in the very stuff of our lives — in our grandmothers’ recipes, the prayers of our ancestors, the activism of our generation, or the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other, mile after mile, breath after sacred breath.

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Alicia Jo Rabins is a writer, musician and Torah teacher who lives in Portland, Ore.

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Oh, Lorde

It’s a good thing Jews don’t celebrate Christmas, because this last one would have been thoroughly spoiled.

’Twas the night before said holiday when 21-year-old New Zealand-born pop star Lorde, a Grammy-winning artist, succumbed to pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and canceled her Tel Aviv concert planned for later this year.

“I pride myself on being an informed young citizen, and I had done a lot of reading and sought a lot of opinions before deciding to book a show in Tel Aviv, but I’m not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one,” the singer said in a statement.

Lorde’s acquiescence to the forceful politics of BDS was a blow to Jewish and Israeli morale, prompting defenders of Israel to respond with rebuke.

Instead of lobbing attacks and insults, what if defenders of Israel encouraged Lorde to perform for her fans to
promote reconciliation and peace?

Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev offered a slyly mocking appeal to the young musician, urging her to reverse her decision. “I’m hoping you can be a ‘pure heroine,’ like the title of your first album,” Regev said in a statement. “[B]e a heroine of pure culture, free from any foreign — and ridiculous — political considerations.”

But asking an artist to be free of political considerations when it comes to the most loaded conflict in the world is naïve and shortsighted. The current generation of young people is the most interconnected in human history, and as a result, deeply socially conscious. Many of them are eager to integrate their values into the decisions they make. Besides, how can you insist a celebrity with a worldwide following divest herself of what happens in the world?

You can’t.

Regev’s statement isn’t the worst offense committed by a lover of Israel in defending the Jewish state. That accolade belongs to The World Values Network, led by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who on New Year’s Day took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post shaming and defaming Lorde for bowing to BDS pressure.

The ad states, “21 is young to become a bigot.” At the center of the ad is Lorde, superimposed on a split-screen background that features two contrasting images: In one, men clutch babies to their chests as they run from a scene of total destruction. In the other, beautiful buildings of Jerusalem stone stand tall and proud, topped by Israeli flags. “Lorde and New Zealand ignore Syria to attack Israel,” the ad declares.

Lorde certainly doesn’t deserve any credit for heroism. As the ad suggests, she schmeissed Israel while proceeding to perform in countries with far worse records. If her aim is to take a stand against countries with stained human rights histories, she’d best cancel other stops on her tour, starting with Russia. President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea was a strutting display of anti-democratic expansionism and his autocratic tactics at home are equally treacherous. According to Human Rights Watch, “Today, Russia is more repressive than it has ever been in the post-Soviet era.”

Because she is young and inexperienced, Lorde is not worthy of our scorn.

But if Boteach and others think politicized assaults on a global superstar are the way to “win” against BDS, they’re mistaken. The language of Boteach’s ad is mean-spirited and offensive, and will only further alienate the pop star and her millions of fans. How does that serve Israel?

Instead of lobbing attacks and insults, what if defenders of Israel encouraged Lorde to perform for her fans, and perhaps use her platform, to promote reconciliation and peace? What if Regev had offered to help facilitate an additional concert in the West Bank for Palestinian fans? What if the message was inviting and encouraging instead of angry and denigrating?

BDS has failed to intimidate musicians into not performing in Israel far more than it has succeeded. Fighting the nasty fight only makes Israel — and us — look foolish, spiteful and, worst of all, guilty.

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Danielle Berrin is a senior writer and columnist at the Jewish Journal.

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‘For We Are Glorious’

An iconic photo has emerged from the protests in Iran. A young woman — fearless, determined, resolute — holds a long stick. At the end of the long stick is a white hijab. The image is so powerful it was morphed into digital art, which then became a social media meme. But it is a meme with no words, no hashtag.

Because a cry from the heart needs no hashtag.

Sadly, as I write this five days into the protests, most people probably haven’t seen the image. It hasn’t been splashed on all the front pages of the world. Indeed, at least in the beginning, much of the media ignored or downplayed the largest protests in Iran since 2009. There has been a deafening silence from leftist groups that purport to be about human rights and feminism.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. The god of leftism, President Barack Obama, set the stage when he was slow to criticize the tyrannical dictatorship during the 2009 protests, and then, as part of the Iran deal, approved of the return of billions of dollars of Iranian assets to the terror-happy regime.

The Iranians have no interest in victimhood and are throwing off the hijab with abandon.

Eight years later, faced with the agonizing cries of a people desperate for freedom and human dignity, the left is failing again. Many are trying to protect Obama’s legacy; most will do anything not to be on the same side as President Trump, who has thrown his support squarely behind the protesters.

Perhaps the larger issue is this: Iran puts in high relief the difference between real liberalism, in which principles transcend politics; and leftists, who live in fear of helping their ideological enemies and offending the victims du jour.

Linda Sarsour and her fellow travelers have sanctified this antiliberalism through endless manipulation and propaganda. In one surreal moment, she was able to convince women on the left that wearing the hijab was a symbol of “empowerment.”

But here’s the funny thing about this Persian Spring: the Iranians have no interest in victimhood and are throwing off the hijab with abandon. Day after day, the brave Persians are showing the world what real liberalism looks like.

Mesmerized by the protests, I keep thinking of a song from the new movie “The Greatest Showman.” The movie is an homage to nonconformity and nonvictimization, but the song, “This Is Me,” describes the sentiment that first inspired feminism and liberalism:

We are bursting through the barricades/And reaching for the sun (we are warriors)/Yeah, that’s what we’ve become/Won’t let them break me down to dust/I know that there’s a place for us/For we are glorious.

In the film, set in the late 19th century, the song is an anthem to human dignity, respect, tolerance and a classless society where anyone can achieve greatness.

In 2018, it can be seen as an anthem to freedom, justice, individualism and the classical liberalism now reborn with the Iranian protesters.

While Sarsour has convinced the left to make the new dictators victims — she recently announced that Palestinians have a right to become terrorists — the Iranian people are done with dictatorship, terrorism (notably, the protesters shouted: “Death to Hezbollah”) and fundamentalism.

Sure, some women may choose to wear a hijab, just like women in other religions choose to dress modestly. But since 1979 Iranian women were not given this choice. They were forced to wear the hijab, as well as to accommodate the craziness of the mullahs in every aspect of their lives, or they were lashed and imprisoned. Meanwhile, Islamic clerics regularly hang gay men, even teens.

The world has watched a vibrant country be destroyed by Islamic fundamentalism, and now, the world watches a people rising up to say,  “Enough.”

Were the protesters inspired by the U.S. standing up to Islamic dictators over Jerusalem? Perhaps indirectly. Freedom has a way of sending out waves of positive energy, as we saw with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We can mark the start of 2018 optimistic that a ray of courage has emerged from an ancient people who have, overall, a positive relationship with another ancient people — the Jews. And we can hope and pray that the evil mullahs will be gone before Purim.

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Karen Lehrman Bloch is a cultural critic and author.

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Where’s #MeToo for Persian Victims?

For the crime of shaking hands with her lawyer, cartoonist Atena Farghadani was forced to undergo a “virginity and pregnancy test” prior to her 2015 trial in Iran on a charge of “illegitimate sexual relations.”

Commenting on her case, Said Boumedouha, deputy director at Amnesty International, said, “The Iranian judicial authorities have truly reached an outrageous low, seeking to exploit the stigma attached to sexual and gender-based violence in order to intimidate, punish or harass her.”

Seeing the waves of protests that have broken out in recent days throughout Iran, I thought of all the other Persian women who must be praying to be liberated from such insidious oppression.

Why are they not part of the #MeToo movement?

Well, for one thing, because in Iran, women pay a price for speaking up. Farghadani herself, in addition to her “illegitimate sexual relations” trial, was sentenced to 12 years and nine months in an Iranian jail because she drew cartoons that “insulted” members of Parliament.

As I wrote back in July 2015, “Farghadani is not alone. There are thousands like her languishing in Iranian prisons because they had the nerve to oppose an evil and oppressive regime. How oppressive? According to Human Rights Watch, ‘In 2014 Iran had the second highest number of executions in the world after China, and executed the largest number of juvenile offenders. The country remains one of the biggest jailers in the world of journalists, bloggers, and social media activists. ’ ”

Since then, after the 2015 nuclear deal that empowered Iran with billions in sanctions relief, the oppression has only gotten worse.

According to Amnesty International, “Iran continued to execute children in 2016,” including hanging 17-year-old Hassan Afshar because of homosexual activity. At least 49 inmates on death row were convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.

In March 2016, the United Nations Children’s Rights Committee noted that in Iran “flogging was still a lawful punishment for boys and girls convicted of certain crimes” and that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) children had been subjected to electric shocks to ‘cure’ them.”

The committee also reported that “the age of marriage for girls is 13” and that “sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years was not criminalized.”

That is what evil does — it grabs more power so that it can stay in power, even if that means jailing women, hanging gays and conniving the West into releasing billions, all in the name of God.

How is all of that for motivation to run on the streets and storm the barricades of theocratic despots who treat women and children worse than slaves?

Yes, those are the same despots who suckered the West into empowering their evil regime in return for an agreement that, at best, delays a nuclear Iran by a decade.

And they’re the same despots who have been wreaking havoc throughout the Middle East while remaining, according to the latest U.S. State Department report, “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”

“Who knows? Iran may change,” President Barack Obama said to Thomas Friedman of The New York Times in April 2015, around the time that Atena Farghadani was being sentenced to jail for her cartoons.

Of course, at the time, Obama was eager to conclude his legacy nuclear deal, which may also explain why he stayed so quiet when protests erupted on Iranian streets in 2009. Instead of betting on the Iranian people, Obama spent his two terms in office betting on the mullahs who were oppressing those very people.

Obama was as passionate about his deal with the mullahs as he was silent about those who were hanged for being gay or women who were jailed for speaking up.

In his zeal to promote his deal, he kept making hopeful comments that all those billions in sanctions relief would help the Iranian economy and trickle down to ordinary citizens. As he told Friedman, he hoped the deal would “harness the incredible talents and ingenuity and entrepreneurship of Iranian people” and empower the nonviolent forces inside Iran who’d want to “excel in science and technology and job creation and developing our people.”

Two years later, the only thing that’s trickled down to Iranian citizens is more oppression and misery. But why should that surprise us? Obama bet on evil, and evil bit him right back.

The Iranian evil includes blatant corruption. For decades, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accumulated assets of about $95 billion through an organization, Setad, that was created to help the poor but has morphed into a business juggernaut.

As detailed in a Reuters investigation:

“Khamenei’s grip on Iran’s politics and its military forces has been apparent for years. The investigation into Setad shows that there is a third dimension to his power: economic might. … Setad gives him the financial means to operate independently of parliament and the national budget.”

That is what evil does — it grabs more power so that it can stay in power, even if that means jailing women, hanging gays and conniving the West into releasing billions, all in the name of God.

It’s an unfortunate timing that this week is our annual Mensch issue, where we focus on human decency and goodness. Maybe the contrast between mensches and oppressors will spur people to launch a #ThemToo campaign, this one on behalf of desperate victims risking their lives right now on Iranian streets.

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Booze, Women or Movies: What do Poor People Spend Money On?

Photo from Pexels.

During the recent Tax Bill debate in Congress, Senator Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) gave a jaw-dropping interview with the Des Moines Register, his state’s largest newspaper. In explaining why multi-millionaires shouldn’t have to pay any estate taxes, he colorfully explained his reasoning: “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley told the Register. “As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

This is not the reality of what I am seeing as the Founding Executive Director of the new community-based nonprofit, the Jewish Los Angeles Special Needs Trust (JLA Trust) which offers 1st and 3rd party pooled special needs trusts at costs far below the commercial market. Beneficiaries enroll in one of these trusts via a controlling Master Trust and funds are kept separately in sub-accounts, pooled only for investment and cash management purposes.

JLA Trust, started from a Cutting Edge grant from the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles with support from the LA Jewish Federation, provides affordable pooled special needs trusts for people in the greater Los Angeles region who have significant disabilities or elders with severe health conditions.

Most of these individuals are completely dependent on needs-based government benefits which prohibit beneficiaries from owning more than $2,000 in cash or investments, and if they receive an inheritance or legal settlement, those lump-sums will end their eligibility for Medi-Cal, our state’s Medicaid health insurance program and SSI, which provides a monthly cash grant for rent and food, maxing out at less than $900.

Since we opened our doors for beneficiaries in August of 2016, my staff and I have spoken with more than 500 people with disabilities, their family members and Jewish and general community professionals including many trust and estate attorneys. All of our enrolled beneficiaries have pooled trust sub-accounts; the average lump-sum payment received is $40,000, and all client funds are invested in conservative to moderate custodial Charles Schwab accounts, managed by True Link, our financial services partner.

It should come as no surprise that the number one requested use of funds is for rent, since LA area housing prices are already sky-high for the middle class, let alone for someone living on less than $900 a month. Unfortunately, federal rules impose a penalty if anyone, including the person’s special needs trustee, use funds other than SSI to pay for rent, so most of our clients are stuck where they are, even if it means living with hostile roommates or in austere, undesirable Board and Care facilities.

Close behind rent is an essential health service out of reach for most poor adults in America – dental care- especially when it comes to expensive but necessary procedures such as dentures, implants and gum surgery, not covered by Denti-Cal (the dental program for Medi-Cal recipients). For years, dental care was eliminated for all poor adults under Medi-Cal, and even now, is highly restrictive and difficult to obtain. One of our clients, a veteran, has been fighting the VA for years to get his dentures replaced, as his first set wore out and was no longer functional.

JLA Trust clients often request funds for transportation. Since the majority can’t drive because of their disabilities, they often ask for monthly bus passes or a monthly allowance with ride sharing companies such as Lyft. In Los Angeles, this service is essential to managing life independently, from bringing home groceries to getting to a medical office.

Also frequently requested is a smart phone that connects to the Internet. Although the free so-called “Obama” flip cell phones for persons on welfare or other government benefits provide basic phone and texting capacities, they don’t connect to the Internet, which is needed for so many everyday needs, from refilling prescriptions to filling out government forms.

For our clients with more severe physical disabilities, whether from a genetic condition, brain injury or old age, there is a need for in-home health care that will assist them with such everyday tasks as showering and cooking. Although some in-home health care is available for free for very low-income clients from the In-Home Supportive Services program, it can be difficult to qualify for, or in some cases, is wholly inadequate for independent living. For example, a case worker from the LA County assessed one client as needing 4 hours a day of help, for all meals and toileting, but then only paying for one 4-hour block of services, oblivious to the fact that nature may call outside of that 4-hour block.

Most interesting of all is that our 1st party clients, most of whom have been living on or below the federal poverty line for years as a result of their disabilities, are very excited to have a chance to invest their inheritance or legal settlement. They take their time to carefully choose among their investment options and ask how their portfolio is doing. Senator Grassley, it turns out poor people want to grow their money just as much as the wealthy—they just need a chance to do so.

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