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A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field – A Paradigm for Our Times

06 Friday Nov 2015

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American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Israel and Palestine, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Poetry, Stories

Chayei Sarah is a monumental Torah portion in the Book of Genesis (23:1-25:18) that establishes Hevron as one of our people’s holiest cities in the land of Israel and tells the story of the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah. Thus, for the first time in Jewish history we witness the passing of the baton of history from one generation to the next.

We, the current generation, however, have yet to fulfill our Jewish destiny. Hevron today is a hot spot of Palestinian and Jewish rage, of extremism and violence, of polarization and hate. Until there is peace (shalom) between the tribes of Israel and shalom/salem (not hudna – i.e. “quiet”) between Israel and the Palestinians, we will not have fulfilled our raison d’etre as a people to be rod’fei shalom, pursuers of peace.

The current violence cannot be the way forward, nor can suspicion, distrust and hatred of the “other” define the character of our people’s and the Palestinian people’s hearts and souls.

I offer a poetic midrash on Isaac’s and Rebekah’s encounter leading to their marriage. I love this story because their meeting is pure and sweet, and it suggests a paradigm of what is possible not only between individuals, but between the tribes that comprise the Jewish people today (e.g. Haredi, Orthodox, Mizrachi, Ashkenazi, Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, secular, atheist, liberal and right-wing Zionists, American, Israeli, European, Latin, etc.), and the peoples of the Middle East who know far too much polarization, suspicion, distrust, and hatred of each other.

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field

To be alone amidst shifting wheat / And rocks and sun / Beneath stirred-up clouds / And singing angels / Audible only by the wind.

I’ve secluded myself / As my father did / When he went out / Alone leaving all he knew / For a place he’d never been / That God would show him.

I can do nothing else / Because Father broke my heart / And crushed my soul / When he betrayed me / By stealing me away one morning / Before my mother awoke / And nearly offered me to his God.

When my mother learned / Her soul passed from the world.

O how she loved me! / And filled me up / With laughter, love and tears.

Bereft now / I’m desolate in this world / And this field.

O Compassionate One – Do You hear me / From this arid place / Filled with snakes and beasts, hatred and vengeance?

I sit here needing YOU.

As if in response, / Suddenly from afar / Appears a caravan / Of people and camels, / Led by Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, / With a young girl.

Isaac, burdened by grief / Neither looks nor sees.

He sits still / Lasuach basadeh / Meditating / And weeping / Beneath the afternoon sun / And swirling clouds / And singing angels / Whom he cannot hear.

Rebekah asks: / ‘Who is that man crying alone in the field?’

Eliezer says: / ‘He is my master Isaac, / Your intended one, / Whose seed you will carry / Into the future.’

“Vatipol min hagamal – And she fell from her camel” / Shocked and afraid / Onto the hard ground / Yearning.

She veiled her face / Bowed her head / And Rebekah and Isaac entered / Sarah’s tent, / And she comforted him.

High Holiday Sermons – 2015-5776

25 Friday Sep 2015

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American Jewish Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories

For those interested in listening/watching on You Tube or reading the text of any of the three High Holiday sermons I delivered this year at Temple Israel of Hollywood on Rosh Hashanah evening, Rosh Hashanah morning and on Kol Nidre, they are now posted together in written form and on YouTube on the Temple Israel of Hollywood website (www.tioh.org) and can be accessed directly here:

http://www.tioh.org/about-us/clergy/aboutus-clergy-clergystudy

Erev Rosh Hashanah – “Radiance in this Austere World”

There is a vast difference between what I call “good speech” about others and gossip (l’shon ha-ra – the evil tongue). The former builds ethical relationships and the latter destroys them. There are no innocent by-standers when we gossip, so the rabbis teach, and we all do it – according to polls 80% of all speech between people is about other people, for better and worse. Recognizing “gossip” as a serious ethical challenge, Judaism has developed a rich series of rules governing our use of language, how we speak to and about others and what we choose to say or not say. My sister in-law put it well recently when she noted that “Candor is golden; diplomacy is divine!” The problem is that people say far too much to each other and about each other, and allow their anger, frustration and self-righteous belief that they are duty-bound to be honest at all times whether harm and hurt comes to others as a consequence or not. The High Holidays reminds us that not all thoughts ought to be expressed, written, shared, or read. In these days leading to the Presidential primaries, we are seeing far too much destructive speech coming from candidates, but that is just a reflection of the coarseness and insensitivity that is happening across society as a whole.

Shacharit Rosh Hashanah – “Fighting for the Soul of the Jewish People”

We Jews are living in a very difficult, threatening and complicated world, and we have been divided by our own extremists about what is in the Jewish people’s best interest relative to the State of Israel’s long-term security and peace as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people. The unity of the Jewish people is essential to our future strength and security, but policies of the government of the state of Israel, led by fear and arrogance and buttressed by an unholy political marriage between ultra-orthodox Hareidi Jews and right-wing one-state believing settlers has now gained significant influence in the policies of the government and threatens to take Israel over a cliff as it becomes increasingly isolated internationally and a source of consternation for the Jewish people in America. We risk losing a generation of young liberal Jews who want to love Israel but are increasingly torn between the values on which they were raised and policies that emphasize security to the exclusion of everything else. The recent battles in the United States over the Iran Agreement, the failure of the Kerry effort to forge a two-state solution, and the vicious attacks on liberal left Jewish supporters of Israel and on other pro-Israel supporters who have taken a different view by both the left and the right, but primarily by extreme right-wing Jews need to be stopped – and soon, or we could lose everything the Jewish people has striven to build since the beginnings of the Zionist movement.

Kol Nidre – “Six Life Lessons”

In this very personal sermon, I share my own spiritual journey and six life-lessons I have learned over the 65+ years of my life. These lessons have broad applicability.

For those interested, on the Temple Israel site are posted the sermons of my colleagues, Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh and Rabbi Jocee Hudson – all well worth reading.

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah – A good and sweet New Year.

The Cottage of Candles – As We Begin Elul on Shabbat Shoftim

20 Thursday Aug 2015

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Divrei Torah, Ethics, Holidays, Musings about God/Faith/Religious Life, Stories

There was once a Jew who went out into the world to fulfill the Biblical command – “Tzedek tzedek tirdof – Justice, justice shall you pursue.” [Deuteronomy. 26:20]

Many years passed before the man had explored the known world, except for one last great forest into which he entered. There in the forest he came upon a cave of thieves who mocked him: “Do you expect to find justice here?”

He then went into a hut of witches who laughed at him as well: “Do you expect to find justice here?”

At last he arrived at a fragile clay hut, and through the window he could see many flickering flames. He wondered why they were burning. He then knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

As soon as he entered, the hut appeared much larger than it had from outside. He saw hundreds of shelves, and on every shelf were dozens of oil candles. Some were sitting in holders of gold, silver or marble, and others were in modest clay or tin holders. Some were filled with oil and had straight wicks with brightly burning flames. Others had very little oil remaining and were about to sputter out.

An old man robed in white with a flowing white beard stood before him: “Shalom Aleichem, my son. How can I help you?”

The Jew said: “Aleichem shalom. I have gone everywhere searching for justice, but never have I seen anything like this. Tell me, what are all these candles?”

The old man said: “Each is a person’s soul,” as it says – ‘Ner Adonai nishmat Adam – The candle of God is the human soul.’ [Proverbs 20:27] As long as that person is alive the candle burns; but, when the person’s soul takes leave of this world, the candle burns out.”

The Jew who sought justice said: “Can you show me the candle of my soul?”

The old man beckoned: “Follow me.”

He led the Jew through the labyrinth of the cottage until they reached a low shelf, and there the old man pointed to a candle in a clay holder, “That is the candle of your soul.”

A great fear suddenly enveloped the Jew for the candle’s wick was short with little oil remaining. Was it possible for the end of his life to be so near without his having known it?

He then noticed the candle next to his own that was filled with oil, its wick long and straight, its flame burning brightly.

“Whose candle is that?” he wanted to know.

“I can only reveal each person’s candle to him or herself alone,” the old man said, and he left the Jew there alone.

The Jew stood there staring at his candle, and then heard a sputtering sound. When he looked up he saw smoke rising from another shelf. He knew that somewhere someone was no longer among the living. He looked back at his own candle, turned to the candle next to his own, so filled with oil, and a terrible thought came to him.

He searched for the old man, but didn’t see him. He lifted the candle filled with oil and a long brightly burning wick and he held it up just above his own. At once the old man reappeared and gripped his arm, saying: “Is THIS the kind of justice you seek?”

The Jew closed his eyes because the pain of the old man’s grip on his arm was so very great. When he opened them at last the old man was gone and the cottage and candles had disappeared. He stood there alone in the forest listening to the trees whispering his fate.”

This story, as told by Howard Schwartz, is not really about the objective state of justice in the world. Rather, it is about the commitment to justice each one of us has made. The old man (Was he God, The Angel of Death, The Keeper of Human Souls, one of the Lamed Vavniks – 36 righteous people who permit the world to survive?) became angry when the Jew tried to extend his own life at the expense of another.

The story uncovers a test – to what degree have we internalized Judaism’s moral principles and performed them in the world?

The month of Elul began last Saturday evening and ushered in a 40-day period in which we are called upon to do t’shuvah (turn and return to lives of dignity, integrity and decency) leading to Yom Kippur. We are as if living in our own great forest and God is calling to us: “Ayeka – Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9).

Like the first man and first woman in the Garden of Eden, there is no place for us to hide. What is in our hearts must be a reflection of the deeds we perform and the values we embody.

Shabbat shalom!
The Torah portion for this week is Shoftim in which is the verse – “Tzedek tzedek tirdof – Justice, justice shall you pursue” appears. [Deuteronomy 16:20]

Source of story: Howard Schwartz included this story in his book The Tree of Souls: The Mythology of Judaism. It is based on tale by Zevulon Qort who received it from Ben Zion Asherov of Afghanistan. I have edited the original telling.

Comedy Secrets to Sustain Long-Term Marriages – A Book Review

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

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Book Recommendations, Ethics, Life cycle, Stories

“Take My Spouse — PLEASE”, Dani Klein Modisett’s second book (the first was “Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine”), is a unique view of two of civilization’s oldest institutions – comedy and marriage.

The author happens to be both a comedian and married, and so she speaks with a certain authority in each arena. Klein Modisett is also an actress of more than twenty years on stage and in television. She enjoys friendship with lots of comedians and is a former decade’s long teacher of stand-up comedy at UCLA.

Early on in her marriage Klein Modisett realized that the rules and skills she learned in becoming a successful stand-up comic are the same rules and skills that sustain happy, healthy and thriving marriages. That is what her book is about – following the rules of comedy to make better marriages.

I loved the book, but before I say anything more a disclaimer is appropriate.

The author is a congregant and friend. She interviewed me and included our conversation in the final chapter “Get Help to Get Better” (pages 233-237). However, even if I had nothing to do with the book or the author, I would recommend “Take My Spouse — PLEASE” because it is a wise and funny guide for both comics on stage and spouses who want stronger, happier and healthier marriages.

After officiating at more than 600 weddings in my 36 years as a congregational rabbi, celebrating hundreds of milestone wedding anniversaries, counseling many couples suffering marital distress, and being married myself for 33 years, I believe that Dani’s insights about what makes a good marriage are spot-on correct. I assume she is also right about what makes for good stand-up comedy, but I have no professional expertise to judge except to say that I enjoy good comedy writing and comedians who know what they are doing.

Dani writes as she is – smart, edgy, funny, honest, warmhearted, self-deprecating, and self-revelatory. The best part of the book is when she herself is reflecting about comedy and marriage, connecting dots and sharing insights. Though the many couples she interviewed support well the points she makes and their stories draw the reader in, Dani is the star of this volume. Her insights, crisp writing, willingness to self-disclose, to lay bare her vulnerabilities, and to discuss candidly her own marriage with her husband Tod make for an engaging and compelling read.

Tod, by the way, deserves a huge shout-out for his generosity and courage in giving his wife permission to write about him and their marriage.

Dani discusses the many rules and skills that comedians need to be successful on stage and spouses need to thrive in their marriages. Here are but a few of them:

• “Show up,” be present, listen, and respond

• Be daring and go for the element of surprise – Doing the unexpected keeps everyone interested

• Laugh it up – laughter diffuses tension, draws everyone close and can be an aphrodisiac

• Be tough, persevere and “don’t let one or two bad experiences take you out”

• Accept constructive criticism, be self-critical and strive to do it better next time

• “Sex is to marriage what jokes are to an audience; without it, the natives get restless”

• Having an extra-marital affair is a very-very-very bad idea! (I don’t know if there is an equivalent no-no-no in comedy [Note to self: Ask Dani about this when I see her next])

• “Pay attention to your physical appearance – how you look matters”

• Stay clear of incessant complainers, toxic and overly critical and negative individuals and couples – especially befriend and hang with those who share your positive and hopeful outlook

• “Timing is everything – Pick your moments and watch what you say and do”

• Relax – nothing works when you are tense

• Be honest, but don’t be unkind – Restraint is a virtue (in other words: keep your mouth shut before you say things you will forever regret!)

• Get help if you are in trouble – and don’t give up

• “Be patient – everything worthwhile takes time”

Dani Klein Modisett has written an important, entertaining and very serious book that can help comedians become better at their craft and couples sustain happier, healthier and thriving marriages – and I recommend it heartily.

“Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate” – A Book Review

12 Sunday Jul 2015

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American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Social Justice, Stories, Women's Rights

This second moving novel by Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a love story that catches the two protagonists in a clash of cultures and religious identities that reveals how powerfully the past plays upon the present and future.

Cleo is a beautiful African American left-wing feminist talk-show host in New York City and the daughter of a mid-20th century black Baptist preacher who had been mentored and supported by a Jew in the racist south. Upon her father’s untimely death, another kindhearted Jewish family gives Cleo’s mother a desperately needed job and her family a place to live. Cleo consequently has a warm spot in her heart for Jews despite the experiences of many of her African American radio listeners who bear anti-Semitic animus against the Jews they have known as slum-lords.

Zach is a politically liberal Bronx yeshiva-educated atheist child of Holocaust survivors, becomes an ACLU lawyer and does pro-Bono legal work for a nonprofit called “Families of Holocaust Survivors.” Zach’s only sibling was an older brother he never met who, as a toddler, was shot in the head by a Nazi as his parents watched in horror. He feels empathy with the African American situation and is a solid liberal thinker, but he feels duty-bound to honor the promise he made to his dying mother that he would marry a Jew and bring Jewish children into the world not only to assure Jewish continuity but to help replace the 6 million and avenge his brother’s murder.

Cleo and Zach encounter one another in the early 1980s when a Black Preacher and a Rabbi invite them with other New York black and Jewish leaders to restore the Black-Jewish alliance that once existed during the civil rights movement. This occurs as Black-Jewish relations fray in the aftermath of the anti-Semitic rants of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Jessie Jackson’s “Hymietown” remark.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a veteran writer of eleven books. She is a founding editor of Ms. Magazine, a journalist, political activist, wife, mother, grandmother, and a serious Jew who has spent years participating in dialogue groups with African American, Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian women. Feminism, liberalism and positive Jewish identification permeate the novel.

Pogrebin’s prose can be deeply moving, such as the novel’s opening paragraph:

“ZACHARIAH ISAAC LEVY grew up in a family of secrets, of conversations cut short by his entrance into a room, of thick-tongued speech and guttural names and the whisper of weeping. His parents spoke in short, stubby sentences, as if words could be used up, and often in a language they refused to translate. From the grammar of their sighs, he came to understand that Yiddish was reserved for matters unspeakable in English and memories too grim for a child’s ear.”

As I neared the end of the novel, I visited a congregant struggling with metastasized cancer who herself is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a serious Jew, a fluent Hebrew speaker with strong family ties in Israel, who has devoted her life to furthering justice and enriching Jewish community. Her son is in love with a non-Jewish woman and, though the young woman is wonderful, my friend is tortured by the very issues that are at the core of Pogrebin’s novel. I recommended that she read it because Pogrebin’s perspective could well offer my friend a measure of insight and comfort.

This book raises many questions: ‘What is Judaism?’ ‘Who is a Jew?’ ‘What ought a Jew know and do to enrich one’s own Jewish life and to assure that Judaism, Jewish practice, culture, ethics, and faith carry forward into the next generation?’ ‘What are the challenges that intermarriage brings to Jewish families?’

The book addresses as well the situation of children of survivors and, in light of the present, challenges their obligations to deceased parents who suffered the indignities of the Shoah.

Though Pogrebin does not deal with the question of how one justifies faith in the God of Jewish tradition in light of evil and the suffering of the innocent, nor does she offer a way to affirm Jewish faith in a liberal non-Orthodox context after the Holocaust, she does effectively present the tension between prophetic humanism and tribal particularism as it plays out in Zach’s inner conflict.

At the novel’s conclusion, Pogrebin brings everything together in a n’chemta (i.e. a hopeful and comforting series of teachings presented by Zach’s Orthodox childhood rabbi).

Rabbi Eleazar Goldfarb is a wise, loving and visionary mentor who lives comfortably between the two worlds of Jewish tradition and modernity primarily because he knows exactly who he is and what he believes. He deftly brings essential Jewish teachings to a tortured Zach.

This book is a wonderful read and provocatively challenges past Jewish assumptions in light of contemporary circumstances.

Community note: Letty Cottin Pogrebin will be the guest speaker at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles on Friday evening, October 30 during a community Shabbat dinner following Kabbalat Shabbat services. She will discuss the many issues she raises in this novel. The community is invited.

 

The Reawakening to Love Again – A Memorial to Moshe Tabak

21 Sunday Jun 2015

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American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Life cycle, Stories

Moshe Tabak was 90 years old when he died last week. Originally from Sigid, Czechoslovakia, he was the descendent of a distinguished line of chassidic Dayanim (scholars and judges) and was one of eleven children.

Moshe’s father was a wealthy land-owner in Czechoslovakia before the war, and so when the Nazis took over the country in 1939, he felt resistant to leave despite his wife’s urgent pleas. He reasoned that the bad times would pass and they should wait it out.

Tragically, he and almost all the family were murdered in Auschwitz, except Moshe, one older brother and a younger sister who survived work camps.

After the war at a port in Rumania, Moshe was waiting to board a Haganah boat that would take him and hundreds of refugees to Palestine. He was standing in a bread line when he spotted Miriam, a girl two years younger than him. Charmed, he reached out and offered her chocolate. Miriam remembers that Moshe was wearing a hat, had beautiful blue eyes and curly hair.

Once on board the ship, Moshe became sea-sick, and Miriam nursed him. They fell in love quickly and two years later, in 1947, they married in Palestine.

Theirs was a love-match from the beginning. Jewish legend relates that at creation each soul was split in two into what is called a palga gufa, a half-soul, and then each half moves through time and multiple lives in a sea of souls seeking its other half to become whole again.

Moshe and Miriam believed they had originally been one soul and that each was the other’s beshert, intended one – soul-mate. Their love was so deep and sustaining, they couldn’t imagine it otherwise.

Together Moshe and Miriam parented four children who in turn brought them nine grandchildren and then six great-grandchildren – L’dor vador.

Last summer, Moshe and Miriam, now living in Los Angeles and together for 70 years, aging and frail, moved in with their youngest daughter and son-in law, Debi and Ofer, and their four children Orly, Danielle, Aleeza, and Bradley, members of our congregation for many years. Their youngest two, twins, had been preparing to become bar and bat mitzvah yesterday on Shabbat Parashat Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32).

Sadly, we buried Moshe at 3 PM on Friday just before Shabbat. The family attended Kabbalat Shabbat services to say Kaddish. Tradition discourages public mourning on the Sabbath.

Yesterday morning, despite the family’s loss of its loving and gentle patriarch, convened to celebrate Aleeza’s and Bradley’s b’nai mitzvah.

My teacher and friend, Rabbi Larry Hoffman of HUC-JIR in NY, wrote a moving d’var Torah this week about the juxtaposition of death and life and how that theme played itself out in the rebellion of Korach and the subsequent sprouting of Aaron’s staff:

“Moses placed the staffs before God in the tent of the covenant law. The next day Moses entered the tent and saw that Aaron’s staff, which represented the tribe of Levi, had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds.” (Numbers 17:7-8)

Rabbi Hoffman explained that the great shoot of promise exemplified in the buds, blossoms and almonds of Aaron’s priestly staff, is regenerative and always bends towards the sun. “Judaism elects that image,” Larry wrote as its preferred image, not the image of destruction, bitterness and negativity.

How true this has been in Moshe’s and Miriam’s family experience.

Moshe was a positive thinking man. He mourned the destruction of his family quietly, deeply, with reverence, and dignity, but he looked forward, started his life over (as did so many survivors of the Shoah), sought continually every day to rediscover the good in life and to celebrate it, showing love and being generous in spirit to all, taking sustenance from Jewish tradition and Jewish faith, and delighting in the joy of family.

An unknown poet has written:

“Four things are beautiful beyond belief:
The pleasant weakness that comes after pain,
The radiant greenness that comes after rain,
The deepened faith that follows after grief,
And the re-awakening to love again.”

Zecher tzadik livracha. May the memory of this righteous man, Moshe Tabak, be a blessing.

From Grandparent to Child – Recording Memories

07 Sunday Jun 2015

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American Jewish Life, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Life cycle, Stories

Few of us know anything about our families beyond three or four generations going back. This is a sad deficit, and so in helping to prepare young people to become bar and bat mitzvah, my synagogue schools initiated a family legacy project to help our students and their parents record as much of the history of their families as is possible.

We asked them to search for historic family documents, photographs, family trees, recorded memories, memoirs, and ritual items. We also asked the students to choose an elderly individual to interview.

This is an important and fun task for children who gain a sense of and identity with these members of their families and a greater sense of their family history. There is also great satisfaction that the older members of our families take in relating their stories to future generations.

To aid our students in the interview, I developed a list of questions they could use. Since most grandparents love telling their grandchildren about their lives, all the students need to do is gently prod their elder’s memories and, if they are fortunate, the floodgates open.

Here is the list that I give to our prospective b’nai mitzvah:

1. To begin, please write down the names of everyone in your family: parents, siblings, children, grand-children, your grandparents, and great-grandparents – their names and approximate dates of birth and death, where they were born and where they died.

2. Can you tell me your own earliest memories growing up? How old were you and where were you when you had those memories?

3. Where were you born? Did you have brothers and sisters? How many of them had children and grandchildren? Do you know your Hebrew name?

4. Were you named after a relative? What kind of a person was your namesake?

5. How did you celebrate your birthday when you were growing up?

6. Were you a member of a synagogue when you were young? Where was your synagogue? Do you remember the name of your rabbi and/or cantor/chazzan, and what do you remember about them?

7. What did you do for fun as a child and as a teenager?

8. Who most significantly influenced your life when you were young? Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?

9. Did you feel “different” in your school, and if so how? How did you cope with feeling different?

10. What factors influenced your choice of profession, employment or way of spending your time?

11. How old were the oldest of your relatives that you remember when you were young, and when and where were they born?

12. What can you remember about your parents and grandparents that I might be interested in knowing? What were they like? What did they do for a living? What were their hobbies? Were they athletes, readers, writers, artists, musicians, scientists, doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, business people, laborers, tradesmen, or teachers? What was the most important accomplishment they would say they achieved in their lives?

13. What important hardships and challenges did your grandparents and great-grandparents face?

14. What were they most proud of at the end of their lives?

15. What languages do you speak and what languages did your grandparents and great-grandparents speak?

16. What countries have you and did they live in?

17. Did you or they experience anti-Semitism? Were you or they survivors of the Holocaust? What can you tell me about yours or their experiences?

18. Were your parents and grandparents observant Jews? Do you believe in God, or, are you a skeptic or an atheist? What about your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents?

19. Are there any Jewish ritual items in your family that are very old? Do they have stories attached to them?

20. If one side of your family is of another faith tradition, what is that tradition and how did your grandparents and great-grandparents practice their religion? Were they part of a church community? If so, where and what was the name of the church and their pastor/priest? Are there ritual items that they have and are there stories attached to them?

21. Did you ever visit Israel? What do you feel about Israel as the national home of the Jewish people?

22. Did you travel much in your life? Where have you been? When did you go there?

23. What world events most influenced your life, the lives of your parents and grandparents?

24. How would you want to be remembered by me?

Question for interviewee: What characteristics and virtues of the person you are interviewing do you most admire?

Paul Wurtzel, Son of Hollywood Legendary Producer Sol Wurtzel, Dies at 92

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Art, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories, Tributes

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American Jewish Life, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Stories

When I received a phone call last week from the great-grand-daughter of the first President of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Sol Wurtzel, who asked me to officiate at the funeral of Sol’s only son, Paul Wurtzel, her great-uncle, I could not say no.

I never met Paul nor his father, who died in 1958. But the “Wurtzel” family name is not only significant in the history of my synagogue, but in the history of Hollywood’s golden era of film-making.

Paul Wurtzel’s death marks the end of an era. Though he himself did not reach the pinnacle of power and influence that his father enjoyed, nevertheless, Paul was well-respected as a long-time assistant director of television series. His credits include hundreds of episodes in series such as The F.B.I., The Fugitive, Barnaby Jones, and The Thin Man, and he was the production manager on the 1980 television movie The Twilight Zone.

More than any of his television credits, Paul was beloved as a humble, unassuming, generous, funny, and gracious man. He married briefly, but had no children. Paul adored his sister’s four grandchildren and doted on them who considered him like a grandfather. His funeral this past Sunday was a veritable love-fest that attracted close to one hundred people – not a small thing for a 92-year old who had no children of his own.

At one point I stopped the service to share with those assembled that I have conducted many funerals in my 35 years as a congregational rabbi, and that the spirit at each is unique because the deceased and the mourners are unique. This one for Paul was memorable because of the palatable love, camaraderie and joyful banter amongst the mourners. I told them that their spirit was testimony to the positive and enduring impact of Paul’s life on each of them.

Paul’s youth and career could not have been easy for him. His father was a powerful man and his family shared with me that he was especially hard on his only son. Paul grew up in the lap of wealth in his parents’ Bel Aire home, but he had to rely upon his own resources. His family said Paul essentially raised himself. When he had knee surgery that kept him in bed for a month as a child, they took a six-week European summer vacation and left him with a care-taker.

Perhaps sensing that the young 8-year old Paul was unseen by his father, George Gershwin, a guest at the family home one night, told Paul to sit down at the piano after Sol had left the room for a few moments. Gershwin then played Rhapsody in Blue and quickly darted out of sight when his father returned only to see Paul sitting with his hands over the piano keys.

All that aside, Sol Wurtzel was one of the principle creators of the golden age of Hollywood of the 1930s and 1940s and had a significant impact upon the careers of some of its most illustrious stars.

Sol was hired in 1917 by William Fox, the founder of Fox Film Corporation, to be his personal secretary in New York. Fox, however, hated coming west to California, so he sent Sol to run production in Los Angeles.

Sol headed up Fox’s “B” rated movie division that included the popular Charlie Chan series and “Bright Eyes” (1934) starring Shirley Temple who sang “The Good Ship Lollypop.” He helped discover and make popular Will Rogers, Spencer Tracy, Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart, Ray Milland, Glenn Ford, Ginger Rogers, Robert Taylor, and the young Norma Jean Baker before she became Marilyn Monroe. Sol also promoted the young director John Ford who became a multiple academy award winning director and delivered the eulogy at his funeral in 1958.

Sol was among a handful of founding members of Temple Israel of Hollywood in 1927. When the congregation moved in the early thirties to a building vacated by the Hollywood United Methodist Church (now at Highland and Franklin Avenues), Sol commissioned Fox Studios to create and build an Ark. When we moved from that building in 1948 to our current Hollywood Blvd facility, those Ark doors were stored and eventually installed in our synagogue’s small chapel in 1955.

Those Chapel Ark doors constitute the only Aron Hakodesh ever created by a Hollywood film studio props department. It graced our Ark continually from 1955 until October, 2013 when our Chapel was demolished as part of a rebuilding project to be completed before this coming High Holidays.

Though we will not be using these Ark doors in our new Chapel, we will display them as they are iconic to our congregation and they bear historic significance in the history of Los Angeles Jewry and early Hollywood.

In Paul Wurtzel’s memory, Zichrono livracha – His memory is a blessing.

“People’s Park” – An Enduring Memory After 45 Years

25 Sunday May 2014

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Politics and Life, Ethics, Stories

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American Politics and Life, Ethics, Stories

May 22 and 23, 1969 are days that I will always remember. I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley. The Vietnam War was raging. A third world college strike against the university had shut down classes earlier that year. Tension could be cut with a knife on the Berkeley campus and on campuses across the nation at the end of a tumultuous decade.

Several blocks south of the Berkeley campus and one block east of Telegraph Avenue an empty block of land owned by the University had been taken over by community folks who had created what is still known as “People’s Park.” It was a peaceful place. There was a vegetable garden, and play equipment and swings had been donated. Communal meals were cooked and shared. Some slept on the grounds.

A week earlier, on May 15 just before sunrise, however, University of California police had been ordered to evacuate the park and erect a fence. Word spread quickly and the community erupted. The Berkeley police department called for assistance from the Alameda Sheriff’s department, and Governor Ronald Reagan called up the National Guard. Overnight Berkeley became an occupied city.

Amidst the tumult that day, UC Student Body President Dan Siegel exhorted the crowd in Sproul Plaza to go “take back the park.”

The combined police forces responded by dropping tear-gas from a helicopter over the campus in violation of international law and by firing bird-shot and buckshot into the crowd killing one man, James Rector, who was innocently observing the march from a rooftop, and injuring dozens.

The over-reaction and death enraged the Berkeley community. A week later, on Thursday, May 22, a peaceful march was called and I decided to join it. Our purpose was to politely ask shop-owners in downtown Berkeley to close their stores for the afternoon in memory of the killed man and in protest of the police over-reaction.

As hundreds of UC students and faculty walked quietly and legally on sidewalks, we were directed by police from one street to another and finally into an open parking lot adjacent to the Bank of America. There, 482 students, faculty and (as it happened) one member of the media were surrounded. The police informed us that we were under arrest.

We were loaded into police buses to carry us one hour southeast to the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, a minimum security prison, in Pleasanton, California. Once we arrived inside the prison gates, the bus stopped and the door opened. A guard entered and screamed orders at us. He threatened physical harm to anyone who did not do exactly as he commanded. I descended dutifully into a fenced compound where I saw 150 others lying belly-down next to one another, much like a Vietnam War body count, in neat rows. Everyone’s faces were turned to the left and guards were slapping their Billy clubs into their hands while cursing us and screaming threats that should anyone move or lift his head he would be beaten. Some were.

I assumed my place in the body formation and, terrified, dutifully did not move for eight hours, the gravel digging into my face, my bladder bursting, the inmates surrounding the compound taunting us for hours (I would learn much later that the prisoners were promised time off for good behavior if they harassed us), and the guards always screaming threats. No guard ever spoke to us in a normal speaking voice. They screamed incessantly like drill sergeants.

I was booked and finger-printed at one in the morning and was led into a barracks as part of a group that included a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle who had discarded his press identification when we were herded into the Bank of America parking lot. He was the first to be bailed out, and Saturday morning the Chronicle’s bold-lettered headline read – “I WAS A PRISONER AT SANTA RITA.” He described in detail everything that had happened in my particular barracks.

I was bailed out at two PM on Friday. Charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.

The intended impact of the experience, however, had registered. I had never before or since felt as frightened as I did on that day. One guard came within inches of my face and screamed that he was going to kill me. I learned that fear can lead us to feel and behave irrationally and against our own best interests.

Some regard fear as the most effective organizing principle in the building of community. This is a false belief. Rather, kindness, empathy and compassion are the virtues that not only distinguish us as human beings but are the essential building blocks for a community that values each individual as endowed with infinite value and worth by virtue of being created b’tzelem Elohim, in the Divine image.

To Be or Not To Be Spock – Leonard Nimoy Discusses his “Live Long and Prosper” Hand Gesture

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by rabbijohnrosove in American Jewish Life, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish Identity, Tributes

≈ 1 Comment

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American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Stories

My friends know that Leonard Nimoy is married to my first cousin Susan (her father and my mother were brother and sister). I have been close with Susan, who is a “smidge” older than me, throughout my adult life from our 20s when we rediscovered each other as young adults outside of childhood.

When Susan married Leonard twenty-five years ago I had only known him the way the public does, as a fine actor and director, the creator of Mr. Spock on the Star Trek series, as Morris Meyerson, the husband of Golda Meir, in Leonard’s Emmy-nominated role opposite Ingrid Bergman in “A Woman Called Golda,” as a liberal political activist, and as a committed Jew.

What I didn’t know was Leonard’s heart, and over these past two plus decades as a close family member, I have grown to love Leonard for so many reasons, not the least of which is that he makes my cousin Susan so happy (as she does him), but also because of his seriousness as an thinker and artist, his sense of humor and loving heart, his kindness and menschlechkite. My wife Barbara and I love him.

This five-minute interview with Leonard is a classic, and if you have not heard the story of his signature hand gesture of greeting/farewell as a Vulcan in Star Trek, do click onto the link below.

Leonard wrote two autobiographies; the first he called “I Am Not Spock”; the second he called “I Am Spock” – both are true, depending on circumstances.

As you will see, the hand gesture that accompanies “Live Long and Prosper” emerged out of Leonard’s earliest memories as a Jew accompanying his grandfather, father and older brother to shul on Shabbos morning in South Boston.

What I love most about this interview is that Leonard’s joy and love come pouring through, clearly reflecting that side of him which is NOT Spock!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyiWkWcR86I

 

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