San Diego Jewish Journal Feb. 2015

FEBRUARY 2015 l SHEVAT • ADAR 5775

PLUS: Help with planning for Jewish summer camp and a look at what it means to be “Blewish”

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CONTENTS

February 2015 Shevat/Adar 5775

36

COVER STORY: The 25th annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival has more than 50 films scheduled for 10 days in 13 theaters. Get all the details in our Film Festival section.

29

FEATURE: This Black History Month, we take a look at what it’s like to be “Blewish.”

54

CAMPS: Not sure where to start when it comes to Jewish summer camp? We’ve got an infographic for that.

59 4 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

THEATER: Pat Launer explores the little-known story behind The Old Globe’s production of “The Twenty-Seventh Man.”

Income Generation in Retirement Our conversation on retirement income can help you move from “Can I retire?” to “How can I make the most of my retirement?”

While most people understand the importance of saving for retirement, the concept of retirement income planning may be less familiar. Retirement income planning is a holistic process to help address key retirement decisions, effectively manage risks, and efficiently provide ongoing income to meet both the clients’ current and long-term retirement needs.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: 32 FEATURE:

JFS ushers in a new era

35 PURIM:

Quick and easy costume ideas

53 CAMPS:

A handy map of California’s sleep-away camps

56 CAMPS:

BunkConnect brings high tech and business know-how to the Jewish camps industry

62 SYNAGOGUE:

Chabad Downtown settles into new digs and looks forward to expanding programming

64 FOOD:

Matbucha – it doesn’t get more Middle Eastern than that

64 Around Town 10 Mailbag 12 Our Town 14 Event Recap 66 What’s Goin’ On 72 Calendar In Every Issue 8 The Starting Line 18 Parenting 20 Israeli Lifestyle 22 Dating 24 Aging 26 Spirituality 28 Israel 68 News 71 Diversions 75 Desert Life

We can support you by providing the guidance needed to make better, more informed choices to help provide a retirement as flexible as you are. As experienced advisors, we take the time to understand your unique goals to help create a plan tailored for you – one that will modify and change over time.

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 5

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www.sdjewishjournal.com February 2015 • Shevat/Adar 5775 PUBLISHERS • Dr. Mark S. Moss and Mark Edelstein EDITOR-IN-CHIEF • Natalie Jacobs CREATIVE DIRECTOR • Peter Talhamé

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Another Listing by Lisa

SAN DIEGO JEWISH JOURNAL (858) 638-9818 • fax: (858) 638-9801 5665 Oberlin Drive, Suite 204 • San Diego, CA 92121 EDITORIAL: editor@sdjewishjournal.com ADVERTISING: sales@sdjewishjournal.com CIRCULATION & SUBSCRIPTIONS: publisher@sdjewishjournal.com ART DEPARTMENT: art@sdjewishjournal.com LISTINGS & CALENDAR: calendar@sdjewishjournal.com SDJJ is published monthly by San Diego Jewish Journal, LLC. Subscription rate is $24 for one year (12 issues). Send subscription requests to SDJJ, 5665 Oberlin Drive, Suite 204, San Diego, CA 92121. The San Diego Jewish Journal is a free and open forum for the expression of opinions. The opinions expressed herein are solely the opinion of the author and in no way reflect the opinions of the publishers, staff or advertisers. The San Diego Jewish Journal is not responsible for the accuracy of any and all information within advertisements. The San Diego Jewish Journal reserves the right to edit all submitted materials, including press releases, letters to the editor, articles and calendar listings for brevity and clarity. The Journal is not legally responsible for the accuracy of calendar or directory listings, nor is it responsible for possible postponements, cancellations or changes in venue. Manuscripts, letters, documents and photographs sent to the Journal become the physical property of the publication, which is not responsible for the return or loss of such material. All contents ©2015 by San Diego Jewish Journal. The San Diego Jewish Journal is a member of the American Jewish Press Association and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 7

THE STARTING LINE

by Natalie Jacobs Editor of the San Diego Jewish Journal editor@sdjewishjournal.com

Playing Favorites

A

story in The New Yorker’s Dec. 22, 2014, issue begins: “Few things are more mysterious than someone else’s favorite film.” The author, Teju Cole, goes on to define a favorite film as “a home to which you return,” comfortable with the surroundings though always seeing it with the fresh eyes of years spent away.

In Cole’s world of favorites, it’s love at first sight whether your like it or not – the film “confirms you on first encounter, and goes on to shape you in some irreversible way.”

I’m keen on saying that I don’t believe in favorites. My moods, and therefore my tastes, change too rapidly for me to not almost instantly perjure myself any time I utter a title. In constant semi-conscious fear of contradiction, I enjoy films and think of certain ones more often than others, but I would be reluctant to name them anywhere near the word “favorite.”

Teju Cole, on the other hand, has had a favorite film since 1996 – “Red” directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski (1996 is when he first watched it, the film came out in 1994). After all these years, Cole’s commitment to the film is unwavering, actually deepening with dozens of viewings and apparently lots of research about Kieślowski’s life.

His love letter to the film left me, a vagabond in Favoritesville, feeling like a hitchhiker with no thumbs.

Cole has watched “Red” everywhere – Michigan, Alabama, Berlin, Geneva, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He even paid homage to the film in his novel “Open City,” with a scene that contains bad weather, a 8 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

sinking ferry and an “oneiric mood.” It is from “Red” that Cole learned how to weave together narrative, where he discovered the patterns that give meaning to imaginary things.

It’s clear that “Red” remains Cole’s favorite film because he continues to learn things from it and because its images and themes still come to mind, unannounced but poignant as a lover’s familiar scent on his pillow. I’m worried now, after reading the exposition, that I have been bereft of something substantial in my unwillingness to play favorites.

While I’m admittedly a bit jealous of what “Red” has done for Cole, reading about his relationship to the film was a nice reminder of the power of storytelling, especially the visual kind. Good art has the unique ability to stick with us and remain relevant to different circumstances throughout our lives. It exponentially rewards the hours spent consuming it. On that point, I can agree with Cole, but do I really have to chose just one piece of art from each medium that does it for me? Can’t I meander through Favoritesville without staking claim on any specific plot of land?

It looks like the San Diego Jewish Film Festival couldn’t pick just one favorite either. To celebrate their 25th anniversary, they’ve brought back four film “favorites” from past years as a special “Deja View” series this year. Like me, you may not be in the market for a favorite film either, but there’s a lot of good-looking stuff on the program this year. Our coverage starts on page 36. A

Follow Us:

On our Facebook page, we share online versions of magazine stories but also fresh content about Jewish news and pop culture daily.

“Like” us at facebook.com/ SanDiegoJewishJournal.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 9

We’re Listening!

>> mailbag

Let us know what you’re thinking.

MISSING SOMEONE? Dear Editor: I am shocked not to find an article [in the January “Women’s Issue”] about a longtime woman Rabbi who has meant so much to women in San Diego. Rabbi Lenore Bohm!

Rabbi Bohm is now the director of “Waters of Eden.” Rabbi Bohm is loved by every woman who has studied with her, participated in women’s ceremonies and so many other events. WHY was Rabbi Bohm not listed in this issue?

It is shameful that she was not recognized!

Connie Robin Oceanside Dear Editor: We were delighted to see a full edition of the Jewish Journal devoted to the accomplishments of prominent San Diego Jewish women. Many of the women featured in this issue [Jan. 2015], including Bonnie Dumanis, Susan Davis and Charlene Seidle, as well as many of the women rabbis and cantors, are Hadassah life members, and have been participants and speakers at our events and meetings.

However, we are deeply troubled that nowhere in this month’s issue is there a single mention of Hadassah.

We are particularly concerned that Hadassah is not listed on page 63 with other women’s organizations.

Althought we are not one of the larger organizations, we are an important part of this community, and many of our members are active in other organizations as well.

Audrey Levin, Hadassah President; Terry Whitten, past President; and Deena Fainman, Hadassah Director San Diego

ON THE MAP

Dear Editor: I had a non-Jewish girlfriend my first year at College some four decades ago. I remember being at her home one day and visiting with her and her mother. The mood was light and we were kidding one

10 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

another, and then her mother said to me that I had the “map of Israel” on my face.

Being caught off guard and not being familiar with the expression she tossed at me, I was at a loss for words. Sensing I had become uncomfortable, my girlfriend’s mother explained to me that I had a very Jewish looking face. She then assured me I was an attractive young man and that it was not meant to be an insult.

The idea that I had a Jewish look never bothered me. Today, I guess you could even say I wear my “map of Israel” face rather proudly.

The real “map of Israel” insult came my way, however, just recently, when I found out that the New York City based HarperCollins publishing giant omitted Israel from the atlases they sell to their Arab nation school customers. Not only did I see this action as a personal affront to me, but an affront to Jews everywhere and an obvious affront to the nation of Israel.

As a matter of fact, by omitting the sovereign nation of Israel from their Middle East maps, HarperCollins has insulted the science of cartography and the great pioneer map makers of antiquity. But thanks to HarperCollins, a publisher that specializes in education, the science of cartography has taken one humongous step backwards.

Now that HarperCollins has been exposed, they have apologized, promised to purge their misleading and misguided maps, and print accurate new ones. That is all fine and dandy, but I have a suggestion for their next future map making business venture. I would like to see HarperCollins design and distribute a Northeast Asia map that omits North Korea.

Harold Witkov San Diego

A GOOD MESSAGE FROM THE CHIEF RABBI OF ISRAEL Dear Editor: I just wanted to share with you

the tremendous impact Rabbi David Lau had on me [when he was in town on Jan. 13] and I think all of us Jews need to hear his amazing message of love and unity.

Also I would like to thank Chabad UC and the Jewish Federation for inviting us to attend such a beautiful spiritual event.

What I heard him said was how important it is for ALL of us Jews to love, care and accept us regardless of who we are, Sephardic or Ashkenazi, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative and even those who never attend any religious service, but know and remember we are all one, even the converts or married to a Jew; a Jew is a Jew period. The other part of his message which I feel will change my life and that of my family is the importance of ALL OF US continuing to practice our G-d given festivals, traditions, prayers and unity in the home. As a Jew, not to be ashamed or think it is a thing of the past, every thing G-d has taught us is all for our good, including our kosher diet, the Torah, Talmud and all the writings are full of wisdom and we need it more then ever now!!! We need to teach our children to honor our creator as well as the elders, parents etc., perhaps if we as Jews shine G-d’s light in our home, the world will learn from us not by ways of being “Religious” but rather people who walk by truth, love, honesty and bless those around us as one, and true Shalom will some day will be possible not only for us Jews but let us be an inspiration for the world too.

Lety Levy San Diego

Send us your comments: editor@sdjewishjournal.com 5665 Oberlin Dr., Ste 204 San Diego, CA 92121

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 11

our

TOWN

BY NATALIE JACOBS, LINDA BENNETT & BETSY BARANOV l BETSY1945@COX.NET PHOTOS COURTESY JCF

A Fine Farewell

A true who’s-who’s of the San Diego Jewish community braved a rain storm and low visibility on Sunday, Jan. 11 in order to honor Marjory Kaplan for her visionary leadership at the helm of the Jewish Community Foundation. Her retirement party, hosted at the Sheraton Shelter Island, opened with an introduction by JCF board president Jane Scher and a prayer led by Kaplan’s rabbi Leonard Rosenthal from Tifereth Israel. The large room was equipped with two projection screens so there wasn’t a bad seat in the house. A tribute video featured all of the living past board presidents who have worked with Kaplan during her 20-year tenure. Employees took the stand to offer a small roast of Kaplan and her love of business books and then Kaplan herself took to the podium to offer a rundown of what she’s learned from her years with the Foundation. In a passing of the torch, Kaplan introduced Charlene Seidle and with that ushered in the Jewish Community Foundation’s next generation.

Mazel tov to Marjory Kaplan!

Birthdays...

On Dec. 26, Stella Madeline Paz arrived to the delight of her parents Alexis and Danny Paz of La Jolla. Happy grandparents are Sandie Zakar Paz, the late Saul Paz, Michael Perlin, Ron and Betsy Baranov, and Janice Baranov.

Happy 82nd birthday to Norman Troyon!

Happy 89th birthday to Doug Selik!

Happy 7th birthday to Talia Eshel!

Happy birthday to the Journal’s Nancy Segal!

Anniversaries...

Happy 60th anniversary to Robert and Sondra Berk!

Happy 60th anniversary to Matt and Iris Strauss!

Mazel Tov...

Mazel tov to Charles Berton Handler on his Bar Mitzvah in December! The inspiring service was held at Temple Emanu-El. Proud parents are Jennifer and Robert Handler.

Top: Charlene Seidle, Marjory Kaplan, and Jane Scher. Middle: Maggie Meyer, Rabbi Lenore Bohm, Deborah Horwitz, and Joyce Axelrod. Bottom: Meg Goldstein, Marjory Kaplan, Mel Cohn, Naomi Feldman, and Greg Anglea.

12 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

WE SERVE HEALTHY MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT Harry meets his friends at the College Avenue Center to catch up over coffee, exercise, and take computer classes. And all morning he looks forward to lunch.

EATING WELL never gets old

Harry’s wife passed away a few years ago. He still lives in the home they shared, but he is finding it more challenging these days. Harry has mastered making breakfast, but preparing a nutritious homecooked meal—he wouldn’t know where to begin.

At the Center, he can count on hot and delicious kosher lunches. He chooses fruits and vegetables from the salad bar and takes home free produce from our new Fresh Market.

Wholesome food.

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Food assistance often leads to a wider range of services that address clients’ physical, financial, social, spiritual, and emotional health. We support the whole person.

And it often starts with that first well-balanced meal.

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WE’RE WITH YOU

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Self-Sufficiency Seven Years in a Row — Only 2% of charities nationwide can make this claim

Aging with Dignity Community Connection & Engagement

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 13

be SEEN NATALIE JACOBS l PHOTOS BY ATRUAX PHOTOGRAPHY AND CASATO PHOTOGRAPHY

Rockin’ the Andaz

While the non-Jewish world was dreaming of Santa Claus and reindeer on Dec. 24, more than 300 of San Diego’s Jewish young adults were living it up at the Andaz Wine Bar and Nightclub in downtown. The Jewish Federation’s annual Christmas Eve event, this year called “Place2Be,” was not just about drinking and dancing either. The event raised more than $2,000 for a variety of Federation programs, like homeless shelters, people in Israel and Jews in Ukraine. It was hosted in partnership with all the “NextGen” organizations from around town: the Center for Jewish Culture’s In the Mix group, Beth El’s Chai, JDC Entwine, JFS Emerging Leaders, Hillel of San Diego, Birthright, OU Next, StandWithUs, and Tarbuton. Expect the whole crew back again at some swanky location this December, 2015. You must be tired of eating Chinese food anyway.

Top: Kimberly Simms and Carly Simms. Clockwise from middle: Jenna Zetisky, Amanda Wachter, and Sara Zolott • April and Paul Segal • Ari Gaffen, Ken Graham, Danielle Rose Marco, Ben Alpert, and Elyse Birnbaum • Darielle Meyerowitz, Alan Deicas, and Juliet Alexandra.

14 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 15

the SCENE

BY NATALIE JACOBS PHOTOS BY SOLANGE

Boutique Benefit

San Diego’s Adopt a Family Foundation is a nonprofit organization started in North County with the intention of raising money to support victims of terror in Israel. It’s a large mission for a small organization that manages to accomplish their goals in novel ways throughout the year. As 2014 drew to a close, the group gathered together a marketplace of Jewish artisans to raise money for their cause. Held on Dec. 2 at the Morgan Run Club and Resort in Rancho Santa Fe, local merchants were eager to set up shop to sell their wares to a friendly group of buyers. Just in time to add a mitzvah to holiday shopping, 20 percent of purchases went to the Foundation.

Jackie Gmach was on hand signing copies of her book “From Bomboloni to Bagel” along with Hatikva and their wonderful Judaica along with a handful of other crafts people. For information on upcoming fundraisers, visit adoptafamilyfoundation.org.

Top: Kaneta Harmon. Clockwise from middle: Denise Schwartz and friend from Hatikva Fine Judaica • Yael Hershkovitz, Iris Pearlman, Carine Chitayat, and Robyn Rapaport • Sheryl Goodman, and Kelly Haas.

16 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 17

parenting

MUSINGS FROM MAMA

by Sharon Rosen Leib srleib@roadrunner.com

Let’s Get (A) Physical

A

s a hormonal 18-year-old back in 1981, Olivia Newton-John’s lusty song “Let’s Get Physical” inspired me. Cute, goodgirl Sandy from “Grease” exhorted us to get over the small talk, embrace our inner animal and just get it on. Now that I’m 52, her lyric “Let me hear your body talk” has taken on a whole new, far tamer meaning.

Our health insurer started robocalling me about 18 months ago to exhort me to get a colonoscopy.

UnitedHealthcare really wants to hear my body talk!! I knew that I of all people, someone who lost both parents to cancer (although not of the colorectal variety), should heed these calls and schedule an appointment. And yet, I felt thoroughly uninspired by the dreaded procedure. Then my gynecologist’s office sent me a reminder to schedule my annual mammogram. I also vaguely remembered that I hadn’t had a physical in a while and should probably get a read on whether my borderline high cholesterol has crept any higher.

But hey, ignorance is bliss and I felt pretty good.

Plus, I’ve been busy attending to pressing needs the past couple of years: helping our two oldest daughters get out of the house and settle into college life; helping youngest daughter find the right high school (too many choices these days if you ask me); helping my great uncle navigate the physical and mental travails of being a 90-plus-year-old, poststroke man confined to a wheelchair; taking care of my husband who had an emergency appendectomy and hernia repair surgery in rapid succession; and, of course, our 14-year-old dog who has a heart murmur and collapsing trachea that cause intermittent wheezing, especially in the middle of the night.

However, now that the older girls are happily 18 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

immersed in college life, ditto with youngest daughter in high school, my great-uncle has passed on, my husband has long-since recovered and the vet prescribed codeine for the dog (who still wheezes), I’ve run out of really good excuses.

The Jewish sage Hillel’s famous saying, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” ricocheted in my brain. His wise, 2,000-year-old words not only inspired, they prodded me into action. I’d been meaning to find a new female primary care doctor with whom I felt comfortable. I asked a doctor friend for recommendations, researched online and made an appointment with a woman whose biography stated she was passionate about wellness and evidence-based, preventative medicine – my kind of gal.

When rummaging through my medical records so I could update the new doctor on my history, I discovered, to my horror, that I hadn’t seen my former male internist or had any blood work done in over two years. Avoidance and denial had felt so comfortable. But if not now, when? Putting off my cholesterol check and colon cancer screening for so long bordered on irresponsibility.

My new doctor lived up to her biography. I adored her commonsense, honest, kind style. And I really fell in love with her when she told me I didn’t necessarily need to have a colonoscopy.

I could choose to submit annual stool samples instead. While this option grosses my husband out, it seems less invasive and scary to me. She also gently referred me to convenient places for lab work and mammography.

I got the best kind of physical. Within minutes, the new doctor made me breathe easier. My body no longer feels afraid to talk. A

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 19

israeli lifestyle

LIVING ON THE FRONT PAGE

by Andrea Simantov

andreasimantov@gmail.com

The Winter of our Content

I

exited the offices of the municipal tax office in a near trance, numb from the news that the back-taxes I owed equaled nearly a halfyear’s salary. Compounded interest and none of the previously awarded discounts for being underemployed or a single mother with young children at home, the concrete-and-iron plaza of City Hall felt shaky beneath my aching feet.

Way-beyond the point of tears, my dreams of quitting the day-job and becoming independent quickly dissipated as I frantically considered selling the apartment and finding additional part-time employment.

Disorder and fear had brought me to this place 20 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

and I suddenly felt both old and frightened. I could not shake the relentless self-flagellation: What kind of pathetic person am I that, instead of looking forward to a blessedly carefree retirement I can only envision endless labor and buckling under the weight of debt, debt and a little more debt?

Employing Herculean-effort, I remembered my resilience, ability and all that other crap in order to (re)claim my life. Surprisingly, every utility provider and other creditor exhibited understanding and willingness to work with me.

Enlisting the services of a professional family budget-manager, I tenuously gained control. The process took less than a month.

The most difficult part was telling my three children in South Africa that, unlike other years, this Passover would not include a trip to visit them and the grandchildren; the budget just wouldn’t allow for it. These were the only times I cried. Canceling our yearly theater trips, using product-coupons and doing away with restaurant dining felt embarrassingly easy. But delaying a chance to snuggle with the grandbabies felt downright cruel. For all its miraculous qualities, Skype just can’t deliver the touch or smell of love.

The other evening I’d gone to bed earlier than usual, drained from a full work day followed by a few hours of bookkeeping and life-planning.

Thus said, it felt like the dead of night when the phone rang a little after eleven. Seeing it was an overseas number, I grew frightened. My family knows I don’t talk on the phone after eight.

What terrible news lurked on the other end of the line?

“Mom, it’s Tehilah,” she excitedly shouted and, even before she continued I knew it was the happy news for which we’d all been waiting. “I’m ENGAGED!” Gavin, her now fiancé, grabbed the receiver from her and with equal excitement exclaimed: “Mazel tov, Andrea! I love you. Can I call you ‘Mom’?”

Despite the drudgery that makes up a good part of daily existence, there are miraculous moments that remind us that it is all a miracle.

Miracles that have nothing to do with city tax offices, bunions or war with our Arab neighbors.

There are Skype visits with grandchildren, shabbos dinners with friends, a clean bill of health from the clinic doctor and late-night phone calls that are both declarations of love and reaffirmation that all is well with the world, if only for a moment. A

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 21

dating

PLAYING WITH MATCHES

by Jennifer Garstang jenscy@gmail.com

Four Lies Movies Tell us About Romance

A

h movies: one of our favorite sources of subconscious dating advice. Our society is inundated with films depicting stories of romance. But while these are fun and entertaining, they also can have unintended consequences for your love-life.

The thing is, there’s a good reason that so many midrashim take the form of parables. We humans learn how to behave from the people we see and the fables we’re told. Unlike our Talmudic tales, however, movies aren’t trying to help us lead fulfilling lives. They’re trying to get us to buy movie tickets (and popcorn). As such, their goal is simply to entertain us, usually in two hours or less.

To do so, they’ll often fall back on common tropes in order to forward the plot.

Now, we all know (at least consciously) that movies aren’t real. But when we see the same unrealistic assumptions acted out over and over, it is very easy to subconsciously internalize them as fact without noticing. When we do that, we wind up applying unrealistic expectations to our own situation, thus sabotaging our love-lives.

Here are a few examples of some of the common assumptions movies make: 1. Everyone has one “perfect” match. Watch half a dozen romantic movie trailers, and odds are you’ll hear the phrase “The One” at least once. But in the real world, there is no “One” person who is completely right for you. Instead, there are a lot of different people who would make great romantic partners in many different ways. If you assume that you will find “The One” and everything will fall into place, then you’re going to discover that things instead will fall apart.

2. Intense and instant attraction is the same as Love. Sure, you may be in a happy, long-term relationship with someone you could share your 22 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

life with...but you just locked eyes with a stranger in a bookstore (what is it about bookstores?) and felt the sparks. So, now, you’ll spend the next few days of your life preparing to marry that “wrong” person you’ve been with for years, only to leave that person at the altar to be with the “right” person you met three days ago...Sorry to break it to you, but what you’re experiencing is infatuation, and it’s not gonna last.

3. Conversely (but somehow NOT mutuallyexclusively), if you despise someone, you’re probably perfect for each other. What better way to keep the main characters apart until the last five minutes than by making them start off hating each other? What is more delightful than watching Sally cry “I hate you, Harry!” over and over before falling into his arms for a big romantic kiss? Yep. Definitely a healthy basis for a relationship right there.

4. If he stalks you, it means he cares.

“Twilight” isn’t the only movie to present a semiabusive co-dependent relationship as True Love.

The romantic genre is chock-full of leading men who doggedly pursue the object of their affections despite all obstacles (including, at times, their own nearly-overpowering desire to kill her and drink her blood). The same isn’t as true for women in movies. Generally, female characters who latch on to the person they want are portrayed far more accurately: as delusional and desperate.

So, how do we avoid inadvertently internalizing these absurd messages? We do so by consciously countering our subconscious. Go enjoy movies!

But if you find yourself feeling that your love-life isn’t living up to your expectations, then it’s time to take a step back and think about your assumptions.

You may find that the problem isn’t actually your love-life...but the expectations themselves. A

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aging

OLDER, WISER, BETTER

by Jon Schwartz

jonaschwartz@hotmail.com

Resolutions and the Month of Love

J

ust a few days into 2015, I was already thinking about breaking my New Year’s resolution. My goal this year is to not reach into my pocket and look at my cell phone, when I’m just waiting for something. On this particularly tempting day, in early January, I was sitting in my doctor’s office waiting for my name to be called. The doctor was running behind schedule and I began to get restless and bored. I thought, what a perfect time to break my resolution and look at my phone! Let’s see; Facebook, Twitter, some sports scores, so much temptation to pass the time. I was about to reach into my pocket to pull out my cell phone, when I looked over and saw an elderly couple holding hands. They each wore a wedding ring and were just sitting there so adorably that I couldn’t help but stare and smile.

I felt compelled to say something, so I broke the ice by asking how long they have been married.

The husband proudly answered 70 years. These two were both in their early 90s and were clearly still very much in love. We talked about how they met (at shul in Philadelphia), their kids, and the secret to a long and loving marriage (something that’s not exactly kosher to write about in the Journal).

Since meeting this couple, I have been more aware of senior romance as well as loneliness.

Unfortunately, the reason why seeing a 70-year marriage is so shocking is that it truly is quite a rarity. One spouse tends to outlive the other, leaving one to finish out his or her days mostly alone. Too many in our society assume that because a partner has lost his or her spouse, or that because an individual is old, that one no longer has a need 24 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

for romance.

Physicians who treat seniors will often inquire about one’s breathing, food intake, bathroom habits and balance…all of Maslow’s physiological needs, except romance and/or sex. I believe that this taboo topic for our aging population should become a more comfortable one to talk about.

Studies have shown that having love in one’s life, or being romantically involved, has many tremendous health benefits. A healthier heart, higher pain tolerance, lower blood pressure and even a longer life are associated with having a romantic partner.

Since February is widely considered the month for love, I feel it is the perfect time to perform a love mitzvah and make a shidduch. The idea of matchmaking for the elderly doesn’t necessarily have to be about connecting romantic partners.

Aging can be a very scary and lonely experience.

To have someone to share that experience with can create an interdependency that is nothing short of beautiful.

I remember my first crush – I was 10 years old.

The feeling I had in my stomach whenever I saw her feels exactly as wonderful 20 years later with my current crush. There is no reason that the feeling of love or having a crush should suddenly feel any less like butterflies as we age.

As inspired as I was by the wonderful couple I met by resisting the urge to entertain myself with the computer in my pocket, I have to confess that I’ve broken my New Year’s resolution. We do what we can. A

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spirituality

THE ARTIST’S TORAH

by David Ebenbach ebenbach@netzero.com

Unafraid to be Afraid

T

his month, the Torah brings us back to the moment of revelation on Mount Sinai – and what a moment it is! The mountain is blazing with fire, shrouded in smoke, everyone’s senses dazzled by horn blasts, thunder, and lightning. Understandably, the people are somewhat cowed by the experience, and they beg Moses to act as their intercessor; they’re afraid that if God talks to them directly, they’ll die.

What Moses says in response is not quite what you’d expect: Don’t fear, he says (Ex 10:17). God is here to test you, so that the fear of Him may be with you, so that you don’t sin. In other words: Don’t be afraid; God just wants you to be afraid.

Of course, apparent contradictions often just turn out to be more complicated truths.

In this case, fear is ultimately seen as a good thing. God wants them to experience it. More on that soon – but, if fear is a good thing, why does Moses first tell the people not to be afraid? To my mind, he’s illustrating the choice that always faces us when we’re afraid (and which I’ve discussed here before): do we run, or, on the other hand, do we acknowledge the fear and allow ourselves to stay, to dwell in the frightening experience? When Moses tells the people not to be afraid, he’s saying, Don’t run. Stay here. Stay and be afraid.

The wisdom here is that, when it comes to the important stuff, we can’t let fear prevent us from 26 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

the experience that fear brings. We have to step forward into it. I last talked about this before in response to the story of the spies, where I argued that we can’t let fear get in our way. But there’s more to it than that: here I’m arguing that, far from being an obstacle to be overcome, fear may sometimes be the destination we need to reach.

The root word that the Torah’s using here for fear, yirah, is sometimes translated instead as awe, which tells us that this is a bigger, more significant feeling than the one that might come up if we saw, say, an extra-large spider in the bathtub. This is a massive feeling that only happens when we’re in the presence of something much larger and more powerful than ourselves – and when we allow ourselves to take in some of that enormity. Given our smallness, that could be a terrifying experience; given our ability to think beyond our individual selves, this can be an awesome experience. Either way, yirah isn’t something to run from or overcome – it’s something to dwell in. According to this Torah verse, this is our ultimate test, the place where we become our best selves. That may indeed be one source of our fear; who will I become amidst the thunder and lightning, and what will my life, my responsibilities, be?

Stay, our tradition counsels us. Stay and find out. You don’t want to miss it. A

 This

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ISRAEL

AN UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCE OF AMERICAN OIL PRODUCTION Japan and Israel establish closer ties

BY CNAAN LIPHSHIZ, JTA

R

eading his Japanese-language newspaper over breakfast, Rabbi Mendy Sudakevich spotted an ad for a self-help DVD titled “Get rich like the Jews.”

“Almost anywhere else in the world, such an ad” – published in several widely read Japanese dailies – “would have been deemed anti-Semitic incitement,” noted Sudakevich, an Israel-born Chabad emissary who settled in Tokyo in 2000.

But in Japan, he and others said, it’s something akin to a compliment. “[T]he takeaway is that Jews, and Israel by extension, should be emulated and embraced,” said Ben-Ami Shillony, a historian and lecturer on the Far East at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Indeed, Japan’s government – buoyed by the population’s generally positive bias toward Jews –has been actively seeking stronger economic ties with Israel. That’s especially true now that the nation’s decades-long dependence on Arab oil is waning due to America’s increased energy production and Japan’s decreased reliance on fossil fuels.

In 2014, trade between the two nations rose by 9.3 percent to $1.75 billion, according to Israel’s Ministry of Economy.

Warmer relations also yielded several recent joint memoranda on enhancing cooperation on research, trade, tourism and even security cooperation – an area that successive Japanese administrations regarded as taboo for fear that it would anger oil-rich Arab nations.

And in Japan, government policy has a substantially larger impact on private firms than in the West, Shillony said. This was evidenced in the decisions by nearly all the large Japanese carmakers not to enter the Israeli market until the 1990s, when the Arab oil boycott – a set of sanctions applied against nations that did business with Israel – began to loosen, he added.

Japan’s new certainty owes to the arrival in October of U.S.-produced shale oil, which is expected to put the United States ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest exporter of black gold. As production in the United States nears 28 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

the projected rate of 11.6 million barrels a day by 2020, exports to Japan are expected to grow far beyond the current level of 300,000 barrels a month. At the same time, Japan is increasingly relying on green energy.

More evidence of warmer ties between Israel and Japan: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official visit to Tokyo in May, 2014, where he and his wife, Sara, dined with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife, Akie, at Abe’s residence. Their meeting exceeded its allotted time – unusual for a state visit in Japan.

Abe, a center-right politician whose career and worldview in many respects align with that of Netanyahu, is heading to Israel later this month in the first state visit of its kind in nine years for a Japanese leader. Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, visited Japan in 2008.

“I am determined, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu, to make further efforts to strengthen Japan-Israel relations, so that the potentials are fully materialized,” Abe told the media in Tokyo during his meeting with Netanyahu.

The feelings appear to be mutual.

In early January, Netanyahu’s Cabinet approved a series of measures aimed at boosting trade to the tune of several tens of millions of dollars. Israel will open an Economy Ministry office in Osaka and increase by 50 percent government grants for joint Israeli-Japanese research projects.

For Abe, strengthening ties with Israel is part of a larger vision for enhancing innovation and

diversifying Japan’s highly centralized industries and markets in an attempt to reverse its declining economy and creeping inflation, according to Shillony.

In Abe’s Japan, the historian added, Israel is a particularly valuable partner because its unique expertise in defense and military technologies fits his plan for beefing up Japanese military capabilities against an increasingly defiant North Korea.

The Arab Spring of 2011 also changed Japan’s view of the region in Israel’s favor, according to Naoki Maruyama, a professor of history at Japan’s Meiji Gakuin University.

“With the region falling into chaos and internal strife, Israel stands out as the exception – and the place in which to invest,” he tells JTA. Abe’s economic doctrine of openness, which analysts often call “Abenomics,” already is changing the reality of doing business in Japan as a foreigner, according to Yoav Keidar, an Israeli businessman who has been working in Japan for the past 25 years.

“Once the main bottleneck for foreign firms, the government is now actively helping those firms overcome other blockages,” he says.

“In Japanese terms, this is nothing short of a revolution.”

In Keidar’s case, the government fast-tracked permits for his telemedicine service – a vetting process that would have taken years in the past, he said.

Despite the dramatic increase in trade between the two nations, it’s still some 30 percent lower than Israel’s trade with South Korea, one of Japan’s main competitors.

That competition is another factor enhancing Israel’s appeal in Japan, according to Peleg Lewi, head of mission of Israel’s embassy in Tokyo.

“It did not escape Japanese industrialists and officials that Israel still has much stronger trade with some of Japan’s strongest competitors,” Lewi says. “At a time when giants like Samsung, Intel and Google are operating research centers in Israel, Japan is beginning to feel left out.” A

BLACK

& Blewish

FEATURE

BY TINA B. ESHEL

T

he history of blacks and their connection to Judiasm is a complicated tale seldom told. As February is Black History Month, it seems an appropriate time to look at what it means to be a Jew of color, or “Blewish” as some members of the group call themselves.

Here, I speak with four people who fall on different points of that spectrum: two biracial women, one born to a Jewish mother, the other who converted when she discovered her Jewish heritage; a Black Zionist; and a Caribbean woman with Jewish roots who now calls herself “Jewmaican.”

Judaism transcends race Jess Cohen is Jewish. An artist with a master’s degree in public administration, Cohen also has a certificate in Jewish communal service from Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. During her time at Hebrew Union College, she wrote a term paper called, “Blacks and Jews: Where has the Love Gone?”

Cohen’s interest is personal. Her mother is Jewish, her birth father is black and she identifies as biracial and “Blewish,” as has become the customary term.

“My parents met in the Civil rights movement,” she explains. “My mom and birth father met in college in late 60s and they were both active in civil rights and the decolonization of Africa.”

Researching the history of the relationships between blacks and Jews helped solidify Cohen’s Jewish identity. She has much to say about a

common history that most, even those who could stand to benefit from the dialogue, don’t talk about.

“Initially, the Jewish community and black community were extremely close because Jews were incredibly involved in the push for civil rights. From abolition to marching and financial supporters of Selma and Martin Luther King and other high power members in the black community, [they] worked really closely with rabbis and other Jewish leaders.”

The love started fading with the rise of the “Nation of Islam and Malcolm X in the late 60s when more peaceful means and legal efforts gave way to more militant efforts. There started to be a strain between the communities – Jewish and black power movements,” Cohen explains.

“There were a lot of Jews [involved in the movement] and the tension between blacks embracing Islam was causing tension between the two groups.”

Like most “Blews,” Cohen moves between her two worlds, intimately aware of the biases each holds against the other. While working for a Conservative synagogue in New York, a congregant once asked her who she was. “I’m the youth director,” Cohen replied to which the woman said, “They let non-Jews do that?”

Cohen had to give the congregant a lesson on the diversity of Judaism, something most white Jews don’t experience in their lifetimes, she observes.

Cohen’s clarity of voice and opinion extends to political correctness and the angst many biracial

Jews report feeling in society, or in this case the two tribes – American Jewry and American Blacks – that often want “Blews” to chose one identity or the other.

“I identify as racially mix. I prefer [the term] Black. I always feel African American is a mouthful and I grew up in the pre-politicallycorrect generation, so for me saying that is like, Dude, this man isn’t an Irish-American. Why do we have to categorize what type of American you are?”

She continues: “There’s a misconception particularly in America that Jews are white. I’m a Jew by birth. I think we are so into categorizing and putting people in boxes and safely homogenizing Judaism that we lose the point.

Jews come in all shapes, sizes and colors.”

Rekindling the love between tribes That tension Cohen wrote about at Hebrew Union College L.A. continues to reverberate with consequences today. Once upon a time, black leaders such as Martin Luther King were strong supporters of the Jewish community, and, by extension, Zionism. Today, that sense of support waxes and wanes, particularly with regards to Israel and the spurious attempts by pro-Palestinian groups to connect the civil rights movement with their own.

Dumasani Washington is a pastor, author and music educator in Northern California. He’s been an Israel supporter for many years, focuses his efforts on young adults and formed the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel in 2013.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 29

FEATURE

Washington blogs for The Times of Israel, and he conducts diversity outreach for Christians United for Israel, the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States.

Washington’s work can be seen as an extension of the civil rights movement that once united, and is now working to reunite these two communities.

“This is an unfortunate reality in a global community that is very ‘race’ conscious. People of color understanding that the Jewish people are black, white and brown (and that they are persecuted on the basis of their ethnicity, regardless of their ‘color’) is crucial. It is also the first step to understanding the true, universal fight for human rights.”

Washington wants his “Jewish brothers and sisters to know that they are not alone; there are many outside of their community that care about them and the Jewish State.”

As for non-Jewish blacks and people of color, Washington’s message is respectfully critical. He says that any parallels between the Palestinian plight and that of African Americans is inaccurate, dangerous, and needs to stop.

“I also want [people] to understand the importance of a free, prosperous, strong Israel to many around the world – not just the Jewish people. There were 60 million who died as a result of Hitler’s Nazis and World War II, Six million were Jews, which means 54 million were not. Anti-Semitism is a poison that affects everyone.”

Finding her Jewish dreadlocks “I call myself a Jewmaican,” says Yvonne Scarlett, a holistic healthcare practitioner and founder of Red Lotus Wellness in San Diego, who was born and raised in Jamaica. “On both my mom and dad’s side, there are Jewish relatives.”

Growing up in Jamaica, (some researchers have estimated that up to 424,000 Jamaicans have Sephardic ancestry), Scarlett was “always fascinated with Jewish customs and traditions and grew up with a lot of Jews. The curiosity was always there.”

What’s more, she says, “I didn’t feel like I ‘belonged’ in the church. I had an issue with the deity of Jesus for a long time.”

In 1996, she left the church and began worshipping with “the Black Jews in Jersey” for about five years while also frequently checking out Conservative synagogues.

“I was living as a Jew for many years. My boys were circumcised. I was living according to Torah. However, when I moved to Florida, I was concerned that if I died, would I be allowed to be buried in a Jewish synagogue?”

That’s when Scarlett spoke to her rabbi who 30 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

arranged for her to present before the Beit Din. “I did the work to become officially converted.

I went into the mikveh to make sure there was no question to the validity of my conversion.”

With her flowing dreadlocks and lilting Jamaican accent, Scarlett wants people to know there’s no physical representation of who is a Jew. “If I were in Jamaica, there’s Jews that look like me.” Even so, she continues, “I’m always asked if I’m a convert. I know it’s because I’m black.”

Stepping stones to Judaism Jessica Lemoine’s upbringing was unconventional by any standard. Raised Christian by her white mother who never married her black father, Lemoine discovered at age 11 that she was Jewish on her mother’s father’s side. From that moment on, the precocious adolescent decided to explore Judaism. She started by attending a Messianic Jewish synagogue. Today, she teaches math at a prestigious college preparatory high school in San Diego.

“As a traditional Jew now, I can understand why Jews have a bias [towards Messianic], but at the time it was a fabulous stepping stone between the two worlds.”

She describes Messianic synagogue services as very familiar in form and format, following the Jewish calendar and worship services.

“Most of the people who attend Messianic synagogue are primarily Jewish men born in traditional Jewish homes married to Christian women. That’s why I fit there so well.”

In college, she started going to Hillel.

“Traditional synagogue was the most welcoming place I could be and they didn’t

question my skin color,” Lemoine says.

“I can go into nearly any community and can fit in like a chameleon because since the day I was born, I’ve had to swing in different worlds.”

Lemoine met her husband, Rich – an MIT educated scientist – through her rabbi who thought they would make a good pair because they both have a white mother and black father with extended Christian family.

“My father passed when I was 23, about three months before I got married. My husband grew up in a Jewish home with a black, atheist father … it’s a funky niche we fit.

“I struggled so much with my racial identity and my religions identity that I was so determined that my children would not have that experience.

“It’s been so nice to be a typical Jewish family,” especially in Southern California, Lemoine concludes.

The challenges she faces today as a biracial Jewish woman involve her sons. Her eldest, who has blond hair and light skin, identifies as white; her youngest, with his darker complexion and more African features, identifies as biracial.

Having children who look so different from one another surprised the Lemoines, who had determined, “as a couple that we would raise our children as Jews in a traditional setting and their parents would look like them.”

Two years before her eldest son’s bar mitzvah, on the advice of her rabbi, Lemoine decided to go to the mikveh to clear up any personal confusion about her identity as a Jewish woman.

“It was a turning point for me. No matter what happens, that was the day in my head that I became confident in my Judaism. I am a Jew.” A

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FEATURE

MAKING TIME FOR CHANGE

JFS completes year-long strategic planning process with fresh understanding and a new look on the horizion

PHOTOS COURTESY JFS

BY NATALIE JACOBS

I

n recent years, Jewish Family Service of San Diego has gone through many changes, some that have been obvious, and others more behind-the-scenes. In the obvious category, Michael Hopkins came on as CEO to replace retiring chief Jill Spitzer in 2011. But behind-thescenes, he had a very specific directive. As Spitzer’s tenure was drawing to a close, it was clear to her and the JFS board that it was time to update the nonprofit’s strategic plan, but it would have been difficult to cram the process into the final days of her 26-year career there. Most nonprofit organizations go through this process every five years, in varying degrees of depth depending on the needs of the time. In general, the strategic planning process forces executive leadership, the board, and what JFS calls “key stakeholders” like employees and clients, to check up on, and in some cases completely redefine, the mission, vision and goals that everyone will operate underneath for the next five years.

32 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

The last time JFS underwent this strategic planning process was in 2006. It helped JFS determine that the move from its Hillcrest location to its current home on Balboa near Montgomery Field was a necessity. But by the time the next five-year mark was on the horizion, the U.S. economy had fallen into recession and the ability for organizations like JFS to look past the ends of their noses became difficult. There were too many immediate needs to meet in the community, and lots of philanthropists pulling back on donations across the board.

“Even in the interview process, we talked about strategic planning,” Hopkins says from a round table in his corner office. “The right time seemed to be upon my arrival.”

But even then, it still took a few years to get the process going. In Hopkins’ first year with JFS, they had the opportunity to buy the building next door to their relatively new digs. In her tenure, Spitzer had expanded the organization

by 40 times, and that momentum was holding steady under Hopkins. There were more than 50 programs, more than 250 employees, a thousand volunteers and countless clients utilizing just one or a whole shopping cart full of services.

Expanding JFS headquarters into something of a campus where all employees could work closer together and clients could more easily navigate the maze was irresistible. The JFS board agreed to the purchase and spent the next year or two raising money to fund the project.

“It was clear that we had made the decision to buy the building, we had raised the money, and it was time to begin to do some serious planning for the future,” Hopkins says.

Good things come to those who wait, though, and for the next several months, the board discussed the best approaches for getting started.

“It’s not like Michael came on board and we decided to do a strategic plan the next day,” says Jennifer Levitt, president of the JFS board, also

FEATURE

LEFT: Renderings of the expanded JFS campus, due by the end of 2015. RIGHT: During the year-long planning process, nearly 100 “stakeholders” from throughout the community gathered for meetings to discuss all aspects of the Jewish Family Service new strategic plan.

in Hopkins’ office one morning in December. “It was really thoughtful examination by a staff, ramping up to the actual planning process.”

“We were looking for a process of transformation,” Hopkins adds. “We were not looking for one that would be a haircut. We were open to the notion that this was a serious, extensive piece of work and that the outcome could in fact be transformational.”

To start with, Hopkins and the board found a consulting group that specialized in an “open systems model” which invites “all the players” to sit together around a very big table. This included a select group of board members, a few JFS executives, and also a cross section of employees, everyone from program managers to individual case workers, as well as a few clients and other nonprofit executives. In total, there were just less than 100 people who worked on the strategic plan, on top of day jobs and familial

responsibilities.

It took one year to write the new strategic plan, a document whose summary is 16 pages long. At the heart of what JFS discovered is what it means to be a Jewish agency and how to keep that at the core of everything they do.

“Historically, we defined Jewish Family Service by the types of services we provided and by who we served. I think that we landed on almost a more robust kind of definition of what it means to be Jewish,” Hopkins explains. “It is for sure who we serve, it is for sure how we serve people, but it is first and foremost why we do this work.”

This realization was aided by a panel of local rabbis who were called to speak before the strategic planning group.

“What we really heard loud and clear from these rabbis is that JFS is positioned to play a leadership role in providing a place where people do good and where people can express their connection to the Jewish community and their

Jewish identity through service,” Levitt recalls.

“That was a really profound moment.”

With that in mind, the strategic planning group was taken on “learning journeys” to explore how best-in-class organizations beyond the Jewish nonprofit sphere find their success.

This took the group to Qualcomm, High Tech High, Planned Parenthood, Sharp Mesa Vista, and Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services, among others.

“It was enlightening to see other for-profits and nonprofits tackle the same kinds of issues we are trying to tackle,” says Marcia Hazan, a JFS board member who participated in the strategic planning process as part of the Vision team.

The word “collaboration” has perhaps never been more aptly applied to JFS than at this moment. In the past, the workforce has been distributed across the region, and with that, the programs and clients were forced to connect their own dots.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 33

FEATURE

JFS CEO Michael Hopkins with JFS Board President Jennifer Levitt.

Central to the new strategic plan is an integrated, client-centered approach that understands the interconnected nature of need.

“Going in, we suspected that maybe the breadth of our programming, the fact that we have so many programs that do so many different things, we were looking at that as potentially a weakness,” Board President Levitt explains. “But we found, paradoxically, that very breadth is actually one of our biggest strengths, precisely because we can respond to the multi-faceted nature of people’s lives.”

The scenarios that bring clients to JFS are many, and once people are involved, it’s likely that if a person comes to JFS for one thing, he or she will find a whole host of other programs and services they can utilize. This is what the new strategic plan is hoping to streamline.

“My family and I have been involved with JFS for three years,” says Valentina Sherabi. She is the single parent of three children who comes to JFS for the Family Connection (which includes Supporting Single Jewish Parents, BIGPals and Pachies), Employment and Career Services, and counseling. Sharabi is also a volunteer with the JFS Immigration and Refugee department.

It is with clients like Sharabi in mind that JFS enters into their next generation with the goal of thinking about the whole person and his or 34 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

her unique road to self-sufficiency. Their new campus, set to open in December, will make this transformation visible to the public, but beneath that surface, clients, employees and volunteers will experience a more cohesive Jewish agency.

And if that doesn’t work like they’re thinking it will, then they’ll be back at the drawing board in a couple of years. But if history teaches us anything, it’s that this Jewish agency is very good at changing, adapting and expanding. Learn more about their full list of programs and new strategic direction at jfssd.org. A

Jewish Family Service San Diego will celebrate its 2015 Mitzvah Honorees Evelyn and Ernest Rady, Ron S. Zollman, and Susan G. Komen, San Diego, at this year’s Heart and Soul Gala.

Saturday, March 28, 2015 6:00pm Hyatt Regency La Jolla jfssd.org/gala (858) 637-3013

PURIM

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BY BRIE STIMSON Best Pop Culture Costume For more nuanced tastes, make a pop culture reference. A “Downton Abbey” nod to the 1920s can be accomplished easily enough, often with just the addition of a bowler or cloche hat, a few pieces of jewelry, or a vest and bowtie. Accessories like a feather, fur boa, or a headband also add to the effect.

Best Home-Made Costume Keep it classic and go for the Queen Esther. Find a satin or silk royal purple dress, add a gold or purple sash, gold jewelry, and requisite crown to complete the look.

Best Non-Costume/Ironic Costume For those who are a little too cool to dress up, or like to be tongue in cheek, a ‘non-costume’ is a whimsical way to poke a little fun. You could go with the “This is My Purim Costume” baseball jersey T-shirt, available at Cafepress.com for $34.50.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 35

36 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

Silver Anniversary for San Diego’s Silver Screen Star

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lot has changed about the movie business in the last 25 years. Pirating, illegal downloading and streaming services have all impacted sales but digital equipment and the declining cost of cameras have made it easier for more people to embark on a low budget “indie” project. It’s a story that we’ve heard many times, in a variety of industries, about how the Internet disrupted business as usual and about how eventually people won’t even have to leave their houses for anything, let alone a movie on the silver screen. While all of that change has been happening quickly throughout the years, the San Diego Jewish Film Festival just keeps plugging along, bringing a huge variety of Jewish-themed movies to our community here, year after year.

“Twenty five years for a film festival is huge,” says festival director Craig Prater. “By the number of film festivals in the world, there’s not a lot that can say they’ve been around for 25 years.”

That’s not just Jewish film festivals, he clarifies, that’s any of them. So to celebrate the milestone, Prater and the film festival committee have increased the number of films by about one third, with nearly 50 total films to be shown this year.

The festival will still be 10 days, but this year, films will be shown on 13 screens in five different theaters throughout the county.

There are documentaries, comedies, dramas, a musical and an animated film on the schedule. Films come from the U.S., France, Germany, Morocco, Israel, India, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, and the Philippines. To be considered for the festival, films had to have been made in 2014 or in 2013 after the deadline for last year’s festival, and there has to be some kind of Jewish story line in the film. From there, the various committees get to work screening films and discussing their merits. The whole process begins in March.

Showings run Feb. 5-15 and if you’re trying to decide on just a few shows to go to, Prater suggests opening and closing nights as two must-see options.

“We’re gonna knock ‘em out of the ballpark for opening and closing,” he says.

Theodore Bikel will be at the pre-opening for underwriters, and he may surprise everyone with a song, so get to the David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre at the JCC early on Feb. 4 for that. Then the film “Serial (Bad) Weddings” will officially kick things off on Feb. 5 at Clairemont Reading 14. Prater promises that this French comedy about a Catholic family with four daughters and the husbands they choose will have you laughing all the way home. The closing night film, “Little White Lie,” takes the opposite approach to the opening film, with an enlightening, based-on-a-true-story look at a young Jewish woman’s journey to understanding and embracing her newfound black identity. Get tickets for the Feb. 15 showing before they’re gone.

There will also be a special evening of Indian film, with the showing of “Shree 420” on Feb. 8 followed by a live Skype conversation with the director Raj Kapoor. This event will explore the little-known fact that Jewish women were the stars of early Bollywood films, because religion kept the Indian women from acting.

In the following pages, we have reviews of eight films to help you narrow your selection process. Also included at the end of the section is a full schedule of showings at all theater locations. Purchase tickets and get more information at lfjcc.org/sdjff. A Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 37

Bikel Commemorates his Legacy in Film “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem”

BY MICHAEL FOX

I

f anyone walking among us qualifies as a living legend, it is Theodore Bikel. Since his Palestine debut with Habimah (which became the Israeli national theater) in the 1940s, the Austria-native has carved a uniquely multilingual career as a stage, screen and television actor, folksinger, Jewish cultural emissary and political activist.

Ninety years old and as vital as ever, Bikel is presently touring the Jewish film festival circuit with his performance documentary, “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem.”

A splendid showcase for the actor’s gift for Yiddish theater, the film will stand as both an introduction and testament to two extraordinary talents for many, many years.

“I come to this in an organic sense,” Bikel says.

“I never lived in a shtetl but the culture that I inherited is the culture of the shtetl, and to the extent to which one can, I keep it alive through song and through language.”

Bikel is beloved by Jewish audiences for his portrayal of Tevye in more than 2,000 stage performances, as well as for his 1950s albums of Israeli and Jewish folk songs. General audiences know him from movies like “The Defiant Ones” (which garnered Bikel an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor) and

38 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

“The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” as well as from countless television roles.

“As a rule, I’m a performer who’s Jewish,” Bikel explains. “That’s different from being a Jewish performer. I toil and work all around, in areas that have nothing to do with being Jewish ...

Where the material is Jewish ... in those instances what I do I do as a Jewish performer, because I’m knowledgeable, I’m well-read, I’m also very consciously and, frankly, proudly Jewish.”

Bikel long ago came to terms with the curious profession of acting, which requires embodying all kinds of people.

“I always feel a responsibility to be respectful,” Bikel says softly but firmly. “So I played Jewhaters, I played Nazis, I played characters who are directly opposed to who I am or what I am because there, too, I have a point to make. I know Jew-haters, I know persecutors, I’ve been at the receiving end of them, and so I feel that I’m capable of portraying them perhaps more truthfully than others who have no knowledge and are simply playing yet another villain.”

Pausing ever so briefly, Bikel goes on to describe his other favorite roles.

“But when I play Jewish characters or rabbis, scholars, scientists who are Jews, I try to find the

Jewish element in them. I don’t force the Jewish element into characters that I’m playing. But if it’s there, I find it.”

Bikel is an earnest man with either a glint or a twinkle in his eye, depending on whether the subject is the blacklist or Jewish humor. Both subjects came up in conversation the morning after he received the Freedom of Expression Award from the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival last August.

“It always seemed to me when the history of America is written,” Bikel says, “that among the contributions that Jews made to America, among the philosophers and scientists and the doctors and the lawyers and the thinkers, it won’t be forgotten that we have taught America how to laugh.”

Bikel has contributed more than his share, notably with “Fiddler on the Roof.” It’s hardly surprising that he’s partial to Sholom Aleichem’s darkly funny and timeless truths.

“There’s no line that’s more Jewish than, ‘You’ve got to survive, even if it kills you,’” Bikel says. “But courage and fearlessness are not the same thing. I have the courage, but that’s not devoid of fear. I have certain fears, but I am determined to overcome the fears.”A

Ninety-Year-Old Top Guns “Above and Beyond”

BY MICHAEL FOX

A

lot of documentary makers get their ideas from the front page. Nancy Spielberg discovered the forgotten late-1940s saga that gives wings to “Above and Beyond” in the obituaries.

“I found out about Al Schwimmer, and that this guy, an American, was considered the godfather of the Israeli Air Force,” Spielberg recalls. “It talked about smuggling planes and being indicted and I was like, ‘Whoa.’”

Schwimmer was alive, and it turned out so were several other World War II veterans who risked their American citizenship and their lives to leap into the fray when the state of Israel was created.

New to the world of documentaries, Spielberg, who happens to be Stephen’s sister, decided to produce “Above and Beyond” with the collaboration of a seasoned director. She chose Roberta Grossman, the savvy and talented director of the riveting World War II portrait, “Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh.”

“I was worried when we started out that the subtitle of the film was going to be ‘Old Guys

Talking,’” Grossman says. “We’d end up with a film that would only appeal to those who were specifically interested in this story. What makes the film rise above that, I hope, is the guys are really wonderful characters. As it should be in a film, the history’s in the background and the individuals are in the foreground.”

Spielberg had the same concern and she chose Grossman in part because the director had employed reenactments in “Blessed Is the Match” with exceptional skill and effectiveness.

“I knew that if I wanted to attract people to the film I needed to have more than 90-year-old talking heads,” Spielberg says. “I needed to do these kinds of [reenacted] flying sequences. We researched archival footage and we got some great stuff, but there’s not a lot out there.”

The straight-talking American pilots in “Above and Beyond” belong to the so-called Greatest Generation, but they have no interest in perpetuating sanitized myths or posing for statues. They revel in long-ago love affairs, and every rule they broke.

“I have to tell you that we really cleaned up a lot,” Grossman says with a smile. “Not just

language, but stories. Believe me, compared to the [full] interviews, this is a G-rated film.”

“They were young men,” Spielberg elaborates, “and many of them said when they came back from World War II they were celebrated heroes and all of a sudden they were selling insurance or shoes. That just doesn’t hold a candle. They liked their flight jackets. They liked their girls. ... They wanted another shot.”

While unambiguously pro-Israel, “Above and Beyond” gracefully avoids simple-minded politics. It sticks to the facts, wrapped in the colorful recollections of its endearing protagonists. As a bonus, the film provides insight into the contemporary Jewish experience.

“It’s a really interesting snapshot for me of how – before, during and after the Holocaust and the birth of Israel – the trajectory of American Jewish identity became so connected to Israel and to Zionism,” Grossman says. “It really was a very, very quick ramp-up. These guys’ lives follow that trajectory, and it’s interesting to learn about American Jewish history through the lives of individuals.”A

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 39

For the Love of the Game “Touchdown Israel: Football in the Holy Land”

BY PETER TALHAMÉ

H

ere in the U.S., despite not owning the title “America’s Pass Time,” football is the sport so intrinsic to our culture that from late August onward, our nation’s obsession with this complicated game rises until it culminates into one of the world’s largest televised events. Now consider Israel. Did you know there are 600 men who may actually take the game even more seriously than the American men and women who literally plan their lives around their favorite sport? In the documentary “Touchdown Israel: Tackle Football in the Holyland,” director Paul Hirschberger traces the origins of tackle football in Israel by following a handful of the sometimes larger than life players and coaches of the Israeli Football League (IFL).

Hirschberger’s film explores how the IFL found its way into its current iteration, with the help of olim Steve Leibowitz. In 1988, tired of missing the sports he grew used to in his American childhood, Leibowitz helped form a popular touch league and eventually became involved with Ofri Becker, the founder of the IFL, a small tackle league that played without helmets. In 2007, after members of both leagues brainstormed on the future of the sport in Israel,

40 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

the IFL was reborn as a four team league complete with helmets, pads, coaches, and referees. With it’s tactical appeal and ability to serve as a positive outlet for pent-up Israeli aggression, the league has swiftly expanded to 11 teams, with more than 600 players on their roster.

Despite paying for their own equipment, often dressing for games right on the sidelines of tornup poorly-lit surfaces, and playing through injuries, it is clear that every single player featured is fully committed to the sport and the brotherhood found within their teams. From the controversial Judean Rebels, a team of West Bank settlers; to the recently integrated Jaffa Sabres whose Jewish and Arab athletes have found unlikely friendships that transcend religion and politics; to the Northern Stars, one of the newest teams just off of the border of Lebanon whose multi-ethnic members are all awkwardly learning the game together; with each team we meet, the audience is treated to a new cast of charismatic and memorable characters.

While the documentary mostly chronicles the progress of the growing league – a fair portion of its hour-plus runtime is dedicated to on-field footage – what’s at the heart of the film is the

passion and dedication that the game has ignited in a small but strong minority of football lovers in Israel. Hirschberger weaves in the individual realizations by some of his focal subjects that their ideas of faith and tradition are not in conflict with the camaraderie that can be experienced between sportsmen who share a common bond regardless of their beliefs.

With the IFL sharing a religious breakdown similar to that of the nation itself, “Touchdown Israel” frames the league as a bright microcosm of Israel, proud in the face of adversity, embracing the values of family and friendship, and ultimately with the potential to overcome the differences that separate people.

At times, the documentary’s klezmer and jazzriff heavy sound editing don’t match its tone and a few limitations of the production can be seen in the cinematography, however, neither are enough to diminish the film’s compelling storyline. While any football fan in the U.S. or abroad will enjoy watching the blossoming of the sport as its played in Israel, you don’t need to be a fan to appreciate this warm and engaging documentary. A

Boy’s Inspired Mitzvah Home RUN “Havana Curveball”

BY MICHAEL FOX

F

or Mica Jarmel-Schneider, the December announcement that President Obama plans to normalize relations between the U.S. and Cuba was exciting news – albeit a bit too late.

As his bar mitzvah approached several years ago, the athletic San Francisco teenager mulled various community-service projects before hitting on the idea of sending baseball gear to the isolated island.

His altruistic campaign, and eye-opening odyssey to Cuba, is vividly depicted in “Havana Curveball,” an inspiring and unsentimental onehour documentary suitable for all ages.

Recognizing the positive trend of bar and bat mitzvah celebrants looking beyond the party and gifts to causes deserving of support, the husband-and-wife team of Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schenider originally envisioned a short film that would trigger conversations about social responsibility during the bar mitzvah process.

Cuba had granted residency to Mica’s grandfather in 1941 when his family was fleeing the Nazis and couldn’t gain access to the U.S. The humanitarian act resonated with Mica and informed his project, even though the Friedmans

didn’t stay in Cuba very long before relocating to America. In fact, Mica’s grandfather declined to travel to Cuba with the lad.

“My dad was deeply grateful that Mica was inspired by his life experience to go and perform this bit of service in Cuba,” Friedman says, “even though he no longer feels a connection to the country which saved his life.”

Mica was also influenced by another wellknown tenet of the Jewish experience, Friedman relates.

“His rabbi told him the story of tikkun olam, which is about putting a broken piece of the world back together, and how small or large acts can be part of that.”

Jarmel and Friedman’s previous documentary, “Speaking in Tongues,” explored bilingualism in public schools. They are aware of the increasing augmentation of community service (performed outside of school) with service learning, in which service – and critical thinking about that service – is part of the curriculum.

“That was certainly what Mica experienced on the ground, that this was difficult, it was complicated, it was messy,” Friedman says.

“Today he asks himself a different set of questions

than he did four years earlier. More complicated questions. Not just ‘How do I change the world?’ but ‘Is it possible for me to change the world?

What are the barriers in my way?’”

Although Mica the college student may occasionally cringe at the onscreen portrayal of his younger self, he revels at “Havana Curveball” screenings at being treated by his peers as a bit of a rock star.

Jarmel sees “Havana Curveball” as a poignant bookend to the final scene of her debut film, “The Return of Sarah’s Daughters,” which explored traditional Jewish values in cotemporary women.

“At the end of that film, I posed a question: ‘Now that I have a child of my own, what am I going to pass on?’ So here we fast-forward and this is what I passed on, this is what my son got from my passion for my Jewish tradition and exploration of that. It’s a reflection on how we brought Judaism to our household and nurtured what we see as core Jewish values in our children.”

A

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 41

How Do you Define Israel?

"The Israeli Code"

BY NATALIE JACOBS

O

ut of the list of movies we were given to watch for this Film Festival issue, I chose “The Israeli Code” because I consistently find myself immensely curious about Israel. I spent 10 days there last January and I’ve been reading lots of opinions about the place ever since. I’ve heard people joke that Israelis are loud and pushy and opinionated. I’ve heard both that the country is welcoming of everyone and staunchly against anyone who isn’t Israeli. I know that it’s expensive to live there, and that there are security checkpoints every few miles and that there is a lot of high tech innovation and plenty of colorful street art. But the questions of the whys and the hows of Israel still linger and since there are always at least two sides to every story, every little bit of information helps.

The movie is based on a book of the same name (or sometimes translated as “The Code of Israeliness”), written by sociologist Gad Yair.

The documentary opens with filmmaker Ayelet Dekel, Yair, and photographer Alex Levac sitting around a table covered in photographs, in what looks to be an industrial warehouse.

Levac’s photographs drive the story. He’s a street photographer and photojournalist who has been

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taking provocative photos of Israelis in all kinds of beautiful, scandalous, and compromised positions since the 1980s. But we don’t learn this from the movie. Around the table, Levac is just a hand and a voice pulling pictures out of a pile and telling stories about how he came to capture each moment. Dekel fills in the blanks from there, with moving images from all around this tiny country. Quotes from Yair’s book serve as chapter markers, quickly introducing the audience to the next topic of exploration.

“The Israeli Code” moves quickly and brushes lightly over a very broad canvas of Israeli life. It starts with a note about security and weapons and discussions of how Israelis “don’t even notice” the fact that everyone is walking around with a rifle or a handgun. And yet, the feeling is that the checkpoints are necessary because the “guy next to you could be carrying a bomb.”

Cut to images of vibrantly painted bomb shelters on the sides of roads and at the edges of playgrounds. Then there are the images of traffic, that universal symbol of a thriving modern metropolis, and lots of talk of how Israelis don’t like to be told what to do. There is some sociological exploration of why this is, because of

the ingrained belief in Theodore Herzl’s mantra “never again,” and the commitment to no longer be seen as weak in the face of trauma. Curiously, in the midst of all of this, the film cuts to a montage of the trash that builds up in the corners of Israel.

There is discussion of comaraderie, collectivity, the intimacy of strangers and the never ending barage of opinions that are even allowed to be splattered across public walls. A few of the interviewees admit that Israelis are racist and lacking in tolerance, but everyone is quick to add their own reasons for why that might be.

Through all of the back and forth, the movie is not judgemental of the images it portrays of Israeli society. It takes on the tone of a detached sociology textbook, like it was made to be put in a time capsule and rocketed into space.

For someone who’s only experience of Israel is this film, the country will seem intimidating.

For those who know Israel well, a vigorous head nod may be all that can be said after a screening.

For those of us in the middle, “The Israeli Code” just adds to the pile of things we think we know about the place we’re working so hard to protect.

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 43

The Rise and Fall of Israel’s “B”-Movie Moguls “The Go Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films”

BY MICHAEL FOX

M

enahem Golan’s death in Tel Aviv last August at the age of 85 was cause for mourning, but also nostalgia. For those who remember run-down movie palaces with enormous marquees, Golan and first cousin Yoram Globus ruled the 1970s and ’80s.

Their manically prolific and profitable filmography of explosion-laced, action-heavy escapades starred the likes of Charles Bronson (“Death Wish II”), Chuck Norris (“The Delta Force”) and even Sylvester Stallone (“Over the Top”). Even if those weren’t your kind of movies, you still kvelled at the brash and flashy Israelis who regularly beat the Americans (and Chinese and everyone else) at their own game.

“The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films,” Hilla Medalia’s diverting new documentary presents Golan and Globus’s careers as the perfect – and perfectly flawed – combination of movie-love and shoot-from-thehip decision-making.

Dedicated to giving audiences full value for their entertainment dollar, Golan and Globus were genre filmmakers with no messages or morals to impart. As enthusiastic, run-and-gun producers operating under the banner Cannon

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Films, they financed dozens of internationally accessible and instantly forgettable flicks.

“The Go-Go Boys,” consequently, should be a nonstop hoot. What could be more fun than accompanying larger-than-life personalities making, essentially, drive-in movies on a fantasyfulfilling journey from slo-mo Israel of the early 1960s to yachts and starlets at Cannes and sunbaked L.A. luxury?

Medalia tells Golan and Globus’s story chronologically, augmenting a vast array of film clips with interviews with the casually-dressed but battle-hardened protagonists and their various collaborators (Jon Voight and director Andrei Konchalovsky of “Runaway Train”) and admirers (Eli Roth, “Cabin Fever”).

However, the filmmaker, who enjoyed a big 2014 with the U.S. theatrical release of the bittersweet Arab-Israeli documentary “Dancing in Jaffa” and “Web Junkie,” aspires to more than vicarious pleasure and hollow hagiography.

She’s frustrated by her subjects, though.

Happy to revisit the glory days, Globus and Golan become circumspect or outright chilly when Medalia presses them about their failures.

Neither man wants to relive the painful episodes

at this point in their lives.

Golan, for his part, directed 45 movies in 45 years, a feat of remarkable stamina, substantial creativity and minimal artistry. So, at the end of the day, what is Golan and Globus’ place in film history?

Here’s where an outside expert, like a film critic or historian, could contribute an objective perspective. But Medalia, with one or two exceptions, has chosen to limit herself to people who knew and worked with the Cannon chiefs.

She’d like us simply to celebrate Globus and Golan’s unquenchable enthusiasm for making movies and projecting them on big screens to eager viewers. Fair enough, but for all the bucks and laughs and tears, we sense that the competitive duo mourned never breaking into Hollywood’s inner circle.

That would be the winner’s circle of Oscar recipients, the ultimate measure of achievement and stamp of respect. Even if it was unrealistic and unspoken, Golan and Globus failed in their goal. It’s not what you’d call a happy ending, but there it is. A

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9/11/14 1:06 PM Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 45

The Mysterious World of Ultra-Orthodox Courtship “A Match Made in Heaven”

BY TINA B. ESHEL

S

ometimes you come across a story and find yourself surprised that no one has taken the time to tell it before. Such is the case with the 2013 Israeli documentary film “Match Made in Heaven,” directed by Ronnie Kay. Kay, a secular Israeli, was given first-time media access to the matchmaking culture in the Ultra Orthodox community in Israel. “Match” is a close look at the private courtship experiences of several young Haredi subjects making the transition into adulthood with very specific expectations about dating and marriage.

There’s Merav, a 25-year-old divorcée (her marriage lasted just months when she asked for a divorce because her husband wasn’t as interested in studying Torah as she wanted him to be), who’s in law school and wants to marry again. She’s bright, articulate, and attractive, dressing fashionably, and, not unlike secular women her age, she vacillates between expressing independence and yearning for marriage. Her conflict is universal, her hurdles decidedly Haredi.

In one scene, she’s getting her nails done with a

46 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

friend. When the manicurist asks if she’s married, Merav replies that she’s divorced.

“Then you’re already considered second-rate,” the manicurist responds.

This is offensive to the viewer, who is suprisingly more shocked when Merav simply replies: “Exactly.”

This is one example of the matter-of-factness about the purpose of marriage that pervades the film. The conversations between these young adults aged 19-24 are direct and insightful.

Without any romantic experience – touching of any kind is strictly verboten – they are surprisingly mature. For example, the men and women ask each other pointed questions such as, “What do you see as your role as the wife?” or, “How many children do you want?” or, “Are you willing to work so I can continue to study?” on the first date.

The ensuing conversations may even border on confrontational from the viewer’s perspective, though the participants don’t seem to mind.

They’ve got one to three dates to decide their

marital futures and Haredi matchmaking rules are specific. Family background, expectations and conforming to well-defined roles matter more than instant emotional attachment or physical chemistry.

Nowhere is this narrative of personal and family pressures regarding dating more poignant than when we are introduced to a 24-year-old Gur Hasidic man. He’s from the strictest of all Ultra-Orthodox sects in which the sexes are separated and sexuality takes a back seat to what they call “sanctity.” We witness his struggles to find a wife with the help of his cousin acting as a matchmaker and in conversations with a fellow yeshiva student. What transpires in the end is nothing short of bittersweet.

“Match” is a window into a mysterious world.

Through a respectful and thoughtful lens focused on the personal journeys of the characters and their families, the film reveals the customs, expectations, joys and oys of Ultra-Orthodox dating. Through the film, we come to see these traditions as part modern, part old-fashioned and fully fascinating. A

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It’s Complicated “Little White Lie”

BY MICHAEL FOX

F

rom Hollywood films like “Next Stop Greenwich Village” and “Reversal of Fortune” to documentaries like “The Times of Harvey Milk,” hyper-verbal Jews are practically a movie cliché.

Name the last film that featured a Jewish person at a loss for words. It’s a stumper, because the silver screen stereotype of Jews is emotionally candid, unabashedly frank and unfailingly articulate.

The rare exception to that rule, Lacey Schwartz’s “Little White Lie,” deserves a place in the record books for that reason alone.

The first-person documentary follows the 30-something filmmaker’s effort to learn the identity of her biological father and, more importantly, force her parents to acknowledge and confront their painful secret.

At the critical juncture, however, they become unexpectedly tongue-tied.

A fascinating modern mystery that paradoxically chooses not to explore the most interesting aspects of identity and race, “Little White Lie” still offers audiences something to think about.

Schwartz grew up in Woodstock, N.Y., with doting parents. Her mother, Peggy, was married at 21, sticking to a path her parents had instilled.

“We didn’t think outside of the box,” Peggy recalls. “And sometimes it was easier that way.”

Going with the flow seems to have been

Peggy and husband Robert’s credo. After Lacey eventually clears up the paternity mystery, but Adat Shalom's Myron and Sue Solomon enjoy was born in 1977 and relatives or friends would along the way the emphasis shifts to Schwartz’s traditional Jewish grub with the community. observe that she was darker-skinned than her ongoing confusion, frustration and insecurity. parents, Robert would point to a photograph In its weaker moments, the film becomes a of his swarthy, Sicilian grandfather by way of therapeutic record of, and a vehicle for, her rocky explanation. process of acceptance.

Schwartz offers numerous childhood pictures Peggy and Robert’s inability to take of herself, and it’s obvious that one of her parents responsibility for the messy secret at the family is black. Was she adopted? That would make core deprives Lacey of the catharsis she seeks, and sense, and certainly wouldn’t be a shanda, but no, keeps “Little White Lie” just shy of a poignant there’s a photo of a very pregnant Peggy. climax.

Did Peggy have an affair? If so, neither she nor More regrettable, though, is Schwartz’s Robert ever said a word about it while they raised disinterest in pursuing a deeper discussion of Lacey like any other Jewish girl. identity, and the comparative influences of “I wasn’t passing,” Schwartz tells us. “I actually genetics and upbringing. The film operates on a grew up believing I was white.” relentlessly personal level that perhaps precludes One of the odder aspects of this bizarre a broader perspective, but it is therefore baffling saga is that Peggy and Robert seemingly never that Schwartz never talks about which Jewish anticipated that one day Lacey would have and African American practices and traits she questions and demand answers. maintains and cherishes.

It wasn’t until Lacey started high school – in Schwartz’s wedding partially addresses this a neighboring town with African American oversight. The filmmaker joins in the hora circle students – that she began to experience serious and is lifted with her husband on chairs; a bit cognitive dissonance. The black kids assumed she later she dances to an African American rhythm. was black, though she thought she was white.

The scene doesn’t have the feel-good power it Schwartz gives the impression that in aspires to, but that’s a minor quibble. the ensuing years, through college and into The greater disappointment is that “Little adulthood, she had to work out her identity White Lie” squanders a unique opportunity issues on her own with little to no help from her to bring Jewish values to a wide audience, and parents.

African American culture and principles to a The perfectly titled “Little White Lie” Jewish audience. A Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 49

FILM FEST SCHEDULE ARCLIGHT CINEMAS 4425 La Jolla Village Dr. San Diego, CA 92122 (858) 768-7770 Monday, Feb. 9 10 a.m. The Joyce Forum Film Shorts Program 1 10:30 a.m. The Joyce Forum Film Shorts Program 2 1 p.m. The Joyce Forum Film Shorts Program 3 1:30 p.m. The Joyce Forum Film Shorts Program 4 4:30 p.m. The Joyce Forum Film Shorts Program 5 5 p.m. The Joyce Forum Film Shorts Program 6 CLAIREMONT READING CINEMAS 4665 Clairemont Drive San Diego, CA 92117 Thursday, Feb. 5 7 p.m. “Serial (Bad) Weddings” (Opening night)

11 a.m. “Almost Friends” 1:30 p.m. “Mr. Kaplan” 2 p.m. “Suicide” 4:45 p.m. “Serial (Bad) Weddings” 5:15 p.m. “The Art Dealer” 7:30 p.m. “Kicking Out Shoshana” 8 p.m. “God’s Slave” Tuesday, Feb. 10 10 a.m. “The Village of Peace” 10:30 a.m. “Belle and Sebastian” 11 a.m. “We Are Here” 1 p.m. “Dancing Before the Enemy: How a Teenage Boy Fooled the Nazis and Lived” 1:30 p.m. “Apples from the Desert” 4 p.m. “Felix and Meira” 4:30 p.m. “Life Sentences” 6 p.m. “Havana Curveball” (Havana Curveball) 7:30 p.m. “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step” 8 p.m. “Run Boy Run”

Saturday, Feb. 7 6:15 p.m. “24 Days” 6:45 p.m. “Orange People” 9:15 p.m. “Dancing Before the Enemy: How a Teenage Boy Fooled the Nazis and Lived” 9:45 p.m. “Fragile”

Wednesday, Feb. 11 10:30 a.m. “Orange People” 11 a.m. “God’s Slave” 1:30 p.m. “Fragile” 2 p.m. “A Match Made in Heaven” 4:30 p.m. “East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem” 5 p.m. “Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa” 7:30 p.m. “Above and Beyond” 8 p.m. “Transit”

Sunday, Feb. 8 10:30 a.m. “Next to Her”

Thursday, Feb. 12 10:30 a.m. “Transit”

50 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

11 a.m. “The Grüninger File” 1:30 p.m. “The Night of Fools” 2 p.m. “Almost Friends” 4:30 p.m. “An Untold Diplomatic History France and Israel since 1948” 5 p.m. “Kicking Out Shoshana” 7:30 p.m. “Next to Her” 8 p.m. Gate to the Negev: “Border Living,” “Baby Rabbits,” “Out of the Box,” “With Love” Saturday, Feb. 14 6:15 p.m. “The Dove Flyer/What We Left Behind” 6:45 p.m. “East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem” 9:15 “Mr. Kaplan” 9:45 p.m. “Apples from the Desert” Sunday, Feb. 15 9:45 a.m. “The Prince of Egypt” 10:30 a.m. “Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silenced” 12:30 p.m. “Nowhere in Africa” 1:30 p.m. “The Grüninger File” 2 p.m. “Touchdown Israel: Tackle Footbal in the Holyland” 4:30 p.m. “The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films” 5 p.m. “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem” 8:15 p.m. “Little White Lie” (Closing Night) CARLSBAD VILLAGE THEATRE 2822 State Street Carlsbad, CA 92008

(760) 518-2786 Saturday, Feb. 7 6:15 p.m. “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem” 9 p.m. “God’s Slave” Tuesday, Feb. 10 6:15 p.m. “All My Loved Ones” 9 p.m. “The Dove Flyer/What We Left Behind” Wednesday, Feb. 11 6:15 p.m. “Life Sentences” 9 p.m. “The Grüninger File” Thursday, Feb. 12 6:15 p.m. “Above and Beyond” 9 p.m. “Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa” DAVID AND DOROTHEA GARFIELD, LFJCC 4126 Executive Drive La Jolla, CA 92037 (858) 362-1348 Wednesday, Feb. 4 7 p.m. “Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem” (Underwriters only)

FILM: The Cancer Mirror DIRECTOR: Sophie Tuttleman WHAT IT’S ABOUT: This the moving story of a young girl who loses her father then her mother to cancer.

WHEN: LFJCC Monday, Feb. 9 5 p.m. as part of the Joyce Forum Shorts

Friday, Feb. 6 10:30 a.m. “The Israeli Code” noon fashion show 1:30 p.m. “Advanced Style”

2 p.m. “A Letter to Wedgwood: The Life of Gabriella Harstein Auspitz” 5 p.m. “Code of Silence” 7:45 p.m. “The Art Dealer”

Sunday. Feb. 8 10 a.m. “Gloomy Sunday” 1 p.m. “Touchdown Israel: Tackle Football in the Holyland” 4 p.m. “Code of Silence” 6:15 p.m. “Shree 420”

Wednesday, Feb. 11 10 a.m. “The Night of Fools” 1 p.m. “Joachim Prinz: I Shall Not Be Silent” 4 p.m. “Belle and Sebastian” 7 p.m. “Aimee and Jaguar”

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Thursday, Feb. 12 10 a.m. “Red Father” 1 p.m. “Havana Curveball”

Tuesday, Feb. 10 9 a.m. The Joyce Forum Flm Shorts Award Ceremony

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(760) 471-3734 Saturday, Feb. 8 10 a.m. “The Prince of Egypt” (Family film) 10:30 a.m. “Belle and Sebastian” 1 p.m. “A Match Made in Heaven” 1:30 p.m. “Dancing Before the Enemy: How a Teenage Boy Fooled the Nazis and Lived” 4 p.m. “An Untold Diplomatic History France and Israel since 1948” 4:30 p.m. “The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films” 7 p.m. “East Jerusalem/West Jerusalem” 7:30 p.m. “Run Boy Run” Saturday, Feb. 14 6:15 p.m. “Serial (Bad) Weddings” 6:45 p.m. “24 Days/Relocation” 9:15 p.m. “Little White Lie” 9:45 p.m. “Suicide/A Knock on the Door”

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 51

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CAMPS

Business, Meet Pleasure The Foundation for Jewish Camp launches new business-minded affordability initiative for summer camp

BY NATALIE JACOBS

I

t’s no secret that Jewish summer camp is expensive, but the experience is one that few parents feel good about keeping their kids away from. Individual camps around the country have their own ways of fundraising to provide scholarships to campers who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend for any length of time.

Nationally, the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC) has been tackling this issue for years.

The nonprofit, based in New York, developed the “One Happy Camper” program to give grants of up to $1,000 for first-time campers who are not “in an immersive daily Jewish experience,” according to their website. For this upcoming camp season, FJC, with The Center for Entrepreneurial Jewish Philanthropy (CEJP), has invented another way to get kids to Jewish summer camp.

BunkConnect is built on a concept familiar to Internet businesses – connect consumers to businesses in bulk and consumers will achieve deep discounts. For BunkConnect, it starts a lot like the Covered California health insurance enrollment process: create an account, fill out your income information and family demographics then meet the organizations that can make a discount offer that suits your needs.

BunkConnect says offers are usually 40-60 percent off of list prices for summer camp. Once you get to that point in the process, BunkConnect is like the Expedia of Jewish summer camp – scroll through the list and pick which one looks best. The kicker: this program, like FJC’s “One Happy Camper,” is only for first-time campers.

If the idea sounds more like it came from the business sector than the nonprofit sector, that’s kind of because it did. A major funder of the project was Len Leader, through The Leader Family Foundation. Len is the former president of the Venture Group of AOL Time Warner Investments, a division of the conglomerate tasked with targeting “new opportunities in early

56 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

to mid-stage companies that generate strategic value for Time Warner’s businesses,” according to their website.

“By using sound economic principles and leveraging market dynamics,” Leader said in a press release, “we are seeing in BunkConnect an exciting new philanthropic business form. This is a model designed to be the ‘gift that keeps on giving’ to all parties involved, especially the campers.”

Another funder involved in the project is Michael Leven, president and COO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., owner of various properties along the Las Vegas strip.

“BunkConnect marries best practices from the business world, new technologies and learnings

from the hospitality industry, and takes a fresh approach to addressing affordability in Jewish life,” Leven said in a press release. “I am very excited to bring this program to a national stage and see how we can help more kids have a summer experience like those that were so meaningful to me many years ago.”

At the end of November, BunkConnect said there were 75 participating camps, representing various movements and denominations, already involved in the platform.

“The philanthropists we advise challenged us to create an outcome-driven business approach that capitalized on the enormous impact of Jewish camping,” said Joseph Hyman, president and founder of The Center for Entrepreneurial Jewish Philanthropy. “BunkConnect is a gamechanging initiative that sets a standard for other philanthropists and organizations to follow.”

The model has been proven by other business sectors, so smart money is predicting that it can be applied to Jewish summer camp as well. See if you qualify for the first-time discounts, or just explore the platform, at bunkconnect.org. A

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Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 57

IN OUR MID’ZT Classes for non-Jews to feel welcome in the community

BY RABBI BEN LEINOW

I

n 1966, a woman who was past president of the sisterhood at my Student Pulpit invited me to lunch. She wanted to know if I thought she should be required to convert to Judaism. She wanted to be buried next to her husband who had passed away. Until the time she asked the question I did not know she was of non-Jewish origin. She had three sons who were raised as Jews, and she was very much part of everything going on in the Temple. She related to me that prior to marrying her husband she drove approximately 90 miles each week for a year taking private tutored lessons by the closest Ordained Rabbi in her area. At the end of a year, the Rabbi was to arrange Mikvah and Bait Din. She received a call that informed her the Rabbi had a heart attack and died. All Rabbis she contacted at that time required that she start over, and it would take another year. Her marriage was to take place in weeks. She and her husband were married by a judge, and she admitted to me she never felt completely part of the community.

In 1967, I started conducting weddings for interfaith couples. I have been concerned that the non-Jew who is part of the Jewish Community, and contributes to the Jewish Community in so many different ways, has no recognizable status

ADVERTORIAL 58 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

in the Jewish Community. I have also been concerned that little is done to integrate the non-Jew who is part of our Jewish Community into the community. We have to first recognize that it is a Mitzvah that a non-Jew is part of us.

We do have a positive classification for a non-Jew that goes all the way back to biblical times, but is not being used universally today. The term is Ger Toshav.

Ger means stranger, and Toshav means resident. In other words, a Ger Toshav is a person who comes from outside of the community, and is part of the community.

The Ger Toshav of Biblical and Middle age times was a person of high regard.

Even Abraham, our ancient patriarch called himself Ger Toshav when he was purchasing the burial cave of Machpelah.

In the Middle Ages, Maimonides reported that if a Ger Toshav faithfully observes the seven Noachide Laws then he/she has earned a proper place in heaven. The Noachide Laws are: 1. Do not Murder, 2. Do not steal, 3. Do not worship false gods, 4. Do not be sexually immoral, 5. Do not eat a limb removed from a live animal, 6. Do not curse God, 7. Follow the laws of the land and bring offenders to justice.

I teach a 12 session course preparing non-Jews for their experiences in the

Jewish Community. The course includes blessings, Jewish greetings and everyday language, history, Israel, calendar, holidays, symbols and God concepts. The class is named: In Our Mid’zt. Mid’zt standing for the concept that it is a Mitzvah that non-Jews we are close to are part of our future.

When a person completes the In Our Mid’zt course he/she receives a certificate that is now being filed at the American Jewish Archives, so there is a permanent international record that they are a Ger Toshav. If a Ger Toshav were to choose to go on to conversion then Mikvah and Beit Dinn would be part of that experience.

A number of students have gone on to conversion, and some were not ready for that step, so they were content to be Ger Toshav. At the Congregation I am Rabbi, the Ger Toshav participates fully in most activities taking place. It is my hope that many non-Jews in our community who do not convert to Judaism will be proud to be ‘Ger Toshav’ The Next In Our Mid’zt class group will begin Feb. 21, 2015, 12:30 p.m., after Shabbat Services at Congregation B’nai Tikvah. You can reach Rabbi Ben Leinow for more information at rabbibensd@ gmail.com.

THEATER

THE MOST INTERESTING

YIDDISH STORY

YOU’VE NEVER HEARD “The Twenty-Seventh Man” premieres at The Old Globe

BY PAT LAUNER

THEATER

H

e first heard the story when he was 19.

It lodged into his head and his heart, and it wouldn’t let go. Acclaimed novelist/short story writer Nathan Englander couldn’t believe that no one had publicized this hair-raising tale.

The event, sometimes referred to as “The Night of the Murdered Poets,” occurred in 1952.

It was a literary tragedy that seemed to have faded into history. Stalin rounded up all the last great Yiddish writers, 26 in total, and executed them all on the same night.

As a fifth-generation American (he calls his family “Mayflower Jews”), Englander, 44, grew up in an Orthodox community in West Hempstead, Long Island, attending a yeshiva where he was steeped in the rhythms and cadences of Yiddish (even if he didn’t truly speak the language. As he humorously puts it, “I know the same three curses and four foods everyone else knows.”).

Yet, he reports, one of his professors at the University of Iowa told Englander that he was “writing all of my sentences in transliterated Yiddish. My mom’s from Boston and my dad’s from Brooklyn, but I hear everything in a Yiddish rhythm.”

So when he learned that grisly bit of history, it gnawed at his very core.

“It’s a story I’ve been writing my whole life,” says the affable and garrulous Englander, from his home in Brooklyn.

When he spent his junior year in Jerusalem, one of his teachers was married to a Russia expert, and that’s how he learned about these Yiddish writers who were being obliterated, putting an end to a Yiddish literary and artistic culture unequaled in the world.

“It was crazy,” Englander says. “Russia was the first country to recognize the state of Israel.

But someone as evil as Stalin shouldn’t win in the long run, shouldn’t succeed in erasing these people. Someone needed to give them a story.”

As he says in his short story, “The TwentySeventh Man” (published in 1999 in his internationally best-selling first collection, “For the Relief of Unbearable Urges”), “the greatest stories of their lives were taken from them.”

“I thought a real writer should write their story,” Englander continues. “I waited for years.

I did research everywhere I could, looking for something. But there was nothing. Finally, I wrote a draft, and ten years later, I found transcripts of a book from Yale about the incident.”

In Englander’s fable-like version (now a 90-minute stage play, to be performed at The Old Globe, 2/14-3/15), three acclaimed writers, trapped in an airless, windowless cell, stand in for the 26. The 27th is a fictional creation, Pinchas, an unknown, unpublished writer (“a Zelig among

60 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

immortals,” theater critic Mel Gussow called him), the only one who writes a story during the incarceration; in the face of death, he finally finds an audience.

Fictionalizing the facts – and finding support Englander made up the names and the characters of the writers.

“They were my younger self’s ideas of iconic forms of writers. Like the Four Sons at the Seder.

They’re complete amalgamations.

“It was exciting to embody these Yiddishists, to see them live again, these writers Stalin wanted to forget. I feel touched and inspired by them.”

He wasn’t the only one who was inspired by the stories. Since his first collection was published, Englander has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award and the Bard Fiction Prize. His second collection, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank,” won the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The New Yorker named Englander one of “20 Writers for the 21st Century.”

There were more personal advocates, too, what Englander calls “the three life-changing people in my life.”

Deborah Brody, a children’s book editor, and the mother of his closest friend in New York, was curious to read something Englander had written. He chose “The Twenty-Seventh Man.” “She read the story and said, ‘There’s a story buried in here and a writer somewhere in you,’” Englander reports. “Out of the goodness of her heart, she worked with me for months. She forced me to go to grad school, taught me what it was to re-write – and to find the story in the story. Five years later, it was published.”

Englander’s second advocate was the late writer/producer/director Nora Ephron. After reading his story, she knew it would make an excellent stage play. Englander was thrilled by the idea, but wanted to finish his novel first (“The Ministry of Special Cases,” published in 2007).

Once he was ready, Ephron effectively became his mentor. For two years, they developed the drama together.

His third champion was Barry Edelstein.

When Ephron brought the play to New York’s prestigious Public Theatre (she was on the board), it was put in Edelstein’s hands.

Edelstein, then director of the Shakespeare Initiative at The Public, is now the artistic director at The Old Globe. “All I was doing was Shakespeare. I always wanted to try something else,” he says.

Edelstein and Englander spent two years developing the piece. “We drafted it endlessly,”

recalls Edelstein. “One of the great sadnesses, though, is that Nora died only a few months before the play premiered.”

“It was such a glorious time,” says Englander of the development process. “Barry was so dedicated to this project. He just has this menschlichkeit (humanity). The main thing I loved was working with other people, on a team project. As a novelist, I’m always by myself, with the blinds drawn, no phone or wi-fi. In bringing my stories to life, I do everything, including build the costumes and the set. It was exciting to have different minds working on the project.

“Here’s how I describe my transition to theater,” Englander says, sarcastically. “I thought, ‘It’s too easy to survive on literary fiction. What could be even harder, even worse, where you even earn less? Ah, theater!’”

The Old Globe production of “The TwentySeventh Man,” its West coast premiere, is the play’s second production, staged in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, an arena stage.

A Prison Cell in the round “Of course you can’t have four walls on a stage,” Englander acknowledges. “On a traditional stage, you can have three walls. I loved the New York set, but I also love the idea of this new challenge, in the round. I’m almost giddy to see what they come up with. A lot of the same design team will be in San Diego.”

For Edelstein, this will be “a completely different production, completely re-thought.

The cell in New York only had a low ceiling and a back wall. There was a feeling of claustrophobia, the sense of the Sword of Damocles looming. In the round, it will feel more intimate. And there’s a different bunch of crazy Jews playing the roles.

“But of course, the story itself is heavy and sad.

The emotion in the rehearsal room: the wailing,

Nathan Englander

THEATER

Hal Linden the geshrei [crying]. It was very intense. There’s so much talk about personal experiences of antiSemitism. Feeling like an outsider resonates with Jews.

“The thing I love about it,” Edelstein continues, “is that people don’t know the history.

But the play also tackles Big Questions: Why art is important, why storytelling is vital. Nathan is a great believer in the necessity of storytelling in society.”

In New York, Edelstein relates, “a very old guy came up after the show and said, ‘I knew them.’

He had known these writers in the 1940s and ’50s. The children of the actual writers – most now living in Israel – are still alive. This is still timely.”

The fact is, according to Edelstein, Stalin’s targets weren’t actually 27 writers, or even 26.

And they weren’t all writers.

“Some were editors, academics,” Edelstein says. “And the arrests took place over four years.

Some were seized in 1948 and held till 1952.

There’s an enormous amount of poetic license, a distilling of characters, in the story and the play.

Some passages in the play come directly from the story. But the seminal scene with the interrogator, a KGB man, is not in the story at all.”

One of Edelstein’s favorite parts of Englander’s creation is young Pinchas.

“I think it’s entirely possible to have a conversation about whether the boy was really there,” Edelstein suggests. “I think he was; but he could’ve been a figure of the imagination of these three men. We play it like he’s real, but his presence poses a provocative question. This kind of magical realism puts Englander in the tradition of Sholom Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer. He really captures the very special spirit of Yiddish literature that flirts with the spiritual and the magical. Crazy stuff happens in his stories.

They’re so wild and funny and warm-hearted.

“Yiddish is, of course, very important to the story,” Edelstein continues. “One of my great regrets is that I don’t speak Yiddish. How supple and nuanced it is! One of the great literary languages on earth. It has tremendous depth and wit and invention. The soul of European Jewry that’s very close to extinction. These Soviet writers were creating the greatest Yiddish writing.

This miraculous language was essentially wiped out.

“For a while in the Soviet Union, Yiddish flourished, in schools, newspapers, theaters and literary journals. Then Stalin got the idea that Yiddish writers could help in the fight against the Nazis, and he sent them all over the world.

They raised a ton of money for the Red Army.

Stalin later used that to accuse them of being Western spies. It was complete insanity. In 1948, he started rounding them up.”

The writers were murdered by firing squad at Lubyanka prison in Moscow, adjacent to KGB headquarters. For decades, according to Edelstein, Jews in the West wanted to mourn them as martyrs. But during the Cold War, they knew they’d be branded as Communists.

“In Nathan’s version,” Edelstein explains, “these writers died knowing that Stalin was a fraud and Communism a failure. But in fact, some went to their deaths as loyalists, true believers. Historians are still in dispute over this.

“There has been virtually no mention of these writers. There’s a documentary about them, including interviews with their children. There’s a tiny little plaque in Jerusalem. The information didn’t get out until the Iron Curtain came down in the 1990s.”

Englander actually wrote his story before the information was even released.

“He began imagining who they were,” Edelstein says. “The great thing about writers is, sometimes what they imagine is remarkably close to the truth. Some of the things he has them say in the story, they actually said. It’s amazing.

That’s the reason he’s one of the great American fiction writers.

“And he’s such fun to be with, such a hilariously, kibbitzy guy. This experience is so great for me, since I spend most of my time with a great writer who’s dead. It sure is nice to be with one who isn’t.”

The New York-to-San Diego express When “The Twenty-Seventh Man” premiered at The Public in 2012, Time Out listed it as one of the Ten Best Plays of the Year.

Christopher Isherwood of the New York Times thought it “captures the clammy sense of entrapment that finds the men slowly pecking

away at each other’s foibles to pass the long hours.”

The three older writers are of varied levels of renown. The booze-soaked Bretsky taunts the loyalist Korinsky, who insists that his lifelong support of the Soviet regime will ensure his release. The most revered of the three is the oldest, Zunser, played by veteran actor (and octogenarian) Hal Linden, a Tony and Emmy Award-winning stage and screen star most fondly remembered for his long TV stint as “Barney Miller.”

Though music was his first love (he was a singer and Big Band clarinetist), Linden has been in “ten thousand plays,” as he humorously recalls it. His favorite part of the process is rehearsals.

“That’s where the actor is most creative,” he says. “I’m very excited about this play and what we’ll discover in working on it,” he says from his second home in the Palm Springs area (he primarily resides in L.A.), a few weeks before rehearsals began at the Globe.

“There are so many questions raised in the script. To me, this man, Zunser, has already decided he’s dead. He stopped writing after the war, in 1946. Now it’s 1952. He hasn’t been seen or heard from. He’s resigned to his death, but he can face that with humor.”

Having grown up in the Bronx, Linden knows “some Yiddish.” But he hadn’t known anything about this story.

“I think we’ll wrench some guts with this play.

It will really be a voyage of discovery for me.”

The voyage, the process, is what intrigues the playwright, too.

“I love to learn,” says Englander, who describes himself as “basically a deeply religious person trying to be an atheist.”

His first taste of theater has given Englander the bite of the drama bug. He’s now working with Lincoln Centre Theatre on adapting his story, “What We Talk about When We Talk about Anne Frank” and, he confesses, “I’m secretly fiddling with an original play.”

Now all three of these creative artists are gearing up for “The Twenty-Seventh Man” at the Globe.

“I think it’s a major play,” says Edelstein, “with important ideas about art and storytelling.” A “The Twenty-Seventh Man” runs Feb. 14-March 15, in the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre of The Old Globe.Tickets (starting at $29) are available at 619-234-5623; theoldglobe.org.

Barry Edelstein in Conversation with Nathan Englander, sponsored by the Judaic Studies Program of UCSD and Congregation Beth El, will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 18 at 6 p.m. on the Old Globe stage.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 61

SYNAGOGUE

THE METROPOLITAN CHABAD

Chabad Downtown serves a diverse and growing community in a new, maybe temporary, space

The Chabad Downtown community gathered in late 2014 to dedicate the mezuza at their new facility located at 308 G St.

S

an Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer has declared Dec. 16 Chabad Downtown Day, to honor the synagogue for being an outstanding neighbor to the downtown community for the past 10 years. Rabbi Zalman Carlebach, a South African who spent a year in New York on his post-rabbincal school studies, started Chabad Downtown in 2004 when the neighborhood was riddled with construction cranes. His wife is from San Diego, and when they approached Rabbi Yonah Fradkin at the Chabad San Diego headquarters in Scripps Ranch, he suggested the downtown region might be a good place to open Carlebach’s Chabad synagogue. At the time, the downtown area was home to only 20,000 residents. Today, Carlebach says there are more than 40,000 people who live within the 10ish block radius around Horton Plaza. Estimates put the resident total at about 80,000 by the year 2020. With about 10-15 Jewish families per downtown high rise, the Jewish community in the heart of America’s finest city is likely to keep growing too.

Chabad Downtown wants to be the spiritual home for all of these Jewish residents.

“We feel that we’re just getting established,” Carlebach says one morning on a tour of his

62 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

newly rented 5,000 sq. ft. building a few blocks from their original location (which was only 1,500 sq. ft.). “We’re constantly growing and now we’re focusing on establishing our own Jewish community center in downtown.”

While the synagogue does hold daily services, along with the traditional Friday night and Saturday morning offerings, Carlebach wants to see all kinds of Jews at Chabad Downtown, not just the ones who worship there. The larger space will allow for more room to have programs beyond services, for young adults, women, or those looking to feed their Jewish curiosities with a class or two.

“The downtown is very community oriented,” Carlebach says, despite what the cityscape might suggest, “there’s a strong sense of community here, it’s not just bars and clubs.”

Given that downtown is a big destination for tourists and business travelers, Carlebach readily opens his doors to those he may never see again after a week. With their proximity to the Convention Center, Chabad Downtown gets conventioneers at services for about 40 weekends out of the year. And there are always tourists trickling in. These one-time attendees go to Chabad Downtown, Rabbi Carlebach and their

website, chabaddowntown.com, for information on Jewish life in San Diego, especially things like Kosher restaurants and local events with a Jewish flair.

To serve another part of the downtown San Diego community, Chabad Downtown distributes bread and canned goods, in association with JFS, on the G St. sidewalk every Friday morning from 10 a.m to noon.

Rabbi Carlebach showed me a list seven pages long of those who come on a regular basis. The synagogue distributes about 100 bags of food each week.

While the new location has already provided Chabad Downtown the ability to expand its programming, they have established a search committee to find a permanent home for their growing community. For now, though, you can find them at 308 G St. Services are held at 7:30 a.m. daily. Friday services are at 5 p.m., and two Saturday services are at 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. The next community event is “An Archaeological Claim to Jerusalem,” a lecture with Rabbi Avrohom Stolik on Feb. 22. Details on this and all 2015 events can be found on their website, chabaddowntown.com. A

PHOTO COURTESY CHABAD DOWNTOWN

BY NATALIE JACOBS

ADVERTORIAL

AwardWinning“Dramedy”AboutWomen,Clothes and Life Comes to Lyceum But it’s only in town for four weeks!

Playhouse Productions is thrilled to return to San Diego with a production of “LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE,” by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron. This play of monologues and ensemble pieces about women, clothes and memory will run at the Lyceum Theatre, Feb. 25- March 22. Produced by the same group behind “My Mother’s Italian,” “My Father’s Jewish & I’m In Therapy,” “RESPECT: A Musical Journey of Women and Old Jews Telling Jokes,” the production features a local cast of San Diego favorites. Opening night for media is Feb. 27.

Proving that a great show is always in fashion, “LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE,” with its rotating cast and compulsively entertaining subject matter, has become an international hit. This intimate collection of stories is based on the best-selling book by Ilene Beckerman, as well as on the recollections of the Ephrons’ friends. Like the popular book, the show uses clothing and accessories and the memories they trigger to tell funny and often poignant stories that all women can relate to, creating an enduring theatergoing experience.

A local cast of five women will be directed by John Anderson. Anderson, San Diego REP Production Manager by day, also helmed the recent hilarious Playhouse Production, Old Jews Telling Jokes.

“I’m excited to be working with some of the most talented women in San Diego,” said Anderson. “They are going to show so many shades of emotion through these funny, compelling and powerful stories.”

The original cast included such luminaries and Tyne Daly, Rosie O’Donnell and Natasha Lyonne. San Diego audiences are in for a real treat as long time favorite actresses will put their unique talent to work in this production. Playing a variety of characters are Melinda Gilb, Deanna Driscoll, Jacole Kitchen, Rachael VanWormer and Elsa Martinez.

Featured in these tales - which are mostly comic but often sad or sentimental - are the mothers who disapprove, the men who disappear and the sisters who’ve got your back. Weaving NY Jewish humor, fashion and emotional recollections, the vignettes will bring back memories for anyone who has had to try on bras, brave a public dressing room or soul-scarring humiliation of possessing a messy handbag.

Show Times: Wed. 7:00PM, Thur. 2:00PM & 7:00PM, Fri. 8:00PM Sat. 2:00PM & 8:00PM, Sun. 2:00PM & 6:00PM One Act- 90 minutes

Tickets: $45 & $55 Wednesday & Thursday $55 & $65 Friday, Saturday & Sunday (Online service fee $3.50 per ticket)

Purchase online at http://playhouseinfo.com

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 63

in the kitchen WITH

TORI AVEY

ROASTED EGGPLANT MATBUCHA

Tori Avey is an awardwinning food writer, recipe developer, and the creator of the popular cooking website toriavey.com.

She writes about food history for PBS Food and Parade. com. Follow Tori on Facebook by searching for “Tori Avey” and on Twitter: @toriavey.

I

n the Middle East and across the Mediterranean, meals are often served “mezze” style – small bites, lots of salads and appetizers to go along with one or more main courses. I’ve encountered endless varieties of mezze during my travels, including several cooked eggplant-tomato salads. These salads are very often sweet and served more like a condiment, always at room temperature, with lots of olive oil added for a richer flavor. They’re usually served with freshly baked bread or pita, perfect for dipping into the saucy goodness.

There is nothing better than sitting on the patio of a seaside Middle Eastern restaurant using a warm grilled pita as a spoon for this stuff.

One of the most important fruits in Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jewish cooking is eggplant. Yes, you read that right – eggplant is technically a large berry fruit, though most cooks generally consider it a vegetable. The eggplant, also known as aubergine, has been cultivated in India for more than 4,000 years. The oldest surviving mention of the fruit dates back to the 5th century in a Chinese agricultural work called Ts’i Min Yao Shu. It later made its way to Persia in the 4th century CE, where it eventually became firmly rooted as a major part of the Middle Eastern diet.

Sephardic Jews prize the eggplant as an affordable, healthy dietary staple that can be prepared in numerous ways. In fact, during a second Jewish expulsion from Spain and Portugal in 1580 (when the two countries united under one crown), eggplant became known as the “Jew’s apple” because of its frequent usage in Sephardic Jewish cuisine. Today the eggplant is grown all over the world, known by many different names including aubergine in the United Kingdom, brinjal in Arab countries, melongene in France, eggfruit in Australia and garden egg in West Africa.

Recently I found myself craving some eggplanttomato mezze goodness. None of my cookbooks had

64 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

exactly what I was looking for, so decided to develop my own take on the concept by combining my popular Moroccan matbucha recipe with eggplant. Roasting the eggplant before adding it to the matbucha mix rids it of excess moisture and makes for a nicer, thicker, less mushy end texture. I also roast the peppers, bringing out their natural sweetness and adding a little smoky flavor to the mix (enhanced by smoked paprika). The result is nothing short of delectable.

This salad-like side condiment is seriously scrumptious. It’s a bit of a process to make (not too difficult, but it takes time). You might want to double a batch and freeze the leftovers…if there are any leftovers.

ROASTED EGGPLANT MATBUCHA 2 lbs. eggplant (2 medium sized eggplants) 1/3 cup olive oil, divided 2 red bell peppers 1 jalapeño or fresno chili pepper 2 ½ lbs. tomatoes (8-10 large), peeled, seeded and diced (learn how here) or 2 large cans (1 lb 12 oz each) diced tomatoes 1 clove garlic, minced ¾ tsp salt, or to taste 2 tbsp tomato paste ½ tsp red chili pepper flakes (or more to taste) Sugar, or your favorite sweetener, to taste 2 ½tsp paprika ½ tsp smoked paprika

You will also need: 2 baking sheets (1 full, 1 half), 4-6 quart pot, foil Makes about 4 cups Kosher Key: Pareve Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

PHOTOS BY TORI AVEY

Heat oven to 425 degrees F. While oven is heating, slice stem ends off the eggplants, then peel them halfway in stripes down the side so strips of skin remain intact around the eggplant, with half of the skin peeled away. This helps the eggplant cubes to hold their shape without being too tough (too much skin can negatively affect the texture).

Slice the eggplant into 1-1 ½ inch chunks and toss them in a bowl with 1 tbsp olive oil. Spray a full-sized baking sheet liberally with nonstick cooking spray, then spread the eggplant out in a single layer on the sheet.

Line a half baking sheet with foil and place the bell peppers and jalapeño or fresno chili pepper on the sheet. Place both baking sheets in the oven and let the vegetables roast for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, turn the peppers over with tongs and continue roasting for another 3-5 minutes, until the small pepper is soft and collapsing. Remove the small roasted pepper and set it aside. Turn the bell peppers again and return them to the oven. Stir the eggplant. Continue roasting the eggplant and bell peppers for another 10 minutes or so until eggplant is tender and lightly browned and the bell peppers are soft and collapsing.

While the rest of the vegetables finish roasting, stem the small pepper, peel off any loose skin, and take out the seeds (unless you want a really spicy matbucha – I leave 10-15 seeds in for a little kick). Dice into small pieces.

You may want to wear gloves during this process to protect sensitive skin from the capsaicin of the pepper. When the eggplant and peppers finish roasting, remove them from the oven. Place the peppers in a bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap or foil and allow to steam for a few minutes. Set the eggplant aside. Once the peppers have steamed, seed them and peel the skin off. Dice into small pieces.

Combine peppers, tomatoes, garlic, salt, tomato paste, and chili flakes in a 6 quart pot. Bring ingredients to a boil, then simmer for 30-40 minutes, stirring every 8-10 minutes, until the mixture has cooked down and most of the excess liquid has evaporated. Stir in the roasted eggplant chunks.

Continue to simmer for 5-10 minutes longer until thick and saucy. Remove from heat. Stir in sugar or your favorite sweetener to taste. I usually end up adding about 2 tbsp of sugar; it’s supposed to be a sweet salad with a bit of a spicy kick. You can add more hot pepper flakes or salt to taste too, if you like.

Stir together remaining ¼ cup olive oil, paprika and smoked paprika in a small bowl. Pour oil into the salad and stir until well mixed. Serve salad at room temperature or chilled.A

IKWTA Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 65

WHAT’S

GOIN’

ON?

No Shortage Here

San Diego Opera’s production of “Don Giovanni,” with Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in the title role, will play at the Civic Theatre Feb. 14-22.

DF

ebruary may be the shortest month of the year but it’s chock full of entertainment.

The Old Globe brings “The TwentySeventh Man” to its White Theatre, while the Main Stage continues to feature the killer musical comedy, “Murder for Two.” The San Diego Opera’s 50th anniversary season is in full swing.

The San Diego Symphony plays on. The Lamb’s unveils “You Can’t Take it With You,” and the San Diego Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 25th anniversary. That’s just a sampling of the events on tap for local audiences this month.

66 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

The San Diego Opera will unveil a production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” that has never been seen here before, with Ildebrando D’Arcangelo debuting in the title role. You can enjoy this thrilling opera at the Civic Theatre Feb. 14-22.

The Old Globe’s White Theatre will give Nathan Englander’s “The Twenty-Seventh Man” its much-anticipated West Coast premiere, Feb. 14-March 15. Barry Edelstein (who directed the play when it premiered in New York) will reimagine the piece for the intimate space with Hal Linden heading a stellar cast. For a preview of

the show and information on the writing process straight from Englander himself, check out Pat Launer’s piece on page 59 of this SD Jewish Journal issue.

The Globe’s Main Stage is also delivering a stylish production of “Murder for Two.” This murder mystery, with music and comic mayhem at its core, is directed by Scott Schwartz.

Described as a “wacky tour-de-force musical,” the show features only two actors performing a litany of characters. The murder takes place at a birthday party, and the killer could be any one of

PHOTO BY MARCUS LIEBERENZ/DEUTSCH OPERA BERLIN

by eileen sondak • nsondak@gmail.com

PHOTO BY PABLO MASON

The Natural History Museum’s new exhibit “Coast to Cactus in Southern California” showcases our region’s environmental diversity on the museum’s first floor.

program featuring Zwilich and Schubert, as well as Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 25.

La Jolla Music Society is presenting “Kodo” – the world famous drummers – on Feb. 6 at the Balboa Theater. Wunderkind Ingolf Wunder will show off his keyboard prowess with works by Chopin and Liszt at TSRI on Feb. 8. The Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra is due to perform works by Ravel and Prokofiev at Symphony Hall on Feb. 13, with Helene Grimmaud on piano.

The La Jolla Playhouse’s latest “Without Walls” production is “The Grift at the Lafayette Hotel,” a world premiere, immersive theater piece that takes place throughout the hotel. This exciting new work will continue through Feb. 22. The Playhouse’s staging of “The Darrell Hammond Project” – which takes audiences on a hilarious and heartbreaking journey into the mind of a comic genius – will run through March 8. “The Astronaut Farmworker,” a play commissioned for young audiences, will be performed at the Playhouse Feb. 14-15.

The Lamb’s Coronado home is ready to unwrap “You Can’t Take It With You,” a vintage comic masterpiece by the inimitable George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The play takes place during the Great Depression, but it remains as fresh and funny as ever. The show will take up residency at the Lamb’s Feb. 13-March 22. The Lamb’s production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” continues at the Horton Grand Theater through March 29.

The La Jolla Symphony – under the direction of Steven Schick – will present virtuoso cellist Maya Beiser (who was raised on an Israeli Kibbutz) on Feb. 7-8 at Mandeville Auditorium.

Moxie is presenting “Trouble in Mind” through Feb. 22. The groundbreaking classic about a racially integrated cast rehearsing a

Broadway show, deals with prejudices and stereotypes.

Mingei’s newest exhibition, “Black Dolls” will open on Feb. 7. It includes more than 100 unique hand-made dolls and rare photographs.

You can check it out until July 5.

The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center will debut the IMAX film, “Humpback Whales” on Feb. 13. “Journey to the South Pacific,” narrated

by Cate Blanchett, provides an exotic tour of the locale that is home to more than 2,000 species.

The museum has several permanent exhibitions, including “Tinkering Studio,” “Block Busters,” and “Origins in Space.” The Fleet’s Concert Series will feature Venice on Feb. 20.

The San Diego Museum of Art will highlight “Ron Nagle: Peripheral Cognition” until Feb. 17. The exhibition features works the acclaimed ceramicist and sculptor created from the 1960s to the present.

The Natural History Museum also has a new core exhibition, “Coast to Cactus in Southern California” – an 8,000 square foot exhibition.

The NAT is still hosting the West Coast premiere of “The Discovery of King Tut” as well.

This fascinating exhibition features more than 1,000 replicas of treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun – the “Boy King.” The show will continue through April 25.

The San Diego History Center’s latest exhibition is “Ingenius! The World of Dr. Seuss” features artwork by Theodor Geisel and will be on view throughout 2015. The History Center is also focusing on “Presidio to Pacific Powerhouse: How the Military Shaped San Diego.” It will be on display throughout the year as well. “Placed Promises” is a permanent exhibition chronicling the history of the San Diego region. A

D

the guests. “Murder for Two” is set to remain on the boards through March 1.

North Coast Rep continues to showcase “Gunmetal Blues: The Musical,” a send-up of film noir until Feb. 8. NCR will follow up this spoof with the witty Neil Simon comedy, “Chapter Two.” The show (the first play ever staged by the company), opens Feb. 25 under David Ellenstein’s direction, and will be ensconced at the Solana Beach theater through March 22.

Cygnet features “Sons of the Prophet,” a Pulitzer Prize-finalist that has been described as “devastating and thrilling.” The play takes you on a roller coaster ride of emotions as it deals with family, culture, and wounds that won’t heal.

This black comedy (recommended for mature audiences) will reside in Cygnet’s Old Town home through Feb. 15.

The San Diego Symphony is featuring soprano Nicole Cabell and clarinetist Sheryl Renk Feb. 6-8. The program, conducted by Jahja Ling, will include works by Mozart and Strauss. The Russian National Ballet Theatre is due on Feb. 10 (for a performance of “Sleeping Beauty”), then again on the 11th (for “Don Quixote”) and finally on Feb. 12 (for “Swan Lake”). The Symphony will host the Vienna Boys Choir on Feb. 20. On Feb. 21, the orchestra will perform a free family concert, titled “Musicians’ Choice.”

“Celebrating San Diego New Music” is scheduled for Feb. 24 at Symphony Hall. The concert will showcase new music highlights in San Diego over the past two decades. Celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14 with “Kenny G: Be My Valentine.” The sweet sounds of this band should provide a romantic evening on that special day. “Goode Plays Mozart” with virtuoso pianist Richard Goode as guest artist, is slated for Feb. 27-March 1. Maestro Ling will conduct a

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StandWithUs brings Israeli Soldiers to Share Stories

The StandWithUs “Israeli Soldiers Stories” (ISS) program comes back to San Diego Feb. 16-18.

This year’s program will feature Ashager, an Ethiopia-born Jew who moved to Israel in 1991 as part of Operation Solomon, and Eyal, a team commander in the IDF Officers Course.

Both former soldiers will speak about their backgrounds, life in Israel and answer questions at events hosted through Hadassah, SDSU and the SD Jewish Academy.

For more details, visit standwithus. com.

Tu B’Shevat at Ohr Shalom

Ed Samiljan (LEFT) accepts his Jcamp 180 award from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.

Ed Samiljan Receives Philanthropist of the Year Award

On Tuesday, Feb. 3, Ohr Shalom will host a community Tu B’Shevat seder and dinner.

“Especially in our growing awareness of the environmental crisis in which we live,” said Rabbi Scott Meltzer, “Tu B’Shvat is the perfect fun time to celebrate as a community and affirm our responsibility to protect and serve the garden.”

R.S.V.P. required, call Ohr Shalom at (619) 231-1456. Programming starts at 6:30 p.m. Cost is $13 for adults, $5 for children.

Visit ohrshalom.org for more programming information.

Jcamp180, a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF), hosted more than 475 leaders from nonprofit Jewish camps and other organizations during its 10th anniversary conference in January. During the event, top individuals and camps were honored for their efforts to support Jewish children’s camps across the country.

Ed Samiljan, founder of San Diego’s Camp Mountain Chai, was presented with the Philanthropist of the Year Award for his significant contributions to the lives of Jewish children. With the support of his wife, donors and partners, Samiljan founded Camp Mountain Chai in 2004 after finding a 7,500-foot property in San Bernardino National Forest. Now 10 years since its founding, Camp Mountain Chai serves nearly 500 Jewish children each year and Samiljan continues to work for and financially support the organization. Samiljan was at the conference, held in Massachusetts, to accept the award which included a $3,000 cash donation to the camp.

Potential campers can learn more at campmountainchai.com.

ADL Mission Connects Students with Israel

Eighteen students from 16 U.S. universities, including San Diego State University, traveled to Israel on an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) mission in January. The participants were part of the annual ADL Campus Leaders Mission to Israel during which they visited Jewish holy sites, met with decision-makers and officials, Israeli and Palestinian students, and ordinary Israelis.

“Our goal is to equip the students with a better understanding of the complicated issues facing Israelis and Palestinians today, [so they may] return to their schools as better informed participants in the dialogue on campus,” said David S. Waren, ADL Director of Education.

The Anti-Defamation league is the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism. More information can be found at adl.org.

68 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

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EL AL Israel Airlines appoints new VP of North, Central America

Yeshiva a cappella group to perform

On Feb. 8 San Diego’s Southern California Yeshiva High School is hosting the Yeshiva University-based a cappella music group Y-Studs in concert. The evening will include a dessert reception and silent auction.

Located in Claremont, SCY High is the only Yeshiva high school for boys in San Diego and is recognized nationally for its academic and religious rigor. Program proceeds will benefit SCY High’s scholarship program. Tickets for Y-Studs can be purchased at scyhigh.org/scytunes.

EL AL Israel Airlines has appointed Shmuel Kuzi as Vice President of North and Central America.

Kuzi, who joined EL AL in 2007, is responsible for overseeing the division that generates the most tourism for the airline. He is based at the EL AL North American headquarters in New York City.

Kuzi was born in Tel Aviv and has a Master’s Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Ben Gurion University in Israel.

State Agency recognizes JFS for volunteerism, leadership

Jewish Family Service San Diego is the first organization in the region to be certified as a “Service Enterprise” by Points of Light and CaliforniaVolunteers, the state office that manages programs and initiatives aimed at increasing the number of Californians engaged in service and volunteering. This prestigious certification recognizes JFS as a leading organization in volunteer engagement, leveraging its volunteers’ skills, talents, and resources strategically and thoughtfully at all levels of the agency. Last year, volunteers donated nearly 62,000 hours of time, providing the hourly equivalent of more than 30 full-time staff members.

“More than 1,000 volunteers support JFS and its clients each year,” said Melinda Wilkes, Director of Volunteer Engagement at JFS. “That level of volunteer engagement is a direct reflection of San Diegans’ deep desire to serve others.”

Research estimates that for every $1 invested in effective volunteer engagement, organizations can expect up to $6 in return.

KPBS announces more news-focused scheduling

KPBS Radio has restructured their midday and weekend programming to reflect the listening habits of San Diegans.

“With these changes, KPBS will better meet our audience’s need for quality, relevant news in the middle of the day, plus feature some of the best new public radio talent,” said KPBS Director of Programming John Decker.

Among the changes announced is the addition of The Takeaway with John Hockenberry at 11 a.m., replacing To the Point with Warren Olney every weekday. A production of WNYC in New York and the BBC, The Takeaway places the major stories of the day into context. As part of the restructuring, Fresh Air with Terry Gross will now move to 8 p.m. Monday-Thursday. Full program descriptions and schedule changes can be accessed at KPBS.org/radioschedule.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 69

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Single Incision Lung Surgery is First for Israel

For the first time in Israel, a patient’s malignant lung tumor has been removed with a single, fourcentimeter incision in the lower lobe between the ribs in a procedure called a thoracoscopy. Dr. Danny Fink, one of the surgeons who performed the procedure at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, explained that the single incision surgery minimizes pain and scarring, as well as speeds recovery.

The patient was discharged four days after the surgery.

Dr. Danny Fink

JCC Teens Join for Shabbat360

On Feb. 20 the Jewish Community Center will host Shabbat360, the largest teen-run Shabbat program in San Diego. Taking place from 5-10 p.m., teens will prepare their own meal and eat it together at the JCC during a festive party with fun programming scheduled throughout the evening. Housing arrangements are availbe for those who are shomer Shabbos. The cost is $18 and teens can register at lfjcc.org/teens/teenspace.aspx.

Anne Frank House Draws Record Attendees

A record number of guests visited the Anne Frank House in 2014 – nearly 1.23 million. The majority of the visitors came to the Amsterdam museum from outside the Netherlands, while 140,000 of last year’s visitors were Dutch.

“It is inspiring that so many people from all around the world visit this place and learn about its history,” said Ronald Leopold, executive director of the Anne Frank House.

Anne Frank’s story is globally renowned, and her book, “The Diary of Anne Frank” has been translated into 60 languages and listed as one of the best 100 books of the 20th century by Goodreads. Amidst reports of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, the legacy of this young Jewish girl who perished in the Holocaust continues to matter to this day. For more information and to book your own trip, visit the website at annefrank.org/en/museum.

Manischewitz goes Non-GMO

The Manischewitz Company, a leader in Kosher foods, recently announced that it will be the first major Kosher company to have a line of Non-GMO Project Verified products. Non-GMO products must pass a rigorous, independent verification process to bear the Non-GMO Project Verified certification from the Non-GMO Project.

“We are thrilled to offer everyone an assortment of products that are compliant with the NonGMO Project standard. Once again The Manischewitz Company leads innovation in food trends to meet the growing needs of our consumers,” said CEO Mark Weinsten.

Among the items to be Non-GMO Project Verified will be several Matzos products, good news on the heals of the announcement in January that long-time Matzos producer, Streits Matzoh, was closing its doors. See manischewitz.com for more product information.

70 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

DIVERSIONS

By Natalie Jacobs

“God, Faith and Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors”

“Almost Friends” Since this is the Film Festival issue, we’ll use this opportunity to highlight one more film you can catch this year.

The documentary “Almost Friends,” having it’s San Diego premiere this month, is interesting because instead of being a modern, and true, take on a Shakesperean tragedy, it has an almost happy ending. Two girls from opposite sides of the track – Israel and the Gaza Strip – meet in the “cloud” as a result of a program intended to combine education and technology. They become electronic penpals and when they decide to meet face-to-face, crossing the 67 kilometers that separate them, the girls and their families undergo a profound and complex experience.

The film is showing at the Clairemont Reading 14 theaters, on Sunday, Feb. 8 at 11 a.m. and Thursday, Feb. 12 at 2 p.m. Find details at sdcjc.org/sdjff.

Woody Allen “The Stand-Up Years 1964-1968” Before Woody Allen was the well-known writer/ director, and well before he got a deal to produce sitcoms for Amazon, Allen was a stand-up comedian making the rounds in New York. The recent release of a two-disc CD set chronicling these “stand-up years” gives fans a rare chance to see Allen develop the unique comedic voice for which he has become so well-known. Order “The Stand-Up Years” on Amazon, iTunes, or at Barnes & Noble.

“Regarding Susan Sontag” To say that Susan Sontag was a writer would be to miss the point almost entirely. Really, she was a cultural critic who wrote essays, made films and ruffled feathers. Friends, admirers and detractors saw her as controversial, passionate and relentlessly outspoken on such bedrock issues as the Vietnam War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and bisexuality.

The documentary about her life is now available on HBO.

“Paper Love: Searching for the Girl my Grandfather Left Behind” A journalist travels to Berlin to find a lost love and ends up unraveling a riveting Holocaust narrative.

“All I Love and Know” A novel about a family torn apart after a Jerusalem suicide bombing.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 71

TAKE NOTE FEB. 1-28

by tina b. eshel

BEST BETS

Mark your calendar.

F

ebruary is a beautiful time of year in San Diego, and it coincides with Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish holiday also known as the birthday for trees. Why not celebrate with an eco-friendly tour of The Leichtag Foundation’s The Ranch in Encinitas? Tours are offered from 10 a.m. to noon on the second Sunday and Wednesday of every month. Make your reservations online at leichtag.org/the-ranch/ ranch-tours. Parents and lil’ ones are invited to come to the JCC on Feb. 3 at 9:20 a.m. for the Shalom Sesame Series celebrating Tu B’Shvat. Details at lfjcc.org/shalombaby.

February is also a great time to explore San Diego’s tide pools.

Check for locations and hours at san-diego-beaches-and-adventures. com/san-diego-tide-pools.html and consider a guided tour with naturalists from Scripps Birch Aquarium on Feb. 15 at noon.

Reservations are required and can be made by calling 858-534-7336.

Teen Screen 2015 is back! Join the San Diego Teen Coalition and teens from San Diego synagogues and Jewish organizations for a free screening of “Havana Curveball” on Feb. 10 at 6 p.m. Find out about this and other ways to curb adolescent angst at lfjcc.org/teens/.

The California Center for the Arts, Escondido, has two concurrent exhibits through Feb. 22 for art enthusiasts. The Strauss Collection highlights contemporary global artists while In the Studio explores the art-making process from 1970 to now. For more information, visit artcenter.org/museum. ’Tis the season of Jewish Galas. Seacrest Village announces the 37th Annual Women’s Auxiliary Gala: Emerald City to benefit Seacrest and its residents. Scheduled on Feb. 21 at 6 p.m., tickets are on sale now at seacrestvillage.org/ways-to-give/special-events.

That same evening, Tifereth Israel hosts the UnGala with a Twist.

Their party gets started at 7 p.m. Tickets at tiferethisrael.com/gala.

Torah High School is celebrating their 16th year with their annual Wild West-Themed Casino Night. This evening of fun, dinner and entertainment takes place on Feb. 22 at 5 p.m. and benefits the Torah High scholarship fund. Learn more at torahsandiego.com.

Families with children of all ages: check out the Classics 4 Kids Family Concert Series: A Salute to American Jazz Greats at Balboa Theatre on Feb. 22 at 2 p.m. The concert celebrates jazz icons in honor of Black History Month. Purchase your $10-$20 tickets online at classics4kids.com.

Finally, Yemen Blues will play just one night during their San Diego premier. This eclectic Israeli band fuses the sounds of West Africa with jazz. They take the stage on Sunday, March 1 at 7:30 p.m. at La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas. Tickets available at the JCC box office.A

72 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

SHALOM SESAME SERIES: TU B’SHVAT Feb. 3 at 9:20 a.m.

Shalom Baby and Lawrence Family JCC lfjcc.org/shalombaby

SAN DIEGO TIDE POOLS All month long and a guided tour Feb. 15 Scripps Birch Aquarium 858-534-7336

THE STRAUSS COLLECTION AND IN THE STUDIO Through Feb. 22 California Center for Arts, Escondido artcenter.org/museum

GALAS GALORE Seacrest Village Women’s Auxiliary Gala: Emerald City, Feb. 21 Tifereth Israel UnGala with a Twist, Feb. 21 Torah High School Casino Night, Feb. 22

SAN DIEGO JEWISH

SENIOR EVENTS FEB. 1-28

Lawrence Family JCC 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla Contact Melanie Rubin to R.S.V.P. (858) 362-1141 Highlights in the History of Synagogue Music Wednesday, Feb. 25 to March 11, 10:30 a.m.

Learn about the instruments of the Middle East in Temple times, the music in the synagogue and church from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Era, Jewish music in modern times, and more with lecturer Allan Endy.

Oceanside Senior Center 455 Country Club Lane, Oceanside Call Josephine at (760) 295-2564 North County Jewish Seniors Club Third Thursday of each month, 12:30 p.m.

Join us to hear speakers and/or entertainment at our monthly meetings.

Light refreshments served. Visitors welcome.

Joslyn Senior Center 210 Park Ave./Broadway, Escondido Call (760) 436-4005 Jewish War Veterans meetings Second Sunday of each month, 11 a.m.

Preceded by a bagel/lox breakfast at 10:45 a.m. San Diego North County Post 385.

Seacrest Village 211 Saxony Road, Encinitas Call Jon Schwartz at (760) 516-2001 Monthly Senior Dance First Friday of every month, 1 p.m.

Refreshments and appetizers from our kosher kitchen will be provided.

Free and open to the public.

JFS University City Older Adult Center 9001 Towne Centre Drive, La Jolla Call Aviva Saad for details or to R.S.V.P. (858) 550-5998 Thursday Feb. 13 from 10 a.m.

Presidents Day Celebration Tuesday Feb. 17 from 10 a.m.

Enjoy some exercise, music and dancing to the music of Cam and Dolly Vidal. Lunch available at noon with reservations.

On the Go excursions A program of Jewish Family Service, On the Go provides transportation to events throughout the county for homebound seniors. For information on any of these excursions, please call (858) 637-7320.

Tour of the San Diego Central Library and Brunch Co-Hosted with the JCC Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015, Depart 9:30 a.m., Pay $25 by Feb. 13 Enjoy a one-hour tour of our fabulous new nine-story San Diego Central Library. After the tour, we’ll have brunch at The Mission Restaurant downtown (brunch not included).

My Fair Lady Musical Thursday, March 5, 2015, Depart 6:30 p.m. Seats are limited, book early.

Cost is $54.

Special evening showing of "My Fair Lady" in Old Town on opening night.

CYBER CAFÉ OPEN LABS

JFS College Avenue Center Mondays, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; Friday, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Computers and tutors are available to assist you, and all levels of computer users are encouraged to stop by. Free Wi-Fi for portable devices. Free for members, $1 for non-members.

JFS No. County Inland Center 15905 Pomerado Road, Poway Call (858) 674-1123 for details.

Asian Adventures Monday, Feb. 16, 11 a.m.

Take a virtual tour of Asia with travel enthusiast, Susan Berger just in time for the Chinese New Year.

David Amos Returns Monday, Feb. 23, 11 a.m.

Conductor David Amos who will take you on an auditory journey through great works of music. Followed by lunch at noon with reservations.

JFS Coastal Club at Temple Solel 3575 Manchester Ave., Cardiff by the Sea Call Melinda Wynar at (858) 674-1123 for details. R.S.V.P. for lunch by Monday at 12:30 p.m.

Arts and Culture Overview Encinitas Tuesday, Feb. 10, 11 a.m.

Jim Gilliam presents upcoming events, activities and festivities in and around the City of Encinitas. Followed by lunch and a movie, "The Fault in our Stars" at 1 p.m.

Does Nutrition Affect Mental Health? How? Tuesday, Feb. 24 at 11 a.m.

Ruth Wallace, PhD, RD, looks at the scientific evidence that shows how nutrients influce mental health.

JFS College Avenue Center 4855 College Ave., San Diego Call (858) 637-3270 for details or to R.S.V.P. Cyber Café Open Lab Mondays, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.; Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.; Friday, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Free for members, $1 for non-members.

Going Wireless: How to use Wi-Fi Thursday, Feb. 19, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Cost is $3 for members, $5 for non-members.

Wellness on the Web: An Introduction Thursday, Feb. 26, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Cost is $3 for members, $5 for non-members.

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 73

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ALL SERVICES ALREADY HELD Dr. Herbert Leopold - San Diego 5/09/1921 - 10/31/2014 Survivors: wife, Rhoda Leopold; and daughter, Cathy Aiello Sandra Muroff - San Diego 10/23/1942 - 11/02/2014 Survivors: husband, Howard Muroff; and son, Marc Muroff.

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74 SDJewishJournal.com l February 2015

Ilya Reytblat - Chula Vista 8/27/1948 - 11/06/2014 Survivors: daughter, Rima Reytblat.

Mildred Polgar - El Cajon 10/22/1924 - 11/08/2014 Survivors: daughter, Roberta Cowen; sons, Doug & Gary Polgar: & 7 grandchildren.

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Seymour Miller - Cardiff by the Sea 3/17/1918 - 11/13/2014 Survivors: daughter, Susan

Harrison.

Sally Krause - Del Mar 12/23/1934 - 11/14/2014 Survivors: husband, Lawrence Krause; and sons, Leonard and Jason Krause.

Ben Shreiber - Encinitas 06/26/1913 - 11/14/2014 Survivors: wife, Reva Sweet; and daughter, Davida Shreiber.

Lois Zlotoff - San Diego 10/04/1921 -11/22/2014 Survivors: son; Bill Zlotoff; and 1 grandchild.

Larry Prager - Menifee 8/26/1938 - 11/25/2014 Survivors: daughter, Andrea Prager; sons, Richard & Steven Prager; and 6 grandchildren.

Larry Prager - Menifee 8/26/1938 - 11/25/2014 Survivors: daughter, Andrea

Prager; sons, Richard & Steven Prager; and 6 grandchildren.

Michel Kleiman - Ramona 4/10/1955 - 11/25/2014 Survivors: cousin, Dan Kleiman.

Rakhil Zaslavskaya - La Mesa 12/23/1917 - 11/27/2014 Survivors: daughter, Ella Mavasheva.

Seymour Kaplan - San Diego 4/11/1917 - 11/28/2014 Survivors: niece, Barbara Recht.

Steffi Goldschmidt - Encinitas 10/05/1926 - 11/29/2014 Survivors: daughter, Vivian Goldschmidt.

Beatrice Langer - San Marcos 09/28/1919 - 11/27/2014 Survivors: daughters, Randie Donovan, Bonnie Liebergot, Susan Ellis and Doree Macra; 9 grandchildren and 8 greatgrandchildren.

desert life

PALM SPRINGS

by Pamela Price

pamprice57@gmail.com

Palm Springs Loves Movies Too

PHOTO BY PAT KRAUSE

Jewish films dominate the International Film Fest

At the 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival, Ronit and Schlomi Elkabetz, Israeli sister and brother duo's film "Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem" was among four Israeli films screened.

T

he 26th Annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) enchanted, disturbed, delighted and enlightened viewers from Jan. 2-13. There were 408 total screenings of 195 films from 65 countries and more than 130,000 guests to take it all in. The world-class film festival included Jewish-themed and Israeli films inspired by world events, history, and politics.

“There was a film for everyone,” says inveterate film festival fan Phyllis Eisenberg, “including a documentary about the original red hot mama, ‘The Outrageous Sophie Tucker.’”

That film chronicled the “My Yiddishe Momme” singer and her raucus career in the 1920s.

Fast forward to 2014 and the release of “Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem,” one of four films submitted from Israel. “Gett” catapulted the co-directing partnership of Israeli sister-brother duo Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz whom Variety recently recognized as two of “10 Directors to Watch.”

The movie follows Viviane, an Israeli woman committed to finalizing a divorce from her estranged husband, Elisha, fights for her freedom for three years. It starts when she has to deal with a panel of three rabbis who deny her the right to

end the marriage because her obstinate husband refuses to agree to it. Divorce in Israel to date has been controversial. Ronit, one of Israel’s most respected actresses, told me that in this context, “women are invisible, the tragic consequences of this unjust system renders women the property of their husbands.

“We can’t believe that in 2014 in a Democratic society this law exists,” Ronit continues.

For the record, the film is Israel’s official entry for the 87th Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Language Film, and the winner of the Israeli Film Academy’s Ophir Award for Best Picture.

The U.S. premiere of “Chagall-Malevich,” a Russian film, was a magnificent spectacle as well.

The film delves into the saga between two of Russia’s greatest artists, both Jewish. Historic and haunting, it takes place during the tense years from 1918-1921 in Vitebsk, Russia.

The Jewish quarter was recreated on the banks of the Dvina River for the movie set. This film, along with “Dancing Arabs” (an Israeli submission) were two of the 12 films in the Modern Masters category this year.

“Above and Beyond: The Untold True Story,” a long-awaited documentary directed by Roberta Grossman and produced by Nancy Spielberg uses interviews and archival footage and swings into

action starting in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion delcared the establishment of the State of Israel.

It was bombed the next day, marking the start of the Arab-Israeli war. A group of Jewish American pilots, “fresh from fighting in WWII answered the Israeli call for help.”

This is the first major feature-length documentary about the foreign airmen in the ’48 war. Literally born on a wing and a prayer, the film defines the actions of the airment in candid terms thanks to remarkable footage and interviews with the surviving pilots, including Leon Frankel, Lou Lennart, Gideon Lichtman, and Modi Alon.

“Steven Spielberg’s sister takes Israeli history ‘Above and Beyond,” said the Provence in one of many reviews. “If someone didn’t tell the story soon, there would be nobody around who could because these men are at an age, once you’ve lost the people there’s not a lot out there to work with,” Nancy Spielberg says. “Preserving the legacy of these pilots and flight crews and keeping their stories from falling under the radar, that’s what it’s all about.”

San Diego audiences can catch “Above and Beyond” in the San Diego Jewish Film Festival.

Get details in our Film Festival section on page 53. A Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 75

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9 locations in SD County Family Owned and Operated since 1953

JEWISH COMMUNITY

Shevat • Adar 5775 l SDJewishJournal.com 77

DESCEND INTO THE MIND OF OPERA’S ULTIMATE BAD BOY! Lustful, pompous and sadistic, Don Giovanni stalks his latest conquest, but he cannot escape his past sins or the ones who try to bring him to justice. In a shocking conclusion, we find that the living are not the only ones who can seek vengeance.

All performances at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

Free lecture one hour prior to each performance.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS DISPLAYED ABOVE THE STAGE

TICKETS START AT $45

sdopera.com (619) 533-7000 Tickets also available at

THE NEW YORK & INTERNATIONAL HIT COMEDY COMES TO SAN DIEGO!

From the Producers of RESPECT: A MUSICAL JOURNEY OF WOMEN and OLD JEWS TELLING JOKES

Philip Roger Roy and Dana Matthow Present

Written by Nora Ephron & Delia Ephron Based on the Book by Ilene Beckerman

Love, Loss, and What I Wore is based on the best-seller by Ilene Beckerman as well as the recollections of the Ephrons’ friends. The show uses clothing and accessories and the memories they trigger to tell funny and often poignant stories to which all women can relate!

FEBRUARY 25 - MARCH 22, 2015 “Funny, Compelling...

Brought Down The House...”

- New York Times

“Funny, powerful, sweet & saucy! Goes directly to the heart, soul & vanity of every woman, young & old.”

- Variety

“Witty & Wise!”

- Vanity Fair

SD JEWISH JOURNAL

EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT SAVE $7.50 OFF Full Price Tickets SHOWTIMES: Wed 7, Thur 2 & 7, Friday 8, Sat. 2 & 8, Sunday 2 & 6 TICKETS: $45 - $65

Use Code: SDJJ & order by Feb. 25.

Not valid w/previously purchased, discounted or group tickets.

Limit 6 tickets per order.

Lyceum Theater 79 Horton Plaza, San Diego 92101 Tickets: 619-544-1000 • Groups (12+): 1-888-264-1788

www.PlayhouseInfo.com

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“Exquisite! As chilling and haunted as a ghost story.”

Time Out New York In a Soviet prison in 1952, Stalin’s secret police have rounded up 26 writers, the giants of Yiddish literature in Russia. As judgment looms, a 27th suddenly appears: a teenager, unpublished and unknown.

Baffled by his arrest, he and his cellmates wonder at what has brought them together and wrestle with what it means to write in troubled times. Artistic Director Barry Edelstein returns to the play he premiered in New York by award-winning novelist Nathan Englander and reimagines it for the Globe’s intimate in-the-round space, bringing us larger-than-life personalities and an unforgettable reminder of the transcendent power of storytelling.

Nathan Englander Directed by Barry Edelstein By

February 14 - March 15 Tickets start at $29

Barry Edelstein IN CONVERSATION WITH Nathan Englander The discussion will explore the evolution of the play, its fascinating historical setting, Englander’s work in fiction versus theatre, and literature’s place in modern American culture.

Co-sponsored by the Judaic Studies Program of UCSD and Congregation Beth El.

Wednesday, February 18 at 6:00 p.m.

Donors/Subscribers/Students: $7 General Public: $10 Tickets are available exclusively to Old Globe donors and subscribers through January 18.

Tickets on sale to Students and the General Public January 20.

(619) 23-GLOBE (234-5623) www.TheOldGlobe.org