I really loved Eitan Arom’s cover story (“L.A.’s Boldest Plan Ever to Help the Homeless,” Oct. 14) with its beautiful depiction of “Faces of Homelessness” as well as the strong support of Measure HHH. Thanks for reaching out to remarkable professionals in our industry (Amy, Dora and Tanya) to get a fair perspective on the crisis and solutions needed to end homelessness.
I was especially touched by the connection to Sukkot. Sukkot has forever been my favorite holiday of the year in part because of its celebration outdoors (much like why I loved celebrating the second day of Rosh Hashanah with Neshuva!), the symbolism of a wandering people living in such a fragile structure, and the tradition of inviting people (real and biblical) into the sukkah. I’ve always felt the need to raise greater awareness about housing issues during this holiday, and so for many years, I’ve made my sukkah a space for staff meetings, or to talk with guests about what we can all do to support more housing. So reading Eitan’s piece connecting Sukkot and strategies to end homelessness was powerful.
After three years of failed efforts in their pledge to help the homeless, the Los Angeles City Council, with Mayor Eric Garcetti in the lead, introduced Proposition HHH as their ticket to re-election. Housing the homeless and hope have a different meaning when less than 25 percent ($250 million) is earmarked for homeless housing. With a $2 billion payback after the 10-year program is completed, it spells a giveaway to the contractors involved in the low-cost housing project, which in L.A. means unaffordable to most. In the meantime, there will be a doubling of the homeless population in L.A. Many refuse a structured life, especially the young enjoying their rootlessness on Venice Beach.
What is needed now is food sufficiency, health care, toilets and showers for the 1,000 in Venice, the 28,000 in L.A. and the 50,000 in L.A. County in an effort that goes beyond the county. Homelessness is a national tragedy and must be dealt with locally, in Sacramento and in Washington, D.C. Instead of sukkahs, tent cities that can be quickly built are needed for shelter on the order of the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. With the new enterprises come responsibility to the new communities and the payback of the homeless.
Dennis Prager calls San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s actions a “mockery of every American soldier, sailor and Marine who fought for, let alone died for, that flag” (“Which Do You Love More: Football or America?” Oct. 14). Whatever one thinks of Kaepernick, the men and women of the United States military have not fought or died for a piece of cloth, but for the very freedoms his protests epitomize.
Why is it that often when conservatives challenge those who protest aspects of American life, they accuse the protesters — in this case 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and author Ta-Nehisi Coates — of “mockery of every American soldier, sailor and Marine who fought for, let alone died for, that flag.”
The flag is just a symbol, and I am sure it means different things to different Americans. I think the very word “America” means different things to different Americans.
I challenge a lot of things about “America,” but I am not mocking anyone who fought (or died) in an American conflict. I do challenge some of the leaders of America and some of the decisions they made and their motives therefore, which took us to wars where Americans died.
I read Danielle Berrin’s article “When a Rabbi Fails” (Oct. 7), in which she described her disappointment when she recently learned of the “fall from grace” of her former congregational rabbi in Miami.
In her article, Berrin said she wrestled with the question, “Is it reasonable to expect that our spiritual leaders should behave better than we do?” I say, “Yes, it is!”
One of my favorite things to do is write children’s songs. Over the years, I have written lots of innocuous little ditties for kids as a way of teaching them about Jewish holidays and rituals, ethics and values, and how to treat families and friends. Long ago, when I was just starting out as a teacher in religious school, I realized that singing a song was an easy and relatively painless way to learn important Jewish lessons about life. So I wrote songs about everything I could think of — from “Hands Hold the Torah Way Up High,” to “Shabbat Shalom Comes to Our Home,” to “Kibbutz is Not the Last Car on a Railroad Train.” Kids seemed to like them, and in the process of singing, they learned some of the most important lessons about Jewish life.
Three thousand years ago, Moses had pretty much the same idea. As he led that bedraggled band of ex-slaves out of 400 years of Egyptian bondage, he sang them across the sea of reeds to quell their fears, bolster their spirits and teach them that what this invisible God of the Hebrews demanded perhaps more than anything else was that people be free. Moses’ “Song of the Sea” became the first number-one hit song in Jewish history, and we still sing some of its lyrics at every single service in the form of the “Mi Kamocha.”
Just as he began this 40-year desert drama by writing a song for his people, he sings his “Farewell Lament” to signal the end of their wandering and teach them about God and the challenge of their collective destiny once again. Moses seems to have written Ha’azinu as a way of reminding the generation about to enter the Promised Land of promises broken and promises kept.
He sings of the promises they broke along the way during their desert years — how, in spite of the fact that God created them, allowed them to endure through all the hardships of slavery, and prepared a precious inheritance for Israel in the future, they continually turned away to follow false idols and pagan “no-gods.” Moses sings to remind them of the remarkable redemption they personally experienced under God’s protective wing (“like an eagle who rouses his nestlings, gliding down to his young”) and to warn them of the promises they will inevitably break in years to come.
When he begins the song by calling on heaven and earth to hear the words of his song, his audience can’t help but be reminded that only a portion ago, he called on the same heaven and earth to witness perhaps the central spiritual challenge of the entire Torah: that good and evil, life and death, blessing and curse dangle balanced forever before the eyes of the entire Jewish people, and the choice is up to them.
Ha’azinu is a musical, poetic ethical will from Moses to his children. Like a loving parent whose child is about to go off to college or to live on her own, Moses gives the Children of Israel his final words of advice so that they will remember when he is gone all the values, ethics and morals that he has tried to teach them during his lifetime.
Perhaps we can all learn from the example of Moses this week. I was only 4 when my first father died. I know how grateful I would have been if he had left a written record of his thoughts and dreams, ideals and moral teachings for me to read and cherish as I grew. It’s not too late to do the same for your children. Take the time to write down the values you most want to pass on to them and their children. It will be the most priceless gift you could ever give.
Steven Carr Reuben is senior rabbi of Kehillat Israel, the Reconstructionist Congregation of Pacific Palisades.
This recipe originally appeared in the summer 2016 issue of our Byachad Magazine. You can read the full issue here.
In 2004, Johnny Stern, a Brazilian born immigrant who moved to Israel with his family at the age of 17, made the bold decision to open his own winery, Stern Winery. He realized his true calling lay with the vines of his winery, located in Kibbutz Tuval, a picturesque community in the hills of the Western Galilee. Before realizing this dream, however, he lived a dual life for nearly six years: as a sales manager for a company manufacturing industrial adhesives, machinery oil, and metal treatments, and as an artisanal wine producer in Israel’s budding boutique wine industry.
My sister woke me from my sleep at 4AM in New York on Sunday morning with a phone call from Johannesburg. I was so shocked by what she said I wept after she had hung up. Then I rang my parents in the UK as I had been requested to do, to tell them what was happening. My sister’s eldest son K had been in a car crash, he had been cut from the wreckage and flown to hospital by air ambulance, the trauma specialists were working to stabilize his condition and scanning his brain for signs of brain damage. Two of K’s best friends were already dead.
Now on Monday It does appear that K will live and hopefully make a full recovery. But obviously it is still a worrying time for all of us. Especially for my Sister and Brother in Law. They really thought they had lost him when there appeared to be no record of him at any of the hospitals. He had arrived in Baragwanath – Soweto General, the biggest hospital in the world, as an unidentified male, so searches for him showed up nothing.
But given the circumstances we are lucky, when I think of the families of the two dearly loved friends who have died, it makes me weep all over again.
PPS ……… I wrote this two weeks back but did not post it till now ……….. because only now have I finally managed to speak to K on Skype myself ………. so now I really do believe … because of the evidence of my own eyes …. that he is going to be fully OK. But of course the loss of his two wonderful friends remains desperately, desperately sad for him, and for all of us, but the pain and sadness of their parents and families I can only begin to imagine.
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The ninth installment in the Filmworks series on Tzadik in the haunting soundtrack to "Trembling Before G-D", a "documentary about gay Hasidim and Orthodox Jews who 'come out' as gays and lesbians and the ways in which they negotiate their sexuality and identity in religious communities." (From the liner notes by director Sandi Simcha Dubowski). Zorn, whose exploration of the many aspects and facets of Jewish identity in Masada and a lifelong championing of outsiders in many of his other projects, makes him uniquely suited to score the film.
However, this is yet another album featuring the Masada songs played by yet another band, and while the results are certainly impressive, they are by no means essential to a record collection. Certainly Filmworks VIII, Bar Kokhba or Circle Maker are better discs to get for the Masada tunes being played by small ensembles, but that being said, this is a beautiful album.
Like Filmworks VIII, the act of scoring a film seems to focus these songs, imbuing them with a certain kind of power that the otherwise wonderful Circle Maker lacks. Circle Maker is, strangely enough, the only Masada song album which isn't a sound track at all.
While I was never a big fan of the clarinet/organ duets on Bar Kokhaba, some extra element makes them work here. While John Medeski's right hand lines flew around with Chris Speed's clarinet lines on Bar Kokhba, Jamie Saft takes a more laid back approach, adding dark colors and pulses to the clarinet; the lower register of Saft's organ is particularly powerful and hypnotic.
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