Jewish Journal; November 4, 2009
Click here for original.
When the Israeli electro-rock-pop band Terry Poison strutted onto the stage at the Hollywood Playhouse as the headliner act of the after-party for Israel’s debut at LA Fashion week on Oct. 14, most audience members — largely Israeli ex-pats — got up to dance, though some stayed behind to scratch their heads. The band wore metallic spandex bodysuits and wild makeup and played synth-based instruments to songs with English lyrics that sometimes sounded like an esoteric robotic language. It was a performance that could easily have been taken for an avant-garde art installation.
Terry Poison diverges radically from the folksy, acoustic and singable tunes of Israeli hit-makers like Idan Raichel or Ivri Lider, both of whom have performed in Los Angeles recently. In Israel, though, the band is emerging as a hot new voice and concept in Israeli pop circles. The band opened for Depeche Mode in Israel in May and was nominated as best Israeli act for the 2009 MTV Europe Music Awards, airing in November in Berlin.
The name Terry Poison was created to evoke the image of a bad girl, conceived in Jerusalem’s prestigious Bezalel Art Academy by lead singer Louise Kahn, who immigrated to Israel from Norway. As a student, she envisioned a band that would reflect the freeing, creative power of Tel Aviv, the city she had traded in Oslo for.
“We see ourselves as a Tel Aviv band. We have a party, good times, beach vibe,” Kahn said during a rehearsal break, sitting over a cup of espresso at the Sweet Love Hangover diner on Hollywood Boulevard, quick to lament America’s poor treatment of espresso. With her extension-enhanced platinum blonde hair, she looks like a strung-out Barbie with a slightly Jewish nose.
Terry Poison would be a “girls’ band” if it weren’t for curly-haired, Haifa native Idan “Bruno” Grife, who serves as both the band’s studio producer and keyboardist. Back in 2006, he foresaw the commercial and artistic potential of Terry Poison as it gained an early following in Tel Aviv’s underground club circuit.
He paired Kahn with singer/songwriter Petite Meller, a sabra with a degree in philosophy and literature from Tel Aviv University. Meller, of mixed Polish ancestry, plays the part of a Parisian socialite. Guitarist Anna Landesman, from Latvia, is the goth, tough chick. The Israeli actress and musician, Gili Saar, with her manly height and features, takes on a transsexual look. All in all, they are like four ethnic variations of Lady Gaga.
“Terry Poison is like a startup,” Grife said.
As anti-establishment as they may seem, the band has been promoted through clever branding and marketing. The members collaborated with up-and-coming Tel Aviv fashion designers and photographers to create a flashy, cohesive image of pretty, hard-edged girls who are the life of any drug-dipping party.
Their eponymous debut album is filled with buzzing bass lines, fast drums, electronic bells and whistles, and lyrics about boys and partying. Their hits “Smash Snack” (which repeats the band’s name ad nauseam in the chorus) and “Comme Ci Comme Ca” get regular airplay on Galgalatz, the coveted destination for Israeli singers.
“Radios are a bit nationalist, Zionist, so they want Hebrew music,” Kahn said. “But we built a big underground so we had a massive fan base.”
It remains to be seen what kind of American fan base they’ll build following their American debut in Los Angeles and New York. Kahn thought the non-Jewish crowd at the Cinespace Hollywood nightclub, where they performed the night before the Fashion Week party, had been much more receptive to them, with girls enthusiastically asking for their pictures.
“We’re not ‘the band that started for the Jewish community,’” Kahn said.
“We’re not that educational.”
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Bacon-wrapped matzah balls with Top Chef Ilan Hall
Jewish Journal; November 4, 2009
Click here for original.
Even before The Gorbals first opened for dinner on Aug. 28, chef Ilan Hall’s bacon-wrapped matzah balls served with horseradish mayonnaise had already earned his new downtown restaurant its share of notoriety in the food press.
But Hall, 27, doesn’t seem afraid of anyone’s opinion — except those of the city’s health inspectors, who, just a few days after opening, temporarily shut down The Gorbals for an inadequate water heater, forcing him to cancel all reservations at the last minute. The restaurant relaunched on Oct. 23.
For every Jew offended by his matzah balls, Hall thinks another two will indulge their inner Jewish rebel. In life, Hall is exactly as viewers of “Top Chef’s” second season might remember him: full of chutzpah, in food and in personality, a quality that charmed the show’s judges to his victory.
One could argue that his restaurant is a delicious symbol, reflecting the assimilation of Jews into world cultures — the bacon as the goy, embracing the Jew, only to absorb each others’ unique flavors. Really, it’s just Hall’s brand of Jewish humor.
“The bacon-wrapped matzah ball thing was a little bit of a joke — a tongue-in-cheek thing I did for a friend’s birthday party in New York,” said the loquacious chef, sporting his signature dark-rimmed glasses as he sat at the restaurant’s wooden communal table, his design. “He was a fellow Jew and not kosher at all, and I thought it would be kind of funny to do. I tried it and loved it. It came out really nice. Pork fat does something magical to matzah meal.”
The Gorbals, where the dish goes for $5 as an amuse bouche, is not a play on the name of a certain Nazi minister (Hall, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, is not that irreverent). Located in downtown’s historic Alexandria hotel, the restaurant is named after a district in Glasgow — the once-thriving center of Scotland’s Jewish community, where his father was born. Growing up in Great Neck, N.Y., Hall’s father was the family chef, but his mother’s sabra roots provided inspiration.
“We didn’t eat a lot of Scottish food growing up, but when we did it was always a treat for me. I grew up eating more Israeli and Mediterranean food, which was always fresh and healthy,” he said.
And if anyone thinks his Jewish mother — born in Jerusalem, no less — would be the one to chastise him for sacrilegious use of pork, think again.
“My mom, who doesn’t cook, made really good sandwiches. She made me a hummus and ham sandwich, and it was really marvelous. It was those two ingredients made to be together. That’s where it all began,” he said.
Pork-filled lunchboxes aside, his mother did send him to Hebrew school in the afternoons, which he couldn’t stomach for long. Hall dropped out two years shy of his friends’ graduation.
“Come on, they tried to convince me dinosaurs didn’t exist. I wasn’t into it. I didn’t like school at all. School on top of school wasn’t my favorite,” he said.
But not everything Hall cooks and says is meant to give rabbis a heart attack. Hall says good taste (as it relates to the palette) drives his menu of 15 items, and he couldn’t think of a tastier braising sauce for pork belly ribs than Manischewitz concord grape wine.
The most kosher dish on the menu is a zatar-spiced cucumber salad with sesame leaf and garbanzo beans. The idea for sesame leaf came from a friend who owns a kosher Israeli restaurant in Great Neck.
The Gorbals has another Jewish influence — Natan Zion, his childhood friend and business partner (emphasis on “business” — once a reporter left out the qualifier, feeding false rumors that Hall is gay). Also of Israeli descent, Zion doesn’t eat bacon because that’s how he was raised (or “brainwashed,” as Hall teases him), but he did sample the treif delight on opening night, as a gesture.
“I was just thinking of the fact that I’m eating bacon right now,” he said of his first bite.
The Israeli ingredients of Hall’s youth also figure into his turkey wings with fatback tabouleh. Scottish classics are interpreted in his shepherd’s pie and haggis burger, named after the peasant dish traditionally made of lamb innards and oatmeal.
Having worked in a fish store after high school, Hall expresses his fondness for (unkosher) seafood in his octopus with gizzards and lemon, king oyster mushrooms and manila clam chowder.
A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Hall worked at “Top Chef” judge Tom Colicchio’s Craft restaurant and at Casa Mono in Manhattan prior to his reality TV win. Hall adopted Los Angeles as his new home in March 2008.
The restaurant interior combines the rusticity of a kibbutz dining hall and the unpretentiousness of a neighborhood pub with a sprinkling of L.A. trend. Stainless steel counters with tree stump-like stools run along the open kitchen and bar. The floor is a patchwork of concrete slabs and marble tile leftover from the space’s previous life as a hotel eatery.
Hall conducted research for The Gorbals upon visiting Scotland as part of his post-”Top Chef” travels to Spain, France, Romania, Venezuela, the Philippines and Israel, where he visited family and ate — or attempted to eat — Israeli foods at their source.
“Last time I was in Israel I was really angry because I went to my favorite shawarma and falafel place on earth — it’s this tiny one in a little Arab village called Tira — and of course it was Ramadan. I didn’t put two and two together. I drove all the way down there. Empty. We went later at night. It was closed. Sucked. Really sucked,” he said.
OK — so we got Hall intermarrying matzah balls and cavorting with Arabs (he laments he can’t visit more Arab countries); single and admittedly not looking, he prefers dating non-Jews (“I’ve had bad experiences with Jewish girls”); and he sometimes gets frightened by ultra-Orthodox Jews (“Why are they still wearing that outfit? It says nowhere in the Bible you need to wear that outfit”).
But the “weird connection” he last felt with the Holy Land reveals that maybe he’s just like his matzah balls: oozing with heresy on the outside, but a soft, mushy Jewish soul on the inside.
“I’m not really a spiritual person, but something about it felt nice and right,” he said with a boyish grin. “Not that I need to move there, but I need to visit more often. Israel, whether you’re religious or not, is such an amazing place. It just has so much history. Whether you believe things in the Torah or not, all those places are there.”
Click here for original.
Even before The Gorbals first opened for dinner on Aug. 28, chef Ilan Hall’s bacon-wrapped matzah balls served with horseradish mayonnaise had already earned his new downtown restaurant its share of notoriety in the food press.
But Hall, 27, doesn’t seem afraid of anyone’s opinion — except those of the city’s health inspectors, who, just a few days after opening, temporarily shut down The Gorbals for an inadequate water heater, forcing him to cancel all reservations at the last minute. The restaurant relaunched on Oct. 23.
For every Jew offended by his matzah balls, Hall thinks another two will indulge their inner Jewish rebel. In life, Hall is exactly as viewers of “Top Chef’s” second season might remember him: full of chutzpah, in food and in personality, a quality that charmed the show’s judges to his victory.
One could argue that his restaurant is a delicious symbol, reflecting the assimilation of Jews into world cultures — the bacon as the goy, embracing the Jew, only to absorb each others’ unique flavors. Really, it’s just Hall’s brand of Jewish humor.
“The bacon-wrapped matzah ball thing was a little bit of a joke — a tongue-in-cheek thing I did for a friend’s birthday party in New York,” said the loquacious chef, sporting his signature dark-rimmed glasses as he sat at the restaurant’s wooden communal table, his design. “He was a fellow Jew and not kosher at all, and I thought it would be kind of funny to do. I tried it and loved it. It came out really nice. Pork fat does something magical to matzah meal.”
The Gorbals, where the dish goes for $5 as an amuse bouche, is not a play on the name of a certain Nazi minister (Hall, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, is not that irreverent). Located in downtown’s historic Alexandria hotel, the restaurant is named after a district in Glasgow — the once-thriving center of Scotland’s Jewish community, where his father was born. Growing up in Great Neck, N.Y., Hall’s father was the family chef, but his mother’s sabra roots provided inspiration.
“We didn’t eat a lot of Scottish food growing up, but when we did it was always a treat for me. I grew up eating more Israeli and Mediterranean food, which was always fresh and healthy,” he said.
And if anyone thinks his Jewish mother — born in Jerusalem, no less — would be the one to chastise him for sacrilegious use of pork, think again.
“My mom, who doesn’t cook, made really good sandwiches. She made me a hummus and ham sandwich, and it was really marvelous. It was those two ingredients made to be together. That’s where it all began,” he said.
Pork-filled lunchboxes aside, his mother did send him to Hebrew school in the afternoons, which he couldn’t stomach for long. Hall dropped out two years shy of his friends’ graduation.
“Come on, they tried to convince me dinosaurs didn’t exist. I wasn’t into it. I didn’t like school at all. School on top of school wasn’t my favorite,” he said.
But not everything Hall cooks and says is meant to give rabbis a heart attack. Hall says good taste (as it relates to the palette) drives his menu of 15 items, and he couldn’t think of a tastier braising sauce for pork belly ribs than Manischewitz concord grape wine.
The most kosher dish on the menu is a zatar-spiced cucumber salad with sesame leaf and garbanzo beans. The idea for sesame leaf came from a friend who owns a kosher Israeli restaurant in Great Neck.
The Gorbals has another Jewish influence — Natan Zion, his childhood friend and business partner (emphasis on “business” — once a reporter left out the qualifier, feeding false rumors that Hall is gay). Also of Israeli descent, Zion doesn’t eat bacon because that’s how he was raised (or “brainwashed,” as Hall teases him), but he did sample the treif delight on opening night, as a gesture.
“I was just thinking of the fact that I’m eating bacon right now,” he said of his first bite.
The Israeli ingredients of Hall’s youth also figure into his turkey wings with fatback tabouleh. Scottish classics are interpreted in his shepherd’s pie and haggis burger, named after the peasant dish traditionally made of lamb innards and oatmeal.
Having worked in a fish store after high school, Hall expresses his fondness for (unkosher) seafood in his octopus with gizzards and lemon, king oyster mushrooms and manila clam chowder.
A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Hall worked at “Top Chef” judge Tom Colicchio’s Craft restaurant and at Casa Mono in Manhattan prior to his reality TV win. Hall adopted Los Angeles as his new home in March 2008.
The restaurant interior combines the rusticity of a kibbutz dining hall and the unpretentiousness of a neighborhood pub with a sprinkling of L.A. trend. Stainless steel counters with tree stump-like stools run along the open kitchen and bar. The floor is a patchwork of concrete slabs and marble tile leftover from the space’s previous life as a hotel eatery.
Hall conducted research for The Gorbals upon visiting Scotland as part of his post-”Top Chef” travels to Spain, France, Romania, Venezuela, the Philippines and Israel, where he visited family and ate — or attempted to eat — Israeli foods at their source.
“Last time I was in Israel I was really angry because I went to my favorite shawarma and falafel place on earth — it’s this tiny one in a little Arab village called Tira — and of course it was Ramadan. I didn’t put two and two together. I drove all the way down there. Empty. We went later at night. It was closed. Sucked. Really sucked,” he said.
OK — so we got Hall intermarrying matzah balls and cavorting with Arabs (he laments he can’t visit more Arab countries); single and admittedly not looking, he prefers dating non-Jews (“I’ve had bad experiences with Jewish girls”); and he sometimes gets frightened by ultra-Orthodox Jews (“Why are they still wearing that outfit? It says nowhere in the Bible you need to wear that outfit”).
But the “weird connection” he last felt with the Holy Land reveals that maybe he’s just like his matzah balls: oozing with heresy on the outside, but a soft, mushy Jewish soul on the inside.
“I’m not really a spiritual person, but something about it felt nice and right,” he said with a boyish grin. “Not that I need to move there, but I need to visit more often. Israel, whether you’re religious or not, is such an amazing place. It just has so much history. Whether you believe things in the Torah or not, all those places are there.”
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Interview with Lead Singer of Terry Poison
Jewish Journal; October 18, 2009
Click here for original.
The Israeli electro-rock-pop band Terry Poison doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Zionism. They belong more in the European electronic music underground. They sing in English and French about boys and partying. Their wardrobe consists of glittery, metallic bodysuits that outlandish pop sensation Lady Gaga would envy. They don’t consider Diaspora Jews who love Israel as their natural market. (Check out the Journal’s upcoming feature on the band.)
But the band’s lead singer and founder, Louise Kahn, left her homeland of Norway to become a part of the Jewish experiment in the Holy Land and to contribute her own sense of fashion, musical creativity, and partying to the Jewish state. Now her dreams are coming true, with a sound that is rocking Israel’s radio waves, regular gigs in Europe, and a bid at the best new Israeli act at the MTV Europe Music Awards being held in Berlin this November.
“Israel was a legitimate place for me because my parents are Zionists,” she told the Journal during a sound check at the Hollywood Playhouse, where they performed on October 15 as part of the Israeli corner of L.A. Fashion Week. Born in Trondheim, a town she now describes as a Jewish museum, she moved to Oslo with her family at age 10, then left for Israel’s metropolis at age 19.
“I found Tel Aviv really exciting,” said Kahn as she prepared her platinum blonde hair extensions that make her look more Norwegian. She admits her natural color is light brown and that her nose is not small enough to be bond-fide Scandinavian. “This was in 2000, right before the intifada. Norway has always been a very homogeneous society.”
She grew-up a good Jewish girl, with Zionist parents having sent her to the Bnei Akiva Zionist youth movement as a child.
“If you’re a minority like me—even if my family is three generation Norwegian—I didn’t really feel like I belonged. When I came to Tel Aviv, it was very freeing to be a part of the majority and leave this ‘Jewish business’ behind.”
She didn’t know any Hebrew when she landed, and she cheated on the Hebrew placement exam to get admitted into Israel’s prestigious art academy in Jerusalem, Bezalel, where Terry Poison was born. “I stopped playing with another band and started writing electronic music on the keyboard, sampler—low tech. A girlfriend and I started playing around Tel Aviv like crazy.”
Haifa native Idan “Bruno” Grift caught wind of the girls at their gigs, and upgraded the band to four girls (plus himself and a drummer) and worked in the studio with them to perfect their sound. Israeli label Phonokol Records put out their debut album.
“He has an amazing studio,” Kahn said of Grife. “He’s a super serious guy. Without him it would be a joke.”
In addition to performing, Kahn teaches a class on branding for musicians at Muzik, a music school in Tel Aviv specializing in electronic music production. She recognized the power of branding in helping musicians secure an audience. In 2006 Terry Poison teamed up with local designers, stylists and photographers to launch on myspace with photographs of the girls in carefully staged outfits and settings.
“We did the photo shoot and video and did things ourselves on myspace. We created our website. After two months on myspace, we were invited all over Europe—for money. We started something.”
Now that the band has penetrated the Israeli mainstream with two radio hits, Kahn, like many artists in Israel, has her sights set on Europe and the US. The band has been making significant headway. It sold a track to Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, and they perform regularly in Europe. In May they opened for Depeche Mode in Israel.
“I’ve been living in Israel for ten years, but I’m really dying to get out of here,” she said as the interview progressed to the café adjacent to the Playhouse. “I love my life there, but as artists you hit the wall very fast. We have a problem with how far we can go with our music there. If you have music in English and French you can be part of the global music scene, and Israel’s an island.”
The band has been invited several times to Norway, with television appearances there. Kahn feels more at home there as the singer of a popular electro-rock pop band than as a Jew.
“Every time they interview me in the paper they have to write I’m a Jew. It’s the way they put things into words that’s very dangerous,” she said, acknowledging Norway’s poor pro-Israel track record.
Her two siblings are among the some 1200 Jews living in Norway. Her father is a medical engineer and her mother is a teacher at a nursing school. Her mother doesn’t advertise her Jewishness to her students to avoid getting into a fight about Israel.
“They see things very black and white and I think it has to do with information people have,” she said. “I think if you’ve been a country that’s been a part of world history—America or Israel, for instance—your worldview becomes more grey. As for their attitude to Israel, you can read some really not fun things in Norwegian newspapers. My parents aren’t happy about being Jewish there.”
She glanced out the window towards Hollywood Boulevard. “It’s not like America. It’s something you hide.”
Click here for original.
The Israeli electro-rock-pop band Terry Poison doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Zionism. They belong more in the European electronic music underground. They sing in English and French about boys and partying. Their wardrobe consists of glittery, metallic bodysuits that outlandish pop sensation Lady Gaga would envy. They don’t consider Diaspora Jews who love Israel as their natural market. (Check out the Journal’s upcoming feature on the band.)
But the band’s lead singer and founder, Louise Kahn, left her homeland of Norway to become a part of the Jewish experiment in the Holy Land and to contribute her own sense of fashion, musical creativity, and partying to the Jewish state. Now her dreams are coming true, with a sound that is rocking Israel’s radio waves, regular gigs in Europe, and a bid at the best new Israeli act at the MTV Europe Music Awards being held in Berlin this November.
“Israel was a legitimate place for me because my parents are Zionists,” she told the Journal during a sound check at the Hollywood Playhouse, where they performed on October 15 as part of the Israeli corner of L.A. Fashion Week. Born in Trondheim, a town she now describes as a Jewish museum, she moved to Oslo with her family at age 10, then left for Israel’s metropolis at age 19.
“I found Tel Aviv really exciting,” said Kahn as she prepared her platinum blonde hair extensions that make her look more Norwegian. She admits her natural color is light brown and that her nose is not small enough to be bond-fide Scandinavian. “This was in 2000, right before the intifada. Norway has always been a very homogeneous society.”
She grew-up a good Jewish girl, with Zionist parents having sent her to the Bnei Akiva Zionist youth movement as a child.
“If you’re a minority like me—even if my family is three generation Norwegian—I didn’t really feel like I belonged. When I came to Tel Aviv, it was very freeing to be a part of the majority and leave this ‘Jewish business’ behind.”
She didn’t know any Hebrew when she landed, and she cheated on the Hebrew placement exam to get admitted into Israel’s prestigious art academy in Jerusalem, Bezalel, where Terry Poison was born. “I stopped playing with another band and started writing electronic music on the keyboard, sampler—low tech. A girlfriend and I started playing around Tel Aviv like crazy.”
Haifa native Idan “Bruno” Grift caught wind of the girls at their gigs, and upgraded the band to four girls (plus himself and a drummer) and worked in the studio with them to perfect their sound. Israeli label Phonokol Records put out their debut album.
“He has an amazing studio,” Kahn said of Grife. “He’s a super serious guy. Without him it would be a joke.”
In addition to performing, Kahn teaches a class on branding for musicians at Muzik, a music school in Tel Aviv specializing in electronic music production. She recognized the power of branding in helping musicians secure an audience. In 2006 Terry Poison teamed up with local designers, stylists and photographers to launch on myspace with photographs of the girls in carefully staged outfits and settings.
“We did the photo shoot and video and did things ourselves on myspace. We created our website. After two months on myspace, we were invited all over Europe—for money. We started something.”
Now that the band has penetrated the Israeli mainstream with two radio hits, Kahn, like many artists in Israel, has her sights set on Europe and the US. The band has been making significant headway. It sold a track to Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, and they perform regularly in Europe. In May they opened for Depeche Mode in Israel.
“I’ve been living in Israel for ten years, but I’m really dying to get out of here,” she said as the interview progressed to the café adjacent to the Playhouse. “I love my life there, but as artists you hit the wall very fast. We have a problem with how far we can go with our music there. If you have music in English and French you can be part of the global music scene, and Israel’s an island.”
The band has been invited several times to Norway, with television appearances there. Kahn feels more at home there as the singer of a popular electro-rock pop band than as a Jew.
“Every time they interview me in the paper they have to write I’m a Jew. It’s the way they put things into words that’s very dangerous,” she said, acknowledging Norway’s poor pro-Israel track record.
Her two siblings are among the some 1200 Jews living in Norway. Her father is a medical engineer and her mother is a teacher at a nursing school. Her mother doesn’t advertise her Jewishness to her students to avoid getting into a fight about Israel.
“They see things very black and white and I think it has to do with information people have,” she said. “I think if you’ve been a country that’s been a part of world history—America or Israel, for instance—your worldview becomes more grey. As for their attitude to Israel, you can read some really not fun things in Norwegian newspapers. My parents aren’t happy about being Jewish there.”
She glanced out the window towards Hollywood Boulevard. “It’s not like America. It’s something you hide.”
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Moishe House's Creative, Communal Living
Jewish Journal; September 9, 2009
Read original here
When Donna Lavian attended a housewarming barbecue at the new Moishe House of Los Angeles last month, it was her first Jewish event since moving to Los Angeles two years ago.
“I just never heard of any [events] my close friends were going to. I wouldn’t go on my own, and I never felt I needed it,” the 23-year-old preschool teacher said.
In fact, the barbecue didn’t feel like a typical Jewish event so much as just a fun, casual, homegrown party. Hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken sizzled on the grill. A resident DJ (an actual resident of the house) spun electronic music from the balcony overlooking the backyard, while Jews in their 20s and 30s smoked a hookah and gulped down cold ones.
With this opening in Los Angeles, the Moishe House organization has added a new landmark to its network of communal homes designed to serve young Jews ages 21 to 30. Already 27 centers have been established in eight countries, and each of these offers informal Jewish community centers with community events, as well as subsidized housing for a small group of residents. Through the Moishe Houses, it is hoped, post-college-aged young adult Jews can find an entry into Jewish life and a place to make friends.
Moishe House is just one part of a growing effort among Jewish organizations to target programming specifically to young Jews; other local efforts include Jewlicious, with its annual retreat in Long Beach of music, prayer and learning, and JconnectLA, which offers social and spiritual programming for singles and young couples.
“After graduating from college or finishing that age, there really is not a lot of vibrant Jewish life happening,” said David Cygielman, Moishe House’s executive director, from the organization’s headquarters in Oakland, home of the first Moishe House, which opened in 2006. “There’s a void basically until people are ready to start joining a synagogue, or get involved or have a family.”
There is a demand, however. Moishe House currently fields more applications than it can fund. Residents receive rent subsidies and a budget to create the house’s programming, with the requirement that a third of it must have distinct Jewish content. Over the summer, the Moishe House organization received a four-year, $1.25 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, and that, coupled with a grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation last year, is allowing the organization to expand operations. New Houses are currently slated to open in Moldova, Budapest and Mexico City in the coming months.
The program, Cygielman said, is both efficient and cost-effective.
“This year, with all the 28 houses around the world and everything that goes into them, our annual budget is slightly over $1 million, which is still smaller than most congregations in one city,” Cygielman said.
The Los Angeles Moishe House was first conceived by Maital Guttman, 26, who moved to Los Angeles two years ago from North Carolina and works as a documentary filmmaker. She knew what it’s like to come to a big city and look for a meaningful, creative, communal framework.
“It’s empowering us to envision the kind of community we want to create, so it’s not someone sitting down and asking, ‘How do you engage Jews in their 20s’; it’s creating our own space and opening it up to people,” she said.
She found four Jewish roommates who share her love for the arts and social justice issues. Together they scouted for a place, and eventually they came upon their dream house in Mar Vista, equipped with a living room, foyer, large kitchen, dining room and backyard. Bedrooms on the second floor offer a private oasis, and events are hosted downstairs.
If a camera were to be installed near every mezuzah, the footage might make up a Jewish version of MTV’s hit reality show, “The Real World,” capturing not only the residents’ interpersonal dramas (a few marriages have come out of Moishe Houses), but also each resident’s unique relationship to Jewish ideals and practice.
Among the first events hosted recently at the L.A. house was a discussion facilitated by Jewish Queer International (JC) on how to create a safe, inclusive space for Jews of all genders and sexual orientations. It’s a topic personally relevant to Guttman, whose Jewishly self-identified girlfriend, Tera Green, 25, also lives at the house, though not as one of the official residents.
“I almost feel like my own reservations and fears are not just about me,” Guttman said. “It’s for me to create a space, and part of that means to be ‘out’ there for other people who can’t.”
Musician and civil rights activist Anthony Rogers-Wright, 33, an African American Jew, is one of the residents. He hails from New York and sees Moishe House as a microcosm of the Jewish world.
“We’re trying to get more of the Jewish values portrayed than you might get portrayed in a typical organization,” he said. Sometimes that means simply figuring out those values.
“It’s hard for me to find a temple I’m comfortable going to,” said Benjie Reynods, 26, a Web designer and U.C. Santa Barbara alum who is one of the L.A. house residents. “This gives me the opportunity to explore different parts of Judaism in a way that’s less organized and more creative.”
Rabbi Scott Perlo of Los Angeles recently came to the organization as the rabbinic adviser for all the Moishe Houses.
“A lot of the residents have dreams they don’t yet know how to fulfill in terms of their own Jewish practice, ideas of study and learning, ideas about joyful community,” he said. “My job is to help them figure out how to do it.”
The various Moishe Houses range from fully observant homes that offer Torah study classes to culturally Jewish ones. Perlo fondly describes the Los Angeles residents as fiery, artistic and socially committed.
“I’m still getting to know them as a house, but they bring to the table this kind of interesting creative flair that I’ve never really seen before.”
Two of the residents bring with them previous Moishe House experiences. Leo Beckerman, 25, who works for a blood bank, started the Moishe House in Washington, D.C.; Elana Rosenbaum, 26, is an MBA student at UCLA and started the house in Buenos Aires.
“It’s a pretty fulfilling and worthwhile experience,” Beckerman said. “It was amazing to see how many people would come through in D.C., and it made me understand there’s really a need for something like this.”
The roommates have not finished furnishing the house, and they’re just getting to know one another’s routines and idiosyncrasies. Wright describes one of their first “dilemmas” as a discussion on what kind of tzedakah-themed event to plan for the High Holy Days. It’s exactly the kind of discussion they’ve come here to have.
“To me it feels like a dream I’ve been talking about has come true and manifested in an even better way than I could have imagined,” Guttman said.
Read original here
When Donna Lavian attended a housewarming barbecue at the new Moishe House of Los Angeles last month, it was her first Jewish event since moving to Los Angeles two years ago.
“I just never heard of any [events] my close friends were going to. I wouldn’t go on my own, and I never felt I needed it,” the 23-year-old preschool teacher said.
In fact, the barbecue didn’t feel like a typical Jewish event so much as just a fun, casual, homegrown party. Hot dogs, hamburgers and chicken sizzled on the grill. A resident DJ (an actual resident of the house) spun electronic music from the balcony overlooking the backyard, while Jews in their 20s and 30s smoked a hookah and gulped down cold ones.
With this opening in Los Angeles, the Moishe House organization has added a new landmark to its network of communal homes designed to serve young Jews ages 21 to 30. Already 27 centers have been established in eight countries, and each of these offers informal Jewish community centers with community events, as well as subsidized housing for a small group of residents. Through the Moishe Houses, it is hoped, post-college-aged young adult Jews can find an entry into Jewish life and a place to make friends.
Moishe House is just one part of a growing effort among Jewish organizations to target programming specifically to young Jews; other local efforts include Jewlicious, with its annual retreat in Long Beach of music, prayer and learning, and JconnectLA, which offers social and spiritual programming for singles and young couples.
“After graduating from college or finishing that age, there really is not a lot of vibrant Jewish life happening,” said David Cygielman, Moishe House’s executive director, from the organization’s headquarters in Oakland, home of the first Moishe House, which opened in 2006. “There’s a void basically until people are ready to start joining a synagogue, or get involved or have a family.”
There is a demand, however. Moishe House currently fields more applications than it can fund. Residents receive rent subsidies and a budget to create the house’s programming, with the requirement that a third of it must have distinct Jewish content. Over the summer, the Moishe House organization received a four-year, $1.25 million grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation, and that, coupled with a grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation last year, is allowing the organization to expand operations. New Houses are currently slated to open in Moldova, Budapest and Mexico City in the coming months.
The program, Cygielman said, is both efficient and cost-effective.
“This year, with all the 28 houses around the world and everything that goes into them, our annual budget is slightly over $1 million, which is still smaller than most congregations in one city,” Cygielman said.
The Los Angeles Moishe House was first conceived by Maital Guttman, 26, who moved to Los Angeles two years ago from North Carolina and works as a documentary filmmaker. She knew what it’s like to come to a big city and look for a meaningful, creative, communal framework.
“It’s empowering us to envision the kind of community we want to create, so it’s not someone sitting down and asking, ‘How do you engage Jews in their 20s’; it’s creating our own space and opening it up to people,” she said.
She found four Jewish roommates who share her love for the arts and social justice issues. Together they scouted for a place, and eventually they came upon their dream house in Mar Vista, equipped with a living room, foyer, large kitchen, dining room and backyard. Bedrooms on the second floor offer a private oasis, and events are hosted downstairs.
If a camera were to be installed near every mezuzah, the footage might make up a Jewish version of MTV’s hit reality show, “The Real World,” capturing not only the residents’ interpersonal dramas (a few marriages have come out of Moishe Houses), but also each resident’s unique relationship to Jewish ideals and practice.
Among the first events hosted recently at the L.A. house was a discussion facilitated by Jewish Queer International (JC) on how to create a safe, inclusive space for Jews of all genders and sexual orientations. It’s a topic personally relevant to Guttman, whose Jewishly self-identified girlfriend, Tera Green, 25, also lives at the house, though not as one of the official residents.
“I almost feel like my own reservations and fears are not just about me,” Guttman said. “It’s for me to create a space, and part of that means to be ‘out’ there for other people who can’t.”
Musician and civil rights activist Anthony Rogers-Wright, 33, an African American Jew, is one of the residents. He hails from New York and sees Moishe House as a microcosm of the Jewish world.
“We’re trying to get more of the Jewish values portrayed than you might get portrayed in a typical organization,” he said. Sometimes that means simply figuring out those values.
“It’s hard for me to find a temple I’m comfortable going to,” said Benjie Reynods, 26, a Web designer and U.C. Santa Barbara alum who is one of the L.A. house residents. “This gives me the opportunity to explore different parts of Judaism in a way that’s less organized and more creative.”
Rabbi Scott Perlo of Los Angeles recently came to the organization as the rabbinic adviser for all the Moishe Houses.
“A lot of the residents have dreams they don’t yet know how to fulfill in terms of their own Jewish practice, ideas of study and learning, ideas about joyful community,” he said. “My job is to help them figure out how to do it.”
The various Moishe Houses range from fully observant homes that offer Torah study classes to culturally Jewish ones. Perlo fondly describes the Los Angeles residents as fiery, artistic and socially committed.
“I’m still getting to know them as a house, but they bring to the table this kind of interesting creative flair that I’ve never really seen before.”
Two of the residents bring with them previous Moishe House experiences. Leo Beckerman, 25, who works for a blood bank, started the Moishe House in Washington, D.C.; Elana Rosenbaum, 26, is an MBA student at UCLA and started the house in Buenos Aires.
“It’s a pretty fulfilling and worthwhile experience,” Beckerman said. “It was amazing to see how many people would come through in D.C., and it made me understand there’s really a need for something like this.”
The roommates have not finished furnishing the house, and they’re just getting to know one another’s routines and idiosyncrasies. Wright describes one of their first “dilemmas” as a discussion on what kind of tzedakah-themed event to plan for the High Holy Days. It’s exactly the kind of discussion they’ve come here to have.
“To me it feels like a dream I’ve been talking about has come true and manifested in an even better way than I could have imagined,” Guttman said.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Center Provides Chasidut for All
Jewish Journal; September 2, 2009
Read original here
As the High Holy Days approach, some Jews might dread sitting for hours on end in shul, crowning God as their King while their minds inevitably wander off to their missed calls, their mortgage payment or their next meal. Davening, the Yiddish term for prayer, may feel like a constant battle.
And that’s how it should be, according to Rabbi Reuven Wolf, director of Maayon Yisroel, a Chasidic community center on La Brea Boulevard that he founded one year ago with his longtime student Chaki Abehsera.
At his recent shiur (study) on the weekly Torah portion, Wolf deftly interwove biblical commentary with kabbalistic thought to interpret God’s biblical battle cry to the army of Israel as a reference to prayer — the “bloodiest” battleground between the Jewish neshama (spiritual soul) and the animal soul.
“We shouldn’t get disheartened if, in the middle of davening, we experience distractions and we think of other things,” he told an audience of about 50, the majority of whom were observant women. “It’s a sign of good davening — good davening will be interrupted. Like wrestling, the animal soul is fighting back.”
Reconciling the yearning for divine light and worldly survival is a theme that permeates Wolf’s teachings at Maayon Yisroel. A father of six, Wolf quit his full-time job as a teacher at Toras Emes, the Orthodox day school located a few blocks away, to dedicate his time to infusing L.A. Jewry with spiritual applications of Jewish practice and texts.
“We had a vision: Why can’t we create a place that is a warm, inspiring place where we learn about the more mystical elements of the Torah?” Wolf, 37, said.
But the animal soul doesn’t seek only the material luxuries abound in Los Angeles, he explained. The practice of religion, too, can succumb to the animal soul, which seeks to reduce religious observance to mere outer practices bereft of a deeper, spiritual motivation.
“Not to say that the performance of ritual mitzvot is coming from an animal soul or furthers animal interests — but the animal soul wants to stop with that, doesn’t want to take it further,” Wolf said.
Wolf had hoped to open his center on Pico Boulevard, the Jewish thoroughfare that serves as a local mecca for the young Jewish searcher. Centers for Chasidic and kabbalistic thought — Chabad, Breslev, and, of course, the Kabbalah Centre — have all set up shop near the Pico-Robertson intersection. But when contracts kept falling through to open on Pico, Wolf took it as a sign to open the center in his own neighborhood of Hancock Park, considered the local stronghold of Litvak Jewry.
With its roots in Lithuania, Litvak Judaism is Chasidut’s centuries-old rival, placing talmudic scholarship as the prime gateway to God. The Chasidic teachings of the Baal Shem Tov (aka Reb Yisroel ben Eliezer) in the 18th century — the inspiration for Maayon’s approach — rivaled the Litvak philosophy with its emphasis on prayer, faith, kindness and the mystical dimensions of the Torah.
Wolf leased the former offices of a fashion designer, which sit above the kosher Pizza Mayven, off First Street, to share Chasidic teachings that may be as foreign to a Litvak Jew as an unaffiliated Jew.
“Spirituality always requires a person to get out of his comfort zone,” he said. “At least to break free from where you are.”
Wolf’s lifelong spiritual and intellectual journey make him an ideal candidate to merge the Litvak and Chasidic worlds. He grew up in Borough Park, a Chasidic community he found Chasidic more in body than in soul.
“The same thing that has happened to Judaism as a whole has happened to Chasidic circles. Even Chasidic communities which are supposed to be about light and energy have become mechanical and superficial,” he said.
Later, as a bochur (student) at acclaimed Litvak yeshivas — Slabodka in Bnei Brak and the Mir in Jerusalem — Wolf kept his deep interest in Chasidut undercover. “I’ve come a long way from that world,” he said.
His emphasis on inner spirituality doesn’t translate into compromises of halachah (Jewish law). Take the mechitza (divider) in the main study hall, for example. It’s high enough to completely block the line of sight between the women and men.
Co-founder Abehsera, 34, who works as a graphic designer by day, is the unofficial welcoming committee for newcomers to Maayon. And he doesn’t want the mechitza to serve as a barrier for the non-observant.
“If you’re sitting down in a class and a beautiful woman comes and sits down, who would you look at first, her or God?” Abehsera often explains to the men.
While kiruv (Jewish outreach) is not Maayon’s goal (women are welcome to come wearing pants), they hope the spiritual teachings will naturally draw Jews to spiritually grounded observance.
The challenge for Maayon is to enhance the physical encasement for its spiritual teachings — its animal soul, if you will. The classrooms are designed in modern tones, but few books line the shelves and they have yet to put up a sign outside the building. Maayon collects just enough money through donations and sponsorships to make it through the month. For now, they’re living on a prayer — and faith.
“But we’re here,” Wolf said. “We know it’s going to explode soon.”
For more information about Maayon Yisroel, call (323) 747-5228 or visit www.maayonyisroel.com.
Read original here
As the High Holy Days approach, some Jews might dread sitting for hours on end in shul, crowning God as their King while their minds inevitably wander off to their missed calls, their mortgage payment or their next meal. Davening, the Yiddish term for prayer, may feel like a constant battle.
And that’s how it should be, according to Rabbi Reuven Wolf, director of Maayon Yisroel, a Chasidic community center on La Brea Boulevard that he founded one year ago with his longtime student Chaki Abehsera.
At his recent shiur (study) on the weekly Torah portion, Wolf deftly interwove biblical commentary with kabbalistic thought to interpret God’s biblical battle cry to the army of Israel as a reference to prayer — the “bloodiest” battleground between the Jewish neshama (spiritual soul) and the animal soul.
“We shouldn’t get disheartened if, in the middle of davening, we experience distractions and we think of other things,” he told an audience of about 50, the majority of whom were observant women. “It’s a sign of good davening — good davening will be interrupted. Like wrestling, the animal soul is fighting back.”
Reconciling the yearning for divine light and worldly survival is a theme that permeates Wolf’s teachings at Maayon Yisroel. A father of six, Wolf quit his full-time job as a teacher at Toras Emes, the Orthodox day school located a few blocks away, to dedicate his time to infusing L.A. Jewry with spiritual applications of Jewish practice and texts.
“We had a vision: Why can’t we create a place that is a warm, inspiring place where we learn about the more mystical elements of the Torah?” Wolf, 37, said.
But the animal soul doesn’t seek only the material luxuries abound in Los Angeles, he explained. The practice of religion, too, can succumb to the animal soul, which seeks to reduce religious observance to mere outer practices bereft of a deeper, spiritual motivation.
“Not to say that the performance of ritual mitzvot is coming from an animal soul or furthers animal interests — but the animal soul wants to stop with that, doesn’t want to take it further,” Wolf said.
Wolf had hoped to open his center on Pico Boulevard, the Jewish thoroughfare that serves as a local mecca for the young Jewish searcher. Centers for Chasidic and kabbalistic thought — Chabad, Breslev, and, of course, the Kabbalah Centre — have all set up shop near the Pico-Robertson intersection. But when contracts kept falling through to open on Pico, Wolf took it as a sign to open the center in his own neighborhood of Hancock Park, considered the local stronghold of Litvak Jewry.
With its roots in Lithuania, Litvak Judaism is Chasidut’s centuries-old rival, placing talmudic scholarship as the prime gateway to God. The Chasidic teachings of the Baal Shem Tov (aka Reb Yisroel ben Eliezer) in the 18th century — the inspiration for Maayon’s approach — rivaled the Litvak philosophy with its emphasis on prayer, faith, kindness and the mystical dimensions of the Torah.
Wolf leased the former offices of a fashion designer, which sit above the kosher Pizza Mayven, off First Street, to share Chasidic teachings that may be as foreign to a Litvak Jew as an unaffiliated Jew.
“Spirituality always requires a person to get out of his comfort zone,” he said. “At least to break free from where you are.”
Wolf’s lifelong spiritual and intellectual journey make him an ideal candidate to merge the Litvak and Chasidic worlds. He grew up in Borough Park, a Chasidic community he found Chasidic more in body than in soul.
“The same thing that has happened to Judaism as a whole has happened to Chasidic circles. Even Chasidic communities which are supposed to be about light and energy have become mechanical and superficial,” he said.
Later, as a bochur (student) at acclaimed Litvak yeshivas — Slabodka in Bnei Brak and the Mir in Jerusalem — Wolf kept his deep interest in Chasidut undercover. “I’ve come a long way from that world,” he said.
His emphasis on inner spirituality doesn’t translate into compromises of halachah (Jewish law). Take the mechitza (divider) in the main study hall, for example. It’s high enough to completely block the line of sight between the women and men.
Co-founder Abehsera, 34, who works as a graphic designer by day, is the unofficial welcoming committee for newcomers to Maayon. And he doesn’t want the mechitza to serve as a barrier for the non-observant.
“If you’re sitting down in a class and a beautiful woman comes and sits down, who would you look at first, her or God?” Abehsera often explains to the men.
While kiruv (Jewish outreach) is not Maayon’s goal (women are welcome to come wearing pants), they hope the spiritual teachings will naturally draw Jews to spiritually grounded observance.
The challenge for Maayon is to enhance the physical encasement for its spiritual teachings — its animal soul, if you will. The classrooms are designed in modern tones, but few books line the shelves and they have yet to put up a sign outside the building. Maayon collects just enough money through donations and sponsorships to make it through the month. For now, they’re living on a prayer — and faith.
“But we’re here,” Wolf said. “We know it’s going to explode soon.”
For more information about Maayon Yisroel, call (323) 747-5228 or visit www.maayonyisroel.com.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Tikkun Gives Korean Treatment to Jewish Spa
Jewish Journal; July 8, 2009
Read original here
Tikkun Holistic Spa is probably one of the few Korean spas in the Los Angeles area where the receptionist greets clients without a Korean accent. Founder Niki Schwarz wanted to make sure non-Koreans who walk through the door (after taking an elevator to the basement) encounter no struggle in their quest for the perfect day of rest.
Jews especially. They’ve struggled enough. And sometimes their ritual day of rest, Shabbat, may not suffice to rejuvenate their performance of Judaism’s greatest mitzvah: tikkun olam, repairing the world.
Tikkun, which opened in May on the grounds of a former Burke Williams Spa in Santa Monica, approaches massages, body scrubs and detoxification treatments like they’re sacred commandments. According to Schwarz, a Korean American who converted to Judaism, Jews and non-Jews alike cannot heal the world if they don’t heal themselves.
“It’s about kabbalah,” she said, referring to the name for Jewish mysticism, which means “receiving” in Hebrew. “You’re here to receive and to receive for yourself, so hopefully you can go out and give. And there’s no way you can go out and give if you don’t receive.”
The concept of tikkun olam inspired her when she set out to study Judaism, first at The Kabbalah Centre (before Madonna made it the sanctuary of the trendy) and later at the American Jewish University. Schwarz believes it’s the people charged with tikkun olam who may need spas the most.
“I think the Jewish people — their histories of always being attacked, always having to give, always having to sacrifice — I really believe the Jewish people have a hard time receiving,” Schwarz said.
Born Soonmi Han in Seoul, Korea (Soonmi means “pure beauty” in Korean, and Han signifies yichus, or lineage, from the Chinese Han dynasty), Schwarz immigrated to America with her Christian Korean family at age 5. Although she long felt Jewish in her heart, she formally converted upon meeting her beshert (destined one), and second Jewish husband, Charles Schwarz, who runs Tikkun Holistic Medical Center in Torrance, the umbrella organization that includes the spa.
When they met in 2003, Niki was a real estate agent by profession and a reiki master by hobby. Charles was a nice Jewish doctor (orthopedic surgeon, to be exact) looking to buy a condo. At their first meeting, she touched him — literally — sampling for him reiki, the Japanese practice of healing by transferring “life force energy” through the hands. About two weeks later, they finalized the deal for his condo (where they currently live with their children, ages 2 and 4), a process Charles purposefully delayed so he could continue to see her, and not just for reiki.
“From the day we met we spent so much time together it was unbelievable,” said Charles, the son of Holocaust survivors. “We were talking about spiritual things; not religious, but about how you think about life and what life is about.”
As members of Sinai Temple, both believe it’s their responsibility as “Chosen People” to heal others, and with the signing of their ketubah came not just a second marriage for each but also the marriage of Eastern and Western healing traditions. Together they constructed the Tikkun Holistic Medical Center and Spa, envisioning a one-stop shop for the holistic diagnosis, treatment and prevention of illness using conventional and natural approaches.
“I came to the conclusion over my years of practice that there’s not just one way,” Charles said. “The Western philosophy is kind of very scientific. I don’t go totally away from that because I have that training, but my concern has been to combine the best of all that has been offered.”
The center in Torrance employs a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist and a nutritionist, and refers clients to the spa for massages and beauty treatments — doctor’s orders. As a marathon runner, Charles would get massages on occasion, but Niki introduced him to the wonders of Korean spas by taking him to one on their first date.
She had always dreamed of creating a wellness center, and her personal tikkun olam involved repairing what bothered her about Korean spas in Koreatown.
“Korean spas are my favorite spas in the world, but there are so many things I disliked about Korean spas. Like when you’re getting a massage, the Korean ladies will talk to each other. They give out keys and they call out ‘No. 2, No 2’ and people are trying to rest,” Niki said.
Spas are a Korean pastime, first developed as public bathhouses. The traditional Korean spa is equipped with heated, herb-infused pools; heated rooms coated in mineral stones; saunas and steam rooms; wet massage stations for Korean massages and body scrubs; and a long washing basin where Koreans can bond by exfoliating one another. (For tourists in Korea, Niki recommends ditching a hotel and staying at a spa. She says that some are built as multiplexes, open 24/7.)
More like a boutique Korean spa, Tikkun is distinguished by its American-style customer service (“Hello” and “Have a great day!”); certified therapists handpicked as “healers”; a modern, aesthetic design constructed with input from feng shui masters; the use of organic products; a surround-sound system showering Zen music in every clean corner; and private stations for Korean scrubs provided by bona fide Korean therapists.
A narrow corridor is lined with three mineral rooms (Chinese jade, Korean hwangto [yellow clay] and Himalayan salt) that are heated using advanced far-infrared technology. In lieu of a cold plunge used to cool off between dips, Tikkun has installed an air-conditioned “ice room” — thermostat set at 62 degrees — a tepid alternative.
Unlike its Koreatown counterparts, the heated mineral rooms are coed, for better or worse. Tikkun is ideal for couples. After a massage in the couples’ suite (which is like a spa within a spa), they can turn on the heat by detoxifying together in the dim light, but individuals may prefer a mechitzah (separation) to schvitz (sweat) and meditate in the nude. Niki seems to have preserved modesty with religious intention, having imported from Korea cotton short and top sets that resemble potato sacks.
Tikkun doesn’t offer any particular Jewish treatment — if one even exists — unless the aromatic green tea pool in the women’s locker area counts as a mikveh (ritual bath). The spa operates on a universalistic approach to healing, offering the gamut from Swedish to Chinese jade-stone massages. To add Israel to the mix, Schwarz is looking to import Dead Sea products.
Then there’s Tikkun massage therapist Wesley Sen, a Hawaiian native ordained by Polynesian royalty in the healing art of lomilomi. He begins each ancient Polynesian massage treatment with a prayer in Hawaiian invoking the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — a tradition he traces back to the lost tribes of Israel who are believed to have settled in Polynesia by way of the South Pacific.
“The theme of tikkun olam is so important because without the foundation there is no true healing,” said Sen, a Christian lover of Israel who feels blessed to work in a Jewish-owned spa.
It’s hard not to feel a shift in mood and energy after spending the day at Tikkun, and those who don’t buy into the mystical explanations can turn to Dr. Charles Schwarz for the scientific ones.
“Most massages are good for lymphatic drainage, help with circulation and stimulate chemicals in your body to help you relax,” he said. “All that puts you back in balance.”
Far-infrared heat is a healthier alternative to saunas for inducing sweating, a common form of detoxification, he said. He added that the Himalayan salt room generates the kind of negatively charged atmosphere (i.e., replete with negative ions) found at a natural getaway, like the beach or mountains.
“The contact of the body with the outside world is basically through skin and lungs, so those negative ions will make your skin better, help with your respiratory problems and will also act as an antibiotic and help your lungs stay healthy,” he said.
All it takes to “receive” at Tikkun is anywhere from $65 for a half-hour Swedish massage to $295 for the 2 1/2-hour “Jade Spa Journey,” standard prices for a spa of this caliber. And for anyone who leaves the spa wanting more, the beach down the street is free.
Read original here
Tikkun Holistic Spa is probably one of the few Korean spas in the Los Angeles area where the receptionist greets clients without a Korean accent. Founder Niki Schwarz wanted to make sure non-Koreans who walk through the door (after taking an elevator to the basement) encounter no struggle in their quest for the perfect day of rest.
Jews especially. They’ve struggled enough. And sometimes their ritual day of rest, Shabbat, may not suffice to rejuvenate their performance of Judaism’s greatest mitzvah: tikkun olam, repairing the world.
Tikkun, which opened in May on the grounds of a former Burke Williams Spa in Santa Monica, approaches massages, body scrubs and detoxification treatments like they’re sacred commandments. According to Schwarz, a Korean American who converted to Judaism, Jews and non-Jews alike cannot heal the world if they don’t heal themselves.
“It’s about kabbalah,” she said, referring to the name for Jewish mysticism, which means “receiving” in Hebrew. “You’re here to receive and to receive for yourself, so hopefully you can go out and give. And there’s no way you can go out and give if you don’t receive.”
The concept of tikkun olam inspired her when she set out to study Judaism, first at The Kabbalah Centre (before Madonna made it the sanctuary of the trendy) and later at the American Jewish University. Schwarz believes it’s the people charged with tikkun olam who may need spas the most.
“I think the Jewish people — their histories of always being attacked, always having to give, always having to sacrifice — I really believe the Jewish people have a hard time receiving,” Schwarz said.
Born Soonmi Han in Seoul, Korea (Soonmi means “pure beauty” in Korean, and Han signifies yichus, or lineage, from the Chinese Han dynasty), Schwarz immigrated to America with her Christian Korean family at age 5. Although she long felt Jewish in her heart, she formally converted upon meeting her beshert (destined one), and second Jewish husband, Charles Schwarz, who runs Tikkun Holistic Medical Center in Torrance, the umbrella organization that includes the spa.
When they met in 2003, Niki was a real estate agent by profession and a reiki master by hobby. Charles was a nice Jewish doctor (orthopedic surgeon, to be exact) looking to buy a condo. At their first meeting, she touched him — literally — sampling for him reiki, the Japanese practice of healing by transferring “life force energy” through the hands. About two weeks later, they finalized the deal for his condo (where they currently live with their children, ages 2 and 4), a process Charles purposefully delayed so he could continue to see her, and not just for reiki.
“From the day we met we spent so much time together it was unbelievable,” said Charles, the son of Holocaust survivors. “We were talking about spiritual things; not religious, but about how you think about life and what life is about.”
As members of Sinai Temple, both believe it’s their responsibility as “Chosen People” to heal others, and with the signing of their ketubah came not just a second marriage for each but also the marriage of Eastern and Western healing traditions. Together they constructed the Tikkun Holistic Medical Center and Spa, envisioning a one-stop shop for the holistic diagnosis, treatment and prevention of illness using conventional and natural approaches.
“I came to the conclusion over my years of practice that there’s not just one way,” Charles said. “The Western philosophy is kind of very scientific. I don’t go totally away from that because I have that training, but my concern has been to combine the best of all that has been offered.”
The center in Torrance employs a naturopathic doctor, an acupuncturist and a nutritionist, and refers clients to the spa for massages and beauty treatments — doctor’s orders. As a marathon runner, Charles would get massages on occasion, but Niki introduced him to the wonders of Korean spas by taking him to one on their first date.
She had always dreamed of creating a wellness center, and her personal tikkun olam involved repairing what bothered her about Korean spas in Koreatown.
“Korean spas are my favorite spas in the world, but there are so many things I disliked about Korean spas. Like when you’re getting a massage, the Korean ladies will talk to each other. They give out keys and they call out ‘No. 2, No 2’ and people are trying to rest,” Niki said.
Spas are a Korean pastime, first developed as public bathhouses. The traditional Korean spa is equipped with heated, herb-infused pools; heated rooms coated in mineral stones; saunas and steam rooms; wet massage stations for Korean massages and body scrubs; and a long washing basin where Koreans can bond by exfoliating one another. (For tourists in Korea, Niki recommends ditching a hotel and staying at a spa. She says that some are built as multiplexes, open 24/7.)
More like a boutique Korean spa, Tikkun is distinguished by its American-style customer service (“Hello” and “Have a great day!”); certified therapists handpicked as “healers”; a modern, aesthetic design constructed with input from feng shui masters; the use of organic products; a surround-sound system showering Zen music in every clean corner; and private stations for Korean scrubs provided by bona fide Korean therapists.
A narrow corridor is lined with three mineral rooms (Chinese jade, Korean hwangto [yellow clay] and Himalayan salt) that are heated using advanced far-infrared technology. In lieu of a cold plunge used to cool off between dips, Tikkun has installed an air-conditioned “ice room” — thermostat set at 62 degrees — a tepid alternative.
Unlike its Koreatown counterparts, the heated mineral rooms are coed, for better or worse. Tikkun is ideal for couples. After a massage in the couples’ suite (which is like a spa within a spa), they can turn on the heat by detoxifying together in the dim light, but individuals may prefer a mechitzah (separation) to schvitz (sweat) and meditate in the nude. Niki seems to have preserved modesty with religious intention, having imported from Korea cotton short and top sets that resemble potato sacks.
Tikkun doesn’t offer any particular Jewish treatment — if one even exists — unless the aromatic green tea pool in the women’s locker area counts as a mikveh (ritual bath). The spa operates on a universalistic approach to healing, offering the gamut from Swedish to Chinese jade-stone massages. To add Israel to the mix, Schwarz is looking to import Dead Sea products.
Then there’s Tikkun massage therapist Wesley Sen, a Hawaiian native ordained by Polynesian royalty in the healing art of lomilomi. He begins each ancient Polynesian massage treatment with a prayer in Hawaiian invoking the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — a tradition he traces back to the lost tribes of Israel who are believed to have settled in Polynesia by way of the South Pacific.
“The theme of tikkun olam is so important because without the foundation there is no true healing,” said Sen, a Christian lover of Israel who feels blessed to work in a Jewish-owned spa.
It’s hard not to feel a shift in mood and energy after spending the day at Tikkun, and those who don’t buy into the mystical explanations can turn to Dr. Charles Schwarz for the scientific ones.
“Most massages are good for lymphatic drainage, help with circulation and stimulate chemicals in your body to help you relax,” he said. “All that puts you back in balance.”
Far-infrared heat is a healthier alternative to saunas for inducing sweating, a common form of detoxification, he said. He added that the Himalayan salt room generates the kind of negatively charged atmosphere (i.e., replete with negative ions) found at a natural getaway, like the beach or mountains.
“The contact of the body with the outside world is basically through skin and lungs, so those negative ions will make your skin better, help with your respiratory problems and will also act as an antibiotic and help your lungs stay healthy,” he said.
All it takes to “receive” at Tikkun is anywhere from $65 for a half-hour Swedish massage to $295 for the 2 1/2-hour “Jade Spa Journey,” standard prices for a spa of this caliber. And for anyone who leaves the spa wanting more, the beach down the street is free.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
LA’s Top Chef Wins First Round of Top Chef Masters [VIDEO]
Jewish Journal; June 22, 2009
Read original here
Suzanne Tracht, executive chef and owner of Los Angeles chophouse, Jar, will feed hungry locals (although not necessarily her creations, to their misfortune) after winning both the Quickfire Challenge and elimination challenge of the second episode of “Top Chef Masters,” a new spin-off of Bravo’s popular cooking competition, “Top Chef.” The new show is designed for chefs who have already achieved their fame the old-fashioned way.
Challenged to create a dish inspired by the television show “Lost” using ingredients that could be found on a remote island, Tracht conceived of shrimp and coconut risotto. While surviving a deserted island may not be conducive to kosher eats (her recipe incorporates shrimp, sea urchins, clams, prawns, and oyster), the dish made-up for it by winning $10,000 earmarked for tzedakah.
Tracht will help locals survive the city through her charity of choice, SOVA, a non-sectarian program of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles dedicated to alleviating hunger and poverty in part through its three food pantries, one of which is located a few blocks away from Jar on Beverly Boulevard.
“Sova is part of my community, and with the economy being as it is, there is more of a need to help those less fortunate by providing food,” Tracht told the Journal through e-mail.
A member of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Tracht’s contributions to SOVA, alongside her other charitable endeavors, is her way of giving back to the community. She’s considered one of the leading women chefs in the US; since Jar’s opening in 2001, the restaurant has earned international recognition and been inducted into the Fine Dining Hall of Fame by Nation’s Restaurant News in May 2007. Jar’s sister chophouse, Tracht’s, is located at the Renaissance Long Beach Hotel.
Tracht’s winning recipe earned her a place in the champion round of the competition, where the six winners of previous episodes will cook-off for the grand prize of $100,000 and the title of Top Chef Master.
“Of course I want to win as a chef, but I also want to win for SOVA,” she said.
How does she plan to take the title?
“By doing what I do best: I will cook from my heart.”
Read original here
Suzanne Tracht, executive chef and owner of Los Angeles chophouse, Jar, will feed hungry locals (although not necessarily her creations, to their misfortune) after winning both the Quickfire Challenge and elimination challenge of the second episode of “Top Chef Masters,” a new spin-off of Bravo’s popular cooking competition, “Top Chef.” The new show is designed for chefs who have already achieved their fame the old-fashioned way.
Challenged to create a dish inspired by the television show “Lost” using ingredients that could be found on a remote island, Tracht conceived of shrimp and coconut risotto. While surviving a deserted island may not be conducive to kosher eats (her recipe incorporates shrimp, sea urchins, clams, prawns, and oyster), the dish made-up for it by winning $10,000 earmarked for tzedakah.
Tracht will help locals survive the city through her charity of choice, SOVA, a non-sectarian program of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles dedicated to alleviating hunger and poverty in part through its three food pantries, one of which is located a few blocks away from Jar on Beverly Boulevard.
“Sova is part of my community, and with the economy being as it is, there is more of a need to help those less fortunate by providing food,” Tracht told the Journal through e-mail.
A member of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Tracht’s contributions to SOVA, alongside her other charitable endeavors, is her way of giving back to the community. She’s considered one of the leading women chefs in the US; since Jar’s opening in 2001, the restaurant has earned international recognition and been inducted into the Fine Dining Hall of Fame by Nation’s Restaurant News in May 2007. Jar’s sister chophouse, Tracht’s, is located at the Renaissance Long Beach Hotel.
Tracht’s winning recipe earned her a place in the champion round of the competition, where the six winners of previous episodes will cook-off for the grand prize of $100,000 and the title of Top Chef Master.
“Of course I want to win as a chef, but I also want to win for SOVA,” she said.
How does she plan to take the title?
“By doing what I do best: I will cook from my heart.”
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tying the Knot After 40
Jewish Journal; June 17, 2009
Read original here
To rephrase the opening line of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”: It is a truth universally acknowledged — especially by Jewish mothers — that a Jewish single man in possession of a good fortune and over the age of 35 must be in want of a wife ... who is in her 20s.
Matchmakers can substantiate this apparent truth with their own experience.
“Men explicitly say to me they want significantly younger women, no matter what age they are,” said Judith Gottesman, founder of Berkeley-based Soul Mates Unlimited, a statewide matchmaking service. “For men in their late 30s and up, it’s an issue for them.”
Ilana Gutman, owner of Global Match, an Encino matchmaking service specializing in the Israeli American community, faces the same preference among her male clients. “When a man comes to my office and he’s around 40 years old, the first thing he wants is to have a family, so he doesn’t want to be with someone who has a limit on having kids,” she said.
But a few local wives have proven to Jewish matchmakers and mothers worldwide that a single woman can take pride in being in her 30s and meet an eligible man not prejudiced by her age.
Michelle Kleinert Bader, 43, always dreamed of her wedding day, but by the time she reached 39, she wondered if she would ever tie the knot.
“There were times when I was down and out and didn’t think it would happen, but I remained positive and focused on all the things I was grateful for in my life,” she said.
Pressured by the ticking of her biological clock, societal expectations, her Moroccan mother’s worries and readiness to move on to the next phase of her life, she considered marriage proposals from men she knew weren’t her beshert (fated), but she maintained faith in her path and resolved to enjoy a fulfilled life filled with family, friends and a satisfying career.
At age 42, a few months into her new job as executive director of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment’s philanthropic department, she started dating Jeff, 44 years old at the time and never married. After a year and a half of dating, they signed their ketubbah on Jan. 18, 2009.
“He has everything that I want in a guy and more,” said Kleinert Bader, a former marketing and communications director for The Jewish Journal. “He had qualities I didn’t even know to look for in a partner.”
Elementary school counselor Lisa Diamond, 42, suffered from a fear commonly associated with men: marriage phobia.
“Honestly, I really didn’t want to get married for a long time,” she said. “I think I was really just scared. At some point, I said you better get over the fear or you’re not getting married.”
She met Scott through JDate, a service she had used on and off for years, alongside single events, speed dating and setups — basically, she tried everything. (“It’s not that it works, it’s that you work it,” she said of JDate.) They’re celebrating their first anniversary on June 22.
“When I started dating Scott, each time we went out, it wasn’t scary; he didn’t pressure me,” she said. “I didn’t feel scared with him. It was really easygoing. Each time I said I can do this, and I tried not to jump ahead, and I went with the flow. I think that’s what did it.”
Women in their late 30s or 40s who may feel discouraged about their prospects for marriage can glean tips from Kleinert Bader’s and Diamond’s experiences.
First, women should consider men who are not their long-cherished “type” while not lowering their standards.
Kleinert Bader and her groom-to-be had socialized in the same circles for years, but the timing was never right because “I was too busy liking guys who were wrong for me, but I did learn from all of them, and they prepared me for the right one.”
Likewise, Diamond opened her heart to men she would have normally dismissed in her 30s. “Typically, I think I would kind of brush people off.”
On their first date she didn’t experience instant fireworks with Scott, rather, a spark of love that grew brighter with every date.
“People say you can’t be so picky,” Kleinert Bader said. “I think there are natural courses that change. You can say you’ll marry someone who is divorced or who has kids, but you shouldn’t lower standards to ‘I should go out with just anybody.’ Then you lower your self-esteem.”
Gutman of Global Match offers similar advice to female clients above the age of 35. “You don’t need to compromise on his character ... but you may need to compromise about his age, his economic situation or whether or not he has kids.”
Second, women should enjoy their lives without a mate.
“You know when it happens?” Kleinert Bader said. “It’s true what they say, when you relax and go on with your own life.”
Diamond, too, always maintained an active and busy life. “I really wasn’t that lonely,” she said.
Third, the question of bearing children shouldn’t hinder the natural progress of a relationship.
“I think he was more interested in meeting the right person, believing the kid thing would work itself out somehow,” Diamond said of her husband.
And Kleinert Bader has now shifted her focus from getting married to having children, while seeking to maintain the undemanding attitude that characterized her courtship. “You don’t want to have that biological clock in your relationship,” she said.
As a matchmaker, Gottesman encourages male clients to reconsider their preoccupation with marrying a younger woman, whom they perceive as more fertile, believing that men and women within the same age range are naturally more compatible and more likely to share similar values, goals and lifestyles.
“You shouldn’t be looking at a woman as a baby-maker but as a partner in your life,” she stressed. “If you love each other, you’ll figure out a way to have children.”
Fourth, have faith.
Kleinert Bader held out and got a fairy tale ending with a twist of reality. As an executive at ABC, Jeff surprised her with a marriage proposal staged on the set of her favorite reality television show, “The Bachelor.”
He led her to the rose ceremony room where the show televises the elimination round. “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison presented Jeff with a single rose on a tray, mimicking the scene in which the starring bachelor chooses his desired match: “Jeff, this is the final rose. Whenever you’re ready,” he said to Jeff. The scene was filmed for the couple’s own keepsake.
“So when you hold out and have faith and believe, it can really happen for you,” she said.
It’s advice Gottesman, single at 39, gives both herself and her clients. “The Jewish concept of a soul mate is that God predestined you to be together, so one way or another he will be there,” she said.
Read original here
To rephrase the opening line of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”: It is a truth universally acknowledged — especially by Jewish mothers — that a Jewish single man in possession of a good fortune and over the age of 35 must be in want of a wife ... who is in her 20s.
Matchmakers can substantiate this apparent truth with their own experience.
“Men explicitly say to me they want significantly younger women, no matter what age they are,” said Judith Gottesman, founder of Berkeley-based Soul Mates Unlimited, a statewide matchmaking service. “For men in their late 30s and up, it’s an issue for them.”
Ilana Gutman, owner of Global Match, an Encino matchmaking service specializing in the Israeli American community, faces the same preference among her male clients. “When a man comes to my office and he’s around 40 years old, the first thing he wants is to have a family, so he doesn’t want to be with someone who has a limit on having kids,” she said.
But a few local wives have proven to Jewish matchmakers and mothers worldwide that a single woman can take pride in being in her 30s and meet an eligible man not prejudiced by her age.
Michelle Kleinert Bader, 43, always dreamed of her wedding day, but by the time she reached 39, she wondered if she would ever tie the knot.
“There were times when I was down and out and didn’t think it would happen, but I remained positive and focused on all the things I was grateful for in my life,” she said.
Pressured by the ticking of her biological clock, societal expectations, her Moroccan mother’s worries and readiness to move on to the next phase of her life, she considered marriage proposals from men she knew weren’t her beshert (fated), but she maintained faith in her path and resolved to enjoy a fulfilled life filled with family, friends and a satisfying career.
At age 42, a few months into her new job as executive director of William Morris Endeavor Entertainment’s philanthropic department, she started dating Jeff, 44 years old at the time and never married. After a year and a half of dating, they signed their ketubbah on Jan. 18, 2009.
“He has everything that I want in a guy and more,” said Kleinert Bader, a former marketing and communications director for The Jewish Journal. “He had qualities I didn’t even know to look for in a partner.”
Elementary school counselor Lisa Diamond, 42, suffered from a fear commonly associated with men: marriage phobia.
“Honestly, I really didn’t want to get married for a long time,” she said. “I think I was really just scared. At some point, I said you better get over the fear or you’re not getting married.”
She met Scott through JDate, a service she had used on and off for years, alongside single events, speed dating and setups — basically, she tried everything. (“It’s not that it works, it’s that you work it,” she said of JDate.) They’re celebrating their first anniversary on June 22.
“When I started dating Scott, each time we went out, it wasn’t scary; he didn’t pressure me,” she said. “I didn’t feel scared with him. It was really easygoing. Each time I said I can do this, and I tried not to jump ahead, and I went with the flow. I think that’s what did it.”
Women in their late 30s or 40s who may feel discouraged about their prospects for marriage can glean tips from Kleinert Bader’s and Diamond’s experiences.
First, women should consider men who are not their long-cherished “type” while not lowering their standards.
Kleinert Bader and her groom-to-be had socialized in the same circles for years, but the timing was never right because “I was too busy liking guys who were wrong for me, but I did learn from all of them, and they prepared me for the right one.”
Likewise, Diamond opened her heart to men she would have normally dismissed in her 30s. “Typically, I think I would kind of brush people off.”
On their first date she didn’t experience instant fireworks with Scott, rather, a spark of love that grew brighter with every date.
“People say you can’t be so picky,” Kleinert Bader said. “I think there are natural courses that change. You can say you’ll marry someone who is divorced or who has kids, but you shouldn’t lower standards to ‘I should go out with just anybody.’ Then you lower your self-esteem.”
Gutman of Global Match offers similar advice to female clients above the age of 35. “You don’t need to compromise on his character ... but you may need to compromise about his age, his economic situation or whether or not he has kids.”
Second, women should enjoy their lives without a mate.
“You know when it happens?” Kleinert Bader said. “It’s true what they say, when you relax and go on with your own life.”
Diamond, too, always maintained an active and busy life. “I really wasn’t that lonely,” she said.
Third, the question of bearing children shouldn’t hinder the natural progress of a relationship.
“I think he was more interested in meeting the right person, believing the kid thing would work itself out somehow,” Diamond said of her husband.
And Kleinert Bader has now shifted her focus from getting married to having children, while seeking to maintain the undemanding attitude that characterized her courtship. “You don’t want to have that biological clock in your relationship,” she said.
As a matchmaker, Gottesman encourages male clients to reconsider their preoccupation with marrying a younger woman, whom they perceive as more fertile, believing that men and women within the same age range are naturally more compatible and more likely to share similar values, goals and lifestyles.
“You shouldn’t be looking at a woman as a baby-maker but as a partner in your life,” she stressed. “If you love each other, you’ll figure out a way to have children.”
Fourth, have faith.
Kleinert Bader held out and got a fairy tale ending with a twist of reality. As an executive at ABC, Jeff surprised her with a marriage proposal staged on the set of her favorite reality television show, “The Bachelor.”
He led her to the rose ceremony room where the show televises the elimination round. “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison presented Jeff with a single rose on a tray, mimicking the scene in which the starring bachelor chooses his desired match: “Jeff, this is the final rose. Whenever you’re ready,” he said to Jeff. The scene was filmed for the couple’s own keepsake.
“So when you hold out and have faith and believe, it can really happen for you,” she said.
It’s advice Gottesman, single at 39, gives both herself and her clients. “The Jewish concept of a soul mate is that God predestined you to be together, so one way or another he will be there,” she said.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Documentaries Expose Mysteries of Fate
Jewish Journal; May 27, 2009
Read original here
Two documentaries, two mysteries: the life and death of a family of Holocaust survivors attempting to rebuild their lives in an Israel ravaged by war; the other reveals the life and death of a Greek musician attempting to build his career as a pop star in Israel, seeking normalcy through music. Together, these films showing at the Israel Film Festival highlight starkly contrasting realities in the development of the State of Israel.
“The Green Dumpster Mystery,” which aired last year on Israel’s documentary channel, is a straightforward chronicle of director Tal Yoffe’s quest to figure out the story behind a stack of family portraits mysteriously trashed in a dumpster in south Tel Aviv.
“The Mystery of Aris San,” which aired to high ratings this year on Israel’s major television network, is executed like an episode of VH1’s “Behind the Music,” telling the story of a Greek musician who rose to Israeli stardom.
Whereas “Aris San” takes us to nightclubs, homes of celebrities and through the streets of New York, “Green Dumpster” visits gravesites, homes of Holocaust survivors and the streets of Tel Aviv.
From the first scene, recreating Yoffe’s encounter with the photographs, the tone of “Green Dumpster” is laconic and staid, signaling a tale of a tragedy and loss.
“I immediately went to my house and Googled the information I found,” said Yoffe in a phone interview from his home in Ramat Gan, describing the day that altered his filmmaking career. “Immediately I knew there was a film behind the photographs, because here was a couple, probably Holocaust survivors, whose son was an IDF casualty.”
In frame after frame, Yoffe painstakingly recreates the family tree of the Volkovich family, using Internet searches, interviews and logical deductions. Their story, as told in the film, starts with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, when Yaakov and Pola Volkovich fled their hometown of Lodz for Russia, only to be sent to a Siberian labor camp.
After the war, they had three children who didn’t live to survive them: Sarah, Rivi and Shoa. Shoa, described as a fun-loving young man with many friends, was killed in the Yom Kippur War. Rivi, a beautiful clinical psychologist, died at 42 while giving birth to her second child. Sarah’s death is revealed only toward the end of the film.
“It started as a curiosity, and little by little I got attached to this family, then it almost turned into an obsession,” said Yoffe, who credits his Zionist curiosity to his upbringing at Kibbutz Maoz on the banks of the Jordan River. “At the end, I almost felt like I was a member of the family, and I felt a big responsibility. I thought it was on my shoulders to tell their story.”
By contrast to the tone of “Green Dumpster,” “The Mystery of Aris San” opens with the famed musician sporting his signature wig and wearing an unrelenting smile beneath a Clark Gable mustache, dancing with his guitar against a psychedelic backdrop. His appeal is immediately apparent: Here is a talented guitar virtuoso who left his Greek hometown in 1957 to embrace the culture of the new Jewish country, bringing with him a musical act bursting with joie-de-vivre and romance.
“At the time there weren’t so many people allowing themselves to become a superstar, because Israel was still in its socialist stage, where you’re not really supposed to have an ego,” said Dani Dothan, who co-directed and produced the film with his creative and life partner, Dalia Mevorach. He spoke from their home in Tel Aviv.
San’s success doesn’t last, however. Like an Israeli-Greek Elvis, he goes from pop icon to flabby performer at second-rate venues, to medication junkie, to a dead man some believe is actually still alive.
Even today, many Israelis love Greek music for its hybrid of Eastern and Western sounds. And San, born Aristod Saisanas in 1940, first won Israeli hearts as a teenager performing at a Greek club in Jaffa. He didn’t swing his hips like the American “king,” but he swung his guitar with an ease and joy that spellbound even the Israeli political royalty at the time, including Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, who invited him to perform at the double wedding of his children. The Israeli government even granted him, a non-Jew, Israeli citizenship.
“We knew Aris was a not a Jew, but he was so much an Israeli,” said actress Gila Almagor, one of the Israeli celebrities interviewed in the film.
At 25, San began singing in Hebrew, and a musical collaboration and, at-times, abusive affair with Israeli singer Aliza Azikri (whose revealing interview was fortunately captured prior to her death this year) catapulted him into the Israeli mainstream. San’s hits, “Sigal” and “Boom Pam,” remain among the country’s greatest hits.
But just at the peak of his fame in Israel, he moved to Manhattan to open the hotspot Sirocco, a Greek nightclub frequented by Anthony Quinn, Harry Belafonte, Telly Savalas and the Gallo mafia clan, whose patronage eventually got him sent to prison for two years — an ordeal from which he never fully recovered.
“He was a very strange character in the ’60s in Israel,” said Dothan. “For us, it was like a detective story, trying to solve the riddle of who Aris San was. We didn’t want to find out if he’s dead or alive — we wanted to unravel his mysteries, what made him tick, how he became a great guitarist, why he came to Israel and why he left.”
Yoffe sees the “Green Dumpster” story as characteristic of a particular era: “I think there are thousands of families with not exactly the same story but families with Holocaust survivors as grandparents and great-grandparents, with IDF soldiers who got killed,” Yoffe said. “It’s a typical family, and a tragic family. Everything that could have happened to them, happened to them.”
San’s story is more unique, but it reveals another side of Israeli life, showing how in the midst of the pain of Israeli’s creation, Israelis sought joy and levity through music.
“It’s strange,” Dothan said. “It doesn’t happen a lot. I think his magic was something we were very captivated by.”
Read original here
Two documentaries, two mysteries: the life and death of a family of Holocaust survivors attempting to rebuild their lives in an Israel ravaged by war; the other reveals the life and death of a Greek musician attempting to build his career as a pop star in Israel, seeking normalcy through music. Together, these films showing at the Israel Film Festival highlight starkly contrasting realities in the development of the State of Israel.
“The Green Dumpster Mystery,” which aired last year on Israel’s documentary channel, is a straightforward chronicle of director Tal Yoffe’s quest to figure out the story behind a stack of family portraits mysteriously trashed in a dumpster in south Tel Aviv.
“The Mystery of Aris San,” which aired to high ratings this year on Israel’s major television network, is executed like an episode of VH1’s “Behind the Music,” telling the story of a Greek musician who rose to Israeli stardom.
Whereas “Aris San” takes us to nightclubs, homes of celebrities and through the streets of New York, “Green Dumpster” visits gravesites, homes of Holocaust survivors and the streets of Tel Aviv.
From the first scene, recreating Yoffe’s encounter with the photographs, the tone of “Green Dumpster” is laconic and staid, signaling a tale of a tragedy and loss.
“I immediately went to my house and Googled the information I found,” said Yoffe in a phone interview from his home in Ramat Gan, describing the day that altered his filmmaking career. “Immediately I knew there was a film behind the photographs, because here was a couple, probably Holocaust survivors, whose son was an IDF casualty.”
In frame after frame, Yoffe painstakingly recreates the family tree of the Volkovich family, using Internet searches, interviews and logical deductions. Their story, as told in the film, starts with the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, when Yaakov and Pola Volkovich fled their hometown of Lodz for Russia, only to be sent to a Siberian labor camp.
After the war, they had three children who didn’t live to survive them: Sarah, Rivi and Shoa. Shoa, described as a fun-loving young man with many friends, was killed in the Yom Kippur War. Rivi, a beautiful clinical psychologist, died at 42 while giving birth to her second child. Sarah’s death is revealed only toward the end of the film.
“It started as a curiosity, and little by little I got attached to this family, then it almost turned into an obsession,” said Yoffe, who credits his Zionist curiosity to his upbringing at Kibbutz Maoz on the banks of the Jordan River. “At the end, I almost felt like I was a member of the family, and I felt a big responsibility. I thought it was on my shoulders to tell their story.”
By contrast to the tone of “Green Dumpster,” “The Mystery of Aris San” opens with the famed musician sporting his signature wig and wearing an unrelenting smile beneath a Clark Gable mustache, dancing with his guitar against a psychedelic backdrop. His appeal is immediately apparent: Here is a talented guitar virtuoso who left his Greek hometown in 1957 to embrace the culture of the new Jewish country, bringing with him a musical act bursting with joie-de-vivre and romance.
“At the time there weren’t so many people allowing themselves to become a superstar, because Israel was still in its socialist stage, where you’re not really supposed to have an ego,” said Dani Dothan, who co-directed and produced the film with his creative and life partner, Dalia Mevorach. He spoke from their home in Tel Aviv.
San’s success doesn’t last, however. Like an Israeli-Greek Elvis, he goes from pop icon to flabby performer at second-rate venues, to medication junkie, to a dead man some believe is actually still alive.
Even today, many Israelis love Greek music for its hybrid of Eastern and Western sounds. And San, born Aristod Saisanas in 1940, first won Israeli hearts as a teenager performing at a Greek club in Jaffa. He didn’t swing his hips like the American “king,” but he swung his guitar with an ease and joy that spellbound even the Israeli political royalty at the time, including Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan, who invited him to perform at the double wedding of his children. The Israeli government even granted him, a non-Jew, Israeli citizenship.
“We knew Aris was a not a Jew, but he was so much an Israeli,” said actress Gila Almagor, one of the Israeli celebrities interviewed in the film.
At 25, San began singing in Hebrew, and a musical collaboration and, at-times, abusive affair with Israeli singer Aliza Azikri (whose revealing interview was fortunately captured prior to her death this year) catapulted him into the Israeli mainstream. San’s hits, “Sigal” and “Boom Pam,” remain among the country’s greatest hits.
But just at the peak of his fame in Israel, he moved to Manhattan to open the hotspot Sirocco, a Greek nightclub frequented by Anthony Quinn, Harry Belafonte, Telly Savalas and the Gallo mafia clan, whose patronage eventually got him sent to prison for two years — an ordeal from which he never fully recovered.
“He was a very strange character in the ’60s in Israel,” said Dothan. “For us, it was like a detective story, trying to solve the riddle of who Aris San was. We didn’t want to find out if he’s dead or alive — we wanted to unravel his mysteries, what made him tick, how he became a great guitarist, why he came to Israel and why he left.”
Yoffe sees the “Green Dumpster” story as characteristic of a particular era: “I think there are thousands of families with not exactly the same story but families with Holocaust survivors as grandparents and great-grandparents, with IDF soldiers who got killed,” Yoffe said. “It’s a typical family, and a tragic family. Everything that could have happened to them, happened to them.”
San’s story is more unique, but it reveals another side of Israeli life, showing how in the midst of the pain of Israeli’s creation, Israelis sought joy and levity through music.
“It’s strange,” Dothan said. “It doesn’t happen a lot. I think his magic was something we were very captivated by.”
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Meet Mr. and Mrs. Jdate
Jewish Journal; May 13, 2009
Read original here
According to Jewish tradition, a person who makes three Jewish matches that lead to marriage earns shares in the world to come. If true, Joe Shapira is a big stockholder in heaven.
As the founding partner of JDate in 1997, he’s among the most prolific shadchanim (matchmakers) in Jewish history. No exact statistics are available on the number of marriages arising from the popular Jewish online dating brand, but more than 21,000 JDate couples reported their marriages to their cyber-yenta in 2008 alone. The site spans England, France and Israel, with Russian and Spanish sites in development.
Shapira’s success and personal allegiances become clear from the minute you step into the foyer of his Beverly Hills home, where the flags of America and Israel flank a view of a lush backyard. Born Yoav Shapira in the Tel Aviv suburb of Givatayim, it’s safe to say the immigrant to America of 30 years has realized the American dream.
“When I came to Los Angeles, I worked for the guy who developed this entire community, and I was the person who delivered the house to new buyers. Those houses looked to me like palaces, and I never imagined in my wildest dreams I would own one.”
Busts of George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani adorn the living-room coffee table. On the mantle are pictures of other notable politicians (Democrats included) posing with Shapira and his wife of five years, Nickie, 33, who wasn’t Jewish when they met. Her roots are half-Japanese, one-quarter Chinese, an eighth Korean, and an eighth native Hawaiian.
“She converted and she’s one of the most revered pro-Israel activists in town,” he said. Indeed, the Princeton alumna was recently made president of the World Alliance for Israel Political Action Committee (WAIPAC), a position she juggles with her production company, 8th Wonder Entertainment, specializing in urban entertainment. Shapira credits Nickie with his systematic approach to pro-Israel philanthropy, and the couple will be honored for their contributions on Sunday, May 17, at the Israel Cancer Research Fund gala to be held at the Century Plaza Hyatt Regency.
“Converts are usually more committed to tradition than people who were born Jewish, especially Israelis,” Shapira, 56, said. “We who come from Israel for the most part don’t practice tradition in Israel. I very seldom had a Shabbat dinner before she converted.”
In 2004, Shapira resigned as CEO of Spark Networks, the parent company of JDate, four years after taking the company public, a process that he says took the fun out of sustaining Jewish continuity (“Who wants to live with lawyers and accountants all day?”). He holds shares in Spark for sentimental value and now serves as president of Java Equities, a real estate acquisitions and management conglomerate — a job he describes as “less exciting but stable.”
Shapira founded JDate with partner Alon Carmel a few years after divorcing his first wife, with whom he has three kids, but he never used JDate for himself, mostly, he said, “because I have a very outgoing personality, so I never had a problem starting a conversation with someone I liked. I met women everywhere — traffic lights, the supermarket.”
But without JDate, he probably wouldn’t have met Nickie. She came to his office in search of subjects to interview for a book she was writing at the time, a practical guide for finding and marrying Mr. Right. “I was very attracted to her but I couldn’t hit on her in the office because there were other people there, and I kept a strict code of behavior in the office,” he said.
Nickie had her eye on him from day one, too; she even told her sister after the meeting that she was going to marry him.
She sent him a thank-you e-mail, to which he responded with a tactical P.S.: “Let me know when you get tired of your boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know if she had a boyfriend; I was fishing,” he said. Yet she fed his flirtation by calling again for “business” only to leave her number with his secretary. They went out three nights in a row, and the rest is (non)-JDate history.
Toward the end of the interview, Nickie stepped down the staircase decked out in a black cocktail dress, about to head out to a dinner party with Bill Clinton, but she took a few minutes to tell her version of the love story. “His humor and politics, his stature because he’s a tall guy,” she said were the qualities that immediately attracted her to her future husband.
“I wasn’t so involved in any pro-Israel causes prior to meeting him, but I was always a fan of politics. After Sept. 11, I became a lot more hawkish, so that’s when I started to follow Middle East and Israel issues.” Her love for Israel grew with their travels together; she has since learned Hebrew.
Nickie never published her book. “It would’ve been too revealing. I think I got a little older, and I didn’t want those things out there for everyone to see forever.” Although it seems the principles worked.
“I didn’t want to get married,” Shapira admitted, probably much like many who dabble on JDate. But he’d met his match: “She’s a closer.”
Her secret, according to Shapira: “Become the best thing that ever happened to him.”
And for Shapira? “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, and I knew she wouldn’t stick around. She had an agenda, things she wanted to accomplish — she wouldn’t let me interfere with that agenda.”
Nickie offered some advice for women seeking a mate: “I think a lot of them roll with it without thinking about it in a methodical, organized process.”
Says Shapira, “Our process was very organized.”
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According to Jewish tradition, a person who makes three Jewish matches that lead to marriage earns shares in the world to come. If true, Joe Shapira is a big stockholder in heaven.
As the founding partner of JDate in 1997, he’s among the most prolific shadchanim (matchmakers) in Jewish history. No exact statistics are available on the number of marriages arising from the popular Jewish online dating brand, but more than 21,000 JDate couples reported their marriages to their cyber-yenta in 2008 alone. The site spans England, France and Israel, with Russian and Spanish sites in development.
Shapira’s success and personal allegiances become clear from the minute you step into the foyer of his Beverly Hills home, where the flags of America and Israel flank a view of a lush backyard. Born Yoav Shapira in the Tel Aviv suburb of Givatayim, it’s safe to say the immigrant to America of 30 years has realized the American dream.
“When I came to Los Angeles, I worked for the guy who developed this entire community, and I was the person who delivered the house to new buyers. Those houses looked to me like palaces, and I never imagined in my wildest dreams I would own one.”
Busts of George W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani adorn the living-room coffee table. On the mantle are pictures of other notable politicians (Democrats included) posing with Shapira and his wife of five years, Nickie, 33, who wasn’t Jewish when they met. Her roots are half-Japanese, one-quarter Chinese, an eighth Korean, and an eighth native Hawaiian.
“She converted and she’s one of the most revered pro-Israel activists in town,” he said. Indeed, the Princeton alumna was recently made president of the World Alliance for Israel Political Action Committee (WAIPAC), a position she juggles with her production company, 8th Wonder Entertainment, specializing in urban entertainment. Shapira credits Nickie with his systematic approach to pro-Israel philanthropy, and the couple will be honored for their contributions on Sunday, May 17, at the Israel Cancer Research Fund gala to be held at the Century Plaza Hyatt Regency.
“Converts are usually more committed to tradition than people who were born Jewish, especially Israelis,” Shapira, 56, said. “We who come from Israel for the most part don’t practice tradition in Israel. I very seldom had a Shabbat dinner before she converted.”
In 2004, Shapira resigned as CEO of Spark Networks, the parent company of JDate, four years after taking the company public, a process that he says took the fun out of sustaining Jewish continuity (“Who wants to live with lawyers and accountants all day?”). He holds shares in Spark for sentimental value and now serves as president of Java Equities, a real estate acquisitions and management conglomerate — a job he describes as “less exciting but stable.”
Shapira founded JDate with partner Alon Carmel a few years after divorcing his first wife, with whom he has three kids, but he never used JDate for himself, mostly, he said, “because I have a very outgoing personality, so I never had a problem starting a conversation with someone I liked. I met women everywhere — traffic lights, the supermarket.”
But without JDate, he probably wouldn’t have met Nickie. She came to his office in search of subjects to interview for a book she was writing at the time, a practical guide for finding and marrying Mr. Right. “I was very attracted to her but I couldn’t hit on her in the office because there were other people there, and I kept a strict code of behavior in the office,” he said.
Nickie had her eye on him from day one, too; she even told her sister after the meeting that she was going to marry him.
She sent him a thank-you e-mail, to which he responded with a tactical P.S.: “Let me know when you get tired of your boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know if she had a boyfriend; I was fishing,” he said. Yet she fed his flirtation by calling again for “business” only to leave her number with his secretary. They went out three nights in a row, and the rest is (non)-JDate history.
Toward the end of the interview, Nickie stepped down the staircase decked out in a black cocktail dress, about to head out to a dinner party with Bill Clinton, but she took a few minutes to tell her version of the love story. “His humor and politics, his stature because he’s a tall guy,” she said were the qualities that immediately attracted her to her future husband.
“I wasn’t so involved in any pro-Israel causes prior to meeting him, but I was always a fan of politics. After Sept. 11, I became a lot more hawkish, so that’s when I started to follow Middle East and Israel issues.” Her love for Israel grew with their travels together; she has since learned Hebrew.
Nickie never published her book. “It would’ve been too revealing. I think I got a little older, and I didn’t want those things out there for everyone to see forever.” Although it seems the principles worked.
“I didn’t want to get married,” Shapira admitted, probably much like many who dabble on JDate. But he’d met his match: “She’s a closer.”
Her secret, according to Shapira: “Become the best thing that ever happened to him.”
And for Shapira? “I couldn’t bear the thought of losing her, and I knew she wouldn’t stick around. She had an agenda, things she wanted to accomplish — she wouldn’t let me interfere with that agenda.”
Nickie offered some advice for women seeking a mate: “I think a lot of them roll with it without thinking about it in a methodical, organized process.”
Says Shapira, “Our process was very organized.”
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