Sunday, June 27, 2004
Recruiting Emissaries
Rebbe Luke is recruiting emissaries (shlichim) to go into the secular virtual world and set up Torah centers, spreading my interpretations, and bringing Jews closer to Torah. You may apply now at Lukeford at comcast dot net.
Cast Aside Old Friends?
Amalek writes: A man, a man whom you know who is into all things Asian, has written to me expressing the fear that just as Bob Zimmerman cast aside all his old chums when he became Bob Dylan and suddenly found he could nail hot shiksas, so too will Luke Ford cast aside his old virtual friends in favor of such new ones as Cathy Seipp, with whom he can actually do things like share a meal or go to a party. I tried to console him that you would not do this as your fame and wealth grew, but I'm having second thoughts.
Chaim writes: I remember just how feeble my social pulse was pre-Cathy, and how strong it is today, baruch HaShem. So although I must cast off some of my old life, I do so with pride for what I have worked towards. Those of you who were like the Old Luke, I suggest you follow in my footsteps.
Chaim writes: I remember just how feeble my social pulse was pre-Cathy, and how strong it is today, baruch HaShem. So although I must cast off some of my old life, I do so with pride for what I have worked towards. Those of you who were like the Old Luke, I suggest you follow in my footsteps.
Saturday, June 26, 2004
INXS Seeks New Lead Singer - That Could Be Me
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - What do you get when you combine "American Idol," "Survivor" and "Big Brother?"
Answer: a new series produced by reality TV pioneer Mark Burnett that features musicians vying for the chance to become the next lead singer of Australian rock band INXS, CBS said Thursday.
Answer: a new series produced by reality TV pioneer Mark Burnett that features musicians vying for the chance to become the next lead singer of Australian rock band INXS, CBS said Thursday.
Some drugs can really intensify the davening experience
My girlfriend and I have found that snorting some cocaine and methamphetamine together provides the most intense experience. The meth really lets you get into the holiness of the action, while the coke adds a hedonistic element. I've tried smoking cocaine (crack) but found that it's terrible for davening (as well as for anything else)..the experience isn't heightened all, but rather dulled. And acid was too weird..made everything seem unholy, mechanical, and just plain ridiculous, but maybe I took too much. Anyone else have any favorite drugs for davening, studying Torah? I haven't tried alcohol, heroin, pot, or ecstasy ...what are those like?
before anyone starts moralizing...
RECREATIONAL DRUG USE DISCLAIMER: All drugs, including alcohol, should be used in moderation and infrequently. Only an idiot uses drugs so frequently that he gets hooked. Don't be an idiot. Even a single drug use is followed by an unpleasant withdrawal period. Sit through this period and don't use again until quite a while after your chemistry and state of mind is back to normal. Otherwise, addiction may begin. Recreational drugs, including alcohol, should only be used by those with exceptional self-discipline and a firm grip on reality. Never inject drugs. Do not take stimulants if not in good physical and aerobic condition with a healthy heart. Some drugs, including alcohol,
may cause unnacceptable damage to the body or brain, so research thoroughly first. Don't drive under the influence of drugs. Don't underestimate the danger of alcohol even though it's legal. Resarch drug interactions (including with alcohol) before experimenting with combinations on yourself. Some combinations can be extremely hazardous or fatal. Be aware that potencies may vary considerably due to the unregulated nature of the black market, so exercise caution. Avoid law enforcement officers. Some nations, such as the United States of America, have highly draconian drug laws. If you are arrested by police for purchasing, possessing, or using illegal drugs, it can result in
lengthy jail sentences and property confiscations, thereby resulting in lost wages, mental anguish, and broken families. If you have children or other dependents, consider what would be the effect on them if you became incarcerated for a long period of time. Always consider the risk/reward ratio in all aspects before buying or using drugs. Because drug prohibition by governments enables a black market, be aware that some of the money you use to pay for illegal drugs may ultimately be used to fund violent criminals including terrorists. Never allow children to use drugs. Don't give drugs to someone who you know does not have the intelligence and discipline to understand and follow the above recommendations.
Some rabbis take exception when you show up to their shul stoned out of your mind and start singing and dancing with the rebbetzin.
Amalek writes: Seriously - you have taken your share of (legal) mood-altering drugs in your day. What effect do they have on the religious experience, particularly when davening? Is there some sort of synergistic effect? More fundamentally, have you ever had a religious experience while davening? I know I have not.
Luke says: They make me more calm and enhance my ability to concentrate. I have a religious experience while davening about 10% of the time, and 90% of the time, even though I feel nothing while davening, I walk away feeling better.
before anyone starts moralizing...
RECREATIONAL DRUG USE DISCLAIMER: All drugs, including alcohol, should be used in moderation and infrequently. Only an idiot uses drugs so frequently that he gets hooked. Don't be an idiot. Even a single drug use is followed by an unpleasant withdrawal period. Sit through this period and don't use again until quite a while after your chemistry and state of mind is back to normal. Otherwise, addiction may begin. Recreational drugs, including alcohol, should only be used by those with exceptional self-discipline and a firm grip on reality. Never inject drugs. Do not take stimulants if not in good physical and aerobic condition with a healthy heart. Some drugs, including alcohol,
may cause unnacceptable damage to the body or brain, so research thoroughly first. Don't drive under the influence of drugs. Don't underestimate the danger of alcohol even though it's legal. Resarch drug interactions (including with alcohol) before experimenting with combinations on yourself. Some combinations can be extremely hazardous or fatal. Be aware that potencies may vary considerably due to the unregulated nature of the black market, so exercise caution. Avoid law enforcement officers. Some nations, such as the United States of America, have highly draconian drug laws. If you are arrested by police for purchasing, possessing, or using illegal drugs, it can result in
lengthy jail sentences and property confiscations, thereby resulting in lost wages, mental anguish, and broken families. If you have children or other dependents, consider what would be the effect on them if you became incarcerated for a long period of time. Always consider the risk/reward ratio in all aspects before buying or using drugs. Because drug prohibition by governments enables a black market, be aware that some of the money you use to pay for illegal drugs may ultimately be used to fund violent criminals including terrorists. Never allow children to use drugs. Don't give drugs to someone who you know does not have the intelligence and discipline to understand and follow the above recommendations.
Some rabbis take exception when you show up to their shul stoned out of your mind and start singing and dancing with the rebbetzin.
Amalek writes: Seriously - you have taken your share of (legal) mood-altering drugs in your day. What effect do they have on the religious experience, particularly when davening? Is there some sort of synergistic effect? More fundamentally, have you ever had a religious experience while davening? I know I have not.
Luke says: They make me more calm and enhance my ability to concentrate. I have a religious experience while davening about 10% of the time, and 90% of the time, even though I feel nothing while davening, I walk away feeling better.
Lovely Lisa Lenkiewicz Of The Ledger
I chat by phone Thursday afternoon, June 24, 2004, with Lisa Lenkiewicz, the 47-year old managing editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.
"What are the obstacles to doing good Jewish journalism?"
"You're going to hear this from everybody. It is difficult to be part of the Jewish community yet report on the Jewish community as an independent journalist. There is a concept in Judaism of lashon hara (evil gossip). Many news stories get put through the filter of -- is this good for the Jews? Another newspaper would not even consider that. Are we a Jewish newspaper or are we a newspaper for Jews? What are our boundaries? What will cause harm in the Jewish community? Do we have a responsibility not to cause harm in the Jewish community? Are Jewish newspapers communal institutions? Or are you independent?"
"What do you think is the best Jewish newspaper?"
"The Jewish Week (New York). I think the writing is of a high quality. It is on the cutting edge of trends. It does a good job of covering New York, almost an impossible task because New York is so huge. Under the steady hand of Gary Rosenblatt, it is a serious good newspaper."
"I don't think I ever recall a negative book review in The Jewish Week."
Lisa laughs. "I don't either. The Forward is very intellectual and has a whole literary section. The Jewish Week can't do that but at least they inform people about the hot Jewish books out there and interview authors."
"Would you call it a compelling read?"
"I think Jonathan Mark is a wonderful writer. I think it is a must read if you are interested in Jewish journalism."
"Would you call it a Federation paper?"
"Yes. You don't like The Jewish Week?" asks Lisa.
"I think it's dull."
"One of the criticisms you hear about Jewish newspapers in general is that they are dull. They are not exciting reads."
"Yeah," I say in my best duh tone.
"That is a challenge to all of us editors.
"What are you looking for? What are you going to find that is not there?
"We're not all hip young magazines. We're Jewish newspapers. What do you think is missing?"
"It is so sanitized. I know Jewish life. I know about the egos and peacocking and scamming and posturing that go on but I don't read about them in my Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Journal."
"But is that news? That there's backstabbing and infighting?"
"I don't recognize the Jewish life that I participate in when I read the Jewish Journal or any other Jewish paper, but I do recognize it when I read Postville and The New Rabbi."
"I found The New Rabbi a good read. A number of people were furious with him. But it was juicy gossip."
"It was delicious."
"It was complete and total gossip in that book but it totally shed a light on the whole rabbinic search process. It was wonderful."
"That book got me excited. I realized that Jewish journalism can be exciting."
"You are right. The feedback I got was that it was pure gossip. I know rabbis who know rabbis and those people are greatly hurt by what was written about them."
"Oh, poor tender sensitive babies," I sneer to myself.
"Well, tough," I say.
"A tremendous amount of damage."
"That's what Gary said."
"That's what you hear from everyone."
"They didn't get to set their own image this time and it was shocking for them."
"No question."
"They're control freaks."
"You take a rabbi, a nice guy like Perry Rank, and your heart goes out to him. That these people said X, Y, and Z about him. I think it made them look bad."
"Yeah, I think it made them look bad."
"Yeah, but his [relative] who lives here, they were just mortified to see their private life exposed like that. I kept saying, it makes everyone else look bad. Not Perry. It still didn't matter. It was very very hurtful."
"I find it amusing that these rabbis who are such enormous consumers of journalism, guys who read The New York Times every day, but as soon as soon as some regular journalistic techniques are applied on them and their friends, they go ballistic."
"Yep. Except, when it happens to you, you don't want to see your life dragged out in front of everybody.
"I can't disagree in many instances with your assessment that Jewish newspapers are too dull. We work hard here to get away from the 'Who poured the punch at the Oneg pictures.' We've gotten away from being a shul bulletin. We're doing nice features. We write about wonderful people doing wonderful things. There is that pressure to write about the Federation annual meeting. Because of the ebb and flow of the Jewish news cycle, it's the same Rosh Hashanah and Passover stories. I like to think we are always looking for fresh angles on things. Where Jewish newspapers fall down is that we don't have the resources to do a good job in investigative journalism. That's why I was impressed with what Gary [Rosenblatt] did with the Baruch Lanner [molestation] stories. There's not enough of that."
"Do you think there's a generation gap?"
"There is. Our readers are 60 and above who don't want to see anything bad about the Jewish community. All of us have recognized that if we don't start reaching out to a different generation, there won't be a Jewish newspaper to wrap their fish in. I'm relatively young in the Jewish newspaper world. At the Jewish Ledger, we run events for singles. We have dances, lectures, speed dating, a night out at the ball park. We've had over a dozen marriages."
"When did you begin in Jewish journalism?"
"I went to the Washington Jewish Week in 1982. I moved to the Ledger in 1992."
"Did you see big stories you couldn't get into the paper?"
"Oh, sure. An executive director for 40 years here is dismissed from a synagogue. He comes to us and says he was dismissed for age discrimination. He's going to file a lawsuit. Then the rabbi calls you up and says, we would greatly appreciate it if you would not run that story. And the publisher says ok. Or a rabbi is dismissed from the synagogue for abusing the discretionary fund account. I call the rabbi. He says, I won't speak to you. This is a legal matter. You are not to print it. You are not able to get anything on the record. No cooperation from anyone in the synagogue or the community and you're not able to run the story. Or, the Jewish Federation executive director settles with the Federation. People come forward and say he's verbally abusing women. The board decides to pay him off and ship him out. And you can't get the story."
"According to the Awareness Center, there are a lot more abusive rabbis than just Lanner."
"I called the women who had run-ins with [the executive director]. They hung up the phone on me. Or said they were scared and wouldn't talk to me. The Federation officials wouldn't talk to us. There were several stories that were vital to do and I am disappointed that we didn't do them. A funeral home gets a fine from the state for malpractice and bilking people and we get beat by the Hartford Courant. They got the information first. Eventually we got to run the story, but some major advertisers came in here and said they would pull their advertising. We sat down with them. We heard their side. We eventually got to do their side but we were completely beat by the secular press on this. What is it about Jewish newspapers that they don't have the staff, the resources, the money, and the ability to be ahead of these stories?"
"What about the status? I've had journalists complain to me that journalists for Jewish papers get treated like teachers in the community. Nebuch."
"The salaries... As managing editor, I get treated nicely by the people in Connecticut. I always feel that people want me to speak and want to be in the paper. I just got an honor from some kashrut commission for my community service of twelve years. True, they were trying to fill their brunch. I don't always feel like a second-class citizen to the people we cover. Yet the first inclination is to say, I'm not talking to you. And pressure is put on you to not write stories that could harm the Jewish community."
"Do you really think the Jewish community would be harmed if these stories ran?"
"Not me. I wouldn't be in this business if I thought that. I keep trying to make the point that the Jewish community can only be strengthened if we are accurate reporters of what is occurring. Not just on what our Jewish institutions are doing but on what's doing at our Jewish institutions.
"People want to open up a Jewish newspaper and feel good. They want to see all the good works that they are doing. They want to hear about their neighbor. They want to see the awards. When I go out speaking, I find that the most popular part of the paper is the obituary page. Then they want to see the engagements, the weddings and the life cycle events. It's that insular feeling of community that they are interested in. If they want to read investigative journalism, they'll go to The New York Times.
"I keep saying that Jewish newspapers should start a gossip column. That would really sell newspapers."
"Call it Lashon Hara corner."
"So-and-so sold their house for this much and they're moving to Florida. This is what people are talking about.
"Most Jewish journalists don't want to go to The New York Times. They like their hometown paper. They feel like they are making a difference.
"Larry [Cohler-Esses] tried for so long to break into non-Jewish journalism. I remember when Larry got an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. Mike told him that he was the best Jewish journalist in the country but you've got to get out of Jewish journalism and get some daily experience. And it was years before Larry was able to get out of Jewish journalism.
"Charles Fenyvesi was at the Washington Post, then Bnai Brith magazine, then Washington Jewish Week, then he got a job at US News & World Report. That was our big excitement. One of ours made it into an important magazine. It doesn't happen that often.
"You need a section in your book on Jewish editors who've been on the job a long time. Robert Cohen, 36 years in St Louis. Marc Klein, a number of years in San Francisco. This is more than a job for them. You may sat it's boring but they really believe in what they're doing. I would say that most of my peers are happy with their job. We wish the salaries were higher. For full-time reporters at our paper, the salary range is between $20-30,000. The pay scale is pretty similar in the secular world. But how do you entice someone coming up in the world of journalism to choose this path? Gary has worked hard to attract young Jewish journalists with seminars and internships."
"What are the obstacles to doing good Jewish journalism?"
"You're going to hear this from everybody. It is difficult to be part of the Jewish community yet report on the Jewish community as an independent journalist. There is a concept in Judaism of lashon hara (evil gossip). Many news stories get put through the filter of -- is this good for the Jews? Another newspaper would not even consider that. Are we a Jewish newspaper or are we a newspaper for Jews? What are our boundaries? What will cause harm in the Jewish community? Do we have a responsibility not to cause harm in the Jewish community? Are Jewish newspapers communal institutions? Or are you independent?"
"What do you think is the best Jewish newspaper?"
"The Jewish Week (New York). I think the writing is of a high quality. It is on the cutting edge of trends. It does a good job of covering New York, almost an impossible task because New York is so huge. Under the steady hand of Gary Rosenblatt, it is a serious good newspaper."
"I don't think I ever recall a negative book review in The Jewish Week."
Lisa laughs. "I don't either. The Forward is very intellectual and has a whole literary section. The Jewish Week can't do that but at least they inform people about the hot Jewish books out there and interview authors."
"Would you call it a compelling read?"
"I think Jonathan Mark is a wonderful writer. I think it is a must read if you are interested in Jewish journalism."
"Would you call it a Federation paper?"
"Yes. You don't like The Jewish Week?" asks Lisa.
"I think it's dull."
"One of the criticisms you hear about Jewish newspapers in general is that they are dull. They are not exciting reads."
"Yeah," I say in my best duh tone.
"That is a challenge to all of us editors.
"What are you looking for? What are you going to find that is not there?
"We're not all hip young magazines. We're Jewish newspapers. What do you think is missing?"
"It is so sanitized. I know Jewish life. I know about the egos and peacocking and scamming and posturing that go on but I don't read about them in my Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Journal."
"But is that news? That there's backstabbing and infighting?"
"I don't recognize the Jewish life that I participate in when I read the Jewish Journal or any other Jewish paper, but I do recognize it when I read Postville and The New Rabbi."
"I found The New Rabbi a good read. A number of people were furious with him. But it was juicy gossip."
"It was delicious."
"It was complete and total gossip in that book but it totally shed a light on the whole rabbinic search process. It was wonderful."
"That book got me excited. I realized that Jewish journalism can be exciting."
"You are right. The feedback I got was that it was pure gossip. I know rabbis who know rabbis and those people are greatly hurt by what was written about them."
"Oh, poor tender sensitive babies," I sneer to myself.
"Well, tough," I say.
"A tremendous amount of damage."
"That's what Gary said."
"That's what you hear from everyone."
"They didn't get to set their own image this time and it was shocking for them."
"No question."
"They're control freaks."
"You take a rabbi, a nice guy like Perry Rank, and your heart goes out to him. That these people said X, Y, and Z about him. I think it made them look bad."
"Yeah, I think it made them look bad."
"Yeah, but his [relative] who lives here, they were just mortified to see their private life exposed like that. I kept saying, it makes everyone else look bad. Not Perry. It still didn't matter. It was very very hurtful."
"I find it amusing that these rabbis who are such enormous consumers of journalism, guys who read The New York Times every day, but as soon as soon as some regular journalistic techniques are applied on them and their friends, they go ballistic."
"Yep. Except, when it happens to you, you don't want to see your life dragged out in front of everybody.
"I can't disagree in many instances with your assessment that Jewish newspapers are too dull. We work hard here to get away from the 'Who poured the punch at the Oneg pictures.' We've gotten away from being a shul bulletin. We're doing nice features. We write about wonderful people doing wonderful things. There is that pressure to write about the Federation annual meeting. Because of the ebb and flow of the Jewish news cycle, it's the same Rosh Hashanah and Passover stories. I like to think we are always looking for fresh angles on things. Where Jewish newspapers fall down is that we don't have the resources to do a good job in investigative journalism. That's why I was impressed with what Gary [Rosenblatt] did with the Baruch Lanner [molestation] stories. There's not enough of that."
"Do you think there's a generation gap?"
"There is. Our readers are 60 and above who don't want to see anything bad about the Jewish community. All of us have recognized that if we don't start reaching out to a different generation, there won't be a Jewish newspaper to wrap their fish in. I'm relatively young in the Jewish newspaper world. At the Jewish Ledger, we run events for singles. We have dances, lectures, speed dating, a night out at the ball park. We've had over a dozen marriages."
"When did you begin in Jewish journalism?"
"I went to the Washington Jewish Week in 1982. I moved to the Ledger in 1992."
"Did you see big stories you couldn't get into the paper?"
"Oh, sure. An executive director for 40 years here is dismissed from a synagogue. He comes to us and says he was dismissed for age discrimination. He's going to file a lawsuit. Then the rabbi calls you up and says, we would greatly appreciate it if you would not run that story. And the publisher says ok. Or a rabbi is dismissed from the synagogue for abusing the discretionary fund account. I call the rabbi. He says, I won't speak to you. This is a legal matter. You are not to print it. You are not able to get anything on the record. No cooperation from anyone in the synagogue or the community and you're not able to run the story. Or, the Jewish Federation executive director settles with the Federation. People come forward and say he's verbally abusing women. The board decides to pay him off and ship him out. And you can't get the story."
"According to the Awareness Center, there are a lot more abusive rabbis than just Lanner."
"I called the women who had run-ins with [the executive director]. They hung up the phone on me. Or said they were scared and wouldn't talk to me. The Federation officials wouldn't talk to us. There were several stories that were vital to do and I am disappointed that we didn't do them. A funeral home gets a fine from the state for malpractice and bilking people and we get beat by the Hartford Courant. They got the information first. Eventually we got to run the story, but some major advertisers came in here and said they would pull their advertising. We sat down with them. We heard their side. We eventually got to do their side but we were completely beat by the secular press on this. What is it about Jewish newspapers that they don't have the staff, the resources, the money, and the ability to be ahead of these stories?"
"What about the status? I've had journalists complain to me that journalists for Jewish papers get treated like teachers in the community. Nebuch."
"The salaries... As managing editor, I get treated nicely by the people in Connecticut. I always feel that people want me to speak and want to be in the paper. I just got an honor from some kashrut commission for my community service of twelve years. True, they were trying to fill their brunch. I don't always feel like a second-class citizen to the people we cover. Yet the first inclination is to say, I'm not talking to you. And pressure is put on you to not write stories that could harm the Jewish community."
"Do you really think the Jewish community would be harmed if these stories ran?"
"Not me. I wouldn't be in this business if I thought that. I keep trying to make the point that the Jewish community can only be strengthened if we are accurate reporters of what is occurring. Not just on what our Jewish institutions are doing but on what's doing at our Jewish institutions.
"People want to open up a Jewish newspaper and feel good. They want to see all the good works that they are doing. They want to hear about their neighbor. They want to see the awards. When I go out speaking, I find that the most popular part of the paper is the obituary page. Then they want to see the engagements, the weddings and the life cycle events. It's that insular feeling of community that they are interested in. If they want to read investigative journalism, they'll go to The New York Times.
"I keep saying that Jewish newspapers should start a gossip column. That would really sell newspapers."
"Call it Lashon Hara corner."
"So-and-so sold their house for this much and they're moving to Florida. This is what people are talking about.
"Most Jewish journalists don't want to go to The New York Times. They like their hometown paper. They feel like they are making a difference.
"Larry [Cohler-Esses] tried for so long to break into non-Jewish journalism. I remember when Larry got an interview with Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. Mike told him that he was the best Jewish journalist in the country but you've got to get out of Jewish journalism and get some daily experience. And it was years before Larry was able to get out of Jewish journalism.
"Charles Fenyvesi was at the Washington Post, then Bnai Brith magazine, then Washington Jewish Week, then he got a job at US News & World Report. That was our big excitement. One of ours made it into an important magazine. It doesn't happen that often.
"You need a section in your book on Jewish editors who've been on the job a long time. Robert Cohen, 36 years in St Louis. Marc Klein, a number of years in San Francisco. This is more than a job for them. You may sat it's boring but they really believe in what they're doing. I would say that most of my peers are happy with their job. We wish the salaries were higher. For full-time reporters at our paper, the salary range is between $20-30,000. The pay scale is pretty similar in the secular world. But how do you entice someone coming up in the world of journalism to choose this path? Gary has worked hard to attract young Jewish journalists with seminars and internships."
If Only I Could Tell...
If only I could tell you about the two total hotties at my friend's Shabbos table Friday night celebrating the publication of my two holy seferim. Baruch HaShem! I walked one home. She's Aish Ha Torah baal teshuvah and an actress in Hollywood. Shomer negiyah like me. God is good.
Tell me, is there anyone you would rather walk home the innocent daughter of Israel through the darkened streets of Pico-Robertson than Your Moral Leader? I didn't think so.
Tell me, is there anyone you would rather walk home the innocent daughter of Israel through the darkened streets of Pico-Robertson than Your Moral Leader? I didn't think so.
Friday, June 25, 2004
Taking care of the Homeless
Cathy Seipp writes: Cecile is helping the cat get settled at Paradise Ranch, the cagefree dog (and a few cats) resort hotel that's the only place I don't feel terrible about leaving the animals when we're gone. The cat gets this entire actual bedroom all to herself. She can sleep on the bed, or under it; whatever she wants. And when things are quiet in the office (adjacent to the cat bedroom) she can come out and sit on people's laps. She's 17, OK? She deserves it. The picture doesn't show the dresser, decorated with ceramic dogs, which I think looked charming but suspect is lost on the cat.
Other bedrooms are filled with dogs (the main clientele), carefully selected from the outdoor play area to see who gets along best and should bunk together inside.
Elisabeth Irwin writes: I applaud the availability of such housing for the animal companions of the well-to-do while they vacation. Still, what does it say about our society that dogs and cats are better housed than the tens of millions of homeless people regularly sent out onto the streets by a heartless national policy that would rather tax Americans to kill Arabs than spend money to house Americans?
A Fly on the Wall writes: Cathy has a very generous and loving attitude toward the homeless. She has even adopted her own derelict that she feeds, cares for, and tends in a generous and selfless spirit, notwithstanding his antisocial and borderline delusional ravings. His name is Luke Ford.
Other bedrooms are filled with dogs (the main clientele), carefully selected from the outdoor play area to see who gets along best and should bunk together inside.
Elisabeth Irwin writes: I applaud the availability of such housing for the animal companions of the well-to-do while they vacation. Still, what does it say about our society that dogs and cats are better housed than the tens of millions of homeless people regularly sent out onto the streets by a heartless national policy that would rather tax Americans to kill Arabs than spend money to house Americans?
A Fly on the Wall writes: Cathy has a very generous and loving attitude toward the homeless. She has even adopted her own derelict that she feeds, cares for, and tends in a generous and selfless spirit, notwithstanding his antisocial and borderline delusional ravings. His name is Luke Ford.
"Are you going to be on television?"
I interviewed Orthodox Rabbi Michael Berenbaum (born 1945) Friday afternoon, June 25. The content designer for the now famous Washington Holocaust Museum, and director of the Shoah Oral History project established by Stephen Spielberg, he is widely known today as a Holocaust scholar (part-time at University of Judaism).
He has four kids, aged 31, 26, 5, 4.
As I sit on the couch after walking in his home, his four year old boy asks, "Who's that man?"
R. "He wants to interview me."
"Are you going to be on television?"
"I don't know."
Two minutes later, the boy asks again, "Are you going to be on television?"
Near the end of the interview, he comes in and plays with my digital tape recorder.
I did not have the moxie to ask the question I wanted to pose: Which is the best Holocaust museum to take a first date?
He has four kids, aged 31, 26, 5, 4.
As I sit on the couch after walking in his home, his four year old boy asks, "Who's that man?"
R. "He wants to interview me."
"Are you going to be on television?"
"I don't know."
Two minutes later, the boy asks again, "Are you going to be on television?"
Near the end of the interview, he comes in and plays with my digital tape recorder.
I did not have the moxie to ask the question I wanted to pose: Which is the best Holocaust museum to take a first date?
Entirely Thanks To Cathy
Cathy Seipp will tell you that my newfound respectability is entirely thanks to her.
When people say that we have helped each so much over the past 18 months, Cathy will say, well, I see where I've helped him...
Another friend observes: "Your new life is entirely due to Cathy. You know it and so does Cathy. She has given your the gift of respectability."
I think this observation is cruel and insulting. You should never ever tell anyone that something they have worked hard towards for years is entirely due to the merit of a third party (unless you want to insult the person). You are telling that person that they deserve no merit for their own years of hard work in an area.
Imagine telling a former alcoholic, "Your sobriety is entirely due to your friend Jack."
Imagine telling a former womanizer, "Your newfound respectability is entirely due to your wife."
OK, I can see that.
I guess I have heard all my life that I am nothing unless I am right with God. Or from frum people that I am nothing unless I am shomer mitzvot. I react viscerally to that type of thinking, when directed against me or others.
Did you ever read Man's Search for Meaning? That book is written against that type of thinking.
Anyway, I think Cathy and Cecile are terrific additions to my life but I believe that I deserve most of the credit and blame for where my life is today and I don't like it when people want to give that credit/demerit to others.
I'm also not ashamed of who I was in 2001, before I became a friend of Cathy.
I have the friends I deserve. They are not mine because of charity.
Cathy Seipp writes: "Oh, so that's what brought your little blog foot-stamping "I don't need her dammit I'm just FINE" on..."
When people say that we have helped each so much over the past 18 months, Cathy will say, well, I see where I've helped him...
Another friend observes: "Your new life is entirely due to Cathy. You know it and so does Cathy. She has given your the gift of respectability."
I think this observation is cruel and insulting. You should never ever tell anyone that something they have worked hard towards for years is entirely due to the merit of a third party (unless you want to insult the person). You are telling that person that they deserve no merit for their own years of hard work in an area.
Imagine telling a former alcoholic, "Your sobriety is entirely due to your friend Jack."
Imagine telling a former womanizer, "Your newfound respectability is entirely due to your wife."
OK, I can see that.
I guess I have heard all my life that I am nothing unless I am right with God. Or from frum people that I am nothing unless I am shomer mitzvot. I react viscerally to that type of thinking, when directed against me or others.
Did you ever read Man's Search for Meaning? That book is written against that type of thinking.
Anyway, I think Cathy and Cecile are terrific additions to my life but I believe that I deserve most of the credit and blame for where my life is today and I don't like it when people want to give that credit/demerit to others.
I'm also not ashamed of who I was in 2001, before I became a friend of Cathy.
I have the friends I deserve. They are not mine because of charity.
Cathy Seipp writes: "Oh, so that's what brought your little blog foot-stamping "I don't need her dammit I'm just FINE" on..."
The Artful Dodger
Jerusalem Report, 12/20/90:
Editors should think twice before they cross their reporters. A case in point: Martin Pomerance, editor of the Washington Jewish Week, who was forced to resign recently, after only 16 months on the job.
Staff reporters, alienated by Pomerance's unpredictable and erratic style, did some extracurricular investigative reporting based on rumors about his past. One discovery: Pomerance was apparently involved in a number of art swindles in Israel eight years ago.
A lawyer by profession, Pomerance came to in Israel from the United States in 1978 and opened the "Hillel" art gallery in Jerusalem. "When he arrived in Israel," says an art collector who had dealings with Pomerance, "he presented himself as a millionaire. He was charming, articulate, and had an extravagant lifestyle."
In 1982, Pomerance allegedly was involved in the sale of works from a number of Israeli artists, at prices well below their true value. Facing a police investigation and two court orders prohibiting him from leaving the country, Pomerance boarded a tourist boat in Eilat, dove into the water and swam to Egypt, according to newspaper accounts. Israeli sources assume he used false papers to enter Egypt, from where he returned to the United States.
"Pomerance was not a professional journalist, but was masquerading as one," says former Washington Jewish Week employee Jon Greene, laid off by Pomerance in September for "budgetary reasons."
What most upset reporters was Pomerance's habit of firing people without warning. According to Greene: "People were producing, yet they would be fired. This left us with the feeling that we had no security."
At last report, Pomerance was hunkering down "someplace in Washington," presumably searching for some security of his own.
Peter Hirschberg
Editors should think twice before they cross their reporters. A case in point: Martin Pomerance, editor of the Washington Jewish Week, who was forced to resign recently, after only 16 months on the job.
Staff reporters, alienated by Pomerance's unpredictable and erratic style, did some extracurricular investigative reporting based on rumors about his past. One discovery: Pomerance was apparently involved in a number of art swindles in Israel eight years ago.
A lawyer by profession, Pomerance came to in Israel from the United States in 1978 and opened the "Hillel" art gallery in Jerusalem. "When he arrived in Israel," says an art collector who had dealings with Pomerance, "he presented himself as a millionaire. He was charming, articulate, and had an extravagant lifestyle."
In 1982, Pomerance allegedly was involved in the sale of works from a number of Israeli artists, at prices well below their true value. Facing a police investigation and two court orders prohibiting him from leaving the country, Pomerance boarded a tourist boat in Eilat, dove into the water and swam to Egypt, according to newspaper accounts. Israeli sources assume he used false papers to enter Egypt, from where he returned to the United States.
"Pomerance was not a professional journalist, but was masquerading as one," says former Washington Jewish Week employee Jon Greene, laid off by Pomerance in September for "budgetary reasons."
What most upset reporters was Pomerance's habit of firing people without warning. According to Greene: "People were producing, yet they would be fired. This left us with the feeling that we had no security."
At last report, Pomerance was hunkering down "someplace in Washington," presumably searching for some security of his own.
Peter Hirschberg
The Lobbyists From AIPAC, Girding for Battle in the New World Order
Copyright 1991 The Washington Post
June 13, 1991, Thursday, Final Edition
BYLINE: Lloyd Grove, Washington Post Staff Writer
Subject: Israel.
Target: Nancy Kassebaum.
Methods: Sweet reason, shock therapy.
A dozen pro-Israel activists filed into Kassebaum's Senate office. Two staffers carried in extra chairs, and the Kansas Republican helped set them up.
"The question," Shaol Pozez told Kassebaum, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "is how do we go about getting this peace process going?" A retired discount shoe store tycoon, sporting athletic footwear this morning, Pozez used to share a back-yard fence with her father, Alf Landon -- which is why he was there. She nodded, politely. The pleasantries were over.
"Israel," Pozez told her, "will do everything short of national suicide to make peace."
"Isn't the PLO going to have to be there at some point, Shaol?" she demanded of Pozez, a frequent political contributor -- though not, in recent years, to Kassebaum. The room fell deathly still at the mention of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as though someone had just suggested ... national suicide. "It seems to me that this is an opportunity," Kassebaum went on, her jaw set, "and everybody's got to be willing to give."
Frowns spread around the room.
So much for sweet reason.
Kassebaum's visitors that morning, most of them with Kansas connections, were from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- AIPAC, for short -- the foreign policy equivalent of the National Rifle Association. Their mission, a life-defining one, is "strengthening the American-Israel relationship," mainly by securing American aid for the Jewish state and blocking U.S. weapons sales to hostile Arabs.
AIPAC is one of the most resented and respected, admired and feared, lobbying organizations in the United States. Kassebaum is one of very few in Congress who will speak bluntly about the group on the record.
"Sometimes," she said, "they're just absolutely, totally inflexible."
If so, perhaps it's because so many Jews, no matter how comfortable in American society, feel themselves linked to a long history of worldwide persecution, culminating in the Holocaust in which 6 million perished. Israel, in the minds of some, may be the only safe haven -- and thus deserves special treatment.
Those in Congress and elsewhere who disagree, or complain about AIPAC's heavy-handedness, tend to do so sotto voce -- terrified of being branded with the epithet "antisemite" or, even worse, "self-hating Jew." In March, half the Senate and a third of the House accepted invitations to schmooze with 2,100 true believers at AIPAC's 32nd annual policy conference, an impressive show of pro-Israel power. In the oft-repeated catch-phrase of AIPAC's detractors, the lobby has made Israel "America's 51st state."
As the pro-Israel lobby anointed to speak for the major U.S. Jewish organizations -- not, as some persist in believing, Israel's registered agent -- AIPAC has prospered mightily since its birth 37 years ago. In the past decade, the lobby has quadrupled its staff to more than 100 and quintupled its membership to 55,000 households -- attracting a new breed of non-Jewish activists like Allen Mothersill -- while its member-financed budget has grown even more, from $ 1.4 million in 1980 to $ 12 million in 1991.
It owes much of its growth to Tom Dine, the lobby's executive director for the past decade, a charismatic proponent of pressure-group politics.
Yet AIPAC's rapid expansion has forced it to cope with a host of competing constituencies -- from liberal Democratic Jews to conservative Republican members of Congress, from American doves to Israeli hard-liners. The lobby also faces mounting and contradictory criticism, from a wide array of political activists both here and in Israel. It is accused, alternately, of climbing into bed with the executive branch at the expense of its friends in Congress; allying itself with the Republican Party at the expense of its ties to the Democrats; and becoming a creature of the Likud Party at the expense of Labor -- "representing," according to Yossi Beilin, a Labor member of the Israeli parliament, "the 'Israel That Refuses.' "
AIPAC officials heatedly dispute the charges, and privately complain that such dissension in the ranks serves only the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.
Tom Dine is fond of quoting Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger: "Dine, I deal with you because you could hurt me."
A Rough Reputation
AIPAC's influence with Congress is due partly to a widespread predisposition to back Israel anyway -- though recent polls have shown that U.S. public opinion, while generally supportive of Israel, can vary sharply in reaction to events in the Middle East. Just as important to the lobby's clout is its reputation for playing rough.
"We are slaves to some of the lobbying groups," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) complained on the day of the Desert Storm vote. "I do not have to name names," Byrd went on, "but I could."
"My colleagues think AIPAC is a very, very powerful organization that is ruthless, and very, very alert," said another senator who, like so many on the subject of AIPAC, asked that his name not be named. "Eighty percent of the senators here roll their eyes on some of the votes. They know that what they're doing isn't what they really believe is right, but why fight on a situation where they're liable to get beat up on?
"There's no countervailing sentiment," this senator added, noting that the small but ardent circle of pro-Israel activists, unlike its Arab-American counterpart, gives millions of dollars every election cycle to candidates for office. "If you vote contrary to the tremendous pressure of AIPAC, no one says to you, 'That's great.' "
The 1984 defeat of Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.) -- the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who crossed the lobby once too often -- is one of several in recent years ascribed to pro-Israel money. "All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy," Dine claimed in a speech after the 1984 election. "And American politicians ... got the message."
Yet many U.S. Jews are uncomfortable with such talk, and see the specter of antisemitism behind every public reference to the "Jewish lobby," as AIPAC is frequently called by its opponents. Rep. Tim Valentine (D-N.C.), whose House amendment to cut the $ 650 million in extra aid for Israel received a mere 24 votes, blamed the Jewish community for its lopsided defeat.
"I do plan to find an opportunity to talk to my Jewish friends," the congressman vowed, "and say, 'Do you realize the impression that this thing makes, when you come down with full force, all the strength that you have, for a few bucks? My God, what does that say?' " Asked what it said, Valentine responded, "I don't know. You know what I mean."
Understandably, perhaps, AIPAC prefers to operate outside the spotlight. "A lobby is like a night flower," AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues, Steven Rosen, once wrote in an internal memo. "It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."
Thus the lobby has a touchy relationship with the Fourth Estate, a medium that other public affairs groups routinely exploit. Often, it finds itself criticizing reporters. In May, it launched a grass-roots letter-writing campaign to CNN, protesting a special report that was critical of Israel. Reporter Mark Feldstein said hundreds of letters poured in. Along with some well-argued ones, taking their cue from AIPAC's "Monthly Update" to members, "some of it was pretty nasty," Feldstein said. "You know, 'self-hating Jew' was used, 'the Nazis would be proud of you,' 'the Jews have always been their own worst enemies.' "
AIPAC's president, Mayer Mitchell, an Alabama businessman, has a policy of simply not speaking to the press. The four AIPAC employees permitted contact with journalists seldom speak for attribution, and Dine would only agree to go on the record for this series if his quotes were read back to him for approval. At AIPAC's recent policy conference, one of about 800 college students in attendance was asked to explain her commitment. "You really have to talk to the people in the press department," she replied, turning away.
In 1987, AIPAC's then-communications director, Barbara Amouyal, argued that this press-shy attitude was counterproductive to the lobby's aims. During her tenure, however, she often found herself trying to keep stories out of the news. Once, she pleaded with two Jewish newspapers not to print an item about a birthday party for Steven Rosen, during which a stripper performed on AIPAC premises. As an inducement to one of the papers, she offered, ironically, access to Tom Dine. She left AIPAC in frustration after 11 months.
Afterward, two AIPAC internal memos were aired by the CBS program "60 Minutes" and other news organizations in October 1988, resulting in the worst publicity AIPAC has ever endured, plus a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission. Amouyal supplied one AIPAC memo urging news stories supporting a pro-Israel Senate candidate and attacking Jesse Jackson's "extramarital affairs." A second memo, which several reporters received over the transom, urged various political action committees to send money to pro-Israel candidates -- suggesting that AIPAC employees had involved themselves in political campaigns, contravening a long-standing AIPAC policy. AIPAC officials still sputter in anger when they discuss Amouyal and her alleged misdeed.
In January 1989, a coalition of Arab Americans, former diplomats and an ex-congressman accused the lobby of violating federal campaign spending limits by orchestrating the donations of 27 pro-Israel PACs. (AIPAC, which is not a political action committee, took its name long before PACs were invented.) The FEC ruled last December that there was "insufficient evidence" to support the charge -- though not everyone was persuaded.
"I think it's disingenuous for AIPAC to say, as for some peculiar reason they frequently do, that they don't direct any money," said Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.), an occasional critic of Israel who was targeted in 1988, when his opponent, Richard Licht, received an estimated $ 213,850 in pro-Israel PAC money.
The night before the FEC's announcement, the lobby's director of media liaison, Toby Dershowitz, visited the editor of Washington Jewish Week at his apartment. Over tea, she asked Andrew Silow Carroll not to assign his regular reporter, Larry Cohler, to the story. She argued that Cohler's previous AIPAC stories were inaccurate, and since several had been cited in the FEC complaint, he was a "player" in the case. Carroll recalled that he told her he'd think about it.
The next day, the ruling was announced and Carroll put Cohler on the story. A few days later, as Cohler was writing, Dershowitz phoned Carroll at his office. Also on the line was David Ifshin, AIPAC's legal counsel. "Mr. Ifshin has some things to say, and I think they're worth a listen," Dershowitz said, according to Carroll's notes of the conversation.
Ifshin, according to Carroll's notes, said Cohler's reporting on AIPAC had raised serious questions about his accuracy. If he were to cover that week's ruling, Ifshin warned the editor, AIPAC would reexamine his previous stories "with an eye toward litigation."
"That sounds to me like a threat of legal action," Carroll replied.
"Nobody is threatening you," Dershowitz interjected, before the conversation abruptly ended.
Carroll phoned Dershowitz back to tell her that Cohler was his reporter; he had no reason to doubt his journalistic abilities.
"Fine," she replied, according to Carroll's notes. "Then what about writing a positive editorial about our exoneration?"
"We've never pushed anybody around," Tom Dine said recently. "That's part of the lore."
June 13, 1991, Thursday, Final Edition
BYLINE: Lloyd Grove, Washington Post Staff Writer
Subject: Israel.
Target: Nancy Kassebaum.
Methods: Sweet reason, shock therapy.
A dozen pro-Israel activists filed into Kassebaum's Senate office. Two staffers carried in extra chairs, and the Kansas Republican helped set them up.
"The question," Shaol Pozez told Kassebaum, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "is how do we go about getting this peace process going?" A retired discount shoe store tycoon, sporting athletic footwear this morning, Pozez used to share a back-yard fence with her father, Alf Landon -- which is why he was there. She nodded, politely. The pleasantries were over.
"Israel," Pozez told her, "will do everything short of national suicide to make peace."
"Isn't the PLO going to have to be there at some point, Shaol?" she demanded of Pozez, a frequent political contributor -- though not, in recent years, to Kassebaum. The room fell deathly still at the mention of the Palestine Liberation Organization, as though someone had just suggested ... national suicide. "It seems to me that this is an opportunity," Kassebaum went on, her jaw set, "and everybody's got to be willing to give."
Frowns spread around the room.
So much for sweet reason.
Kassebaum's visitors that morning, most of them with Kansas connections, were from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee -- AIPAC, for short -- the foreign policy equivalent of the National Rifle Association. Their mission, a life-defining one, is "strengthening the American-Israel relationship," mainly by securing American aid for the Jewish state and blocking U.S. weapons sales to hostile Arabs.
AIPAC is one of the most resented and respected, admired and feared, lobbying organizations in the United States. Kassebaum is one of very few in Congress who will speak bluntly about the group on the record.
"Sometimes," she said, "they're just absolutely, totally inflexible."
If so, perhaps it's because so many Jews, no matter how comfortable in American society, feel themselves linked to a long history of worldwide persecution, culminating in the Holocaust in which 6 million perished. Israel, in the minds of some, may be the only safe haven -- and thus deserves special treatment.
Those in Congress and elsewhere who disagree, or complain about AIPAC's heavy-handedness, tend to do so sotto voce -- terrified of being branded with the epithet "antisemite" or, even worse, "self-hating Jew." In March, half the Senate and a third of the House accepted invitations to schmooze with 2,100 true believers at AIPAC's 32nd annual policy conference, an impressive show of pro-Israel power. In the oft-repeated catch-phrase of AIPAC's detractors, the lobby has made Israel "America's 51st state."
As the pro-Israel lobby anointed to speak for the major U.S. Jewish organizations -- not, as some persist in believing, Israel's registered agent -- AIPAC has prospered mightily since its birth 37 years ago. In the past decade, the lobby has quadrupled its staff to more than 100 and quintupled its membership to 55,000 households -- attracting a new breed of non-Jewish activists like Allen Mothersill -- while its member-financed budget has grown even more, from $ 1.4 million in 1980 to $ 12 million in 1991.
It owes much of its growth to Tom Dine, the lobby's executive director for the past decade, a charismatic proponent of pressure-group politics.
Yet AIPAC's rapid expansion has forced it to cope with a host of competing constituencies -- from liberal Democratic Jews to conservative Republican members of Congress, from American doves to Israeli hard-liners. The lobby also faces mounting and contradictory criticism, from a wide array of political activists both here and in Israel. It is accused, alternately, of climbing into bed with the executive branch at the expense of its friends in Congress; allying itself with the Republican Party at the expense of its ties to the Democrats; and becoming a creature of the Likud Party at the expense of Labor -- "representing," according to Yossi Beilin, a Labor member of the Israeli parliament, "the 'Israel That Refuses.' "
AIPAC officials heatedly dispute the charges, and privately complain that such dissension in the ranks serves only the enemies of Israel and the Jewish people.
Tom Dine is fond of quoting Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger: "Dine, I deal with you because you could hurt me."
A Rough Reputation
AIPAC's influence with Congress is due partly to a widespread predisposition to back Israel anyway -- though recent polls have shown that U.S. public opinion, while generally supportive of Israel, can vary sharply in reaction to events in the Middle East. Just as important to the lobby's clout is its reputation for playing rough.
"We are slaves to some of the lobbying groups," Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) complained on the day of the Desert Storm vote. "I do not have to name names," Byrd went on, "but I could."
"My colleagues think AIPAC is a very, very powerful organization that is ruthless, and very, very alert," said another senator who, like so many on the subject of AIPAC, asked that his name not be named. "Eighty percent of the senators here roll their eyes on some of the votes. They know that what they're doing isn't what they really believe is right, but why fight on a situation where they're liable to get beat up on?
"There's no countervailing sentiment," this senator added, noting that the small but ardent circle of pro-Israel activists, unlike its Arab-American counterpart, gives millions of dollars every election cycle to candidates for office. "If you vote contrary to the tremendous pressure of AIPAC, no one says to you, 'That's great.' "
The 1984 defeat of Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.) -- the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee who crossed the lobby once too often -- is one of several in recent years ascribed to pro-Israel money. "All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy," Dine claimed in a speech after the 1984 election. "And American politicians ... got the message."
Yet many U.S. Jews are uncomfortable with such talk, and see the specter of antisemitism behind every public reference to the "Jewish lobby," as AIPAC is frequently called by its opponents. Rep. Tim Valentine (D-N.C.), whose House amendment to cut the $ 650 million in extra aid for Israel received a mere 24 votes, blamed the Jewish community for its lopsided defeat.
"I do plan to find an opportunity to talk to my Jewish friends," the congressman vowed, "and say, 'Do you realize the impression that this thing makes, when you come down with full force, all the strength that you have, for a few bucks? My God, what does that say?' " Asked what it said, Valentine responded, "I don't know. You know what I mean."
Understandably, perhaps, AIPAC prefers to operate outside the spotlight. "A lobby is like a night flower," AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues, Steven Rosen, once wrote in an internal memo. "It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun."
Thus the lobby has a touchy relationship with the Fourth Estate, a medium that other public affairs groups routinely exploit. Often, it finds itself criticizing reporters. In May, it launched a grass-roots letter-writing campaign to CNN, protesting a special report that was critical of Israel. Reporter Mark Feldstein said hundreds of letters poured in. Along with some well-argued ones, taking their cue from AIPAC's "Monthly Update" to members, "some of it was pretty nasty," Feldstein said. "You know, 'self-hating Jew' was used, 'the Nazis would be proud of you,' 'the Jews have always been their own worst enemies.' "
AIPAC's president, Mayer Mitchell, an Alabama businessman, has a policy of simply not speaking to the press. The four AIPAC employees permitted contact with journalists seldom speak for attribution, and Dine would only agree to go on the record for this series if his quotes were read back to him for approval. At AIPAC's recent policy conference, one of about 800 college students in attendance was asked to explain her commitment. "You really have to talk to the people in the press department," she replied, turning away.
In 1987, AIPAC's then-communications director, Barbara Amouyal, argued that this press-shy attitude was counterproductive to the lobby's aims. During her tenure, however, she often found herself trying to keep stories out of the news. Once, she pleaded with two Jewish newspapers not to print an item about a birthday party for Steven Rosen, during which a stripper performed on AIPAC premises. As an inducement to one of the papers, she offered, ironically, access to Tom Dine. She left AIPAC in frustration after 11 months.
Afterward, two AIPAC internal memos were aired by the CBS program "60 Minutes" and other news organizations in October 1988, resulting in the worst publicity AIPAC has ever endured, plus a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission. Amouyal supplied one AIPAC memo urging news stories supporting a pro-Israel Senate candidate and attacking Jesse Jackson's "extramarital affairs." A second memo, which several reporters received over the transom, urged various political action committees to send money to pro-Israel candidates -- suggesting that AIPAC employees had involved themselves in political campaigns, contravening a long-standing AIPAC policy. AIPAC officials still sputter in anger when they discuss Amouyal and her alleged misdeed.
In January 1989, a coalition of Arab Americans, former diplomats and an ex-congressman accused the lobby of violating federal campaign spending limits by orchestrating the donations of 27 pro-Israel PACs. (AIPAC, which is not a political action committee, took its name long before PACs were invented.) The FEC ruled last December that there was "insufficient evidence" to support the charge -- though not everyone was persuaded.
"I think it's disingenuous for AIPAC to say, as for some peculiar reason they frequently do, that they don't direct any money," said Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.), an occasional critic of Israel who was targeted in 1988, when his opponent, Richard Licht, received an estimated $ 213,850 in pro-Israel PAC money.
The night before the FEC's announcement, the lobby's director of media liaison, Toby Dershowitz, visited the editor of Washington Jewish Week at his apartment. Over tea, she asked Andrew Silow Carroll not to assign his regular reporter, Larry Cohler, to the story. She argued that Cohler's previous AIPAC stories were inaccurate, and since several had been cited in the FEC complaint, he was a "player" in the case. Carroll recalled that he told her he'd think about it.
The next day, the ruling was announced and Carroll put Cohler on the story. A few days later, as Cohler was writing, Dershowitz phoned Carroll at his office. Also on the line was David Ifshin, AIPAC's legal counsel. "Mr. Ifshin has some things to say, and I think they're worth a listen," Dershowitz said, according to Carroll's notes of the conversation.
Ifshin, according to Carroll's notes, said Cohler's reporting on AIPAC had raised serious questions about his accuracy. If he were to cover that week's ruling, Ifshin warned the editor, AIPAC would reexamine his previous stories "with an eye toward litigation."
"That sounds to me like a threat of legal action," Carroll replied.
"Nobody is threatening you," Dershowitz interjected, before the conversation abruptly ended.
Carroll phoned Dershowitz back to tell her that Cohler was his reporter; he had no reason to doubt his journalistic abilities.
"Fine," she replied, according to Carroll's notes. "Then what about writing a positive editorial about our exoneration?"
"We've never pushed anybody around," Tom Dine said recently. "That's part of the lore."
Sex, Celebrity and the Internet
From the Luke Ford Fan Blog:
Luke is a charismatic leader? I bet he just loves you. Women are so gullible. You throw a few compliments in their direction and pretty soon you have them tied around your little finger. So what exactly did Luke say to you to get you to fall so completely under his spell?
I love this paragraph, especially the bit about "six best male friends." Surely Luke has one best male friend, plus five other men he is stringing along? Apparently Luke's charm works on (some) men, too. Luke has his own "team" of men? So that is what they are calling it these days? You know, there is a name for team players like these. Let's see, it has three letters g - y - a, but not necessarily in that order.
Luke is a charismatic leader? I bet he just loves you. Women are so gullible. You throw a few compliments in their direction and pretty soon you have them tied around your little finger. So what exactly did Luke say to you to get you to fall so completely under his spell?
I love this paragraph, especially the bit about "six best male friends." Surely Luke has one best male friend, plus five other men he is stringing along? Apparently Luke's charm works on (some) men, too. Luke has his own "team" of men? So that is what they are calling it these days? You know, there is a name for team players like these. Let's see, it has three letters g - y - a, but not necessarily in that order.
Temple Beth Zion (C), a mini review
Temple Beth Zion (C), a mini review: I just got back from spending a few hours with Temple Beth Zion. I'll post a full review asap, but for now let me say that I got more than I had hoped for. TBZ is gorgeous, in fantastic shape with a recent renovation and is intelligent and funny. I'd put her level of service in the same category as Aish Ha Torah. TBZ is one of those who truly loves Torah and has a great time (and lets you know it). LOVES reading Torah and receiving it and is very vocal, a great davener... The rabbi speaks fluent Russian and French. Once again, the temples of the 80's prove that they know what pleasing a fan means. A great lady who I've added to my "see whenever I can" list.
PS - I took a few photos that I'll be posting to my Fun With Shuls yahoo group probably tomorrow night.
PS - I took a few photos that I'll be posting to my Fun With Shuls yahoo group probably tomorrow night.
Thursday, June 24, 2004
The Jewish Week Interview
I chat by phone with Gary Rosenblatt, editor of The Jewish Week, Thursday morning, June 24, 2004.
"How happy are you with your job?"
"I love it."
"How happy are you with your paper and which parts if any most need to be improved?"
"I'm happy with the paper overall. We could stand improvement across the board. We're always trying to reach more readers, particularly younger readers, more people outside the organized Jewish community."
"Would you describe The Jewish Week as a compelling read?"
"I don't want to tout our paper. That's certainly our goal."
"Would you describe it as the best Jewish newspaper?"
"I'd have to give the same answer."
"What do you think are the obstacles to good Jewish journalism?"
"I sometime describe our ongoing dilemma this way -- a Jewish journalist works with two competing mandates. The first commandment for journalists is to probe, explore and uncover and all the things people expect when they pick up their daily paper. On the other hand, one of the commandments in the organized Jewish community is the opposite, to cover-up and create a unified front, and not present any negative impression to the outside world. The Yiddish expression, shander fer de goyim (scandal for the goyim). You're always walking that tightrope -- doing the job of a journalist and being a responsible part of the Jewish community."
"How much status does a journalist for a Jewish paper have in Jewish life?"
"We're like the Rodney Dangerfields of Jewish life. We don't get any respect. On the other hand, it is incremental in building respect. I think it can be there. It depends on the paper and the individual. It is too easy to hide behind the notion that there is some inherent part of our job that makes us not respected by the community. If you do a good job, you are respected by the community."
"What do you love and what do you hate about your job?"
"I write about and deal with issues that are meaningful to me. One of my first jobs was with TV Guide (sports editor from 1970-72). If you get a high from writing for a big audience, that was great. Now I get to combine my love of journalism with Jewish life. The downside is the same. Sometimes it can be dispiriting when you see the pettiness of the community you really care about. People you admire until you meet them. See their egos and the things that motivate them. Sometimes you wish you had just known them from a distance."
"How do you deal with threats, such as threats to the financial survivability of the paper if you publish something that a powerful person does not want?"
"It is part of the nature of the job. I remember in Baltimore, we did a story about Israel bonds. We were told that if that story appeared, it would not only hurt that local bonds drive, but the state of Israel was going to suffer. They both survived.
"That doesn't mean I'm dismissive of what you'd call a threat, which is a pretty strong word. A cautionary message. I try to take them all seriously and not be so cavalier as to not think about the consequences of things we write. My experience has born out that the sun will still come up the next day. I have yet to see the kind of article that would be so destructive. There are threats of boycotting the paper and boycotting our advertisers but it hasn't gone anywhere."
"Your paper was famous for its investigation of [Rabbi] Baruch Lanner and the abuse situation. Many people think that have you information about other rabbis who were similarly abusive. You even wrote a column about information pouring in to you. But you didn't seem to go on to investigate other rabbis with the same zest you applied to Lanner?"
"I don't think that's accurate. I have a lot of files. One rabbi in particular I've been trailing for over three years. I've talked to many dozen people. I have to apply the same standards as I would for the Lanner story. We have done stories about other rabbis and other cases of abuse. Until it meets that bar, I have continued to pursue some of these stories.
"I think the Lanner stories have had a corrective element. I've written that I don't think that the newspaper should be the mechanism for dealing with these issues. There should be communal mechanisms. The reason people come to us is that they have struck out everywhere else in the community. They come to us out of frustration and desperation. There was a rabbi [Willig] who was on the Beit Din on the Lanner case who I wrote about last year. He did a public mea culpa about his role."
"How would you rate the quality of Jewish journalism done on the Federations?"
"It depends on city to city, newspaper to newspaper, issue to issue. If I pick up a Jewish newspaper from different parts of the country, I sometimes wouldn't know what community I was reading about if I covered up the masthead. It's a lot easier to run a JTA story about what is going on in Israel than to send a reporter to cover a conflict in your own neighborhood. It's cheaper and safer to the run the JTA."
"Are there any individuals in the Jewish Establishment who you would regard as the greatest threats to Jewish journalism because they're bullies?"
"Yeah. I wouldn't name them. I've met some national Jewish leaders who've told me, not in a bullying way, that they believe that the role of Jewish newspapers is to promote Israel and the Jewish community and to unify the community and not to write critical articles about the community. I differ with that. The best way to educate, enlighten and involve people in the Jewish community is to tell them what is really going on. If we tell them we are one, all we do is lose our credibility. I don't think we are one is a goal."
"How often do you encounter bullying?"
"There are varying degrees of it, from canceling subscriptions to stopping advertising to getting my friends to do those things."
"What's the biggest hit you've taken for publishing a story?"
"It's hard to measure. When the Lanner story first broke, we were threatened with institutions pulling their advertising. We didn't see it happen."
"What are the joys and tribulations of being a Federation paper?"
"We do not consider ourselves a Federation paper. We have no formal ties with the UJA Federation. There was a time when the UJA were ex-officio members of the board of The Jewish Week but that stopped about eight years ago. They buy subscriptions for people who give $50 or more to UJA."
"Does that make them the dominant force behind the paper?"
"Yeah, in that sense, sure. Then we have close to 30,000 subscribe directly."
"How many papers does the Federation buy?"
"It depends from year to year."
"Approximately."
"Between 50,000-60,000."
"If they are buying about twice the number of papers than subscribers, could not the paper be fairly called a Federation paper?"
"I don't think so. We have no formal ties. They don't have any say in editorial or financial matters. It's their choice. They think it serves them well to supply their donors with a Jewish newspaper.
"Some of the pressure I got in Baltimore, where we were an independent paper, was just as strong as the pressure I get here. From the Federation and the Establishment community."
"If you wrote a memoir, would you have a pile of stories you weren't able to work into the Jewish papers you've worked on?"
"I have a file I keep called, 'My Last Issue.' Not necessarily a tell-all memoir, I'd just like to deal with some of these issues."
"There isn't a market for hard-hitting muckraking Jewish journalism for a Jewish audience?"
"Jewish readers tend to be very bright, well-read, sophisticated people, and if you present them good journalism, I think they will want to read it."
"What did your father the rabbi think of your going into journalism?"
"He was proud of me. He used to tease me that if I stayed away from the rabbinate because I saw you live in a glass house, he'd say he only had his congregants giving him a hard time while I had everybody giving me a hard time. But they don't pay my salary directly."
"What's your relationship to Judaism?"
"I consider myself an active observant Jew."
"Do you believe in God?"
"I do."
"Choseness?"
"Yep. I think it is a misinterpreted word. I don't think it means chosen to be better than everybody else. It means simply to be responsible."
"You're happy to believe that the Jews are God's Chosen People?"
"I don't have a choice."
"Some Jews reject it."
"I don't reject it."
"How do you think the Internet and blogging is affecting Jewish journalism?"
"That's a good question. It's very hard to say. I always wonder who has the time to read a lot of these blogs. I don't get the impression that those audiences are wide but I guess they're pretty deep. It does give me a lot of pause because I think it has the potential to reach as many people as standard journalism but it doesn't have the checks and balances and an editing process that more normative journalism has. That's something to worry about."
"You think that's more of a downer than a good sign?"
"It's certainly worrisome. People can come home late at night and write anything off the top of their head and send it out and it's out there."
"Is that scary?"
"It can be."
"Do you think we have too many checks and balances in Establishment Jewish journalism?"
"No. They are the same checks and balances you have in any professional journalistic enterprise, maybe with an added element of sensitivity, which I don't think is a bad thing. I don't think it is a question of whether or not you do a story but how you do a story. I don't see any stories that are absolutely verboten, but it depends on how you treat it."
"You should be sensitive to save people's feelings?"
"You should be aware of feelings. At times it is inevitable you will hurt people's feelings, say a rabbi who's losing a job. You have to weigh that against what you owe the readers in the larger community. Those are tough calls. I don't think there are clear definitions. They are ad hoc and made as much from your kishkes as from your brains."
"Did you read the book The New Rabbi?"
"Yeah."
"What did you think of it?"
"Well, you know, there was a lot that I admired and I think he went a little too far sometimes in exposing people, specifically embarrassing them in ways that he could've handled a little more indirectly and gotten the same message across and not be as hurtful."
"How happy are you with your job?"
"I love it."
"How happy are you with your paper and which parts if any most need to be improved?"
"I'm happy with the paper overall. We could stand improvement across the board. We're always trying to reach more readers, particularly younger readers, more people outside the organized Jewish community."
"Would you describe The Jewish Week as a compelling read?"
"I don't want to tout our paper. That's certainly our goal."
"Would you describe it as the best Jewish newspaper?"
"I'd have to give the same answer."
"What do you think are the obstacles to good Jewish journalism?"
"I sometime describe our ongoing dilemma this way -- a Jewish journalist works with two competing mandates. The first commandment for journalists is to probe, explore and uncover and all the things people expect when they pick up their daily paper. On the other hand, one of the commandments in the organized Jewish community is the opposite, to cover-up and create a unified front, and not present any negative impression to the outside world. The Yiddish expression, shander fer de goyim (scandal for the goyim). You're always walking that tightrope -- doing the job of a journalist and being a responsible part of the Jewish community."
"How much status does a journalist for a Jewish paper have in Jewish life?"
"We're like the Rodney Dangerfields of Jewish life. We don't get any respect. On the other hand, it is incremental in building respect. I think it can be there. It depends on the paper and the individual. It is too easy to hide behind the notion that there is some inherent part of our job that makes us not respected by the community. If you do a good job, you are respected by the community."
"What do you love and what do you hate about your job?"
"I write about and deal with issues that are meaningful to me. One of my first jobs was with TV Guide (sports editor from 1970-72). If you get a high from writing for a big audience, that was great. Now I get to combine my love of journalism with Jewish life. The downside is the same. Sometimes it can be dispiriting when you see the pettiness of the community you really care about. People you admire until you meet them. See their egos and the things that motivate them. Sometimes you wish you had just known them from a distance."
"How do you deal with threats, such as threats to the financial survivability of the paper if you publish something that a powerful person does not want?"
"It is part of the nature of the job. I remember in Baltimore, we did a story about Israel bonds. We were told that if that story appeared, it would not only hurt that local bonds drive, but the state of Israel was going to suffer. They both survived.
"That doesn't mean I'm dismissive of what you'd call a threat, which is a pretty strong word. A cautionary message. I try to take them all seriously and not be so cavalier as to not think about the consequences of things we write. My experience has born out that the sun will still come up the next day. I have yet to see the kind of article that would be so destructive. There are threats of boycotting the paper and boycotting our advertisers but it hasn't gone anywhere."
"Your paper was famous for its investigation of [Rabbi] Baruch Lanner and the abuse situation. Many people think that have you information about other rabbis who were similarly abusive. You even wrote a column about information pouring in to you. But you didn't seem to go on to investigate other rabbis with the same zest you applied to Lanner?"
"I don't think that's accurate. I have a lot of files. One rabbi in particular I've been trailing for over three years. I've talked to many dozen people. I have to apply the same standards as I would for the Lanner story. We have done stories about other rabbis and other cases of abuse. Until it meets that bar, I have continued to pursue some of these stories.
"I think the Lanner stories have had a corrective element. I've written that I don't think that the newspaper should be the mechanism for dealing with these issues. There should be communal mechanisms. The reason people come to us is that they have struck out everywhere else in the community. They come to us out of frustration and desperation. There was a rabbi [Willig] who was on the Beit Din on the Lanner case who I wrote about last year. He did a public mea culpa about his role."
"How would you rate the quality of Jewish journalism done on the Federations?"
"It depends on city to city, newspaper to newspaper, issue to issue. If I pick up a Jewish newspaper from different parts of the country, I sometimes wouldn't know what community I was reading about if I covered up the masthead. It's a lot easier to run a JTA story about what is going on in Israel than to send a reporter to cover a conflict in your own neighborhood. It's cheaper and safer to the run the JTA."
"Are there any individuals in the Jewish Establishment who you would regard as the greatest threats to Jewish journalism because they're bullies?"
"Yeah. I wouldn't name them. I've met some national Jewish leaders who've told me, not in a bullying way, that they believe that the role of Jewish newspapers is to promote Israel and the Jewish community and to unify the community and not to write critical articles about the community. I differ with that. The best way to educate, enlighten and involve people in the Jewish community is to tell them what is really going on. If we tell them we are one, all we do is lose our credibility. I don't think we are one is a goal."
"How often do you encounter bullying?"
"There are varying degrees of it, from canceling subscriptions to stopping advertising to getting my friends to do those things."
"What's the biggest hit you've taken for publishing a story?"
"It's hard to measure. When the Lanner story first broke, we were threatened with institutions pulling their advertising. We didn't see it happen."
"What are the joys and tribulations of being a Federation paper?"
"We do not consider ourselves a Federation paper. We have no formal ties with the UJA Federation. There was a time when the UJA were ex-officio members of the board of The Jewish Week but that stopped about eight years ago. They buy subscriptions for people who give $50 or more to UJA."
"Does that make them the dominant force behind the paper?"
"Yeah, in that sense, sure. Then we have close to 30,000 subscribe directly."
"How many papers does the Federation buy?"
"It depends from year to year."
"Approximately."
"Between 50,000-60,000."
"If they are buying about twice the number of papers than subscribers, could not the paper be fairly called a Federation paper?"
"I don't think so. We have no formal ties. They don't have any say in editorial or financial matters. It's their choice. They think it serves them well to supply their donors with a Jewish newspaper.
"Some of the pressure I got in Baltimore, where we were an independent paper, was just as strong as the pressure I get here. From the Federation and the Establishment community."
"If you wrote a memoir, would you have a pile of stories you weren't able to work into the Jewish papers you've worked on?"
"I have a file I keep called, 'My Last Issue.' Not necessarily a tell-all memoir, I'd just like to deal with some of these issues."
"There isn't a market for hard-hitting muckraking Jewish journalism for a Jewish audience?"
"Jewish readers tend to be very bright, well-read, sophisticated people, and if you present them good journalism, I think they will want to read it."
"What did your father the rabbi think of your going into journalism?"
"He was proud of me. He used to tease me that if I stayed away from the rabbinate because I saw you live in a glass house, he'd say he only had his congregants giving him a hard time while I had everybody giving me a hard time. But they don't pay my salary directly."
"What's your relationship to Judaism?"
"I consider myself an active observant Jew."
"Do you believe in God?"
"I do."
"Choseness?"
"Yep. I think it is a misinterpreted word. I don't think it means chosen to be better than everybody else. It means simply to be responsible."
"You're happy to believe that the Jews are God's Chosen People?"
"I don't have a choice."
"Some Jews reject it."
"I don't reject it."
"How do you think the Internet and blogging is affecting Jewish journalism?"
"That's a good question. It's very hard to say. I always wonder who has the time to read a lot of these blogs. I don't get the impression that those audiences are wide but I guess they're pretty deep. It does give me a lot of pause because I think it has the potential to reach as many people as standard journalism but it doesn't have the checks and balances and an editing process that more normative journalism has. That's something to worry about."
"You think that's more of a downer than a good sign?"
"It's certainly worrisome. People can come home late at night and write anything off the top of their head and send it out and it's out there."
"Is that scary?"
"It can be."
"Do you think we have too many checks and balances in Establishment Jewish journalism?"
"No. They are the same checks and balances you have in any professional journalistic enterprise, maybe with an added element of sensitivity, which I don't think is a bad thing. I don't think it is a question of whether or not you do a story but how you do a story. I don't see any stories that are absolutely verboten, but it depends on how you treat it."
"You should be sensitive to save people's feelings?"
"You should be aware of feelings. At times it is inevitable you will hurt people's feelings, say a rabbi who's losing a job. You have to weigh that against what you owe the readers in the larger community. Those are tough calls. I don't think there are clear definitions. They are ad hoc and made as much from your kishkes as from your brains."
"Did you read the book The New Rabbi?"
"Yeah."
"What did you think of it?"
"Well, you know, there was a lot that I admired and I think he went a little too far sometimes in exposing people, specifically embarrassing them in ways that he could've handled a little more indirectly and gotten the same message across and not be as hurtful."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)