	San Diego Jewish World 'There's a Jewish story everywhere'

Today's Postings

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Not the best of the Viorst"
Dov Burt Levy in Salem, Massachusetts: 'Israel lobby' responses

Larry Zeiger in San Diego: "A tzedakah project in Honduras"

The week in Review
(click on dates to see back issues)

Thursday, October 4
Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C: "World without Israel still would be unpleasant for the Arabs"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Torah-chology: Mogel blends psychology and Judaism"

Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: "Why Torah bears reading again and again"

Lynne Thrope in San Diego: Sampling San Diego's best chefs' creations at annual Chef Celebration

San Diego Jewish World staff: Three photo combination shows march of Torahs followed by one's unrolling at Tifereth Israel Synagogue in San Diego

Wednesday, October 3

Shoshana Bryen in Washington, DC: "U.S. recruitment of Arabs to anti-Iran coalition must not be at Israel's expense"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "SDJA student activist unrelenting in campaign to alleviate Darfur suffering"

Jay Jacobson in St. Louis Park, Minnesota: (Humor forwarded from internet): "Buddhist philosophy with a Jewish twist"

Bruce Kesler in Encinitas, California: "Columbia and Ahmadinejad: guidelines needed for future"

J. Zel Lurie in Delray Beach, Florida: Real socialized medicine is what takes care of President Bush."

Joel A. Moskowitz, M.D. in San Diego: "Sour and sweet at ‘Davka’ exhibit"

Tuesday, October 2

Rabbi Michael Berk in San Diego: "Innovative Reform movement has much to teach other style Jews"

Garry Fabian in Melbourne, Australia: "Queensland Jewish community devising plan to involve the unaffiliated in communal life" ... "Learning Centre on tap for Carmel School in Perth" ... "Suzanne Rutland book celebrates 40th anniversary of Jewish Communal Appeal"
.

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "In bar mitzvah year, San Diego Jewish Book Fair stays up longer, broadens horizons"

Barry Jagoda in San Diego: "Bar Kamza story in Talmud provides inspiration for UCSD arts project"

Monday, October 1
Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C. : "Does Bush's international conference require concessions only from Israel?"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Are people really kind? Pat Feldman is so sure they are, we can bank on it!"

Alan Rusonik in San Diego: "Three recommendations for changing Jewish education."

Sunday, September 30
Judy Lash Balint in Jerusalem: "Pain and gain during Sukkot"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Seven sukkot of eastern San Diego and a first grader's question for Moses"

Joe Naiman in Lakeside, California: "Diamondbacks skipper Melvin a member of the Jewish community"

Isaac Yetiv in La Jolla, California: "An S.O.S. for American democracy"

Saturday, September 29
Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: From Shiloh to Shiloh to Shiloh

Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: 'Separation of Church and State' not a true constitutional doctrine

Archive of Previous Issues

__________________

The Jewish Citizen
by Donald H. Harrison

Not the best of the Viorst

Alexander and the Wonderful, Marvelous, Excellent, Terrific Ninety Days by Judith Viorst. (New York: Free Press: 2007) 113 pages, $17.

SAN DIEGO—This book is a sequel to the very successful Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Reading it, I had the distinct feeling that Viorst made a valiant effort, putting into it the skills she has learned over a lifetime of being an author. But my sense of it was that her passion wasn't in it.

There is no grand statement here, no "ah-hah!" revelation, just the thoroughly common sense information that when fastidious grandparents open their home for three months to their son, daughter-in-law and three young, curious and active grandchildren, some adjustments in lifestyle are both necessary and inevitable.

Because Viorst is a talented writer, any reader will find some nugget of information, or well-turned phrase, worth savoring. And fans who have built up a rapport with Viorst will enjoy renewing acquaintances, not only by reading the book but by attending her noon lecture Thursday, Nov. 8, at the San Diego Jewish Book Fair. (Click the logo for more details of the book fair.)

As for me, I found myself far more stimulated by one of the subtopics— kids and religion— than I was by the main theme about the joys and adjustments attendant to live-in grandparenthood.

There were two anecdotes that I particularly enjoyed. One dealt with a long-ago conversation with her then six- or seven-year-old son Nick about the differences between Judaism and Christianity. Her response, given while navigating through difficult traffic, was to the effect that Christians believe Jesus is the savior, while Jews don't.

Judith Viorst photo by Milton Viorst

The boy responded: "So you're saying that right when I was born, already I decided inside my head that Jesus Christ was not the savior of mankind?"

Unable to both drive and think that one through, Viorst stifled the conversation by saying she ought to concentrate on her driving. She now recommends a bumper sticker for parents driving with intellectually curious children: "We brake for theological and other questions."

generation later and Viorst's grandaughter, Olivia, 5, had a discussion with her mother Marla (wife of Alexander) in which she "scoffed at the notion that humans evolved from monkeys, insisting not only that God had created man on the sixth day but also that, on the third day, He had created rivers and trees and 'all the sidewalks.'"

My own grandchildren are about the ages of Viorst's, and while I recognized many of the situations described in the book, those two stories particularly resonated with me. I'm certain other readers will stop, smile, and re-read other passages.

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Larry Zeiger

Critic at large

A tzedakah project in Honduras

SAN DIEGO—My mother, a lawyer and published writer, wrote a prize winning article about the meaning of the word Tzedakah and why it is important for all people to understand the powerful meaning of the concept.

Tzedakah literally means “righteous action” and is most often interpreted as providing assistance to those in need as part of a natural outgrowth of the human experience. Too often she would say, we read about desperate people in the world and we feel strong compassion for them but then we close the newspaper and do very little. What a treat then it was for me to attend the San Diego Film Festival this year and see two of my former students (I taught film, literature, and theater for 33 years at Point Loma High School), Brian Ruark and Joel McGinty introduce to a sold out audience the documentary they made in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, Cocal Gracias and learn about their passionate plea to assist a community in crisis.

Cocal Gracias is a working city dump and one of the poorest villages in Puerto Cortes, Honduras. The poor of the village live adjacent to the dumpsite, and build their homes from discarded trash. Most homes have mud floors and lack bathroom and kitchen facilities. Families often fear that at any moment their homes may collapse. Most of the adults in the community do not have jobs and make money to survive by selling objects they find in the trash site.

Many children suffer from asthma due to breathing in the daily smoke from the dump. When Ruark and McGinty arrived at this site, seventy families lived in this area, mostly single mothers taking care of children who were not educated because there are no schools in this community. What the filmmakers discovered in these horrible living conditions is a beautiful story of people trying to survive day by day in an impoverished village and a ministry who is dedicated to assist them.

During the filmmakers’ visit, the dump was shut down and while this may seem like a good thing to most, the closure was staggering for the inhabitants. Many made their living from selling articles they discovered in the trash and without this income, they experienced anxiety and a sense of uncertainty about their future.

The focus of the film, however, is not simply on the tragic nature of the dispossessed but on their sense of hope and joy that the future may hold something better for their children. Members of the local ministry headed by a young man in the community named Hector, a charismatic individual with vision and integrity, want to make a difference by teaching parents and their children that they can bring about change and create better lives for themselves and their surrounding community through education and assisting these families with the essentials of everyday living – things most of us take for granted.

The scenes of the broken down homes and the people who inhabit them is at first glance is heartbreaking but there is something so poignant, about these people that the filmmakers captured in their documentary that judging from the huge ovation at the end of the film, the audience at the Pacific Gaslamp Theater wanted to reach out and offer assistance to the people in this small village... Many people in attendance asked about getting involved in the project at the Q and A following the screening.

Tzedakah is the gift of giving, of helping the less fortunate. The filmmakers Brian Ruark and Joel McGinty have devoted a tremendous amount of time and effort to assist the people who live adjacent to the dump site of Cocal Gracias. Ruark, a professional photographer, actually living in the community, providing assistance to families, and McGinty who works for San Diego’s FOX TV, are attempting to raise $65,000 to build a school in the area, because they, like members of the ministry, believe that education is the key to providing every child and parent with a sense of hope for a brighter and healthier future.

This is a beautifully photographed film with wonderful interviews about a world that most of us know little about. In effect, Joel McGinty and Brian Ruark have defined the true meaning of Tzedakah.

For additional information about the film, future screenings, and how to contribute to the fund for creating a school in this community, visit www.cocalgracias.org

Dov Burt Levy

  'Israel lobby' responses


SALEM, Massachusetts—What a storm of passionate emails I got following my recent column about Professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

The M-W book, I wrote, was a pernicious account of the Jewish community's alleged sway over America's Middle East policies.

For openers, let's talk about so-called dual loyalty, the book's most hateful charge. One reader helped a lot by writing that "American Jews DO have dual loyalty. The problem is the M-W suggestion that this is somehow a problem. Irish-Americans, Franco-Americans, and on down the list — all these have dual loyalty too. It's as American as apple
pie."

He is right. But M-W go even further by in-effect charging American Jews with "primary loyalty" to Israel. My guesstimate is that well over half of Americans have a special relationship with their families' countries of origin. At its most intense levels, this leads them to visit often, urge their children to learn the language and make family and institutional contributions. On a lesser level, they cheer the national soccer team and occasionally visit the country.

To the reader's citation of the French and Irish, add Greeks,
Armenians, Portuguese, Dominicans, Brazilians, Lebanese, Nigerians and almost everybody else.

By portraying American Jews as holding primary loyalty to Israel, M-W create the specter of American Jews pushing policies that favor Israel's interests over America's. That, in my opinion, is a gun aimed at the American-Jewish heart.

Jews know from sad experience that once an ethnic or religious group is separated from the body of the nation by charges of disloyalty, anything is possible: pogroms (Russia), expulsion (Spain and Portugal), extermination (Germany).

Another response to my column said: "Instead of presenting the arguments and thesis of the M-W book and then refuting them, you just rely on sheer emotion… All this will make a hit with your local readers, but does not serve the cause of responsible journalism and commentary."

Here's the deal. I am prepared to discuss virtually every social and political issue, where I have knowledge and opinions, with all of the academic niceties. But I exclude three subjects I consider beyond debate, where debate would give even a hint of credibility to the other side: whether the Holocaust happened, Israel's right to exist and American Jews' loyalty to America. On these, I am combatively Jewish.

Finally, M-W know at least two things that should have made their book much different than it is. First, they speak of how Jewish neo-cons (Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, among others), brainwashed the ruling trio of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld into the Iraq fiasco.

Utter nonsense to think that these three long-time political animals could be easily swayed by those outside their inner circle, especially about something as significant as starting a war in Iraq. Here's an example of how tough Bush is to persuade once he's made up his mind. He, as Texas governor, never, though implored by many, commuted even
one death sentence to life imprisonment.

Cheney and Rumsfeld can be criticized for many things, but not as patsies for anybody's foisted ideas. They formulated their world vision over years of working together. To say that the Jewish underlings brought those three into their orbit, rather than the opposite, is complete nonsense.

Second, M-W know that a lobby's primary goals are to keep the organization rich, high salaries flowing and their supporters believing in their power.

Really successful lobbies don't do, as AIPAC has done over the years, things like televising annual meetings featuring


Hollywood-like settings and pandering politicians.

The real lobby powers in Washington, the defense contractors and the drug companies, accomplish their goals quietly and keep their profilelow. They don't need to brag publicly nor prompt politicians to sing their virtues. That's real lobbying strength.

There's no denying that AIPAC has lobbying clout getting 90 signatures on a Senate resolution; but, for example, what are the real results of all those resolutions to bring the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem or not to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia? Nada, klum, nothing.

Somebody might think the motivation for the Mearsheimer-Walt book was the $700,000 book advance and their new celebrity. I don't know. For me, it is their attempt to put their heel on my neck. So, why should I be polite?

Dov Burt Levy is a regular Jewish Journal - Boston North columnist. He may be contacted at dblevy@columnist.com.

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