THE LITERARY LIFE; Daily Journal is on the case for poetic lawyers
Christine N. Ziemba. Los Angeles Times. Apr 4, 2004. pg. E.3

Have you heard the one about the lawyer who writes poetry? The folks at the Daily Journal have—and to them, poetry is no joke.

The legal newspaper is to California lawyers as Variety is to studio execs: It's a serious-minded publication dedicated to deals, decisions and the art of jurisprudence. But to enliven its usual buttoned-down pages, the paper recently launched "Barristers and Bards," a weekly poetry column.

In his introduction, Martin Berg, the San Francisco edition's editor in chief (and now poetry editor), writes, "Both lawyers and poets often deal with conflict and complex emotions, in the context of precise language and form." The poetry column, he notes, is a way to show readers "another dimension of the lives of lawyers."

Lawyer-poets have a strong lineage in American history. Wallace Stevens, Edgar Lee Masters and Archibald MacLeish all practiced law; Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

There's a myth that lawyers' briefs and articles are "badly written, verbose and in Latin," says the L.A. edition's legal editor Jordan Elgrably. Another misconception, he adds, is that lawyers are "not good with language, except for arguments.

"So the Daily Journal is a perfect forum to expose the work [of lawyer-poets] to a wider public."

The column's inaugural poem, "Commonwealth v. Wright" by Philadelphia attorney Richard S. Bank, describes a young girl's tragic death in language as eloquent as many a closing argument: "A few days before the incident / Lorraine, age thirteen / had come to Mrs. Fanning's apartment/ in the middle of the night / with her brothers and sisters still in bedclothes / explaining that the appellant had attempted / some sort of sexual contact...."

Although Bank's poem has a legal focus, "Barristers and Bards" is not limited to court sonnets or blank verse from the bar. Anyone with a law degree can submit a poem.

The practice of law is not mandatory. The practice of poetry is.



Center Shines Its Art Through Clouds of War
Directors hope performances will help Americans better understand viewpoints of the Middle East
Mary Rourke. Los Angeles Times. Sept. 26, 2002. pg. E.1

Click here for story and photos.



An Evening of Drama Cloaked in Sept. 11
Don Shirley. Los Angeles Times. Dec 22, 2001. pg. F.8

"A wave of despondency fell on artists" after the events of Sept. 11, said Felix Pire, a writer, actor and director. "A lot of them just wanted to vent their pent-up emotions. It created a reason to create art instantly."

Art can't be as instant as TV coverage, of course. But now, after more than three months, plays in direct response to Sept. 11 are beginning to emerge. An evening of readings at Beyond Baroque in Venice on Thursday, directed by Pire, was devoted to that subject.

"The New Millennium Project: Responses to September 11, 2001" was presented by Levantine Cultural Center, a fledgling organization that is trying to create a place where musicians, dancers, poets, filmmakers and other artists will specifically address Middle Eastern subjects. Part of the group's mission is to create a spirit of coexistence among the region's often clashing ethnicities.

However, the play reading also had roots in other organizations. It began with meetings at the Music Center Annex under the auspices of the Mark Taper Forum. And it was inspired by the New York-based Artists Network, which was spearheaded by Tony Kushner — the playwright whose own "Homebody/Kabul," set in Afghanistan in 1998, opened this week in New York.

Pire, a Cuban American who is best known to the L.A. theater community as the solo actor in Guillermo Reyes' "Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown," not only directed the readings but also was one of the primary actors in them.

The intense media coverage of the terrorist attacks and their aftermath didn't give any of the playwrights second thoughts about whether they had anything fresh to contribute, Pire said. "A lot of the work is in response to the media. The media is almost another character."

The name "New Millennium" arose from Pire's belief that "Sept. 11 is the mark of the new millennium. Dark as it may be, this really is the new age."

A few of the writers directly addressed the events at the World Trade Center. Shahid Nadeem, a Pakistani playwright and director who has been working recently in L.A., wrote "Trapped," about two men who are caught on the 23rd floor of one of the towers, unable to move. One of the men, who has a Middle Eastern name, borrows the other's cell phone to call his wife and uses up the battery in the process. As the scene ended Thursday, rescue still wasn't assured.

In "Twin Telepathy," Nzingha Clarke wrote about a woman who sees her twin sister in live footage from the World Trade Center. Padraic Duffy's "Shake a Tree to Shake a Tree" was a much more oblique look at an office worker who is inferred to be in one of the Twin Towers, while his wife works in the other.

Other writers' works were set in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.

Al Austin's "Muslim" takes place in an L.A. health club, where one of the weightlifters wears a T-shirt that says "Muslim," to the consternation of the man who's spotting him as he works out. A Florida shopping mall, shortly after the attacks, is the setting for Marc Ostrick's "The Scene," involving a Jewish mother, her adult son and a fellow shopper who's a Sikh. David Lewison's "Peace" is a monologue set at least a decade in the future, when all cities have been either destroyed or simply dispersed so as to break up possible targets.

Another group of writers addressed Middle Eastern subjects in general, without particular references to Sept. 11.

Joshua Zide's "On Borders" depicts an Iraqi Jew who is stopped at the Tel Aviv airport. Barbara Genovese's "Toy Soldiers" is about a 10-year-old boy who's drafted into military duty. Two pieces by Heather Raffo are about Iraqi women, the Persian Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions against Iraq.

Although visual design was bare-bones throughout most of the evening, "Chador," the opening monologue by Gita Khashabi, featured Shida Pegahi wearing a chador woven from small American flags.

Comic relief was provided by Lory Tatoulian's appearance as an Armenian American "coffee cup fortuneteller" who works at Zankou Chicken.

Pire said he doubts many of the pieces will be further developed, but he hopes to put together another evening of similar material.

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Los Angeles; Using the Arts to Celebrate L.A.'s Cultures; Diversity: Wide-ranging annual open house draws an estimated 75,000 to 150 sites across the county
Stephanie Chavez, Jose Cardenas. Los Angeles Times. Oct 7, 2001. pg. B.3

From an "I Love Lucy" marathon in Beverly Hills to a performance of Philippine folk dancing, Los Angeles County showed off a stunning spectrum of cultural diversity Saturday in a burst of color, song and crafts.

Whether deep inside the Angeles National Forest, where Native Americans read poetry, or in breezy Santa Monica, where artisans opened their studio doors, about 75,000 people converged on 150 locations throughout the county as part of the seventh annual L.A. Arts Open House.

Best of all for the audiences, everything Saturday was free, a gift from the scores of artists who said they welcomed the opportunity to share their hobbies, passions and heritage with the public.

"I think it's wonderful for people to see dances like this, to see a side of the Philippines that is not just some Third World country," said Cathy Singson, 29, of West Hills. She's a financial analyst who performs with the Kultura Philippine Dance Company.

She and her troupe appeared at the Cal State Northridge Performing Arts Center, one of dozens of theaters, museums and auditoriums that opened their doors to the public.
Officials at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art said attendance was twice as high as normal because of the free admission. Normally, an adult ticket costs $7.

In downtown Los Angeles, a family festival drew crowds for puppet making and origami as well as music from Africa and Asia. Nearby, about 500 people showed up for concerts at California Plaza. In Long Beach, crowds surged to 1,000 at the Museum of Latin American Art.

Santa Clarita organized a street-painting festival at its Town Center Mall, where visitors could chalk up the sidewalk until their fingers were numb.

Nearly 150 visitors to the Downey Museum of Art were treated to an exhibit by Northern California sculptor Phillip Glashoff, who transforms discarded metals--from old wrenches to horseshoes--into pigs, bulls, dragons and angels.

Though the events were designed to carry celebratory themes, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 heightened awareness of the need for cultural understanding, especially of the Middle East.

In one poignant moment at the John Anson Ford Theatre in Hollywood, Jordan Elgrably, who helped establish a new Middle Eastern cultural center in Los Angeles, stood before about 200 people to introduce a Persian dance troupe and a Sufi music ensemble.

"When you think of the Middle East today, you think of . . ." he paused, then continued: "You think of terrorists, the Taliban maybe, people in bunkers." The audience fell silent. "But today," he said, "we are here to think of the Middle East as a cradle of cultures. These performers show the wealth of Mideast culture in Southern California."

That was just the reason Jim Cruess, his wife, Juana Ventura, and their three children drove from Placentia to Hollywood for the performance. They wanted a day of culture and wanted to better understand people from the Middle East.

"For all that is going on in the world today, for all the headlines right now, the real work of bridge building can be done through the arts," Cruess said. "It's part of our responsibility as parents to expose our children to this."

'This Music Reached Into My Soul'

As the male vocalist of the Lian Ensemble sang melodic poetry in Persian, many in the crowd were moved.

"I had no idea what he was saying, but it was clearly powerful," said Petty Officer Brian Arrington, 32, on weekend leave from his Navy duty in San Diego. "I just wanted to come here and be a local citizen and enjoy culture outside of a military assignment."

Arrington said he has been stationed in the United Arab Emirates, but the many restrictions on what people are allowed to do there left few opportunities to learn the culture.
After the performance, Tannaz Laghaee, an Iranian American, rose to her feet in cheers and applause. "This music reached into my soul," she said.

For many, L.A. Arts Open House provided a full-day itinerary with many cross-town options. Glenn Lopez and his family settled on activities at the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica and later traveled to a dance performance in Canoga Park. "There were all these events within 20 minutes of our house," said Lopez, who came from his Fairfax district home with his wife, Anai, and children Niete, 6, and Aaron, 4. "We are just settling down [in Los Angeles] and the fact that it's free is a big plus."

Said his wife: "We wanted to be everywhere, but we can't."

Numerous small rooms and two small stages around the art complex offered everything from modern dance to music and poetry--even a bake sale to benefit women in Afghanistan.

The programs started at noon--with adults and children trickling in slowly. But by early afternoon the crowd had grown to a couple hundred enjoying the festival atmosphere.
Eileen Moskowitz and her 9-year-old daughter, Mariah, decided against a theater experience and instead drove to the Haramokngna American Indian Culture Center in the Angeles National Forest.

Sharing Ancient Traditions

Native Americans from all over Southern California showed up to teach and share their songs, stories and traditions.

Rudy Ortega Jr. stood in the shade of a sycamore tree, singing songs passed down to him from older members of the Fernandeno Tataviam tribe. Jacque Tahuka-Nun'ez, wearing a skirt of willow bark strips, traveled from San Juan Capistrano to share stories about the creation of stars told by her people, the Acjachemen.

Mariah, an animal lover, said she picked the Native American event because "they want to save nature." Eileen, recently laid off from her job as an educational media producer, appreciated not having to pay to expose her daughter to the array of cultural offerings.

At the Stages Theater in Hollywood, the Towne Street Theatre company put on a two-act reading of a play about Sally Hemings, one of Thomas Jefferson's slaves who is thought to have been involved in a love affair with him and borne one or more of his children.

Audience members listened as the 11-member cast read the tale about racial and class struggles two centuries ago. Kim Dyer of Los Angeles took her 8-year-old son, Christian Bouldin.

"I saw this on the list of open house events and I knew I wanted to take him," Dyer said. "I wanted him to be exposed to the story."
     
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Stopped Talks: Intifada II has put a halt to local efforts of Arab-Jewish dialogue
By Tom Tugend. Jewish Journal. June 29, 2001

The headlines in the Los Angeles Times track the fever chart of relations between the city’s large Jewish and Muslim communities:
"Arabs, Jews [in L.A.] Hoping Peace Will Blossom" (Jan. 22, 1988).
"Terrorism in Israel Strains Muslim-Jewish Ties in L.A." (March 25, 1996).
"Jews, Muslims Agree About Disagreeing" (Nov. 30, 1988).
"Muslims, Jews Set to Unveil Code for Debate" (December, 6 1999).
And currently:
"Muslim-Jewish Group Breaks Off Dialogue" (June 6, 2001).
"Jewish-Muslim Group to Resume Dialogue" (June 19, 2001).
These days, the dialogue is on hold – though once again organizers are trying to revive what’s left of years of intermittent effort.

Attempts at creating a viable relationship between representatives of some 600,000 Jews and 500,000 Muslims in Southern California go back almost as far as the 1948-49 war between Israelis and Arabs, and, as the headlines show, have reflected the fortunes of peace and war in the Middle East.

The parallel is not as self-evident as it seems. Time and time again, Jewish and Muslim/Arab leaders here have vowed to concentrate on such local issues as ethnic discrimination and interreligious ties, and to ignore the intractable and divisive conflicts of the Middle East.

Even now, as local leaders seek to repair the break in the dialogue, the talk is again about emphasizing educational and youth programs and fighting hate crimes.
The domestic-issues approach has its defenders and successes, if only in preventing a complete breakdown in communications between the two communities, or even outright confrontations.

But looking at the record over decades, Jewish and Muslim Angelenos have not been able to escape the impact of events in the Middle East.

"Originally, we tried to concentrate on concerns close to home, but we soon realized that we couldn’t ignore the elephant in the living room," says Rabbi Allen Freehling of University Synagogue, spokesman for a group of progressive colleagues who have been a mainstay of the various dialogues.

Rabbi James Rudin, for decades the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) national point man for interreligious affairs, observed in a 1996 interview: "The state of encounter [in the United States] is almost in direct proportion to the situation in the Middle East.

"If there is real movement on both sides [in the Middle East], the fever drops and there is movement here. When you have a terrorist bombing or a Jew shooting Muslims at prayer ... there is a cessation of contact, or strained and awkward contact."

Even Rabbi Alfred Wolf, considered the progenitor of Jewish-Muslim relations in Los Angeles, acknowledges the problem.

"In the early 1970s," he recalled in a later interview, "we had a very good dialogue going, which was terminated by the 1973 Yom Kippur War."

Wolf was the first in a continuing line of Wilshire Boulevard Temple rabbis to initiate contacts with Muslim religious leaders. Largely at his initiative, Muslims were invited in the late 1940s to join Protestant, Catholic and Jewish clergy in the Inter-Religious Council of Southern California.

The following years and decades were marked by a succession of often bewildering groupings, working for Jewish-Muslim understanding.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, they included such established organizations as the AJC, American Jewish Congress, National Conference of Christians and Jews, and the American Friends Service Committee.

The 1980s were a particularly fruitful decade, with the establishment of such groups as the Foundation for Middle East Communication, catalyzed by Beverly Hills attorney Michael Lame and the late TV producer Zev Putterman.

A successor group was the Middle East Cousins Club of America, which, in one well-publicized event, planted two olive trees adjacent to City Hall.

"Side by side we plant these trees, and side by side our peoples will flourish," intoned the master of ceremonies, radio and television host Casey Kasem, for years an active Arab member of various dialogues.

By 1987, a Los Angeles Times report estimated that some 60 dialogue groups were operating throughout the United States.

Another period of cooperation occurred, somewhat ironically, during the 1990-91 Gulf War, when The Jewish Federation, Anti-Defamation League and AJC publicly protested government harassment of Arab Americans.

The famous 1993 handshake between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn triggered another spurt in Muslim-Jewish joint talks and ventures.

One was Builders for Peace, a high-level effort to mobilize Jewish and Arab capital and know-how in the United States to build up the economy of the West Bank and Gaza, but which foundered after a couple of years.

The most recent incarnation has been the Jewish-Muslim Dialogue, which in December 1999, forged a well-publicized code of ethics. It bound some 80 signatories to denounce all terrorism and hate crimes, promote civil dialogue, and avoid mutual stereotyping and incitement.

In the last 50 years, an impressive array of men and women have devoted themselves to bettering Muslim-Jewish relations. Some have stayed the course, while others became burned out or moved on to other causes.

On the Muslim/Arab side, the senior representative and one of the two key players has been Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesman for the Islamic Center of Southern California. The Egyptian-born physician has devoted himself to relations with the Jewish community, from almost the moment he arrived in Los Angeles in 1971. His partner is Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Born in Iraq, Al-Marayati is media-savvy, the focus of frequent controversies and the most visible Arab figure in Los Angeles.

Don Bustany was a leading Arab spokesman in the 1980s and early ‘90s. He helped form the Arab-Jewish Speakers Bureau, whose mixed teams spoke frequently at synagogues and, to a lesser extent, at churches and mosques.

On the Jewish side, following in Wolf’s footsteps, has been a group of predominantly liberal and Reform rabbis, including Freehling, Leonard Beerman of Leo Baeck Temple, Neil Comess-Daniels of Beth Shir Sholom, John Rosove of Temple Israel of Hollywood, Chaim Seidler-Feller of the UCLA Hillel Council, Harvey J. Fields and Steven Z. Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple, and Steven B. Jacobs of Kol Tikvah.

An early lay voice was that of Susan Weissman, an attorney and mediator, who in the early 1980s formed her own dialogue group, consisting initially of 15 Jews and two or three Arabs.

Gradually, more Arabs joined, while Jews dropped out, because "they had come thinking they would set the Arabs straight, but they didn’t get that," Weissman observes.
Like some other activists, she discontinued her intensive involvement after the 1993 Rabin-Arafat handshake, mainly in the optimistic belief that her mission had been accomplished.

A recent effort off the beaten track is the Open Tent Middle East Coalition, which sponsors joint Arab-Jewish cultural events and discussions. It was founded by Jordan Elgrably, a Sephardi community activist who faults the Jewish community for lack of self-criticism and failure to acknowledge Arab grievances.

Elgrably, sounding a not-uncommon note of frustration, likens the job of dialogue facilitator to that of King Sisyphus of Greek mythology, who was condemned to forever roll a heavy stone uphill, only to see it tumble down again as soon as it reached the peak.

One of the main current activists is Arthur Stern, a Holocaust survivor who after a brilliant engineering and business career in the United States, has turned his considerable talent and energy to Jewish community causes.

The role of The Jewish Federation, the official voice of organized L.A. Jewry, has been generally cautious and somewhat ambivalent.

Its rabbinical arm, the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, has maintained a hands-off policy vis-a-vis Jewish-Arab dialogues.

"We have members on the far left and far right," notes Rabbi Lawrence Goldmark, the board’s former president and acting director. "We could not function if we had to deal with controversial issues that could cause us to implode."

The Federation’s main arm in working with other ethnic and religious groups is its Jewish Community Relations Committee (JCRC). During his 1985-1995 tenure as JCRC director, there were "sporadic moments of engagement," recalls Dr. Steven Windmueller.

A few years later, the JCRC formally joined the ongoing Jewish-Muslim Dialogue in December 1999, after the latter had promulgated its code of ethics.

Elaine Albert, now the JCRC’s associate director, attended monthly meetings of the group until March of this year, when JCRC withdrew.

The reasons given for the withdrawal by Albert and JCRC Executive Director Michael Hirschfeld were an internal restructuring of the JCRC, escalating terrorism in the Middle East, and the imbalance of Jewish to Muslim representation at meetings and retreats.

The latter point is frequently mentioned by critics of the dialogue, where Jewish participants not uncommonly outnumber Muslims and Arabs by a ratio of 6 to 1 or 10 to 1.

One prominent mainstream Jewish community leader, who asked not to be identified, said: "We are constantly meeting with the same two or three Arab professionals, always Hathout and Al-Marayati, who say one thing to us and another when they talk to their own groups.

"Where are the Arab lay or religious leaders? Are these two men really leaders in their community? When The Jewish Federation speaks, it represents 50,000 Jews. But who do they represent?"

The most outspoken mainstream critic of the dialogue is Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, Western regional director of the AJC.

Greenebaum says he worked with the Islam Center and the Muslim Public Affairs Council between 1990 and 1995, but then concluded that neither organization "has been operating in an open, honest way since the Oslo accords. At some point, their MO changed from interest in interreligious work to political activism."

Greenebaum believes that in the last few years, the local Muslim community has become more fundamentalist, with accompanying intimidation of middle-of-the-road groups.

Al-Marayati responds to one point of the criticism by saying that the Jewish leaders themselves have failed to reach out to other organizations within the Muslim community.

He adds, "We are much less organized and structured than the Jewish community, to begin with. The few leaders who are willing and able to devote the time and effort to dialogues — including Aslam Abdullah, editor of the Minaret, and Muzzammil Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Society of North America and its Orange County chapter — are overwhelmed by demands on their time."

Other members of the Arab community, as well as Jewish dialogue participants, warmly defend the two men.

"Dr. Hathout and Salam are best equipped to speak for the Arab and Muslim communities," says Kasem. "They are both very honest and able."

Another point of contention, this one mainly intra-Arab, is whether a dialogue with the Jews should be led by a Muslim or specifically Arab organization.

The point is important because, for one, the local Arab population is about evenly split between Christians and Muslims. For another, Arabs represent only a minority within the Muslim community, being outnumbered by immigrants from Southeast Asia and by African American converts.

"The conflict in the Middle East is at the center of our dialogue; without it there would be no friction and need to dialogue with the Jewish community," says Bustany.

"But the conflict is not a religious one, it’s a matter of real estate," he adds. "What do Muslims from Indonesia and the Philippines care about Palestine?"

Al-Marayati rebuts Bustany’s point by arguing that the status and future of Jerusalem "is a central concern of all Muslims everywhere."

The Muslim-Jewish Dialogue is now on hold, at least temporarily, after the Arab side called for a time-out in early June. "After the F-16 raids, we needed a cooling-off period to deal with our own community," says Hathout. "It had nothing to do with the Jewish community." At a subsequent meeting between the two Arab leaders with a group of rabbis and the Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA), it was noted that most of the principal players would be away for part of the summer and that regular meetings should resume in the fall.

On the JCRC side, Chairman Ozzie Goren convened a meeting of five former chairs of the organization, who were asked to submit suggestions at a future date on the format and content of a resumed dialogue.

With all the ups and downs of dialogues past and present, there remains a vital core of supporters on both sides who believe in the intrinsic value of their efforts and hope devoutly that they might eventually serve as role model for the combatants in the Middle East.

Douglas Mirell, president of the PJA, says: "In the dialogues with Muslims, as in similar dialogues with African Americans and Latinos, what is critically important is not so much what is said, but that they take place at all. There is great value in the dialogue qua dialogue."

Arthur Stern, who steps nimbly between his roles as JCRC vice chairman, PJA vice president and private citizen, observes:
"Some people may label me as naive, but I believe we should never stop talking. As long as we talk, there is a chance of understanding. When we stop talking, we fall back on rumors and stereotypes."

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Music Review; Middle Eastern Program Puts Focus on Inclusiveness
Don Heckman. Los Angeles Times. Jun 25, 2001. pg. F.4

The Middle East has been the center of cultural ferment for millenniums, from the dominance of Egypt to the campaigns of Alexander to the incursions of the Crusaders and beyond. It also has been a perpetual flash point, ignited by dreams of empire, ethnicity, religion and oil.

The contradictions between those two factors — cultural connectivity and seemingly endless conflicts — underscored a concert of world music and dance Saturday night at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre. The program, which featured flamenco dancer Laila and guitarist Adam del Monte, oud player John Bilezikjian, singer Marysol Fuentes and the Ney Nava Dance Theatre, was a benefit supporting the creation of the Levantine Center.

The center is described by its organizers, the Open Tent Middle East Coalition, as "a new paradigm for Middle Eastern cultures and coexistence." Scheduled to open in 2002 (at a site yet to be identified), it reportedly will include a performance space, art gallery, conference room, workshops, bookstore, cafe and office space for nonprofit groups representing Arab, Israeli, Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Greek, Kurdish and other cultures, including Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews.

Cultural "coexistence," at least, was fully present in the opening half of the program, "El Azahar" (named after the orange blossoms of El-Andalus), an exploration of flamenco and Arab music by the Del Montes and Bilezikjian. The eight selections ranged from a solea and buleria to a rumba and Del Monte's own invention, sambule, a fusion of samba, flamenco and jazz. Joining the featured artists in various numbers were bassist Asaf del Monte, percussionist Patric Olivier, guitarist Tony Ybarra, flutist Roberto Dergara and the Del Montes' two sons, Enosh and Shaul, playing violin and cello.

The most compelling aspect of "El Azahar," however, was the marvelously creative coexistence between the dancing of Laila del Monte and her husband's playing. She began with a classic flamenco in the opening "Solea" and concluded with a stunning blend of flamenco and Middle Eastern movements in the closing "Solea por Buleria." Her rhythmic stamping became a virtual percussion instrument, exchanging passages with his guitar, initiating new segments in the music, emerging into the foreground as a stunning display of physical and musical virtuosity.

Adam del Monte's performance, especially in tandem with the passionate singing of Fuentes, tapped into the rich tradition of flamenco before moving easily into more fusion-oriented passages. A duet with Bilezikjian on "Los Bilbilikos" reached into the Sephardic roots of flamenco. "Rumba," with the two Del Monte sons participating, gathered in Armenian influences. And both "Sambule" and "Chalaco" blended jazz, flamenco and South American rhythms into a cultural coexistence reaching beyond the Middle East and into the New World.

The program's second half, titled "Halparkeh" ("dance" in Kurdish) was created by Iranian-born choreographer-dancer Shida Pegahi as a "personal history," an effort to inform her American audience of the diverse nature of her culture. Its eight selections were performed by Pegahi's Ney Nava Dance Theatre and the Ney Nava Junior Dance Ensemble in styles ranging from classical Persian to contemporary dance.   

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Los Angeles; Jews of Diverse Views Rally for Israeli Solidarity; Demonstration: Groups from a cross-section of the community turn out, 5,000 strong, in effort to regain the public relations offensive.
LARRY B. STAMMER. Los Angeles Times. Jul 23, 2001. pg. B.3

In a show of solidarity with Israelis, about 5,000 members of Los Angeles' Jewish community rallied Sunday to reaffirm their support in the face of ongoing violence, economic hardship and demoralization in the Holy Land.

The rally was billed as a "people to people" demonstration, rather than a more controversial display of political support for the Israeli government, now led by conservative Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It drew participants from groups representing a cross- section of the Jewish community, including those that normally would be at odds over Middle East political issues. The turnout was about half the minimum 10,000 participants organizers expected.

"It's very important for a community that has so many different views about the peace process, about religious observance, to speak with one voice," U.S. Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles) said Sunday.

About 60 of the 5,000 present, including Jews and non-Jews, shouted other points of view. Some supported an independent Palestinian state, others criticized Sharon for not taking stronger measures against Palestinian terrorists. Others simply called for peace.

"We want the Jewish community to see another message — that Arabs and Jews are not enemies and that we have been misled by the peace process," said one of the counterdemonstrators, Jordan Elgrably, of Open Tent, a U.S.-based interfaith coalition that advocates peace in the Middle East.

Sunday's rally was part of a national strategy by Jewish organizations to regain the public relations offensive. Some Jewish leaders fear Palestinians have been reaping propaganda benefits. About 600 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed in 10 months of sporadic violence that has frustrated the peace process. A rally similar to Sunday's is planned in New York in September.

Many trace Israel's faltering image to the dramatic videotape of a Palestinian father hovering over his young son, trying to shield him from Israeli gunfire in Gaza last September. The 12-year-old boy, Mohammed Al-Durrah, was killed.

Most talk and outrage Sunday was directed at the terrorist bombing June 1 that killed 21 Israeli students at a Tel Aviv nightclub.

"For the rest of our lives there will be an empty place in our hearts, a place that belongs just to them," said their classmate, Olga Bakharakh, 17, a Russian-born Israeli whom the organizers flew to Los Angeles for the rally.

Gathering in front of the Wilshire Boulevard headquarters of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, the crowd sang Jewish songs and waved Israeli and American flags. Others pumped placards up and down. "Americans for Peace Now. Secure the Dream," said one. "A Time to Hate. A Time for War," said another carried by a member of activist Irv Rubin's militant Jewish Defense League.

"Those of us who have traveled to Israel are very appalled by what we've seen," John Fishel, president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said in an interview. "There's a growing sense of anxiety and in some cases fear. We believe very strongly it is time for all of us who care to stand up and speak loudly and say to Israel, 'We're with you.' "

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, speaking by telephone from Israel, told a breakfast gathering before the rally that Israel needs the support of Los Angeles Jews, the second largest Jewish community in the United States.

"We are going through trying times," he said. "But there is no room to lose our hope. We shall overcome. We shall overcome in the same way we did in the past, by being together, by seeing clearly our aims, by working ceaselessly to achieve them."

Numerous Los Angeles speakers Sunday charged that Palestinians are cynically using their children in the battle over the occupied areas of Gaza and the West Bank.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) told the crowd, "We know that Israel is dedicated to peace. But we turn on our television set and we see a horrendous campaign of vilification as one side sends its own children charging into barbed wire hoping for a tragic death of their own children so long as it appears in front of CNN cameras. We are not fooled!"

Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple decried deaths of young Palestinians in the name of God.

The accusations were denied Sunday by Ahmad Sakr, a member of the board of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California and president of the Foundation of Islamic Knowledge.

"Nobody is telling them [youths] to go and die," Sakr said in an interview. "But they have seen. They are out of jobs, out of school, out of money and out of home. What do you expect from them, except they have nothing to defend themselves except pebbles in front of them."

Rabbi Marvin Heir, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, reminded the crowd that it was Israel that offered an unprecedented peace package to Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat at Camp David last July and that Arafat had turned it down.

Despite brief skirmishes, no injuries or arrests were reported.

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Seminar to Focus on Achieving Mideast Peace
Larry B. Stammer. Los Angeles Times. May 19, 2001. pg. B.13

A daylong seminar on ways to bring peace to the Holy Land will be held Sunday at UCLA by a coalition of liberal Jewish peace activists, Muslim organizations and Christians. "The Israeli-Palestinian Crisis: New Conversations for a Pluralist Future" will be sponsored by the Open Tent Middle East Coalition.

Speakers will include Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian Christian and historian who is director of the University of Chicago's Center for International Studies; Ella Habiba Shohat, professor of media and cultural studies at City University of New York; Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine; Salam Al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; Knesset member Marcia Freedman; author Marc Ellis; peace activist Gila Svirsky of Israel; and Jordan Elgrably, director of Open Tent.

Co-sponsors include Ed Asner, Americans for Peace Now, the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA, Hillel Council at UCLA, Casey Kasem, the Muslim Women's League, the National Lawyers Guild, the New Israel Fund and the Progressive Jewish Alliance. The seminar will be at 10 a.m. in Room 184 of Kinsey Hall. Admission is $20 general, $10 for students and seniors. A dinner buffet and concert follows, at $15. (323) 650-3157 or http://www.opentent.org.

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Requiem for a Dream?
Will organizations promoting Jewish-Arab coexistence buckle under Mideast pressure?
By Michael Aushenker. Jewish Journal. May 18. 2001

Deanna Armbruster doesn’t pull any punches.

The Los Angeles-based executive director of a Jewish-arab cooperative village in Israel is used to promoting an often-controversial cause, but these days her job has become even tougher. "We have been greatly impacted, obviously," she said the Los Angeles-based executive director of American Friends of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam. Neve Shalom, midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, has served as an ethnic-relations experiment for nearly two decades.

About 300 Jewish and Palestinian children attend the village’s School of Peace each year. The intent, of course, is part of a long-term investment to improve frayed cultural ties between both communities.

So it was dismaying for Armbruster last fall when, during a visit with the residents of Neve Shalom, she learned that violence had broken out between Jews and Palestinians just beyond what in English translates as "oasis of peace."

"It was extremely stressful," she recalled. "People were up all night watching their television sets. The mood was somber."

The idealistic promise symbolized by this model village seemed to be collapsing all around them, reverting to bloody conflict.

What Armbruster wouldn’t realize until her return to Los Angeles was how uphill the effort to keep American Jews committed to her cause would become. As her organization and other nonprofit enterprises devoted to Israeli-Palestinian coexistence have discovered, the latest intifada in Israel has had a ripple effect on the morale and fundraising efforts of American organizations that support lofty mission statements of unity and peace. Neve Shalom’s L.A. headquarters, for example, was forced to drop plans for both its biannual fundraising events.

"In the past, we have had events bringing two sides together," said Myer Sankary, director of Neve Shalom’s national board and chairman of the L.A. chapter. "We’re not doing any public events; the emotions are too raw. We’re going to foundations and individuals, but right now it’s getting hard to get individuals to get up and take the heat."

"There’s been concern over the village and the school" among L.A. benefactors, Armbruster added. "Either friends have stood by and continued to support us more avidly than before, or they have stepped back and said that they need more time to understand the situation."

American Friends of Neve Shalom is not the only group reeling from the situation in Israel. Others have also been feeling the pinch of skittish donors or have had to redirect their efforts as they adjust to the deteriorating situation overseas.

Melisse Lewine-Boskovich, who with her Palestinian counterpart, Rula Hamdan, directs Peace Child Israel in Tel Aviv, recently made a stop at Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Complex to talk about her program. While the work that Peace Child does — uniting Israeli and Palestinian 10th-graders in a yearlong, performing-arts-based cultural exchange — was inspiring, attendance at Boskovich’s West Coast appearance was underwhelming, drawing fewer than 10 people, including restless kids and a few adults who nodded off during the presentation.

"People are incredibly depressed," said Boskovich, speaking of the mood back in Israel. "I don’t call it a setback. It’s an awakening."

Evidently, that mood has dampened the fundraising spirit. Boskovich commented that four of Peace Child Israel’s 10 workshops closed this year, due to a lack of funding.

L.A. resident Judith Jenya founded and runs the Global Children’s Organization (GLO), which provides cross-community summer programs for children from conflict-torn environments. Since 1992, nearly 2,000 children have taken part in her camps, which include Protestant/Catholic programs throughout Ireland and a camp at a Bosnian/Croatian site. A day before she was due to fly to Bosnia to oversee the latter project (now in its ninth year), Jenya discussed with the Journal her organization’s one aborted mission. Originally slated for last November, "Children of the Red Sea" was supposed to have brought Israeli and Palestinian youth together. Unfortunately, parents from both communities made creation of the camp a logistical nightmare.

"It became very, very hard to get people to cooperate, from all sides. People were incredibly frightened about crossing a border," said Jenya, 60. As a Jew and a Holocaust survivor’s daughter, she felt this disappointment very deeply.

"There’s definitely been a breakdown of communication" between Arabs and Jews, reported Jordan Elgrably, who, with Munir Shaikh, co-directs Open Tent, a local Arab-Jewish cultural coalition. For a decade now, the part-Moroccan, part-Jewish Elgrably has been on the forefront of working to remedy stilted relations between members of what he has tagged as "a dysfunctional family." In fact, Open Tent will hold its latest forum at UCLA this weekend (see information on page 46), when progressive Jewish and Palestinian speakers will engage on panels discussing issues affecting both communities.

Elgrably believes that the need for forums such as Open Tent and the recent JUNITY conference in Chicago is more crucial than ever. As he sees it, the deterioration of ties between Arabs and Jews will continue as long as both sides avoid doing the real social interaction required — especially mainstream American Jews, who, he said, continue to view Israel as an underdog rather than an oppressor. From his experience, most Palestinians have made peace with the idea of a Jewish state.

"They’re not thinking we’re going to destroy Israel one day," Elgrably said. "They just want to have their homeland and move on."

Sankary echoed Elgrably’s sentiments regarding what he calls a ham-fisted Sharon administration and post-Oslo failures. But politics, he observed, are almost irrelevant.

"What about the people who have to live there?" he asked. "How would you feel living there? Have we done everything possible? Are we going to blame the Arabs for this situation, or are we going to do something about it?"

Some organizations supporting coexistence programs nevertheless maintain that recent violence has not dampened fundraising efforts.

The Shefa Fund, a national Jewish progressive grant-allocating foundation that invests in institutions such as the Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Develop-ment in Israel, will embark on creating a local presence beginning June 1. Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, who directs the Shefa Fund out of its Philadelphia national offices, told the Journal, "We really haven’t had much of an impact. They were contributing before, and they’re giving now. Our particular experience is that there continues to be a solid commitment toward efforts for peace and building bridges between Palestinians and Israel."

Liebling noted that his nonprofit group raised $80,000 to publicize its Olive Trees for Peace campaign and recently ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times calling for Israel to end its West Bank occupation and for Palestinians to stop the violence. Liebling emphasized the importance of continuing to reach out to Palestinians and said he hopes to see Shefa’s effort to replant trees destroyed in Palestinian villages by Israeli tanks culminate next Tu B’Shevat with a formal West Bank ceremony.

Regional Director David Moses of Los Angeles’ New Israel Fund (NIF) chapter confirmed that, regarding funds at his organization, "some were reallocated internally, some externally, but we’ve had no decrease in contributions." The mission of the group, a grant-making entity, is to promote pluralism and equal rights in Israel.

Then there was last month’s successful gathering at Stanley Sheinbaum’s Brentwood home, which attracted a nexus of high-profile people, including American Jewish Committee National President Bruce Ramer and OLAM’s David Suissa. Ostensibly, the draw at this private reception was Oslo accords negotiator Dennis Ross. Yet it was the pair of Israeli teenagers who followed, speaking in broken English, who made the biggest impact. Aviv Liron and Adham Rishmawi, both 18 and citizens of Israel, were on hand as ambassadors of Seeds of Peace, a neutral, apolitical program that each year brings 400 Israeli and Palestinian teenagers to an Otisfield, Maine, summer camp in an effort to put historical baggage aside and encourage social bonding.

Both Rishmawi, an Arab, and Liron, a Jew, held their audience spellbound with personal accounts of discrimination and suffering in Israel and testimony of the constructive work being done at Seeds. The teenagers’ impassioned endorsement apparently resonated with listeners. According to project coordinator Michael Wallach, Seeds of Peace has been able to sustain its annual $2 million budget, despite the events of the past few months, thanks to continued enthusiastic support from individual donors and small foundations. (Next week’s Circuit column will have more details on this event.)

If anything, say organizers, the events that have unfolded in the Middle East since Sept. 29 have added a deeper layer of meaning to causes bent on Jewish-Arab unity.

"We believe that coexistence is inevitable, and the sooner these issues are dealt with, the sooner these conditions will dissipate," Moses said. And key to bringing about the dissipation will be education and awareness.

"The attitude, from our perspective, [is that] there is more demand than ever before for coexistence programs," Sankary said. "The hostilities and violence are the result of the failure to do what we’ve been saying — that is, to educate both sides."

Locally, nonprofit arms of NIF, Neve Shalom, and other organizations have been countering their PR problems through a more vigorous dissemination of information and updates to prospective benefactors.

"On the one hand, we can look where we have to go. On the other hand, where we’ve come," said Moses of NIF, which supports such enterprises as the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (Israel’s ACLU), Arab Women Leadership Training, and Lel-Khwarezmi, which assists college-bound Bedouins. "We need to continue to address these issues, to empower these people and advocate on their behalf, so they can be more productive members of Israeli society. If Arab kids have a stronger education, they are more likely to have higher education."

Those involved in promoting coexistence ventures are understandably defensive about being portrayed as naive or idealistic.

"What we do is not naive," said Wallach, the son of Seeds of Peace founder John Wallach. "My father was a reporter for 30 years. He wrote books on the Middle East. Not all of the kids that come through our program become best friends, but a good amount become very good friends. That’s real. That’s not fake, that’s not phony."

Americans for Peace Now (APN) founder and policy director Mark Rosenblum insisted that, judging from past APN conferences between Jews and Arabs, "many relationships were forged from these dialogues. They put brakes on violence and incitement and stereotyping."

"The sad fact is that peace advocates are lumped together as post-Zionists," said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of UCLA Hillel and no stranger to Los Angeles’ progressive Jewish circles. "Coexistence is not a foreign term that comes out of the left as a critique or as a contrary force. It’s the very essence of Zion and of establishing and sustaining the State of Israel."

Ultimately, those in the grass-roots trenches admit that they don’t have all the answers. Yet they are confident that they are raising the right questions and promoting the right actions.

To accusations of being Pollyannaish, Sankary responds that the 20,000 kids who have passed through Neve Shalom’s School for Peace over the years represent a good start in replacing the cycle of hate with a cycle of peace.

In fact, Neve Shalom supporters see plenty of reason to keep hope alive. In October, at the Neve Shalom village, something positive emerged during all of the tumult. For the first time, the community’s Arab and Jewish members took a proactive stand, organizing more than 200 people to demonstrate in Tel Aviv in the name of peace. And, as if by a miracle, the village of Neve Shalom Wahat al-Salam thus far has weathered the turmoil unscathed.

"Being there, it renewed my faith in the whole project," Armbruster said. "People were coming together and dialoguing. I’m not trying to present the village as some sort of utopian vision — there was real pain and emotional conflict. But they were coming together and sharing their experiences, their fears, their worries."

"It’s not easy to change people’s attitudes that they’ve harbored for a long time," Sankary said. "It’s going to take a lot of commitment from people considered idealistic."

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* Open Tent Middle East Coalition will host "The Israeli/Palestinian Crisis: New Conversations for a Pluralist Future" at UCLA on Sunday, May 20. The event will feature roundtables, entertainers, and, among other speakers, Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian historian and director of the University of Chicago’s Center for International Studies, and former Knesset member Marcia Freedman. Americans for Peace Now, New Israel Fund, Workmen’s Circle, Muslim Public Affairs Council, and UC Irvine Center for Global Conflict are among the co-sponsors.

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Israeli group Sheva to perform for peace in S.F. concert
Rebecca Rosen Lum. Jewish Bulletin. Oct. 15, 1999

As part of a World Festival of Sacred Music spurred by the Dalai Lama's call for peacemaking at the millennium, the Israeli Sheva ensemble will appear in San Francisco.

The one-night only program, on Thursday at the Great American Music Hall, is called "The Poetry of Peace." The kickoff event and pièce de resistance of the intercontinental festival was an Oct. 10 concert at the Hollywood Bowl before 17,000 people. But a sweeping series of events will take place through April 2000.

Sheva features Jewish and Arab musicians. Also performing in San Francisco will be Omar Faruk Tekbilek and special guest Jai Uttal, both bright lights in the world music genre. Jordan Elgrably, co-director of Open Tent Middle East Coalition, which is helping to organize the event, said this concert series is coming at an ideal time.

"What better way to ring in the new millennium than with a concert series featuring the best of world music reflecting an ethos and heartfelt desire for an end to hostilities in the Middle East?"

One of five linked international festivals, the World Festival of Sacred Music represents "nothing less than a call to revive the spirit of cooperation and cross-pollination represented by the Golden Age of Spain, when Jews, Muslims and Christians together created the most creative and advanced society in the world," Elgrably added.

That's easy for him to say: Musicians speak their own language.

That said, the series of events promises to be vibrant indeed. The producers have brought in powerhouse performers.

Poetry readings, a film festival, musical and spiritual workshops, a portable mural painted by Arabic and Jewish artists and a documentary called "The Mending Cloth" are part of the plan.

The event is co-sponsored by the Israel Center of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, the Consulate General of Israel, Gate Productions and Ivri-NASAWI, the New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International.

Sheva shares the festival aim: to spur peace through "transformative world music from the ancient cultures of the Middle East."

If music can put the message over, Sheva can do it. The ensemble of musicians and vocalists, all at the top of their form, have achieved a unison that is deceptively graceful.

The CD "Day and Night" is beautifully engineered. A diversity of sounds includes the commandingly reedy migwiz, Hebrew chants, trilling flute and percussion that renders the drums melodic.

Much of what claims to be influenced by world music renders traditional scales tepid by soaking them in a warm bath of midi rhythms, giving it all the power of a televised campfire.

This group, on the other hand, has the vibrancy that comes with acoustic instruments.

One question arises, however. Early discographers recorded music that could be considered as powerful as Sheva's. And, some would say, musicians and artists share a language the world over that enables them to communicate more effectively than diplomats.

As the Renewal leader Rabbi Yacov Gabriel wrote, "In some ways they do a better job of revealing the Israeli soul than new sound bytes ever could."

But if beautiful music alone were enough to bring about peace, wouldn't it have happened by now?

"The whole movement of world music today -- fusion -- is different," said Vavi Toran, director of cultural and educational resources for the S.F.-based JCF. "You go to a cafe in London, eat Indonesian food, your waiter is Japanese. A new culture is emerging that is universal, and this is a path to peace."

Sheva will perform during "The Poetry of Peace" concert at 8 p.m. Thursday at the Great American Music Hall, 859 O'Farrell St., S.F. Tickets: $17, $12 for students. Information: (415) 885-0750.

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Middle East Peace Through Music
By Carvin Knowles. Jewish Journal. Oct. 8, 1999

Can music be a catalyst for peace in the Middle East? His Holiness the Dalai Lama thinks so, and he's not alone. An A-list of Jewish and Arab musicians and music experts are lending their support to "The World Festival of Sacred Music-The Americas," the Dalai Lama's mammoth concert series that begins this weekend and continues for nine days.

According to Jordan Elgrably, founder and creative director of Ivri-NASAWI (New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International ), the Dalai Lama believes musicians can set an example of cross-cultural cooperation through their harmonious behavior. Whether the performances will ease tensions in Israel remains to be seen, but their efforts should prove dazzling.

The most notable example of cross-cultural cooperation will take place at the John Anson Ford Amphitheater on Saturday, October 16 at 7:00 p.m. with the "Poetry of Peace" concert. The concert, produced by Elgrably, features Omar Faruk Tekbilek, who is of Turkish and Egyptian heritage, and the Israeli group "Sheva," that includes both Jewish and Arab members as well as guests Ali Jihad Racy, Jai Uttal and Adam del Monte. The concert is hosted by Neal Brostoff, director of Cultural Affairs for the Israeli Consulate.

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Brave New 'Worlds'Film prompts dialogue between local Arabs and Jews
By Michael Aushenker. Jewish Journal. June 11, 1999

Last week's film screening/discussion, Open Tent Middle East Coalition — part of an ongoing gesture of goodwill and communication between American Jews and Arabs — couldn't have been more timely.

The second installment of a program billed as the "Middle East Film Festival: A Cultural Conversation," Open Tent was held at UCLA's Moore Hall at a time when the school's Muslim Students Association (MSA) and Jewish Student Union (JSU) have been clashing over the execution of MSA's Anti-Oppression Week and the involvement of the university's Undergraduate Students Association Council as sponsor. This was, in fact, exactly the kind of conflict that Open Tent -- backed by organizations such as American Friends of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, Ohr HaTorah, Temple Beth Am, Suitcase, American Alliance of Arabs and Jews, and UCLA's Hillel chapter -- was designed to curtail through the promotion of cross-cultural empathy.

Screening at Open Tent was Rick Ray's 1998 documentary, "Lost Worlds of the Middle East: Israel, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon," which was followed by a conversation with an interfaith panel — Americans for Peace Now's Yiftach Levy, Lebanese filmmakers Walid Mouaness and Sabine El-Genayel, and Ray.

Originally conceived as an innocuous travelogue for The Learning Channel, "Lost Worlds" has been since rejected because of its critical voice. A neutral outsider to the Jewish, Christian and Muslim civilizations he observed, Ray nevertheless exposes the inherent absurdities informing schisms between the cultures. Nonpartisan yet critical, Ray as narrator seems chronically bemused by all manner of contradiction and cultural irony awash in the Middle East — Lebanese decadence in the midst of war-torn Beirut; two rival churches in the Galilee that claim to designate the spot where Jesus transubstantiated water to wine; and the fact that the precise locations of most events depicted in the Torah — i.e. Moses' place of death somewhere between Jordan and Israel -- cannot be verified.

From the film's first frames, Ray's viewpoint comes across in the form of a striking analogy — footage of the region's unique animals fighting for territory. In his equally blunt narration, he concludes, "In reality, this is only land, and we assign it importance."

As the filmmaker himself told his audience both on film and in person, Ray ultimately saw the Middle East as a patchwork of tribes with ancient rivalries based on, in his words, "stories slightly different, but in each people's mind, the absolute truth."

He stated that he purposely "blurred the borders" between the countries he visited to echo this observation. Ivri-NASAWI founder and event co-director Jordan Elgrably, of Sephardic Jewish descent, admitted to the audience that he was "not as clear about my identity as I was before I saw the movie."

The screening attracted a diverse crowd, and judging by those who approached the microphone to talk to the panelists — which included an African, a Latino and a past president of the Arab American Press Guild — Ray's take on the complex subject matter was well received.

Also in attendance was Palestinian playwright Saleem, who has firsthand knowledge of Arab/Israeli coexistence: his three-year relationship with an Israeli inspired his current two-act play, "Salam Shalom: A Tale of Passion," which runs through June 27 at North Hollywood's Bitter Truth Theater.

Says Saleem of Ray's film, "Because it was done by an American, it has a fresh perspective that I haven't seen before, even though I'm from that [part of the world]."
Ultimately, Open Tent proved that there is interest within local Jewish- and Arab-American communities to find civilized solutions to age-old Middle East friction. As Saleem puts it, referring to his personal relationship, "If we could have lived together in peace, why not those two nations."



Cover Story: A festival at the Skirball Cultural Center kicksoff a month of events
By Naomi Pfefferman. Jewish Journal. July 10, 1998

The expulsion of Jews from the IberianPeninsula 500 years ago brought a tragic end to a Jewish presencethat had thrived for centuries in Sepharad, the Hebrew word forSpain. It also set in motion the dispersion of Sephardicculture.

Strictly speaking, Sephardic Jewry includes thecommunities that fanned out across North Africa, Italy, Turkey, theMideast and Greece after the expulsion. But in today's colloquialsense, the word Sephardic has come to include most non-Ashkenazim.Jews from countries such as Iraq, Iran and Yemen, whose communitiesoriginate with the First and Second Temple exiles, never sojourned inSpain or Portugal, but are generally included within the broaddefinition of Sephardim. In Israel, these Jews are known as Mizrachi,usually translated as Middle Eastern or Oriental.

Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews hold fast tocustoms, food, music, liturgical style and Hebrew pronunciation,which are distinct from the Ashkenazi community. Within Sephardicsubcommunities, traditions vary widely, depending on where theculture evolved. That diversity is reflected in Los Angeles, home toan estimated 100,000 Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews.

Jordan Elgrably, Ivri-NASAWI

The author/journalist, who is half French-Moroccan, grew up in an "American, assimilated, Ashkenaziworld, with the idea that being Jewish was going to be defined byreading I.B. Singer and Saul Bellow.... By my early 20s, I felt Iwasn't whole."

Elgrably moved to France and then to his father'sancient family home of Granada, Spain, to "put the fragments backtogether." In the early 1990s, when he realized that there was no national organization to promote work by Sephardic artists and intellectuals, he decided to create Ivri-NASAWI. "Our goal is to promote a more universalist view of Judaism, with roots in the East,"he says.

 
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Crossing Over : New Sephardic group here hopes to transcend borders and dispel myths, starting with Symphony Space event.
Susan Josephs. Jewish Week. June 10, 1998

Joyce Allegra Maio doesn’t dispute the notion that Sephardic Jews know how to create terrifically spicy cuisine and throw great parties. “But in America, that’s often all that Sephardic Jews are known for,” she says. “There’s this misconception that we have little to offer on an intellectual level.”

Maio — a Jew of Egyptian ancestry who grew up in France — currently has her hands full with unmasking a plethora of misconceptions about what it means to be Jewish and not of Eastern European descent. With a group of writers, scholars and activists, she is preparing to launch the New York chapter of Ivri-Nasawi — an organization headquartered in Los Angeles that describes itself as both a proponent of Sephardi artistic/intellectual achievements and multi-cultural understanding. While Nasawi stands for the New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International, the word “Ivri” has a double meaning: it stands for both a Hebrew and a person who crosses a border.

“We want people to know that Sephardic Jews have an extremely rich culture but we don’t want [Ivri-Nasawi] to just be for Sephardim,” Maio says. “We want to be cross-cultural. The last thing we want to do is segregate people from each other.”

Ivri-Nasawi’s New York chapter will hold its kick-off event next week at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. Titled “Sephardic Voices,” the evening will include a musical performance, a tribute to the finalists and winners of the 1998 National Sephardi Literary Contest and a discussion of Sephardic/Mizrachi writers with prominent Israeli novelist Yitzhak Gormezano Goren.

Structuring the first event around an annual literary contest seemed “ideal for getting the ball rolling,” says Ammiel Alcalay, the chair of Classical Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at Queens College and one of Ivri-Nasawi’s co-founders. “We found all kinds of writers ... writers who often would be seen as exotic, odd or be completely unrecognized in a normal Ashkenazi context.”

Alcalay, who wrote “After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture” and compiled the anthology “Keys to the Garden: New Israeli Writing,” has spent the past 15 years dispelling myths about Sephardic Jewry and has often felt “isolated” in his work. With Ivri-Nasawi, “people can get together and see they have things in common,” he says. “It gives us a forum to express ourselves and for people to understand that there are other Jews in New York besides Ashkenazi ones.”

While other New York-based organizations like Sephardic House also sponsor cultural events, Ivri-Nasawi’s founders say their organization has a different approach to promoting the Sephardic legacy. Besides celebrating Sephardic culture, “we want to change perceptions of what that [Sephardic culture] is,” Alcalay says. “We want to examine the political implications of cultural diversity and we’re concerned with not just preserving culture but with culture in the making.”

Ivri-Nasawi grew out of a passionate, collective reclamation of identity. In the fall of 1996, a group of Sephardic writers who contributed to the same anthology “got to talking and we realized that there were other people like us out there,” says Jordan Elgrably, the group’s founder and creative director. “Sephardic Jews tend to walk around like three-legged fish.”

Elgrably — a 40-year-old writer of French-Moroccan and Lithuanian descent with a penchant for describing cultural dislocation in dramatic metaphors — spent the 1980s living in Europe and not realizing “I was denying my Sephardic roots. I did not realize that there was this world of writers and poets who sprung from a Sephardic tradition and that I was one of them,” he says.

Since returning to Los Angeles in 1990, Elgrably made it his mission to educate others that Sephardic Jews “did not fall off the map” after Spain expelled them in 1492. Through Ivri-Nasawi, “we’ve done a variety of events,” he says, giving examples of symposia, concerts and a Sephardic arts festival. “Today, if Jewish institutions teach anything about Sephardim, they teach it as history. We’re showing that not only have we not disappeared, we’re searching for ways to keep our culture contemporary and vibrant.
After “Sephardic Voices,” Ivri-Nasawi’s next New York event will be a multimedia evening titled “The Other Jews,” scheduled for September. Maio foresees having an annual East Coast Sephardic arts festival and hopes to produce events that will embrace “any kind of art. We’re very open to new ideas and we want to do events that may be about Sephardim but will attract people who aren’t necessarily Sephardim.”

Diane Matza, one of the judges of the literary contest and a professor of 20th Century American Literature at Utica College, believes that Ivri-Nasawi’s impact should transcend individual events. “Whenever there is some kind of panel about issues related to Jewish cultural understanding, that event should include voices from multiple perspectives,” she says. “I think the main idea with Ivri-Nasawi is to remind people that there’s not just one Jewish voice.”

For now, the biggest challenge in launching a new chapter lies in “bringing Sephardim together,” Maio says and observes how Sephardic Jews from a particular country prefer to socialize amongst themselves. “I think that’s our biggest problem.”

Elgrably agrees and recalls a fund-raising meeting he once attended for a Sephardic cause. “At one point, I looked out into the sea of faces and noticed that all the Persians sat together in one part of the room, while the Iraqis sat in another part. I was the only Moroccan Jew at the event and I felt very alone.”

Alcalay, however, believes that getting any group of Jews together “is always a challenge and not particularly unique to Sephardic Jews. If anything, Ivri-Nasawi will help people get in touch with each other,” he says.

On the other hand, Ivri-Nasawi should not be just another “kind of club,” Alcalay cautions. “It should stand as a reminder that one cannot think of Jewish or American culture without taking into account the [Sephardic] historical experience and what Sephardic voices express.”

“Sephardic Voices,” will take place on Monday, June 15, 7:30 p.m. at Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, Manhattan. Tickets are $15 and $12. Info: (212) 864-5400.

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Fast Forward
Sephardic Culture Goes Mainstream
L.A. Newspaper Aims to Expand 'Ethnic-Based Society'
Peter Savodnik. Forward. Feb. 6, 1998

'There is a schism in the Jewish people," says Jordan Elgrably, "a schism between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Our hope is to heal through education and writing." Then, he adds, "The idea that God is in each one of us, that massive oneness, is also a massive diversity."

Carving "that massive oneness" out of the rich and variegated woodwork of Jewish life is the central mission of Nasawi News, the Los Angeles-based Sephardic arts and culture newspaper Mr. Elgrably, a translator and reporter for The Los Angeles Times and The International Herald Tribune, co-founded with Victor Perara, a former editor at The New Yorker, last summer. "Our motto is 'Unity and Diversity,'" says Mr. Elgrably.

When Nasawi News - Nasawi is the acronym for the New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International - first hit the newsstands last August, Mr. Elgrably printed only 5,000 copies. On February 27, the paper - what editors describe as an attempt to transform the Jewish community's perception of the Sephardic thinker from "cultural commuter" to mainstream, Jewish intellectual - plans to print 25,000 copies of its spring issue, reaching a nationwide audience.

"In most of the Jewish publications in this country," Mr. Elgrably says, "we don't really see the broadest spectrum of the Jewish experience, in terms of Sephardic, Mizrahi and even Anousi [Crypto-Jewish] representation. What we're trying to do is present the full panoply of Jewish experience, culturally and spiritually."

Distributed at local arts festivals sponsored by Ivri-Nasawi, the group that publishes Nasawi News and the newspaper's sister magazine, Ivri - "Ivri" means "Hebrew" in Hebrew - the newspaper comes out four times yearly and features essays, editorials and stories on the American-Sephardic community. Editors emphasize the newspaper is not so much a celebration of Sephardic culture as a campaign to expand Jewish consciousness.

Mr. Elgrably notes that the word "mitzraim" (from the phrase "yetzira mitzraim," which is recited on Passover) means "Egypt" according to the Kabbalah. The central word in "mitzraim," however, is "tzar," which means "narrow." "What we wanted to do in getting out of Egypt was to get out of a narrow place, this small, fertile crescent that was in the middle of the desert," Mr. Elgrably says. "If you only look at Jewish identity in terms of an American assimilated model, you're in a narrow place. But if you want to get out of Egypt you acknowledge that Jews live in 120 countries and that the Sephardi experience has greatly contributed to who we are as a people."

The editor-at-large of Nasawi News and chair of the classical, Middle Eastern and Asian languages and cultures department at Queens College, Ammiel Alcalay, says the journal is an "address for diversity." "In America you see an Ashkenazi, Zionist-oriented kind of expression, with pockets of difference," he says, "but they're very insular."

Mr. Alcalay adds that the early history of the Jewish state reflects the deep-rooted antagonism between the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities. Unfortunately, Mr. Alcalay says, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the Ashkenazic ruling class suppressed the Sephardic community by cutting non-Ashkenazic Jews out of the leadership of Israel's core institutions - from the public school system to the Histadrut. "You're talking about an ethnic-based society which is based on what your last name is," Mr. Alcalay says.

One of the primary objectives of Nasawi News, Mr. Alcalay says, is to broaden the Jewish idea of this "ethnic-based society." This mission has been facilitated by the Middle East peace process, which, he says, underscores the connection between Arab and Jew. "After there was some access to a vocabulary in which Arab and Jew were closer to one another - that began to shift some of the sensibility here. I think that also helped to dislodge some of the old ways of interacting. There was the possibility of some reassertion [of the Sephardim]," Mr. Alcalay says.

He adds that Diane Matza's 1996 book, "Sephardic American Voices" (Brandeis University Press), gave Sephardic thinkers the opportunity to come together and share ideas. "What's threatening about us," says Mr. Alcalay, "is that if what we say has validity, then for people to know Jewish culture they would also have to know Arab culture, Middle Eastern culture." After all, he says, "most of the classical texts - from the Talmud to Saidia Gaon to Maimonides to the Kabbalah - were produced in the Middle Ages in a Middle East context."

Ms. Matza, a professor of English at Utica College, warns against walking the tightrope of identity politics. "I think that there almost has to be some element of identity politics in this movement. We're surrounded by that. But if that's the only thing it is, then it's going to die out fairly quickly."

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Sponsoring Sephardim
Naomi Pfefferman. Jewish Journal. Aug. 1, 1997

The New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International (NASAWI) is 11 months old, and already it has sponsored concerts, lectures and a Sephardic Arts Festival at the Skirball Cultural Center. This week, it publishes the debut issue of a 24-page newspaper, and later this year, it will begin a glossy bimonthly, Ivri, which means "Hebrew" and also "border-crosser."

The editors say that it's the perfect word to describe Sephardim, whose ancestors endured several diasporas.

The idea for NASAWI actually began with a border-crosser of sorts: Jordan Elgrably founded NASAWI after a worldwide search for his Jewish identity.

Elgrably, a 39-year-old author and journalist, is the son of a French-Moroccan émigré father and an American mother of Lithuanian-Jewish descent. But his mother's family regarded his father as foreign, non-Jewish, and the bias pressured the couple to divorce when Jordan was 2.

Thus, he grew up in an "American, assimilated, Ashkenazi world, with the idea that being Jewish was going to be defined by reading I.B. Singer, Philip Roth and Saul Bellow," Elgrably says. "By my early 20s, I felt I wasn't whole, and that the only way to put the fragments back together was to figure out my relationship to my parents and their pasts."
And, so, Elgrably emigrated to France, where his father's family had lived for a generation; he stayed there almost 10 years. He studied at the American University in Paris and at the Sorbonne and frequented the circles of the Sephardic intellectual elite. He then moved to Granada, Spain -- where his ancestors had lived before the 1492 expulsion — and ultimately became a correspondent for Vogue Espana.

NASAWI was born after he moved back to Los Angeles, in 1990 — specifically after he interviewed author Victor Perera for the Washington Post. Guatemalan-born Perera, like Elgrably, had written an autobiographical novel about his Sephardic roots. The two writers reflected that there was no national organization to promote work by Sephardic artists, so they decided to create one.

Since January, NASAWI has produced events such as a literary evening and a flamenco concert (yes, flamenco has Jewish roots). There will be a Sephardic multicultural evening on Aug. 28 at the Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring, a Yiddish cultural center.

"Our goal is to promote a more universalist view of Judaism, with roots in the East," Elgrably says.

A Sephardic Celebration
Ruth Stroud. Jewish Journal. Aug. 1, 1997

Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Mizrachic, or just out for a good time -- whatever their background, Jews poured into the Skirball Cultural Center last Sunday for the first annual Sephardic Arts Festival. The event was a success beyond its organizers' wildest dreams. Attendance, estimated at more than 4,000, was more than double the anticipated turnout, making it the largest audience for any one-day event since the Skirball opened in April 1996. Despite long lines for shuttle buses and food, the mood of participants — a mix of generations and ethnicities -- was festive and good-humored. Many people bumped into relatives and friends — often literally -- while searching for seats, program notes or restrooms.

"I think it was a remarkable success," said Skirball program director Dr. Robert Kirschner, who also said that he had spoken with Moroccan, Yemenite, Turkish, Iraqi, Iranian and Israeli Jews, representing both Sephardic and Mizrachic communities, as well as many Ashkenazic Jews at the festival.

Recognizing the diversity of the Jewish people and promoting the ideal of diversity as an American democratic value was part of the Skirball's mission, he said. "That's why this event was so gratifying to us."

Estimated at about 100,000, Los Angeles' Sephardic Jews are part of "a vital and emerging community," Kirschner said. The goal, he said, is to make the festival an annual tradition.

Jordan Elgrably, founder of the New Association of Sephardi/Mizrahi Artists & Writers International (NASAWI) and editor of the NASAWI News and the forthcoming Ivri magazine, estimated that about 60 percent of those attending were Ashkenazi Jews.

"I had the impression they were really excited to learn more about this kind of culture. It was a real coming-together all across the board," said Elgrably.

It was Elgrably who first approached the Skirball about producing the Sephardic Arts Festival. He also lined up the co-sponsors, which, in addition to his own organization, included the Sephardic Educational Center, the Israeli Consulate's Department for Cultural Affairs, the Consulate General of Spain, and the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity.

Elgrably also programmed the day's musical entertainment, which took place in the crowded Skirball courtyard. Among the performers were Judy Frankel, who sang Ladino songs; Adam and Laila Del Monte, who presented Sephardic flamenco music and dance; and Rivka Riki Zabary, who demonstrated Yemenite dances. Israeli singing star Yair Dalal made his Los Angeles debut, improvising on oud and guitar and singing in Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew.

The cultural diversity was equally notable in the art exhibit "Beyond Boundaries," in which artists from Spain, Turkey, Brazil, Syria, Iran, Morocco, Yemen and Iraq revealed a wide range of styles and subject matter in paintings, sculpture, an installation and print work.

Children engaged in art projects that reflected the festival theme as well -- making clay hamsas, henna paintings and Turkish puppets.

Early in the day, it was standing-room-only for "Island of Roses: The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles," the award-winning film by Gregori Viens that documents the history, customs and memories of this little-know group of Sephardic Jews on the Island of Rhodes and in Los Angeles.

The food, prepared by the Skirball culinary staff with input from the Sephardic community, included lamb and chicken kabob, falafel, salmon paella and spiced beef sausage; it ran short as the day wore on and the lines continued to grow.

"We thought it was fabulous," said Lucienne Aroesty, who was accompanied by four generations of her family -- her husband, parents, daughter and granddaughter. An Ashkenazi married to a Sephardic Jew, Aroesty said that the festival "met an incredible need in the community, and the turnout really proved it."

She hoped to see an expanded program that was more "hands-on" in the future, including food demonstrations and dance and song workshops.

"But, overall, there was a terrific feeling of community," Aroesty said. "As a Jew, it felt wonderful to be with so many other Jews that were interested in this."

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