February 7, 2012 | 10:22 pm

Proposition 8 overturn prompts hundreds to celebrate in West Hollywood [VIDEO]

Posted by Ryan Torok

People celebrating Tuesday's ruling on Proposition 8 in West Hollywood, Ca., Feb. 7. Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Alcorn

Celebrating the overturning of Proposition 8 – California’s gay marriage ban – hundreds of supporters of gay marriage gathered in West Hollywood on the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 7.

The crowd marched up and down Santa Monica boulevard, going several blocks east from the West Hollywood Library to Santa Monica boulevard and Westmount drive and back again. Police cars blocked several blocks of Santa Monica boulevard.

Speakers at the rally included Mayor John Duran of West Hollywood, Reverend Dr. Neil Thomas of Metropolitan Community Church Los Angeles, Jon Davidson, legal director for LAMBDA and Diane Abbit, a LGBT rights activist.

The ban against gay marriage was passed in 2008. Today’s ruling, a 2-1 decision by the judges of the Ninth Circuit Courthouse in San Francisco, prompted celebrations throughout the state.

However, because of a 9th Circuit rule, same sex marriages cannot resume for at least two weeks and opponents of gay marriage vowed to appeal the decision, according to Reuters.

On San Vicente boulevard, cars driving at slow speeds in rush hour honked in support. Marchers, many with face-paint, carried rainbow flags, held up signs that said “It’s Time! Marriage Equality” and chanted rallying cries like “2, 4, 6, 8, goodbye Prop 8.”

“This is what all the hard work has gone on for,” said Congregation Kol Ami member Arthur Bernstein, 49, in attendance at the rally. “This is equality, as a California, as a U.S. citizen, as a Jew.

“This gives California an opportunity to model some of the freedoms [LGBT people] get in Israel,” Bernstein, a West Hollywood resident, said, referring to the openness in Israeli society and the Israeli army toward homosexuality.

A LGBT 28-year-old named Dan, who identified as Jewish but did not want to give his last name, said he’s particularly affected by the decision. He married his friend, a girl, who’s gay, from Australia, needed temporary legal status here and was not allowed to marry her girlfriend.

“We are obviously both strong supporters of gay marriage and gay rights and equal rights for all,” Dan said. “The whole reason we’re married is because she wasn’t allowed to marry her girlfriend to stay in the country.”

In an interview with the Journal, Thomas insisted that the overturn is a decision that religious groups can get behind. “There is no one religious voice here in America,” he said. “There is a progressive voice on the side of LGBT…whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim.”

Thomas estimated that there were 300 in people in attendance. But by 7:45 p.m., only a handful of people remained by the West Hollywood Library, and talk veered toward grabbing celebratory drinks and dinner nearby.

Assembly member Mike Feuer, who was represented at the rally by his deputy chief of staff, released a statement applauding the overturn. “Today, a federal appeals court upheld our most cherished constitutional principle, that all Americans are equal under the law.”

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February 7, 2012 | 10:17 pm

George Clooney to chase Nazi-looted art

Posted by  Tom Tugend

Hollywood isn’t through yet with chasing after Nazis, nor with adapting successful Israeli productions, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

George Clooney, hot off his highly praised “The Descendants” and “The Ides of March,” has optioned, and will most likely star, in the actual story of U.S. and British art experts who tracked down the art works looted by the Nazis, mainly from Jewish owners, during World War II.

The film will be based on Robert M. Edsel’s book “The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History.” The same events were explored in the 2006 documentary, “The Rape of Europa.”

After a rash of Hollywood adaptations of Israeli television hits, Paramount Studios is preparing an American version of the 2009 Israeli comedy film, “A Matter of Size.”

The main characters are four really fat guys who, under the tutelage of a Japanese restaurant owner in Israel, turn themselves into fearsome Sumo wrestlers. David Permut will produce and Jon Turteltaub direct the U.S. adaptation.

The Israeli original starred Itzik Cohen and was directed by Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor.

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February 3, 2012 | 11:07 am

A short and fun Tu B’Shevat video: The surprising truth about trees

Posted by Andy Lipkis, founder and president of TreePeople, Los Angeles

Photo by Stefan Wernli/Wikipedia

What role could trees possibly play in the survival of Los Angeles…and of cities everywhere?

Today one of the most critical issues city dwellers face is ensuring ample clean water.  In Los Angeles, a city that must import close to 90% of the water it drinks, trees have a surprisingly critical role to play in ensuring its water supply and safety.

Thousands of years ago Rabbis, in their deepest wisdom, knew that trees are literally our life support system. In a religion focused for much of its history on survival, Jews recognized early on that when societies stopped planting and caring for trees those trees disappeared, and along with them went their soil, their food and their water.  When that happened those societies disappeared.  Perhaps that’s why we have, and continue to need a holiday with the sole purpose of remembering and appreciating trees.

Tu B’Shevat celebrates a victory over disappearance, and contains vital wisdom to remind us what’s needed not only to survive today, but to thrive.

For more information, please visit: www.treepeople.org

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January 28, 2012 | 12:30 am

In Fla., Republican Jews shower Gingrich with applause (if not necessarily votes)

Posted by Jonah Lowenfeld

Peter Weisz's sketch of GOP Presidential Hopeful and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, drawn in Delray Beach, Fla., on Jan. 27, 2012.

Delray Beach, Fla.—Speaking on Friday at an event organized by the state’s Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) chapter, former House Speaker and Republican Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich struck a mostly professorial tone as he talked foreign policy to a friendly audience.

He may have been introduced as “the next president of the United States,” but Gingrich was still trying to convince the crowd of about 300, some of whom had already pledged their support to his Republican rivals, that he deserved their support in Florida’s primary election, being held on January 31.

“If, with your help, we carry this primary,” Gingrich said, “at that point, I believe, we’ll be a long way towards the nomination.” If nominated, he continued, “I believe that we can decisively defeat President Obama in a general election.”

Gene Goldberg, who has lived in Boca Raton for 30 years, was in the room. He’s supporting former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney because he doesn’t believe Gingrich can win in November.

“I think Gingrich is—” and then Goldberg turned to his wife of 27 years to ask for the word “—explosive. I think he’s a very intelligent man and knowledgeable. But he’s too explosive.”

“I’m not into cheating on your wives,” Goldberg added. “And he did it on both of them.”

Just one week after he decisively won the South Carolina primary, Gingrich is once again the underdog in the race for the Republican nomination.

A new Quinnipiac University poll showed him trailing former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney by nine points, likely the result of Romney’s campaign vastly outspending Gingrich’s in this large and important swing state. The attack ads targeting the former speaker being aired on Florida’s expensive airwaves, paid for by Super PACs affiliated with Romney, don’t help Gingrich’s chances, either.

At the RJC event, Gingrich did take a few shots at Romney, but his speech focused mostly on familiar territory: foreign policy, and specifically the Middle East.

If elected, Gingrich promised to enact a “very different strategy for the entire region.” He said that any efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians had to wait until the Palestinians first accept Israel’s right to exist, relinquish any right of return, and “adequately quit teaching terrorism.”

“Until they do those three things, there is no peace process. This is a fraud,” Gingrich said. “And it’s a dangerous fraud because it always leads to one-sided pressure on Israel.”

When it came to Iran, Gingrich reiterated his belief that a nuclear Iran could endanger Israel. Talk of “a second Holocaust,” Gingrich said, wasn’t hyperbolic.

“If you’re going to go to Yad Vashem,” Gingrich said, referring to the Holocaust museum in Israel, “if you’re going to go around saying ‘Never again,’... then we had better act before it happens, not after it happens.”

That line, along with a few others, won a standing ovation from the audience, and there were certainly a number of Gingrich supporters in the crowd.

“I just think he’s a stronger person,” said Haley Joyce, a Gingrich backer who lives in nearby coastal town of Ocean Ridge. “He’s not a yes man.”

Joyce had just been interviewed by a journalist from another Jewish publication, and she said the conversation ended somewhat abruptly, when she told the interviewer that she wasn’t Jewish.

“This is why our country is so divided,” Joyce said, expressing frustration at those who describe themselves with hyphenated terms like Jewish-American or African-American. “Why can’t we all just be Americans?” she asked.

One Jewish-American, Peter Weisz, said he knew that many Jews were wary of supporting Gingrich, preferring to support Romney, for reasons that went beyond simple electability.

“They also feel that Romney is a little bit more, how shall I put it, acceptable taste-wise, for people that buy into a liberal agenda,” Weisz said. “He’s not as off-putting about abortion, etcetera. That’s why he’s gaining some support among Jews.”

But Weisz, who was holding a sketch of Gingrich he had made during the event (see photo), said that Jews voting for Romney should think twice about their choice.

“If you’re looking at a litmus test, which of these gentlemen is the most devoted Zionist,” Weisz said, “any investigation will tell you it’s got to be Gingrich.”

How Tuesday’s Republican primary will turn out is anyone’s guess. The first three states to vote turned up three different winners. The candidates have met for 19 televised debates. And yet the Republican party’s voters remain divided.

Romney is often referred to as the candidate of the Republican party’s establishment, and the endorsements he’s racked up are evidence of that. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who ran for President in 2008, has been stumping for Romney in Florida and Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, another surrogate, was actually present at Gingrich’s RJC event. I heard one Romney advertisement playing on a Spanish-language radio station that featured endorsements from prominent Latino elected officials, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. 

But Adam Hasner, a former majority leader in the Florida State Legislature who is running for U.S. Senate, was also in the room on Friday, and he said he was, like many Republican voters, “still uncommitted.”

“I am in good company,” Hasner said, “because [former Florida Governor] Jeb Bush and [Florida Sen.] Marco Rubio have also not publicly declared which Presidential candidate they’re supporting,”

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January 26, 2012 | 3:00 am

Learning from Hitler’s lawyers

Posted by Jonah Lowenfeld

Imagine the following scenario: Your country is attacked. The attack comes suddenly, without much warning, a direct hit on the central seat of power. As fear and rage bubble just beneath the surface, a controversial political leader, who represents the preferred choice of maybe half of the country’s citizens, takes over the country’s most powerful office. The country’s very identity is under threat, the leader says, a threat from an enemy that must be defeated. This new leader declares a state of emergency.

You are a lawyer, and you watch as the leaders of your country enact new laws—the better to protect the people from this dangerous enemy, they say—and transform old ones, broadening and extending them in unprecedented ways. Police officers begin working more closely with the armed forces. In court, some people have lawyers; others are denied legal representation. For some unlucky defendants, detention can come at any time, without so much as an explanation of the charges against them.

This scenario describes the situation that faced attorneys and judges in Nazi Germany. On January 25, in his presentation “Law, Justice and the Holocaust,” historian William Meinecke, Jr., outlined the process by which, step by step, lawyers in Nazi Germany acquiesced to the policies set out by Adolf Hitler.

Forced to pledge allegiance to the Fuhrer, German defense attorneys turned on their clients, and pleaded for convictions. Low-level criminals—petty thieves, for instance—were given death sentences by obedient judges.

And some lawyers did even more to advance the Nazi agenda. In 1942, Meinecke said, a group of high-ranking Nazi officials met in Wannsee, where they devised the “Final Solution,” a regimented process that efficiently brought about the murder of millions of European Jews.

“Of the 15 who met at Wannsee,” Meinecke said, “nine had law degrees. Six had doctorates of law.” Why is it, the historian asked in a room full of lawyers, that the study of law is not a barrier to engaging in—or justifying—activities that are obviously illegal?

Meinecke has given this hour-long presentation countless times before, telling lawyers and judges around the world about how lawyers and judges in Nazi Germany engaged in gross miscarriages of justice in the name of protecting “the interests of the national community.”

At the University of California, Los Angeles Faculty Center, 150 people, most of them lawyers, listened to Meinecke recount the case of Jewish film director Henry Koster, who had the second half of his two-picture deal declared null and void on the basis of a clause that was intended to take effect if Koster died or became disabled.

Koster, whose name was then Hermann Kosterlitz, was very much alive and well in 1933, but with the Nazis in power, no film of his could ever be shown in Germany. The film company cancelled his contract, and three separate courts, including the country’s highest, found in their favor, against Koster.

Wednesday evening’s event was presented by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Bet Tzedek Legal Services and the School of Law at UCLA. In his introduction, Stan Levy, a founder of Bet Tzedek, said that now is an appropriate time to talk about law and the Holocaust, since the pro bono firm was set to present an award to the museum for its assistance with its largest single initiative, the Holocaust Survivors Justice Network, at its gala the following night. Furthermore, Levy pointed out, this Friday, Jan. 27 has been established by the United Nations as Holocaust Remembrance Day.

But the event’s second component—a panel discussion with three legal experts responding to Meinecke’s remarks—was appropriately timed as well. UCLA Law Professor David Kaye pointed out a present-day legal gray zone—the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, marking its 10th anniversary this month.

Each panelist began by assuring their fellow lawyers in the audience that the legal justifications of Germany’s genocidal war against the Jews is not comparable to the use and/or abuse of law in the United States’ post-9/11 War on Terror. (Despite parallels hinted at in the first two paragraphs of this post, the two situations are more different than they are similar.)

But then they all attempted to explore what lessons might be learned from the failures of lawyers and judges to hold their ground against the Nazi-reformulation of Germany’s laws.

Attorney Charles E. Patterson, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Morrison Foerster, represents one of the detainees being held at Guantanamo.

“Your access to your client is carefully controlled,” Patterson said. “You have to show to what’s called ‘a privilege team’ anything you want to take in.” Anything he wishes to take back with him must be given back to that team upon exit. It’s up to the team to decide whether or not to return those notes at a later time, Patterson said.

“He knows nothing,” Patterson said of his client, a 30 year-old Saudi Arabian who has been at Guantanamo for 10 years. “But because he has a graduate degree in electrical engineering, the government is convinced there must be something connected to something.”

Loyola Law School Professor Laurie L. Levenson, who worked as a federal prosecutor for a decade before becoming a professor, presented to the audience evidence of the transformation of the “material witness law,” a U.S. law she said was established in the 1700s and had long been used sparingly, if at all.

“It wasn’t a favored mechanism,” Levenson said, explaining that the law gives prosecutors the right to detain individuals, even United States citizens, for an unspecified amount of time without charging them with a crime if their testimony is considered essential to the prosecution of a criminal.

After 9/11, though, use of the material witness law exploded. Many of those detained under the law were held for at least a week without being charged. Half of all those so-called material witnesses were never called to testify in a court proceeding.

“From my perspective, oftentimes laws are very neutral on their face,” Levenson said. “They can be used for good, and they can be used for not good, and the most important thing is that the public pay attention.”

In Nazi Germany, the record of lawyers and jurists was abysmal. UCLA Law School Dean Rachel Moran made this clear from the very start, by quoting from a passage from Elie Wiesel’s memoir, “Night.”

In one section, a young boy is hanged in the concentration camp.

“Where is God now?” a prisoner cries out. Wiesel writes that he believed God was hanging on the gallows.

For Moran, it wasn’t only the divine that was absent.

“The question,” Moran asked, “might equally have been, where is law now? And how did it come to this?”

By comparison, the degree to which lawyers like Patterson and others are raising alarm about the legal limbo of the Guantanamo detainees is encouraging. Moreover, even though Guantanamo shows no signs of being closed down anytime soon, some 800 other terror subjects have been prosecuted in United States Courts, Patterson said. Ninety percent of those tried were convicted.

“We can deal with the threats to our security without denying the accused the basic rights provided by our Constitution,” Patterson said.

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January 24, 2012 | 2:14 pm

Jews at the Oscars [FILM TRAILERS]

Posted by Six Degrees No Bacon, JTA

A scene from the Israeli film "Footnote," which aims to take home the countryIsrael's first Academy Award for best foreign-language film when the Oscars are given out on Feb. 26. Photo courtesy of Sony Classics Pictures

The 2012 Academy Award nominations came out Tuesday and it seems like Billy Crystal will be hosting a big ol’ Jewish party, providing traction to those who advance the canard that Jews do indeed control Hollywood.

Three Jewish filmmakers are nominated for best picture—Steven Spielberg for “War Horse,” Rachael Horovitz for “Moneyball” and Stephen Tenenbaum and Letty Aronson for “Midnight in Paris.” Aronson, who happens to be Woody Allen’s sister, will probably be seeing a lot of her brother during the show because Woody is also nominated for an Academy Award as best director for the same film.

Jonah Hill is also nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in “Moneyball.” And in foreign news, Israel is back with Joseph Cedar’s film “Footnote,” due for a March release in the United States. “Footnote” will go head to head with “In Darkness,” a Polish film from Jewish director Agnieszka Holland (“Europa, Europa”) about Jews who hid in the gutters of Lvov during the Holocaust.

The Oscars will take place Feb. 26. 6noBacon will be updating before, during and after the event.

Trailers for the Oscar nominated films:

War Horse

Moneyball

Midnight in Paris

Footnote

In Darkness

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January 24, 2012 | 8:34 am

Jonah Hill, Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, ‘Footnote’ in Oscar finals

Posted by  Tom Tugend

Director and producer Steven Spielberg (C) arrives with wife, actress Kate Capshaw and their daughter Sasha Spielberg (R) at the 23rd annual Producers Guild Awards in Beverly Hills, California on Jan. 21. Photo by REUTERS/Fred Prouser

Veterans Steven Spielberg and Woody Allen and Israel’s “Footnote” are in the finals of the Oscar race as the 84th Academy Award nominations were announced early Jan. 24 in Los Angeles.

Spielberg’s “War Horse” and Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” are among the nine best picture nominees, while Allen also got nods for best director and best writing (original screenplay).

However, surprisingly, Spielberg’s “The Adventures of Tintin,” which won a Golden Globe, did not qualify in the best animated film competition.

Israel’s hope for its first Oscar was kept alive with Joseph Cedar’s “Footnote” listed among the five finalists in the foreign-language film category. The story of the rivalry between two talmudic scholars, who are also father and son, marks Cedar’s second Oscar nod, following “Beaufort” in 2007.

Israel’s toughest competition for the Oscar will likely come from Iran’s entry “A Separation” and the Polish film “In Darkness.”

Agnieszka Holland (“Europa, Europa”), the half-Jewish director of “In Darkness,” tells the actual story of a dozen Jewish men, women and children, who hid in the underground sewers of Lvov for 14 months during the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Among other Jewish talent making the cut are:

Jonah Hill, the surprise hit of “Moneyball” after graduating from his shaggy boy roles in “Superbad” and “Cyrus,” who qualified in the best supporting actor category.

Aaron Sorkin (with Steven Zailian), whose “Moneyball” is vying for best adapted screenplay.

Oscar winners will be crowned Feb. 26 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

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January 23, 2012 | 9:21 pm

What Can the Adelsons Buy Next ? (Newt?)

Posted by Susan Freudenheim

Sheldon Adelson with Michael Milken, Sept. 2011, at a Los Angeles fundraiser. Photo by Marvin Steindler

The New York Times is reporting tonight that Dr. Miriam Adelson, wife of Sheldon Adelson, has donated $5 million to the Super Pac supporting Newt Gingrich’s Florida primary campaign; this is on top of the $5 million that Sheldon Adelson gave to Gingrich to support the same Super PAC Winning Our Future that was supporting (successfully, as it turned out) the Gingrich campaign in advance of the South Carolina primary.
The Adelsons, whom I met here in L.A. in September, when they made a relatively rare appearance to talk about their support for Birthright Israel, have virtually unlimited cash to support causes that they care about. Adelson told me there would be no limit to his support for Birthright, and similarly, he and his wife seem to have no limit to their support for Gingrich.
As I wrote in September, Adelson explained his philosophy of giving this way:

He described how he grew up poor, taunted by anti-Semites outside Boston, and how he was deeply influenced by his father, whom he repeatedly referred to, endearingly, as “Daddy.” Adelson’s father was a Lithuanian-born dirt-poor cab driver who, each evening, put all his spare change into the Jewish National Fund “pushke” (tzedakah box). The billionaire son remains bothered that this man, who ardently gave whatever he could to Israel, never got to visit the Jewish state, which is a part of why he believes in sending 18- to-26-year-olds there on free 10-day trips, to help, he said, ensure a Jewish future. Indeed, he has happily paid a lion’s share of Birthright’s costs, though the need has never been fully met, so now he wants more help. Still, he’s prepared to match, dollar for dollar, anyone’s gift.

He explained that “beside my current motto that It Feels Good to Do Good,” he believes in the Jewish obligation to give, whatever your situation. “My parents were too poor to own rags,” Adelson said, and yet, “Daddy told me, ‘No matter how poor you are, there’s always somebody poorer.’ ” The elder Adelson instructed his son to put one penny from every dollar he earned into the pushke, and it stuck.

“I don’t do it every day,” Adelson admitted, “but I make it up in bulk.”

Yes, of course, paying for kids to go to Israel isn’t the same as giving to a political campaign—there would seem to be far less self interest, naturally. But the aspect of giving BIG may be related.

At any rate, this time, we can concern ourselves with how much one man’s money can change not just a kid’s life—or how young Americans, by the thousands, relate to Israel. This is a moment to see how much one couple’s money can influence a whole election cycle. We all knew that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s “Citizen’s United” decision that corporations and unions could hold sway on campaign fundraising, but it was hard to imagine, back in the day,that one couple could singlehandedly tip the balance of a primary.  Will Florida Republicans now go the way of South Carolina? 

The Adelsons, who have made their fortune in casinos, are known for their generosity. But what else can generosity buy?

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