December 14, 2011 | 5:15 pm

Angelina Jolie and genocide beyond the Holocaust

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Even the title of Angelina Jolie’s film, “In the Land of Blood and Honey” suggests parallels to the Jewish story.

It bespeaks the location of one genocide, where the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims by Christian Serbs took place, while doubling as a reference to the land of milk and honey, which was not host but haven for Jewish victims of a different genocide.

But Jolie’s film also proves that genocide is not exclusive to the Holocaust. According to Anne Applebaum, writing in The New York Review of Books, the actual word “genocide” was coined in 1943 when Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin needed a way to describe “the crime of barbarity” that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime were imposing throughout Europe. Though history has proven the word contains multitudes, and encompasses a horror more prodigious than a singular event.

Though I have not yet seen the film, Jewish Journal executive editor Susan Freudenheim did, and came away with a poignant message about a powerful film: That the xenophobia and tribalism that impels one group to brutalize another is evident across cultures and a more pervasive evil than any single conflict.

Freudenheim writes:

I left this film thinking of its similarities to the Holocaust. And then I immediately ran into a friend, Samuel Chu, an activist born in China, who told me he’d come to see “Blood and Honey” just after watching “City of Life and Death,” by the Chinese director Lu Chuan. That film is about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre — also known as the Rape of Nanjing — when the invading Japanese brutalized the Chinese. Chu said he was deeply moved by the parallels between “Blood and Honey” and China’s story.

And then there are the parallels to the current situation in Darfur, where women continue to be brutalized just for leaving their camps to gather firewood.

And there were yet other parallels, as “Blood and Honey” lead actor Goran Kostic pointed out: As the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina played out, Steven Spielberg was in Poland shooting “Schindler’s List,” a recreated ethnic cleansing only a short distance away from an existing one.

Even beyond ethnic annihilation, Jolie’s film also addresses the tyranny of men over women, and the barbaric savagery that ensues when men are powerful and women are vulnerable.

Read Freudenheim’s rave report here

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December 14, 2011 | 11:32 am

The way we were: Streisand and Saban shore up for Israel

Posted by Danielle Berrin

This time of year gets people thinking about what they miss.

For the 1,200-person crowd at the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces (FIDF) Gala Dinner on Dec. 8, it was Israel lighting the corners of their mind.

Century City’s Hyatt Regency ballroom was teeming with Los Angeles’ most hawkish, hard-line lovers of Israel, among them the annual event’s hosts, Haim and Cheryl Saban. Channeling a less idealized love were the evening’s headliners — Barbra Streisand, who sang, and Jason Alexander, who emceed — both of whom belong decidedly to the pro-peace, two-state solution left.

There were other, stranger contrasts and ironies: Maimed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers and U.S. Army veterans shared tables with a cosmetically reconstructed Real Housewife (Jill Zarin) and a fame-chasing Millionaire Matchmaker (Patti Stanger). Lachrymose videos about 18-year-old men and women who sacrifice all for God and country were projected on giant HD screens for the viewing pleasure of Los Angeles’ most affluent.

It was a striking mix of Jewish guilt and privilege, and nowhere was the conflict between those forces more evident than in Haim Saban himself. When he took the podium, he momentarily digressed from the speech on the teleprompter to admit, “It’s truly humbling to follow these guys” — referring to a one-eyed veteran of the war in Iraq, a paralyzed IDF soldier and a female F-16 fighter pilot, all of whom risked life and limb in the name of national fealty. “And here we are in Beverly Hills,” Saban said, “having a good time.”

He should know. He used to drive tanks; now he has a driver. He used to live in Israel; now he lives in Beverly Park. He moved on from his first love and thrived with his next love. So how does a man repay the country that saved him from persecution in Egypt and remained faithfully true, even after he abandoned her for the good life in America?

Israel is Saban’s poor ex-wife to whom he’s paying lifelong alimony.

Which explains why, year after year, Saban goes all-out for Israel. In addition to the millions he provides to support pro-Israel U.S. political candidates and the Democratic Party, as well as to the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, and his seemingly endless and unchecked support for local organizations like the Israeli Leadership Council, the FIDF dinner is his biggest public show. This one night of the year, Saban can prove to Israel that even though he can’t be with her, he really does still love her.

And what better way to demonstrate that romantic longing than with Streisand, the iconic Jewish star, who by simply parting her lips can bring a room to tears? 

In an age of hyper-sexualized, high-couture, high-tech performances, Streisand is a throwback to The Way Things Were — before Madonna’s provocative sexuality, Lady Gaga’s self-aggrandizing avant-gardism and Taylor Swift’s bubble-gum best-sellers. She is an original who now seems to represent a more authentic time, when raw talent mattered more than putting on a show.

What other modern “icon” can compare? A once-in-a-lifetime vocal talent, award-winning film actress and Broadway star, Streisand built her career on the strength of her natural gifts and not synthetic paradigms. She doesn’t measure her success by numbers of Twitter followers.

And even though age has marred her voice to a coarser, quieter sound, she can still deliver as if she were performing the last song on earth.

During four numbers — “The Windmills of Your Mind,” “People,” “The Way We Were” and “Avinu Malkeinu” — Streisand reminded a Hollywood-ized crowd of how enchanting simplicity can be. Elegant and understated, Streisand wore all black and sang bright.

“I also sang at the 30th anniversary of the State of Israel,” she told the crowd. “And I had the privilege of speaking, via satellite, of course, with Prime Minister Golda Meir — and she knew then that our tradition teaches us that none of us can stand alone in this world. Judaism at its core is a religion of community, and, therefore, it propels us to live a life connected to …

“People …”

One benefit of Streisand’s maturity is that her life experience layers every lyric. Sixty-nine years of complex emotions register on her face each time she sings what she has sung countless times before. Songs of memory and longing, love and reverence sound even truer in later life than they did in her youth.

And when she sings, you believe her. Her voice, syrupy rich, and her face, bursting with emotion, still have the power to transport her audience wherever they wish to be — young, healthy, in love, at home. But even in a performance full of promise, there was nostalgia. How does one watch Streisand without being reminded of the ubiquitous presence she used to be?

Everything changes. Life is precious and limited. Only love remains.

Most in the audience that night came to the dinner because they love Israel. Although it’s not always clear how to express that love (of all the organizations in Israel that need supporting, the IDF is perhaps the most important, but the least needy), the main thing is that her lovers are trying.

Like Streisand, Israel is a star that changes but never fades.

CORRECTION APPENDED: An earlier version of this article referred to a nameless IDF soldier who is legless when in fact he is paralyzed from the waist down.

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December 13, 2011 | 3:59 pm

How novelist Amos Oz would solve the Middle East conflict

Posted by Danielle Berrin

I’ve been reading a lot of Amos Oz lately, perhaps because I’m researching a series of stories about Israel and it’s foremost on my mind.

Last night, I finished his latest, Scenes from Village Life, and was haunted by the final scene “In a faraway place at another time” which I interpreted as the kind of apocalyptic nightmare that could occur if Israel’s current realities don’t change. Oz doesn’t say if it’s the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or the external existential threats that might lead to this demise, his only focus is the resultant decay.

It happens because this “village” becomes so isolated, it rots.

“[P]oisonous vapors blow in from the green swamp…fences rot with a damp mold, mildew eats at the walls, straw and hay turn black with moisture as though burnt in fire…the very soil bubbles.”

And inbreeding sickens its inhabitants beyond recognition.

“The children are sick all summer with boils, eczema and gangrene. The old folks die from atrophy of the airways. There are many people who are crippled, who suffer from goiter, from mental deficiency, twisted limbs, facial tics, drooling, because they all interbreed: brothers and sisters, sons and mothers, fathers and daughters.”

It is a fine metaphor. A “malignant marsh” develops in the town and all sorts of figures—official, political, intellectual, spiritual—make recommendations for how to fix the problem: “dig, divert, dry out, dig up, cleanse, inject, remove, upgrade and turn over a new leaf.”

But nothing happens.

Leadership fluctuates: “one was ousted, one was defeated, another fell from grace, a fourth was assassinated, a fifth was imprisoned, a sixth became a turncoat, a seventh fled or fell asleep.”

“Here,” Oz writes, “everything has remained as it always was.”

Without change, the village loses its life force.

The macabre portrait that concludes Oz’s book is quite different from the denouement he hopes for in reality. During a recent appearance on Charlie Rose, the television host asked him about comparisons between himself and Chekhov. As he considered the parallel, he brought up Shakespeare. What is the difference between Chekhov’s writing and Shakespeare’s?

“In a Shakespearean tragedy,” Oz began, “in the end, the stage is covered, hued with dead bodies. And justice prevails, perhaps; whereas, in a tragedy by Chekhov, in the end, everybody is melancholy, unhappy, disappointed, heartbroken, sad—but alive. And my colleagues and I have been looking for a Chekhovian—not a Shakespearean, resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

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December 13, 2011 | 12:11 pm

For the love of Israel: Don’t youtube Streisand!

Posted by Danielle Berrin

A friend warned me after I recorded Barbra Streisand’s 4-song performance at last week’s Friends of the Israel Defense Forces dinner that I should not post it on this blog.

I’m glad I listened.

According to the gossip site Radar Online, Real Housewife of New York Jill Zarin, who also attended the dinner, posted a video of Streisand’s performance on youtube and was threatened with a lawsuit.

Zarin tweeted: “Someone from Barbra [S]treisand’s company just called my store to tell me to take down my YouTube video or they will sue me. Is that nuts? Sorry guys. I took it down!”

In a culture where nearly every cellphone doubles as a camera, very little is private. A star like Streisand, who keeps strict control over her image, is smart to realize that a poorly shot youtube video will only diminish the power of her performance and not necessarily reflect the amateur photography skills of its videographer.

Either that, or she wasn’t happy with that evening’s hair and makeup.

Check back for more on Streisand’s performance, the FIDF dinner and its host Haim Saban when this week’s Hollywood Jew column is posted online.

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December 13, 2011 | 11:21 am

Matisyahu Shaves His Beard!

Posted by JewishJournal.com

The reggae pop star Matisyahu sent a Twitter message to his followers this morning announcing that he has shaved his beard.  The accompanying photo showed a smooth-cheeked Matisyahu posing in front of a mirror, cell-phone camera in hand.

Along with the pic came a post on Matisyahu’s web site:

A beardless Matisyahu posted a picture of himself today to Twitter. He has just issued the following statement:

NOTE FROM MATISYAHU

This morning I posted a photo of myself on Twitter.

No more Chassidic reggae superstar.

Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias. When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality—not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity…to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.

Get ready for an amazing year filled with music of rebirth. And for those concerned with my naked face, don’t worry…you haven’t seen the last of my facial hair.

- Matisyahu

The singer, who was born Matthew Paul Miller and raised non-Orthodox in Pennsylvania and New York, embraced Hasidism after a high-school study trip to Israel.  His beard and black coat have been part of his distinctive look, and, according to an interview with Rabbi Naomi Levy in The Jewish Journal, part of his spiritual growth.

NL: Your attire, the way that you look, in what ways is it a hindrance to you; in what ways does it help you?

M: In terms of the beard, it keeps me a little bit less focused on how I look, you know what I mean? I want to look good, but it kind of makes me less focused on that a little bit. And then I guess when I get into the music and I’m moving around or I’m singing or whatever it is, it’s like there’s a lot in it, a lot of emotion, and there’s excitement and there’s love, you know what I mean? And I guess all those things can be translated as sexy. But I won’t go out there and sort of like ... I’m not looking to be sexy. I’m looking for this kind of spiritual experience.

Judging by the comments section on the singer’s web site, his fans support the move.  While a few posters wondered if this meant he was “denouncing” his faith, most supported his evolution.

“Matis,” said the poster Aedile, “I don’t believe we will be judged by the hair on our face, but rather by the deeds we have done, the words we have said, and the lives we have changed.  I am excited to see what you will bring us in the new year!”

To read Rob Eshman on Matisyahu’s importance (and see him perform mit beard, click here.

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December 12, 2011 | 10:41 am

Streisand fights for women’s hearts

Posted by Lauren Bottner

Barbara Streisand is outraged about the gender inequality facing women’s heart disease. 

The “man’s disease” is killing more women than all cancers combined; kills more women annually than men; and last year killed nearly 500,000 women in the United States according to the Huffington Post.  The part that Streisand has an issue with is that despite these statistics, “only 24 percent of participants in all heart-related studies are women.”

“Throughout my life, gender inequality has always concerned me,” Streisand said. “Whether it’s making a movie about it or becoming involved in women’s issues. And in this case, gender really DOES matter when it comes to medical science. How can you treat a woman for a life-threatening ailment based on research done on men? Especially when women’s hearts are physiologically different than men’s hearts.”

So how can you treat women with heart disease based on research done on men? Right. You can’t.

For past Barbara Streisand coverage:
Barbara Streisand’s ex kisses and tells
Don’t mess with this Jewish mother
Streisand opens Obama’s fundraiser

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December 12, 2011 | 10:31 am

Harry Potter to play gay Jewish poet

Posted by Lauren Bottner

Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, is slated to play Allen Ginsberg for the new movie “Kill Your Darlings.” Radcliffe will step into the shoes of the “gay Jewish poet for the film about beat poetry and murder in 1940s New York,” reported the Jerusalem Post.

Ginsberg was recently played by another Jewish actor, James Franco, last year in “Howl.”

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December 12, 2011 | 10:23 am

Eli Roth votes: Bear vs. Otter Jew

Posted by Lauren Bottner

Eli Roth is more of a gay bear Jew than an otter Jew according to TMZ. Roth says he’s just too hairy to be an otter in the subculture of gay animal types.

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December 9, 2011 | 3:34 pm

Non-Jewish Canadian producer launches epic IMAX doc on Jerusalem [VIDEO]

Posted by Danielle Berrin

The Canadian-born, Oscar-winning producer Jake Eberts plans to release an IMAX documentary about the city of Jerusalem with the goal of reaching 100 million viewers.

To aid that end, Eberts screened a rough cut of the movie during a benefit in his honor hosted by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem on Nov. 28 in Montreal.

His ambitious plans are a tall order for any documentary, let alone one about the contentious little city at the center of the world’s three major religions, but Eberts sounds like the kind of guy who gets things done. For starters, he has a proven track record—a whopping 37 Oscars—and a film resume that contains an obscene amount of classics: “Chariots of Fire,”  “Gandhi,” “Dances With Wolves,” “The Name of the Rose,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “A River Runs Through It.” (even more impressive is that he won his Oscars during the days when Oscar really mattered).

Also to his credit, Eberts is good with numbers: he was a Wall Street banker before making his way to movies.

For a non-Jew, Eberts’ plans sound eerily reminiscent of the champagne dreams held by many Israel supporters who long for new messaging about “the real Israel” and that could divert attention away from the country’s conflict side.

According to the Canadian Jewish News, Eberts was inspired to tell the tale of Jerusalem after he and his wife spent their honeymoon there more than forty years ago. Now he is partnering with the Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to produce the project, and they will in turn stand to benefit from box office revenues and royalties.

But it could be awhile before the film attempts to “shift the discussion of Jerusalem beyond the politics” as director and scriptwriter Daniel Ferguson put it, since the film is a work in progress and still has to raise more than half of its projected $11 million budget. And even though Ferguson, a graduate of McGill University’s religious studies program, plans to focus the doc on “Jerusalem’s history, spiritual significance and earthly beauty” he admitted that he will also explore the “competing narratives” that characterize the region.

While the ultimate goals for the film are rather lofty, financially, socially and politically, there is passion for the project, which, as anyone in Hollywood will tell you, is a powerful ingredient and a promising start.

From CJNews.com:

“The story of Jerusalem will be told through the people who call it home,” he said. “The competing narratives give the place its dynamism and energy.”

The filmmakers are working with an advisory board of more than 30, including Hebrew University of Jerusalem faculty. “On the theological, political and community levels, we are determined to get it right, and it is complex. Every word is looked at carefully,” Ferguson said.

The excerpt shown introduces Jerusalem’s successive conquerors and occupants over the centuries, diverse surrounding geography, and mystical architecture through breathtaking aerial views of the city approached from the four directions.

That trailer has received 1.2 million hits online in five months.

Watch it:

Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D from JerusalemTheMovie on Vimeo.

 

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December 9, 2011 | 3:23 pm

Joan Rivers channels personal tragedy on ‘The Simpsons’

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Comedian and soi-disant style icon Joan Rivers recently guest starred on a new episode of “The Simpsons” in all her tragicomic glory.

The blogosphere was quick to note the parallels between the show’s plot and Rivers’ life.

Adam Buckman summated on TVHowl.com:

It was a story about a top comedy talent headlining a network TV show and the show’s headstrong producer, with whom the comedian has a close personal relationship.  In the episode, the producer — played by Rivers — threw her weight around so much on the set that network execs ordered the comedian, Krusty the Clown, to fire her, or else they would.

The story, no doubt devised with Rivers’ approval and possibly with her input, mirrored her own personal history — with Fox, no less — back in 1987.  That’s when she starred in a late-night show on the then-fledgling network — “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers” — while her husband, Edgar Rosenberg, acted as executive producer.  When Fox execs ordered her to fire Edgar, she refused and they were both canned.  Three months later, he committed suicide — the worst tragedy of Rivers’ life.

And yet, there she was on “The Simpsons” spoofing her own tragic history — something only a comedian of her stature and experience would attempt.

Anyone who caught Rivers’ excellent biographical documentary “A Piece of Work” gained insight into the tragedy and trauma that informs her comedy. Not only has she suffered unthinkable loss, she has been riddled with insecurity about her appearance since childhood. Her candid recollections of being told by family, friends and boyfriends that she was ugly, ordinary and sexually unappealing was heart wrenching to hear, though it explains the deep psychic motives she had for all that deforming surgery. As I watched I realized Rivers wasn’t having all that work done just to look younger, she was literally trying to erase her face, the scourge of shame and self-doubt.

Buckman seems somewhat amazed by Rivers’ ability to lay bare her painful past, setting aside her ego for the sake of her art. But that is often the creative salve of great comics who use their vulnerable status to poke fun at everything else.

Producer Bernie Brillstein once observed of Jewish humor, “If you talk about it out loud, it can take away the curse of it all.” That ethos encapsulates the sensibility of Jewish humorists, who have historically responded to the absurdities and tyrannies of the larger culture by self-deprecating. As Roseanne Barr once said, “If you make fun of your own in front of the dominant culture here, you can live next door to them.”

The impulse to mock the very things about yourself that others might fault you for is essentially an attempt at belonging.

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December 9, 2011 | 12:58 pm

Funny business in Israel

Posted by Lauren Bottner

Top American comedians, including Maryellen Hooper, John Mulrooney and Saleem, travel to Israel to fundraise for the Koby Mandell Foundation.  The foundation is headed by Avi Liberman and provides “support to family members of victims of terror,” reports the Jerusalem Post. 

This is the seventh Comedy for Koby tour and includes six national comedy shows with an expected audience of around 2,000.

The audiences’ favorite bits typically include “hearing material based on the comedians’ experiences coming to Israel – dealing with El Al security, visiting the Dead Sea, dealing with taxi drivers in Israel and experiencing the holy sites.”

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