I didn’t know there was a Los Angeles-based Israeli radio station online at israla.com.
I’ll be a guest Tuesday night. Liami Lawrence posts to my Facebook: Infamous Blogger Luke Ford, Israel’s first Bedioun Diplomat Ish Khaldi ( former Deputy Consul General to the Northwest USA), & artist Jane Korman who’s “I Will Survive Auschwitz dancing video is the talk of the internet will all be my guests Tuesday night July 20th on my radio show on ISRALA.COM 9-11pm (pacific time) listen and call-in!
I always get this funny feeling when I see oil drilling around Los Angeles.
It’s right in the heart of the bloody city and it seems incongruous. There’s a big operation on Pico Blvd and Cardiff and one right by Beverly Hills High School. I pass a bunch of rigs on the way to and from LAX.
I know nothing about oil drilling but I always think of it as taking place in remote areas. And here in Los Angeles it is all around me and I wonder who’s getting rich from it?
The Los Angeles Times reports:
You don’t need to set foot on the campus of Beverly Hills High School (241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills; [310] 229-3685, http://www.bhhs.bhusd.org) to see its oil derrick. In fact, you shouldn’t. Instead, park nearby or just drive past to check out the derrick, which is clad in flowery slipcovers that serve as soundproofing. For decades, on-campus operations have included more than a dozen wells. For the year ending June 30, interim Assistant Supt. Mary Anne McCabe said, the wells yielded $550,000 for the district. Lawsuits blaming the wells for illnesses among students have been dismissed.
For two more variations on oil extraction in disguise, head east a few blocks to Pico Boulevard and Cardiff Avenue (we’re in the city of Los Angeles now), where machinery is sheathed by a mysterious beige tower that reaches 10 stories above neighboring storefronts and offices. Or head to nearby Pico and South Genessee Avenue, where another drilling operation is hidden inside an ersatz office building. (Peek into the locked building’s atrium and you realize there’s no roof.) Then head south on the 405 Freeway. In Carson, about 25 miles from Beverly Hills, you’ll see an enormous American flag at an industrial site to the south. That’s the BP Carson refinery (1801 E. Sepulveda Blvd., Carson).
Tom Ficara emails: Hi Luke:
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you but we are receiving so much information on Elliot Karp’s bad behavior from his various stops along the Jewish Federation trail that we are simply overwhelmed. In fact, we have made the decision to partner with a news organization and create this as a national TV show instead of a Las Vegas based show. It’s just too big for us.
Despite a ton of official stonewalling, we have received info from Rockland, New York; Brandeis University in Massachusetts; Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio that confirms a pattern of employee abuse by Elliot Karp that creates a damning scenario for Las Vegas attorney Leonard Stone and Las Vegas newspaper heir Danny Greenspun for their behavior before and during the Elliot Karp reign of terror at the Las Vegas Jewish Federation. It also enforces our contention that the National Jewish Federation is behaving no differently than the Catholic Church in aiding and abetting this monster.
Here are some interesting items as regard Elliot Karp’s reign of terror at the Cincinnati Jewish Federation:
Elliot Karp fired several capable women with otherwise excellent credentials in the same heavy handed way he did in Las Vegas. Again, confirming his pattern, he saw to it that they got no severance when fired, although one of the woman did resist and get a few months severance.
As he has done in Las Vegas with Marjorie Greibel, he found the weak, needy woman in Cincinnati, Kim Morris, and similarly befriended her so they could reign terror on the targeted strong employees.
The threatening of Charry Kennedy in Las Vegas that resulted in her calling the police to have her escorted from is also a repeat performance. He similarly menaced a woman in Cincinnati (holding the name until we get her interview directly) and would not let her escape from the room as he yelled, screamed, and berated her. Instead of calling the police, she called her husband to protect her from Elliot Karp.
As in Las Vegas, fundraising in Cincinnati also decreased for the same reasons, the acidic and bullying behavior of Elliot Karp.
Interestingly, Elliot Karp was fired from his position in the Cincinnati Jewish Federation. While he was sure to combat any severance pay for his victims, he made sure that he received a full year’s severance pay when he was terminated for cause.
Wow! We have a full 15 people to interview on camera in Cincinnati, and we are making those arrangements this week.
More next week on Rockland, Columbus, and Massachusetts. This is horrible… how can otherwise good and decent people allow this to continue?
Buried deep down in a story headlined, “Sponsor of Flotilla Tied to Elite of Turkey,” The New York Times reports:
The Humanitarian Relief Foundation was founded in the early 1990s, first as a charity for the poor in Istanbul, and later for Bosnian war victims. It works in more than 100 countries…The charity has one branch in the West Bank and another in Gaza…
On Monday, Germany banned the charity’s offices, citing its support for Hamas, which Germany considers a terrorist organization. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the charity abused donors’ good intentions “to support a terrorist organization with money supposedly donated for charitable purposes.” The newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung said that from 2007 the charity collected $8.5 million and transferred money to six smaller organizations, two belonging directly to Hamas and four with close ties to it.
The charity called the ban a “disgrace” and “misanthropic” and said it would challenge it in court.
A June 21 letter signed by 87 United States senators urged the White House to investigate whether the charity should be designated a foreign terrorist organization. Israel has accused the charity of bolstering Hamas. It also says the group has links to Al Qaeda and has bought weapons, accusations the charity denies.
This week’s Torah portion is Deuteronomy.
Joey and I started Torah talk in August of 2008, the same month I took my first Alexander Technique lesson.
Luke: “You were recently on a spiritual journey to India?”
Joey: “My wife and I had just agreed to get divorced. One guy said to me, ‘India? You just got divorced. You should go to Brazil.’ He probably had a point.
“It was avodah zora (idol worship) non-stop. I started with a group of Catholics in India and did some of the worst avodah zora. I went to a Catholic compound in the jungle outside Mumbai. I spent a week there, some of the worst avodah zora a young Jew has done.
“I didn’t get the wafer because I didn’t deserve it. I attended mass. I did kinda a confession.”
Luke: “That must’ve taken a long time.”
Joey: “I had a lot to get off my chest.
“Also, the songs. The songs were begging Jesus to bathe us in his blood. I’d never seen this kind of hardcore… I was begging strangers. You get on your knees and you beg strangers for forgiveness.
“I did 24 days of silent meditation.”
Luke: “I can see you’ve totally changed.”
Joey: “Probably the wrong time to do it. I spent the whole time thinking evil thoughts of my ex-wife, which she didn’t deserve.
“I went to a mountain where they worship fire. If you want to worship idols, India is as good as it gets.”
For health reasons, Joey has a Diet 7-Up, cherry-flavored with antioxidants.
Joey: “The Catholics in India were philo-semitic. I remember listening to one of the preachers talk about his visit to Israel, how the people were wonderful and the Arabs were rotten.”
Luke: “It’s always great to be alone when you are miserable.”
“Here, open your drink. Let me hold your Torah so it doesn’t get covered with cherry-flavored Diet 7Up with antioxidants.”
Joey: “I’ve traveled a lot in my life. I don’t think traveling really changes you.”
I just finished reading this terrific new novel by Mitchell James Kaplan.
We talk by phone today.
Luke: “Mitchell, when you were a child, did you want to be a novelist when you grew up?”
Mitchell: “Yes. Certainly from the age of 15 at the latest. Books were my refuge.”
Luke: “Refuge from what?”
Mitchell: “I grew up in the late ’60s, early ’70s. They were my refuge from a dysfunctional world. I think of fiction as a way of approximating truth, a way to try to find something beyond the dysfunction of the world that makes sense.”
Luke: “I heard someone say that art [well, pornography] is a solace from the frustrations of real life.”
“Where did you grow up?”
Mitchell: “My father lived in Beverly Hills. He was a cardiologist at UCLA. My mother lived in Munich, Germany. I went to high school at a boarding school near Santa Barbara called the Cate school. Then I went away to college at Yale. Then I lived in Paris for seven years.”
“Southern California never felt like home to me.”
Luke: “What has felt like home?”
Mitchell: “Hmm. I’ve had many places that have been homes…but I can’t say that any place in the world is really my home.”
Luke: “Except perhaps literature?”
Mitchell: “Yes. I must say, Luke, I wasn’t expecting this kind of question. Fine with me but I feel like I am revealing a lot about myself here. The interviews that I’ve had so far have not gone this direction but I know that you’re a special kind of guy.”
Luke: “Where were you in the social pecking order in high school?”
Mitchell: “I was outside of it completely. I got very good grades. I earned some respect from some people for that. I was very socially awkward. That’s another reason I could find comfort with books.”
Luke: “When you graduated Yale, what did you most want to accomplish with your life?”
Mitchell: “I wanted to be a writer.
“I went to France after college. I was living with a very powerful family, very much at the top of French industry and government. I lived in their slave’s quarters at the top of the building. It was a five-floor typical French apartment building. I lived at the top in the garret. My sinecure consisted of having breakfast with the kids and speaking English with them. They spoke English fluently. They had a chauffeur and a maid and everything else. They just wanted them to stay in practice. Each year they hired a Yale graduate and a Harvard graduate, not snobs or anything, and one of them had breakfast with the kids and one of them had lunch.
“I spent most of my time reading and trying to write a novel.
“There was a man I knew in college, I guess I’d call him a mentor, his name was William Styron. An author. He had been very kind to me and very interested in my ambitions when I was in college.
“One day I saw that William Styron was going to be on a book discussion program on French TV. I went to the studio and pretended that I belonged there. I walked right into the television studio with my briefcase and in it I had the manuscript of this book I had been typing. I sat through the show and watched him discuss Sophie’s Choice.
“Afterward, I went up to him and he greeted me and he agreed to read my first attempt at a novel. And he loved it. He sent me this beautiful letter, saying he didn’t know if this book would be published or not but that I write beautifully and I have the stuff of a novelist and he’s going to show it to his editor just in case. The editor did reject it. I was devastated. I still have that letter [from William Styron]. I needed it to continue with this dream though I did take a long detour working in the film industry.
“I think William Styron was responding to that I take immense pleasure in the manipulation of words.”
Luke: “Why did you spend so much time in the film industry?”
Mitchell: “I came back to America with my wife. We came to Los Angeles for my sister’s wedding. I didn’t have enough money to get back to France, which I considered my home.
“I just happened to know someone who knew someone who was just starting to make a movie called The Couch Trip. They hired me as a PA. The director, Michael Ritchie, and I hit it off and I ended up working for him for several years. I ended up working on screenplays. I sold several of my own. None were produced but we made some decent money. I learned a lot about dramaturgy and how to develop characters. The other stuff I thought I had learned earlier in my life about style stayed in the background.”
Luke: “There’s nothing like a screenplay to learn discipline and structure.”
“What’s the story behind your new novel?”
Mitchell: “I came up with the idea while living in Paris. I was working as a translator and struggling to get by. I had a pass to the largest library in the world. I had to go to some trouble to get the card so I felt so privileged that I spent a lot of time there reading whenever I could. I came across a list of the those who sailed with Columbus in 1492. Every name had where the person came from and what he did on board but there was one man who served no purpose at all on a sailing ship in the 15th Century — Luis De Torres. He was dead weight, which was a very uncommon thing in a crowded vessel. I asked why did Columbus bring this guy along? He was his translator. I did some more research. I looked at Columbus’s journals.
“I found out this guy spoke Aramaic, Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish. So I asked myself, where did Columbus think he was going? He needed someone who spoke Aramaic and Hebrew? Two dead languages at the time. Then I eventually came to the realization that Columbus was going to paradise and leaving a world that was the opposite of paradise.
“No one had developed his voyage in this context in a work of fiction that I was aware of.”
“After 18 years in the film industry, my wife and I and our two kids lived in Big Bear Lake. We had a little private plane and I was flying down the hill when I needed to. I finally said to my wife, this career is not satisfying. It’s not really going anywhere. Who knows if I’ll sell another screenplay.
“I’d always wanted to be a novelist. I’d never wanted to work in the film industry. With my wife’s blessing, I set about to write this.
“The first draft was written from the point of view of Luis de Torres. Only after I completed that draft did I realize that he wasn’t the central character. His point of view was limited. The stage was much bigger than anything he could’ve experienced.
“Then I wrote a second draft with Luis de Santangel [chancellor of Aragon] as the main character. After that, it was just a process of refinement.”
Luke: “Was there any dramatic difference in being a Jew in any of the places you’ve lived?”
Mitchell: “Very much. I don’t relate well to the culture of Los Angeles. The people I knew placed so much importance on the type of car you drive, and whether you lived north of Sunset Blvd or south of Sunset Blvd, or north of Wilshire and south of Wilshire. A preoccupation with money and status. Maybe you’ve found a niche outside of that, but growing up as the son of a physician in Beverly Hills, I didn’t find that niche.”
Luke: “What was high school like?”
Mitchell: “It was an Episcopalian high school and we had to go to chapel three times a week. It was very uncomfortable. Not in terms of faith because at that point in my life, faith didn’t mean much to me at all but definitely in terms of not being in the club.”
Mitchell says he has mainly experienced anti-Semitism from Jews. “I didn’t have to define myself as Jewish in France because everyone else was busy doing it for me. France is a Catholic country as much as Israel is a Jewish country. Everyone [in France] wants to know what group you belong to.
“In the top echelon of French society, there’s a feeling that Jews can be visitors but they can never be members. I felt like I was an American in the 1930s where the Protestant establishment might have Jewish friends and advisers [but no members]. The Jews are there as guests.
“The French media has very biased reporting on the Middle East. One of the terms they use for Jews in France is Israelite. They consider it to be a euphemism. They think that calling someone a Jew is an insult. You’re an appointed ambassador of Israel whether you like it or not.
“The guy who invented the concept of denying the Holocaust was a French professor Robert Faurisson. I had very close friends in France who talked about him as though he were credible…and isn’t it true that we don’t really know the truth about the Holocaust. I didn’t come to blows with anybody… I learned to appreciate what was good in them and not just dismiss them even though I thought some of their ideas were crazy.”
Luke: “Do the French have a weakness for conspiracy theories? I remember a book in France that denied 9/11 was very popular in France.”
Mitchell: “The first book that came out saying that it was a Jewish conspiracy was a number one bestseller.”
Luke: “Did you think about a happy ending for your book?”
Mitchell: “I showed it to a friend of mine who’s a big shot Hollywood screenwriter and he just hated the ending. I didn’t even take that comment seriously. I was guided by history.”
What is a man of faith to do when he is repeatedly confronted by bad implants happening to good people?
Does he deny the existence of all an powerful, all beneficent deity? Does he wail and gnash his teeth and declare there is no Judge and there is no Judgment?
Or does he instead scrutinize the teachings for sacred writ for comfort?
Those are the questions Joey Kurtzman and I will confront on Torah Talk at 2pm PST on my live cam. We’ll also discuss the book of Deuteronomy.
One does not have to be a sex maniac to be disheartened by the number of fine looking natural breasts in our great country that have been mangled by the plastic surgeon’s knife.
It is in times like these, I believe, that we most need God.
