What Hollywood does for the Jewish community

From: The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles www.jewishjournal.com

This is what Hollywood's old-school Jewish philanthropy looks like: 900 Jews worried about anti-Semitism sitting inside the International Hall of the Beverly Hilton.

Holocaust survivors sit side-by-side with some of entertainment's biggest big shots. Onstage, the American and Israeli flags hang together, with "Rush Hour" director Brett Ratner saying the Hamotzi; Rabbi Meyer H. May singing the national anthem and Hatikvah; talk show host Larry King telling jokes and introducing household names, like Queen Latifah, that aren't necessarily Jewish.

It's the 30th anniversary of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the internationally recognized human rights organization and operator of the Museum of Tolerance located a mile and a half away, and the men behind this June 20 gala are Jewish entertainment chieftains —Time Warner President and COO Jeff Bewkes, Universal Studios President and COO Ron Meyer and, specifically, Jeffrey Katzenberg, a center trustee and CEO of Dreamworks Animation.

No. 40 on the list of wealthiest Angelenos, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal, Katzenberg has given millions to philanthropies ranging from the Motion Picture & Television Fund to AIDS Project Los Angeles to the American Jewish Committee. For the past 15 years, though, his favorite Jewish cause has been the Wiesenthal Center.

"When I took my first tour, the sensation was almost overwhelming -- a combination of anger, sadness, hope and resolve to support this institution in any way possible," Katzenberg tells his $125-a-plate guests in opening remarks.

This is a familiar sight, one steeped in tradition. The Wiesenthal Center may only be 30 years old, but Jewish entertainment leaders have been deeply involved in Jewish nonprofits since before Hollywood became synonymous with the motion-picture business.

First it came from the fathers of film, Carl Laemmle, the Warner brothers and Samuel Goldwyn; the second take was of "The Last Mogul" Lew Wasserman and game-show host Monty Hall; next came Sherry Lansing, Steven Spielberg, Katzenberg and a few others. Soon, that task will fall to a new generation that is now in its 20s, 30s and early 40s. But who will step forward as tomorrow's Katzenbergs or Wassermans or Warners?

That is a difficult question to answer because most of today's Jewish philanthropists are cut from a different mold than their predecessors.

On the one hand, no longer feeling the insularity and even paranoia that led them to support only their own, many of today's Hollywood's Jews -- notables include David Geffen and Michael Eisner -- are increasingly giving to causes that have nothing to do with Israel or the Jewish community directly.

At the same time, some organizations have found that appealing to the singular Jewish community isn't the only way to go: Jewish World Watch, a decidedly Jewish organization founded by a rabbi and designed to provide relief to people under genocidal attack, has had great success partnering with black actors, even more so than Jewish ones.

And then there are those who pick and choose their causes specific to their own personal development. Peter Spears, as just one example, came to Hollywood for his work, but recently found himself on a mission to Israel's film industry, which helped him to rediscover his Jewish self in the process.

This is Hollywood Jewish giving ... Take 4 ...

The perception that Hollywood doesn't do squat for the Jews may be as much a part of Jewish belief as monotheism. It's hyperbole, but a disconnect does exist between many Hollywood Jews and the greater Jewish community. Some of it can be attributed to the phlegmatic nature of Los Angeles, some to the city's geography and transient nature of its denizens and some to the growing trend away from Jewish giving.

David Lonner, co-head of the motion picture department at the William Morris Agency -- who has been described in this paper as "the kind of agent whom stars thank by name, along with God, from the Oscar podium" -- has wrestled with these forces as he's tried to engage his colleagues in issues he finds important to the Jewish community, both by taking them to Israel on trips he funds and by serving at one point as the volunteer president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles' Entertainment Division.

"In the '60s and '70s you had people from that generation who were very affected by those two gigantic earthquakes in Jewish history," said Lonner, 45, referring to the Holocaust and the creation of a Jewish state. "Now you've got an assimilated, prosperous society who is also focused on what affects their lives directly. It is not that they are shunning Jewish causes; it is just that they are removed."

To be sure, this phenomenon is affecting young Jews across the country, not just in Hollywood. Recent studies -- by Brandeis University, Reboot, sociologist Steven Cohen, Hillel -- have found young Jews are conflicted about how to express their identity. They are proudly Jewish -- some more "Jew-ish" -- and cherish the culture, but they have little attachment to Judaism and reject the idea of remaining part of an insular tribe. In terms of charity, or tzedakah, they want to heal the world, but they aren't so comfortable doing it the way their parents did.

"It is an acknowledgement that one's responsibility is to the broader community," said Dan Adler, a former talent agent and vice president of business development at Walt Disney Imagineering, now working on an Internet venture. "Whether it is Darfur or poverty, or whether it is any cause it might be, the Jewish community is doing a great job of honoring those broader pillars of Judaism, whether you want to frame it in tikkun olam or frame it in a responsibility to the broader community."

But what has this meant for Los Angeles' Jewish community?

It is no secret that Jews built Hollywood, but less widely known is that Hollywood helped build L.A. Jewish life. The American Jewish Committee's local chapter and the ancestors of The Federation have their roots in the entertainment industry. So do prominent synagogues like Temple Israel of Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Sixty years ago, about a third of the annual contributions to The Federation's predecessor, the Jewish Welfare Fund, came from the entertainment industry. In 2005, the proportion of The Federation's total from the industry was between 8 and 10 percent.

That generation was less concerned with Jewish education or culture or benevolent services than with telling the story of Jewish assimilation and affluence in America, said Gerald Bubis, founding director of the Irwin Daniels School of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

"Their efforts were not altruistic," Bubis said. "They were concerned about what would gentiles think about Jews. The bulk of what they did in the Jewish community was focused on how to protect the good name of the Jews, not to help Jewish people in need."

Some, like talent head William Morris, preferred to support Jewish efforts that dropped the word "Jew" from fundraising literature. And others, like David Selznick, wanted nothing to do with Jewish causes regardless of how they were framed.

"I am not interested in Jewish political problems," Selznick told screenwriter Ben Hecht, according to Hecht's memoir "A Child of the Century," when he was raising money for Jews in Palestine during World War II. "I'm an American and not a Jew. I'm interested in this war as an American. It would be silly of me to pretend suddenly that I'm a Jew, with some sort of full-blown Jewish psychology."

For those not at the top, there was plenty of pressure to give. The United Jewish Welfare Fund circulated a magazine that listed how much Jewish entertainers had given, and the constant demand for money, often coming from studio higher-ups, was enough to drive some crazy.

"Jack Warner demanded that his Jewish employees donate a percentage of their salary to the United Jewish Welfare Fund," Neil Gabler wrote in "An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood. "During a fundraising drive, he would call them into the studio commissary.

"'When we were all assembled,' screenwriter Alvah Bessie remembered, '[Warner] marched in and -- to our astonishment -- brandished a rubber truncheon, which had probably been a prop for one of the anti-Nazi pictures we were making. He stood behind his table and smashed the length of the rubber hose on the wood, and then he smiled and said, "I've been looking at the results of the Jewish Appeal drive, and believe you me, it ain't good." Here he paused for effect and said, "Everybody's gonna double his contribution here and now -- or else!" The rubber truncheon crashed on the table again as everyone present reached for our checkbooks.'"

Historically, though, Hollywood was considered a dry well for all charitable causes. But a decade ago that trend started to shift, marked by a 1997 New York Times article that stated, "In Hollywood, a new generation of philanthropists is being born -- and not a moment too soon."

The report largely focused on people making sizable contributions to improve L.A. culture -- David Geffen giving $5 million to the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood and Michael Eisner committing $25 million from his then-media empire, the Walt Disney Company, for downtown's Disney Concert Hall -- but also noted people like Spielberg who were donating millions to enrich specific communities.

"For all their glitzy wealth and self-promotion, residents of Los Angeles, particularly members of the entertainment industry, have been relatively stingy when it comes to charity," the paper reported.

Compare that to this turn of phrase by The Hollywood Reporter in its annual philanthropy issue this month. "These days, executives themselves are as likely to be found rolling up their sleeves for charity as they are posing for paparazzi at posh dinners. Indeed, the people at the top can be a nonprofit's best friend."

The shift in Hollywood's attitude toward philanthropy can be partially attributed to a sort of economic enlightenment, said Alan J. Abramson, director of the nonprofit sector and philanthropy program at the Aspen Institute. Hollywood gets that conspicuous acts of charity can be a good investment.

"Celebrities are like corporations, so philanthropy has the same attraction," he said. "It gives them a chance to get their names out there associated with a humanitarian cause that might go down well with the public, and so the public might think better about celebrities like they would about corporations doing philanthropy in the U.S. and the world.

"It is good to better the world, " Abramson said. "But it also makes good business sense."

Hollywood Jews have gotten more involved, too, and they aren't limiting their support to organizations building schools in Israel or fighting anti-Semitism in Europe.

Howard Gordon, executive producer of "24," and his wife, Cami, contribute heavily to both University Synagogue and the Stroke Association of Southern California. They also give to the "I Have a Dream" Foundation, which, among other things, provides college scholarships to inner-city children who maintain good grades.

"Helping someone help themselves is the greatest form of giving," Howard Gordon said. "It was not a Jewish charity, per se, but it is based on Jewish values."

Such enlightenment has put Jewish organizations in fundraising competition with those searching for a cure for breast cancer or trying to slow the pace of global warming. "Or," The Federation's Meredith Weiss said, "whatever the sexiest cause is."

Right now, that would be Africa.

The entire July issue of Vanity Fair, guest-edited by U2's Bono, was dedicated to issues affecting Africa. A front-page Sunday story in the Washington Post last month followed Drew Barrymore up the Capitol steps as she lobbied on behalf of the U.N. World Food Program for African child-feeding programs. George Clooney just filmed the documentary "A Journey to Darfur," Brad Pitt helped start the One Campaign to Make Poverty History after visiting Ethiopia and South Africa, and his love interest, Angelina Jolie, is a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Within this milieu, only a short jaunt over the Santa Monica Mountains, Jewish World Watch began three years ago at Valley Beth Shalom and has since received international recognition for its efforts to end the slaughtering in Darfur. The organization receives most of its support from synagogues and schools, public and private, Jewish and Christian.

Jewish World Watch has not set out to court celebrities, though it has caught some of their attention. Actors Danny Glover and Forest Whitaker attended its Seder for Darfur and Don Cheadle, who starred in "Hotel Rwanda," just filmed a public-service announcement promoting the Encino-based organization's Solar Cooker Project, which fits refugee camps with solar heating and protects women from the dangers of leaving the camp for firewood.

The organization has not asked Hollywood Jews and been rejected, said JWW President and CEO Janice Kamenir-Reznik said. It simply hasn't asked. To date, only a few Hollywood Jews have gotten involved, chiefly actress Monica Horan Rosenthal and her husband Phil Rosenthal, creator of the sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond."

"We can't turn a blind eye on things of a horrific global nature," said Horan Rosenthal, who was raised Catholic and converted to Judaism before marriage. "The worst genocide of all time was the Holocaust, and from that I think the Jewish people have taken on that we are never going to let that happen again."

Across the nation, though, Jews are increasingly giving to non-Jewish causes. The Institute for Jewish & Community Research found that between 1995 and 2000, only 6 percent of the money given away by Jewish mega-donors went to Jewish causes.

In 2002, the year before the study was published, David Geffen, the movie and music mogul, was the fourth-most generous donor in the country, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. But of the $206.2 million he donated or pledged, $200 million was for the UCLA School of Medicine and $5 million the Geffen Playhouse, leaving at most 0.5 percent of his charity for Jewish causes. The year before, when his foundation reported $2 million in charitable contributions, $110,000 went to Jewish organizations.

But that does not mean Jewish philanthropy has gone wrong. Jews have long cared about the arts and about medicine, about creating a better world, whether it's the world of Jewish life or the whole globe.

"What's best is the person who is not saying, 'I will care for the whole world at the expense of the Jews,' or 'I will care about the Jews at the expense of the world,'" said Bubis, the Jewish communal service expert. "A wholesome and fulfilled Jewish philanthropist is one who finds opportunities and outlooks and bridges those two into the fusion. That is why for me a Jewish World Watch is a healthy fusion of something universally mindful out of a sensitivity of what a Jews is supposed to care about as a human being based on what Jewish texts teach. It is not either/or."

These are better days for Hollywood Jews. They no longer need to change their names -- sometimes not even their noses. Orthodox screenwriters like David Sacks of "The Simpsons" and "Malcolm in the Middle" find producers more understanding of Shabbat. Young stars like Natalie Portman, Sacha Baron Cohen and Seth Rogen make it cool to be Jewish.

But a chasm remains between Jewish identity and Jewish institutions. One reason has as much to do with geography and economy as it does with generational shift. The problem in Los Angeles is not simply that young Jews aren't interested in Jewish organizations. The problem, in part, is Los Angeles.

"There is plenty of blame to go around. Some of it is Los Angeles, some of it is the Jewish community, some of it is the lack of appeal to younger people," said Donna Bojarsky, an adviser to Hollywood figures. "In the Los Angeles Jewish community, most people didn't grow up here. You don't have those communal ties that sometimes facilitate engagement. The Jewish community itself, therefore, is perceived as your mother's or grandmother's Jewish community, so it doesn't seem as interesting to younger Jews."

Scott Halle's story makes the case for the importance of communal continuity. A 28-year-old native of the San Fernando Valley, Halle grew up attending the shul his grandparents help start -- Valley Beth Shalom -- and watching his parents in volunteer leadership at The Federation.

"I can see my stepfather running around at the West Valley JCC on Super Sunday, talking on his walkie-talkie. He always looked happy."

So when Halle returned in 2002 from the University of Wisconsin, volunteering at The Federation would have to fit into his schedule somewhere between co-founding a production-management company and participating in the AIDS Walk.

"I always knew I was going to be involved in Jewish causes," he said.

For Keren Markuze, who arrived in the Fairfax District from Montreal without a thread of attachment to the Jewish community surrounding her, getting philanthropically plugged in was much more challenging.

She eventually discovered the Progressive Jewish Alliance, which hooked her up with a victim-offender mediation program, and once she decided she was going to stay in Los Angeles a while, she called Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters. For the past three years, the 30-year-old documentary TV writer -- Markuze's main work has been scripting medical programs for Discovery Health -- has spent a few hours every other week with her 11-year-old little sister.

"One of the most important aspects of my Judaism is the sense of love thy neighbor as you love thyself," Markuze said. "That is where I draw a lot of my identity from in terms of giving back. If you look at tradition and ritual, a lot of the things we do are ultimately about how our actions can benefit our community and society."

The Federation has created a feeder for both the Halles and Markuzes in the form of its Entertainment Division. The division, which has been around longer than officials can remember, has been recently re-energized by director Meredith Weiss, who left Creative Artists Agency last year after five years in its entertainment-marketing group. It operates a yearlong leadership institute, organizes industry socials and facilitates missions to Israel.

"The goal of this is to get them to start believing in philanthropy now so it is a part of their being as they grow in their careers and professional development," Weiss said.

In a place where time is money -- and the young have no time to spare and even less money -- donating energy and enthusiasm is how many young Jews choose to give back.

"In Israel, you did Milu'im, which is reserve duty, and officers do it between 30 and 42 days a year. If you live in America, you don't have to do that. The least I could do is volunteer for the community and help people less fortunate than us," said Amotz Zakai, vice president of Echo Lake Productions.

Zakai, 34, who moved from Israel to Los Angeles 12 years ago, volunteered for five years with The Federation and ran a youth program at Temple Israel of Hollywood that planted trees, cooked for AIDS patients and visited women's shelters.

"We really live in this bubble, especially in Hollywood. There is no connection to the real world. It is like this magical wonderland," he said. "Think about it: We do jury duty for one or two days here, and we get upset about it. In Israel, you serve in a reserve unit in the Gaza Strip and you might die."

Cynical. Pessimistic. Lazy. Uninspired. Gen-Xers may be the most maligned generation since the Gilded Age, but they also learned a lot more about charity at a younger age than their parents. That's become increasingly the case with Generation Y, or the Millenialists.

"What I am getting from the people who come to me -- the agents and celebs and whoever else comes through -- is this, and this is refreshing," said Michelle Kleinert, executive director of the Lastfogel Foundation at William Morris. "'I don't want to just write a check. I write a lot of checks. I want to get involved. I don't have a lot of time, but I want to do something I am passionate about.'"

For Brad Fuller, producer of "The Hitcher" and "The Amityville Horror," that meant delivering Shabbat meals to homebound Jews and getting involved with the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and its annual dinner at which an entertainer -- the past three were Barry Meyer, Amy Pascal and Joe Roth -- is given the Dorothy and Sherrill C. Corwin Human Relations Award, which is named for Fuller's maternal grandparents, who owned Metropolitan Theaters.

"It is my responsibility to continue the tradition of my grandparents," said Fuller, 41. "If you can, it is a blessing to be able to give back. I was taught to do it. I was raised doing it. I don't know anything else."

The AJC reported that last fall's dinner brought in $1.5 million for the national organization. A lot of that is thanks to having a name like Meyer's, the chairman and CEO of Warner Bros., on the program. This is an advantage of being a household name in Hollywood: Your involvement with charities doesn't so much demand that you dig into your pocket as it creates the expectation you'll inspire others to reach into theirs.

And when words speak louder than actions, an entertainer's message often means more than their money. That is why the Consulate General of Israel recently created a special consul liaison to Hollywood. And that is why Sam Nazarian, a young Persian Jew, whose company SBE Entertainment owns several nightclubs and produced the film "Mr. Brooks" this spring, held a fundraiser last October at his Sunset club Privilege for victims of Hezbollah rocket fire in Israel's north.

"People in Hollywood are often viewed as trendsetters," Nazarian said, "and that is an important role when translated to charity."

Spielberg, in particular, wields unfathomable influence; in May, he told the Chinese government that he was ready to meet with President Hu Jintao to urge Beijing to help stop genocide in Darfur.

But Tinseltown is a fickle place, and even Spielberg's popularity as a supporter of Jewish causes has ebbed and flowed. After directing "Schindler's List," founding the Shoah Foundation to record the stories of Holocaust survivors and creating the Righteous Persons Foundation, to which he has contributed about $70 million, predominantly for Jewish causes, Spielberg's social capital took a significant blow two years ago with the release of his film "Munich" -- criticized as "an anti-Zionist epic" and "a politically correct 'Mein Kampf' for our time."

"It takes a Hollywood ignoramus to give flesh to the argument of a radical anti-Semitic Iranian," Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer griped.

Less than a year later, with Israel at war with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, Spielberg was exalted as a hero when his Righteous Persons Foundation donated $1 million for Israeli relief. The money was significant, but his philanthropic adviser said the gesture was more so.

"Having someone like Steven Spielberg back a cause provides a seal of approval, a mark of credibility, for much of the Hollywood community," Andy Spahn told The Journal last August.

Israel has traditionally been taboo for Hollywood philanthropy, too politically charged for the image-conscious. Sure, Joshua Malina had no problem speaking out during the Second Intifada on behalf of Israel and Jason Alexander wasn't punished for joining a few other actors on the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiative One Voice. But such cases have been the exception, not the rule -- until a few years ago, and not just for Jews but non-Jews, too.

Last summer, 84 celebrities signed a letter than ran as a full-page ad in the Los Angeles Times urging the world to support Israel's fight against Hezbollah, Hamas and terrorism. Jews and non-Jews joined hands, including Sylvester Stallone and Sumner Redstone, Nicole Kidman and Haim Saban to state: "If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die."

There is, however, another emphasis for entertainers concerned about supporting the Holy Land -- giving a leg up to Israel's burgeoning picture business.

"The Jewish mentality and the Jewish sense of the importance of art and the importance of culture is now exploding out of Israel," said Joan Hyler, founder of Hyler Management. "And thank god we have something to talk about, except for the other explosions out of there that have haunted us for the past 10 years."

In May, not long after the Israeli Film Festival came through town, Hyler, another talent agent and an actor/writer/producer went with The Federation to Tel Aviv to teach a three-day class titled "Hollywood 101." On the third day, Peter Spears shared his journey from Kansas country boy to producer of the new HBO series "John From Cincinnati."

"This is your moment," Spears told a crowd of actors and writers, according to The Federation's newsletter. "Hollywood is looking at Israel right now."

This was the first time Spears, 40, had been to Israel and the second time he had gotten involved with The Federation. The first experience was volunteering to help the elderly after noticing a flier for the organization at an audition. To his pleasure, he was connected with a nonagenarian who made a name in silent films, Loyal Lucas.

"I'd only been out here several years, not a long time, and trying to do this whole Hollywood thing. And here was somebody who had been there in the beginning of Hollywood," Spears said.

Spears' second involvement -- the sojourn to Israel -- so moved him that he had his bar mitzvah at the Western Wall. Coupled together, the experiences taught Spears the importance of getting personally involved.

"It is easier to write a check, but you don't get as much back from the experience as you do when you do it in person," he said. "I wouldn't have the fond memories of going to Israel or spending time with Loyal. I only have a vague recollection of it during tax time. And then you get kind of solicited by them for eternity. That one-on-one thing is really great. Twice now in my life it has been an amazing experience The Federation has afforded me. And if they called me again, I wouldn't hesitate to do whatever it was they asked."

When asked to compare the next generation to the legends of show biz, Bruce Ramer, the high-powered entertainment lawyer and honorary national president of the AJC, said it couldn't be done.

"Wasserman was supportive and active in ways and respects that were appropriate to that day and age," Ramer said of his late friend. "I don't think one can indulge and say he did it better than others. We continue to have exceedingly generous and great people who are leaders. I'm not sure I can compare them; that was a different time.

"Different times, different styles, different methods, different technology, different concerns."

In other words, Hollywood will continue to have Jewish leaders who care about more than themselves, who give time and money to Jewish organizations and secular ones too. The times will change. So will the methods and expressions of charity. But the values remain the same.

Cut!

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Holocaust 'revisionism' in Ventura County

From: The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

The way Jews in the Conejo Valley describe it, Joseph Goebbels would be proud of the propaganda proffered as academic discourse at the Goebel Senior Adult Center last month. That's when John Bravos, a commissioner of the publicly funded facility, focused a lecture in his comparative religion series on the Holocaust. The first question asked by a flier for the event was: "Did it happen?"

When about a dozen seniors showed up, Bravos began by talking about deniers who use the phrase "so-called Holocaust," comparing the atrocities of World War II to other genocides and saying that far fewer Jews were murdered by the Nazis than historians have long believed.

"I was devastated and irate and just very insulted and offended," said Honey Bencomo, a 67-year-old Jewish woman from Agoura Hills who attended the lecture with her husband, who is Catholic. "He was talking about something that is a very significant part of Jewish history and was saying it didn't happen."

Word of the June 19 lecture spread slowly through the Jewish community of eastern Ventura County at first, and then gathered momentum last week after Thousand Oaks resident Dina Adler heard what happened and notified local and national Jewish organizations. On Friday night, Rabbi Ted Riter of Temple Adat Elohim in Thousand Oaks, a shul where Bravos once lectured on being involved in counter-intelligence during World War II, noted from the pulpit that some contradictory information regarding the lecture was swirling around.

Many Jews already have branded Bravos, a veteran of the Allied Forces, with the distinctions of being a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite.

"To live long enough to see your family's suffering and martyrdom spat upon to your face, it is really something that -- I mean, we can talk about it, but I don't think we can understand how painful that really is," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

But what's unclear is whether a sincere but ill-prepared teacher found his words taken out of context by what one attendee called "a lynching mob," until -- thanks to e-mail blasts and a furious game of telephone -- one awkward lecture became a cause celebre.

In a phone interview, Bravos, who said he worked as a Nazi-hunting spy after the war, said he has long been a friend of Israel and of the Jewish people.

"This is just like the McCarthy era," the 81-year-old retired social anthropologist said, "where people call you a name and tarnish you with mud for the rest of your life."

Some of Bravos' Jewish friends -- like Rhoda Vestuto, whose Hungarian parents lost much of their family in the Shoah -- have come to his defense.

"I hadn't talked to him in a long time, and I called him because I was so upset with peoples' self-righteous indignation. There is no way he was calling the Holocaust imaginary, that it didn't happen," said Vestuto, 78, of Thousand Oaks. "He is not an anti-Semite."

The Conejo Recreation and Park District, which runs the Goebel center, is now scrambling to figure out what happened. The district launched an investigation to learn exactly what Bravos said, and to determine who approved it beforehand.

At a specially called public meeting Tuesday, recreational supervisor Steve Wiley apologized for the lecture and, more specifically, the incendiary flier that asked whether the Holocaust happened, if it constituted "ethnic cleansing or mass-murder" and what its "moral dilemmas" were.

"The first question -- did it happen? -- is the one I need to apologize for. We all know that it happened," Wiley said at the contentious meeting, which was attending by more than 200 people, including representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, the Wiesenthal Center and local synagogues.

"That was a question intended to spur interest. It wasn't intended to deny that the Holocaust happened. ... I don't think there was any malice intended on the instructor's part," Wiley said.

What is known is that Bravos has volunteered for years at the Goebel Center and throughout the Conejo Valley and this spring was leading a series called "comparative religion." The first lecture focused on the origin of deistic worship. Discussing Islam dominated the second and third classes, and then Bravos was asked to dedicate the fourth session to the Holocaust.

"So I created a flier, that said, 'The Holocaust, did it happen? How many people died? Who did it?'" he said. "I wanted to get some of these naysayers to come into the class, so I put this on the flier, because I don't think we can ever talk enough about the Holocaust. It is 60 years old, but it's still a horrific event."

Bravos began the meeting by talking about deniers and then read a definition of the word "holocaust" and asked why Jews used that term when others had suffered, as well. Discussion was limited and a few in attendance left shortly after the lecture began.

Regardless of whether Bravos is a sincere philo-Semite who is sorely misinformed or a veiled Jew hater, the scope and highlights of his lecture bear a resemblance to tactics used by Holocaust deniers, particularly saying that atrocities did occur, but that they weren't as bad as succeeding generations were told.

Holocaust deniers, who prefer to be called "revisionists," play the part of truth-seekers, pseudo-academics on a quest to uncover the fallacies of history. But revisionism has become an important and powerful tool for anti-Semitism.

Bravos didn't claim Jews weren't killed during World War II. But he insisted that a major statistic historians agree upon -- that the Nazis exterminated about 6 million Jews -- has been proven wrong by recent research, information he said he found through a Google search.

"For 60 years, we knew those numbers; now new numbers are out," he said. "Based on the information I read, they said 3.5 million were killed in the Holocaust, which is still horrible."

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Orthodox Jews packing heat, getting mugged leaving shul

From: The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

Fifteen years ago, Mordechai Naor walked to Congregation Shaarei Tefila in the Fairfax district with a handgun as his companion. Six years after moving to the Pico-Robertson neighborhood and leaving those fears of mugging behind, Naor is considering re-kindling an old relationship.

"Since we moved over here, I always felt safe," said Naor, 60. "It's not extreme to go armed again, but I never even thought to worry about who was walking behind me."

His new sense of vulnerability stems from a recent spate of attacks against Jews in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

As dusk turned to dark on the first night of Shavuot, one rabbi, who asked not to be named, was mugged at knifepoint on Rodeo Drive near Olympic Boulevard as he was walking home after services. Eight hours later, five Orthodox men were walking down Pico Boulevard near Sherbourne Drive when a van pulled up and two men jumped out waving handguns. Less than a week later, another Jewish man was mugged in Beverlywood.

"All we want to do is be left alone and be able to go to shul and spend time with our families," said Cliff Alsberg, who handles security at Aish Los Angeles. "But these people are coming in and disrupting our lives."

Los Angeles police have attributed 11 robberies of about 30 people -- including many non-Jews -- to three teams of suspects. Five people, comprising two of the teams, have been arrested and charged; three men believed to be members of the third team have been arrested but not yet charged.

"The Jewish community was not the intended target," said Lt. Ray Lombardo of the West L.A. station. "They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when these suspects drove by."

But the apparently connected robberies have heightened fears throughout the Orthodox community. Los Angeles Councilman Jack Weiss organized two meetings in the past three weeks with Jewish leaders and police. Synagogues responded with blast e-mails telling members to be more cautious when traveling to shul; to pay attention to their surroundings, whether during the day or at night, and to walk in groups.

"But I'm not stopping any of my activities," said the mother of a 17-year-old boy who was jumped at gunpoint while walking home from a Friday night celebration of a newborn boy -- known as a shalom zachor -- in March. "And when my son went to another shalom zachor, he still walked home, but he went with a neighbor."

The robberies have evoked memories of what Naor and his family witnessed when they lived in the Fairfax District in the early 1990s. Observant Jews were targeted as easy marks, because they walked at night, sometimes alone, and even though they didn't carry cash, they often wore expensive jewelry.

"It was like an epidemic," said Isaac Naor, Mordechai's son. "Every week, somebody else was getting mugged. Everybody was walking to shul with a gun."

Among those attacked was the then-president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen, who also was the leader of the Naor's synagogue.

On Shabbat, Cohen was walking near his home with his son when two strangers approached, one asking for directions.

"Before I knew what was going on," Cohen said, "he put me in a stranglehold and started banging my right arm across the sidewalk. Just kept smashing it and snapped it."

The attack, which Cohen thinks was aggravated by the fact he had nothing to give the men, sent a shockwave through the community. People were afraid to go to synagogue without protection Cohen said. Shalom zachors were rescheduled from Friday nights to afternoons.

"I really didn't want to go out at night anymore," said Cohen, now the spiritual leader of Aitz Chaim in West Palm Beach, Fla. "People who really wanted me to be at their home for a celebration at night, they would send a guard to escort me."
Carrying a gun on Shabbat is problematic for a few reasons.

"I've always had the feeling that the people with guns don't know how to use them," Cohen said. "I always felt that they would probably shoot themselves."

There also are nonreligious legal qualms about Jews carrying weapons to shul.

Except for the few people who qualify for a concealed weapon permit, carrying a gun is illegal.

"If people are carrying them, they are doing so at their own peril, because it is against the law," Alsberg said. "But one of these days, they are going to rob the wrong person, and it will cost them their lives, and that will be the end of the crime spree."

Another suggestion, posited before, would be for Jews to stuff a small amount of cash in their sock or hatband, with which they could appease a mugger. The late Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said this would not violate the Sabbath.

"He had ruled that one would be permitted to carry on the Sabbath things which normally would be forbidden to carry," said Rabbi Basil Herring, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America. "This being a case of life or death, that would be permissible."

But Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, the chair in Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School, said it would be better for Jews to travel to shul in large groups or simply stay home than to carry money or a gun.

"There are other ways for making sure people aren't as easy marks, rather than looking as first recourse for ways of bending the laws of Shabbat," he said.
Already, the frequency of street robberies has fallen.

"We don't live in a dangerous neighborhood, thank God, and we have to be very careful before we project that it is a panic situation," said Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City.

"You don't want to create public hysteria."

Read more about yids with guns at The God Blog

Make love, not war, on porn

From: LA Daily News

LAS VEGAS -- If Craig Gross considers Jesus Christ his best friend, why is his arm around porn's leading man?

"We are the world. We are the children," Ron Jeremy sings as he and Gross draw a circus crowd at the Adult Entertainment Expo here.

During the past few years, the two -- a conservative Christian who considers masturbation a sin and a secular Jew who has performed in 1,900 porn flicks -- have grown close and, despite diametric career choices, have come to respect and appreciate each other.

"I have nothing against Ron Jeremy," says Gross, an ordained minister who leads the anti-porn crusade XXXChurch.com "I love this guy. I love hanging out with him."

Oh, how the war on porn has changed. The days of Christian groups prominently lobbying against obscenity are over. Enter the era of extending love and consolation to the adult industry and those touched by it.

Members of a Chatsworth church pray for the end of pornography and the healing of those it has harmed. Christian men gather to confess their Internet-fueled addiction. Rehab centers in Colorado and Kentucky provide short-term and months-long escapes more commonly used to treat drug abuse.

In the adult industry, it seems every dark corner has a ministry. The former strippers of JC's Girls. Hookers For Jesus. And XXXChurch, the Web's "#1 Christian porn site."

XXXChurch, which runs a Web site where people confess their struggles and offers free anti-porn software, has made the biggest splash, using gimmicks at adult conventions -- like Wally the Wiener, a 25-foot inflatable penis -- to lure eyes, and hopefully minds, away from depictions of depravity.

The message is simple: porn separates husbands and wives, defiles teenagers' minds and breeds lies. A tool of the devil, it can only be cured by God.

"People are blind to the consequences of this. They don't realize the problems this will cause down the line," Gross says, handing out Bibles. "This is a lie. This is not reality. Girls aren't like this."


`Not harmless fun'

In three decades, pornography has moved from a red-light industry reliant on seedy theaters and throw-away magazines to a multibillion-dollar enterprise piped into millions of American homes.

"I don't think America is 100 percent ready for porn. We're still a really puritanical society," actress Tera Patrick said. "But the business itself has definitely gotten a lot more popular in the five years I've been in it."

The daughter of an English-Jewish father and a Thai mother, the 5-foot-9 star with the DD chest and long black hair looks like a beauty queen. With her actor-director husband Evan Seinfeld, she owns the production company Teravision and is one of several stars credited with making the business mainstream. Last year, Patrick became the first porn star to grace the cover of FHM and also wrote a porn how-to column for the men's magazine.

But before there was Teravision, there was a cultural crisis, culminating in the mid-1980s with the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, which had been ordered by President Ronald Reagan.

``Under other circumstances,'' said commission member James C. Dobson, the conservative Christian who founded Focus on the Family, ``one would not willingly devote a year of his life to depictions of rape, incest, masturbation, mutilation, defecation, urination, child molestation and sadomasochistic activity.''

The 1,960-page report was rife with warnings about the negative social effects of pornography and allegations of adult-film stars being raped, kidnapped and tortured by employers.

But government pressure on the industry plunged when President Bill Clinton entered office in 1993, with then-Attorney General Janet Reno only concerned with child exploitation. Since then, the Department of Justice has struggled to confront Internet pornography, which has made it impossible for individual communities to keep out products they deem obscene.

``No one is seriously advocating the legalization of cocaine or heroin, but somehow the pornography industry has convinced a large segment of the population that viewing porn is not just harmless fun, but is also a fundamental right,'' Daniel Weiss, senior analyst for media and sexuality at Focus on the Family, said at a 2005 summit.

``By not calling pornography what it is -- highly addictive and destructive material -- we are heading for troubled times.''


Porn's pull

In six years of marriage, Kyle Paulson had kept his promise to abstain from watching pictures of naked women.

But work had been stressful and, over the course of 10 days, he surreptitiously visited pornographic Web sites.

``It ripped her heart out,'' Paulson, 41, of Westlake Village said of his wife's discovery five years ago.

He responded by installing filters on his computer and asking a friend to hold him accountable. Finally, Paulson confessed his struggles to the men at his church and started a Bible study for others like him.

``I didn't feel like I was addicted,'' he said. ``But I was afraid because it had such a powerful pull on me.''

Last summer, a poll by the online Christian marketplace ChristiaNet found that 50 percent of Christian men and 20 percent of Christian women are ``addicted'' to pornography. Christian ministers speak vaguely of surveys indicating 70 percent of men look at porn monthly.

But Nielsen/NetRatings detected only 42 million unique American visits to adult sites in November -- at most 14 percent of Americans.

XXXChurch claims worldwide porn sales top $70 billion, more than the gross domestic product of all but 54 nations. But Forbes magazine reported in 2001 that adult-entertainment industry annual revenues exceed no more than $4 billion, while other analysts have pegged it as an $11 billion or $12 billion business.

``Whether it is Christians talking about pornography or the media talking about pornography, the statistics talking about pornography consumption are the least reliable I have ever seen,'' Weiss said.

Anecdotally, though, anti-porn crusaders tell countless stories of men leading secret lives, of husbands learning to lie to their wives, of adults sacrificing their families to self-gratify.

``Pornography is intense pleasure, and when a man becomes addicted to intense pleasure, nothing else will satisfy him,'' said Steve Gallagher, president of Pure Life Ministries, a so-called sexual rehabilitation center in Kentucky.

``So what happens over time is he just becomes hollowed out as a person and he loses interest in interaction with other people -- wife, kids.

``He just becomes a zombie.''

Critics warn that porn glorifies extramarital sex, can be violent and can appeal to fetishes, to things God didn't design us to enjoy.

And it can be deadly, they say.

``Pornography, especially on the Internet, has become the crack cocaine of sexual addiction,'' said Ted Roberts, an Oregon pastor and author of ``Pure Desire: Helping People Break Free From Sexual Struggles.''

``Internet pornography takes someone from zero to full-blown addiction in two months.

``The implications are the disintegration of family, the loss of financial resources and, for a Christian man, it is the absolute craziness of him believing one thing and doing something else. It sets up a wrenching situation in the man's spiritual life.''

At Pure Life in Kentucky, self-enacted stays last six to nine months for men who feel enslaved by homosexual experiences, prostitute liaisons and pornography.


`A bondage to sin'

``It is a bondage to sin,'' Gallagher said. ``If it is a bondage to sin, only God has the power to break that bondage and replace that empty spot in their hearts. That really is what happens here. In simple terms: Their love for pornography and sex diminishes and their love for God increases.''

On a frigid Sunday morning in Chatsworth, two hours before the first service at The Church at Rocky Peak, a small group of prayer warriors treks to the property's apex.

This is a common occurrence, repeated the second Sunday of each month since January 2003. It began after Neil Johnson, the church's director of men's ministries, returned from a mission trip to Peru, where, he said, 700 people accepted Jesus as their savior.

Johnson was told that before his mission team's arrival, a group of women hiked to the mountains to pray for a spiritual awakening. That explanation made sense. In the Bible, the children of Israel often communicated with God from the mountaintops.

Why not, Johnson thought, do the same in a pocket of Los Angeles synonymous with sex?

With a panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley, the group members face the sun as it rises and sing praises to God, praying for their church, for spiritual revival below and for the end of pornography.

``Lord, we pray right now that we will be able to reach out to people in the adult(-entertainment) industry, that we will be able to love them, that we will tell them we love them but not what they do,'' Johnson's wife, Lynn, says.

``Lord, we pray right now for the marriages that have been pulled apart by pornography. Lord, we pray for restoration, we pray for healing.''


`Are you a sinner?'

At the four-day Adult Expo in Las Vegas, Gross and his XXXChurch carried the porn-ministry baton.

XXXChurch's booth was on the main floor, next to Gourmet Videos' 10-foot-wide poster board featuring 120 movie covers, from ``Tons of Fun'' to ``Over 50.''

Twenty feet away, fans posed with a 6-foot-1 transvestite in fishnet stockings, a pink bikini and 6-inch stilettos.

Nearby, actress Penny Flame, wearing a cut shirt that said ``Naughty American'' and tiny red boy shorts, collected money for breast cancer awareness by selling foam breasts signed by her, Patrick and other adult entertainers.

``Are you a sinner? Do you need redemption?'' Flame bellowed through a sheaf of papers rolled into a bullhorn. ``For $5, you can be redeemed.''

Fans surveyed the countless booths hawking niche films, erotic toys and photos with their favorite porn stars. Confusion was common when they passed XXXChurch and were handed the word of God.

The pocket-size Bible, written in contemporary language, is yellow and fuchsia with three stars, bubble lettering that states ``Jesus Loves Porn Stars'' and a sketched face that, with its aviator sunglasses, pencil-thin mustache and shaggy hair, most mistake for porn legend John Holmes.

``That might go against what you've heard, but it's true,'' the back of the Bible states. ``Jesus loves porn stars as much as he loves pastors, soccer moms, liars, thieves and prostitutes. We're all the same to Jesus. We're all just people who need God to save us from the mess we're in and lead us to a better way.''

Gross is an odd breed -- too much of a fundamentalist for liberal Christians and too provocative for theological conservatives. He sees himself as a minister cut from the same cloth as Jesus, someone unafraid to reach down into the gutter.

At a convention celebrating sin, porn patrons and performers not only accept the Bibles handed to them but ask for extra copies.

``What have we here?'' asked Adam Gilad, a fan from L.A.

``This is the real New Testament,'' J.R. Mahon, a XXXChurch pastor, responded.

``This is how you reach out?'' Gilad asked.

``We're not about shutting down the industry. We're about helping people,'' said Mahon.

``So you're real Christians? They're real Christians,'' Gilad said in a gee-whiz way.

He stuffed the Bible in his bag of adult toys and walked away.

Long Beach MSA leader supports suicide bombings

From: The Jewish Journal

Ahmed Billoo is the product of an upper-middle-class Alhambra home. He grew up going to the local mosque on Fridays and holidays, playing sports with friends and enjoying the blessings of a comfortable American childhood.

Twelve months from completing a business degree at Cal State Long Beach, Billoo, 22, is fully Muslim and American, the two locked hand in hand.

And yet, he believes the righteousness of suicide bombers needs to be evaluated on a "case-by-case basis."

"Muslim or not Muslim, we all fear death. Blowing yourself up is not something everyone can do or something that everyone has the courage to do," said Billoo, the outgoing president of Long Beach's Muslim Student Association. "But don't get me wrong: I'm not saying we should all go around America doing that; Palestine is a different situation. There is a huge difference between saying we should do it and saying I'm going to be a suicide bomber. I just think it is something that Islam justifies."

He is far from alone, according to a report last week by the Pew Research Center. In its first nationwide survey of Muslim Americans, about 26 percent of American Muslims ages 18 to 29 share Billoo's sentiment to varying degrees.

"I would have to say it's actually like 60 or 65 percent of the youth," Billoo added. "It's very rare that I meet someone who says suicide bombings in Palestine are not justified."

When Pew asked respondents whether "suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies," 78 percent of all U.S. Muslims flatly condemned such attacks; 9 percent declined to answer or said they didn't know. But 8 percent of all Muslims -- and 15 percent of younger Muslims -- said attacks on civilians were justified "often" or "sometimes."

While a chasm separates such sympathies from actual martyrdom -- a leap Billoo said he wouldn't be willing to make -- news of the report has affirmed a deeply held fear: That the radical strain of Islam that has swept through Europe may be infecting this country.

"What you have is a low-wage jihad taking place, but people are not paying attention to it," said Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum. "These sentiments are seething, and at any time might erupt."

Overall, however, the survey of 1,050 Muslims was encouraging.

The Pew survey, conducted through telephone interviews from January through April, estimated 2.35 million U.S. Muslims -- far fewer than the 6 million to 7 million numbers many Muslim organizations use. Two-thirds of respondents are foreign born and are strong believers in the American way of life.

The majority think of themselves as American Muslims, not Muslim Americans; believe women are treated better here than in Muslim nations, and are worried about Islamic extremism. And 61 percent said Israel and Palestinian rights could coexist -- compared to 67 percent of the general American public.

"What the survey overwhelmingly shows is that the Muslim community is the one that we at PJA have experienced. It is not the one that some people have heatedly claimed constitutes a fifth column in this country," said Daniel Sokatch, executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, which recently created with the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) the interfaith dialogue, NewGround.

Muslim American leaders have highlighted these positive findings -- "mainstream and middle class and not monolithic," as MPAC Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati put it.

They said reported sympathies for suicide bombings sounded an alarm, but, as Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) noted, they weren't any more extreme than the 24 percent of Americans who, according to a recent poll by the University of Maryland's Program on International Public Attitudes, believe attacks against civilians are "often or sometimes justified."

"The word suicide bombing is very loaded and creates images of terrorism," said Ayloush, executive director of CAIR's Los Angeles area chapter. "A lot of the young people, what I hear from them, it is not something that relates to our American scene, but it is a view about a people under occupation responding to an occupation, and it is not the civilians but the occupier."

Despite Middle Eastern fatwahs to the contrary, the Quran explicitly prohibits any transgressions against civilians, said Khaled Abou El Fadl, an Islamic law professor at the UCLA School of Law. These limitations range from torching a noncombatant's tree to killing a rival warrior's wife.

But some Muslims miss this point, Abou El Fadl said, "because they confuse politics and ethics."

"Human beings have the remarkable ability to reach results that they want to reach," he said. "In the case of Islam, the argument goes something like this: Yes it is true that our prophet has all these prohibitions; yes it is true that our prophet acted in a fashion that respected the sanctity of civilians at war; yes it is true that the Quran prohibits transgressing, but -- and this is a big but -- we have a rule that says that in the case of dire necessity, what is prohibited becomes permissible."

Since before Sept. 11, 2001, prominent Muslim American leaders have repeatedly condemned terrorist attacks. Last summer, in response to accusations that one of MPAC's founders was a closet extremist who had referred to the "butchers" of Israel, the organization bought an ad in the Los Angeles Times that affirmed "we condemn terrorism in all forms, regardless of the identity of the victim or of the perpetrator."

But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict bends black and white into shades of gray, because many Muslims don't consider Israelis, particularly aggressive settlers, to be civilians.

"Islam believes life is precious, but we also believe in justice. We are not just going to let someone come into our house and kick us out. We are allowed to fight back," said Billoo, who is of Pakistani descent. "Obviously, the more conventional combat is preferred. But suicide bombings is a last resort."

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A marijuana raid and a mezuzah

From: The Jewish Journal

Alex Grabiner was not a particularly religious Jew, but when he and a few friends opened a medical marijuana pharmacy last year in the San Fernando Valley, they invited an Orthodox rabbi to install three mezuzot in hopes that God would bless their business.

"We wanted to create a place where there was a drastically different energy inside than there was outside," said Grabiner, a 22-year-old Boston transplant.

"That is what the mezuzah symbolizes: That this is a house of people who believe."

But last month, the Karma Collective, as the pharmacy near Van Nuys Airport is known, was burglarized. The thieves didn't take much -- a few hundred dollars, no drugs -- but they cut through a steel security gate and knocked down the front door and another door that opened from the lobby to the cannabis shop.

The mezuzot were still hanging when the police arrived, Grabiner said. After the police were done, a mezuzah was on the ground, its sacred parchment removed from its plastic shell and from the safety wrapper.

Between those points in time, a burglary investigation turned into a narcotics raid, and Karma's Diana Hahn was placed in the back of a black-and-white over allegedly possessing illegal drugs. (The 23-year-old is now out on $100,000 bond; the district attorney was given an extension Tuesday to file charges by June 5.)

It's unclear what happened to the mezuzah. Grabiner and his colleagues -- they're hush-hush about titles and ownership of the pot pharmacy, which continues to operate -- claim Los Angeles police intentionally defiled the mezuzah. However, Capt. Jim Miller of LAPD's Van Nuys Division said, "To the best of my knowledge, whatever happened to that happened before our investigation."

"We don't just wantonly go through places and destroy property, and there is no reason we would have for destroying religious items," said Miller, who joined his officers at the Karma Collective investigation April 26. "If we had information that we believed narcotics was stored within an object and it was necessary for us to damage that object to recover the product, that would be fully documented -- and that didn't happen."

Whatever the case, Karma's tale underscores the broader reality that 11 years after California voters passed Proposition 215, implementation of the Compassionate Use Act, which legalized marijuana for medical purposes, remains mired in confusion.

Most cities and counties have done nothing to regulate cannabis clubs, which in Los Angeles have multiplied more than fourfold in the past year. While police are not proactively investigating the pharmacies, Miller said, they wouldn't overlook illegal activity of which they are made aware. In the case of Karma, he said, that was the sale of marijuana baked into edible cookies and chocolates, which Miller said are not protected by state law. The pharmacy contends that baked goods are protected by state law and continues to sell them, as do most clubs.

Additionally, the federal government does not recognize Proposition 215 or subsequent state legislation protecting medical marijuana and in January federal agents raided 11 L.A. cannabis clubs. Because of marijuana's purported lack of medicinal value -- last year, the Food and Drug Administration stated "no scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana," the Drug Enforcement Administration considers marijuana a Schedule I narcotic, as dangerous as heroin. Cocaine is a Schedule II.

But a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, found marijuana helpful in easing symptoms for certain cancer and AIDS patients, particularly those having problems eating.

Other studies have found cannabis eases chronic pain, relaxes muscle spasms, calms chemotherapy-induced nausea and promotes hunger in AIDS patients who are physically wasting away.

"Whether it is addictive, whether it has a negative effect on the mind -- all those things are irrelevant if you are talking about someone who is dying. What you are trying to do is alleviate pain," said Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism) and co-chairman of its bioethics department. "So the question about medical marijuana from a Jewish perspective is a slam dunk."

That might explain why Jews have been at the forefront of advocating the overhaul of marijuana laws. Many of Los Angeles' so-called "pot docs" are Jewish; so, too, is the local head of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. And one of the most prominent proponents of medical marijuana has been the Bay Area's self-styled "ganja guru," Ed Rosenthal.

A secular Jew who has spent the past four years fighting federal felony charges for running an Oakland pot club, Rosenthal's been convicted, seen his case overturned and is now being re-tried. Though authorities have agreed Rosenthal won't serve prison time if convicted, he at one point faced a possible lifetime prison sentence and millions of dollars in fines. All the while he has maintained not just his innocence but his moral obligation.

"When I was asked by the city of Oakland to become an officer to the city, I felt it was my duty, not just a civil duty but a biblical duty," he told the San Francisco Jewish newsweekly j. in 2003; he repeated the comment in a phone interview last week. "Not doing it would have been a sin of omission."

Laura McGee believes that. Growing up, the Santa Clarita Jewish girl was plagued by panic attacks so accute, she said that at times she was hospitalized almost monthly. Doctors tried Prozac and Celexa and Klonopin and more drugs than she can remember. Some helped, but not without inducing unbearable mood swings.

When she graduated last year from New Community Jewish High School in West Hills and moved from her family home, the walls closed in. Her mother tried what she considered her last resort and took McGee to a pot doc. It seemed to work. On a recent visit to the Karma Collective, McGee, who now works there and lives in Karma's Woodland Hills commune, was calm and articulate and yet indignant about the difficulty of legal access.

"Life and saving your own life and saving another life is the most important thing in Judaism. So I don't understand how this could be wrong," said McGee, 18. "It allowed me to live a normal life. To be happy. I never thought I would reach this point."

Fears of Islamophobia

NORTHRIDGE - The Muslim university student was listening to his biology professor when the lecture sharply digressed from evolution.

"Don't talk to Muslims about religion," the California State University, Northridge, teacher reportedly said. "Because they turn to a different animal."

The unidentified student reported the incident to CSUN's Muslim Student Association, which sent a letter to university President Jolene Koester, demanding that the teacher apologize and that the university conduct sensitivity training.

"The school needs to provide a safe environment for our students' education," said Zabie Mansoory, Muslim association president. "It is a biology class, for God's sake. Religion shouldn't be anywhere close to a biology class."

The incident last month, which CSUN is investigating, illuminates a broader concern among the United States' estimated 5 million Muslims. With increasing frequency, Muslims are talking about an "Islamophobic" culture that is inciting violence and discrimination - more than five years after 9-11.

In February, a hacker entered the Web site for the council that oversees Southern California mosques and wrote a hateful obscenity aimed at Muslims on the mosque-finder page.

Three times in the past two months, the Islamic Center of Upland in San Bernardino County has been vandalized.

And in December, Keith Ellison, who was about to be sworn in as Congress' first Muslim, was widely criticized for wanting to take the oath on the Quran.

Hate crimes against Muslims have constituted about 11 percent of religious-bias incidents since 2002 - after spiking to 26 percent in 2001 from only 2 percent in 2000, according to the FBI. But religious-discrimination complaints filed with Muslim organizations have been climbing.

And some worry that could lead to broader problems. Marginalized Muslims in France rioted two years ago, bombed subways and buses in London, and bombed a train in Madrid.

"Islamophobia is a root cause of radicalization," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council.

"As we are trying to counter extremism, we are coming up on Islamophobia as a major barrier to integration of Muslim Americans into the larger society."

Biology digression

At CSUN last month, biology lecturer Haig Kopooshian had been talking about evolution when he digressed into discussing religious perspectives on science.

An Armenian Christian who lived most of his life in Lebanon, Kopooshian said his discussion of humans as the "most complex animals" caused him to unconsciously refer to Muslims as animals.

"I don't know what the problem is. You are an animal and I am an animal," he said, adding that he immediately apologized in case he had offended anyone in the class.

While Kopooshian said he harbors no ill feelings toward Muslims, plenty of Americans do.

In the film "Borat," a Virginia rodeo organizer asks Borat, whom he thinks is a Kazakh journalist, whether he is Muslim.

"I see a lot of people," the organizer says, "and I think, `There's a dadgum Muslim. I wonder what kind of bomb he's got strapped to him."'

Prejudicial feelings

It's an uncomfortable moment because while Borat is a film character, John Saunders, the rodeo organizer and assistant director of the Salem Civic Center, is a real person.

Last summer, a USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 39 percent of Americans have "at least some feelings of prejudice against Muslims" and 34 percent said Muslims living in the United States were "sympathetic" to al-Qaida.

"There are elements of truth (to that)," said Daniel Pipes, a Middle East expert and visiting professor at Pepperdine University. "That is not to say it is a broad-brush indictment of all Muslims. But there is a segment of Muslims who are alienated from the United States.

"Were Muslims unequivocal and consistent in condemning not just terrorism but the perpetrators and the ideology that support terrorism, the American public would feel much more confident."

The term "Islamophobia" was coined in 1997 by the British think tank Runnymede Trust. But before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it had little use in the American lexicon.

Kevin J. Hasson, president of the Washington-based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said growing suspicion of Muslim Americans isn't surprising.

"It isn't surprising people were fearful of Japanese-Americans in World War II, and it isn't surprising they decided to put them in internment camps," he added. "But it's still appalling."

Media voices blamed

Muslim leaders blame Islamophobia on voices in the media such as syndicated columnist Ann Coulter and politicians such as Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Virginia, who criticized Ellison's use of the Quran for taking the oath of office.

"The underlying issue is the growing anti-Islamic sentiment that is being fueled by the industry of hate in America," said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Southern California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization that has been accused of having links to terrorist groups, most recently in The New Republic.

"It's an industry that benefits financially and otherwise from policies of war, policies of division and policies of demonization of American Muslims."

But Ayloush also added: "America has its way of eventually accepting and integrating all segments of the population. It is just a matter of how long it takes. We are, as American Muslims, fully committed to integrating through dialogue and creating trust, no matter what attacks we are subjected to."

Pastors feel the pressure on Easter morning

The senior pastor of Shepherd of the Hills hasn't been seen in two weeks.

Cell-phone mailbox full, voice silent to the 10,000 who attend his Porter Ranch megachurch, the Rev. Dudley Rutherford had escaped Los Angeles for deep prayer in the desert.

On Sunday, though, he will return triumphantly to a packed Pauley Pavilion at UCLA, where he will preach of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection during his church's relocated Easter service.

"It's a scary thought," he said in a phone interview from Rancho Mirage. "You know what is at stake: There will be someone in that arena making a spiritual decision for which the consequences are eternity. You multiply that one person by 13,000 people, and it is overwhelming."

So goes the pressure of being a Christian pastor at Easter, one of two days each year when pews swell with people who haven't seen an altar in months.

While Christianity couldn't exist without Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Christ, the faith's foundation is found in Easter.

On the heels of Holy Week, a time that drags Christians through the agonizing last days of Jesus' life and his death, pastors lead the celebration of the resurrection, which reminds Christians of their hope of eternal life.

"It is a journey through despair, meaninglessness, hopelessness, evil and the principalities of this world to some sense that God is still alive in this world," said John S. McClure, a professor of homiletics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. "It's a big challenge."

It's not unusual, McClure said, for pastors to take a brief retreat, to collect their thoughts away from the clutter of daily life and the demands of leading a church. Others opt to stay at home but purposely adjust their schedule.

"My preparation is first of all through prayer," said Bishop Gerald Wilkerson, head of the San Fernando Pastoral Region of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. "You've got to slow yourself down, let go of all these things and stop for a moment."

As a bishop, Wilkerson no longer endures the long hours he did as a parish priest - visiting the sick, speaking at Catholic school services, spending hours upon hours in the confessional box and celebrating special Masses for each day from Thursday through Sunday.

But he does still prepare a homily for Easter Mass, which he will celebrate at St. Finbar Catholic Church in Burbank.

Most pastors prepare weeks, if not months, in advance. With some churches putting on big Holy Week productions - Passion plays, services for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday - those ministers know that if they don't at least outline their sermon by Palm Sunday, they will be drowning in research and prayer the following Saturday night.

"There is a modicum of pressure, but it is not unbearable pressure. It is natural pressure," said Jim Tolle, senior pastor of The Church on the Way in Van Nuys, who preaches three Easter services on Saturday and eight on Sunday. "A woman giving birth has pressure. A man closing a big business deal has pressure. An athlete entering a championship game has pressure.

"But, truly, the Jesus Christ I serve carries the burden for us."

As of Thursday, Rutherford said he was 80-90 percent done. And that was after a period of study that would make a doctoral student blush.

Last week, he drove to Rancho Mirage, a resort community near Palm Springs, taking with him a basket of books, news articles, Scripture and anything else he found during the past year that involved the resurrection.

He rose early each morning, often before the sun, and pored through his notes, shaving the 2-foot-tall stack of books and papers into a 3-inch-thick sheaf of notes. Next, he honed in on the 20th chapter of the Gospel of John, identifying a few points from the text to highlight.

"Then, I take that three inches of material and I fill in all the blanks," he said.

"It is the most important topic of the year," he later added. "You've got one shot at some of these people. This is the only time they go to church all year. And I've got one shot at getting them to come back."

'People are ready for this'

CAMARILLO -- When Bill Lowe preaches his first sermon as a Catholic priest in May, he will be the only clergyman in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles with his wife, children and grandchildren listening from the pews.

Lowe, 68, is about to become the first married priest in the history of the country's largest Roman Catholic diocese.

"People are ready for this. They are ready for some married clergy," said Lowe, who retired in 2001 after 29 years as an Episcopal priest and unexpectedly converted to Catholicism soon after.

Lowe does not represent a sea change for the centuries-old requirement that priests remain celibate. Instead, he is the benefactor of an obscure order that Pope John Paul II issued in 1980.

That Pastoral Provision has allowed about 80 married men, all former Episcopal priests, to continue utilizing their gift for pastoral ministry after Catholic conversion. (Married former Lutheran pastors also have been permitted through a different provision.)

"We see it as a gift, his coming to the Catholic Church," said Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who leads the Santa Barbara Pastoral Region, which includes Ventura County. "He has a lot of experience. He's ministered to a lot of people for a long time, and he's bringing all of that to the Catholic Church."

Growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist home in Pasadena, Lowe decided at 15 he would become a priest.

"No matter how miserable the day at the parish, I always felt like I was doing what I should be doing," said Lowe, who was known in Massachusetts as the "burying parson" because of his gift for consoling the bereaved.

Rethinking celibacy

As an assistant pastor at Blessed Junipero Serra Catholic Church in Camarillo, Lowe will again be able to use his gifts for comforting and preaching.

Some priests and parishioners, however, hope Lowe brings more than experience -- that his ordination will help fuel the discussion about whether celibacy should be optional, as it was for the church's first 1,000 years.

"This move is not only historic but prophetic," Monsignor Padraic Loftus, pastor of St. Mel Catholic Church in Woodland Hills, wrote in his parish's Feb.18 bulletin. "Having a married priest in our midst must surely make us pause and reconsider, at this time of rapidly diminishing priests, why this privilege given to this couple could not be more widely granted."

Since 1985 -- for various reasons not limited to celibacy -- the number of active U.S. priests has plummeted from 57,317 to 41,794, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

One proposed solution, rejected by the Vatican, is to drop the celibacy mandate. After John Paul died two years ago, a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found 63 percent of U.S. Catholics thought priests should be able to marry.

Rule to protect land

The biblical basis for celibacy comes from the Gospel of Matthew: "Others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

But in the 12th century, when the Catholic Church adopted a celibacy requirement, it was as much about protecting property as it was committing priestly intimacy to God, said the Rev. Thomas Rausch, a Jesuit professor of theology at Loyola Marymount University.

"The church was worried about church property going to the descendents of priests," he said.

The internal drive against the celibacy requirement dates to at least the Reformation.

Celibacy has caused thousands of priests to leave ministry since the end of the Second Vatican Council 42 years ago, according to Corpus, an organization that pushes for priesthood reform.

"I am a married priest," said Russ Ditzel, the organization's president.

But to marry, Ditzel had to leave ministry in 1978, though he technically remains an ordained priest. Others, he said, have surreptitiously married and remained behind the altar -- "leading a double life."

Though Lowe agrees change is needed, he said he doesn't want to be a cause celebre. He just wants to get back to his calling.

'Where God wants us'

Lowe's journey began in early 2001, after retiring from the 100-family Parish of the Messiah in Newton, Mass.

Lowe and his wife, Linda, began celebrating Mass with friends at various Catholic churches. The liturgical experience was familiar, but he noticed the parish pews overflowing with Catholics, something he had not experienced in the shrinking Episcopal Church.

"I said to Linda, 'This is where it is happening,'" Lowe recalled.

And then, around Easter of that year, Linda told her husband they needed to make the switch official.

"We don't think of it as a conversion because we weren't changing. We were growing into something," said Linda, 66, who grew up in Glendale and was raised Presbyterian. "We feel very much now that this is where God wants us to be."

About that time, Lowe was finding retirement a bore. So, in 2002, he scheduled a meeting with Cardinal Bernard Law of the Archdiocese of Boston, whose nomination he sought for the Pastoral Provision.

But three days before the meeting, the Boston Globe broke the clergy sex-abuse scandal. That slowed the process for Lowe, as did his family's decision to return to California to care for Linda's ailing parents.

Pursuit of priesthood

They moved to Camarillo and joined Junipero Serra Church, which is known as Padre Serra Parish. Lowe continued his pursuit of the priesthood, which included reading 50 books in seven theological areas -- including ethics, church history and dogmatic theology -- a daylong psychological exam and an all-day oral exam.

"It was like getting a doctorate," he said.

On Dec. 1, he joined the church staff as a lay employee handling bereavement and counseling. Last month, amid much celebration, Curry ordained him a deacon.

"Everybody was grinning from ear to ear," said Anne Hansen, a two-decade parishioner of Padre Serra.

On May 6, Lowe's five-year pilgrimage from retirement to the priesthood will conclude when he is ordained by Cardinal Roger Mahony.

"It's finally happening," Lowe said, standing in his cramped office at Padre Serra, a Southwestern-style parish adjacent St. John's Seminary. "It is getting back to work and doing what I love to do.

"Yesterday, for example -- going to a funeral, to a hospital, visiting a baby, writing a sermon. It's getting back to what I love to do."

Higher calling

From: Los Angeles Daily News
www.dailynews.com (video posted)

HOLLYWOOD - The Rev. Craig X Rubin read aloud a passage from 1 Kings as the sun set and his congregation prepared for the Sabbath.

Flicking a lighter to the lone candle atop the podium, Rubin burned a bud of marijuana on the flame. He puffed it out, walked to each of the eight members sitting in the pews and waved the smoldering cannabis around them.

This, Rubin proclaims, carries the prayers of Temple 420 to God.

That's the God of Isaac and of Jesus, because members are Christians and Jews. That makes the congregation Rubin founded last summer unique.

But what really sets it apart - and the reason Rubin will be in court Friday - is the temple's use of marijuana as a religious sacrament.

"I am willing to preach the Bible and go to jail if it means getting my message out there," the 41-year-old Panorama City man said. And he knows how strange that sounds.

"I'm a Jewish kid from Beverly Hills who went to UCLA. I could have been a lawyer making $250 an hour like the rest of my friends, or a TV producer. Instead, I'm teaching the Bible, selling weed on Hollywood Boulevard, facing seven years in jail - of course I'm crazy."

The temple's problems actually began as a poisoning investigation performed by homicide detectives. One day last fall, a delivery driver and a security guard were given baked goods from Temple 420, said police spokesman Kevin Maiberger. Both became violently ill and almost died.

No charges came of that, but a few weeks later, on Nov. 3, an undercover officer joined Temple 420. Five days later, at 4:20 p.m., police raided it.

The temple's assets were seized, as were Rubin's. He, his 18-year-old son and another man were charged with one count each of selling or transporting marijuana and one count of possessing marijuana for sale.

"They were trying to set it up under the guise of a religious right and then be able to sidestep marijuana laws," Maiberger said. "The deal was for a $100 initiation fee and $100 annual fee, you could buy all the pot you wanted for quote-unquote `religious purpose.' That's bull----."

Rubin, however, continues to distribute marijuana six days a week to the temple's members - there are more than 400 who have paid the initiation and annual dues - for a "requested donation" of $60 for an eighth of an ounce.

He continues to burn marijuana as a sacrament at Friday night services and preaches on the weekends - Old Testament on Saturdays, New Testament on Sundays, always at 4:20.

His defense relies on his insistence that God wants people to enjoy cannabis - for recreation, religion and industry - and his belief that federal and state laws protect his religious practices.

"It's not a laughable argument," said Eugene Volokh, a UCLA School of Law professor and religious freedom expert. "It's just an uphill argument."

Temple 420 would need to demonstrate that its beliefs are sincere and that marijuana use is not the foundation of the religion but part of a broader ethical system, Volokh said.

Also, the organization would need to prove that its practices don't come at the expense of a compelling government interest.

"But it's not open and shut," Volokh said.

In 1996, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Rastafarians, who believe marijuana is a sacrament, could use federal law to defend their use of the drug, but not to defend distribution or possession with the intent to distribute.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a small religious group in New Mexico could use a hallucinogenic drug in its services.

Groups often opposed to each other - from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Association of Evangelicals - had supported O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal in its defense against the government.

But the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, cited in the Rasta and O Centro cases, doesn't apply at the state level, and that's where the charges against Rubin will be heard.

California has not passed a law similar to the federal one, and the state Supreme Court has not clearly defined whether the state constitution provides greater religious protection than the First Amendment.

And, of course, there are plenty of Temple 420 skeptics.

"I would inherently be suspect ... of someone attempting to use the Bible as a justification of their desire to smoke marijuana," said Brad Dacus, founder and president of the Pacific Justice Institute, a legal defender of Christian values. "It's not unusual for people to try to use religion as a pretext for purposes of carrying out their pleasures."

Temple 420's tenets stem from Rubin's Jewish childhood, conversion to Christianity and experience taking peyote in American-Indian sweat lodges.

A pro-pot Republican partial to dark suits and red ties, Rubin hangs the American flag behind his podium and gushes about Ronald Reagan. He has been a marijuana activist since his days at UCLA in the early '90s.

A "roper" - who believes hemp is a medicinal marvel and a panacea for fiber, food and fuel shortages - and a "doper," Rubin was dubbed "Hollywood's Wizard of Weed" by High Times magazine and was a consultant on Showtime's hit "Weeds" for two seasons.

While undergoing a family crisis three years ago, Rubin began studying the Bible and, he claims, God revealed to him cannabis' status as the tree of life.

Last year, after the Supreme Court ruled on O Centro, Rubin reasoned he could openly practice his new beliefs, which he describes as "Judeo-Christian" and "Bible based."

In August, Scott Linden, a Pasadena attorney who has helped open several medical-marijuana dispensaries in the San Fernando Valley, filed paperwork with the Secretary of State's Office that registered Temple 420 as a religious corporation.

The organization, however, did not file for tax-exempt status, said Franchise Tax Board spokesman Patrick Hill.

Religious services began Aug. 26, and Craig Roberts, who added the X to his name after studying Malcolm X and changed his last name back to that of his Jewish grandfather, started going by "reverend."

Rubin did not attended a seminary but was ordained in 1990 by the Universal Life Church, an interfaith organization that offers "Free Instant Online Ordination."

"Using sacrament as a way to elevate my spirituality blew me out," said temple member Evan Goding, 29, of Orange, who drives to Hollywood each week with his Jewish girlfriend. "I was like, no way. It just clicked. It made so much sense.

"I've always believed that the world as a whole would be better if most people would just try marijuana. It brings out the better in people. And I'm sorry it's not legal; I'm sorry I can't use it for my religious beliefs without being persecuted."

Temple 420 is located in a strip mall at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue, next door to an H&R Block and across the street from a Christian Science Church. Fifteen to 30 people stop by most days to pick up pot, said the cashier, who wouldn't give his name.

Rubin gets his stash from the same guys who sell it to medical-marijuana dispensaries, but he charges about 20 percent less per eighth of an ounce. Income goes to pay salaries and support the temple, he said.

He insists he turns away about half the people who try to join; new members must sign an agreement professing, among other things, that "the God of the Bible created cannabis ... for the healing of all nations."

"There are six medical-marijuana clubs within walking distance of here," Rubin said. "If you're a liar, you don't need to come here. Pretend you are sick."

But it is clear some of Temple 420's members aren't interested in the religious services. The sanctuary seats about 40. Some members have never attended.

"For me, it was worth it," David Donahue, 37, of West Hollywood said of joining the temple. "If I didn't get it through him, I would get it through one of my friends' dealers - and I don't know anyone here.

"Two hundred bucks, to some people, it's a lot. It's a lot to me, don't get me wrong. But we pay for convenience."

Ownership of Torah scrolls disputed

From: LA Daily News

Torah scrolls are the centerpieces of Jewish religious services. The written word of God, they are kept in arks like the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai and are revered above all Jewish symbols.

But for the past decade, Beth Midrash Mishkan Israel in Sherman Oaks has been "praying on stolen Torahs," said Rita Pauker, whose late husband, Rabbi Norman Pauker, lent the Orthodox synagogue four Torahs in the late 1990s.

Since her husband died in 2002, Pauker has repeatedly implored Rabbi Samuel Ohana to return the Torahs so she can give them to two nephews, rabbis in Florida and New York.

Ohana has refused, saying the scrolls belong to the congregation. In a brief phone interview Monday, he said Rabbi Pauker gifted the Torahs years after he closed his North Hollywood synagogue, similarly named Congregation Mishkan Israel, in 1994.

"He called me in front of his wife and he said, `Rabbi, I cannot bear having these Torahs gathering dust in my garage. Take them. Please,"' he said.

Ohana said he would return the Torahs if Pauker's widow could prove she was going to give them to another synagogue and not sell them. Three of them are likely worth about $10,000 to $20,000 each.

The dispute, deadlocked for the past two years, seems ripe for civil court. But it likely won't go there.

The only attorney Pauker can afford is Jeffrey Bohrer, a longtime member of her husband's synagogue (and coincidentally a former yeshiva student of Ohana's). But Jewish law prohibits Bohrer from bringing a lawsuit regarding a religious article in secular court.

Pauker could take the case to beis din, a rabbinical court, but neither she nor Bohrer has faith in the tribunal process.

"It has been my experience that the beis din is more interested in compromise than in the word of Jewish law," Bohrer said. "... The truth is the beis din probably is going to split the baby. Rabbi Ohana has no claim to these, and Rita has all claim. So it is unfair for Rita to settle for half."

Lending a Torah to a synagogue is a common way Jews fulfill a mitzvah, or a good deed, said Rabbi Nachum Sauer, who teaches Torah studies at Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles. "It is on long-term loan to their synagogue, but he still owns it," Sauer said.

"It would be the same as lending any property to anybody else," added David Olivestone, spokesman for the Orthodox Union. "It would be like lending a book to a synagogue. If I wanted it back, it would still be mine. Or if I lent a chair. There is no real difference."

Except Torahs are worth much more, literally and physically, than common books.

When a scroll is damaged and can't be restored, it must be buried. The focal point architecturally and liturgically of Jewish services, said Elliot Wolfson, professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University, "the Torah is described in rabbinic literature as the Princess of God."

New Torahs take nine months to a year to ink and cost from the high $20,000s to high $40,000s, said Avrom Fox, owner of AllTorahScrolls.com, an online retailer. Containing 304,805 letters and 245 columns of God's word on roughly 60 sections of parchment, Torahs are made with varying degrees of decoration and aesthetics.

Rabbi Pauker's Torahs were originally donated decades ago by his sister to Young Israel of the Bronx. When the organization closed, the scrolls were given to Pauker.

Toward the end of his career, his congregation began to shrink. At least once, it joined with Ohana's for High Holy Days services at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center near Valley College.

When he retired in 1994 and closed his synagogue, Pauker transferred ownership of most of the assets to Ohana, including the ark, prayer shawls and religious books.

But the Torahs, according to a handwritten contract between Pauker and Ohana, were to be loaned for two years. At the bottom of the page is Ohana's signature.

However, Ohana said the contract was for insurance purposes, and five years later Pauker asked him to take the Torahs and put them to good use.

"He is disrespecting everything Jewish," was Rita Pauker's response. "He is operating on a lie. It's all a lie."