A Hanukkah Story

Since Hanukkah is falling abnormally early this year, on Thanksgiving even! I've decided to write a small tale for the holiday. Here it is:

It was December 1968 and I was a mere stripling of 12 years. It was a cold winter by Los Angeles standards and the holidays were approaching, Christmas and Hanukkah. Usually around Hanukkah we would visit a childless elderly couple, The Pollaks.

Although they were the happiest and warmest elderly people I have ever known, the Pollaks met under less than romantic circumstances. Henry Pollak was a concentration camp survivor who saw his wife and four daughters killed by the Nazis. Agnes Pollak also suffered through seeing her husband and children murdered in the camps. Survivors both, they shared their experiences and mourned together and eventually married. When my father came by to visit he would reflect his experiences with them. Most of his family was wiped out as well.

One night when we visited the Pollaks, they left the living room and my brother changed the channel on the TV from a wrestling show to a World War II war show ("Combat"). There was a scene when army tanks rolled into a small village and as we were watching it my father and the Pollaks came back into the room.

The normally mellow Mr. Pollak dropped his customary friendly tone and shouted at my brother, "CHANGE THE CHANNEL! CHANGE IT RIGHT NOW!"
"Put something nicer on. Take it off", my dad said.
A little freaked out by the reaction, my brother quickly turned the TV knob to the next station, taking us back to two wrestlers beating the crap out of each other and drop kicking each other in the face.
"HAHAHAHA, oh that's funny!" The Pollaks laughed hysterically.

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A week later we had assembly in the gym at school and there was a projector in the back. Nobody knew what they were going to watch. Sometimes we saw films like the instructional CPR training movie but this time no one knew.

The school principal, Rabbi Goldstein didn't help with his obscure introduction. Walking up to the microphone stand he simply said. "You are going to see a film about your future and your parent's future and your friend's future".

With the lights turned off, the film started and we watched a black and white film of concentration camps....Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Treblinka....a voice narrated over the footage of genocide.

"During the Nazi purge of World War II, Nazi Germany exterminated millions of Jews, young and old alike..."
-An emaciated Jewish boy with a shaved head and haunting eyes stares at the camera.
"...Man, woman and child, the Nazi death camps showed no mercy to anyone, slaughtering people by the hundreds whether by bullet or by gas chamber..."
-Piles of dead, emaciated, naked Jewish bodies are pushed into a huge, bottomless ditch by a tractor.
"...The Nazis showed no mercy to the Jews of Europe, even making lamp shades made from human skin..."
-Skeletal Jews are being gently carried out of the concentration camp gates by American soldiers, liberating them.

"With the end of the Jewish nightmare comes a new paradise, the State of Israel..."
-The film is now in color and shows olive groves around a sunny desert. The sky is a clear blue.
"A Jewish state brimming with industry and promise, one can live here safe from threats of genocide..."
-Fifties era Israel shows Israelis farming and laughing, enjoying their jobs on a Kibbutz.
"Women participate in the Israeli army or they work on a Kibbutz. A Kibbutz! A cooperative farm where man, woman and child enjoy the fruits of The Holy Land..."
-Footage of dark women in fatigues with rifles drilling, date trees in a static desert surrounding them.
"This is The New Holy Land, Jerusalem of Gold!"

The film ended with a rising crescendo of music to stir the soul and the lights turned on. The principal returned to the mike.
"After you graduate Hebrew school, I want you to consider Israel as your new homeland and work on a kibbutz. It would be a life-changing experience. Talk it over with your parents tonight!"

Returning to our regular classes, I wondered why I would give up a city that housed the Whiskey A Go Go, the Santa Monica Pier and Irwindale Raceway for a farm in the desert. I didn't even like looking at short-haired girls in shorts juggling rifles.

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My school would often employ Israelis newly arrived to the States as teachers. Many of them did not have teaching credentials at all, but as long as they could speak Hebrew they had a job. The worst teacher and class I ever had was the one called Jewish History. Jewish History consisted of a Six-Day War veteran named Mister Gur newly emigrated to the US teaching us what he did during the Six-Day War. He was a red-haired man with a handlebar moustache and thick horn-rimmed glasses. He spoke with a lisp and never bathed. Every day he wore the same white dress shirt open down his chest so you could see his chest hairs.

Class consisted of him pulling down a yellowed map of Israel in front of the blackboard and using a wooden pointer to show each little town where there was war action. He spoke very slowly and knew very little English. If you knew Hebrew you had a fighting chance of understanding him.

"Tho, we went to....Haifa and got our orderth to go the Gatha Thtrip, and blah blah blah..."
I started daydreaming.
"Hmmmm..." I thought. "If The Beatles put out a white album cover and The Rolling Stones also put out a white album cover does this mean EVERYBODY'S going to put out white album covers? That's so dull-"
"THEVRIN!!!! Are you paying attention? What did I jutht thay?"
"Um...." think fast. "You surrounded the Egyptians and they all surrendered!"
Everybody laughed. Mister Gur's face turned red.
"Go to the printhipal's offith!!!!!"

Great, now I have to tell the Zionist principal I didn't pay attention listening to a bunch of war stories.

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Most Gentiles don't really know what Hanukkah means, but most Jews, especially American ones don't really know what Hanukkah means, either.

Hanukkah is a holiday about the empowerment of the Jews who fought back against the Greeks when they took over the Second Temple and outlawed Judaism. A family of rebels named The Maccabees fought against them and emerged victorious. Hanukkah is a holiday celebrating Jewish strength over adversity and not one of sorrow or persecution.

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Today marks the Centennial birthday of my Uncle Alex who I wrote about in my story "Hungarian Kitchen Fight Club" (August 11, 2007). A remarkable man who began as a mechanic in my grandfather's machine shop, he survived The Holocaust and moved to the United States where he repaired motorcycles, maintaining a highly loyal clientele among countless biker clubs across the greater New England Area. When I asked him if he was offended by their swastikas, he'd just smile and say, "They don't really understand what the hell it means".

Although he worked long hours in his garage he still managed to find time to put on tefillin and pray in the morning. Happy birthday, Uncle Alex, 100 years old today.

The Later Prophets

Time wasn’t on Barry’s side anymore. Once considered an asset to his workplace, he was now overshadowed by younger clerks, and now that he was no longer the new face at work, people were getting tired of him. Just what it was they were tired of, nobody knows. Barry was quiet and didn’t intrude on anyone, which of course struck everyone as being aloof. You couldn’t win.

Barry Weiss worked in a large government building constructed in marble and stone, the traditional classic metropolitan style. Where there wasn’t marble there was granite, and as such the building was so incredibly dense that cell phone calls couldn’t be made or received. One had to stand outside in order to make mobile calls.

Barry turned his computer on and opened up his emails. The first one was from the Director and made him laugh.

“TO: All Departmental Personnel
SUBJECT: Cultural Diversity Month
As you all know, the month of April is Cultural Diversitty month. This month we salute all minorities, races and creeds by having hour annual cultural Diversity lunch on Friday, April 10 at 11:30 aM. Bring you’re favorite dish from you’re cultural childhood, it will be fun!
Examples: Burritos, tacos, enchilades, and other ethnic delites. See you their!
Director Dan Ashman
Los Angeles County Department of Legislators
NOTE: All governmental correspondence should be treated as confidential.”

Dan Ashman had the highest position in his Department but still had trouble stringing together a sentence. Cerebral Palsy victims were far more accomplished at expressing themselves.

Barry’s intercom line rang. “Hello?”
“Barry could you step inside my office? I need to see you”. It was his boss, Mrs. Weston.

Mrs. Weston’s office had no windows and the walls had generic art prints framed in the common manner. Her office furniture was like a wrestling match between blonde wood and battleship gray metal. Her hair had the same combination with the battleship gray metallic look winning. Her face was fat and overly simple, trying hard to look contemplative.

When Barry stepped into Mrs. Weston’s office he sat down. She kept on writing as if he wasn’t there. After a minute of ignoring him she looked up and said, “Could you close the door?”
Barry got up and closed the door and as soon as he sat down she said.
“Barry, this is about that request for time off next week. I’m afraid I can’t approve your time off, I’m sorry”.
“But Tuesday and Wednesday is Passover”.
“Yes I know it’s one of those Jewish things, but we’re really booked with deadlines that we have to meet by the end of next week. We’re short-staffed enough as it is, and Nyesha’s still out on vacation”.
“She’s been on vacation for three weeks”.
“Well, that’s not really your concern, but anyway, I hope you understand the position I’m in. Sometimes I wish you’d stop and consider the responsibilities a boss like me faces every day”.
“What if Nyesha returns next week?”
“Barry, I’m afraid it’s not negotiable”. Her phone rang which she promptly picked up. “Yes?” She looked at Barry. “We’re done”.
Barry got up to leave.
“Yes, yes, of course I’m listening to it right now”, she said and then raised her chin from the phone. “And please close the door after you!”
Barry closed the door and walked back to his cubicle.

The office was now an audio flood of broadcasts from the Los Angeles County Legislators meeting. Everyone had the meeting turned on live from their computers, so the whole room boomed with the sounds of the Los Angeles County Legislators arguing and discussing important matters. Barry was bored of government and bored with politics.

“You didn’t get your time off, huh?” his work mate Jerry asked him as he sat down.
“How can you tell?”
“The world famous Walk of Shame from the boss’ office”. They both laughed.
“Thanks for the laugh. I wish I had more to choose from”.
“Smile! Look at the sun shining and the flowers blooming! Spring is here!” Jerry waved his fat arms around. The only thing thin on Jerry was his face. The rest of him was big, thick and jolly.
“We used to be able to see the sun and the flowers and all that shit until Weston moved us into the basement. Now all we have are a lot of walls and exhaust from the parking lot”.
“Aw, what do you want to see a bunch of windows for? They’re too bright, you might blind yourself!”
“THERE’S TOO MUCH TALKING GOING ON. ARE MY REPORTS READY, BARRY?” Barry’s supervisor Miss Salazar barked at them. Miss Salazar was short and fat like a little dog and just like one did a lot of barking.

Two hours later Barry was wrapping up a ten-page report with databases and charts drafted by him. It was a pain in the ass to draft with the meeting squalling all around him, but he managed to slap it all together into something presentable.

His co-worker Ameer was across the room goofing around with Talia. He used to be pretty good friends with her until Ameer joined the section, but now she talked to him all the time and ignored Barry. Miss Salazar raced over to Barry’s cubicle on her stumpy legs and barked at him.

“Barry! I need you to get started on the meeting minutes and we need to have a final draft completed by tomorrow morning!”
“Wasn’t Ameer supposed to do the minutes? He told me you assigned it to him”.
“Now, Barry! Ameer is too busy with other assignments so I need you to step up and pick up the slack!”
Barry looked across the room at Ameer bullshitting around with Talia.

“I’ll draft the minutes but I think next time Ameer should do it next time like you said he would”.
“Why are you being so rude to me? Do you remember what I said the last time you were rude to me?”
“No, when was that?”
“You know, you remember!”
“No, I don’t remember, when was that?”
“Remember how last month I asked you to do something and you raised your voice at me?” Who the fuck remembers shit like that and why?, thought Barry.
“No I don’t and obviously I have a report to finish because Ameer”, Barry waved his arm towards Ameer giving him a dirty look, “has too many responsibilities keeping him so busy”.
“Well if you’re going to be that confrontational I’m afraid I’m going to have to write you up. I really didn’t want to have to do this but I have no choice”, Miss Salazar, thick, short single mother’s voice rose. “YOU MADE ME WRITE YOU UP, I DIDN’T WANT TO DO THIS I’M A NICE PERSON BUT YOU’RE JUST PLAIN RUDE!”

Half an hour later, Barry took his afternoon break. He finally got a glimpse of the sunshine, the wind blowing his dark hair around. He stood at the bottom of the huge marble and granite staircase the fronted the august building he worked at. There was a bus stop by the sidewalk in front, stopping every so often and letting high school kids out. They seemed very happy.

Barry straightened his tie and lit up his cigar, puffing it a few times to make sure the flames catch. The flames seared his sinuses and his throat giving him a smooth, delirious high. He took a quick look at the hills miles away from him, and then opened up his Bible. It was opened up for The Later Prophets, reading a few lines from the Book of Micah:

“Woe to them that devise iniquity and work evil upon their beds when the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away; so they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage”.

Barry looked up from his Bible and saw Talia standing by the marble balcony overlooking the street, pretending not to notice him reading, unconvincingly. He looked back down at his Bible, turning to the Book of Habakkuk:

“Woe to him that getteth unjust gain to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many peoples, and sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and stablisheth a city by iniquity!”

Barry took another puff from his cigar, checking his watch to see how much time he had left before he had to return to his daily reporting. A bus pulled up at the curb and a couple of laughing teenagers jumped off, yelling and jumping around. Barry turned to the Book of Zephaniah:

“The great day of the Lord is near…that day is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring destruction upon men that they shall walk like blind men because they have sinned against the Lord, and their blood shall be poured out as dust and their flesh as dung”.

The Bible was funny. Barry laughed at the last line and realized that if he was going to get written up for insubordination he was going to do it with God’s blessing. He decided right then and there he was going to synagogue the following week for Passover. With a big smile he slammed the Bible shut, crushed the fat cigar out on the marble wall and slowly strode back up the steps of the obscene building.

An Electro-Swing Hanukkah

This week - Saturday night, December 8th -brings the arrival of Chanukah, Hanukkah, or the Festival of Lights. Hanukkah is an 8-day festival represented by a candle lit for every day on the Menorah, the candelabra used for this special occasion. The Menorah is used to commemorate the miracle of a single day’s portion of olive oil lasting eight days, the olive oil being important for lighting the candles in the newly rededicated Second Temple.

One of the most significant aspects of Hanukkah is that it reflects an image of Judah and The Maccabees, Jewish rebels that fought against the tyrannical Antiochus Epiphanes of Greece. In light of the tragedy of The Holocaust it was important to remember that there were times in Jewish history when Jews have risen up and rebelled to reclaim their right to be Jews.

Jimmy's Gang - Parov Stelar

For the next eight nights candles will be lit and added each night on my Menorah (pictured above). Buying Hanukkah candles has always been pretty cool. Nowadays you can get candles in silver, gold, or multicolor with weird little wax appliqués on them. I get a different color and design each year. The wax is usually in a braided shape with the appliqués hanging off them like moon craters. You can find them at Bed Bath & Beyond in addition to any religious store.

Rock It For Me - Caravan Palace

No Jewish holiday is complete without a seasonal delicacy to make the holiday more fun, and that’s where latkes come in. Potato pancakes with either apple sauce or sour cream on the side, even non-Jews enjoy eating this all year round, but they’re the official delicacy for Hanukkah.

Be-Bop 2 Hip-Hop - Jem Stone

Another festival custom is spinning the dreidel, a diminutive spinning top that we played when we were kids. Each side of the dreidel had a different letter, which in Hebrew has a numerological value to it. When the dreidel stopped spinning and fell on the letter with the highest number value the kid with the highest number would win all the chocolate coins or bubble gum coins the other kids would put up in the betting pot. I always preferred the chocolate coins to the bubble gum coins because the bubble gum was always too hard and made your jaws ache!

The Gasworks Gang - Jem Stone

After all is said and done you can’t beat an awesome holiday season, and growing up in snowy Providence, Rhode Island in 1961 was the best. Predominantly Roman Catholic (a lot of Italians lived there) even my family loved going to downtown Providence and looking at the great department store displays with Christmas toys and electric trains and the humongous Christmas trees all tricked out with billions of lights. It was pre-zactly just like Bob Clark’s classic film “A Christmas Story” with all the elaborate fancy toy displays.

Hotel Axos - Parov Stelar

After we checked out the great store displays all over the metro area we drove through the residential areas to see who had the most extravagant display in front of their house. Some people went all out with an elaborately built manger (like in “Diner”) or a Santa’s Village that would make Walt Disney blush. One manger showcased statues painted and lit so ghouly grotesque the Three Wise Men looked more like Dracula, Wolfman and Frankenstein. Scary. I guess the bottom line with this holiday season that it’s all about THE LIGHTS, Christmas or Hanukkah. The snow might be falling but it’s all about THE LIGHTS.

The morning after this Xmas phantasmagoria had us bobsledding down the hilly streets of Taft Avenue, Rhode Island Jewish kids sledding in the snow with the starry spire of Temple Emanuel standing tall at the top of the hill like a sentinel protecting us from any further Antiochus Epiphanes in the future.

And all I want for Hanukkah is lots and lots of Burberry Prorsum clothes for men, or at least the dough to buy it with!

Parov Stelar will be appearing at The Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles on Friday, December 14, 2012 at 8 pm.

Happy New Year 5773

At this time of year the Jewish Holiday Season begins, inaugurated by the Jewish New Year, which is now 5773. Around this time I engage in thoughts both religious and secular, but as long as I’m discussing religion I want to talk about my favorite artist, Marc Chagall. The majority of Chagall’s timeless artwork is Jewish-based, mostly reflecting the streets of the European ghettos of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Chagall’s art style strikes an equal balance of fauvism, surrealism and naïve art that still presents a challenge to the viewer. The presence of animals in his painting, such as goats, chickens and cows is not necessarily intended for comic relief but is included because many homes in the pre-war shtetls (Jewish villages) had farms which housed these animals.

Most religious art is bound by tradition but Chagall’s depiction of religion is the freest ever painted, unencumbered by any pressure to follow reverence. While it isn’t irreverent by any means, there is a playfulness and humor that is absent in most religious work.

Whenever Rosh Hashanah (New Year) and its successive holidays come around I always look at my Chagall books and enjoy the works of a brilliant genius. His work transcends the folklore of any religion - if you’ve got eyes you gotta feel it.

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I live in the heart of the Jewish hood on La Brea Avenue between a girls’ school and a wig store (heh!) and the school kids walk by under my 2nd floor window. It’s funny when I play my techno-swing records because a lot of them use clarinet, giving the music an almost klezmer-type sound. One day I was blasting out “Chambermaid Swing” by Parov Stelar, the lord high fixer of electro-swing, and I could hear a bunch of school kids hooping and hollering outside my window.

The Mojo Radio Gang - Parov Stelar

Who knew Jewish kids were into this Betty Boop swing shit? But it all fits, the music, the era, the culture, a lot of it has very Jewish roots (Afro too, of course, but this is really Jewish sounding stuff!). Just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things I played “The Mojo Radio Gang” by Stelar and I could still hear those crazy kids outside enjoying the music.

Princess Crocdile - Gry

After doing a little bit of research I discovered that electro-swing is pretty big in Europe, esp. in Britain and Germany, where they even have gigantic festivals dedicated to this hypnotic, insane dance music. Girls dress like Louise Brooks/Clara Bow flapperdoodle and guys look like old bootleggers, and it might all dress-up , but it doesn’t matter. The king of swing Parov Stelar looks like a male model so you don’t need to re-enact “The Sting”.

Chambermaid Swing - Parov Stelar

Just to raise the Betty Boop stakes some more I played “Princess Crocodile” by Gry, a bizarre ballad about a woman who travels through graveyards as a swing band of ghosts vamp on "Sweet Georgia Brown". By the way, the kids didn’t leave until I stopped playing all that crazy electro-swing. Never mind the lame American punk revival, electro-swing is the very next craze. The kids have spoken. Loudly!

Masters of Illusion: Jewish Magicians

The Skirball Cultural Center is a museum located far up the Santa Monica Mountains, so high up it’s located beyond Bel Air and The Getty Museum. The museum is located in an area is so remote it defies credibility but there is nothing so incredible as the world of magic, which is why I went there. The Skirball hosted an exhibit on Jewish magicians of the early 20th century titled “Masters of Illusion”. I thought it was a wonderful show.

In addition to beautiful show posters for magicians as diverse as Kellar, Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin, Goldin and the great Houdini there were props from the original acts, including magic wands, trick cards and balls, restraints and the inevitable strait-jacket. Magic as a form of popular entertainment was at its peak around the late 19th-early 20th century thanks to Vaudeville, Music Halls and Carnivals. Their greatest rival was this new thing called movies, which eventually signed up Harry Houdini who starred in several mystery-sci fi serials, which were screened at The Skirball that afternoon.

A lot of pieces were on loan from Ricky Jay, a great magician who’s worked in millions of movies like “House of Games” and “The Grifters”, the ultimate sleight-of-hand movies you need to catch up on. Others were loaned out from The Magic Castle, an invitation-only club that exclusively showcases magic acts.

Many anecdotes on Houdini were posted at the exhibit, but my favorite was the one about Houdini’s attendance at a séance at writer Arthur Conan Doyle’s home. Doyle’s wife was a big fan of the occult and conducted a séance where Houdini’s mother supposedly contacted him from the grave. Houdini was skeptical of the ceremony and patiently sat through the whole bogus affair. Needless to say, the ceremony reached a new pitch of outrage when after the séance Mrs. Doyle handed him a letter “written” by his mother from the great beyond. It was in English; strike one, Houdini’s mother only spoke to him in Hungarian, their native language. It also had a crucifix scrawled on it; strike two, Houdini was a rabbi’s son, so he came from an orthodox Jewish home. Houdini exposed Mrs. Doyle as a fraud and doubled his efforts at exposing fraudulent séances, many at the time targeted at bilking rich widowers of their money, as fictionalized in the great movie “Nightmare Alley”.

I don’t think magic will ever leave us as a major entertainment form. We still have conjurers like Penn & Teller and that weird TV goth guy whose name escapes me still doing the sleight of hand, and some people are dumb enough to believe Harry Potter’s a real magician, so the art of magic still lurks among us.

Another exhibition recently attended was the “Beauty Culture” show at the Annenberg Photography Space in Century City.  I thought the Annenberg was a gorgeous space to view photography. On display were diverse images from the past century with icons either represented by movie stars, i.e. Marilyn, Bardot, Harlow, Audrey, etc. or supermodels, i.e. Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton, Heidi Klum, etc.  I enjoyed discovering photographers I was previously unaware of, like Horst P. Horst and the amazing Marvin Sokolsky = check out his floating balloon series, absolutely amazing. And as I said there was diversity in images of beauty, whether it was photos of tribal beauties, mid-century models still working into their seventies and plus-sized beauties, to name a few. The show runs through November, admission is free, and is highly recommended.

I Was A Juvenile Delinquent For The JDL

In 1972 I went to Rambam Torah Institute, a division of Yeshiva University. Not a big school, but infamous in teenage Jewish circles. When word got around that Rabbi Meir Kahane was scheduled to speak at our school you could have knocked us over with a feather. Rabbi Kahane was a legendary figure in the Jewish scene, one who was controversial in a world that disdained controversy. Orthodox Jews, for the most part, want to be left alone in their own little world and don’t want to rock the boat, but Rabbi Kahane couldn’t rock the boat hard enough. He was fed up with Jews being depicted as eternal victims and punching bags for every angry minority that needed an easy target for their frustration.

In the late Sixties there were too many incidents involving Jews being attacked in New York by rabid minorities deluded into thinking that Jews were meant to be shoved into ovens for the rest of their lives. Rabbi Kahane was angry as hell and fed up with this shit, forming the Jewish Defense League and fighting back every Anti-Semitic dickhead in New York. He was coming to LA’s most psychopathic yeshiva ready to recruit a West Coast chapter, and I was in on the ground floor.

Our assembly hall was a tiny chapel at the top floor of the school. When you looked out the window all you saw were clouds, birds, the sky and the sun. Nearer thy God to thee. As we filed in Rabbi Kahane was already on stage, nervously pacing up and down. Instead of seeing an old codger with a long, white beard I saw a dead ringer for Tyrone Power in “Nightmare Alley” (with a yarmulke).

“An elderly Chasidic Rabbi was attacked by three Puerto Rican thugs as he was going home from shul on Erev Shabbos (Friday night). Jewish Defense League members saw this happening and fought back with baseball bats. The police arrived at the scene and arrested these criminals who had a history of robbing and beating innocent citizens in the past. The Holocaust was a despicable chapter in Jewish history and has unfortunately given the goyishe (non-Jewish) world the mistaken impression that we’re chronic victims. Well, the JDL is here to show that Jews aren’t targets for anyone.

Just like the Maccabees we believe in fighting back. Our motto is ‘Never Again’ – never again will we allow goyim to attack our people, and in keeping with that philosophy we have neighborhood watch groups patrolling yiddishe neighborhoods like Crown Heights , Queens, just like the Guardian Angels. We’re here to expand our chapters nationwide. Volunteers are encouraged - a sheet will be passed around for signing. I look forward to each and every one of you volunteering for this great mitzvah (good deed) – the mitzvah of protecting the world’s oldest civilization from being crushed by vicious criminals. Yasha Koach (more power to you”.

Of course, I signed. A lot of kids signed but many “disappeared” from JDL activities, partially out of apathy and some because their parents hit the ceiling after hearing about their new commitment (ha,ha). The first JDL activity was at the Hillel Hebrew Academy (9120 W. Olympic Blvd.) gym for Boxing Class. Teaching skinny yeshiva scholars how to fight. As we filed in a very non-Jewish looking pug was skipping rope furiously, kinda showing off if you ask me because he kept at it for five minutes after we came in. Once he got bored being the Big Man of the Gym he paired us all off and had us put on boxing gloves.

“Okay, kid, you cover your face like this with yr. left glove, and then you hit, Hit, HIT with yr. right. That’s the way, champ! Okey doke!” he instructed in his Texas beat-down drawl. I was paired off with a kid I used to see leaving the Reiss-Davis Childrens Institute, a sort of psychiatric clinic for disturbed Jewish kids. I know cause I went there myself. We squared off and this nerdy kid with the crazed elf face started swinging wildly and punching everything in sight, my shoulder, my arm, my collar, my ribs, everything but my face.

“Punch harder, kid, harder! Aim harder!” the Dallas nutcase roared, jumping around like an epileptic referee. Since this monkfish swung with both arms and didn’t cover his face I took a clear right hook to his cheek and flattened him. The horse trader made a disgusted face because he didn’t want me to win, so he pushed me away and spat, “That’s enough with you two! Next!”

Boxing lessons didn’t last long because the kids got bored and the check from the JDL probably bounced, so it came and went. We had bigger fish to fry, anyway. Dr. Linus Pauling was going to speak at a banquet held by the Russian Consulate in Hancock Park . We, along with fifty other Jews were there to protest the inhuman treatment Russian Jews were suffering by their government. Any Soviet Jew applying for a visa to Israel was arrested and placed in an asylum for the criminally insane, and the American government, not smelling a profit, typically turned their backs. We carried placards saying “Save Soviet Jewry” and “Let My People Go”.

We demonstrated in front of the building and chanted “Shame on you, Mother Russia” and “Let the Jews Go”. Russians spat at us and screamed at us in Lithuanian (Litvak), Armenian, Ukrainian, and every other Russki dialect they could think of. Bottom line, it was Anti-Semitic. When we chanted “Never Again” the color would drain from their faces because we were Jews who wouldn’t take it lying down. We had TV exposure on the news and Rabbi Marvin Hier, later of the Simon Wiesenthal Institute, commented on the protest.

Besides raising the hackles of the Jewish community we also made enemies with the White People’s Party, headed by head Nazi Joe Tomassi. They were located on Peck Road in the city of El Monte, and they followed us around in their Nazi uniforms and their spaced out German Shepherds, too stupid to scare a six-year old. They even had a hot line you could call where Tomassi had his Hate Message of the Week, e.g. “Niggers are led by evil Jew devils to wreck schools and churches. We must stop their sleazy deviltry right now. My message next week: shipping those taco eating wetbacks back where they came from. Please leave a message when you hear the tone:” And of course we’d crank the asshole.

We managed to also get their direct line and crank them like crazy; because of our “deviltry” they had to change their phone number on a regular basis. We also kept track of every demonstration those pigs attended, at L.A. City Hall, at Olvera Street, they even tried to demonstrate at Jew Central, Fairfax High School. We ran up their asses and made life hell for them. It was a waste of time, though; if there’s anything Nazis do best its kill their own. Just like George Lincoln Rockwell was killed by a fellow Nazi, Joe Tomassi suffered a similar fate by being shot to death by a rival Nazi Party drone.

By the late Seventies/early Eighties my involvement in all things militant had waned. Shucks, punk rock was as militant as I could get back then. Besides, by that point in time, many civil rights groups like the Black Panthers, Womens Liberation, and the JDL evolved into such an extreme reactionary caricature of all the things that made them valid in the first place.

Many of the original followers of those groups moved away as quickly as possible because their original agendas had been replaced with an extremist slant. Rabbi Kahane spoke less about defending the Jewish community in America and more about racial discrimination towards black Jews in Israel. Whatever happened to the “defense” in Jewish defense???

But the most horrifying vision was in 1981 at a Passover seder where I saw some punk-ass creep bragging loudly about his work with the JDL, his voice rising to get attention. I finally turned around to take a look at an ugly kid with a yarmulke in a brown shirt, a little moustache, and his hair parted to the side almost resembling Adolf You-Know-Who. Here comes the new boss, same as the old boss. L.A. got its own JDL leader, too, the unfortunate Irv Rubin. Irv meant well when he wasn’t screaming at everyone and shoving them out of the way, which was fairly often. My last memory of him was when I was waiting for a bus on Fairfax and espied him chasing some stupid black kid down the street because he made the mistake of grabbing some kid’s yarmulke within ten feet of Rubin.

Violence begets violence, of course: Rubin ended up brutally murdered in County Jail. Kahane was assassinated in a New York hotel by one of the Palestinian rats that blew up the World Trade Center parking lot in 1993,and Kahane’s son and daughter-in-law were ambushed by Palestinian terrorists. So now you ask me, was it worth it? Was all the fighting worth it? Absolutely. Before and even after Kahane’s death there are too many Jews that refuse to fight back or even stand up to discrimination. The world gets too comfortable accepting the fate of a race that too often has been beaten down, and we need more leaders that teach us the importance of self-defense, because birds do it, bees do it, even Jews must do it. Never again.

God's Little Darkroom

I don’t remember how I met him, maybe he approached me, maybe I approached him, Yosef was a very cool guy for an Orthodox Jew. He talked the hip lingo, didn’t cop a self-righteous attitude as many did, loved science fiction, and collected vintage Citroens. Yosef was part of some Citroen collectors club so there were four parked in his driveway, some spilling over into the front lawn. He wasn’t a diamond dealer, he was an astronomer who worked at Griffith Observatory. If all Orthodox Jews were as hip as he was, well…

“You know, Andy, Citroens are pretty far-out cars, they have the most amazing pneumatic system that protects them. Let’s go see ‘Barbarella’ tomorrow night, man. It’s playing in Sherman Oaks, I’ll drive”.
“Barbarella, huh? Does Miriam know?” Miriam was his wife.
“No”, he smiled sheepishly. “We’ll tell her we’re going to the Observatory. She hates astronomy”.

Miriam didn’t hate astronomy, she hated everything. A cold, unfriendly Catholic girl who converted to Judaism, Mary, I mean Miriam had “NUN” written all over her. With no makeup on and her shawl around her head instead of a habit, Miriam didn’t resemble a Jewish wife so much as she did an angry nun. And acted like one, too.

It wasn’t unusual, though. After hanging out at Chez Yosef on the Sabbath I got to meet a few of their friends, who were either: a) Jewish ex-hippies who got on the rehab train from acid, speed or heroin; or, b) they were converts to Judaism. So when you met a Nordic-looking kid named Moshe Johnson, you shouldn’t be surprised.

I didn’t mind them at all except when they acted like they knew Judaism better than I did.
Yosef’s wife Miriam was like that.
“That’s not the way you hold a menorah”.
“You can’t be alone in a room with a married woman. It’s in the Torah”.
No it’s not, Mother Superior. I went to Hebrew school while you were eating pork out of a can, you stupid bitch. Out of respect for Yosef I kept my mouth shut from her.

When Passover came around Yosef invited me to come to his Seder (festival banquet). He practically begged to the point of embarrassment, so I gave in.
“Besides”, I said, “It’ll probably be safer than the Chabad House (UCLA campus Jewish institution) Seder I went to last year. The frat house next door was staging a Redneck Night:”
“That sounds funny”.
“No, it wasn’t”, I said, “After the Seder some drunken frat guys were following me down the sidewalk blathering about beating up some Jews”.
“That’s terrible! Baruch Hashem (praise the Lord) you’re safe.”
“The sidewalk was poorly lit and I was by myself. I was pretty scared, and to this day I hate college fraternities”.
“Well, we’ll protect you. I give you my guarantee this will be the safest Passover you’ll ever have. The most enjoyable, too”.

It wasn’t. I met Yosef and Miriam’s friends, some looked like they were visiting and some looked like they were now living in the house. Moshe Johnson was there, and then there was some guy everybody was excited about seeing.
“Herschel’s here! Herschel, when did you get back?”
“I got out on Sunday. They wanted to release me on Shabbos, but I said no”, he said, lifting up his arm to take off his jacket. All I focused on was the tracks on his arms. Herschel was a junkie, who with his sleepy eyes looked like he was still loaded. He always wore a large overcoat and beret. Junkie.

There was Freyer, the Johnny Cool Jew with dreadlocks, resplendent in shorts, sandals and the ever-present tallith under a green t-shirt. Tallith is a prayer shawl that married men wear when they pray. Well, he wasn’t married, and you don’t wear it as a clothes accoutrement 24/7. But all the girls loved him.
“Ooooh, Freyer, when are you going to Israel?”
“Oh, Freyer, will you make the blessing? Yosef won’t mind!”
Even Yosef thought Freyer was a posey little tool but had too much class to spit it out. But he’d get a little snatchy some times.
“Ahhh, Freyer”, Yosef slyly appraised the bad Hebrew hippie outfit, “I see you’ll be working in a nice Shabbos hat with those sandals, huh?”
“Far out, Brother”, Freyer would insincerely drawl. Trash.

Yosef and Miriam had a cute little boy, Mendel, three years old, and a little girl, Chana, two years old. Chana was a show-off and being the youngest got all the attention. I liked Mendel immediately. He was always asking me questions.
“How do you know my abbah (daddy)?”
“Did you stop taking drugs, too?”
“I can count in Hebrew. Wanna hear?”

Miriam had a new friend, a fat, surly black girl (Leah) who wore the same ugly scarf around her head as her. She also disdained makeup like her mentor, and I suspected there was a little more going on, too. I had the nauseating notion that she was now living in their home. Now that Miriam had a sneer sister it was a waste of time trying to befriend her.
“It’s time to set the Passover table, Leah”, Miriam coldly commanded.
“Can I help?” I offered.
“No thank you”, Miriam said, not smiling.
“You’re not taking a mitzvah (holy deed) away from us, okay”, Leah grumbled angrily. I think this was the only thing she ever said to me. For the rest of the time I was there she just kept grumbling quietly about everybody to Miriam, and refused to speak to anyone else. It was astounding how dysfunctional all of these hippie Jews were with their new found gift of God.

The Seder went okay. No, it was irritating, I’m sorry. Freyer sang so loudly he drowned everyone out. Herschel almost passed out in his matzos, and Leah kept grumbling in Miriam’s ear. I wanted to be home and in bed reading Raymond Chandler. The only thing that kept me there was Mendel, whose huge brown eyes kept darting around the room. He couldn’t ask the Four Questions which the youngest in the house is supposed to sing. It was Chana’s job now, and she struggled through it for seven agonizing minutes. Everybody thought it was cute. Leah didn’t smile until Miriam made it okay for her to smile.

Once the Seder was over I was fixing to leave. Moshe Johnson was asking Yosef more questions about Jewish traditional laws in his hippie way.
“So this cat was rapping to the Rabbi, and-“
“Andy, where are you going?”
“I’m going home, it’s been great. Thanks for having me as a guest, I enjoyed myself, and-“
“You can’t go home now”, Yosef ran up to me. “You drank too much wine and it’s very late. Please stay, we’ll go to shul (temple) together tomorrow. Stay!”
“Yes, Andy!” Miriam yelped. “Please stay!”
What the fuck does she care whether I stay or go? I looked over at Leah and she was still cleaning off the table with an angry look plastered on her fat, black face.

It creeped me out: ten people sleeping on the floor of the living room like a hippie commune. I just wanted to shoot myself in the head.
So the lot of us prayed in the house, same area where we slept, is it starting to get claustrophobic for you? Then we walked five feet to the dining room for lunch. Same people, same little house. By one p.m. I was getting a little freaked out by the commune environment, so I escaped to the back yard.

I watched Mendel digging up worms excitedly. Leah walked over and freaked out.
“Mendel, no digging on Passover, it’s a Yom Tov (holiday)”. She sneered at me.
“Oh, okay”, Mendel sighed. Leah trotted away. He looked up at me.
“Listen, Mendel”, I said to him, “the reason you can’t dig around here is because there’s buried treasure in the back yard.”
Mendel’s eyes lit up. “There is?”
“Yeah! There’s gold, diamonds, sparkling jewelry of every color you can imagine. You can’t dig it up because then burglars will find out”, I gave him my best Treasure Island rap.
“Wow!” He ran away all excited. I stretched my legs out on the back yard lawn staring up at the trees. In two minutes Miriam’s face replaced the trees.

“What kind of garbage are you telling MY SON? Who do you think you are filling his head with your vile lies? “ She screamed at me, the cords in her neck bulging like cables. “I want you to stay away from my boy!”
That does it. I try to have a little fun with some kid and I get my ass handed to me by a lesbian pseudo-nun with pretensions of being a Jew. Fuck her.
“Okay”, I said half-heartedly, “I’m sorry-“
“Sorry won’t cut it! You’re filling Mendel with impure thoughts! Such rubbish! You know what I think? I think you must be some evil spirit sent to test us from Satan!”
Okay, that did it, my Judaism questioned by some trendy Cross banger. I turned. “Gee, I’m sorry. Maybe I should be a junkie with a yarmulke and dreadlocks, and-“
“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE! NOW!!!” she screamed.
“Yeah, fuck you, too”, I grumbled, imitating Leah. Yosef was nowhere to be found, probably in the bathroom jerking off thinking about Barbarella or something like that. I was finally booted out of the commune. And that’s all it took.

Months later I ran into Yosef, once, twice, etc. He was always trying to invite me over to another religious function at his creepy house. After the third invitation whenever I saw him I would duck out of sight from him. I liked him, actually, he wasn’t a bad guy. After all, it’s not like he put the fear of God in me. No, he put the fear of religion in me.

Butcher Boy

I confounded my old man's expectations when I blew off college and decided to go to work full time. Since I had low self-esteem, instead of getting an administrative clerk's position which I would have excelled at, I went for something low and menial. I got a job as a delivery boy.
I had a halfway decent car that could get me around, so I applied for the nearest business in the neighborhood. It was a kosher butcher shop, Zimmerman's Meats, run by Morty Zimmerman, a gaunt man with a pot belly and a mustache that looked Hitlerian. His behavior was fairly Hitlerian, but I needed money, bad.
Zimmerman was cranky and acted like he was always on the rag, and looked it too with his bloody butcher's smock.
"Sevrin!" he yelled at me. "Mrs. Scheinblum of Cashio Street ordered five pounds of brisket. Here's twenty dollars and make sure you get exact change. Did you hear me, Sevrin?"
"I'm on my way!" I grabbed the twenty and the pink wrapping paper of five pounds brisket.
Twenty minutes later I came back with exact change for Zimmerman. Zimmerman was chopping wings off chicken bodies, and stopped to look at me. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, "Nu, how much did she tip you?"
"She tipped me fifty cents", which was normal back then. A pound of meat was only two dollars fifty cents.
"That cheap son of a bitch!" he yelled. "Only fifty cents. God damn it!"

Zimmerman was punk rock before there was punk rock. He showed me the ropes at depositing the store take for the week by walking with me to the bank across the street. Zimmerman didn't give two shits about propriety, he kept his bloody apron on. There we were in line, me frightened young yid-mod alongside Jewish hitler moustache with a bloody apron stinking of dead flesh, the customers moving far away from us in line. Zimmerman was oblivious to his effect on the crowd.
"Now listen, if they offer you a glass tea with cookies you tell them Mister Zimmerman has more meat you HAVE to deliver", he hissed so loudly you could hear him in Calabassas. "Take the money and get the fuck out", his voice rising with Semitic rage, people parting away from us even more.
I was disgusted by him, but then I lifted my arm and realized I had dead cattle and chicken stink on me, too. We both had the stink! I looked down at my shoes and noticed the reddish-brown hue of dried blood, too.
"Look, Sevrin", he went back to hissing, "The next assignment when we get back I have for you is you're going to hose the floor and I want you to sponge the freezer, then we have to prepare for the Shabbos rush!"
The teller waved us over with a terrified look on his face and took the cash. I think I worked for Zimmerman for two months and finally I got tired of taking scalding showers that barely got the bleeding meat smell off me. Zimmerman hated paying me anyway, I think that's why he threw a pisspot tantrum over my tips. I don't think he missed me and I KNOW I didn't miss him.

Pico and Robertson

I forgot to put the bobby pin on my yarmulke, so the skull cap kept slipping off the back of my head again and again. I had to keep readjusting it on my head to keep it from falling off. I walked down Pico Boulevard doing this as the carnival of the damaged and depraved passed me by.

There was Mr. Exploded Eye, the Dog Lady, even old Moe Howard, decades away from Three Stooges fame. He’d hang out by the news stand and talk to the battered old vendor in his frail voice, a small, meek old guy with the spittoon haircut, all white now, too tired to throw a pie or poke a Shemp eye to save his life.

Mr. Exploded Eye had a severe case of conjunctivitis that was never treated, so he had one eye that protruded from his head like an enormous fried egg that exploded. He always wore a baggy suit with a crushed hat and looked like an old baggy pants comedian straight out of a burlesque show.

The Dog Lady was a gnomish woman of indeterminate age who always wore a heavy coat regardless of the weather. She continuously walked four mongrels on a leash. The dogs were so tired and inbred they didn’t resemble any identifiable breed to anyone.

Advancing towards the large intersection of Robertson Boulevard one could hear the shrill wail of Morey Branovan’s alto saxophone. Branovan was an insane little Jew with platinum blonde hair and a baby face who hated children and teenagers. And we hated him. He would play “Hatikvah” in an excruciatingly loud bray that sounded like a horse being tortured. In between notes he’d scream “HEY!” He’d wear a Hawaiian shirt with rotting old leis around his neck and have a sign in front of his sax stand that said “I LOVE GOLDA MEIR”. Even the Rabbis avoided this no-talent creep, stepping around him as you would a big dog turd.

Naïve idiot that I was, I tried to talk saxophones with him. BIG mistake.

“Hey, man, what brand mouthpiece do you use?”

“#@xT&%!” he mumbled insanely, clearly not interested.

“Do you double on tenor, also?”

“Kaftaferogoondoolabob”, he hacked in my face, a loogie just barely missing my pan. I was getting kinda steamed at his phoney crazy ass act.

“Did you blow your Daddy to get that horn, you old freak mother?” I leaned into him.

“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE MOISHE DAYAN SHIT PISS HEBREW NATIONAL!” he roared, his fat pugly face turning beet red.

“Oops!’ I kicked his sax case over, causing nickels, dimes, and quarters to spill out onto the sidewalk, coins rolling into the gutter and further out into the street.

“I’LL KILL YOU!” he screamed so loud everybody stopped in their tracks and turned around. “YOU DAMN KUGEL MATZO BALLO VOOTY BASTARD FUCK SIDNEY MENDEL KATZENBERGER!”

I strolled down the road and felt a little bit better than I did ten minutes ago. I turned for a sec and saw Branovan chasing his change into the street, shiny new Cadillacs almost plowing into his stocky frame and honking angrily at him. The world was crazy and I didn’t care anymore.