Jew Eat Yet?

Jew Decorate Yet?

I have a long history of trashing Christmas on this blog. My second, third, and fourth posts way back in December 2004 when I started this thing were all anti-holiday diatribes. The following year, I tried to limit my Scrooge-like rants but still got in trouble for a post I wrote that all but accused Santa Claus of being a pedophile. In 2006, I restrained myself even further, and then worried about my lack of Christmas kvetching. Last year, I ignored Christmas completely but found time to bemoan some of the agonies of Hanukkah and the misguided connections of that holiday to the yuletide orgy of consumption.

My nephew Spencer is turning 13 next Tuesday and is gearing up for his Bar Mitzvah that will take place in May 2009. Spencer is a genius on the computer and a damn good writer, too. As part of his Bar Mitzvah preparation, he recently started his THIRD concurrent blog called “All About Mitzvah.” In his latest post, “December Crisis: Surviving the Holidays,” Spencer contemplates the problem his Jewish family faces every year: whether to celebrate Christmas. Spencer’s dad is not Jewish so that, in my opinion, gives them license to trot out any red and green decorations they like without the ghosts of our Chasidic great-grandparents rattling chains in protest like Jacob Marley in “A Christmas Carol.” But come to think of it, I don’t remember ever seeing a Christmas tree or any other signs of the holiday in my sister’s house when I was fool enough to visit Chicago during the winter. I guess the kids got their fill of stockings and candy canes when they’d visit their Christmas-lovin' relatives in Belleville, Illinois, my brother-in-law’s home town. But what about Spencer's query? Has Christmas become so secularized that it’s now “okay” for Jews to celebrate?

Not really. No matter how you slice it, it’s still about the birth of Baby Jesus, and while I do enjoy the festivities at my in-laws’ house, I would fear the hauntings I mentioned earlier if I dared to slaughter a pine tree and drag it into our living room. We never had any decorations in our house as kids, although I’m remembering one year when we were teenagers when my sister put blue and white ornaments a tiny tree and called it a Hanukkah Bush. Eww. As I’ve already stated, I have little tolerance for attempts to turn Hanukkah into “Jewish Christmas”—the two holidays have nothing to do with each other except an accidental proximity. And even that is in question after yesterday’s announcement by a group of international astronomers. Based on celestial clues from the story of Christ’s birth, they now believe that Mary's child was actually born on June 17th! Relax, kids, you’ve got six more shopping months until the real Christmas!

How Many Illinois Governors Does It Take…

…to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to screw it in and one to screw it up and face criminal charges. Okay, I admit that's a bad joke, but not as bad as what’s going on in my home state of Illinois today.

I was shocked to wake up to the news that Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich was arrested by FBI agents this morning and charged with conspiracy to commit fraud as well as solicitation of bribery. Among the many charges he faces in the alleged criminal conspiracy is attempting to “sell” the Illinois senate seat vacated by President-Elect Obama. Innocent until proven guilty, I know, but it doesn’t look good for the Democratic governor who was my classmate at Northwestern University in the late 1970s. Yikes, has any other state governorship produced more scandals? They might as well build a tunnel from the governor’s mansion to the nearest federal prison.

Let’s review: Blagojevich’s predecessor, Governor George Ryan, is currently serving a six-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Indiana for racketeering and widespread corruption. Ryan’s predecessor, Governor Jim Edgar, faced federal scrutiny when his largest campaign contributor was given a “sweetheart contract” that cost Illinois taxpayers around 20 million dollars in fraudulent overcharges. Edgar was also criticized when he proclaimed March 13, 1991, L. Ron Hubbard Day in Illinois in honor of the founder of Scientology. Dan Walker, who was governor when I was in high school, was sentenced to seven years after he left office following a Savings & Loan scandal. In January 2001 Walker requested a pardon from outgoing President Clinton but was denied. When I was a kid, Governor Otto Kerner, Jr., was convicted of 17 counts of bribery, conspiracy, and perjury and did time in the slammer. The list goes on. What is it about politics in Illinois that breeds corruption?

Oh, I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush, I’m sure there were plenty of good guys, too. The state’s first governor, Shadrach Bond, put a stop to the use of the whipping post and the pillory for misdemeanors. Bond raised funds for the state’s first penitentiary. He never would have believed how many of his successors would be calling it home. Governor Edward Coles, who served in the 1820s, was an anti-slavery activist who ran for governor to repel efforts to turn Illinois into a slave state. Governor August French eliminated the state’s huge debt by the end of his administration in 1853. Governor John Palmer, in the late 1800s, had the distinction of switching political parties six times during his career. “I had my own views. I was not a slave of any party,” he said. “I thought for myself and have spoken my own words on all occasions.”

Governor Joseph Fifer supported women’s rights and lived to see his daughter Florence Fifer Bohrer become the first female State Senator of Illinois in 1924. Governor John Riley Tanner was a strong advocate of workers’ rights, as was his predecessor, Governor John Altgeld, and he refused to send in troops to break strikes. “The laboring man’s only property is the right to labor, which is as dear to him as the capitalist’s millions,” Tanner proclaimed, “and he has the same right to carry arms in defense of his property as the capitalist has to protect his millions.” Governor Edward Dunne founded an organization called the National Unity Council to fight the popular Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Governor Dwight Green fought to remove the stranglehold that Al Capone and other organized crime figures had on the state during the 1930s.

I guess our state’s most famous governor was Adlai Stevenson II who was probably the most liberal and the most intellectual of all Illinois governors. Stevenson ran for President in 1952 and 1956 and was known for his wry sense of humor. During one of his presidential campaigns, a supporter said that he was sure to “get the vote of every thinking man” in the United States, to which Stevenson replied, “Thank you, but I need a majority to win.” My memories of Adlai Stevenson are as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the 1960s. And every Jewish kid who grew up in Chicago was familiar with the name of Henry Horner, the state’s first Jewish governor. Illinois became the first state to have two Jewish governors in 1968 when Samuel Shapiro took office.

I mostly remember James Thompson, the longest-serving governor of the state (1977-1991) and think of him whenever I look at the beautiful antique breakfront in my house because I bought it at an antique store in Chicago from under the nose of Governor Thompson’s wife who was also interested in the piece. Perhaps the breakfront would have been happier in the governor’s mansion but I’m thrilled to have it even though every mover I’ve ever hired asked me not to call them again after shlepping the insanely heavy piece of furniture. Long after leaving public office, Thompson served on the 9/11 Commission and made a name for himself with his brutal questioning of Richard Clarke, the former counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council.

Who knows what will happen to Rod Blagojevich, who used to talk about his presidential aspirations and was considering appointing himself to Obama’s senate seat with his future in national politics in mind. Even if he’s acquitted of these latest charges, I think it’s safe to say that his political career is kaput. Tomorrow is Blagojevich’s 52nd birthday. What a present he received from the Feds. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said this morning that Blagojevich’s activities represented “a new low” and that after placing taps on the governor’s home and office phones, even seasoned investigators were “stunned” by what they heard on the tapes.

Remembering Odetta

One of America’s greatest folksingers, Odetta, died this week at the age of 77. What’s the connection between that legendary performer and my previous post about Harvey Milk and the new film starring Sean Penn?

In November 1978, when Harvey Milk was vigorously fighting the passage of California’s Proposition 6, Odetta flew from New York to Los Angeles to headline a huge concert at the Greek Theatre in opposition to the initiative authored by Senator John V. Briggs that would have banned gays and lesbians from holding any position in California schools. Odetta felt strongly about gay rights and about Prop 6. “It’s a terrible precedent to set,” she explained backstage at the Greek Theatre. “If you allow it to happen to someone else it’s going to happen to you.” Referring to claims made by Anita Bryant and John Briggs about the Bible’s declaration that homosexuality is a crime, the singer said, “They are using the Bible for their own perverse needs for power and control. They use the Bible as a camouflage. I would say they are the enemies of religion.” Right on, Odetta.

Unlike most of her contemporaries, this incredible singer and activist got her start in musical theatre. In the late 1940s, when she was very young, Odetta appeared in the chorus of two touring Broadway shows that played Los Angeles, “Finian’s Rainbow” and “Guys and Dolls.” How I wish I could’ve seen those productions. After 1950, she concentrated mostly on folk music, appearing here often. One of her biggest early concerts in Los Angeles was in October 1956 at the beautiful Wilshire Ebell Theatre which is close to our house. Appearing with several other performers, Odetta got the best notices.

The most striking moments occurred during Odetta’s spirituals. She has a very low, darkly colored and naturally powerful voice which had persuasion and impact in such songs as “Deep River,” Maybe She Go,” “Children Go Where I Send Thee,” “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your L’il Foot,” and others.

That same year, at the age of 25, Odetta’s first solo album was released, “Odetta Sings Balads and Blues.” Bob Dylan later cited it as a powerful influence and what made him focus on folk rather than rock n’roll. The liner notes for the album were enthusiastic but accurate.

A magnificent voice is here to sing the old songs. It belongs to a woman whom we believe to be the queen of American folksingers, the latest descendent of the line which gave birth to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the rightful heiress to Leadbelly’s legacy. Her name is Odetta, and like everything else about this remarkable personality, it is unusual. 

When one first sees her, her size and height give rise to the uneasy feeling that she belongs to a race a cut above our own; but in her strong, haunting face there is a reassuring beauty and charm. In her normal speech her voice is quiet and delicate, but when she sings she can unleash a force that is startling. In her rendition of a number like Joshua, she displays a power and intensity that could well have tumbled the walls of Jericho, while a few minutes later her voice in Glory, Glory is more like the shuffling of angels’ feet.

In the early 1960s, the Hollywood Bowl offered folk song nights starring Odetta and other singers such as Theodore Bikel and Judy Collins. In 1964, the Los Angeles Times had this to say about Odetta’s performance at the Bowl: 

Odetta was the first to step forward. Actually, Odetta is two people. One is a hard-driving, biting personality who invests work songs and blues with a power rare in her sex. The other Odetta is a soft-singing individual whose voice sometimes acquires the piping candor of a child and who slips into her material sly digs of humor that lend it a rare charm. The first Odetta came forth in a Bessie Smith blues called “Weeping Willow,” while the second manifested herself in a children’s song called “Sweet Potato.”

Odetta sure got around. I remember her playing often in Chicago when I was growing up, I know she gave frequent concerts in New York, and it seems like she was always appearing in Los Angeles for one cause or another.

I found several ads for benefits Odetta gave in the early 1970s for the local Jewish Community Centers here. This made me think of the symbiotic relationship African-Americans and Jews have always had for each other's causes. It also makes me think of one of Odetta’s contemporaries, someone who recorded with her on more than one occasion and who was one of my idols: folksinger Ella Jenkins who is still going strong at the age of 82. While Martin Luther King, Jr. dubbed Odetta the “Queen of American Folk Music,” Ella Jenkins was the indisputable “First Lady of Children’s Folk Music.”

While Jenkins has performed her music on all seven continents (even Antarctica!), has recorded dozens of albums for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, has sang for President, and won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, we were lucky enough to call her our music teacher when we were kids at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center in Chicago. We had no idea that our teacher was a world-renowned musician, we just knew we loved her and her call-and-response songs such as “Did You Feed My Cow,” “Miss Mary Mack,” “Oh My, I Want a Piece of Pie,” and many songs in Spanish, Hebrew, Swahili, and other languages. I think I was an adult when I first realized that “our” Ella Jenkins at our neighborhood JCC was “the” Ella Jenkins who was famous around the world.

Later, when I was working for Heinemann, I had the good fortune to work on a book with the charismatic (and crazy as a loon—in the best possible way) educator Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld who is a close friend of Ella's and often appears at teacher conferences with her. Meeting Miss Jenkins again was a thrill, and when she told me that she had just played a gig in downtown Chicago with my nephew Spencer’s band (I think he was eight at the time) and that she thought she was hearing Buddy Rich playing when she heard Spencer on the drums, I thought coming from her it was the greatest compliment a family member of mine will ever receive. I treasure this photo of me with Ella Jenkins and Leah at a concert in Chicago one summer a few years ago.

But back to Odetta. I couldn’t find any clips of her singing my favorite songs but here’s a short one of her at the Newport Folk Festival. Behold her power and grace.

I can’t think of a performer who was more influential to other singers. Joan Baez called Odetta a goddess. “Her passion moved me,” Baez said. “I learned everything she sang.” Janis Joplin spent her difficult teenage years listening to Odetta and she tried to imitate her when she first started singing. Harry Belafonte said Odetta was a key influence on his career. Maya Angelou said, “If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta’s would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time.” And, as I mentioned above, Bob Dylan always credited Odetta with getting him interested in folk music. “I heard a record of hers, “Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues,” in a record store, back when you could listen to records in the store,” Dylan said. “Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson. That album was just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record.”

In August 1963, when Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington, Odetta was at his side singing the beautiful song “I’m On My Way.” She was slated to perform the same song in Washington next month at Barack Obama’s Inauguration. What an incredibly moving bookend that would have been to her 1963 performance with Martin Luther King. Odetta campaigned fiercely for Obama and her name was one of the first he penciled in to perform at his Inauguration. It’s a shame she didn’t make it but I’m sure she will be there in one way or another singing her song with that clear, strong voice of hers that brought so many people together.

I’m on my way, I don’t want to turn back
I’m on my way, I don’t want to turn back
I’m on my way, praise God, I’m on my way.

And the Best Actor Oscar Goes To…

Sean Penn in “Milk.” Sorry, Leo, Hugh, Clint, Benicio, Philip, and any of you other guys who thought you had a chance to walk down the aisle of the Kodak Theatre next February. You don’t…so just be happy if you get nominated and don’t bother drafting that speech. Hey, don’t sweat it—there’s always next year.

We saw “Milk” over the weekend and thought it was extraordinary. I can’t remember a Gus Van Sant film that I didn’t love (well, I guess I could have lived without the shot-by-shot remake of “Psycho”) and this film, probably his most accessible and mainstream to date, is certainly among his best work. The direction, the script, the recreation of 1970s San Francisco, and the ensemble cast are all superb, but Sean Penn has to be singled out for channeling the spirit of Harvey Milk even though he looks nothing like the slain leader. Penn morphs into Harvey Milk in a way that is so complete, so pure that we’re completely engrossed in the story—we're never sitting there thinking, “Wow, Sean Penn is doing a great job, what a good actor.”

I urge everyone to see “Milk,” the story of a flawed but extremely courageous and inspiring man, the first openly gay person ever elected to public office in this country. The film begins with newsreel footage of Dianne Feinstein’s chilling announcement from 30 years ago last week that San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk had just been shot and killed by Supervisor Dan White. Another framing device uses the prophetic words Harvey actually recorded in the event of his assassination. The film then flashes back to Milk’s closeted life in New York, his move to the Castro district in San Francisco, and his ultimate rise to power as a community organizer. Yes, COMMUNITY ORGANIZER, one of the most important and valuable political roles in the history of this country, Ms. Sarah Palin. I’m still not over Palin and Giuliani’s obnoxious sneering over this term at the Republican National Convention last summer. I think both of them should publicly apologize for their attempts to ridicule community organizers and they should acknowledge that if it weren’t for such people, we’d probably still have separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites and neighborhoods with restrictive covenants against Jews.

I’ll never forget the day that Milk and Moscone were gunned down. I was living in Paris at the time and read every bit of the coverage. Coming less than two weeks after the horrific Jonestown massacre in Guyana, and remembering that Jim Jones’ People’s Temple had its headquarters in San Francisco, I remember wondering what the hell was going on in that city.

Dan White murdered George Moscone and Harvey Milk in cold blood. I assumed he’d get the death penalty, which had been re-instated in California the previous year. I couldn’t believe it when he got a measly seven years for the reduced charge of manslaughter, thanks to the infamous “Twinkie Defense” his lawyers trotted out claiming that White’s junk food diet had impaired his reasoning so he wasn’t fully responsible for the killings. Like many people, I thought that the results of White’s trial were affected by the hatred many people had of gay people. I still believe that had Dan White ONLY assassinated Mayor Moscone, he would have received a much harsher sentence than he did by killing Moscone AND openly gay Harvey Milk. The trial was a travesty, as was White’s release after only five years. Upon his release, Dianne Feinstein, then the mayor of San Francisco, urged Dan White not to return to that city, but he did anyway. Clearly a tormented individual, he committed suicide less than two years after his release from prison. Josh Brolin did an amazing job of portraying Dan White in “Milk” and I believe he will be nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

Other stunning performances in this film include James Franco as Milk’s boyfriend Scott Smith, Emile Hirsch as young activist Cleve Jones, and Alison Pill as Milk’s lesbian campaign manager, Anne Kronenberg.

One of the main plot points in the film is Harvey Milk’s fight in the 1970s against anti-gay rights crusader Anita Bryant and California’s Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, that would have allowed public schools in California to fire any teachers or employees they suspected of being gay, or even of supporting gay rights. When this film was being shot earlier this year, I’m sure Van Sant, Penn, and the others never dreamed how much the fight against Prop 6 in November 1978 that they were depicting would mirror the fight against Prop 8 in November 2008. And who could have guessed that Proposition 8 would pass while Proposition 6 was defeated against all odds. True, the stakes may have been higher for Prop 6, but the proponents of Prop 8 used much of the same language and the same cache of ugly lies in their scurrilous arguments. And the ultimate message of both propositions was the same: gays and lesbians in California are still not viewed as full citizen with equal rights. It is a terribly sad postscript to the legacy of Harvey Milk, and I hope that some of the people who voted for Proposition 8 go to see “Milk” and that their faces burn with shame as they watch the film.

Today is the 20th anniversary of World Aids Day. Harvey Milk died before the specter of AIDS reared its ugly head but everyone else in this story was affected by the AIDS crisis. Scott Smith died of the disease in 1994. Cleve Jones founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983 and later, at a candlelight memorial service for his friend Harvey Milk, conceived the idea of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. This quilt has become the largest community arts project in the world, memorializing the lives of over 85,000 Americans who have died of AIDS.

Gus Van Sant and his set designers did an incredible job of recreating the look of the Castro in the late 1970s. They turned Harvey Milk’s old camera shop, now a gift shop, back into Milk’s headquarters. A plaque on this building reads as follows:

Harvey Milk’s camera store and campaign headquarters at 575 Castro Street and his apartment upstairs were centers of community activism for a wide range of human rights, environmental, labor, and neighborhood issues. Harvey Milk’s hard work and accomplishments on behalf of all San Franciscans earned him widespread respect and support. His life is an inspiration to all people committed to equal opportunity and an end to bigotry.

Harvey Milk loved movies and I know he’d be thrilled with this excellent film about his too-short life. If he were alive today, Harvey Milk would be 78. I hope he’s able to look down on the festivities at the Kodak Theatre on February 22 when Sean Penn collects his award in Harvey’s name.