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Rabbi's Message
Once, just once, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not hear a catastrophic news report. Never has our nation been subjected to so many random killings of innocent victims and never has hatred been so prevalent. We complain, we are vociferous, we write letters to newspaper editors, we make calls to our Congressmen and women. We hear nothing in return. No police action, no organized activities from the government or concerned citizens. And, being of Jewish faith, we decry the rise of anti-Semitism which is at its highest level since 1979. Assaults are up 26%, Harassment 29%, Vandalism 22%,
vociferous anti-Jewish sentiments on college campuses up 40% and 50% at K-12 schools.
The former statistics are the hate-filled actions against the Jewish people since 1979 and posted by the Anti-Defamation League. The numbers are very frightening and we as a group of people who only know the unconscionable activities of hate mongers, must ban together and continue to make this country a safer and better place in which to live and worship in peace and harmony. However, the days of ‘live and let live’ are long over. The world is in a mess and our country leaders seem to be oblivious to the ominous clouds hovering above. There is no love, there is no compassion…
The numbers are frightening and we who know the unconscionable activities of hate mongers, must ban together and continue to make our country, our states, our neighborhoods, a safer place in which to live and raise our children with Jewish values. The world is in a colossal
mess. There is no love, there is no co-existence, there is no compassion. There is plenty to be concerned about!
We, the Creative Arts Temple, cannot remain oblivious to the proliferation of guns, wanton killings and the erosion of Biblical Guidelines. We must fulfill the prophecy of living together in peace and harmony and instill our children and grandchildren with dreams and positive virtues.
For three years, CAT was unable to meet due to Covid. Thanks to Rebbitzen Jeff, Cantor Chelsana and our editor, Tess McKenzie, our
streamed services at the beginning of each month worked very well however, I missed the personal contact and Heimish feeling of praying
with close friends. We will begin our regular ‘Friday Night In-Person’ services in a few months. Stay tuned!
One more important issue. Due to Covid, we had a large fallout of membership dues and
contributions putting us in a desperate financial fix. Incidentally, we are just one of many Synagogues and Churches throughout the country who share this same problem.
This time, more than any other year during our 40 years, we are in a financial hole. We need your help to continue our creative services.
Please, make a noble effort to continue your membership dues.
Keep posted as we will keep you informed where and when we will have our next in-person CAT Shabbat Service. As we currently live in the desert, we are looking for a reasonably priced room or apartment - a panoramic view is not necessary. If you are aware of one, please call our office. We are looking forward to many more productive CAT years with all of you.
With Prayers and Blessings to each and every one of you,
Rabbi Jerry
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CAT FNL (Friday Night Live) on Facebook Live
Where:
In your home
We will be meeting on
Friday, May 5, 2023, at 6:00 pm
Save The Date - Next service:
Friday, June 2, 2023. at 6:00 pm
Why?
Tradition!
Please like and share with others.
Click on this link where we will be live streaming:
https://www.facebook.com/CreativeArtsTemple/live/
You will also be able to view it on Our Website (creativeartstemple.org) and on YouTube as well.
This is a Streamlined Shabbat Service with special guests. You will be able to chat with us, share any news from your week, or send a virtual hug via Facebook.
We will be chanting the Mishabeirach for global healing and reciting the Kaddish for the current yahrzeits. If you have the names of loved ones you would like to include, please let us know.
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Renew Ralphs Community Contributions Now!
Please Register today!
For your convenience, step-by-step website registration instructions can be found at www.ralphs.com, or if you are having a problem registering call the temple office at 310-720-9618 and we will help you.
Also, if you don't have computer access, you can call Ralphs at 1-800-443-4438 for assistance.
CAT NPO# 92136
Ralphs Rewards Card
Donate to CAT while you grocery shop
Participants are required to register for the new term online at www.ralphs.comor by calling Ralphs at
1-800-443-4438.
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You will be asked for The Creative Arts Temple NPO number. It is NPO# 92136
Please Note!!
The Scan Bar letters will no longer work at the register.
To verify if Creative Arts Temple is your charity of choice, look at the very bottom of your receipt next time you shop at Ralph's. It should say "At your request, Ralph's is donating to Creative Arts Temple." If you do not see that, you will need to register through the Ralph's
website.
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May Anniversaries
Mazel Tov to our CAT lovebirds!
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Joshua and Tiffany Glass - May 4, 2023
Stephanie Stern Lazarus and Tom Lazarus - May 30, 2023
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With a donation of Chai ($18) or above, CAT will mail out a tribute card in your honor of Birthdays, Anniversaries, Get-Well-Soon wishes, Congratulations and In Loving Memory.
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DONATIONS
You now can Order Tribute Cards, Remember A Yarzheit, Make donations to the Services, or Order a Plaque through your Temple Talk Email or on our website.
Just click on the link and choose what kind of donation you would like
to make.
Paypal is secure and safe. You can choose to use your credit card or through your bank. Once we receive your information, we will send you a confirmation email to let you know that we are in receipt of
your donation.
Or, you can call the office or just send a donation in the mail.
Click here to make your donation with PayPal.
or go to our website at creativeartstemple.org
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You can now make a donation through Venmo. Our username is @CreativeArtsTemple-10
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May Birthdays
And many happy returns!
Pamela Phillips Oland - May 2, 2023
Fern Bloom - May 3, 2023
Caroline Lembeck - May 4, 2023
Ben Cohen - May 8, 2023
Robert Leevan - May 11, 2023
Martin Levine - May 12, 2023
Gerald Doren - May 13, 2023
Barbara Rae Levine - May 13, 2023
Martin Gilmore - May 15, 2023
Joann Oseary - May 18, 2023
Stephen Ellman - May 19, 2023
Douglas Cohen - May 23, 2023
Rochelle Blumenfeld - May 24, 2023
Marsha Heller - May 25.2023
Steven Zax - May 27, 2023
Gloria Jennings - May 28, 2023
Steven Doren - May 30, 2023
David Rothman - May 30, 2023
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Service Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsors!
Shabbat Sponsors:
Debby and Ken Bitticks - Oneg Sponsor
Gregory Cruz - Oneg Sponsor
A special thank you to Joey English. the longest-running radio show in the desert - for her shout-outs
Click here to make a donation or go to our website at creativeartstemple.org
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Get Wells
Refuah Shleima
CAT wishes speedy recoveries to:
Debby and Ken Bitticks, Henry Bush, Gregory Cruz, Lowell Dreyfus, Burt Newmark, Donna and Peter Paul.
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April Yahrzeits
We thank those who have made a donation in memory of your loved one.
Douglas and Roni Cohen
In memory of Allan Cohen
Alene Daniels
In memory of Stanley Daniels
Allison Mupas and Randi DenBesten
In memory of Morton Fallick
Martin and Phyllis Gilmore
In memory of Lenore Gilmore
Howard and Charlotte Goldberg
In memory of Elizabeth Berman
Ava Kahn and Mitch Richman
In memory of Marvin Kahn
Bill and Gail Landers
In memory of Nathan Bercovitz
Daniel Paulson
In memory of Bess Chanin Paulson
Barbara Lee Schulz
In memory of George Schulz
Arlene Sidaris
In memory of Andy Sidaris
Phyllis Spear and Irwin Schwartzman
In memory of Jack Spear
Carole Speer
In memory of Judith Fierberg and Jacob Meyer Trystman
Lucy Weltsch
In memory of Simon Weltsch
May you be comforted by the mourners of Zion
If you made a donation and you don't see it here, it is because it was received after the publication deadline and will appear next month
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An inspiring story of a school that relocated to escape the Nazis
Reviewed by CAT member
Stephen Maitland-Lewis
There is no shortage of books on the Holocaust and the overall inferno of the Hitler years.
Reading anything from the vast published material on this subject is bound to evoke obvious disgust and horror. Yet, the question remains: how could this have happened in the 20th century, in a country which hitherto was considered one of the foremost cultured and educated of all civilized nations?
Deborah Cadbury in her The School That Escaped the Nazis skillfully evokes another, more heartwarming emotion, and this book goes a long way to confirm that amid the carnage of that era there were instances of profound goodness and human decency.
Anna Essinger, a young German schoolteacher, had established a small progressive school in southern Germany. She saw the writing on the wall when Hitler came into power in 1933. She had read Mein Kampf and abhorred its wicked ideology.
With an abundance of courage, determination, and pure defiance, in spite of her limited resources, she succeeded in relocating her school to the rural county of Kent in southeast England. The school flourished and soon attracted a number of English pupils as well as teachers. Before long, as a result of Nazi regulations which made it impossible for Jewish teachers and pupils to remain within the German school system, there was an additional influx of pupils and highly qualified academic staff.
The school swiftly earned a fine reputation and enjoyed good relations with its neighbors. The local villagers were largely friendly, supportive and hospitable. But, in 1939 upon the outbreak of war, the school faced new challenges. Many of the German staff and the older students were interred as enemy aliens far away from Kent. The locals, who had treated the school and all those connected with it with respect, now treated it with suspicion. The school’s neighbors shunned it.
The British Government requisitioned the school’s strategically important premises for British military purposes, and another evacuation was necessary. On short notice, Essinger found a decrepit mansion for the school, two hundred miles away. Simultaneously, the school was struggling to take in as many Jewish children as it could among those who had remained in Germany. Additionally, the school admitted countless others whose parents the Nazis had kidnapped and sent to concentration camps throughout Germany and Poland.
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The author recounts the testimony of many of the students who described how they left their homes and families only to struggle with the differences in culture and a new language, as well as with the heartache of not knowing whether they would ever reunite with their parents and other family members. Essinger and her colleagues had to deal not only with the academic and overall well-being of her pupils but also with the immense trauma that they were suffering.
The school became a home for the children, a haven of love and warmth where they could live peacefully and without fear of being bullied and treated as outcasts in their native Germany. They formed lifetime bonds and a great many succeeded as adults in their chosen fields.
Essinger and her colleagues created a loving home for approximately nine hundred pupils between 1933 and 1948 when the school finally closed. Despite all the miseries and suffering that the children and the German staff members, had endured, she created a happy and productive environment. To describe reading about this period of history as a joyful experience is counterintuitive. However, Deborah Cadbury succeeds in delivering an uplifting and inspiring book about the challenges that Essinger, her pupils, and her colleagues faced. So many books on the Holocaust focus heavily on statistics that in time one becomes almost immune to the savagery. Case studies of specific named individual children, some as young as eight, who arrived at the school traumatized and how they fared carry more weight. Cadbury illustrates the teamwork between teachers and pupils who together faced hurdles and survived.
This book is a worthy edition to the countless books written about this painful historical period. The school was devoid of any form of religious syllabus or practice but nevertheless, Anna Essinger, as the author states, “fulfilled in her own way, the old Hebrew saying, ‘Tikkun Hoaolam’ — ‘mend the world.’”
This piece originally appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books.
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Roots Music & Beyond
KPFK 90.7 FM
Saturdays,
6-8 a.m.
New Christy Minstrels, Art Podell, was a Greenwich Village folk singer in 1958. In the rush to capitalize on the folk boom, Columbia Records signed Podell and partner Paul Potash and, as the duo “Art & Paul,” they released two albums in 1960 and ’61, which are sought-after today by folk music aficionados.
"I thought I was watching and listening to Will Rogers with an Ivy League education and maybe that's true, but your humor and songs - both touching and delightful - was better and much more enjoyable than his lasso"
-Herb Freed, Film-maker, novelist, and friend
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If you are a fan of the classic folk music of the fifties/sixties, this might be the program for you.
Add to that some flavors of old-time jazz and bluegrass. We'll be catering to your musical pallets while offering some wonderful premiums to help support KPFK.
Roots Music & Beyond celebrates ten years on air in March!
Third Saturday host: Art Podell art@artpodell.com,a bona fide Greenwich Village folkie, one-half of the legendary duo Art and Paul and an original member of The New Christy Minstrels, and Professor.
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Fern Field Brooks, author of Letters to My Husband, has written a new meowmoir on her cat called Destiny's Children. You can order this charming book at http://www.books2cherish.com. Temple members and friends can add "Temple Member" to your shipping instructions and 10% of all sales will go to C.A.T.
"LOVED IT! A clever and refreshing approach to a memoir!"
Mary Lou Belli, Director, Author, Teacher
"Wow! Destiny is incredible! I read it in two evenings and was absolutely enthralled. This book is one in a million!"
Laurel D. - Miami
"I Love Destiny and Fern! I was concerned for Destiny on every adventure, felt relieved when all was well, and eagerly await the rest of the series! Engaging. Charming. Insightful - about cats and humans!"
Dr. Linda Seger, Author, Script Consultant, Lecturer
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Even if it’s forced or phony, smiling brightens your mood
Global research collaboration shows that facial expressions influence our emotional experience.
By Abigail Klein Leichman
Israel 21c
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When we feel happy, we smile. New research indicates the opposite is true, too — posing our muscles in a smile brightens our mood.
The collaborative study, described in Nature Human Behavior by an international team of researchers led by Stanford University’s Nicholas Coles, found strong evidence supporting the long-debated “facial feedback hypothesis.”
The Many Smiles Collaboration purposely included researchers on both sides of the debate. They collected data from 3,878 participants in 19 countries.
In Israel, Ben-Gurion University social-cognitive neuroscience researcher Niv Reggev and his PhD student Aviv Mokady recruited 105 BGU freshmen to do the online study.
One-third of participants were directed to hold a pen or pencil in their teeth without letting their lips touch it, thus forcing a smile.
Another third was asked to mimic the facial expressions seen in photos of smiling actors.
The final third had to move the corners of their lips toward their ears and lift their cheeks using only the muscles in their face.
In each group, half the participants performed the smiling task while looking at cheerful images of puppies, kittens, flowers and fireworks, while the other half saw a blank screen.
To measure the difference in effect, they were shown these same images (or the blank screen) again while directed to keep their facial expression neutral.
Noticeable increase in happiness
Analysis of the data revealed a noticeable increase in happiness among participants mimicking smiling photographs or pulling their mouth toward their ears. This was true no matter what country they came from.
There wasn’t a strong mood change in participants using the pen-in-mouth technique, possibly because it involves clenching the teeth and therefore isn’t an accurate analog of smiling.
“The stretch of a smile can make people feel happy and the furrowed brow can make people feel angry; thus, the conscious experience of emotion must be at least partially based on bodily sensations,” Coles said.
Reggev tells ISRAEL21c that like Coles, he was “on the fence” regarding the facial feedback hypothesis before the study. Afterward, Reggev felt “somewhat convinced that if you make people activate the right muscles it can make them happier.”
“Based on the results, which were quite robust, people should try to make themselves smile,” the Israeli social psychologist concludes.
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Creative Arts Temple
P.O. Box 241831
Los Angeles, CA 90024
310-720-9618
creativeartstemple@gmail.com
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