Palisadian Josh Lederman and his partner, Scott Hohenstein of Orange County, finished the year No. 6 in the nation in the USTA’s Boys 18 doubles division. A senior at Harvard-Westlake High, Lederman is also ranked 51st in the nation in Boys 18 singles and was one of 40 male prep players to earn All-American honors from the National High School Tennis All All-American Foundation. Lederman was the Wolverines’ No. 1 player throughout an undefeated season that culminated with Harvard-Westlake’s first CIF Southern Section Division I championship. Along the way, Lederman was named Mission League most valuable player. Lederman, who will attend Yale in September, began 2004 by reaching the finals of the Boys 18 doubles USTA National Open in Hawaii along with Ben Steensland of Westlake Village. Lederman and Hohenstein then teamed up for the USTA National Championships in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where they lost in the round of 16 to the eventual champions. They rebounded to win both the 19th J.R. Yamasaki Memorial Jr. Tournament last October in Orange and the USTA National Open in Costa Mesa in November. Lederman’s accomplishments are all the more meaningful given that he was out of tennis for a year beginning in June 2002 with Guillian-Barre Syndrome, a rare disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its nervous system’often rendering the body partially or totally numb. As a result of his affliction, Lederman lacked the strength to hold a racket or even walk. Even today he has limited feeling in either of his feet, though one would not know it by his play.
Rooftop Signs Removed For Marquez Makeover
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
Palisades PRIDE’s efforts to revitalize and beautify the Marquez Avenue business block got off to ‘a great start’ last Friday morning when three aging rooftop signs were taken down, reported project leader Bob Jeffers. Engineers from Tako Tyko sign company cut through the steel supports and lifted the signs off with a huge crane as several local officials watched. ‘For not much money, we got maximum impact,’ said Jeffers, a vice-president of PRIDE. ‘The block looks so much better already.’ Other improvements to the business district, which will be named Marquez Village Shops, include new signage, antique lampposts, benches and trash cans, as well as landscaping of the sidewalk and the island triangle at the corner of Sunset and Marquez, which is currently covered in cement. The retaining wall on the opposite side of the street will also be planted with flowers and shrubs. In addition, a stop sign will soon be installed at Marquez and Bollinger ‘to slow down traffic and allow pedestrians to cross,’ said Jeffers, who won a Golden Sparkplug Award last year for his role in creating landscaped medians on Sunset at Chautauqua. Total cost of the project is estimated at $95,000. In early January, the Los Angeles City Council passed a motion that allocated $89,000 in City discretionary funds for the Marquez beautification project and waived associated planning fees for the median. ‘We’ve had such great support from everyone’the landlords, the merchants, Marquez homeowners and, of course, Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski,’ Jeffers said. He credited Monique Ford, the councilwoman’s chief deputy representing the Palisades, with working ‘really hard with us to get things moving. Now, we’ve got the money in our pockets and are dealing with several different City departments,’ including Street Lighting, Building and Safety’s Sign Inspection Division, the Bureau of Street Services, and Public Works. PRIDE, which will maintain the improvements until a formal maintenance association is formed, envisions that the block will ‘become a quaint commercial hub for the Marquez area,’ Jeffers said. ‘It’s a big project. Within six months the block will be transformed and look more like Swarthmore and less of a time warp with the 1950s signage gone. The ‘Drugs’ sign is very retro.’ Landlord Don Haselkorn remembers the ‘Drugs’ sign being there when he bought Knoll’s Pharmacy in 1961. If there is enough interest, PRIDE will hold a public auction in the next week to sell the vintage sign. Anyone interested in purchasing it should contact Jeffers at 230-8914. (Editor’s note: Moving into the prime retail space at the corner of Marquez and Bollinger formerly occupied by Marquez Market, which closed down at the end of December, is a childhood education center which will provide tutoring and after-school enrichment activities. That space is owned by the Wilson Family Trust. A martial arts academy is expected to occupy the former D & T Studio, which also closed down in December. Accessed through the alley, below Marquez Avenue, the space is owned by Haselkorn.)
Potrero Committee to Meet Wednesday
The 16-member Potrero Canyon Community Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting next Wednesday, February 16 at 7:15 p.m. at the Palisades Recreation Center. At this meeting, which Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski will attend and is open to the public, ‘everyone will be brought up to speed,’ said George Wolfberg, head of the advisory committee. ‘We can then lay the groundwork for the work that needs to be done.’ Two major tasks face the advisory committee, which was selected by Miscikowski and Community Council chairman Norm Kulla to work with advisors and the city. One is the completion of Potrero Park itself, a mile-long expanse which extends from the recreation center to Pacific Coast Highway. Currently, plans call for a riparian habitat and a hiking trail with limited amenities to be built. This final part of the project (Phase III) is expected to cost from $7 million to $12 million. The second challenge for the advisory committee will be how to handle the sale of the city-owned lots in Potrero. To date, the city has spent at least $13 million to acquire 35 landslide-impaired lots and another $17 million to buttress and fill the canyon. However, work was brought to a halt over two years ago when the city lacked the $1.2 million needed to complete Phase II. In an effort to break the logjam, Miscikowski put forth a motion which was approved by L.A. City Council in December to sell two of the lots’both of them on Alma Real (at 615 and 623), both with houses that the city currently leases. These lots have now been declared surplus by the city, with 100 percent of the net proceeds to be deposited in a designated Potrero Canyon Trust Fund. The proceeds, expected to be as much as $4 million, will be used exclusively for completion of Phases II and to ‘begin’ Phase III, explained Miscikowski at the motion hearing last fall. However, the city cannot offer the two lots, which will be sold at public auction, without California Coastal Commission approval, which is currently pending. When the Coastal Commission originally approved Potrero in 1986, it placed restrictions on the sale of the city-owned lots until all three phases of the project were complete and funding for inspections and maintenance had been identified. When it became clear last year that these conditions would be impossible to meet, negotiations began with Coastal staff to clear the way for the immediate sale of the two Alma Real lots to finish Phase II, where work is 95 percent complete. Two landslides still need repairing and there is final grading to be done. The other 33 city-owned lots, which were condemned starting in 1964 when the canyon was first found to be too unstable because of landslides, are located on Earlham, De Pauw, and Friends Street, where nine buildable pads already exist. ‘As soon as all the lots are deemed to be stable [a two-year process], they can be certified by the city and gradually sold off as funds are needed for Phase III,’ Miscikowski said Wednesday. ‘Not only are we going to have to look into the existing deed restrictions and CC&R’s for each lot, but we will have to ensure that they are sold off in an orderly fashion so as to not create problems in the neighborhoods where they are located.’ Another question is whether developers will be permitted to buy the lots and what kind of houses can be built on them ‘so as to not affect existing views,’ said Wolfberg, former chairman of Community Council. ‘Will they still step-down the hillside, as was originally discussed with the Civic League? The advisory committee is also going to look into how best to divide the public from the private space. Where do we end the plantings for the park, for example? There is also the larger question of who is going to be responsible for maintaining the park. As you can see, we have a lot of work ahead of us.’ The park was purchased in 1964 by the Department of Recreation and Parks to provide coastal access to and from Palisades Park. The canyon historically included a natural watercourse through which run-off from the Santa Monica Mountains and runoff from the Palisades community was carried to the Pacific Ocean. Abnormally high runoff from storms in 1978 and 1980 caused extensive erosion, landslides and slippages that led the City of Los Angeles to acquire the privately-owned properties along the canyon rim. Since then, the Departments of Recreation and Parks and Bureau of Engineering have worked with the California Coastal Commission to remediate the problems, which included the installation of a storm drain and subdrain system, as well as landfill to support the canyon walls. (Editor’s note: Ron Weber, an attorney who lives adjacent to the Recreation Center, is on the community advisory committee. His name was inadvertently deleted from the list of members in last week’s article: ‘Advisory Committee to Tackle Potrero.’)
PaliHi Teachers Give Key Approval of Charter Draft
Palisades Charter High School’s petition to the Los Angeles school board to renew its independent charter for another five years has cleared a vital hurdle. The draft petition was delivered to the LAUSD Charter Office on January 31 with the signatures of 73 percent of the permanent teachers (52 of 71), far exceeding the required 50 percent support by permanent teachers, according to Jack Sutton, the school’s executive director. Another 47 non-permanent teachers and staff members also signed in support of the petition. ‘Our board of directors’three teachers, three parents, three community representatives, a classified employee and myself’committed itself to successfully renewing the charter as well as addressing important issues raised by teachers when it passed the following motion at its January meeting,’ Sutton said. The motion read: ‘The PCHS Board of Directors is committed to charter renewal being submitted as a 501(c)3 California nonprofit public benefit corporation. The PCHS Board of Directors is also committed to, through the amendment process prescribed in the Charter, examining the governance structure once the charter has been renewed and labor negotiations are completed.’ In the weeks leading up to the vote, teachers union representative Alex Shuhgalter rallied a small contingent of faculty in criticizing the school’s current governing model. They argued that the board under the 501(c)3 structure did not give teachers enough say in governing the school. At a public meeting in January, Sutton argued that the backbone of the school’s governance is the seven standing committees, each comprised of 50 percent faculty members. But, Sutton added, if the faculty wants to make changes to the governing structure, there is a mechanism to do so in the charter. The amendment process requires 75 percent of teachers and two-thirds of the board support. The teachers have also criticized the board for making no headway on class-size reduction. While there is no dispute over the need to reduce class size, doing so necessitates more long-term considerations, Sutton said. For example: Should there be a new building? Should there be more on-line courses? What would each option cost? The next step in charter renewal is for the LAUSD charter office staff to review the draft and send it to other departments (e.g., budget, special education, and facilities) for review. After feedback is received, changes will be made in the final draft that is submitted to the school board for approval. Sutton estimated that the board will take up the charter renewal sometime in April or May. ‘We hope that all the stakeholders will recognize the value and responsibility of remaining an independent charter high school,’ said Sutton, quoting from a January 27 Palisadian-Post editorial. ‘We ask that the community support our efforts toward that end.’
Music from Her Youth in Afghanistan
VIEWPOINT
By NAHID MASSOUD Special to the Palisadian-Post I heard Ustad Mahwash’s splendid voice on Saturday, January 15, at the Getty Center’s Harold Williams Auditorium. The sound took me back to my adolescent days in Afghanistan. Tears rolled down my eyes as memories of Kabul flooded my consciousness. The first song, ‘Mullah Mamad Jaan,’ was one of the most popular numbers of its time. It was always played during Afghani New Year, Nowrose, which is the 21st of March and the beginning of spring season. Radio Kabul played this and other Afghan songs over and over. The sound of music filled streets of the city and the narrow lanes of the bazaars, while shopkeepers hustled and hawked their wares. You could hear the voice of Ustad Mahwash everywhere as part of a kind of perpetual background music to the activities of men, women and children, all wearing colorful native Afghan clothes as part of the seasonal festivities. Nowrose is a particularly exciting time. The smell of spring was in the air, the scent of plants and budding trees mingled with the smells on the streets, everyone making mewai (our special Nowrose fruit dish). In the streets, farmers in from the country seemed excited, ready for the new planting season. All that seems a long time ago, the peaceful Kabul of my youth when people listened to music and lived peacefully despite their differences. It has vanished into a landscape devastated by war and destruction. Yet musical experiences can take you to a past that has gone, as Ustad Mahwash did for me, bringing what was repressed so vividly alive in the present. The powerful lyrics of her songs of god, love, and loss touched another part of me that I had forgotten. The ghazals penetrated my soul, made me remember my favorite composer, Ustad Naynawaz, who wrote wonderful songs that were often sung by the handsome, great and very popular Ahmed Zaher, whom I heard in person many times (he was the brother of my best friend). Unfortunately, both Naynawaz and Zaher were casualties of the Soviet war, assassinated while still in their prime. The melodies sung by Ustad Mahwash at the Getty in both Dari and Pashto languages were representative of popular Afghan music of the sixties and seventies. Their beauty was underscored by the excellent musicians who accompanied her’Aziz Herawi on dutar, Ehsan Ahmadi on tabla, and Ahmad Khalil Rageb on harmonium. As the first woman Ustad (maestro) in Afghanistan, Mahwash is not only a master musician but was in those days a role model, a strong woman who managed to turn her talent into a brilliant career against all the obstacles that usually prevented women from succeeding. I left the Ustad Mahwash concert full of sorrow over the years of war and destruction of my homeland. It’s so hard to imagine how, during the Taliban regime, such a musical people had to live without music. Mahwash’s powerful voice was a reminder of how much the Afghan people have suffered and lost in this last quarter century. The concert taught me how in exile you can come to appreciate in a new way the meaning of a past that is forever lost, but can be resurrected momentarily through the power of music and song. Palisadian Nahid Massoud, a native of Kabul, is a psychiatric nurse who works at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. She came to America on a student visa in 1977 and was given political asylum in the U.S. after the Soviet invasion endangered her family, all of whom later escaped to the U.S. With the aid of her husband, history professor and author Robert Rosenstone, Nahid directs Sharq, an art space at her home devoted to contemporary works by artists from the East. The next exhibit, ‘The Fire Next Time,’ opens March 5 and will feature Persian artist Kamran Moojedi.
Exiled to Paradise
It’s remarkable that Los Angeles, a city built on the convenient collision of dreamers and boosters, became the unlikely refuge for Jewish artists and intellectuals who fled Hitler’s persecution and added important chapters to the cultural history of L. A. During the 1930s and 1940s, many of the artists, writers, moviemakers and musicians who fled Europe settled in Los Angeles, a large number in Santa Monica Canyon and Pacific Palisades. Some, like filmmaker Billy Wilder and writers Bertold and Salka Viertel, came at the behest of the movie studios; others came because of friends or relatives, and others were drawn by the balmy weather. The Skirball Museum has just opened the first exhibition focusing on the major contributions Jewish exiles made to the cultural foundation of Los Angeles. Over the last 18 months, Associate Curator Tal Gozani has been researching and interpreting the journeys of these 11 men and women who, because of their perceived intellectual capital, escaped the restrictive U.S. immigration laws enacted in 1924, but who nevertheless did not escape the emotional and political displacement, having lost their European citizenship and sense of place in their homelands. Gozani took into consideration a number of factors in choosing the ‘migr’s to be highlighted. She wanted to include women, she said in an interview, and there also had be to enough resource material available. The Warner Bros. Library and the Arnold Schoenberg center in Vienna provided extensive information, and she was lucky that Salka Viertel had written ‘The Kindness of Strangers,’ which described her early years in California, culminating with America’s entry into World War II. Some artists, like Bertold Brecht, were excluded because they weren’t Jewish. The exhibition was conceived as a companion piece to the Albert Einstein show currently on view at the Skirball. Einstein spent three winters in California’1931, 1932 and 1933 at Caltech. He associated himself with other ‘migr’s and with Hollywood and lent his considerable influence and resources to advocate on behalf of other artists and scientists trapped in Nazi Europe. ‘Throughout this nine-month exhibition we knew we needed to create related elements that would look deeper at L.A. and the ‘migr’, including the cultural history preceding and through the Nazi period that defined Einstein’s experience,’ said Lori Starr, director of the Skirball Museum. The show, ‘Driven into Paradise,’ has been mounted in the Ruby Gallery, which is the informal gathering place in front of the auditorium, and one of the most prominent places in the museum. Conceived to be self-contained, the exhibition was designed to travel to libraries and cultural institutions around the country. The ‘migr’s highlighted are filmmakers Michael Curtiz and Billy Wilder, composers Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Toch, artists Otto and Gertrud Natzler, art collector Galka Scheyer and writers Vicki Baum, Lion Feuchtwanger, Salka Viertel and Franz Werfel. Each artist has his or her own display panel, which includes a small biography, photographs, documents, and film clips or music samples where appropriate. The Natzlers’ exhibit even includes a sampling of their ceramic pots demonstrating Gertrud’s fine crafting and Otto’s innovative glazes. Each of these talented men and women had enjoyed a productive creative life in Europe which, despite the upheaval in their lives, the displacement and loss that drove them to safety in America, continued in their new lives. Lion Feuchtwanger, born in an affluent Orthodox Jewish family in Munich, had already published his first novel by his early 20s. In these early works he alerted the world to the dangers of German nationalism, and warned German Jews against complacency. His outspokenness established him as one of the foremost anti-fascist writers of the time. Feuchtwanger was in America when Hitler came to power in 1933, and was warned not to return to Germany. While in exile in France, he and his wife Marta were assisted by President Roosevelt in immigrating to the United States and arrived in Los Angeles in 1941. Within two years, the couple’s home Villa Aurora on Paseo Miramar became an intellectual and artistic free zone, where ‘migr’s would gather to exchange ideas and support one another. Frequent visitors included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Fritz Lang, Aldous Huxley, Bertold Brecht, Peter Lorre and Arnold Schoenberg. Feuchtwanger continued to write prolifically, adopting American themes such as the Salem witch hunts into his novels’an ironic choice in light of the government’s suspicion that the fiercely anti-fascist ‘migr’s were communists. Otto and Gertrud Natzler arrived here after leaving behind promising careers as ceramists in Vienna. They brought with them a kiln, a potter’s wheel, and 20 kilos of uranium oxide for glazes and a crate of ceramics. Over the next three decades, Gertrud produced her wafer-thin bowls, vases, jars and bottles while Otto experimented with new, local glaze ingredients, and perfected over 2,000 glazes. Until Gertrud’s death in 1971, the Natzlers created some 25,000 vessels and helped establish ceramics as a form of high art. In a marked departure from the fecundity of the others’ creative energy, Ernst Toch’s creative impetus waned during the war years. Under pressure to support his wife and child, he gave up his own composing, and went to work writing film scores for various studios and teaching musical composition at USC. A massive heart attack in 1948 forced him to realign his priorities, and he quit both jobs to concentrate on his own compositions. Over the last 16 years of his life, he completed seven symphonies and developed his own strategy for writing approachable and lively atonal music. He is also remembered today as the inventor of the genre of spoken music. Each of these immigrants maintained a commitment to artistic and political freedom, some by working to save other German intellectuals in Europe, others by using their talents to challenge injustices they saw around them in their adopted country. During the 1930s and 1940s, many of Michael Curtiz’s films focused on controversial domestic social issues, including the elusiveness of the American Dream for groups at the margins of American society. In ‘Black Fury’ (1935), he depicted the desperate plight of working-class immigrants in an American coal-mining town. And Billy Wilder, who came to Hollywood in 1934 when Columbia purchased a story from him, moved into directing movies that often treated taboo topics in a charming and amusing manner. In ‘Some Like It Hot,’ he used good humor to feast on the topic of gender confusion. These ‘migr’s shared the courage and resourcefulness necessary to survive and prosper in the new country, but suffered the guilt of knowing that while they were safe from tyranny, many others perished, and that Europe would bear the physical cost of war. In her memoir, Salka Viertel reflects on her safe life in Santa Monica Canyon and the guilt she feels over having been spared. ‘The unconcerned sunbathers on the beach, their hairless bodies glistening and brown, the gigantic trucks rumbling on the highway, the supermarkets with their mountains of food, the studio with the oh-so-relaxed employees, the chatting extras pouring out from the stages at lunch time, the pompous executives marching to their ‘exclusive dining room’ or to the barbershop, stopping to flirt with the endearing ‘young talent”all these scenes were a nerve-racking contrast to the war horror I constantly imagined.’ The life stories of these European Jewish ‘migr’s are stories of culture shock, isolation and anti-immigrant discrimination, but also of resilient men and women who produced some of the great art, music, literature and film of the 20th century. The Skirball Museum is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., off the 405 Freeway. Admission is free to the Ruby Gallery. Contact: 440-4500 or visit www.skirball.org.
Young Palisadians
Compiled by LAURA WITSENHAUSEN, Associate Editor As part of the monthlong Community Awareness program at Totally Kids, the preschoolers were visited by Officer Susan Quan of the LAPD, who taught a safety class. They also visited the fire station, post office and Gelson’s market. Totally Kids and Sunrise Assisted Living have also created an Intergenerational Program where the children visit the residents once a week and enjoy an art project and snack together. ‘Our goal is to have the children become aware of the community they live in and be able to contribute something back to it,’ says owner Robin Briskin. o o o Palisades students were involved with several volunteer outreach programs this week. Kids Reaching Out, Marquez Charter’s service learning program, aims to expose students to the benefit of reaching out to others. Each grade level works on at least one project throughout the year, centered on grade-level themes. Projects include a first grade toy drive, second grade lunch making at Turning Point Shelter and the fourth grade food drive and CROP Walk participation. The Marquez third graders have set up lemonade stands to raise money for Pediatric Cancer Research. Each third grade class is sponsoring a lemonade stand throughout the year and is responsible for advertising and working its event. Lemonade donations are 50 cents a cup. When Calvary students learned of the destructive nature of the tsunami in Southeast Asia, they returned to school after the holidays eager to help the survivors. Student council members believed they were the right organization within Calvary to sponsor the fundraising efforts for the entire school. Student council members placed decorated shoeboxes in each classroom, including preschool, for one week, giving each student the opportunity to donate to this cause. Some students donated their allowance; some washed their parents’ cars, or did other chores to raise money for the tsunami victims. Many students wrote prayers which were posted on a bulletin board for all to read. At the end of the week, student council announced that Calvary students collectively had raised $5,481. Fifth grade teachers, Tara Morrow and Mike Brown, oversee student council activities and CATI HANCE is president of the student council. Funds are being forwarded to the Direct Relief Organization (www.directrelief.org), chosen by Steve Faubion, Senior Pastor of Calvary Christian Church. o o o Two local students were named to the honor roll for the fall semester at UC Santa Barbara. DANIEL BOST HOWARD, a student in the Letters and Science Program, and TARYN JEAN ERICKSON, a student of dramatic arts, received the honor for excellence in academic work. o o o MICHAEL BEILINSON, who is majoring in history and television, radio and film at Syracuse University in New York, was named to the dean’s list for the fall semester. o o o DAVID WEINER-CRANE was named to the Academic Honor Roll for the fall term at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Massachusetts.
Scouts Team with Pali Beautiful to Clear Ivy
By JULIAN SUHR Palisadian-Post Intern On Saturday, January 29, six scouts from Girl Scout Troop 535 and Boy Scout Troops 23 and 85 teamed up with Palisades Beautiful to clear destructive Algerian ivy from parkway trees. This ivy, if left unchecked, will climb a tree and strangle it. Headed by Ann Fogel, a facilitator of Palisades Beautiful, the scouts used shovels and clippers to clear away the ivy in an 18-inch radius around each tree. Eight to ten parkway trees on Sunset near Marquez, in the Alphabet streets and on lower Chautauqua were cleared, but many more remain. ‘Palisades Beautiful hopes to establish an ongoing relationship with the local scout troops to help maintain the parkway trees around the Palisades,’ Fogel said. ‘This will allow our organization to allocate funds otherwise spent hiring gardeners towards tree plantings. We thank the scouts for their hard work.’ Future projects with the scouts may involve pruning and the removal of stakes and ties from trees that have outgrown them. Of course, Algerian ivy removal will continue. Palisades Beautiful is an all-volunteer organization that strives to enhance the beauty and environmental health of the community. New members and donations are encouraged. Some activities planned this spring include the irrigation and planting of the Northfield/Sunset triangle and the annual tree planting. The group’s next meeting will be Friday, February 18, at 10 a.m. in the branch library. Contact: palisadesbeautiful@earthlink.net.
Rabbi to Explore Catholic-Jewish Relations
The 2,000-year relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jews will be explored in a three-part seminar by Rabbi Sheryl Lewart at Kehillat Israel, starting Wednesday, February 16 at 7:30 p.m. Lewart will focus on specific chapters from the 2001 New York Times bestseller ‘Constantine’s Sword’ by James Carroll. Carroll, a Catholic scholar, explores Catholic-Jewish relations with insight into each major historical period. Lewart has long been interested in Catholic-Jewish relations. ‘If I wasn’t born Jewish, Catholicism feels like the most compelling religion to me with its love of ritual and ceremony.’ ‘James Carroll’s perspective is a good opening into this topic,’ said Lewart. ‘I read the book years ago and it resonated for me.’ The seminar series is part of ‘Historic Fears and Contemporary Anxieties,’ three educational programs sponsored by KI in response to the concerns over the release of Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ last year. Lewart says that Gibson’s film was widely talked about in her congregation last year. ‘People were fearful that it might create a new wave of anti-Semitic response; the timing of the release close to Easter/Passover hit a nerve in the Jewish psyche.’ Last spring, Lewart was part of community panels at both Corpus Christi and St. Matthew’s. ‘I was specifically addressing the movie, giving the perspective of how a Jewish person might view or react to the film. Out of that, there was a sense that people might want to explore further.’ Lewart, who is a member of the Palisades Ministerial Association as well as the local women’s ministerial group, talked with other clergy members about the response to the film. ‘What came out of our discussions was that the best part of all the excitement and emotion about the release of the film was that this is a great opportunity to learn more about each other. And what we thought would be the most helpful was education.’ The first seminar, February 16, will focus on Paul and the New Testament rejection of Judaism with the chapter entitled ‘Paul the Martyr of Shalom.’ In the second session, scheduled for March 9, the discussion will focus on the period of the Crusades, the origin of the blood libel, conversionism, and Thomas Aquinas and the chapters ‘The War of the Cross’ and ‘Thomas Aquinas: Reason Against the Jews.’ On April 20, the final session will focus on the Church and Hitler and the chapters ‘From Christian Anti-Judaism to Eliminationist Anti-Semitism’ and ‘Pius XII: Last Days of the Roman Ghetto.’ In addition to the three-part seminar, Dr. Michael Berenbaum, a KI scholar-in-residence, and Lewart will discuss ‘What Jews Should Know About Jesus’ on Wednesday, February 23. All seminars begin at 7:30 p.m. at Kehillat Israel, 16019 Sunset, and are open to the community. Contact KI at 459-2328.
Via Residents Fear Latest Slide
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
Neighbors first noticed a new slump along the Via de las Olas bluffs between Friends and Lombard streets over two weeks ago. The approximately 50-foot-long fissure appeared after the heavy rains, forcing the hillside to drop two feet. Slippage has been occurring ever since. ‘My neighbors and I immediately reported it to the City,’ said Regina McConahay, who lives across the street from the slide. ‘There is a critical need for Public Works and possibly other agencies to secure this area before there’s loss of life or property. People walk their dogs and children here, they have picnics here and in my opinion it is very dangerous, even though the City says it is not.’ Craig Kunesh, one of the Department of Public Works geological engineers who inspected the site last week, said that the slide does not present any immediate danger to the street or the private residences across the street, some 300 feet away. He also said that as with any other slide area, his department will do routine monitoring and maintenance of the site, which is located just 15 feet away from the dirt walking path that runs the length of Via. This does not satisfy McConahay, who has lived on the bluffs since 1998. ‘What do they mean by monitoring and maintenance? No one seems to know. We’ve been asking the City for years to do something about stabilizing this hillside and they haven’t. You just have to look at the fissure to know how dangerous it is. It’s only a question of time before there’s an accident. It’s scary.’ Bill Eisner, who regularly strolls the bluffs, feels the same way. ‘We’ve been watching this hillside erode over the years,’ Eisner said. ‘I expect the next heavy rain will take out another chunk.’
