Villaraigosa renews his Israeli ties

To celebrate Israeli@60, Jewlicious started a feature called 60Bloggers, which has included a few notable names thus far, including Gary Wexler and The Calendar Girls. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa added his name Monday, drawing comparisons to the "culture and commerce, and ties of blood and family":

Los Angeles and Israel are both homes of creativity and bastions of innovation - places defined by a deep respect for diversity, a longstanding belief in what’s possible, and the fervent hope, dream and commitment to build a peaceful tomorrow.

Here in Los Angeles, we celebrate the state of Israel and our own Israeli community in a variety of ways. We host the largest showcase of Israeli films in the United States and we have built a strong relationship with our sister city, Eilat. Thousands of Israeli students of all ages have attended and enriched our schools and synagogues, and Israeli security specialists have come to the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles International Airport to help protect airline passengers and foreign visitors. Each year, the city’s Israel Festival brings together over 40,000 people in the largest celebration of Israeli culture anywhere. And, overcoming the obstacles faced by so many immigrant groups, the vitality and vibrancy of L.A.’s Israeli families never diminish and only grow stronger every day.

Israel’s 60 years have been shaped by the resilience, strength and devotion of its people. Through criticism and condemnation, the Jewish state has stood up for the values and principles that have long made the Jewish people a “light unto the nations.” Israel’s citizens have kept faith with the hope – “ha-tikvah” – that they might live as a free nation, in peace and security, in the land of their ancestors. I know the City of Los Angeles and our people will continue to benefit from a close relationship with the State of Israel long into the future.

Villaraigosa has a very close relationship with L.A.'s Jewish leaders. He's been called an "honorary member of the Tribe" and his best buddy on the City Council is Jack Weiss, who represents the city's most Jewish district.

As Speaker of the California Assembly, Villaraigosa twice visited Israel, and two years ago he developed a relationship with Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal. Efforts last summer to organize a mayor's trip to the Jewish state were unsuccessful; I've been told his calendar is marked for a week-long trip next month.

Though he couldn't see the holy sites or dignitaries from the San Fernando Valley on Sunday Villaraigosa had the chance to speak with several thousand Israelis at the annual Israel Festival at Woodley Park.

I was there, but, vainly attempting to avoid the heat of the day, before the mayor arrived. Between dripping buckets of sweat and being shown how to solve a Rubik's cube by a Messianic Jew, I enjoyed fake Hebrew coke and picked up books about Spinoza and Koufax. It reminded me of something a former field deputy for U.S. Rep Brad Sherman, who is Jewish and represents part of the Valley, once told me:

The biggest threat to Israel is Tarzana, Calif. It looks like Israel; it feels like Israel; and the people all speak Hebrew.

LA's mayor a member of the Tribe?

The Forward has a short profile this week of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, whom reporter Rebecca Spence calls "something of an honorary member of the tribe."

Los Angeles is a small town, and with half a million Jews in the greater L.A. area, it's no surprise Villaraigosa has leaned heavily on many Jews along the way, whether it was high school teacher Herman Katz or his best friend on the City Council, Jack Weiss, or chief of staff Robin Kramer.

His predecessors, most notably Tom Bradley, benefited similarly. But Spence presents a man whose philo-Semitism goes a good deal further than political expedience (though he's still no Mark Paredes).

According to local Jewish leaders, the mayor himself has made a habit of attending synagogue services, beyond the public appearances L.A. mayors tend to make at High Holiday services. He has been spotted at Temple Valley Beth Shalom and at Adat Ariel, both located in the San Fernando Valley — a region that tends to skew somewhat more conservative when it comes to local politics and that, unlike the Westside, went for Villaraigosa’s predecessor, James Hahn, in 2005.

The mayor has also attended Friday Night Live, a popular Sabbath service with live music held at Sinai Temple, a 2,000-family Conservative synagogue located on the Westside. In fact, said Sinai’s rabbi, David Wolpe, when Villaraigosa showed up this past September at his synagogue for Kol Nidre services, he sat in the back, didn’t come up to the bimah and left quietly. “In my experience, that is unprecedented,” Wolpe said. “It’s unheard of that a political figure should desire to come just to be there.” (Despite the frequent synagogue attendance, Villaraigosa, it should be noted, is a practicing Catholic.)

Villaraigosa also has made a point of attending major Jewish events, from Super Sunday to a major rally for Israel during the war with Hezbollah to the recent groundbreaking of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. And he's developed political relationships with some Israelis, including Sderot Mayor Eli Moyal. (I asked Villaraigosa's office for an interview last August when I wrote about life in Sderot; they got back to me in late December.)

That neighborhood racket is a bunch of atoning Jews

The Jewish Journal is getting in the mood of 24/7, and today, instead of waiting until Thursday, uploaded Tom Tugend's explanation of what went wrong Friday with LA bureaucrats' Yom Kippur sin.

The scene was a Kol Nidrei service at Yeshivas Yavneh, a Hebrew academy run out of a former Tudor estate in Los Angeles' pricey Hancock Park neighborhood, not far from the mayor's official residence. After 8 p.m., two building inspectors showed up and told a congregant that it was closing time, but the 200 Orthodox Jews observing Yom Kippur refused to leave. Then the anger spread.

As word of the strange incident spread through the closely knit Orthodox community in Hancock Park, tempers and outrage rose.

The yeshivaworld.com Web site declared that the incident was "reminiscent of the cowardly sneak attack on Israel during the Yom Kippur War," and quoted one woman worshipper, a wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor, "I was frightened. I started crying. I don't want to go to jail. I want to pray."

By Sunday evening, top aides to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and City Councilman Tom LaBonge, joined by Councilman Jack Weiss, met with Orthodox community rabbis and officials of the offending department in City Hall for some hasty damage control.

On Monday evening, the mayor and two councilmen released a statement condemning the "outrageous intrusion" on erev Yom Kippur, "which caused great pain and anguish."

This is not the first time Jews have clashed with their less-than-welcoming neighbors in the once WASPy Hancock Park. It's also not the first time LA city officials have shown insensitivity when dealing with religious observance (remember that story I did about the cops allegedly tearing down a mezuzah at a pot pharmacy?).

(Hat tip: LAObserved)

Is Luke Ford good for the Jews?

Loyal readers are familiar with the name Luke Ford. He is an LA blogger who writes about kinky porn, Orthodox Judaism and sinful politicians. But Luke is a contentious figure in the Jewish community, of which he is a convert into, and is both loved and loathed by people in the porn industry.

"Ford is an interesting cat -- a nice guy and a snake, all at the same time," a friend told me.

Of late, Luke has been receiving quite a bit more attention. He was the one who first reported that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had stopped wearing his wedding rings, that the nuptials were failing. And in June his reporting was vindicated.

Luke is a complex character, a man of many layers, and I set out last week to profile him for the cover of this week's Jewish Journal. I spent six hours with him -- eating together, praying together -- and tomorrow I'll put some of the audio online. Here's a snippet from the print story:

His techniques were unorthodox, and not simply because he kept kosher and Shabbat while profiting from pornography. Trading in rumor and innuendo, lawsuits became part of the gig because he was willing to publish one-source stories and anonymous accusations as fact.

"There are three reasons why people come into the adult industry and two of them are wrong. The first is sex, which is mechanical, and the second is money, which is incidental. The primary reason is for the glory, and Luke has made himself glorious," said Bill "Papa Bear" Margold, once dubbed "the renaissance man of porn" by Playboy. "He is the first site you go to see what is going on. Even if he doesn't know what is going on, you go there to see that he doesn't know what is going on."

But his notoriety as an adult-industry blogger complicated Ford's search for a spiritual home in Los Angeles' Orthodox community. The first shul to give him the boot was Aish HaTorah in 1995 for being too antagonistic and again in 1998 when Rabbi Moshe Cohen discovered Ford's double life as a porn journalist.

"He was one of the Torah weirdos," said Rabbi Aryeh Markman, the shul's executive director. "You get all sorts of people showing up in shul and we bust them. 'I'm happy you're looking for a place to daven. But this isn't one of them.' And you throw them out. ... The antithesis of Torah is porn."

(skip)

He lives in a guesthouse occupying half a converted garage. In a narrow room smaller than a college dorm, a few blankets -- Ford's bed -- lay on the ground between his desk and the bathroom door, against which two white pillows rest. A bookshelf is lined with Judaica items and books on the Talmud, Jewish history and English literature; most of the books he reads come from the library.

There is a fridge and microwave; cassette tapes of recorded phone conversations are piled on the floor, a smorgasbord of bottled vitamins and medication cover a white dresser with gilded accents. "The Hovel," as Ford endearingly refers to it, feels dank and smells worse, but for $600 a month, it's home.

Ford posts the story, slips into the bathroom to wash his hands, then locks up and begins the half-mile schlep to shul.

"This is a good place," an elderly man says to a teenage boy as Ford reads a Talmud commentary before a minyan has arrived. "You're welcome here. You can come in the morning; you can come in the evening. You will feel good here."

Certainly, that is true for Ford. This is the place that gives his life structure and purpose and stability. This is the only shul that's let him continue davening there after discovering the depraved world within which he works. Judaism is not about a personal relationship with God, and without an accepting community there is no religious observance. For a convert like Ford, there is no Jewish identity absent Judaism.

"Orthodox Judaism in general, not just going to shul, gives me much needed structure," Ford says after the service ended. "I have no core. I'm way too flexible on the things I do. This gives me some structure, and it's important for me to bounce off the same people everyday.... It gives my life meaning, it gives my life rhythm, it gives my day a beginning and end. And it reminds me that there is a God."

He returns home and hops in his van -- a distinctly dented and rusted old GTE work van -- and heads out to the Valley. He's got a porn party to infiltrate.

Luke will be back ...

The Luke Ford post has been taken down temporarily. It will be reposted Thursday afternoon, when The Jewish Journal cover story on Ford goes live. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Cardinal Mahony as the serpent and the mayor as Adam

I'm been writing of late about Cardinal Roger Mahony and the LA Archdiocese's massive settlement with 508 alleged victims of clergy sex abuse and about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's philandering ways.

Well, the LA Daily News put the two together in this cover for the Sunday Viewpoint section. That's Mahony as the serpent and the mayor chasing his adulterous lover Mirthala Salinas through the "Garden of Telemundo." You obviously get the reference.

(Thanks, LAObserved)

Borderline humor wouldn't fly for whites, blacks or Jews

Gregory Rodriguez makes a solid claim in the LA Times today that the news media exacts ethnic stereotypes on the Latinos leaders it covers. His case study is the coverage of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's affair with a Telemundo newscaster.

LAST WEEK, I got a phone call from a television news producer who asked me what Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's extramarital affair revealed about the nature of Latino political leadership. I told her I'd agree to be interviewed on air only if we could explore what Bill Clinton's dalliances said about white people or Jesse Jackson's fling with an aide told us about black activists. Dumbfounded, she asked if I could refer her to someone else. ...

Reporters from a variety of newspapers, including The Times, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle and the LA Weekly made lame comparisons between the mayor's affair and telenovelas, Spanish-language soap operas. Do you think they didn't write "soap opera" because the English-language versions lack sufficient sex and intrigue? Or maybe it was a cute way to ascribe this behavior, as opposed to planting trees, to his ethnicity. ...

I'm surprised no newspaper ran a cartoon of the mayor sporting a pencil mustache, a Zorro mask and a rose clenched between his teeth.

Granted, some, like Gustavo Arellano, have voiced frustration that the highest-ranking Latino politician in the country would behave so recklessly. But Rodriguez makes a good point that all the "ethnic innuendo" wouldn't be tolerated if L.A.'s philandering mayor was Anglo, black or Jewish.

Imagine if New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the grandson of a Russian Jewish immigrant, were embroiled in some sort of scandal over his kid's marriage, would a mainstream newspaper say the meshugeneh mayor's predicament was straight out of "Fiddler on the Roof"? Probably not. In fact, last week an Associated Press story stated bluntly that in New York, "Bloomberg isn't known … as the Jewish mayor."

(Cartoon: Downtown News)

Mayor Villaraigosa getting prayers

Tony Castro was ahead of the LA press corps on poking holes in Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's gilded facade. He wrote this story in November that questioned the authenticity of the mayor's rags-to-riches story, and in January, he was the first to get the story-that-never-ran about Villaraigosa's failing marriage.

Last week, Castro's colleague at the LA Daily News, editorial page editor Chris Weinkopf, called on the mayor, a fellow Catholic, to end his affair with a local (suspended) newscaster and repent. It seems plenty of others think Villaraigosa needs to get right with God, Castro reports today.

A black lace mantilla draped over her head, Matilda Salas knelt at a side altar of downtown's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, immersed in solemn prayer, a rosary of crystal beads clutched in her tiny hands.

When she finished, she carefully lit two votive candles, as she had done since Tuesday, the day she learned of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's admitted extramarital affair.

"I light one candle for Antonio and one candle for (his wife)," said Salas, 56. "I pray that with God's help, they find a way of reconciling.

"If they don't, Antonio is lost. He is lost to his family. He is lost to himself. Most importantly, he is lost to God."

(Photo: AP)

Who's afraid of lashon hara? *

Lashon hara is Hebrew for "evil tongue," which I imagine looks something like a serpent's. It is forbidden in Judaism not just to gossip, but to say anything that might hurt another person, even if true. That is why working in the Jewish media -- yes that is different than MSM -- demands a delicate dance. It seems secular newspapers, however, are concerned about lashon hara as well. (That is an over-generalization; journalists are very good at them.)

The hottest story in LA right now is the rockstar mayor's failed marriage. Though the LA Daily News recovered nicely this week by being the first to identify TV newscaster Mirthala Salinas as the vixen who sparked Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's divorce, the paper never published this story by Tony Castro, filed in mid-January, that revealed the mayor hadn't worn his wedding ring since at least September and hadn't been seen with his wife since before then.

Quite presciently, Castro wrote in that unpublished article, now on his blog, that "(h)istorically, the coverage of marital troubles in the marriages of Los Angeles politicians has made for queezy stomachs among local mainstream journalists."

The 2003 breakup of then Mayor James K. Hahn, for instance, received scant coverage and apparently was first reported in a dot-dash column of The Wave, a community weekly in South Los Angeles which had long been a Hahn family stronghold.

“If Los Angeles worked like New York City, competitive pressures already would have flushed out any gossip involving the mayor,” Jewish Journal senior editor Howard Blume wrote at the time in his publication.

“Why is it in Los Angeles that the personal life of actor Robert Blake looms more newsworthy than the mayor’s? Is it a reflection of Los Angeles’ civic culture that the mayor barely seems to qualify as a public figure?”

So breaking the news that Antonio's marriage was on the rocks fell to cowboy blogger/porn watchdog/Orthodox Jewish convert Luke Ford. (Yes, all those adjectives are accurate.) After Ford wrote on his blog Jan. 29 that the mayor and Corina Villaraigosa were separated, the mayor told an LA Times reporter at the Getty House that the blogger's claim was untrue. Corina, however, couldn't spare the time to appear at his defense, and Villaraigosa's ball of yarn began to unravel quite publicly.

Ford, who was profiled last month by Castro in the Daily News' porn series, is now enjoying the limelight. He got a mention on Slate, interviewed by CNN and a Q & A at LAist.

But what about lashon hara?

* I sent Ford this post and asked him how he balanced the interest of reporting with the gossip taboo. He sent back this synthesis of his thoughts, these related thoughts and this comment about when reporters have the right to rake muck:

Unlimited right to publish about public officials in the public performance of their duty.

If they do things in their private life that make them vulnerable to blackmail, conflicts of interest, perjury, etc, also fair game.

If someone is flagrant about violating social norms publicly (as Villaraigosa has been over the years with his serial philandering, much of it was Mirthala Salinas was pretty public), then I don't see a problem with reporting on it.

(Photo: LAObserved)

Time to repent, Antonio, or pay the reaper

My former colleague Beth Barrett broke the news today that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's divorce was in fact caused by a little -- OK, a lot -- of extramarital activity. Now Chris Weinkopf, the LA Daily News' editorial page editor, calls on his fellow Catholic to end the affair and repent.

Please. Look, I make no judgment on their souls -- Lord knows, we all have our sins, and we all need mercy -- but I'm not afraid to cast judgment on these "lovers'" actions. They are a despicable travesty that are causing great pain to Villaraigosa's family, a pain that will endure for decades. I refuse to play the game of pretending that this "romance" is cute or healthy, or that it is a "private matter."

Marriage is, by definition, a public matter. That's why we hold weddings in public, and get the government to sanction them. Indeed, marriage is the foundational institution of our society. The violation of one's wedding vows is much more than a private betrayal; its repercussions extend far beyond the couple. No, it's not our business to monitor what goes on in the Villaraigosas' home, but it is our duty not to condone adultery, and to support the aggrieved.

Adultery is not a new thing for Villaraigosa, as Connie Bruck wrote in The New Yorker in May.

Can a minister put the fear of God in gang members?

It appears LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa -- who himself could use the fear of God -- thinks so. Today he introduced the Rev. Jeff Carr as L.A.'s first gang czar. Carr has been the COO of Sojourners, the Washington-based liberal evangelical organization run by Jim Wallis. For 17 years before that he led the Bresee Foundation, named for Church of the Nazarene founder Phineas Bresee, which ministers to L.A.'s poor.

"I've been a minister my whole life and deeply rooted in my faith that calls me to deal with respect with every individual, to treat people as creative human beings with dignity," Carr said. "I try to see the positive in every life, regardless of where they live, the color of their skin or the economic status."

But with that, Carr said he brings a practical approach in dealing with young people.

"I tell them they have to get their tail in school and get a job," Carr said. "I agree with (Father Gregory Boyle of HomeBoy Industries) that the best way to stop a bullet is with a job."