Month: August 2005

Fascinating story on a unique group of Asian Americans – Indian Jews. Columnist Charles W. Bell notes:

Every Saturday for two years, Romiel Daniel and his family walked more than a mile from their home in Rego Park, Queens, to attend Sabbath services at an Orthodox synagogue in Forest Hills.

Then, one cold day he decided to check out the Conservative synagogue one block from his home, the Rego Park Jewish Center.

There, Daniel found a mission: He just celebrated his first anniversary as president of the congregation. He is its cantor and, because the synagogue has been without a rabbi for 19 months, often leads worship services.

That is not what surprises many people, including Jews, when they first meet Daniel. The surprise is that he is an Indian Jew.

“A lot of people never knew that there were Indians who are Jews,” he said this week, when he issued an appeal on behalf of Jews in Mumbai, which until eight years ago was called Bombay and is where he was born 63 years ago. “They think we’re all converts, but we’re not.”

The appeal was issued by Jews of India, which Daniel heads, to raise funds to replace two torahs lost in a recent monsoon that devastated the city. In all, six torahs in the Beth-El Synagogue of Panvel, a suburb of Mumbai, were destroyed in the flooding, and Daniel said members desperately need new torahs in time for the coming High Holy Days.

The Rego Park synagogue, which has 293 members, mostly East European, occupies most of his spare time, but his main job is being director of a lingerie import company in midtown Manhattan. When he assumed the presidency last summer, it made him the first Indian-born Jew to head a U.S. synagogue.

He is a member of Bene Israel, by far the largest of three Indian Jewish groups, with about 60,000 members, including 300 or so in the United States, about 1,000 in Canada, about 5,000 in India, and most of the rest in Israel. The other two groups are the Cochinis, now down to 16 members, all in the Cochin area of India, and the Baghdadis, with about 250 members, living in Britain, Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

Their histories in India go back 2,000 or so years with the arrival of Jews, starting with the Cochinis, who were fleeing the persecution of King Antiochus of Syria – the Jewish revolt against him is celebrated today as Chanukah. The Bene Israel arrived at about the same time, when Daniel’s ancestors were shipwrecked near Bombay while fleeing Antiochus. The Baghdadis arrived in the late 18th century from Syria and Iraq. All are considered Oriental Jews.

There are a few differences between Western and Oriental Jews. Before entering a synagogue, for example, Oriental Jews remove their shoes. They eat rice at Passover instead of matzo, and wear all white on Yom Kippur. [….]

Fascinating stuff.

And, then we may ask: what does it really mean to be a “minority,” when the so-called minority may be majority?

My new homepage is the Wikipedia Random Page. Yeah, I was one of those geeks that actually liked reading random encyclopedia articles when I was young and my parents bought the requisite multi-volume set with the annual year books. Wikipedia is a thousand times better because it incorporates cultural awareness in its researched articles. You also can look at the discussion and see what kind of biases exist in the writing, which you can’t do in a regular encyclopedia.

They’re in another fund-raising season — consider contributing.

I’ve been out of action for a while, partially because I needed a break after cooking for 200 at last week’s successful APA picnic in the Bronx, and partially because my hard drive crashed on my desktop computer, putting a big crimp on my Internet addiction.

Updating a previous post, my friend had a healthy 7 lb. baby boy in HK on Monday. Congrats!

In APA news, Cristeta Comerford, who is Filipina, becomes the first Asian executive White House chef. Apparently, the Bushes were looking for someone that could cook both state dinners and huevos rancheros.

Finally, got a brand new work laptop. 6 weeks on back order, I finally got a Thinkpad T43. Perfect typing surface, long battery life (got over 4 hours on one charge) and built in everything. Very very sweet.

Hmm, so it’s not hot the past two days – wow. After the blistering high temperatures of the weekend (wherein I became convinced of the reality of global warming and spent the entire time indoors in air conditioning), the cooler temperatures feels alien…

Hmm, so what’s with Slate? Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon are saying that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts really isn’t so bad (or, at least, that the left-of-center folks will swallow him as someone who isn’t so bad).

There’s this picture in today’s Daily News of the dog that won the ugliest dog contest (a Californian dog); he (or she?) really didn’t look very pleasant. The picture’s also in Newsday. Daily News is asking NY’ers to see if we can top that ugly Californian dog, and offered the contest winner’s dog a day at doggie spa. Umm, sure.

And, while I’m happy that Dick Clark is planning to be back for the upcoming Rockin’ New Year’s Eve, I’m not sure what to make of his intending to bring along his anointed successor, American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest. Seacrest has already taken over the old Casey Kasem Top 40 show on the radio; must he aim to take over other things? Well, I’ll reserve judgment – for all I care, he and Simon Cowell might end up joining forces to host tv bloopers to replace Dick Clark and Ed McMahon.

Wednesday night – ABC aired a two-hour, commercial-free tribute to Peter Jennings – “Peter Jennings: Reporter” (to remind us of those specials he used to do, “Peter Jennings: Reporting.”). Poignant stuff – his colleagues and friends expressing themselves about the man they admired and respected. The clips of his finest moments – Challenger, Millenium New Year’s 2000, and Sept. 11, 2001 – and I wondered what might have been (if he had covered the South Asia tsunami, the passing of the Pope, and the London bombings). And, some clips of his “Reporting” specials (“The Search for Jesus” was a good one to show of clips). The tributes made the point that Peter worked hard and believed in standards.

One of those Peter Jennings memories of mine – just before the original Gulf War, he had a special to educate kids and adolescents about the Middle East. Being the age I was back then, it was enlightening to have watched. There was something reassuring about Peter, that Dan or Tom didn’t do for me (ok, so there was Peter’s handsome good looks and sophistication, but that’s besides the point). And, Peter did stories – the world news stuff – that others didn’t really do (I didn’t truly appreciate that until I got old enough to appreciate the NY Times and the Jim Lehrer news in-depth coverage). And, of course, those times of watching him do the presidential campaign coverages. Sad to have seen a clip of him and David Brinkley doing an Election Night coverage and realizing both are now gone.

Summer reading – On Monday night, I finished (finally!) reading “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.” Huge thick book (even for a paperback). Harry’s clearly an adolescent, angst and self-absorption and all – somewhat justifiably sad and angry all at once. The adults’ dilemmas were also finely drawn (not bad for a book from Harry’s perspective – one could feel Prof. Dumbledore’s pain, and that of everybody else’s). But, I kept wishing for an editor who could have cut the book somewhat – no offense intended to J.K. Rowling, but Books 4 and 5 were really thick books. The brand spanking new Book 6 is in the “To be read” pile – dare I pursue it so soon?

In the meantime, I read “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” by Vonda McIntyre in the “Duty, Honor, Redemption” compilation edition of the novelizations of the trilogy films (II, III, IV). As noted in a previous entry, these were great novelizations. It had been awhile since I last read “II” or watched it, but the book feels a little dated.

The characterizations were nicely consistent to what I’ve seen or read in other Trek novels or movies/shows (Spock at this point was accepting his role as friend/ officer/part Vulcan-part human; McCoy being, well, himself; Kirk dealing with age, mortality, and loving every minute of being the leader), but some stuff felt a little odd (like must David Marcus, Kirk’s son, be that hostile about Starfleet? It’s a “military” but hardly the secret police of a dictatorship). I didn’t remember Scotty’s nephew being that young in the movie – the book made him a teenage cadet, a la the kid cadets of Russell Crowe’s movie “Master and Commander” and Saavik, in the book, was an extremely young lieutenant (umm, Kirstie Alley in the movie as Saavik wasn’t that young).

My guess is that McIntyre was buying into Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s idea of a Horatio Hornblower/coming of age model of naval training, with literal children training aboard the vessel. If that’s the case, why wasn’t Saavik made an ensign rather than a lieutenant? (actually, I have no idea how young lieutenants are in the real military, so …) – Eh, whatever. Fortunately, years of modern Trek (in books and movies) kind of changed the portrayal Starfleet training (i.e., making Starfleet Academy more like the modern West Point or the Naval Academy, an elite college, so it’s not like you have 14-year-old kids training like you had in the Horation Hornblower era of the 1700’s and 1800’s). But, these are mere quibbles – the book was vivid stuff, and made Khan (if it is possible) even more vicious by taking an inside look from the view of the people he led. “II” was a nice subway read.

The passing of Peter Jennings. Being the news addict that I am (and living without cable), I grew up watching Peter Jennings. He was, as they say, suave and sophisticated – I mean, come on – it was “World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.” Not just Nightly News, but World News (no offense to Tom Brokaw, but I seriously watched more Jennings than Brokaw). As I grew older, I realized he wasn’t infallible (he could be a little pedantic, and that Canadian accent made you wonder – is it alien or charming?) – the NY Times’ Jacques Steinberg captured it right:

As an anchor, Mr. Jennings presented himself as a worldly alternative to Mr. Brokaw’s plain-spoken Midwestern manner and Mr. Rather’s folksy, if at times offbeat, Southern charm. He neither spoke like many of his viewers (“about” came out of his mouth as A-BOOT, a remnant of his Canadian roots) nor looked like them, with a matinee-idol face and crisply tailored wardrobe that were frequently likened in print to those of James Bond.

Though his bearing could be stiff on the air (and his syntax sometimes criticized as being so simplistic as to border on patronizing), Mr. Jennings was immensely popular with his audience.

During a trip last fall through Kansas, Pennsylvania and Ohio in the weeks before the presidential election, he traveled at times aboard a coach customized by the news division to trumpet its campaign coverage and frequently received a rock star’s welcome when he decamped.

For example, in the parking lot of a deli just outside of Pittsburgh, where he had come to interview a long-shot candidate for Congress whose threadbare headquarters was upstairs, Mr. Jennings found himself on the receiving end of several hugs from loyal viewers.

“He’s so handsome,” one of those viewers, Vilma Berryman, 66, the deli owner, observed immediately after meeting him. “He’s taller than I thought. He speaks so softly.”

“I feel like I know him,” she added. “He’s just so easy.”

Like all of the Big 3, Mr. Jennings was not without his detractors. Some critics contended he was too soft on the air when describing the Palestinian cause or the regime of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro – charges he disputed. Similarly, a July 2004 article in the National Review portrayed him as a thinly veiled opponent of the American war in Iraq.

The article quoted Mr. Jennings as saying: “That is simply not the way I think of this role. This role is designed to question the behavior of government officials on behalf of the public.”

Mr. Jennings was conscious of having been imbued, during his Canadian boyhood, with a skepticism about American behavior; at least partly as a result, he often delighted in presenting the opinions of those in the minority, whatever the situation.

And yet he simultaneously carried on an elaborate love affair with America, one that reached its apex in the summer of 2003, when he announced that he had become an American citizen, scoring, he said proudly, 100 percent on his citizenship test.

In a toast around that time that he gave at the new National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he described his adopted home as “this brash and noble container of dreams, this muse to artists and inventors and entrepreneurs, this beacon of optimism, this dynamo of energy, this trumpet blare of liberty.”

Mr. Jennings’s personal life was at times grist for the gossip pages, including his three divorces. His third wife, the author Kati Marton, whom he married in 1979 and divorced in 1993, is the mother of his two children, who survive him. They are a daughter, Elizabeth, and son, Christopher, both of New York City. He is also survived by his fourth wife, Kayce Freed, a former ABC television producer whom he married in December 1997, and a sister, Sarah Jennings of Ottawa, Canada. Having prided himself on rarely taking a sick day in nearly 40 years – and being dismissive, at times, of those well-paid colleagues who did – Mr. Jennings had missed the broadcast and the newsroom terribly in recent months.

When he got to be in the gossip pages and faced criticism, I realized that Jennings was human. In an era where the Anchorman isn’t what it used to be, maybe that’s okay. But, in times of trouble, there was Jennings being reassuring while realistic. It didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes and entirely credible. NY Times’ Alessandra Stanley notes:

He was not warm or cozily familiar. He was cool and even a little supercilious. If you invited Peter Jennings into your living room, he would be likely to raise an eyebrow at the stains on the coffee table. He was not America’s best friend or kindly uncle. But in an era of chatty newscasters, jousting analysts and hyperactive commentators, he was a rare voice of civility. [….]

What Mr. Jennings had that will be harder to replace was a worldliness that was rooted in his personality and also in his rich background of experience in the field.

Mr. Jennings, who died on Sunday, worked hard his entire life to overcome a flighty beginning: he never attended college, and got his start on Canadian television with the help of his father, a senior executive at the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Mr. Jennings became famous as the host of a dance show for teenagers and was only 26 when ABC News recruited him to be an anchor, more on the basis of his good looks and smooth delivery than anything else. He made up for it later, working as a correspondent in Vietnam, Beirut and Europe. His colleagues teased him about his dashing trench coats, but nobody looked better in Burberry or in black tie. [….]

Brian Williams on NBC is as natty, self-possessed and buttoned-down as Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Jennings combined. Charles Gibson, who stepped in most often to replace Mr. Jennings when he began cancer treatment, proved a comfortingly familiar, competent face. For now at least, Bob Schieffer at CBS has introduced a no-nonsense note of the elder statesman after the nightly roller-coaster ride that was Dan Rather.

All of them remain in the classic anchor mold, but not one of them has the hauteur and dignity that Mr. Jennings brought to the news. Network newscasts have lost much of their audience and authority, but throughout all the setbacks, erosions and even his own fatal illness, he never lost his uncommon touch.

Ironically, another network’s commentator did it nicely – MSNBC’s commentator Michael Ventre says:

The last trustworthy American was born a Canadian.

Peter Jennings became an American citizen in 2003. But before that, he was an honorary American, one of the small handful of people we went to for the truth. And he came through. He never lied to us. He always gave it to us straight. [….]

Jennings made fewer headlines than his broadcast brethren. He did in network news what Spencer Tracy once advised a fellow actor to do: “Find your mark, look into the camera and tell the truth.”

Now media consultants will panic to replace him, like they’ve done in the aftermath of the Rather exit. They’ll look for new ways to present the news.[….]

Spin will be the order of the day. Never mind that folks have less faith in the news media now than ever. The idea is to jazz up the broadcast while softening the edges, not break stories. Network suits are able to do this now because the last trustworthy man in America is no longer with us.

He was our Cronkite, even if people didn’t realize it, or took him for granted. He will be missed, and network news will never be the same.