MegilLA: Eve of Destruction Issue

July 16, 2021

Jul 16, 2021

Folks,

Interrupting our Saturday night plans, Tisha B’Av sneaks up on us, even if we see it coming. In this time of recovery, who wants to think again of death and destruction especially from such a long, long time ago? But we are a people who remember the blows taken, the souls lost; if only to remember how we have recovered, changed, and grown. So we fast, light our candles, sit on the floor or low stools, open our books, and sing a dirge to a fallen, silent city. In between the broken words tears fall, and we hope for a better day and renewal.

In this sad time, I mourn as well the recent loss of my mother-in-law Shirley Berko. A builder and sustainer of family and Jewish community, a teacher of inclusiveness, and source of quiet strength and inner beauty to all who knew her, may her memory be for a blessing. (Read about her HERE and HERE.)

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Shabbat Shalom
Edmon J. Rodman

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GUIDE FOR THE JEWPLEXED

Tisha B'Av, on the 'Eve of Destruction'

Edmon J. Rodman

“Ah, you may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it's the same old place.”
“Eve of Destruction”

When Richard Branson flew to the threshold of space on Sunday in the Virgin Galactic spacecraft the week before Tisha B’Av, the event brought to mind a dirge-like song from the 1960s, “Eve of Destruction.”

The hit song, with its sardonic reminder that a trip into space changes very little on Earth, was written under the name P. F. Sloan by a young Jewish Los Angeles songwriter who was born Philip Schlein in 1964.

Sloan who was bar mitzvahed in Los Angeles, was still a teenager when he wrote the song, which performed by Barry McGuire was a #1 hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in 1965.

Beyond the space reference, the song, with its gloomy outlook and its observations on the utter destructiveness of war and hatred, can be seen as fitting into the mode of Jewish literature chanted on Tisha B’Av, which begins Saturday night.

If you have never heard the song (Listen to it Here.), it echoes several themes found in Eicha, or Lamentations, the dirge chanted on Tish B’Av, which helps us recall the soul-crushing destruction of the First and Second Temples as well as many other tragedies which occurred throughout history on that day.

“You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction,” says the song’s refrain which many took as a warning in musical form. Eich in its depiction of the utter destruction of Jerusalem and its people is a kind of musical warning too. May destruction “never befall you,” says its narrator.

Continuing this comparison, “Our hearts are sick,” says Eicha. “This whole crazy world is just too frustratin',” says “Eve.”

Considering Sloan’s Jewish background—his father changed the family name after experiencing anti-Semitism in his business—it is not that difficult to see “Eve” as a Jewish song. After Sloan’s bar mitzvah at Conservative Temple Beth El, his rabbi suspecting the budding songwriter as someone with an “old soul,” and suggested he study the mystical writings found in Kabbalah and the Zohar, reported a 2006 story by Steven Rosen in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

According to the story, Sloan felt “Eve” was "directly attributable" to his Kabbalah studies. "The song was a divine gift," he told the paper. "I was given information about the history of the world through that song — not that that's unusual in mystical Judaism. It was quite a wonderful gift at age 19 to be given that. I knew it was special and knew it would change things," said Sloan, who died at age 70 in 2015.

“Eve” comes from the point of view of an individual “sittin' here just contemplatin',” and in the opening lines of Eicha we can easily imagine the narrator sitting in despair among the ruins trying to find meaning amidst a lonely city “once great with people.”

Eicha calls to God “from the depths of the pit,” from a place where “ruin is vast as the sea. Similarly, Sloan calls to America from the depths of social conflagrations and armed conflicts; from the “poundin’ of the drums,” and the fear of the whole world being “put in a grave.”

Eicha, while relating in often graphic detail the final horrifying days of Jerusalem, speaks of the days leading up to the destruction, “we have transgressed and rebelled,” confesses the narrator. “Eve of Destruction," also in a confessional tone, admits that we “hate” our “next door neighbor,” while still remembering to “say grace,” and that we live in a time when “human respect is disintegratin'.”

Both dirge and song, each with repeating tropes of the fears, sorrows and anger of their time want us to remember and change.

“Behold my agony,” says Eicha, reaching out to us, from that terrible day of destruction so many generations ago. “Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,” says “Eve.”

What Atomic War Will Do to You

Not long after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and before the hit song "Eve of Destruction," in 1947, LA Jewish artist Boris Deutsch shocked America with his post-apocalyptic vision of "What Atomic War Will Do to You." He entered his painting in the national Pepsi-Cola art calendar contest, and, surprisingly, his work was included (He also won $2500). Shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as part of a national traveling exhibit, the work provoked controversy and commentary. Said the LA Times: "Whether viewed as a cry of horror or as a warning of possible human mutations due to radioactivity, it dominates the room by sheer power of statement."

LAUSD will teach Jewish history and culture

In LA public schools, Jews and their culture and history will soon become an official area of study.

Responding to the recent rise in anti-Semitism in Los Angeles, the Board of Education of the City of Los Angeles passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a curriculum “in the areas of Jewish history and culture and the Holocaust,” on Tuesday, July 13. (Read resolution HERE.)

Noting that “approximately 15 percent of the K-12 child population within LAUSD’s boundaries are themselves or have family members who are Jewish,” the board moved to affirm the value of Jewish students, staff, and families in LAUSD.

In justifying their action, the board cited that “Property and vandalism crimes against Jewish temples and places of worship and physical assaults against people who 'look Jewish' or dine at restaurants frequented by Jewish people has increased significantly over the past four years and most recently.”

“No individual or group within our District should fear becoming targets of retaliation, derision, bullying, isolation, or violence,” said the motion.

To create the new curriculum, the board is not only looking to educators, but invited other expert groups such as the “Anti-Defamation League, Simon Wiesenthal Center and J Street to update and revise” existing educational resources.

LAUSD’s Division of Instruction and Office of Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity, has 90 days to report on its progress.

In Devarim “words,” this week’s Torah portion, Moses, in a farewell address recounts many of the key locations on Israel’s 40-year journey in the wilderness. Not one to merely reminisce, Moses reminds the people of the lessons learned and the laws given along the way. On the journey, he has learned much too about being a leader. He reviews the system of magistrates that he set up, and that they are charged with deciding “justly between any man and a fellow Israelite or a stranger.” Furthermore, the magistrates are not to be “partial in judgment,” they are to hear out “low and high alike.” Today in L.A., we are reminded of Moses and his relationship to the justice system by a stone relief sculpture of “Moses the Law Giver” that stands above the Grand Avenue entrance to Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown (110 N. Grand Ave.). What better Torah than to have Moses and Mosk, another law giver, together in the same place, as Stanley Mosk played an important role in making Los Angeles housing accessible to everyone regardless of religion or race. In 1947, a year before the U.S. Supreme Court made a similar judgment, the 35-year-old Jewish Los Angeles Superior Court Judge decided in Wright v. Drye that enforcement of restrictive housing covenants was unconstitutional. In 1964, Mosk went on to be appointed to the California Supreme Court, where he served with distinction until 2001.

Seen On the Way: the White Mountains

The Edmund F. Schulman Memorial Grove of ancient bristlecone pines, high in the White Mountains, located near the town of Lone Pine, is about a four-hour drive from LA. Considered the world’s oldest living trees, the pines, some of them over 4,000 years old were first encountered and identified by Dr. Shulman, a pioneer of modern tree-ring dating, in 1953. (Read more about the bristlecones HERE.) Schulman, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, and was Jewish, after identifying a tree that he thought was the oldest of the stand at around 4,845 years old, named it Methuselah, the figure in the bible who lived to 969. The tree is considered to be the world's second oldest non-clonal tree. A few years ago, an even older bristlecone was discovered. To protect them both, their location is kept secret.