Seraphic Secret

Jon Voight Visits Israeli Terror Victims

2008-05-13T16:37:08Z

Have you noticed all the Hollywood stars rushing to Israel on her 60th birthday?

Doesn't your heart swell with pride as Hollywood stars and moguls—many of them Jewish—publicly voice their support for the Jewish State?

Isn't it wonderful how so many Hollywood people are making their way to S'derot to show solidarity with those innocent Jews living under a state of siege?

I'm just messing with your head.

Hollywood couldn't care less.

Hollywood films don't even begin to approach the existential issue of Islamic terrorism.

If you look at Hollywood films, (and many are not) the people who do get harsh treatment are: the American military, American soldiers, Evangelical Christians, Catholics, and of course evil Republicans.

But Islamists who proudly boast of wanting to wipe Israel of the face of the earth are a no-go zone. Muslim cultures that oppress women, homosexuals and religious minorities are also never criticized.

Iran, an imperial, Holocaust denying state, and the world's greatest export of terrorism, is ignored.

No, Hollywood will crank out one loser after another about evil American soldiers in Iraq, or Gitmo, or, sigh, soon to die in your local theaters, Oliver Stone's smear of President Bush.

Not only are the films wretched, but they are washed in red ink.

You'd think the studio heads would notice.

You'd think.

But guess what. Hollywood is so radically leftist in ideology that it continues to produce stinker after stinker knowing that these American-hating films will die at the box office, domestic and foreign.

It's an anti-capitalist mind set that reminds us of the Soviet Politburo. Yes, these people are rigid as calculus in their leftist ideology—thus stockholders suffer and audiences, with alarming regularity, stay home to watch cable television.

Hey, LC on The Hills may have lousy taste in men but she's a solid Republican.

But there is one man who cares, actually he cares a lot more than the current Israeli government which is discussing a hudna with the barbarians when they should be destroying Gaza.

We salute Jon Voight, who, unlike PM Olmert and the criminal appeasers in his government, knows that negotiating with terrorists only invites more terror.

Award-winning American actor Jon Voight has visited Israeli victims of Palestinian militant attacks during a trip to Israel.

In Jerusalem Monday, Voight played with children whose fathers were killed in suicide bombings. He also chatted with a man who lost his legs in an attack. Voight was visibly moved by the visit and said Israel shouldn't negotiate with Palestinian militants. He called the attackers "barbarians" who "spat" on Israeli peacemaking attempts.

To read the complete article, please click here.

The Fleet Positions Itself for War Against Iran

2008-05-12T17:16:54Z

Currently, there is a large U.S. naval deployment that points to a an overwhelming military strike against the Persian nuclear facilities. The carrier rotations indicate a clear tactical pattern for war.

Why now?

Iran will not willingly give up her nuclear ambitions. That much is clear. Iran is intent in spreading its hegemony throughout the region. Currently, she is, through her proxy Hizbullah, in the process of turning Lebanon into another Gaza.

We can assume that America and Israel are sharing intelligence on this operation. The Saudis, who fear and detest the Shia Persians are, no doubt, opening their files on their Muslim brothers. The Gulf Sunnis are as anxious as Israel to defang the Shia Mullahs.

President Bush and his advisers cannot risk an Obama presidency, in effect, a second Jimmy Carter. Obama, an entrenched leftist, is an appeaser. The Persians, and every transnational terrorist movement, would eat him—and us—alive.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of the Mullahs would be a disaster for the region and for the civilized world. President Bush understands the geopolitical implications. And yet the American press yawns in the face of a regime that denies one Holocaust while it promises another.

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or “army of god,” the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border — whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law’s throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

And this:

Our observations regarding developments began back in September of last year, as we began to watch how the rotations would come together for 2008. We have discussed 6+2 strategy for carriers before. The carrier strategy which was enabled by the Fleet Response Plan was designed to insure the Navy has 6 aircraft carriers available within 30 days to anywhere in the world, with 2 more available by 90 days. The theory is that beyond 90 days, the other 2 carriers not conducting a nuclear refueling would be available within 180 days. 6+2 is theory though, it usually involves several of those 6 carriers returning from deployment, thus the 30 day metric.

However, as the rhetoric builds, we observe 6+2 is getting very close to reality. Lets count them down.
Here is the 6 for the 30 day response this summer:

6 & 30 Days:

USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) - Deployed to Gulf

USS George Washington (CVN 73) - Deployed on way to Japan

USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) - Next Atlantic Fleet Carrier to Deploy

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) - Next Pacific Fleet Carrier to Deploy

USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) - Surge Atlantic Carrier Behind Roosevelt

USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) - Surge Pacific Carrier Behind Reagan

2 & 90 Days:

USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63) - Rotating from Japan to San Diego (Currently Deployed)

USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) - Currently Deployed, Returning Home

2 & 180 Days:

USS Enterprise (CVN 65) - 16-month Extended Docking Availability Began April 11th

USS Nimitz (CVN 68) - Currently Deployed, Extended Drydock Availability Begins After Deployment

Nuclear Refueling:

USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) - Unavailable until end of 2008

Check closely, we list both carriers for 60 days as deployed today, plus a 180 day carrier as deployed today. In other words, they won't be unavailable until the Navy decides them to be.

To read the complete article, please click here.

Who's the Jewish Movie Star? Take 4: Answer

2008-05-11T15:12:05Z

The Jewish movie star is Max Aaronson, who changed his name to Gilbert Anderson, and was known to millions of early movie goers as Broncho Billy Anderson .

Yup, the first cowboy hero of the motion pictures was a Jewish kid from Little Rock, Arkansas.

Not one correct guess from dozens of brave attempts from all across the globe.

Not even our champs, movie maven sisters Buttercup and Tamster were able to solve this one.

I admit, this was obscure. Beyond obscure.

Anywhoo. Onward.

Max's father, Henry, was a dry goods salesman and his mother Esther, a mother and homemaker. The family moved to St. Louis Missouri in 1883 and here Max, a teenager, was an office clerk like his brothers Jerome, Edward, and Nathaniel. Max became a cotton-buyer a year later, in partnership with his brother-in-law Louis Roth. But Max was restless, a dreamer—and he was stage struck.

After taking courses in a St. Louis acting school, Max headed for New York City, and with no professional experience headed straight for Broadway. He was a dismal failure, hauled off-stage and fired during his very first appearance.

Theatrical agents had such a low opinion of young Aaronson's talents that one suggested he try the pictures.

This was an insult.

Acting was considered an indecent profession by the general public, but even theater actors looked down on motion picture actors as little better than trash.

To protect his reputation, Max Aaronson, desperate for money and fame, adopted the stage name, Gilbert M. Anderson, and applied to the Edison film studio at 41 East 21st Street, for work.

Anderson appeared in several early films, some lasting just a minute or two.

In October, 1903, Edwin S. Porter began casting a film at the Edison studios. Porter asked Anderson if he could ride a horse. Anderson said yes.

He was lying.

When the cast arrived on location and Anderson started to mount up from the wrong side; the horse bucked and Anderson was thrown to the ground.

Max Aaronson AKA Broncho Billy, the first western
movie star.

Porter forgave him and Anderson ended up playing three different roles in The Great Train Robbery: a train robber on foot, a man shot in the back during the robbery, and a tenderfoot in a saloon dancing to gun shots directed at his feet.

The Great Train Robbery opened at Huber's Museum, a grimy vaudeville house on 14th street in New York. After the vaudeville show, when the film was announced to the theater's usual patrons—thieves, prostitutes and drug addicts—the crowd started to drift towards the exit. But then the movie began and the audience was riveted.

Anderson was there: “I've seen some receptions to plays, but I've never seen such a reception to a picture in my life. They got up and shouted and yelled, and then when it was all over they yelled 'Run it again! Run it again!' You couldn't get them out. They sat there two or three times, and finally they put on the lights to chase them out... And I said to myself: that's it; it's going to be the picture business for me.”

The Great Train Robbery, 1903. Just twelve minutes long, this was first western. Some of the scenes were hand-tinted. Director Edwin S. Porter used new cinematic techniques such as cross-cutting between scenes to advance the story and build suspense.

Anderson along with George K. Spoor founded the Chicago-based Essany Studios and there began developing his Broncho Billy character in a series of one-reelers.

The very first film with Gilbert M. Anderson as Broncho Billy was called Broncho Billy's Redemption, 1910.

Here's the synopsis from David Kiehn's Broncho Billy and the Essany Film Company:

Redemption comes to Broncho Billy, a cattle Rustler, when he discovers a young woman and her father unconscious from illness out in the prairie. He decides to take them into town for medical attention, knowing he'll be arrested by the sheriff as an outlaw.

Broncho Billy's Redemption: Jack O'Brien looks at Anderson, hands held up, as Clara Williams is moved to the doctor's office.

Anderson's insistence on plausible Western geography eventually brought Anderson and his crew west to Niles California, a sleepy town near San Francisco. There Anderson built a working studio with full production facilities.

The Niles Essany Studio, 1913.

The Niles Essany scenario department in 1914: George Cantwell and his boss Josephine Rector.

The Niles Essany darkroom. Film was developed in studio.

The Niles Essany editing room. Just benches with rewinds.

Broncho Billy was the mythic westerner—often an an outlaw—with a strong sense of right and wrong.

Millions thrilled to Broncho Billy's adventures, and though Anderson was not handsome or physically imposing, his powerful personality, his insistence on authentic locations, the eternally conflicted hero—moral and physical—plus hair-raising stunts and good triumphing over evil made Broncho Billy the first western movie star.

Anderson, in handcuffs, plays cards with the sheriff, in Broncho Billy's
Double Escape.

Anderson and leading lady Marguerite Clayton in Broncho Billy's Decision.

From Broncho Billy's legacy emerged all subsequent Hollywood Western stars, among them: William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Harry Carey, and of course the greatest western hero of all John Wayne.

Anderson starred and directed his Broncho Billy films from 1910 until 1916. Anderson yearned to expand into feature films, but his partner was wary of this new form, and Essany missed the boat on the public's appetite for feature films.

Anderson had a keen eye for talent and insisted on signing the young English comedian Charlie Chaplin to a contract for the unheard sum of $1,250 per week and a $10,000 bonus. Anderson's partner, George K. Spoor hesitated. He didn't believe any talent was worth that much money, but Anderson persisted and the deal was finalized.

Francis X. Bushman, Charlie Chaplin and G.M. Anderson in Chicago, 1914.

Chaplin's films for Essany went on to become blockbusters—especially “The Tramp,” 1915, the film that ends with the iconic shot of the lonely tramp—back to the camera—sadly shuffling down the road, and then straightening his spine and bravely heading forward to his next adventure.

At Niles, Anderson and Chaplin appeared together in Chaplin’s “The Champion,” released in 1915, the only film in which the two stars appeared together.

Chaplin left Essanay after only one year for The Mutual Film Company where he was offered more money and more creative control. This caused a serious rift between Anderson and Spoor. Anderson wanted to hold onto Chaplin, pay his escalating price, but Spoor was unwilling to enter the bidding war.

After 10 years, and over 1,200 films, Essany closed the Niles studio.

Like so many early film pioneers who could not keep pace with the rapidly changing industry, Anderson drifted from one bad business venture to the next, and was all but forgotten by the business he helped invent. In 1958 Anderson was awarded a special Academy Award as “one of a small group of pioneers whose belief in a new medium, and whose contributions to its development, blazed the trail along which the motion picture has progressed, in their lifetime, from obscurity to world-wide acclaim.”

Unfortunately, Anderson did not attend the ceremony.

Max Aaronson AKA Broncho Billy, passed away at the Academy's Brierwood Convalescent Hospital in 1970. He was 90 years old.

Aaronson, the grandson of a rabbi, never discussed his Jewish roots publicly. And contrary to halacha, Jewish law, he was cremated after death.

The only book about Anderson is David Kiehn's Broncho Billy and the Essany Film Company. This is a fine but rather dry book about a narrow period of Anderson's career. As far as I know there is no biography of Anderson and that is a shame. All the photos and information from this essay are from Kiehn's informative volume.

Broncho Billy: Back in the Saddle in Niles

Broncho Billy DVD: The Son of a Gun

Gilbert M. Anderson IMDb

Broncho Billy: Closeted Jewish Movie Star

Chaplin's Essanay comedies on DVD

Seraphic Secret Hollywood Profiles

Hollywood's First Western Hero, Broncho Billy: A Jewish Kid Who Couldn't Ride a Horse

Sylvia Sidney Replaces Clara Bow

Douglas Sirk Directs Linda Darnell

Less Dialogue is More: Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor and Waterloo Bridge.

Alla Nazimova

Charlton Heston: A Moment of Silence

Lilyan Tashman.

Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter

Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes

Colleen Moore's Wedding Night

One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks

Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops

Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To

Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess

Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star

Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide

Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star

Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick

Louis B. Mayer Goes to Shul

Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress

The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow

Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign

Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta

Michael Kidd: The Last Dance

Best of the Jewish Blogosphere # 165

2008-05-11T13:05:33Z

Haveil Havalim #165, “Happy 6oth Birthday Israel” is now live.

We'd like to thank Jack for including Seraphic Secret's 1948, Israel, The Palestinians: The True Story.

This is a fine round-up with an excellent balance of scholarly and deeply personal articles about Eretz Yisroel and her people.

Enjoy.

Who's the Jewish Movie Star? Take 4

2008-05-09T08:48:44Z

This great Jewish movie star wishes Israel a happy 60th Birthday.

Who's the Jewish movie star?

Instead of posting your answer in the comments section, send your guess directly to robert.avrech@gmail.com.

Good luck.

Answer on Sunday.

Karen and I wish all our friends a wonderful miracle in Shabbat .

Here's a photo from the editing dept at MGM during World War II with equipment arranged to look like cannons. Oh, how times have changed.

Seraphic Secret Hollywood Profiles

Sylvia Sidney Replaces Clara Bow

Douglas Sirk Directs Linda Darnell

Less Dialogue is More: Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor and Waterloo Bridge.

Alla Nazimova

Charlton Heston: A Moment of Silence

Lilyan Tashman.

Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter

Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes

Colleen Moore's Wedding Night

One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks

Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops

Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To

Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess

Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star

Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide

Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star

Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick

Louis B. Mayer Goes to Shul

Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress

The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow

Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign

Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta

Michael Kidd: The Last Dance

The Promise Fulfilled

2008-05-08T17:43:50Z

Painting depicts a number of well known Rabbis from previous generations dancing with Torah scrolls on Simchat Torah — the day of rejoicing with the Torah.

Pictured are:
Rabbi Yakov Yisrael Kanievski (known as the Steipler Gaon)
Rabbi Yitzchak Kaduri
Chacham Yosef Chaim (known as the Ben Ish Chai)
Rabbi Yisrael Abuchatzeira (known as the Baba Sali)

Moses ascended from the plains of Moab, to Mount Nebo, to the summit of the cliff that faces Jericho, and Hashem showed him the entire Land; the Gilead as far as Dan; all of Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim and Manasseh; the entire land of Judah as far as the western sea; the Negev and the plain—the valley of Jericho, city of date palms—as far as Zoar.

And Hashem said to him, “This is the land which I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying 'I will give it to your offspring,' I have let you see it with your own eyes, but you shall not cross over to there.”

So Moses, servant to Hashem, died there, in the land of Moab, by the mouth of Hashem. He buried him in the depression, in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, and no one knows his burial place to this day. Moses was one hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eye had not dimmed, and his vigor had not diminished. The children of Israel bewailed Moses in the plains of Moab for thirty days; then the days of tearful mourning for Moses ended.

—Parshat Vezot Haberacha (Deuteronomy) 34, 1 - 8

Rashi, (1040 - 1105) the great French medieval commentator explains: Having blessed the people and prayed for them, Moses, the faithful servant ascended the mountain as he had been commanded (32:49). As he stood there, G-d showed him every part of the Land, the entire panorama of Jewish history that occurred at the places named in the passage. G-d prophetically showed Moses the entire Land of Israel, in its prosperity and under the oppression of future conquerors.

—The Stone Edition, published by Mesorah Publications

Israel at 60

2008-05-08T15:59:32Z

Paratroopers from various countries, some holding an American flag,
pose for a photo after a practice jump in Palmahim near Tel Aviv.

This from the IDF:

150 Foreign Paratroopers Arrive in Israel for its 60th Celebrations.

On Friday and Saturday 150 foreign paratroopers, representing various armies around the world, arrived in Israel. Amongst them, are paratroopers from the US, England, France, Spain, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, Greece, Italy and Switzerland. The paratroopers arrived in Israel in order to take part in Israel's 60th celebrations and to salute the IDF.

The paratroopers will jump together at the IDF event on Israel Independence Day, May 8th, in which 120 paratroopers will parachute along the beaches of Ashkelon. A rehearsal for this jump will take place on May 5th, at Palmahim beach at 10:00-13:00.

On May 4th, the paratroopers will stay at the IDF Parachuting School. They will formally enter Tel-Nof base at 8:00, where, the senior foreign officers will meet the commander of the parachuting school, Colonel Dror Paltin, and IDF senior officers. Together, the paratroopers will train for the Independence Day event including practices jumps at sea. At 14:30 the Oketz unit will explain their capabilities to the foreign paratroopers. Later on, a ceremony will be held at the IDF Paratroopers Memorial. The ceremony will be military in nature, and the paratroopers will wear their uniforms. The Greek paratroopers will lay a laurels at the memorial. A Dutch paratrooper, Jesper Nels, the grandchild of Righteous Gentiles, will plant an olive tree next to the memorial. Nels will also meet the family of the man that was saved by his grandfather.

On Memorial Day for the fallen, the foreign paratroopers will participate in memorial ceremonies throughout the country including ceremonies in Ashkelon, Yad-Mordechay, Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem and the Latrun site.

In addition they will visit technological farms and will experience the latest technological advances in development of the Negev in Revivim and Sede-Boqer. They will also take part in a jeep tour in the desert. The paratroopers will visit Jerusalem and will follow in the footsteps of the Jerusalem brigade which fought in the Six Day War.

One of the participants, a paratrooper named Yoni, serving in the French Foreign Legion is named after Yoni Netanyahu, the renowned commander who was killed in the famous Entebbe operation. He will fulfill his dream and get the chance to wear the IDF's Paratrooper wings.
Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Toronto Pearl

1948, Israel, the Palestinians: The True Story

2008-05-07T16:21:34Z

Not surprisingly the mainstream media is using Israel's 60th birthday as an opportunity to scold Israel for, what else, daring to exist. It seems to Seraphic Secret that the best way of celebrating Israel's miraculous birthday is by publishing this fine article by Efraim Karsh, an article which refutes the endless libels that are hurled against the Jewish State. The most recent libel, a blood libel really, is that the Jewish state, should not be a Jewish state. These liberal-Arab-Peace Now critics gently suggest that the Jewish State should convert to a Whatever Status, which translates into a future Islamic State.

Just what the world needs.

Another happy-go-lucky Islamic fascist regime.

I don't get it. Why don't these critics just pick up and move to beautiful downtown Gaza?

I have another suggestion. Let the 22 members of the Organization of Islamic States give up their identity as Islamic states because as we all know, they are each brutal tyrannies founded on the repression of minority religions, the repression of women, homosexuals, and the complete lack of economic transparency. Oh, and except for Iran each and every Islamic country is Judenrein. It's an open secret that the 30,000 Persian Jews live in utter fear and dhimmitude. Members of my Persian community here in Los Angeles often tell me stories of the every day horrors their relatives endure under the thumb of the Iranian secret police.

Anyway, here's the Karsh article from Commentary Magazine.

Sixty years after its establishment by an internationally recognized act of self-determination, Israel remains the only state in the world that is subjected to a constant outpouring of the most outlandish conspiracy theories and blood libels; whose policies and actions are obsessively condemned by the international community; and whose right to exist is constantly debated and challenged not only by its Arab enemies but by segments of advanced opinion in the West.

During the past decade or so, the actual elimination of the Jewish state has become a cause célèbre among many of these educated Westerners. The “one-state solution,” as it is called, is a euphemistic formula proposing the replacement of Israel by a state, theoretically comprising the whole of historic Palestine, in which Jews will be reduced to the status of a permanent minority. Only this, it is said, can expiate the “original sin” of Israel’s founding, an act built (in the words of one critic) “on the ruins of Arab Palestine” and achieved through the deliberate and aggressive dispossession of its native population.

This claim of premeditated dispossession and the consequent creation of the longstanding Palestinian “refugee problem” forms, indeed, the central plank in the bill of particulars pressed by Israel’s alleged victims and their Western supporters. It is a charge that has hardly gone undisputed. As early as the mid-1950’s, the eminent American historian J.C. Hurewitz undertook a systematic refutation, and his findings were abundantly confirmed by later generations of scholars and writers. Even Benny Morris, the most influential of Israel’s revisionist “new historians,” and one who went out of his way to establish the case for Israel’s “original sin,” grudgingly stipulated that there was no “design” to displace the Palestinian Arabs.

The recent declassification of millions of documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-1948) and Israel’s early days, documents untapped by earlier generations of writers and ignored or distorted by the “new historians,” paint a much more definitive picture of the historical record. They reveal that the claim of dispossession is not only completely unfounded but the inverse of the truth. What follows is based on fresh research into these documents, which contain many facts and data hitherto unreported.

To read the complete article, please click here.

The Fifth Annual Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture 2008

2008-05-05T17:04:25Z

Ariel Chaim Avrech ZT'L

The Fifth Annual Ariel Avrech ZT'L Yahrtzeit Lecture will take place on Sunday June 15, 2008, at 10 AM at the Young Israel of Century City, followed by a brunch.

Young Israel of Century City
9317 West Pico Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90035

We are pleased to announce that we have engaged Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl to present this year’s lecture.

Gil Perl is the Dean of the Margolin Hebrew Academy / Feinstone Yeshiva of the South, a Prek-12 day school serving the Jewish community of Memphis. Before arriving in Memphis, Dr. Perl served as an instructor of Modern Jewish History in Yeshiva University and as the Associate Head of School in Yeshiva University's High School for Boys. He earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Pennsylvania, his Masters and Doctorate in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, and rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University. As a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, Rabbi Perl was twice awarded Harvard's prestigious Certificate of Distinction in Teaching and in the Spring of 2006 he was named Yeshiva University's Lillian F. and William L. Silber Professor of the Year.

The title of Rabbi Perl’s lecture is: “What Was the Rosh Yeshiva Reading? Intellectual Openness in 19th Century Lithuania.”

We look forward to seeing all our Seraphic Friends and relatives at the lecture.

Learning Torah was Ariel's greatest joy. There is no better way of honoring Ariel's memory than by participating in this lecture series.

May Ariel's neshama have an aliyah.

You do not have to RSVP to attend. The lecture and brunch are courtesy of the Avrech Family and Friends.

Who's the Jewish Movie Star? Take 3: Answer

2008-05-04T20:10:29Z

Early studio portrait.

The Jewish movie star is Sylvia Sydney. Real name Sophia Kosow, 1910 - 1999.

As I suspected, the privacy of e-mailing answers resulted in greater participation.

Mazal Tov to all those who guessed correctly. First in were movie-maven sisters: Buttercup and Tamster, who are three for three in our “Who's the Jewish Movie Star Quiz,” — our reigning champs.

Toronto Pearl came in with the correct answer a few minutes later, and Miranda Rose Smith followed a day later, but Miranda is in another time zone so she's at a disadvantage.

Sylvia Sidney, publicity photo from Paramount.

Seraphic Friend Toronto Pearl sent us this picture of Sylvia Sidney's grandfather.

Moyshe Kosovski, father of Mr. Victor Kossow and grandfather of Hollywood screen actress Sylvia Sidney. Sidney was her stepfather's name. From: The Grodno Site

Seraphic Friend Miranda Rose Smith writes: “Did you know she [Sylvia Sidney] was an embroiderer? I picked up a copy of her book on needlepoint in a used bookstore.”

What would Seraphic Secret be without our loyal and savvy readers?

Sylvia Sidney's rise to stardom is, sadly, linked to the tragic fall of Clara Bow, 1905 - 1965, one of the greatest actresses in the history of motion pictures.

Clara Bow, at the height of her popularity she received 40,000 fan letters a week.

Bow, “The It Girl” was an instinctive performer whose radiant presence lit up the screen from 1924 to 1930. She was from Brooklyn, the product of an impoverished, dysfunctional family. Her mother, a part time prostitute, was mad and twice tried to murder Bow. Clara's father raped her when she was a teenager. With just a fifth grade education, Clara dreamed of escaping her miserable life and getting into motion pictures. She won a beauty contest, secured a screen test, came out to California where she clawed her way to the top, performing in endless programmers before she finally broke through as a genuine star.

Producer B.P. Schulberg had her under personal contract. He discovered a formula that clicked with the public and sometimes had her working in three movies simultaneously. At the height of her stardom during the silent era Bow was the most popular actress in Hollywood receiving 40,000 fan letters a week.

But Bow's personal demons, a series of public scandals, a grueling schedule, and the coming of sound conspired to destroy her magnificent career.

By 1930, Clara's value to Paramount was no longer what it once was. Schulberg, who owed his success to Bow, called her “Crisis-a-Day-Clara.”

He concentrated instead on his new protege—and mistress—the beautiful and waif like Sylvia Sidney. The contrast between the two actresses could not have been greater. Whereas Clara Bow was coarse and gutter-mouthed. Sidney was refined, a lady. Where Clara was an unpredictable genius, pure instinct, Sidney was a thoughtful, stage-trained actress.

Sylvia Sidney, publicity photo when she was under contract to
B.P. Schulberg, early 1930's.

In 1931, with her nerves shattered and her contract dissolved by Schulberg, Bow returned to her dressing room to pack her belongings, there she discovered that it was already assigned to Sylvia Sidney.

Bow was finished. Hollywood's biggest star was twenty-five years old.

B.P. Schulberg abandoned his wife and children for Sylvia Sidney. He then exited Paramount with Sidney and produced a series of pictures for her that failed at the box office. He gambled away his fortune. Sidney walked out on him when she caught him in bed with two prostitutes.

Schulberg died in 1957. Thirty years later, Sylvia Sidney was nominated for an Emmy award for her touching performance in An Early Frost, a made for television movie about AIDS.

The best book about Clara Bow is by screenwriter David Stenn, Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild.

My favorite Sylvia Sidney movies are Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotoge. And Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once. Her delicacy, understated acting style, and vulnerability are used perfectly in both films. Unfortunately, these performances locked her into a type she could not escape and she was cast again and again in the same roles as the long-suffering heroine. Sidney became bored with the parts assigned to her and returned to the stage as often as possible.

Sylvia Sidney, studio portrait, early 1930's.

Though not observant, this fine actress never tried to hide her Jewish roots like so many other Hollywood Jews. Sylvia Sidney was horrified by news of The Holocaust and was determined to do something for her people. Like most American Jews, Sidney must have had relatives trapped and doomed under the Nazi onslaught.

In 1943 Bronx born Sylvia Sidney participated in the dramatic pageant “We Will Never Die.”

Determined to alert the American public about the Nazi slaughter of the Jews, [screenwriter Ben] Hecht authored a dramatic pageant that he called “We Will Never Die.” (The title derived from a biblical verse affirming Jewish national survival.) With its cast of hundreds, “We Will Never Die” would be an extraordinary production in every sense of the word. According to Hecht’s plan, the actors would stand in front of two forty-foot-high tablets of the Ten Commandments. They would read aloud a long list of Jews who made important contributions to civilization throughout history. They would describe the Nazi slaughter of the Jews in painful detail. A group of children, garbed in white rags and their faces painted gray to resemble corpses, would quietly say the words “Remember us” over and over again. The performance would culminate in the dramatic reciting of “Kaddish,” the traditional Jewish prayer for the dead, by fifty elderly rabbis who had escaped from Europe.

We Will Never Die, 1943.

Edward G. Robinson, real name Emanuel Goldenberg, and Sylvia Sidney,
two of the stars of "We Will Never Die," reviewing the script with director
Billy Rose.

I'm aware of only one book about Sylvia Sidney, Sylvia: A Memoir of Hollywood Star Sylvia Sidney by Sally Miller. Have not read it, so I'm clueless.

Lobby Card for Clara Bow's Wild Party, 1929. Directed by Dorothy Arzner.

Seraphic Secret Hollywood Profiles

Douglas Sirk Directs Linda Darnell

Less Dialogue is More: Mervyn LeRoy, Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor and Waterloo Bridge.

Alla Nazimova

Charlton Heston: A Moment of Silence

Lilyan Tashman.

Carmel Myers: The Rabbi's Beautiful Daughter

Colleen Moore: The Stars and Stripes

Colleen Moore's Wedding Night

One Hairstyle, Three Memoirs: Alma Rubens, Colleen Moore, Louise Brooks

Theda Bara: The Vamp Adopts the Troops

Movie Magazines: They Don't Print 'em Like They Used To

Alma Rubens: Dope Fiend, But Not a Jewess

Wallace Reid: Hollywood Shooting Star

Olive Thomas: Hollywood's First Suicide

Mary Pickford: The Greatest Movie Star

Seraphic Secret Chats with Actress Coleen Gray about John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and Stanley Kubrick

Louis B. Mayer Goes to Shul

Susan Peters: The Great Unknown and Tragic Actress

The Blond Machine Gun: Jean Harlow

Peg Entwistle & The Hollywood Sign

Brigitte Bardot & Sean Connery in Shalako—Sorta

Michael Kidd: The Last Dance

Best of the Jewish Blogosphere # 164

2008-05-04T18:08:37Z

The Duke says: “Hold on pardner, time to pull over and read Haveil Havalim.”

Haveil Havalim #164 the No Name Edition is live.

We'd like to thank Simply Jews for including Seraphic Secret's The Battle of Algiers Never Ends in this fine edition.

“For those who are new to Haveil Havalim a bit of introduction from an excellent HH # 162 by Yaaqov Ben Yehudah (who, as it appears, based the text below on Batya's original):”

Founded by Soccer Dad, Haveil Havalim is a carnival of Jewish blogs — a weekly collection of Jewish & Israeli blog highlights, tidbits and points of interest collected from blogs all around the world. It's hosted by different bloggers each week and coordinated by Jack. The term 'Haveil Havalim,' which means "Vanity of Vanities," is from Qoheleth, (Ecclesiastes) which was written by King Solomon. King Solomon built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and later on got all bogged down in materialism and other 'excesses' and realized that it was nothing but 'hevel,' or in English, 'vanity.'

Who's the Jewish Movie Star? Take 3

2008-05-02T20:50:10Z

Who's the Jewish Movie Star?

She starred opposite such great actors as Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, Joel McCrea, Fredric March, George Raft and Cary Grant.

Instead of posting your answer in the comments section, send your guess directly to robert.avrech@gmail.com.

Good luck.

Answer on Sunday.

Karen and I wish all our friends a wonderful miracle in Shabbat .

Whitewashing Hamas

2008-05-02T18:21:37Z

An important commentary from Caroline B. Glick, the woman who should be Prime Minister of Israel.

Another ordinary week has come and gone in southern Israel.

Bombarded by rockets from Hamastan in Gaza, residents of Sderot, Ashkelon and nearby towns watched as their national leaders conducted negotiations by proxy with Hamas to release hundreds of terrorists in Israeli jails and consolidate Hamas's weapons supply lines by suspending Israeli counter-terror operations during a "cease-fire."

Between trips to the local bomb shelter, they watched Israeli trucks deliver fuel and supplies to Hamas in Gaza in the morning; and they watched Hamas store the fuel and supplies in depots near the border in the afternoon. In the evening they watched news reports echoing Hamas' claims that Israel is depriving Gazan hospitals of fuel and Gazan civilians of basic foodstuffs.

Wednesday night they tried having a Yom Hashoah ceremony in Sderot but it was interrupted by incoming missiles. For its part, Hamas marked the Holocaust with a documentary series claiming that the genocide of European Jewry was a satanic Jewish plot to cull the Jewish population of its handicapped and to manipulate the world media.

Hamas captured headlines this week with its allegation that Israel was responsible for the death of a Palestinian woman and four of her children in an explosion in Bet Hanoun in Gaza as the IDF targeted Hamas terrorists from the air. The IDF conducted two investigations showing that the woman and her children were killed by something else: a secondary explosion caused by bombs the Hamas terrorists — one of whom was her husband — were carrying at the time the IDF targeted them.

To read Caroline Glickman's complete article, please click here.

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friends, Joel Wiesz, Yonoson Fisgus, M.D.

The IAF Flies Over Auschwitz

2008-05-01T21:42:20Z

This is an incredibly moving video.

Keep in mind that sometime in the next few months the IAF will be flying into Persia—on an extremely complex but necessary mission—to halt another Holocaust.

I believe that Israel is sending an unequivocal message to Iran and to the world with this overflight of Auschwitz.

The Israeli pilot reads a message to the world: “For all those who were murdered, we will never let it happen again. We are here. We will fight for you.”

Hat Tip: Seraphic Friend, Jackie Danicki

Hamas TV: Jews Planned Holocaust to Kill Disabled

2008-05-01T08:46:56Z

While Jimmy Carter was meeting with Hamas, the terrorist group made the most of the legitimacy bestowed upon them by this Jew hating Democrat by producing for Arab TV an “educational film” about the Holocaust—Palestinian style.

Good job, Jimmy!

Yup, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is being observed today in Israel and America, Hamas commissioned a television program that claims a gruesome conspiracy between the Nazis and the pre-state Jewish leadership.

And don't forget Hamas has endorsed Barack Obama.

No wonder the Arab world hates Israel and Jews with such passion. They are fed lies from cradle to grave.

Let me repeat the obvious: the wars between Israel and her Arab neighbors has nothing to do with so-called occupation, boundaries, walls, or a Palestinian state.

It's about Jews living and breathing in the mideast.

From The Jerusalem Post:

According to the documentary's narrator, Israel's first prime minister David Ben Gurion decided that Jewish “disabled and handicapped are a burden to the state,” after which “the Satanic Jews” —the film cuts to a picture of a hassidic Jew — “thought up an evil plot to be rid of the burden of disabled and handicapped” — the film then cuts to piles of emaciated corpses — “in twisted criminal ways.”

“This is official Hamas TV,” explained PMW director Itamar Marcus. “It's owned and totally controlled by the Hamas leadership in Gaza, and it goes out by satellite to the whole Arab-speaking world.”

And remember, Israel is supplying Gaza with the energy and fuel with which this and other fine educational movies are produced.

Keep it up Israel.

National suicide on your 60'th birthday, makes perfect sense.

What to do?

Well, I know a few ladies who have a few common sense proposals.

Brigitte Bardot takes aim at jihadists in France.

Carole Lombard says: “Bomb Gaza back to the stone age.”

Lillian Gish vows: “I'll pick off those pesky jihad varmints one by one!”

Peggy Cummins is Gun Crazy and will fight the Islamists to the death.

Zhang Ziyi is an old fashioned girl. She'll disembowel the Islamofacists.