A Golden Baton winner looks back on TICO's last endorphin-filled season

By Eileen Wingard

SAN DIEGO—For a number of years, the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra (TICO) has annually bestowed a golden baton on an individual whom the orchestra and its support group have deemed worthy of the honor.

This yearly accolade includes conducting TICO in a selection at the season’s Pops Concert.  I was privileged to be the honoree this year, conducting the orchestra in Ivanovici’s "Danube Waves" waltzes. With words added by Al Jolson, the first waltz became famous as "The Anniversary Waltz." I was grateful to the TICO musicians for how beautifully they performed these light-hearted dances.
   
Previous golden baton recipients have included Dr. Robert Forman, SDSU’s music professor emeritus, TICO support group members Gloria Rimland, Sharlene Berman, Ralph Barnes and Ruth Kass, and TICO musicians Dr. Wanda Walker, violist, and Jeanne Shenkman, violinist, who played in the orchestra since its inception in 1974. 
    
This past summer, TICO performed its Third Annual Pops Concert July 22 at the Allied Gardens Park for over 1000 local residents. The excellent sound system and the beautiful illumination of the orchestra enhanced the listening experience as conductor David Amos led the ensemble in Sousa marches, medleys of Broadway favorites and movie scores, and works by Rimsky-Korsakov, Leroy Anderson and Arthur Benjamin. And I led the Ivanovici waltzes.
   
Much of the repertoire was repeated at the Sunday matinee concert July 29 at Tifereth Israel Synagogue. This time, Maestro Amos presented me with a gold colored baton before my podium stint.
   
The second half of the program featured the San Fernando Valley Male Chorus accompanied by the orchestra under the direction of the chorus’ conductor, Shelly Cohen. The 12-member group sang with gusto.  Several individuals
rendered solos including a humorous medley of "Songs for Kids of all Ages." The Summertime Sing-a-Long had the whole audience warbling "In the Good Old Summertime," and  "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

As Shelly Cohen remarked, when you sing, as when you laugh, your brain  releases endorphins which make you feel
happy. As TICO played its traditional finale, "The Stars and Stripes Forever," the listeners filed out with joyful smiles on their faces. The endorphins were obviously flowing.
   
TICO opens its 2007-2008 season on November 11 at Adat Shalom in Poway and on November 13 at Tifereth Israel Synagogue. The program will feature Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 1, Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 and Brahms’ First Piano Concerto with soloist Dan Smith; an appropriate line-up of firsts for the first concert of the season, entitled Numero Uno!

Wingard is a former violinist with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra

Larry Zeiger Critic at large

Book of David grows tiresome with its extended biblical metaphor

SAN DIEGO—The Book of David is an audacious and at times, outrageous autobiographical account of the life of brilliant Emmy Award-winning director, writer, producer, actor and comedian, David Steinberg. 

Steinberg’s technique for telling the story of his life is wildly funny in parts, almost too clever however to sustain interest throughout.   For starters, he uses third person to tell his own story and then in a move that certainly will raise some eyebrows, he attempts to tell his story as if it were the sixth Book of Moses with mostly Old Testament allusions with a few references to New Testament themes as well.  During the first few chapters, one marvels at his cleverness and originality but after fifty or sixty

pages of extended metaphors and allegory, I found myself getting tired of what appears to be a story, somewhat like the Bible, that seems to be far too epic for the subject matter.

Steinberg chronicles his life from its origins (after all this is biblical) growing up in Winnipeg, Canada where instead of studying the Talmud, he was more focused on Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.  Evidently, God decided that David’s purpose in life was to become a great performance artist of comedy on network television, and so David goes for it – achieving great fame as well as frustration and obstacles along the way to success – not to mention several gorgeous starlets who become more than the object of his affection!

Steinberg’s book has many lengthy footnotes written in first person which are, on the other hand, very interesting and introspective.  No doubt, Steinberg, along with such groundbreaking wits and satirists as Lenny Bruce and Woody Allen (major influences on Steinberg’s life) paved the way for many of our great comic writers and performers today.  What makes Steinberg so unique is he is not just a comedian but has worked as producer, director, and writer for film, television, and theater. He mentions so many interesting and revealing parts of his life that you almost want to ask him to slow down and give us more details in everyday language!

Most interesting parts of the book deal with his rise to fame and his involvement in Second City, working with such people as Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Alan Arkin, Barbara Harris, Joan Rivers, Robert Klein, and others.  It would have been interesting to develop this section more and provide more insight into the genius of these wonderful improvisational comedians and how their techniques of catching us all off guard with their creative minds kept us laughing even during the most difficult periods of American life.

Also interesting are the passages detailing his work with Johnny Carson and with the Smothers Brothers, as well as his weekly lunch meetings at the Hillcrest County Club for two years with Groucho Marx, Jack Benny, and George Burns.  However, once again, I would have liked to learn more about their exchange of thoughts and ideas.

What is particularly amazing is how people like Steinberg could push the envelope with brilliant satire, often viewed as blasphemous by some, even during the more conservative McCarthy period and beyond. . This was not always easy for people like Steinberg during an age of censorship and conservative thinking, but perhaps it was the moral code of the day and the supposedly righteous “pillars of the community” that stimulated Steinberg to develop his most outrageous and controversial material.  

The Book of David is never dull – it is filled with romance, love, sex, adventure, espionage, suspense, murder, assassination, comedy (lots of it) and even a few plagues. Freud and Moses would love this tale; however, I think Steinberg’s life is so interesting that he owes his public a first person narrative minus the biblical allusions.  The book tends to read like a very lengthy monologue (190 pages).  What we long to hear is the “real voice” of this talented actor, writer, director, and producer as he tell his story of his rise to fame in first person – from the heart.

Steinberg will be among the featured speakers of the San Diego Jewish Book Fair when he delivers the "Grand Opening Evening Author Lecture" at 7:30 p.m. at the Lawrence Family JCC, Jacobs Family campus, 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla.  A full book fair schedule may be accessed by clicking the logo at the left.

____________________ The Jewish Citizen              by Donald H. Harrison

Comedian ponders relations between U.S. Jews, Christians


Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Everyday Life by Larry Miller (New York: HarperEntertainment, paperback 2007), 279 pages, $14.95.

SAN DIEGO—Like many comedians, Larry Miller has funny ways of looking at such topics as sex, alcoholism, ethnic identity, and the entertainment business. When he discusses religion, he grows uncharacteristically serious, at least in his book, Spoiled Rotten America: Outrages of Everyday Life. His message to his fellow Jews: let the Christians be Christians.

If anyone needs confirmation that Miller is a humorous guy, there are accolades printed on the paperback covers of the book from Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher, Paul Reiser, and on the front page from Jay Leno. So this review will focus on what he has to say about relations in the United States between the Jewish minority and the Christian majority. On page 85, he writes: “I guess I’m in the group that shrugs and

says, What in the world is so wrong about your dry cleaner, and (gasp) the evening news, and even (double gasp and grabbing of chest!) your senator saying ‘Merry Christmas’?  I don’t get it, I swear I don’t.  Ninety two percent of the country (or thereabouts) is actively or inactively or nominally a Christian; they all celebrate Christmas. Does that make America a Christian country?  Not officially, maybe, and it never has been, but doesn’t it kind of make it one unofficially?   The main thing is…who cares?  I don’t.  In fact, it’s fine with me.  Look, folks, in case this little fun-fact has passed you by, the United States was started by Christians, thought up by Christians, and grown by Christians, and I can’t speak for you, but I’m glad they did.”

Two pages later, Miller returns to the theme “…America, Christian America, with all its mistakes past and present, has not only given us the best place in the world to live and grow, but was instrumental in creating Israel and helping it survive.  That no matter what bones I have to pick with Christendom in the last two thousand years—and there a few big ones—it wasn’t a Christian Germany that murdered so many, it was the explicitly, exuberantly, specifically – required – to – formally – and – publicly - leave Christianity- and – turn –your –back – on –it – or –you –couldn’t –get-ahead Nazis who did; and that the biggest friend Israel has in the world today, by a huge margin, is Christian America.”

Obviously there is nothing wrong with someone saying “Merry Christmas,” just as there is nothing wrong with someone writing, as Miller does on page 88, “Happy Hannu-Kwanz-Mas to you, too.”   Unless words incite a mob to hurt someone, such as “Hey, there’s one of the bastards who killed Jesus, let’s hang the S.O.B.!” words, like religion itself, are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  Freedom of speech, freedom of religion; they’re part of the same wonderful fabric that is America.

I wish my Christian friends—at least those I know to be Christians—“Merry Christmas” every winter.  I wouldn’t be surprised if my boyhood friend from New Rochelle, N.Y., Amnon Markusfeld, who had a dry cleaning business in Wykagyl, wished some of his customers a “Merry Christmas,” now and again.  To this day, Amnon is a warm, considerate guy, solicitous of others’ well being and happiness.  The evening news?  If local newscaster Marty Levin wants to wish his Christian friends and viewers a “Merry Christmas,” great.  In fact, I hope his ratings go up; he is a trusted name in a crazy business.  And if Amnon, Marty and I all wish our friends a Merry Christmas, nu, by what right should I complain if my U.S. senators, who are also Jews, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, offer similar wishes to their Christian constituents?  Let them say Merry Christmas all they want.

The fact that Jews in the United States are not ghettoized, that we can be, according to our choices, abilities and opportunities, dry cleaners, or evening newscasters, or U.S. senators, bespeaks what a wonderful country the United States has been for Jews.  A wonderful, wonderful country, with its Christian majority, and we owe it a great debt.  We can repay that debt by insisting that the United States continue to live up to the ideals underlying that very greatness.

Those of us who insist upon freedom of religion ought to understand that freedom of speech is its fraternal twin.  That’s why I’m not signing any petitions demanding that Republican presidential candidates denounce right-wing commentator Ann Coulter for saying that all the Jews in the United States need to be “perfected” by being taught to embrace Jesus.  This is what so many evangelical Christians believe: that their religion has the corner on truth—and the rest of us can never share in the world to come, unless we believe the way they do.  Fine, they can believe that all they want.  They can say it all they want.  Obviously, I think they are wrong, but, I have no objections to their believing what they want to.  A la Voltaire, I defend their right to do so.

Where the controversy comes, in my opinion, is not over what people believe or what they say but over what they want the government to do to enforce such beliefs on the non-believers.  Christians have maturede over the centuries.  No longer do they say, ‘Profess Jesus as your Lord, or leave the country” as the Spaniards told us Jews in the 15^th century.  No longer do they burn people at the stake for “Judaizing” as the Spaniards did throughout their empire during the times of the Inquisition. 

Today, Christian intolerance for minority religions comes in other, far more subtle, ways.  Instead of killing Jews for not practicing Christianity, various levels of government are pressured to marginalize those who are not Christians.  Intolerance is spending a fortune in public money to maintain that the Christian cross atop Mount Soledad isn’t a religious symbol, but is instead a “war memorial”—as if only Christians, and no one else, died to defend America.  Do you want a national symbol atop Mount Soledad?  It’s not a cross.  It is a large American flag, long may it wave.  Or a giant sculpture of our brave military service personnel.  But a cross, no matter how hard people try to stand logic on its head, is a sectarian symbol.

There are also the messages that we teach our children in the public schools.  A football team kneels together in prayer before the big game.  So, what does the Jewish player do?  “If you don’t mind coach, I’ll stand.” And what if the coach says, “listen, Ginzburg, you’re either part of this team or you’re not.”

Or,  in elementary school, is it right when the teacher, Miss Smith, says “for our Christmas program, we’re all going to sing, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘O Holy Night’  and, oh, Rachel, I thought about our singing ‘O Hannukah,’ but I just don’t think there will be time.”?

The issue is not speech, it is coercion, whether it be forceful or subtle.  To return to Miller’s essay, I thank Christians for starting, thinking up, and growing America, but I also insist that we play by a cardinal rule that made America great.  No one should use the government (at any of its levels) to force other people to honor one religion over another.

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