S • • •
COMPILED BY ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Going To Shul Is Good For You
p
Retrieving A Lost Past
mong the films to
look for in the corn-
•ng months is Moi
Ivan Toi Abraham (Ivan
and Abraham), a new fea-
ture from French director
Yolanda Zauberman.
The story focuses on
Ivan, an orphaned appren-
tice, and his friend Abra-
ham, who live in a small
Jewish town in Poland dur-
ing the 1930s. It was filmed
in Ukraine and stars
Russian, Gypsy and Polish
actors.
Moi Ivan Toi Abraham
was shown at Cannes,
where it received critical
and popular acclaim —
despite the fact that its for-
mat hardly suggests mass
public appeal. Moi Ivan is
in black and white; dia-
logue is in Yiddish.
Director Yolanda Zaub-
erman is the daughter of
Polish parents. Her father
spent the war years in hid-
ing, and her mother was in
a death camp. Neither dis-
cussed the Holocaust with
their daughter.
"At home, there was
silence," Ms. Zauberman
told the International
Herald Tribune. "It wasn't
like a family secret, more
like a piece of your body
that's missing. So Abraham
isn't my story. It's not even
my memory. It came from a
dream I had."
Ms. Zauberman said she
filmed Moi Abraham in
Yiddish because "the story
took place in that time and
that language." Roma
Alexandrovitch, a Gypsy
from Lithuania, learned
Yiddish to play the part of
Abraham; Sasha Iakovlev,
a native of St. Petersburg,
did the same for his role as
Ivan.
Ms. Zauberman, whose
previous films include
Classified People, about
South African apartheid,
said she at first considered
filming in Poland.
She recalled meeting one
Polish peasant who said
that, as a boy, he had lived
with Jews and even spoken
Yiddish.
"All of that is gone," he
told Ms. Zauberman. She
asked if he was sorry. "He
thought about it," she said,
"then told me, 'No.' "
Hebrew University Hosts Conference
T
he Hebrew University
of Jerusalem's Re-
search Institute for
Innovation in Education
will host an international
conference, "Immigration,
Language Acquisition and
Patterns of Social Integra-
tion," June 29-30, 1994, in
Israel.
Conference themes in-
clude family and community
life; bilingualism, language
acquisition and mainte-
nance; and sociological mod-
els of integration and assim-
ilation.
For information, contact
Elite Olshtain, National
Council of Jewish Women
Research Institute for Inno-
vation in Education, School
of Education, the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem,
Jerusalem 91905, or call
011-972-2-882-015.
Call Home,
Call Cheap
Dimension
Ceremony
O
kay, so you've just
spent almost every
last dime renting that
tacky video treasure Glen or
Glenda? and fixing micro-
wave popcorn with a lot of
butter.
You're not going to be
able to use that as an excuse
for not calling Aunt Bertha
this Rosh Hashanah.
Thanks to a new program
offered by Sprint, in con-
junction with Universal
Telecomm Access Corp.,
anyone can afford to call
anyone this holiday season.
The Kansas
City,
Mo.
based Sprint
is offering a
25 percent dis-
count to all
Sprint/UTAC
customers on
Sept. 14 (the
day before
Rosh Hashanah). The dis-
count applies both to calls
within the United States
and to Israel.
Similar savings will apply
to Chanukah and other holi-
days in 1994.
"Sprint understands that
the Jewish community has
different calling needs,
which is why we designed
this holiday calling pro-
gram," said Myron Schlep,
group manager of Sprint's
international partnership
and development. "Since
most Jewish holidays fall
during the week, callers
haven't been able to take
advantage of lower weekend
rates."
Sprint also offers dis-
counted weekend rates on
calls to Israel, which are
extended through midnight
Sundays. When consumers
sign up through the Sprint/
UTAC program, a percent-
age of every long-distance
call is donated to the caller's
Jewish charity of choice.
-
la
ings that analyzed the effect
of religious commitment on
mental health, 31 had bene-
ficial effects (84 percent),
five had harmful effects (14
percent) and one had no
effect (3 percent). Of those
religious characteristics
that clearly involved active
participation, 24 of 26 stud-
and get thee to a syna-
gogue.
The best cure for unhap-
py, anxious or mildly de-
pressed persons is attend-
ing religious services, ac-
cording to an analysis of sci-
entific studies on religion
conducted over a 12-year
Benefical Association of
Religious Commitment and Mental Health
11111111 •1111•11•1111•111111101111•111111111111111111114
Meaning
Social
Support
Prayer
Relationship
with God
------Ru
Immumnimumw
0%
period by two leading psy-
chiatry journals.
Researchers from the
U.S. Department of Human
Services and Bowman Gray
medical school analyzed all
scientific articles studying
religious involvement and
its effects on mental health
in the American Journal of
Psychiatry and the Ar-
chives of General Psychiatry
from 1978-1989. The re-
searchers divided religious
involvement into ceremony
participation, meaning and
purpose, social support,
participation in prayer, and
active relationship with
God.
Of the 37 published find-
40%
60%
80%
100%
ies (92 percent) had benefi-
cial effects on mental
health.
The category which was
less beneficial involved
beliefs as opposed to actions
(though even in this catego-
ry religion is shown more
beneficial than harmful).
Researchers suggest that
the "meaning and purpose"
category may have lower
benefit due to some who
rate religion highly, but
then have low participation.
The guilt associated with
such an inconsistent ap-
proach to life might cause a
lowering of mental health,
they say.
CAMERA Sponsors
National Conference
I
n the 10 years before
the Gulf War, one story
about Iraq captured in-
tense, sustained media in-
terest and condemnation:
Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's
Osirak nuclear reactor.
Few, it seemed, were
concerned about Saddam
Hussein's abuse of human
rights or his avid procure-
ment of weapons of mass
destruction, according to
CAMERA, the Committee
for Accuracy in Middle
East Reporting in America.
Such examples illustrate
the double standard that
news organizations in-
creasingly apply to Israel
and the Middle East, says
CAMERA Executive Direc-
tor Andrea Levin. This
trend and its implications
will be explored at a na-
tional conference, to be
sponsored by CAMERA,
Oct. 24 at Brandeis
University.
Founded in 1982, CAM-
ERA is a nondenomination-
al, nonpartisan organiza-
tion. For information about
the conference, contact
CAMERA at P.O. Box 428,
Boston, MA 02258, or call
(617) 789-3672.
0
0
0
SEPTEMBER
Serge Berdugo, president of the Jewish community of Morocco, recently received
the Medal of the Order of the Throne from Moroccan King Hassan II. The
decoration, given In honor of Mr. Berdugo's contributions to the nation, was
presented in the Moroccan town of Kenitra. A veteran leader of the Moroccan
Jewish community, Mr. Berdugo, 56, is a prominent industrialist and civic leader
in Casablanca. He is founding president of the World Assembly of Moroccan Jews.
ut away those pills
15