We Shall Not Be Moved

Folks,

In this time of chaos, the tree stands as a source of life and hope. Monday is Tu B’Shevat, a day that we remember trees, and the happiness they bring. In the midst of life and death protests in our streets, we remember the line “Like a tree that stands by the water, we shall not be moved,” and realize it’s a branch connecting us to Jewish thought. Psalm 1 speaks about the happiness that flows by not following the “wicked,” or in today’s take, not following the wickedness of someone who is destroying our rights. Happy is the person, the psalm begins, who “is like a tree planted by the water, which yields its fruit in season, whose foliage never fades, and whatever it produces thrives.” May we soon all have that kind of happiness.
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Shabbat shalom
Edmon J. Rodman

Edmon J. Rodman

What is it about ICE detention centers that pokes American Jews in an unexpected place? It is not that we fear being hauled off to one, as there are very few, if any, Jews incarcerated in them.

No, it’s a sudden re-connection to group memories much older that snaps open our fears of the centers; things like aggression, hate, breaking glass, and barbed wire.

It’s remembering we were once strangers too, and often still feel that way.

Saying the centers remind us of Nazi concentration camps, is only the first turn down a spiral of cultural memory that we thought, and prayed, we had safely captured in books and movies.

The terrible jolt, that as a nation, we have entered a time when people can be taken off the streets and from their homes, where they can be teargassed, slammed against concrete, shot dead, regardless of their citizenship status, is a time trip, especially for Jews, too painful to contemplate.

But, is this comparison too easy, and one that belittles the sacrifice of 6 million Jews? Am I comparing apples to oranges? Or just observing that human cruelty begins with a seed.

The Ice Processing Center in nearby Adelanto, is not nearly an Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen, you could reasonably say. After all, it’s what a lot of us voted for, and there are no gas chambers.

Yet, according to the Guardian, 32 people died in ICE detention in 2025, the highest number since 2004.

Will the spouses and children, and extended families of those who died mourn their loss any less because the scope does not reach that of the Holocaust?

Death is not the only jogger of memory.

In response to inhumane conditions at another center in California City, a federal class-action law suit alleged that the center’s detainees are subject to medical negligence and below standard living conditions.

Consider too what will happen to the children of the survivors as a result of the trauma their parents experienced. Studies of the children of Holocaust survivors have shown that the trauma can be passed on.

In a 2016 study, Dr. Rachel Yehuda, a neuroscientist, working with colleagues, found that “epigenetic changes caused by exposure to trauma can be passed on to children born after the event,” said a synopsis published by the VA

“These observations suggest that parental trauma is a relevant contributor to offspring biology,” Yehuda said.

Understanding that detainees will need of psychological help, an agency called Welcome Staffing, in search of clinicians to help treat detainees sent out this message: “Detained immigrants often experience emotional distress due to family separation, cultural displacement, and prolonged uncertainty.”

More detention centers are in the planning phase. According to a report issued by the American Immigration Council, “ICE has enough funding” from the Big Beautiful Bill Act “to operate upwards of 135,000 detention beds through the end of FY 2029.”

Trump’s Department of Homeland Security under Kristi Noem is planning to add many more detention centers.

New plans suggest that the administration may purchase unused commercial warehouses and convert them into jails to hold thousands of people at a time.

Across the U.S. however, towns and cities are resisting the plans. In Salt Lake City protesters gathered outside a developer’s office attempting to block a potential new ICE facility.

In Kansas City, Missouri, the City Council voted to block the opening of an ICE detention center within city limits.

Protests against new detention sites or the expansion of existing ones have occurred in Broadview, Illinois, Newark, New Jersey, and Tacoma, Washington.

Responding to their collective memories, Jews are organizing to stop the detention centers. Never Again Action, a Jewish-led organization dedicated to mobilizing “against the persecution, detention, and deportation of immigrants in the United States,” has seen hundreds of its members arrested during sit-in and blockages of ICE detention centers.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America has reached out to Jewish activists to send “nearly 10,000 letters to our members of Congress calling for no additional funding for ICE and the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said the organization.

Said the Jewish Partnership for Los Angeles: “Again and again, our tradition calls on us to welcome the stranger and the immigrant— to speak out against injustice, not only when it’s politically convenient.”

The biography of a doll as famous as Ken, is no small thing.

“Born” in 1961, he was the creation of a Jewish couple Ruth and Elliot Handler, founders of Mattel along with Harold Matson. Just as Barbie was named after the Handler’s daughter, Ken was named after their son Kenneth Robert Handler.

But in doll-world that is not his name. As revealed recently by Mattel ahead of Ken’s 65th birthday, Ken’s full name is Kenneth Sean Carson.

Not revealed, however, was Ken’s Jewish heritage.

American Girl (owned by Mattel) has a Rebecca Rubin doll that is clearly Jewish. Everything about her is Jewish including her backstory and accessories.

What about Ken?

Real life Ken had a bar mitzvah in 1957 at Temple Isaiah. Just think, with the addition of a Jewish identity, there could be a Ken Kippah for every occasion, with matching tallit, and later, a Ken chuppah.

Edmon J. Rodman

The La Brea Tar Pits & Museum will soon expand its pool of educational and research potential.

As part of its Reimagining La Brea Tar Pits Campaign, The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County announced in January the creation of the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Research at La Brea Tar Pits.

The new center, named after the prominent Los Angeles builder and banker, will be built through a major gift, the largest ever to NHM from the Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Oschin Family Foundation, a local philanthropic non-profit started by the Jewish couple.

More than a building, the center “will be a research-and program-driven entity woven throughout the Tar Pits campus and scientific work,” said NHM in a statement. It “will support NHM’s broader goals for the complete transformation of the Tar Pits’ 13-acre site.”

Planned improvements include a new entrance, a triple pedestrian loop connecting active excavation sites, research and exhibition spaces, and a central green.

“There is no place on Earth like La Brea Tar Pits. It is fitting to honor my husband Samuel Oschin’s legacy by supporting science and research in the heart of Los Angeles, a city he helped to develop and shape,” said Lynda Oschin, chairman of the foundation.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, July 18, 1914, Sam Oschin began working at the age of ten, cleaning ashes out of fireplaces. Soon, he began adding houses and hired other boys to work with him.

Eventually he left high school, and began working with his father, a painter. To help his family during the Depression, he took a job at Briggs Manufacturing, a large tool and die company in Detroit.

At the beginning of WWII, he learned that the U.S. government was requesting bids for parts to be attached to the wings of planes. He formed his own tool and die factory, bid to do the work, and won.

In 1946, he and his family moved to Los Angeles where he and his brother started an air conditioning business.

Seeing that there would be a need for post WWII housing, he ventured into the building business with a planned community in Oxnard.

Oschin moved into banking around 1957 with a successful bid on the troubled Empire Savings and Loan Association of Pacoima. After building it into 27 branches throughout the state, he sold it in 1974 to Sears as part of its Allstate division.

In LA Jewish communal life, in 1966 Oschin was on the board of Temple Beth Hayim in Sherman Oaks. In 1969, he was active in fundraising for UJWF, and in 1973 his savings and loan held $250,000 in Israeli Bonds.

At heart, an adventurer, in 1979 he boarded an elephant and began a nine-day, 100-mile replication of Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps.

In 2003, Oschin died, leaving with his wife a foundation that has helped renovate the Samuel Oschin Planetarium at the Griffith Observatory, and build the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center at the California Science Center.

David S. Gold, who partnered with Stan Ross to open the pioneering and successful Gold Star Studios in 1950 in Hollywood, died January 28 at age 98.

Gold, who was Jewish, grew up in Boyle Heights where he attended Roosevelt High School. Mostly self-taught in electronics and recording techniques, he built his own studio equipment, including custom control boards and modifications.

Over the 30 years of his independent recording studio’s existence, some of the biggest pop music makers in the U.S. were recorded, including Bobby Darin, The Who, The Monkees, The Band, The Go Go’s, The Ramones, The Association, Art Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, The Turtles, and even the Chipmunks.

They also recorded two Jewish Fairfax High alumni whose works continue to influence today’s musicians: Herb Alpert (whose Tijuana Brass album is shown above), and Phil Spector.

In 1956 Gold designed and hand-crafted the studio’s twin trapezoidal echo chambers used in creating “the Wall of Sound” associated with many of Phil Spector-produced recordings.

In an interview, Gold related that by recalling the sound voices made in the large shower in his father’s shop, he was able to develop a formula for the plaster that was used to coat the walls of his studio’s echo chambers.

Adding to Gold’s legacy, according to writer Mimi Pollack, Gold Star in the 1950s was one of the first to be “color blind,” by working with artists that included Hugh Masekela, Barry White, Ritchie Valens, and Chris Montez.

A temporary memorial to the 15 people who were murdered on Bondi Beach on December 14, 2025 now stands not far from the place where the tragedy happened.

The victims that day included a rabbi, Holocaust survivors, and other attendees of the “Chanukah by the Sea” event who were from the local Jewish community, as well as other community members.

The memorial, an attempt to push back the darkness of the day, is a Chanukiah designed by Jewish artist Joel Adler. Titled “Sunnukiah,” the Chanukah menorah was designed with solar-powered candles.

Showing that those who died are not forgotten, visitors have already begun placing stones on the memorial, a custom followed by Jews worldwide.

The menorah was moved to Bondi Beach from its original placement in a local park.

To create a more permanent memorial, the New South Wales state government will lead the process in consultation with victims’ families, the Waverley Council, which is the local government authority responsible for managing the beach, and the Jewish community.

“The memorialization will offer the community a dedicated and serene space to pray, reflect, and heal,” Mayor Will Nemesh of Waverley said.