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A Reform synagogue with mixed seating and equal participation of men and women.

Reform Judaism is a phrase that refers to various beliefs, practices and organizations associated with the Reform Jewish movement in North America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.^[1] In general, Reform Judaism maintains that Judaism and Jewish traditions should be modernized and compatible with participation in the surrounding culture. Many branches of Reform Judaism hold that Jewish law should be interpreted as a set of general guidelines rather than as a list of restrictions whose literal observance is required of all Jews.^[2][3] Similar movements that are also occasionally called "Reform" include the Israeli Progressive Movement and its worldwide counterpart.

Reform Judaism in North America[link]

Reform Judaism is one of the two North American denominations affiliated with the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It is the largest denomination of American Jews today.^[4][5] With an estimated 1.1 million members, it also accounts for the largest number of Jews affiliated with Progressive Judaism worldwide.

Official bodies of the Reform Movement in North America include the Union for Reform Judaism, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Reform Judaism in Britain[link]

UK Reform and Liberal Judaism are the two Progressive movements in the UK. For details on the relationship between the two progressive movements, see Progressive Judaism (United Kingdom).

Progressive Judaism in Israel[link]

After a failed attempt in the 1930s to start an Israeli movement, the World Union for Progressive Judaism tried again in the 1970s and created the movement now known as the Israeli Progressive Movement. Because the first rabbis in the 1970s were trained in the United States, the Israeli press and public often refers to the Israeli Progressive Movement as "Reform".

Reform movement in Judaism[link]

Along with other forms of non-orthodox Judaism, the North American Reform, UK Reform, UK Liberal Judaism and Israeli Progressive Movement can all trace their intellectual roots to the Reform movement in Judaism.^[6][7][8] Elements of Orthodoxy developed their cohesive identity in reaction to the Reform movement in Judaism.^[7]

Although North American Reform, UK Reform, UK Liberal Judaism and Israeli Progressive Judaism all share an intellectual heritage, they have taken places at different ends of the non-orthodox spectrum. The North American Reform movement and UK Liberal Judaism reflect a more radical end. The UK Reform,^[9][10][11] and Progressive Israeli movements,^[12] along with the North American Conservative movement and Masorti Judaism, occupy the more conservative end of the non-orthodox Judaisms.

See also[link]

• Beliefs and practices in Progressive Judaism
• Liberal Judaism
• Progressive Judaism
• Cantor in Reform Judaism
• Reform Judaism (magazine)

References[link]

External links[link]

Official Sites[link]

• Union for Reform Judaism
• RJ.org: Official news site of the Union for Reform Judaism
• World Union for Progressive Judaism
• Central Conference of American Rabbis
• Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion

Other Resources[link]

• Research and articles about Reform Judaism on the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner
• Reform Judaism FAQ on Soc.Culture.Jewish Newsgroups

Howard Berman
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 28th district
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 2003
Preceded by	David Dreier
Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
In office February 11, 2008 – January 3, 2011
Preceded by	Tom Lantos
Succeeded by	Ileana Ros-Lehtinen
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from California's 26th district
In office January 3, 1983 – January 3, 2003
Preceded by	John H. Rousselot
Succeeded by	David Dreier
California State Assembly Majority Leader
In office 1974–1980
Preceded by	Jack R. Fenton
Succeeded by	Willie Brown
Member of the California State Assembly from the 43rd district
In office January 3, 1975 – January 3, 1983
Preceded by	Michael D. Antonovich
Succeeded by	Gray Davis
Member of the California State Assembly from the 57th district
In office January 3, 1973 – January 3, 1975
Preceded by	Charles J. Conrad
Succeeded by	Mike Cullen
Personal details
Born	Howard Lawrence Berman (1941-04-15) April 15, 1941 (age 71) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Janis Berman
Children	Brinley Berman Lindsey Berman
Residence	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles
Occupation	Attorney
Religion	Judaism[1]

Howard Lawrence Berman (born April 15, 1941) is the U.S. Representative for California's 28th congressional district, serving since 1983. The district, numbered as the 26th District from 1983 to 2003, includes about half of the San Fernando Valley. Berman is a Democrat.

Early life, education, and legal career[link]

Berman was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Eleanor (née Schapiro) and Joseph Berman. His maternal grandparents immigrated from Russia.^[2] Berman grew up in modest circumstances. He graduated from Alexander Hamilton High School (Los Angeles) (1959), and earned his B.A. (1962, International Relations) and LL.B. (1965) at University of California, Los Angeles. Blanche Bettington, his high school civics teacher, inspired him to enter politics and government.^[3] He was a VISTA volunteer (1966–1967) in Baltimore and San Francisco, and was an associate at a Los Angeles law firm (1967–72) specializing in labor relations.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]}

Berman was active in the Bruin Democrats at UCLA. He began his friendship with Henry Waxman there in 1960, when both were still undergraduates. Waxman was head of the YD liberal caucus, and through it ran the YDs. Both of them supported Adlai E. Stevenson's pursuit of the presidential nomination up to the eve of the 1960 convention. Berman was President of the California Young Democrats 1967-1969. He and Waxman co-founded the Los Angeles County Young Democrats, which grew to become one of the largest young professional clubs in Southern California.

Berman was a convention delegate to the 1968 (Chicago), 1976, and 1984 Democratic National Conventions.

California Assembly[link]

Elections[link]

Berman won election to the Assembly in 1972 from a district in the Hollywood Hills, unseating the incumbent Republican Speaker pro-tempore. His brother Michael, campaign manager in Henry Waxman's 1968 Assembly race, again ran a targeted mail operation.

Tenure[link]

In 1974 Berman and Waxman both opposed Willie Brown's unsuccessful revolt against Speaker of the California State Assembly Leo McCarthy, who rewarded Berman's loyalty by appointing him the youngest majority leader in the Assembly's history. McCarthy fired Berman when he tried to replace him in 1980. Although McCarthy failed to retain the Speakership, Berman failed to win it; and Brown became Speaker. Other members remarked on what a tough politician he was; the Bermans helped arrange a primary defeat for at least one colleague (Jack R. Fenton) who had opposed his bid.^{[4][7][10][11][12]}

Committee assignments[link]

He also served as Chairman of the Assembly Democratic Caucus and on the Policy Research Management Committee of the Assembly.^[7]

U.S. House of Representatives[link]

Elections[link]

After redistricting made the 26th District significantly more Democratic, incumbent Republican U.S. Congressman John Harbin Rousselot decided to run in California's 30th congressional district in 1982. Berman won the Democratic primary for the open seat with 83%.^[13] He won the general election with 60% of the vote.^[14] He has been reelected 14 times, never dropping below 61% of the vote.^[15]

Following redistricting, Berman will run in California's 30th congressional district in 2012 against fellow Democrat Brad Sherman.

Tenure[link]

Berman was the House sponsor of the 1986 False Claims Act that authorized civil litigation by whistleblowers. It led to recoveries for the United States Government exceeding one billion dollars.^[7]

Berman has championed protecting American film industry jobs from outsourcing ("runaway production"). He has also voted against amending the constitution to require a balanced budget, banning the desecration of the American flag,^[4] the Defense of Marriage Act, and restrictions on abortion.^[4]

However, Berman concurs with many on the right on a number of issues—particularly foreign affairs and trade. Berman voted in support of the invasion of Iraq in both 1991 and 2003, as well as for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008,^[5][16] positions that have hurt his standing among many liberals in his district.^{[17][citation needed]} While he generally supports free trade—for instance voting in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)^[6] and various trade agreements with specific countries—he voted against the more recent Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).^[5] He opposes withdrawing U.S. support for the World Trade Organization. In that same year, he also voted to phase out many farm subsidy programs put into place by the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the New Deal.

Berman is known for his staunch protection of copyright interests and his alliances with the entertainment industry; he is sometimes referred to as the "representative from Hollywood." He was an original co-sponor of SOPA, otherwise known as the Stop Online Piracy Act and has publicly referred to it as a "perfect document."^[18] The major industry contributing to his election campaigns has been the entertainment industry.^[19] He proposed legislation under which copyright holders would be able to employ technological tools such as file blocking, redirection, spoofs, and decoys—among others—to curb piracy (Peer to Peer Piracy Prevention Act). He has been named as one of the primary politicians involved in the creation of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).^[20] In a September 2008 hearing of the House Intellectual Property Subcommittee, Berman criticized the National Institutes of Health's policy requiring NIH-sponsored research to be submitted to a database open to the public by saying that "the N in NIH shouldn't stand for Napster".^[21][22] In addition to Hollywood, his district also covers roughly the eastern half of Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley districts and the city of San Fernando.

Berman is also a strong supporter of Israel, telling the Jewish newspaper, The Forward after being appointed Chairman of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, "Even before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist."^[18] He has sponsored the Anti-Boycott Act in the House, which prohibits American individuals and organizations from actively boycotting Israeli goods.^[23]

In Congress, Berman led the investigation into the conduct of house members in the Mark Foley Page scandal.^[24]

In 2003, Berman expressed his concerns over the Patriot Act with then US Attorney General John Ashcroft, specifically on the method to hold illegal immigrants until they prove they are not terrorists.^[25]

In 2000, Berman along with then US Senator from Oregon, Gordon Smith, proposed an amnesty, which would have granted legal status to hundreds of thousands of undocumented farm laborers. In exchange, requirements that growers provide housing to guest workers, and pay them a minimum wage adjusted annually for inflation, would have been relaxed.^[26] In 2005, Berman was part of the bipartisan group in Congress who fought against immigration reform efforts.^[27] That path to citizenship was also supported by President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain.

Investments

The Center for Responsive Politics named 151 members of Congress who had investments (as of year end 2006) in companies that do business with the United States Department of Defense, suggesting that such holdings conflict with their responsibility for U.S. security policy. The most important such companies, ranked by estimated total value of members' holdings, were Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Pepsi, ExxonMobil, Berkshire Hathaway, IBM, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, H. J. Heinz Company, and Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. CRP identified the top ten members of Congress, and the report named no other members among the 151, save committee chairmen Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Rep. Berman.^[28][29] None of the firms listed above ranked among the top ten DOD contractors in 2008,^[30] nor in the top twenty for 2009.^[31]

Fundraising

Berman paid his brother Michael Berman's consulting firm Berman & D'Agostino $195,000 from campaign funds from 2001 to 2006.^[32] This included $70,000 in consulting fees for the 2006 election.^[33] In 2005, $50,000 in consulting fees were paid to the company, and Michael Berman himself was paid a further $80,500 in campaign management and consulting fees.^[33] In the 2002 campaign, Berman & D'Agostino was paid $75,000 in political consulting fees.^[33]

Ethics

Alan Mollohan, ranking member of the House Ethics Committee, resigned from the committee after he himself became the subject of an ethics complaint. Berman had been its senior Democrat 1997-2003, and on 2006-10-05 Minority leader Nancy Pelosi reappointed him to replace Mollohan. Berman served on the subcommittee investigating the House's page program in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal.^[5][34][35] "This is an honor I could have done without."^[5]

Center for Public Integrity reported in 2006 that members of the House Ethics Committee and their staffs had taken many privately sponsored trips, about 400 trips from 2000 to mid 2005, at a total expense nearly $1 million. Of these, Democrats took about 80% of the trips at about 70% of the cost. Berman and his staff were at the top of the chart, with trips costing more than $245,000. Berman himself had taken 14 trips at the Aspen Institute's expense, including two to China with Mrs. Berman. Aspen replied that its events for members were like graduate seminars, and did not push any policy agenda. "Gene Smith, Berman's chief of staff, said that the bulk of the congressman's foreign travel can be attributed to his being a senior member on the House Committee on International Relations." Five private groups (Campaign Legal Center, Democracy 21, the League of Women Voters, Public Citizen and U.S. PIRG) jointly sent a letter to the ethics committee urging it ban or restrict such travel.^[36][37]

Redistricting

The 2000 census allocated California one new House seat, 53 in all. Howard Berman, "dad of the delegation" on redistricting, made a deal with Republicans Tom Davis and David Dreier keeping 34 safe seats for Democrats, and adding one new Republican district while protecting 19 incumbent Republicans. Every California Democrat in the House and California State Senate hired Michael Berman as a redistricting consultant, for a fee of $20,000 each.^{[citation needed]} When the August 2001 plan was unveiled, Brad Sherman complained that it undermined the safety of his seat with too many Hispanic voters. "Howard Berman stabbed me in the back." Berman agreed to redraw the boundary between their districts, giving himself 55.6% and Sherman 36.5% Latino population. The redistricting plan survived (June, 2002) MALDEF's court challenge, arguing it diluted Hispanic representation.^[8] The Republicans suffered some slippage; they had only 19 members in the delegation to the 110th Congress.^[5]

Committee assignments[link]

• Committee on Foreign Affairs (Ranking Member)
• Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet

Caucus memberships

• Congressional Children's Working Group
• Congressional Diabetes Caucus
• International Conservation Caucus
• LGBT Equality Caucus

Personal life[link]

Berman married Janis Gail Schwarz in 1979; they have two daughters, Brinley and Lindsey.^{[4][5][6][7][8][9]}

Memberships and awards

• First Annual Farmworker Justice Award, 2000^[38][39]
• President, California Federation of Young Democrats, 1967–1969
• President's award, National Music Publishers Association, 2007^[9]
• NATO Parliamentary Assembly
• Mexico Parliamentary Group^[7]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Congressman Howard L. Berman official U.S. house site
• Howard Berman for Congress official campaign site
• Biography at WhoRunsGov.com at The Washington Post
• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Voting record maintained by The Washington Post
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Congressional profile at GovTrack
• Congressional profile at OpenCongress
• Issue positions and quotes at On the Issues
• Financial information at OpenSecrets.org
• Staff salaries, trips and personal finance at LegiStorm.com
• Campaign finance reports and data at the Federal Election Commission
• Appearances on C-SPAN programs

Luke Ford
Luke Ford, circa 2000
Born	(1966-05-28) 28 May 1966 (age 46) Kurri Kurri, New South Wales, Australia
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Writer
Religion	Judaism

Luke Ford (born 28 May 1966, in Kurri Kurri, New South Wales, Australia) is an American writer, blogger, and former pornography gossip columnist known for his disclosures and traditionalist Jewish religious views.^[1]

Personal[link]

Ford moved to California in 1977. His father, Desmond Ford, was a noted Seventh-day Adventist theologian, and was the center of a theological controversy in the late 1970s and '80s. His mother, Gwen Ford, died of bone cancer in March 1970, when Ford was three years old.

After leaving the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Ford explored atheism. Ford states that he was converted through the Los Angeles Beis Din.^[2] Ford says he observes the Jewish Sabbath, attends synagogue regularly, and keeps kosher. He has been asked to leave at least two different congregations.^[3] Ford wrote about his religious ostracism in XXX-Communicated: A Rebel Without a Shul.

Ford has suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome, which kept him bedridden for a time in his 20s.^[4]

Professional[link]

Ford studied economics at UCLA but did not graduate. Instead, he worked as an investigative journalist for southern California newspapers and at a radio station. In 1995, he became intrigued with the lack of journalistic coverage of the pornography industry, and started to write a book, which would become A History of X.

In January 1996, after researching porn for a year, Ford wrote, produced, directed and acted in What Women Want, a pornographic video (not related to the Mel Gibson movie of the same name). It was not a success. Ford is credited as "Dick Dundee".^[5]

In 1997, Ford started his pornography gossip website, LukeFord.com. It was criticized for being badly organized, but contained a large amount of information; Ford would take a tape recorder nearly wherever he went, and transcribed many conversations.

Ford exposed a 1998 HIV outbreak which infected an indeterminate number of actors (including Tricia Devereaux, Brooke Ashley and Kimberly Jade) who had been working with actor Marc Wallice.^[4] Ashley eventually sued Wallice, claiming that she had been infected on the set of The World's Biggest Anal Gangbang.

Discretion has never been a Ford strong suit. In his own words "I'm not a businessman. I'm not a conventional journalist. I'm a story teller/entertainer/lunatic."^[6] Porn stars such as Asia Carrera and Brandy Alexandre have criticized errors and inaccuracy on his site. But its impact was undeniable, and he was referred to as the Matt Drudge of porn.^[4]

Ford was sued for defamation multiple times by people in the porn industry, including by RJB Telecom, whom he (as well as the Federal Trade Commission) accused of dishonesty; Christi Lake, whom he mislabeled in a bestiality photo; and Laurie Holmes (widow of John Holmes), for accusations of prostitution on the set. Ford has said that he has been sued five times to date: one suit was dropped, another was thrown out, another was settled when his insurance company paid $100,000, and the last two were settled when he removed some of his statements without making a retraction.^[7] Wired magazine called him "The Most Hated Man in Web Porn".^[6] He was even physically assaulted by Mike Albo, an editor for Hustler.^[8]

In August 2001, after urgings of his rabbi, Ford sold his main website, lukeford.com^[9] to Netvideogirls.com for $25,000, and created lukeford.net,^[10] which avoided pornography, and focused more on Jewish issues. One year later, after nearly going broke, he returned to his pornographic roots by starting lukeisback.com^[11] with many of his old archives.^[12] On 23 October 2007, Ford announced he had sold lukeisback.com and its contents for an undisclosed sum to an undisclosed party.^[13] "Any writing I do on the porn industry from now on will be for publications with no porn advertising," Ford said. Those owners (whose names have not been divulged) ran the site until June 2008 but walked away from the site saying that writing the site was too much work for the money earned.^[14] It was sold a second time, with the new owner being long-time industry observer Cindy Loftus.^[15]

AVN Hall of Famer Bill Margold has said that "Luke Ford is exactly what we deserve... Luke's not really a blogger as much as is an internet journalist".^[12]

Bibliography[link]

• A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film. Prometheus Books, 1999. ISBN 1-57392-678-7

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Luke Ford photos

Websites run by Ford[link]

• Official website, without pornographic content
• Autobiography at official website
• Luke Is Back! Porn News 2002-2007
• Your Moral Leader blog about Judaism and moral issues
• Nearer My God To Thee Buzznet site with many photos
• MySpace site Used for personal and social activities

Other[link]

• Luke's weekly report on Booble Nation (site where Luke Ford used to contribute)
• Emmanuelle Richard, "Luke Ford: Another Brash Web Columnist", Online Journalism Review, 9 July 1997
• Nancy Beiles, "Porn Muckraker and Son of a Preacher Man: Luke Ford Holds Forth on Converting, Dennis Prager and the Trials of the Triple-X Industry", The Forward, 7 January 2000
• Noah Shachtman, "Porn Stripped of Gossip Maven", Wired magazine, 13 August 2001
• Dan Kapelovitz, "LA People 2006: The Xxxorcist", LA Weekly, 19 April 2006
• Brad A. Greenberg, "Interview with a serial blogger", JewishJournal.com, 3 August 2007
• Luke Ford at the Internet Movie Database - Appearances in What Women Want and pornography documentaries