Not in Jeopardy!

We’re only halfway through Double Jeopardy and Alex Trebek is earning his paycheck. He’s trying valiantly to manufacture a bit of intrigue in this special edition of “Celebrity Jeopardy!” by encouraging the obviously vanquished not to give up just yet. “Don’t despair,” Trebek tells the trailing contestants. “It’s too early for that.”

Of course, everyone in the room knows better. Actress CCH Pounder (FX’s “The Shield”) is, well, taking a pounding, and “Survivor” host Jeff Probst stands little chance of being the last one left on the island today. The new kid on the block with the Yale pedigree is simply dogging the opposition, prompting the befuddled Probst to ask Trebek midway through the second round if he might excuse himself and use the nearest restroom.

A final bit of levity comes near the end. Newcomer Josh Malina of NBC’s Emmy-winning drama, “The West Wing,” has $16,800 in the till—more than three times the dough of his closest competition—when he hits the Daily Double. “Bet it all,” Probst pleads desperately. Malina—displaying the quick wit that made his replacement of Rob Lowe on the NBC hit last season a seamless one—glances over at Probst and phrases his reaction in the form of a question, “Uh, what is no?” So he bets $2,500 but gets the question right anyway. Before the show is over, TV’s Will Bailey will correctly answer questions about Ted Turner, the flea circus, Jerusalem, Moby Dick, Richard Nixon, inchworms, Lady Godiva, Marilyn Monroe, and the son of the prophet Isaiah.

You are almost tempted to feel sorry for celebrities Pounder and Probst…well, at least until Malina reveals an off-camera exchange with Trebek that took place just before the show. After being informed that the winning celebrity would win $50,000 for his or her favorite charity and the runners-up 20K apiece for theirs, Malina asks Alex, “What happens if there’s a tie?” Pounder is playing for Artists for a New South Africa’s AIDS relief efforts, while Probst’s charity is the Evergreen chapter of the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association that’s fighting Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Trebek informs them that, in such a scenario, each contestant tied for the lead would receive the full 50 grand for his or her charity. Hearing this, Malina whispers to his foes that they should coordinate their bets come Final Jeopardy so all three end up with the same dollar amounts. After all, we’re playing for charity, right? It was a move that would have made President Bartlet proud, but alas, “They sort of gave me funny looks,” Malina recalls, grinning.

Guess who had the last laugh?

A TRUE SURVIVOR

“Joshua, why don’t you tell us which charity you’re playing for?” Trebek inquires after the first commercial break.

“I’m playing for Bet Tzedek, a wonderful organization that provides free legal counsel to the elderly and the poor here in Los Angeles on a non-sectarian basis.”

Trebek: “Way to go. Good charity.”

He has no idea. It’s six weeks after the show, and Malina has come to pay a personal visit to the beneficiary of his trivia largesse. Clad in a pair of muted green jeans and a stylish gray v-neck, he stands in contrast to the bookish White House Deputy Communications Director he plays on TV. Malina receives a hero’s welcome from the legal aid staff as he walks down the hall (“Such a mensch!” he hears again and again…) before being introduced to several clients whose prospects for justice have been enhanced by his involvement.

One of them is Ed Allen, a bundle of smiles and stories whose cheerful disposition belies the terrifying past that has brought him here for help. Allen has heard about how Malina cleaned house on “Jeopardy!” and is clearly tickled to meet the celebrity. “When I heard you were on the show and won $50,000 for Bet Tzedek, I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” Allen gushes in a heavy Polish accent. He places his hand gently on Malina’s shoulder. “I mean, how wonderful!” Malina flashes his endearing, boyish grin—but the lightheartedness passes quickly as a Bet Tzedek staffer walks the two men over to a VCR in the rear of the office library and pops in a tape. It’s Ed Allen’s testimonial about the horrors of being sent to a Nazi concentration camp.

“It was the spring of 1943, and all the men arrived at Birkenau. It’s when I stopped being a person and became a number. Edward Sobczak no longer existed; I had to answer to my number now. After the morning report, they gave you a loaf of bread and something they call ‘tea’ to drink. Then we were marched off to work. Sometimes, there was soup for lunch. If we were lucky, we got a potato. The work was very difficult. Everywhere, there was death and suffering. I knew then, ‘How long could I live under those conditions?’”

Malina chats with summer legal interns Hilla Kimia and Chaim Woolf (right) in the Bet Tzedek offices in Los Angeles.

Sobczak (who later changed his surname to “Allen”) had been arrested by the Gestapo weeks before for helping the Polish resistance. A native of Lodz, Poland, Sobczak immediately agreed to help when his good friend Andrew asked him to write and distribute pamphlets about the dangers of the spreading Nazi menace. Once captured by the SS, Sobczak was tortured for nearly a month and clung to life by a thread. Only after being beaten in and out of consciousness for weeks did his captors give him this chilling warning: You have survived this, but the worst is in front of you now.

Ed Allen is inspiringly jovial for a man who still wears the scars. There’s one clearly visible on his forehead from the beatings that took place more than a half-century ago, another tattooed in black on his arm, and the deepest—the one on his heart. He rolls up his sleeve to show Malina how the Nazis branded him:

120244. The number comes with a story.

“It was my first night in Birkenau and I was waiting in line to get my tattoo when I hear a voice call out: ‘Ed, is that you?’ I turned around, and I could not believe it. It was my friend Andrew. There was this sort of smell of death about him, and I knew then he did not have long. When he sees me, he pulls me to the side and asks me something: to remember him and everyone who was going to die in that camp… And so I do …He died that very same night…I am very proud to have known him…” Composed and reflective until now, Allen begins to cry at the memory and covers his face.

Malina sheds tears after viewing Allen's testimonial about life in the Nazi concentration camps.

Malina, watching the video and digesting each word, has been far less successful in concealing his emotions. Sure, he is an accomplished actor who earns a living emoting for the camera, but the tears streaming down his cheeks are real. His face crumples, and he appears on the verge of sobbing. Later, recalling the experience, Malina shakes his head. “I don’t care what your political affiliation is. If you can’t get behind an organization like this—if you can watch the video they put out without crying—you have a heart of stone. This is not a political issue. What they do is 100 percent good. These people are real-life heroes. For me, it’s a treat to be involved in even a small way.”

This is why Josh Malina does the things he does when he’s off the set. For Malina, an observant Orthodox Jew, there’s a three-word proverb in the Torah that captures his motivation:

“Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof. Justice, justice you shall pursue.”

SPREADING THE HELP

Perhaps the most incredible part of Ed Allen’s story is that he never stopped believing that he would live to tell it. “It was April 29, a Sunday, when the Americans came. I always knew, always knew that I will get through this. And I always knew that I would end up here in the United States.”

Indeed, in 1968 he arrived, by way of Toronto, in the country responsible for his liberation—with little money but an inexhaustible supply of hope. He settled in Los Angeles, where he met his wife and has lived ever since. Today, like most of his fellow Holocaust survivors, Allen must deal with the effects of aging on a body that has endured ravages that no man’s should. Yet medicine, food, and decent housing come at a price in America—and it just so happens that the good people at Bet Tzedek believe that survivors like Allen have paid enough.

Two years ago, Allen sought a way to claim reparations offered by the German Foundation and the Swiss government to assist survivors with basic living expenses in the twilight of their lives. Allen, in particular, was entitled to relief under a slave/forced labor fund for his enslavement in the Longwaser labor camp, where he was forced to make aircraft wings for a German military bent on global domination. After the turn of the millennium, Allen contacted more than one L.A.-area organization seeking assistance in registering for reparations to improve his quality of life. He shared the story of his friend Andrew, of his work for the Resistance, of his capture and torture, of the bondage…he even bared the brand on his forearm. They were all too happy to help—until he provided the wrong answer to one crucial question:

   “Are you Jewish?”

   “No, I am not.”

   “Sorry, we can’t help you then.”

Michael Freedman (left) was finally able to get Holocaust survivor Ed Allen (right) the compensation owed to him by the Germans and the Swiss. Allen endured torture and enslavement for his work with the Polish Resistance, but he was turned away by other area Jewish organizations who would not offer reparations assistance because of his non-Jewish heritage.

Allen, it turns out, risked his life not because he had to, not because he was born into the Judaic faith so despised by Hitler. He helped because a Jewish friend had asked him to, because he knew it was the right thing to do.

Michael Freedman, Director of Bet Tzedek’s Holocaust Reparations Program, remembers the day Allen walked through his office door. It was August 28, 2001. Allen’s wife had suggested he try contacting Bet Tzedek after being spurned by other religious-affiliated organizations because of his non-Jewish roots.

“Somebody walks in with a tattoo on either arm, I don’t ask,” Freedman says. “I have met people from all over Europe—Romania, Hungary, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic—and they are all people who have suffered horribly. The greater number were Jewish, sure, but there were many others who suffered as well. To me, it’s not a matter of religion. They were persecuted and they’re entitled to assistance."

Allen’s case for reparations was not easily made. He shares the difficulty of so many survivors (and their heirs), who struggle to produce documents that can definitively prove their enslavement by the Nazis. Death certificates were not issued by concentration camps, and personal financial documents like insurance policies were typically lost or destroyed. In Allen’s case, Freedman decided to photograph the tattoo on his arm and mail in the Polaroid with his claim.

“With the collapse of the Eastern bloc, so many of these survivors have never seen a reparations payment,” says Gina Lobaco, marketing and development director at Bet Tzedek. “Time is running out for many of these elderly survivors. It’s so important that they can come here and get help because the whole process is incredibly complex. Some of the forms are 37 pages long.”

Bet Tzedek Executive Director Mitch Kamin (left) was elated but not surprised that Malina agreed to chair the program's annual Justice Ball this summer--their second-largest revenue-generator each year. "it's a natural connection for people like Josh, who are Jewish and believe in going out and healing the world," Kamin says.

It took almost two years, but this past April—thanks to Freedman’s dogged assistance—Allen received his first reparations payment. To call it compensation long overdue is to traffic in the boldest sort of understatement, and yet Allen’s first order of business after receiving the funds was to turn around and write out a check to Bet Tzedek for $300, so others like him might be similarly helped.

It’s a central tenet of Jewish law that you cannot deny tzedakah—charity or justice—to anyone who needs it. It’s an ideal that was impressed upon Malina since his boyhood in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he would drop coins into his first-grade tzedakah box as the teacher reminded the class “mitzvah gedola latet tzedakah.” (“It’s a great mitzvah to give charity.”) That same principle has guided Bet Tzedek since a small group of attorneys, rabbis, and law students opened it as a once-a-week storefront clinic in 1974, advertising with fliers on telephone poles and passing around a hat to pay the rent. On opening day, the line of would-be clients wrapped well around the block in the historically Jewish Fairfax district of Los Angeles. Immediately, it became clear that the need for legal assistance in the area was overwhelming and not limited to poor and elderly Jews.

The English translation of Bet Tzedek is “House of Justice,” and its doors have always been open to all low-income clients. Today, more than 10,000 people are helped annually; only slightly more than one-quarter of them are Jewish. (Another 27 percent are Latino; 26 percent are African-American.) Religious faith has never been a factor in deciding to whom to render assistance at Bet Tzedek. For nearly 30 years, they’ve seen how poverty and hardship can strike people of all backgrounds and denominations—and they know legal aid is often their last and only refuge for help.

“Truly, this is one of the major reasons why I picked Bet Tzedek as my charity for ‘Celebrity Jeopardy!’” Malina explains. “Obviously, there is a Jewishness to the origin of this organization, but it is non-sectarian in that it will help anyone. I like to see Jewish organizations helping the entire community.”

“I’VE BEEN BLESSED”

Malina and Bet Tzedek attorney Janet Morris talk with one of the more than 10,000 clients the program assists annually with housing, benefits, home equity fraud, home care, elder abuse, and other issues.

Malina has been involved in helping Jewish charities in Los Angeles for the better part of the last decade. He has served on the young leadership committee of the New Israel Fund that seeks to enhance democracy in Israel. He reads to kids at the Central Library to support the local Jewish Federation’s literacy program. And he has served as celebrity chair of a “Vodka Latke” celebration that raises funds for at-risk kids. Malina has a reputation in the local philanthropic community for being willing to lend not only his name to good causes, but also his time and energy.

It’s the face time that separates Malina from many of his acting peers, says Bet Tzedek Executive Director Mitchell Kamin. “Josh is playing a really important role from my perspective by setting a high bar in terms of what celebrities can do,” Kamin says. “A lot of organizations try to recruit stars for the ‘glitz factor.’ But he shows up and is actually a presence. We’re not recruiting celebrities arbitrarily here. We want people within whom our work resonates, who want to work to sustain it. And that’s exactly what Josh brings to the table for us.”

The “Celebrity Jeopardy!” payday is only the latest contribution Malina has made to legal aid since his Hollywood star rose with his big-screen debut as an orderly in the 1992 classic “A Few Good Men.” (“I spoke five words,” Malina recalls. “Three of them ‘yes,’ two of them ‘sir.’”) He has been helping Bet Tzedek raise resources and awareness for the cause of equal justice since the late ’90s, when he was cast in a major role in the critically acclaimed, but regrettably short-lived ABC series “Sports Night.”

“When you’re an actor, you get asked to do things all the time, and it’s so easy to say ‘yes,’” Malina says. “I’ve been blessed beyond what you can reasonably expect out of life. I have parents who provided for me all the time, and I’m now in a situation where I earn a good living. There has to be a certain amount of philanthropy in people’s hearts for this experiment to work.”

Malina talks about the “seductive access to platforms” that movie stars enjoy but is reluctant to publicize his own political views, even though he respects colleagues like Martin Sheen who feel strongly enough about the issues of the day to speak out. (“The West Wing” President took a vocal public stance against the war in Iraq.) “I happen to think that most people are as interested in the political views of the cast of ‘West Wing’ as they are in having Eriq LaSalle perform their appendectomy,” Malina jokes. “Nonetheless, there are some people out there who do care, and I don’t fault actors who do take advantage of the opportunity. You just have to take it with a grain of salt.”

One nonetheless wonders how Malina feels about America’s access to justice crisis, in which millions of poor people are shut out of the civil courts because they cannot afford competent legal counsel. Malina already knew about Bet Tzedek’s signature program, its Holocaust reparations assistance. But as he takes his extended tour of the Bet Tzedek facilities—meeting with clients and hearing detailed stories about the program’s work addressing elder abuse and neglect, home equity fraud, substandard housing, kinship care, employment rights, and children seeking disability benefits—Malina shares his growing understanding about the struggle for equal justice.

Malina (right) feels at home chatting with (L to R) Hilla Kimia, Stephanie Lee, Kristin Rowse, David Williams, and Andres Garcia of Bet Tzedek. "I like to see Jewish organizations helping the entire community," says Malina, who was raised Orthodox.

“I have not had personal experiences with our system of justice, which is why coming here and meeting these people has been such a learning experience for me,” he says. “I actually feel more naïve than I ever realized. I’m amazed at the amount of scams that are perpetrated against the poor and elderly. I like to believe that the world is a better place.

“I’m no expert in world justice systems,” he continues, “but I think the U.S. system is a terrific system in concept, but in practice, not everyone has equal access to justice under the law, nor are they treated the same when they get into the system. These are serious problems that, luckily, are addressed by the people here who work so hard for so little compensation. I think it’s a sad reflection of something in our society that I’m not smart enough to quantify that it is people like legal aid lawyers who are on the lowest end of the pay scale.”

CONSCIENTIOUS CONDUIT

It’s the night before the “Celebrity Jeopardy!” taping and the phone rings at the home of Lobaco, the Bet Tzedek development director.

No, she’s not surprised to hear from Malina, nor is she surprised to hear how the former Yale University theater major has been spending his evening: brushing up on trivia and reviewing state capitals in preparation for the big charity challenge tomorrow.

“Josh is so conscientious,” Lobaco says. “When I heard he was an Ivy League graduate, I didn’t worry. He is atypically Hollywood, but then, I think there are a lot of people who are atypically Hollywood. In this town, you find that the stereotype is certainly there, but for everyone who adheres to it, there are those who don’t.”

Many of the conscientious celebrities can be found attending and supporting Bet Tzedek’s Justice Ball, a premier summer fundraising event in Los Angeles that typically draws some 2,000 guests and raises in the neighborhood of a half-million dollars a year—a substantial chunk of Bet Tzedek’s $5 million annual budget.

“Just as important as raising money, this has been a great event for raising the consciousness of younger professionals who are trying to figure out what to do with their time and resources,” says Director Kamin. “It’s become a kind of training ground for people who’ve played major roles within our organization.” This July, at the seventh-annual Justice Ball featuring a live performance by Macy Gray, Malina shares the role of honorary co-chair with other TV stars who he helped recruit—big names like Camryn Manheim of CBS’ “The Practice” and “The West Wing’s” Allison Janney and Timothy Busfield.

Malina knows all about the power of celebrity, even if he doesn’t consider himself a “real” one despite more than 20 film and TV credits to his name. (See filmography) In a town like Hollywood, you can use your movie-star credentials to open any number of doors—from the “A-list” parties to the “A-list” philanthropic givers. A devoted husband to actress Melissa Merwin and father of two young kids, Avi and Isabel, Malina won’t be found chilling at The Viper Room. Instead, he uses his star power to enlist his fellow actors to do charitable works. “I like to think of myself as a conduit to bigger celebrities,” he says in his usual self-effacing manner.

For legal aid, raising money is never easy. It’s not a single-issue charitable cause like fighting multiple sclerosis or saving the whales, so striking a chord with the big givers can be a challenge, especially in a town with a high “glitz factor” like L.A. Says Lobaco: “Los Angeles is a very event-driven town in terms of fundraising. Many charities actively vie for celebrities in order to provide greater appeal for the organization, so having someone like Josh who is so involved makes a real difference. Many of the issues we deal with are complex. People blame the poor for their problems, and lawyers sometimes have a bad reputation.”

Malina shoots down the stereotypes with the deftness Will Bailey might employ to change President Bartlet’s mind on a major policy issue. “I don’t have a knee-jerk association with lawyers,” he says, “probably because my father and my uncle are lawyers. A lot of people have a negative association with actors, so I’m pretty sensitive to the fact that there are good and bad in all professions. I’ve seen enough of the good side of the people who practice law to know that the clients who come to legal aid get high-quality legal representation from people who really want to give something back.”

And what of the good side of the people in Hollywood who consider themselves blessed and want to give something back…well, now, that’s the easiest question of all.

Who is Joshua Malina?