Usually, the donation of a Torah to a religious facility is a mitzvah. Or as the Torah explains -- an act of human kindness. In this case, however, I look at it as an abomination, or an averah -- a moral transgression.

What I'm addressing is the donation of a Torah to the Motion Picture Home by Steven Spielberg. On the face of it, as Spielberg recognizes a Holocaust survivor in his presentation, it's beautiful. However, reading between the lines makes this anything but a genuine offer of the love and education that a Torah represents.

If you're not Jewish, hang in there and finish reading this. If you are Jewish, this will drive you meshugah. Even if you're not Jewish, this will make your blood boil.

The MPTF is not a religious facility. Its beauty is the nondenominational and bicultural environment that it fosters. Try getting a nativity scene...

Had they been able to stand, Mary Stellar and Rosemary Quinn would have been more active and able to properly protest the planned closing of the Motion Picture Home's Long Term Care Facility at Tuesday's poorly attended Board Meeting at the luxurious Saban Center.

As it was, the ladies were enjoying the beautiful weather with their two sons Daniel and myself as we sat in the shade of the Saban Center entryway -- as a visual reminder to the 31 or so board members whose apathy didn't keep them from the luncheon meeting.

Had this been a hastily prepared and informal get-together of power-brokers and industry moguls, Daniel and I might have not cared to escort our ladies to it. However, this was the BIG Annual MPTF Board of Trustees meeting.

You wouldn't know it by the attendance, as it seems that most were “catching on...

It seems that the entire motion picture and television industry is hanging onto every development concerning the fate of the Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF) elderly and infirm residents. Our advocates have advanced our cause to the pages of this esteemed website, and in other traditional and digital media worldwide.

On Monday, thanks to these good people, SAG will hear our plight.

The clarion call has always been that it makes no sense to endorse the closure of what is the heart and soul of MPTF care. The edifice erected by Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin for the care of the industry's most needy was being taken off the shelf much like a filet of sole that has gone past its sell-by date.

And while the proverbial fish might stink from the head (that being the heads of the MPTF Board of Directors that have been chastised ad nauseum in...

Since my kid was a little boy and fascinated with movie making, we loved playing the Kevin Bacon version of Six Degrees of Separation.

Now there is another version, and it's not so much fun. His grandmother, along with all the other residents at the Motion Picture and Television Fund long term care center, is within a Few Degrees of Obliteration at the hands of Jeffrey Katzenberg and his fellow board members.

The guillotine blade has started its downward course. On the chopping block are not only the elderly and infirm heads of the MPTF long term care residents, but the soul of motion picture and television health care. The blades' aim is to cut off both -- cleanly, mercilessly, and with surgical precision. The torso that remains will be held up to a firing squad while the board takes aim at the rest of industry health care.

You would think that somebody...