Dear Reader,
What are the limits, if any, of a rabbi's freedom to preach? That was the issue I sought to explore this week, focusing on reactions, pro and con, at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun, the popular, progressive Manhattan mega-synagogue, to their rabbis' public criticism of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
GARY ROSENBLATT
Fuel For Debate Over Rabbis’ Role
At B'nai Jeshurun, congregants quit to protest their clergy's criticism of mayor’s support for AIPAC.
Gary Rosenblatt
Where do you draw the line between a rabbi’s freedom to preach and his or her responsibility to maintain a cohesive congregation?
That is a topic of internal debate still swirling within B’nai Jeshurun, the popular mega-synagogue on the Upper West Side known for its joyful, spiritual services, progressive advocacy of causes like gay rights and caring for the needy — and, unfortunately for some members — its three senior rabbis’ high-profile criticism of Israeli policy on the Palestinian issue.
This past week several notable members resigned in response to Rabbis Rolando Matalon and Felicia Sol signing on to a recent public letter criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio for his support of AIPAC, the official pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington. (Rabbi Marcello Bronstein was said to be out of town when the letter was circulated.)
Other members are on the verge of resigning, and several BJ congregants I spoke with said they were weighing a similar move. They are deeply pained by the two rabbis’ action, particularly since this was not the first time they made headlines for taking a controversial stand on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and causing dissension in the non-denominational congregation of some 1,740 households.
In December 2012, after hailing as a “historic moment” a United Nations resolution elevating the Palestinians to nonmember status — which touched off criticism from many congregants — Rabbis Matalon and Sol, along with their colleague, Rabbi Bronstein, wrote to express “regret [for] the feelings of alienation” within the congregation.
It is believed that scores of members resigned at the time. Others, like Sam Levine, a BJ congregant for 25 years, who said he was “livid” at the rabbis’ actions, held back. They did so in part because they felt the rabbis, in frank, emergency meetings with critics, were sincerely apologetic, and in part because the members loved the teachings of the rabbis, the spirituality of the prayer services and the sense of community within BJ.
That was more than a year ago.
The last straw for Levine came with the recent anti-AIPAC letter, though. Last Tuesday evening he wrote a long letter of resignation to the rabbis on behalf of his family — his children and wife, Laurie Blitzer, a vice chair of Birthright Israel, among her many affiliations in the community. Levine wrote the rabbis that he joined BJ because of their “extraordinary talents in making the spiritual elements of Judaism relevant and meaningful,” but that their positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were creating “painful disagreements” and “extraordinary tension.”
Those positions over the last several years, he said, included their “participating in a Palestinian forum airing grievances against Israel … publicly bashing Israel’s ‘cruelty’ toward the ‘peace-loving innocents of Gaza,’ and of course your letter celebrating the declaration” regarding Palestinian nonmember status at the UN.
More than a year after that major flare-up, the rabbis’ decision to criticize the mayor for supporting AIPAC was “unforgivable, inexcusable,” Levine told me, because “they took advantage of their extraordinary platform and instead of strengthening the Jewish people, they do the opposite.” (At a private AIPAC meeting in New York, de Blasio was quoted as saying that City Hall was always open to AIPAC and that he would “happily” stand with the group anytime and anyplace.)
Eve Birnbaum, a BJ member for 16 years who almost resigned last year over the UN flap, said she was “emotionally exhausted from expressing the same arguments and objections to the rabbis’ destructive actions and statements — in letters and e-mails to the rabbis and correspondence among like-minded congregants.” Her letter of resignation last week consisted of just a sentence or two announcing her family’s decision.
In an interview, she said there was much she admired about the rabbis and that she cherished the warm relationship Rabbi Matalon had with her children, who had their bar and bat mitzvahs at BJ. But she said the rabbis’ views on Israel were “antithetical to me” and that as a result of their insistence on speaking out as they have, “we felt like outsiders, and my kavanah [spiritual intention] was broken each time an anti-Israel political missile was launched from the bimah during services.”
She added that many people come to BJ for its warmth and spiritual services, not to hear about Mideast politics.
“How could they [the rabbis] break up our [congregational] family?” she asked. “I hope they will rethink their impact on the congregation.”
Birnbaum does not know where the family will pray now. For the time being, “I’ll be a wandering Jew,” she said.
‘Wrestling With The Issues’
Is this about rabbinical freedom of speech, misperceptions of AIPAC, signing on to a letter that contained supporters of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, the common practice of disgruntled congregants leaving a synagogue, or all of the above?
Birnbaum and other members who voiced their criticism to the rabbis received a brief email this week from Rabbis Matalon and Sol saying, “I care about your feelings and concern,” and “I will be calling you next week so we can have a personal conversation about the issues you have raised.”
The rabbis did not respond to requests for an interview, and the congregation has taken no official position on their signing on to the letter criticizing de Blasio.
Jeanie Blaustein, president of the board of BJ, responded to an interview request with the following e-mail: “There is a wide variety of viewpoints in the American Jewish community about what is needed to secure Israel’s future. The challenge before all of us is to develop ways of speaking so that we can listen to others’ points of view on such complex issues.
“It requires all of us to stretch. I am proud to be the president of a congregation that wrestles with these issues, and we will continue to work hard at the vital mission of deepening our engagement and commitment to the people and state of Israel.”
Critics blame the board for allowing these issues to have festered for years, resulting in occasional emergency board meetings and press coverage that they say has further split the congregation, especially at a time when it is being called on to raise tens of millions of dollars to renovate its recently purchased building. Some members on the left have encouraged the rabbis to continue to speak out on issues of conscience and not be swayed by detractors. Other members insist that whether or not they agree with the rabbis’ views on the Mideast conflict, as clergy they have the right and responsibility to give voice to their moral positions.
It may well be, though, that a majority of BJ members are not upset, or even aware, of the recent disagreement. Anne Mintz, a member for more than 10 years, wrote me a note on Sunday to question The Jewish Week’s previous coverage of the AIPAC-de Blasio incident. “Where’s the news here?” she wrote. “The political leanings and activism of the BJ clergy are long and widely known” and only “a sliver of the BJ membership” was “annoyed,” she said, adding that the matter “wasn’t even news inside the congregation.”
If accurate, perhaps that speaks to BJ’s size and diversity. Many believe that while the majority of the congregation is left of center politically, including those most active in a variety of social action projects, a significant number of members who attend Shabbat hand holiday services regularly reflect a wider range of Mideast views. And those I spoke with stressed how alienated non-left members have felt for some time now when it comes to hearing the rabbis speak out on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, rarely celebrating Jerusalem’s actions.
One member said her close relatives who made aliyah from the U.S. are “demoralized” when they hear and read about “what the rabbis of such a major New York synagogue are saying” on these issues.
Jeff Feig, a member of BJ since 1994, says the congregation is “a big part of my life and brought me closer to Judaism.” But he was deeply troubled at the rabbis’ support for the UN action and, as a supporter of AIPAC, he thinks the rabbis see the pro-Israel lobby as hawkish rather than bipartisan, and morally unacceptable. He is considering leaving the synagogue.
Mark Pearlman, a member for 17 years, said he was pained and conflicted over the recurring controversies and weighing whether to remain in the synagogue. (Pearlman has supported a number of initiatives with The Jewish Week and with B’nai Jeshurun.) He noted that the rabbis’ political advocacy on “these sensitive and explosive issues take away from the prayer service and spiritual environment” that his family so much enjoyed.
“The synagogue, in a strange way, appears to be consciously trying to divide its own community,” he said. Once proud of his affiliation with BJ, Pearlman said he feels “embarrassed” at times, and asserted that the congregation “needs to decide what it wants to be and what it views as important” so members can have a clear choice of staying or leaving.
A woman who has been a member for 15 years and whose great-grandfather was a founder of the congregation, said she now feels “tremendous shame and disappointment” in “a place I once considered my spiritual home.” She said the synagogue was “not a place for politics,” and that the rabbis are “embarrassing the congregation” and “the Jewish community.”
Anne Mintz isn’t persuaded by these complaints. When I spoke to her the day after I received her note, she said that every synagogue has members who leave or threaten to, and that “when you join BJ you know the rabbis talk about politics, and if you don’t like it, maybe it’s not the shul for you.”
What she worries about, though, is that other rabbis who read of the flak the BJ rabbis are getting will be that much “less willing to take controversial stands in the hopes of guiding congregants through the difficult issues.
“We need rabbis with more moral courage,” not less, she said.
‘Dialogue Or Dogmatism’
Jewish leaders since biblical times have stirred controversy for speaking out. Moses complained to God about the demands of the Israelites, and the prophets who chastised the people as sinners were harassed and ignored.
Even harsh critics of the BJ rabbis believe the spiritual leaders are sincere in their love of Israel and believe it is part of their moral duty to speak out against perceived injustices against the Palestinians.
Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, acknowledges that “it’s a delicate line for rabbis who know that their congregants thirst for them to stand up and not waffle” on important issues and yet “not stand so tall that they drown out” other voices.
“I’m torn as to whether this issue [at BJ] is about freedom of speech or exercising poor judgment,” he said, noting that a synagogue should be “a place for dialogue rather than dogmatism.”
He questioned “the process” of the rabbis signing on to a public statement, along with known BDS supporters, rather than, for example, addressing the topic from the pulpits, though that route has been problematic in the past as well.
As a supporter of AIPAC, he says there is “gross misunderstanding of AIPAC in the Jewish community,” noting that “this is the same AIPAC that supports liberal governments in Israel” as well.
Rabbi Kirshner said he hears from rabbinic colleagues that “talking about Israel from the pulpit is the third rail,” but he disagrees, estimating that about one-third of his sermons are devoted in some way to Israel. “It’s the core of our existence, the fuel of our shul,” Temple Emanu-el, a Conservative congregation in Closter, N.J.
He said that if he were to chastise his children or criticize America, a listener shouldn’t be able to question his underlying love for his family or country. And if that is not the case — if, for example, one’s criticism of Israel did not seem rooted in affection — “that’s a problem.” He added that one’s Zionism should not be contingent on a set of specific issues.
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, says he never tells rabbis, publicly, what they should do. “I whisper in their ear.”
He demurred from discussing the specifics of the BJ conflict, but did say, “At the end of the day, you want to keep your congregation together. Where are you without community?”
Gary@jewishweek.org
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PJ Library, the project that has provided more than 10 million books to the families of Jewish youngsters in the U.S. and Israel, is now offering Arabic-language books to Israeli Arabs. Israel Correspondent Michele Chabin reports.
ISRAEL NEWS
PJ Library-Like Program Comes To Jaffa
Israel’s reading-readiness project provides 45,000 schoolchildren with Arabic-language children’s books.
Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent
Jaffa, Israel — The children at the Arabic-speaking Ofek preschool in Jaffa have spent a lot of time this month thinking about a mouse named Soumsoum, the character of a picture book all the kids read with their parents at home.
In class, the children did a range of Soumsoum-related projects inspired by the book, “Soumsoum the Mouse,” by Jabil Khazaal, about a field mouse who relaxes while the other mice gather food for the winter, but who later warms the hearts of the worker mice with his colorful stories.
The children discussed the emotions portrayed in the book, and learned that every creature has a role to play in the community — and that food for the soul can be as important as food for the stomach.
In the process, the children fell in love with the book and are eagerly awaiting the next one.
Throughout Israel, 45,000 Arab children (including 100 percent of the kindergarteners) in government preschools are reading “Samsoum the Mouse” as part of a reading-readiness program called Maktabat al-Fanoos, or Lantern Library.
The program, which began last month, is modeled after Sifriyat Pijama, an organization launched five years ago that distributes Hebrew children’s books to hundreds of thousands of Jewish preschoolers. Sifriyat Pijama is a sister program to the fast-growing PJ Library program in North America, which has distributed more than five million Jewish books and music CDs to over 175,000 children in the past eight years.
The Lantern Library was created by the Ministry of Education in partnership with the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and Price Family Charities Fund with the goal of providing children with four books to take home and treasure over the course of the year. Next year the goal is eight books.
Culturally appropriate and with a strong story line conducive to discussions on values and emotions, the books encourage parents and children to lay the groundwork for reading. As with books in the Hebrew-speaking sector, the Arabic books are chosen by a selection committee composed of experts in child development, children’s literature and preschool education.
On the occasion of a visit this week by the Price family to the preschool, Keefah Masri Bassel, who teaches the 3- and 4-year-olds, said the program has transformed her classroom.
“The first time I held one of the books, I began to dream that every child would have a shelf in their room reserved for their books,” Bassel said.
A week later the teacher invited the parents to the school, where she taught them how to create a library corner at home. The parents helped the children transform T-shirts into book bags and create “This Library Belongs to…” signs.
When the children went outside for breakfast, a speech language expert discussed with the parents ways to cope with the differences between spoken and written Arabic, and how to best engage the children (allowing them to retell the book in their own words, for example). Together, they explored the parents’ guide at the back of the book.
Galina Vromen, executive director of the Grinspoon Foundation in Israel, said the Arabic-language program presented the organizers with some unique challenges. One of them is the dearth of quality Arabic children’s books that are accessible to the Israeli market.
Vromen said the program “is largely dependent on what’s produced here in Israel, Jordan and Egypt,” and noted that, due to political unrest, the annual Egyptian book fair, once the largest Arabic fair in the world, has been discontinued. Turmoil has also affected children’s book production in other nations, including Syria and Iraq.
Due to the Arab boycott of all things Israeli, some Arab publishers have refused to sell reprint rights to Israeli publishers, who repackage the books, with a parents’ guide, for the program.
That’s one reason the program has an interest in supporting the local Arab Israeli publishing industry, which clearly benefits from a sale of 45,000 copies, whether the book is an original or reprinted.
“We want strong readers, so we need locally made books,” Vromen said, adding that “there’s tremendous excitement” about the program in the Arab sector from publishers, teachers and parents.
These same teachers and parents say the literacy program is particularly important for Arab children because it introduces them to written Arab, which is different from spoken Arabic, at an early age.
“Our goal is to encourage reading readiness with exposure to classical Arabic,” said Vicky Glazer, the supervisor of Jaffa preschools.
Sandy Abu El Adas, a speech language pathologist from the Hirsh Childhood Development Center in Jaffa, said Arab children in Jaffa have fewer skills at the start of preschool than their Jewish counterparts due to socioeconomic gaps.
“Arab children in Jaffa are usually less prepared and less exposed to literature than Jewish children their age because of their families’ financial situation. Jews from the same socioeconomic level have the same problems.”
Fatma Abu Ahmed Kassem, national supervisor of preschools for the Arab sector, said the program’s emphasis on interaction with adults “is critical to learning. Reading books offers an opportunity for quality adult interaction with children at home and in the classroom.”
The program, Kassem said, “promotes and enhances a culture of expression and discussion, and raises the awareness of language and enriches language use. Exposing children to a variety of literary works of Arab literature and culture as well as world literature encourages children to become curious and enthusiastic readers.”
Watching as the preschoolers at one table created mouse masks and those at another pretended they were mice searching for food for the winter, Vromen expressed the hope that, next year, the program will be able to serve all 70,000 children attending government preschools.
That, she said, will depend on Ministry of Education funding and matching grants from the American foundations.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Also this week, Culture Editor Sandee Brawarsky on a debut collection of short stories by Molly Antopol; and are our students prepared to defend Israel? We explore the issue in a news story about Ramaz high schoolers' attempt to invite a leading advocate of the Palestinian cause, and in an Editorial.
BOOKS
When History Disrupts Dreams
The characters in Molly Antopol’s debut collection of ‘diasporic’ stories face a series of disconnects
Sandee Brawarsky
Culture Editor
At night, Talia and her sisters liked to sneak onto the kibbutz adjacent to their land and hang out in the date palms, climbing and balancing themselves while trying to steer clear of the thorns — they understood that whatever was said there stayed there. Everything in life seemed solvable among those trees. She also loved the walk back home in the dark, when it was impossible to distinguish between sky and hills.
Talia and the other characters that populate Molly Antopol’s outstanding debut collection of eight stories, “The UnAmericans” (Norton), struggle and sometimes stumble, as they experience some of life’s insolvable moments. Antopol captures their emotions, including the messy ones, with precision. She’s a writer with a big heart.
Historical events reverberate in the backgrounds of Antopol’s stories, set in Israel, California, New York, Prague, Ukraine and the forests of Eastern Europe, and the foregrounds are fleshed out with detail and bittersweet humor. Readers come to know about the grandparents, homes, habits and personal history of characters like the Russian-born actor who changes his name from Alexi to Alex and then back to Alexi and is imprisoned for his Communist leanings during the McCarthy era (which he had played up only to get a part in a movie); a grandmother who narrates her escape from Belarus during World War II; the families of party members who move together from crowded apartments in the Bronx to stucco duplexes painted in the optimistic pastels of Los Angeles and Talia, the young Israeli woman who moves back into her parent’s home when her job prospects in journalism narrow, and then meets a widower whose teenage daughter inspires a return to the date palms.
Some of the stories begin as though the reader is walking into an intimate conversation already underway, reminiscent of the great short story writer Grace Paley, who is a particular hero of Antopol’s. The endings are never predictable.
Antopol, 35, who teaches writing at Stanford University, was selected by the National Book Foundation as one of “5 Under 35” novelists to be honored. In an interview last week in the offices of The Jewish Week when Antopol was visiting New York City, she explains that while the stories — written over 10 years — move back and forward in time, and feature shifting voices and locales, a few questions and obsessions keep surfacing.
“For me, it’s what happens if you devote yourself to something that means everything to you, and then history changes and that loses its relevance. What do you do when the thing you’ve dedicated yourself to is over?” Her European dissidents who immigrate to the United States, Communist party members and partisan fighters experience that disconnect between their dreams and choices they’ve ultimately faced.
Antopol comes from a family of lively storytellers, and many of the stories were inspired in part by her family’s experience. She was born on the East Coast and her parents divorced when she was quite young. Her father is the historian and biographer Paul Johnson (whose book “Stalin: The Kremlin Mountaineer” is also published this month). With her mother, she spent her first few years living on a commune near New Haven, Conn. When she began school, they moved to California and she grew up in Los Angeles. Her mother’s parents, who also moved to California, were Communists, and surveillance and frequent visits by FBI agents were part of their lives. The writer’s great-grandmother Molly, who came from Antopol (in what’s now Belarus) to New York, lived in a Queens boardinghouse that was also a sweatshop. She became a union organizer.
“I’ve always been fascinated by family ancestry,” Antopol says. For each story, she did extensive research, spending time in Eastern Europe on research grants and summers in Israel with her husband Chanan Tigay, a college professor and writer.
“I love being in the archives, traveling, sitting in dusty places and looking at books with brittle pages. I love reading biographies and researching, to make myself informed about whatever political or historical time I’m writing about. From there a lot of the emotional truths about my characters emerge,” she says. Each story took no less than 10 drafts and about a year to complete.
As a college student, Antopol first traveled to Israel to spend time studying at Hebrew University. She connected with the country in such a powerful way that she moved back immediately after graduating from college and had a variety of jobs, including working and living in a state-run retirement home in Tel Aviv. There, she grew very close to the residents — she hasn’t yet figured out a way to bring that experience into her fiction.
In December 2000, she attended a party with a friend in Haifa and offered to help the older woman at the sink with the dishes. The woman asked Molly where she was from in that deep way that implied what came before the U.S., and when she replied that her family came from a small town called Antopol that had been mostly destroyed, the woman said that she too was from Antopol. The old woman shared memories of the town, and then introduced Molly to her son, who gave her a copy of the town’s yizkor book, or memorial book, with its local history. That meeting inspired Antopol to begin writing these stories.
Her approach is different from previous generations of Jewish writers who may have written of Yiddish speaking and other neighborhoods that were distinctly Jewish, that may no longer exist. She sees her book as “diasporic,” connecting to Israel and Europe. She feels a real kinship with her generation of Israeli writers as well as those coming out of Europe and the former Soviet Union.
“I can’t imagine writing something that didn’t address Jewish themes and questions. It’s such a big part of my life, a lot of the way in which I experience the world,” she says.
It’s easy to imagine the stories in “The UnAmericans” as theater pieces, with an ensemble of actors taking on Antopol’s likable crew: Israeli brothers in love with the same woman (“Minor Heroics”), a daughter not included in the public largesse of her mother’s will (“Retrospective”), a New York dry cleaner who hoped to honeymoon in Tahiti not Ukraine (“The Old World”), the young girl who watches her widower father shoved into the back of a police car and the young man always watching out for her (“Duck and Cover”). Antopol says she knows exactly how their voices would sound.
editor@jewishweek.org
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NEW YORK
Ramaz Israel Row Points To Larger Trends
In extending invitation to Khalidi, Modern Orthodox students seen seeking wider view on Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
The decision by a prominent Manhattan day school to rescind a speaking invitation offered to an Arab-American critic of Israel, and some students’ online effort to overturn the administration’s cancellation decision, is the latest sign of many young American Jews’ desire for what they consider a more-balanced education about Israel.
Rashid Khalidi, professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, was invited to speak last week at Ramaz, a flagship Modern Orthodox day school on the Upper East Side, by the school Ramaz Politics Society, which was formed two years ago. Paul Shaviv, the head of school who had been out of town when Khalidi’s speech was announced, cancelled the academic’s appearance, traveling to Khalidi’s office to explain his decision in person.
Khalidi’s reputation as an outspoken defender of the Palestinian cause would cause a controversy that would “massively overshadow any conversation” about Israeli-Palestinian relations “and make an educational experience impossible,” Shaviv wrote in a message to Ramaz parents and faculty members. “Professor Khalidi, who is an international personality of great political stature, was not the right partner for ‘dialogue’ with high school students.”
In response, the Politics Society (known at Ramaz as RamPo), initiated a petition drive on the Internet that urges Shaviv to “reverse his prohibition.” Several hundred people had signed the petition by early this week, but there was no way to determine how many have a connection to Ramaz.
The controversy over Khalidi’s speech, and the Politics Society’s invitation, are a reflection of the school’s balanced approach to education about Israel and of many Jewish students’ desire for a nuanced presentation about the Jewish state, observers say.
According to a 2011 study by Hebrew University’s Melton Centre for Jewish Education, a growing number of day school students reject what they view as one-sided, pro-Israel “propaganda” they learn in the classroom, and seek out other perspectives.
The invitation to Khalidi appears to be a case in point.
“We are a school of diverse views and diverse opinions,” encouraging students to study subjects — including the Middle East situation — from many perspectives, Shaviv told The Jewish Week in an interview. But, he added, Khalidi, “a controversial, highly partisan character,” would not present “the right balance for dealing with high school students.”
Matthew Hiltzik, a Ramaz alumnus and father of three current students at the school, said he supports both the students’ initial invitation to Khalidi and the administration’s cancellation of the invitation.
“Clearly, the students felt comfortable seeking out other points of view” about Israel, said Hiltzik, who is a public relations professional and member of The Jewish Week’s board of directors. “I think it’s great that the kids did it. The school … unequivocally a pro-Zionist school … did not say no to having other points of view expressed; it simply raised reservations about this particular person.”
Hiltzik said most fellow alumni and Ramaz parents with whom he has been in contact agree that Shaviv made the right decision. “Most feel it was not appropriate to have Mr. Khalidi participate.”
Shaviv said he has received some 200 email messages on this topic from parents of Ramaz students, “overwhelmingly supportive” of his decision.
The decision by Ramaz to disinvite Khalidi comes as debate over Israel continues to roil the Jewish community. Some congregants at popular mega-synagogue B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side have expressed anger in recent weeks about two of their spiritual leaders signing on to a letter criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio for statements he made that were seen as favorable to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. (See story on page 1.) And on the college front, the Vassar Jewish Union last week became the second school to declare itself an “Open Hillel,” stating that it is rejecting Hillel International’s guidelines banning partnerships with groups that support the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions movement) against Israel. (See story on page 9.) Swarthmore made a similar break with Hillel late last year.
Khalidi, born in New York to a Saudi father and a Lebanese-American mother, is a respected scholar and frequent guest on television and radio shows, where he criticizes the Israeli “occupation” and supports Palestinians’ armed resistance.
During Barack Obama’s first campaign for the presidency, Khalidi’s close ties with the then-senator were often cited as evidence of the candidate’s anti-Israel leanings.
Khalidi, in an email message to The Jewish Week, declined to comment on his cancelled speech at Ramaz. The student leaders of RamPo also declined to be interviewed indivisually.
Khalidi is “certainly not the ‘anti-Semite’ some people made him out to be,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where Khalidi spoke in 2009.
“We invited [Khalidi] after we felt he was unfairly maligned during the 2008 presidential election,” Rabbi Bachman said. Khalidi, in his remarks at the synagogue, “was measured, informative and gracious,” the rabbi said. “He was critical of Israel and understood the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a ‘pro-Palestinian’ perspective, as I understand the conflict from a ‘pro-Israel’ perspective.
“It was our goal to model that from a synagogue pulpit, a community could have a civil and respectful dialogue about Israel,” Rabbi Bachman said. “As a lover of Israel, I think the very act of not talking to those with whom we disagree causes more harm than good.”
“The Ramaz Politics Society will continue to stay committed to encouraging open dialogue in our community,” an email message from the presidents of the organization states. “While we disagree with the Head of School’s decision on this matter, we look forward to working together with the Ramaz administration to expose students to outside perspectives.”
RamPo and the school’s administration are planning a future program that will present alternative perspectives on the Middle East situation. “The partner in dialogue,” Shaviv said, “will be more balanced.”
steve@jewishweek.org
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EDITORIAL
Who’s Teaching (Defending) Zionism Anymore?
Israel is under attack. Not across the ocean but right here in New York. The mayor of New York has been roundly criticized by some major figures in our community for his embrace of AIPAC, the Israel lobbying group whose politics have always been in sync with Israel’s democratically elected government, left or right. This was a challenge not to any Israeli policy but to AIPAC itself. As Reform leader Rabbi Eric Yoffie countered, “A Washington without AIPAC would not mean an Israel at peace; it would mean an Israel isolated and vulnerable”
This week, Lucette Lagnado writes in The Wall Street Journal, “I was contacted by a fellow Vassar alumna [who] wanted to know if I was aware that our genteel alma mater had become a hotbed of anti-Israel, pro-boycotts sentiment.” Not a week goes by without reports, somewhere in the community, of boycotts and similar delegitimization.
And at one of our city’s great religious Zionist day schools, more than 150 students signed a petition to invite Rashid Khalidi, a Columbia University academic and sharp critic of Israel, to share his ideas with the school’s politics club. The headmaster explained that he was all for discussion and debate but that this was not the appropriate occasion. While the school’s overruling of the club’s invitation has caused an uproar in some quarters, perhaps the root issue is our insecurity in defending and asserting Israel’s case.
What should frighten the traditional Zionist community is how ill-equipped we, and our schools, seem to be in teaching students to recognize threats and respond, let alone training our students to take the pro-Israel initiative. Most parents know all too well that modern Israeli history is barely taught in even our best Jewish schools. Marching in the Salute to Israel parade is nice, but it is not a curriculum. Too many of our students, some even after 12 years of day school, can’t identify, let alone debate, pivotal moments and ideas that they will be confronted with in colleges where even the Hillel may no longer be a refuge. Will we see more “Open Hillels,” open to advocates of boycotts and what once would have been seen as defamation, beyond the bounds of reasonable differences?
The Jewish Week is proud of its Write On For Israel program, which for more than a decade has been seeking to educate a select group of high school juniors and seniors about the realities of the Mideast today, instilling in them the knowledge and confidence to deal with the issues when they get to campus. But more must be done in our community.
We have been arguing among ourselves about Israel for decades; no harm in that, it’s healthy, but this is more menacing. There is a ferocity to criticism of Israel these days, a tenaciousness that goes beyond an immediate critique of this policy or that, an energy that the traditional Zionists can’t seem to match these days.
It’s one thing to be unable to educate our enemies. It’s far more troubling when we can’t or won’t even educate ourselves — our children — to confront these attacks with the information and self-assurance that should rightfully be ours.
editor@jewishweek.org
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Enjoy the read as you hunker down for another "polar vortex" weekend, and Shabbat shalom,
Gary Rosenblatt
P.S. Please check our website anytime for breaking news and exclusive videos, blogs, and opinion and advice columns.
http://www.thejewishweek.com/
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Between the Lines - Gary Rosenblatt
Fuel For Debate Over Rabbis' Role
Where do you draw the line between a rabbi’s freedom to preach and his or her responsibility to maintain a cohesive congregation?
That is a topic of internal debate still swirling within B’nai Jeshurun, the popular mega-synagogue on the Upper West Side known for its joyful, spiritual services, progressive advocacy of causes like gay rights and caring for the needy — and, unfortunately for some members — its three senior rabbis’ high-profile criticism of Israeli policy on the Palestinian issue.
This past week several notable members resigned in response to Rabbis Rolando Matalon and Felicia Sol signing on to a recent public letter criticizing Mayor Bill de Blasio for his support of AIPAC, the official pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington. (Rabbi Marcello Bronstein was said to be out of town when the letter was circulated.)
Other members are on the verge of resigning, and several BJ congregants I spoke with said they were weighing a similar move. They are deeply pained by the two rabbis’ action, particularly since this was not the first time they made headlines for taking a controversial stand on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and causing dissension in the non-denominational congregation of some 1,740 households.
In December 2012, after hailing as a “historic moment” a United Nations resolution elevating the Palestinians to nonmember status — which touched off criticism from many congregants — Rabbis Matalon and Sol, along with their colleague, Rabbi Bronstein, wrote to express “regret [for] the feelings of alienation” within the congregation.
It is believed that scores of members resigned at the time. Others, like Sam Levine, a BJ congregant for 25 years, who said he was “livid” at the rabbis’ actions, held back. They did so in part because they felt the rabbis, in frank, emergency meetings with critics, were sincerely apologetic, and in part because the members loved the teachings of the rabbis, the spirituality of the prayer services and the sense of community within BJ.
That was more than a year ago.
The last straw for Levine came with the recent anti-AIPAC letter, though. Last Tuesday evening he wrote a long letter of resignation to the rabbis on behalf of his family — his children and wife, Laurie Blitzer, a vice chair of Birthright Israel, among her many affiliations in the community. Levine wrote the rabbis that he joined BJ because of their “extraordinary talents in making the spiritual elements of Judaism relevant and meaningful,” but that their positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were creating “painful disagreements” and “extraordinary tension.”
Those positions over the last several years, he said, included their “participating in a Palestinian forum airing grievances against Israel … publicly bashing Israel’s ‘cruelty’ toward the ‘peace-loving innocents of Gaza,’ and of course your letter celebrating the declaration” regarding Palestinian nonmember status at the UN.
More than a year after that major flare-up, the rabbis’ decision to criticize the mayor for supporting AIPAC was “unforgivable, inexcusable,” Levine told me, because “they took advantage of their extraordinary platform and instead of strengthening the Jewish people, they do the opposite.” (At a private AIPAC meeting in New York, de Blasio was quoted as saying that City Hall was always open to AIPAC and that he would “happily” stand with the group anytime and anyplace.)
Eve Birnbaum, a BJ member for 16 years who almost resigned last year over the UN flap, said she was “emotionally exhausted from expressing the same arguments and objections to the rabbis’ destructive actions and statements — in letters and e-mails to the rabbis and correspondence among like-minded congregants.” Her letter of resignation last week consisted of just a sentence or two announcing her family’s decision.
In an interview, she said there was much she admired about the rabbis and that she cherished the warm relationship Rabbi Matalon had with her children, who had their bar and bat mitzvahs at BJ. But she said the rabbis’ views on Israel were “antithetical to me” and that as a result of their insistence on speaking out as they have, “we felt like outsiders, and my kavanah [spiritual intention] was broken each time an anti-Israel political missile was launched from the bimah during services.”
She added that many people come to BJ for its warmth and spiritual services, not to hear about Mideast politics.
“How could they [the rabbis] break up our [congregational] family?” she asked. “I hope they will rethink their impact on the congregation.”
Birnbaum does not know where the family will pray now. For the time being, “I’ll be a wandering Jew,” she said.
‘Wrestling With The Issues’
Is this about rabbinical freedom of speech, misperceptions of AIPAC, signing on to a letter that contained supporters of the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, the common practice of disgruntled congregants leaving a synagogue, or all of the above?
Birnbaum and other members who voiced their criticism to the rabbis received a brief email this week from Rabbis Matalon and Sol saying, “I care about your feelings and concern,” and “I will be calling you next week so we can have a personal conversation about the issues you have raised.”
The rabbis did not respond to requests for an interview, and the congregation has taken no official position on their signing on to the letter criticizing de Blasio.
Jeanie Blaustein, president of the board of BJ, responded to an interview request with the following e-mail: “There is a wide variety of viewpoints in the American Jewish community about what is needed to secure Israel’s future. The challenge before all of us is to develop ways of speaking so that we can listen to others’ points of view on such complex issues.
“It requires all of us to stretch. I am proud to be the president of a congregation that wrestles with these issues, and we will continue to work hard at the vital mission of deepening our engagement and commitment to the people and state of Israel.”
Critics blame the board for allowing these issues to have festered for years, resulting in occasional emergency board meetings and press coverage that they say has further split the congregation, especially at a time when it is being called on to raise tens of millions of dollars to renovate its recently purchased building. Some members on the left have encouraged the rabbis to continue to speak out on issues of conscience and not be swayed by detractors. Other members insist that whether or not they agree with the rabbis’ views on the Mideast conflict, as clergy they have the right and responsibility to give voice to their moral positions.
It may well be, though, that a majority of BJ members are not upset, or even aware, of the recent disagreement. Anne Mintz, a member for more than 10 years, wrote me a note on Sunday to question The Jewish Week’s previous coverage of the AIPAC-de Blasio incident. “Where’s the news here?” she wrote. “The political leanings and activism of the BJ clergy are long and widely known” and only “a sliver of the BJ membership” was “annoyed,” she said, adding that the matter “wasn’t even news inside the congregation.”
If accurate, perhaps that speaks to BJ’s size and diversity. Many believe that while the majority of the congregation is left of center politically, including those most active in a variety of social action projects, a significant number of members who attend Shabbat hand holiday services regularly reflect a wider range of Mideast views. And those I spoke with stressed how alienated non-left members have felt for some time now when it comes to hearing the rabbis speak out on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, rarely celebrating Jerusalem’s actions.
One member said her close relatives who made aliyah from the U.S. are “demoralized” when they hear and read about “what the rabbis of such a major New York synagogue are saying” on these issues.
Jeff Feig, a member of BJ since 1994, says the congregation is “a big part of my life and brought me closer to Judaism.” But he was deeply troubled at the rabbis’ support for the UN action and, as a supporter of AIPAC, he thinks the rabbis see the pro-Israel lobby as hawkish rather than bipartisan, and morally unacceptable. He is considering leaving the synagogue.
Mark Pearlman, a member for 17 years, said he was pained and conflicted over the recurring controversies and weighing whether to remain in the synagogue. (Pearlman has supported a number of initiatives with The Jewish Week and with B’nai Jeshurun.) He noted that the rabbis’ political advocacy on “these sensitive and explosive issues take away from the prayer service and spiritual environment” that his family so much enjoyed.
“The synagogue, in a strange way, appears to be consciously trying to divide its own community,” he said. Once proud of his affiliation with BJ, Pearlman said he feels “embarrassed” at times, and asserted that the congregation “needs to decide what it wants to be and what it views as important” so members can have a clear choice of staying or leaving.
A woman who has been a member for 15 years and whose great-grandfather was a founder of the congregation, said she now feels “tremendous shame and disappointment” in “a place I once considered my spiritual home.” She said the synagogue was “not a place for politics,” and that the rabbis are “embarrassing the congregation” and “the Jewish community.”
Anne Mintz isn’t persuaded by these complaints. When I spoke to her the day after I received her note, she said that every synagogue has members who leave or threaten to, and that “when you join BJ you know the rabbis talk about politics, and if you don’t like it, maybe it’s not the shul for you.”
What she worries about, though, is that other rabbis who read of the flak the BJ rabbis are getting will be that much “less willing to take controversial stands in the hopes of guiding congregants through the difficult issues.
“We need rabbis with more moral courage,” not less, she said.
‘Dialogue Or Dogmatism’
Jewish leaders since biblical times have stirred controversy for speaking out. Moses complained to God about the demands of the Israelites, and the prophets who chastised the people as sinners were harassed and ignored.
Even harsh critics of the BJ rabbis believe the spiritual leaders are sincere in their love of Israel and believe it is part of their moral duty to speak out against perceived injustices against the Palestinians.
Rabbi David-Seth Kirshner, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, acknowledges that “it’s a delicate line for rabbis who know that their congregants thirst for them to stand up and not waffle” on important issues and yet “not stand so tall that they drown out” other voices.
“I’m torn as to whether this issue [at BJ] is about freedom of speech or exercising poor judgment,” he said, noting that a synagogue should be “a place for dialogue rather than dogmatism.”
He questioned “the process” of the rabbis signing on to a public statement, along with known BDS supporters, rather than, for example, addressing the topic from the pulpits, though that route has been problematic in the past as well.
As a supporter of AIPAC, he says there is “gross misunderstanding of AIPAC in the Jewish community,” noting that “this is the same AIPAC that supports liberal governments in Israel” as well.
Rabbi Kirshner said he hears from rabbinic colleagues that “talking about Israel from the pulpit is the third rail,” but he disagrees, estimating that about one-third of his sermons are devoted in some way to Israel. “It’s the core of our existence, the fuel of our shul,” Temple Emanu-el, a Conservative congregation in Closter, N.J.
He said that if he were to chastise his children or criticize America, a listener shouldn’t be able to question his underlying love for his family or country. And if that is not the case — if, for example, one’s criticism of Israel did not seem rooted in affection — “that’s a problem.” He added that one’s Zionism should not be contingent on a set of specific issues.
Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, says he never tells rabbis, publicly, what they should do. “I whisper in their ear.”
He demurred from discussing the specifics of the BJ conflict, but did say, “At the end of the day, you want to keep your congregation together. Where are you without community?”
Gary@jewishweek.org
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NEWS and FEATURES
Leaders of Vassar College's Student Union say their "Open Hillel" affiliation reflects "values we were already practicing."
Another 'Open Hillel'
Vassar becomes the second school to reject organization's rules governing acceptable Israel-related speech.
Amy Sara Clark - Staff Writer
A second college’s Jewish student organization has joined the “Open Hillel” movement, rejecting Hillel International’s guidelines banning partnerships with groups that support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
The Vassar Jewish Union announced the decision on its website on Feb. 18, two and a half months after Swarthmore became the first school to repudiate the guidelines. Vassar is located in Poughkeepsie, 90 minutes north of New York City.
“We believe that this policy censors and delegitimizes the diverse range of personal and political opinions held by Jewish students,” the group wrote on their website.
“We believe that Hillel International’s goal to ‘inspire every Jewish college student to develop a meaningful and enduring relationship to Israel’ does not represent the diverse opinions of young American Jews,” the statement continues. “We believe that fostering a pluralistic community and supporting all Jewish life on campus cannot be achieved with Hillel International’s Israel Guidelines in place.”
Naomi Dann, VJU’s president told The Jewish Week that her organization aligned itself more closely with the principles of the “Open Hillel” movement than of Hillel International.
“We thought that the values of the Open Hillel movement were already values that we were practicing and we wanted to make a statement,” she said.
Students at Harvard University began the Open Hillel movement in November of 2012 in response the Hillel International’s guidelines, which were adopted in 2010. In addition to banning partnerships with groups supporting the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement, Hillel-affiliated groups are not allowed to partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers” that “Deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders; Delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel … [or] Exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”
Harvard student Rachel Sandalow-Ash said she helped start the Open Hillel movement because the guidelines are “counterproductive.”
“Every campus Palestinian group supports BDS. What that means is there can’t be any dialogues with Palestinian groups,” she said in a telephone interview.
She said has been in contact with students from several Hillel-affiliated groups that are considering joining the movement, and that the organization has a core group of a few dozen organizers around the country and a mailing list of several thousand.
Hillel International President Eric Fingerhut responded to Vassar’s announcement by saying in a written statement that while his group agrees “that Hillel should and will always provide students with an open and pluralistic forum where they can explore issues and opinions related to their Jewish identity,” Hillel “will not, however, give a platform to groups or individuals to attack the Jewish people, Jewish values or the Jewish state’s right to exist.”
Sandalow-Ash doesn’t contest Hillel’s right to create guidelines for the groups that use its name or receive funding.
“We’re not challenging what Hillel has a right to do. It can do whatever it wants,” she said. “The question is what it should do. Hillel as the Foundation of Jewish Life on Campus should be a space that nurtures the fostering of Jewish identities. … I think that is the more important value.”
“Cosponsoring something with another group doesn’t mean that you agree with the other group,” she added. “Groups cosponsor events with each other all the time. The Democrats and the Republicans cosponsor events.”
Fingerhut has reached out to Dann and other VJU leaders asking to discuss the issue in person, and Dann said she has agreed.
Meanwhile, a group of Boston University students have started “Safe Hillel” in opposition to the “Open Hillel” movement.
“Hillel should not have to change its mission in order to accommodate those who don’t agree with it,” co-founder Raphael Fils told The Jewish Press.
On its website, the group says that “College campuses allow for debate and open discussion, but Hillel is a place for those that support Israel to feel welcomed and safe on the many campuses that have become anti-Israel.”
amy.jewishweek@gmail.com
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Food and Wine
Kosher BBQ from top going clockwise: pastrami; brisket; beef rib; chopped brisket. Lauren Rothman
Kosher Barbecue Pop-Up Seeks A Permanent Home
Izzy's BBQ Addiction brings Texas-style flavor to kosher meat.
Lauren Rothman - Food and Wine Editor
Growing up in Midwood, Brooklyn, the Eidelman brothers ate a lot of meat. Their mother, Sara, an accomplished cook, was born in Israel to Holocaust survivor parents whose budget didn’t often allow for such a luxury, and when Sara had her boys, she wanted to give them all she could.
“She used to buy us filet mignon,” Sruly Eidelman, now 26 and living in Crown Heights, said.
As a result of their carnivorous diet, Sruly and his brother became young men who were pretty into meat. From that beginning at his mother's table, Eidelman — known as Izzy to his non-Jewish friends — has become the force behind Izzy's BBQ Addiction, a Texas-style kosher barbecue spot that he’s currently running as a pop-up.
About once a week, Eidelman, who has a day job in quality control at a custom cabinetry company, rises before dawn, heads down to his parents’ place in Midwood, and loads his two smokers there: with brisket, with beef ribs, with chicken or whatever else he feels like. As he’s cooking, he posts the menu on his Facebook page, and orders — mostly from his friends and family, at this point — begin pouring in. When the meat is ready — sometimes up to 16 hours later — Eidelman loads up his car and makes his deliveries, mostly in the Crown Heights area.
“Here I can cook up to 40 or 50 pounds of meat at a time,” Eidelman said, pointing to the two bullet-shaped smokers that he loads with charcoal and hickory, cooking the meat over slow, indirect heat and steam. Though his menu varies, he’s got a few staples: dry-cured pastrami and brisket, rubbed with “salt and pepper and other secret spices;” smoky beef ribs; and chopped pulled brisket, which he mixes with his specialty barbecue sauce: a hybrid of a Memphis- and Kansas City-styles, he said, made with brown sugar, cayenne, and real maple syrup.
The business has its origins in a the brothers' love of the show “BBQ Pitmasters” — then airing on the Discovery channel — and they wondered, when seeing the juicy, flavorful meat and all the fun that went into making it, why the style of barbecue was never applied to kosher meat.
Today, Eidelman is a bonafide BBQ expert — a non-kosher Jewish reporter found his rich, tender meats to be startlingly similar in flavor and texture to their treif counterparts — but it wasn’t an easy road. After all, a year ago, Eidelman was a complete novice, having never tasted barbecue before. Luckily for Eidelman, he found Ari White, the El Paso, Texas-born chef and owner of Wandering ‘Que, a kosher barbecue company that also “pops up” around New York City, at synagogues and Jewish cultural centers as well as at barbecue competitions and street fairs. Eidelman’s barbecue education began the moment he headed uptown and tried a bite of White’s ‘que.
“I absolutely loved those flavors,” Sruly said. “I thought, ‘This has to become part of my life.’”
A year — and many dog-eared cookbooks — later, Izzy’s BBQ Addiction is a huge part of his life. With the work he pours into it in addition to his job, Eidelman ends up working 70-80 hours per week. But, he said, it’s all worth it.
“I think that this kind of food is something that is missing from the Jewish cuisine,” he said. “It’s simple and it’s hearty,” he said, adding that while there are a handful of great kosher restaurants in the city, there are few that have the down-home, easygoing atmosphere that barbecue lends itself to. To that end, Eidelman is currently seeking a brick-and-mortar home for his company, ideally in the Crown Heights area, where many of his young foodie friends live.
He's not the only young religious foodie dreaming of restaurant glory. Itta Werdiger-Roth, who used to run a kosher supper club out of her home in Ditmas Park, opened Mason and Mug, a small plates restaurant, in Prospect Heights. Yuda Schlass runs a similar pop-up out of his Crown Heights home, and is also scouting real estate in the hope of hanging out his shingle.
“I want this to be a place where you can sit down, order a great craft beer, listen to some bluegrass music and talk with your friends,” Eidelman said. “And I think that more Jews need to try this kind of food.”
After all, there’s not all that much separating great barbecue from the long-cooking, deeply-flavored foods that Jewish cuisine has long been known for.
“It’s all about taking cheap cuts of meat and turning them into something delicious,” Eidelman said.
For more information or to place an order, visit the Izzy's BBQ Addiction Facebook page.
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Travel - Buenos Aires
A plaque commemorating slain Israeli leader Yitzchak Rabin in Buenos Aires' Retiro neighborhood. Caroline Lagnado/JW
Where Jewish Culture Runs Deep
There are a few reasons why a New Yorker will feel at home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the second-largest city in South America: he has to negotiate busy streets and assertive natives, and take the “subte” (the subway) to get around. He can always find pizza and he gets to choose from an abundant roster of cultural events. But with its decaying colonial architecture and unique blend of gentility and bellicosity, Buenos Aires is also a true mix of Europe and South America.
Since it is located in the Southern Hemisphere, Argentina’s seasons are opposite to ours, which makes it a great winter escape.
New York Jews will feel especially comfortable in the city’s deep-rooted community, the largest in Latin America, and its many synagogues, restaurants and social clubs.
Argentina’s Jewish population grew during the 19th century, thanks to extensive land purchases made by the German-Jewish philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch in an effort to help Jews in Eastern Europe. Tens of thousands of Jews later immigrated as a result of the Holocaust. Paradoxically, hundreds of German war criminals were also admitted, including Adolf Eichmann.
Sadly, Buenos Aires’ Jews have been hit with their share of tragedies. Over a third of the tens of thousands of Argentinians kidnapped during the Dirty War, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, were Jewish. In 1992 the Israeli embassy was bombed, killing 29. The AMIA (amia.org.ar) (the Argentine Israelite Mutual Aid Association), the Jewish community center, was attacked two years later, killing 87.
Despite this, the 250,000-strong community is robust and diverse, and it offers much for tourists to enjoy. Due to security precautions, contact a congregation to say you plan to join it for services.
Comunidad Amijai (amijai.org) (pronounced Amichai), located in the city’s small Chinatown, is a large and extremely modern Conservative synagogue, its members well heeled, its Friday-night services packed. Rabbi Dario Feguin, a disciple of Rabbi Marshall Meyer (who rejuvenated B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side), regularly leads lively discussions with the congregation, making this visitor wish she spoke Spanish. Centro Comunitario Chalom (chalom.com.ar) is a good Sephardic option in the beautiful Belgrano neighborhood, a quiet area of stately apartment buildings and tasteful shops. Jabad (Chabad) is quite popular, with 25 centers in Buenos Aires alone, many of them in its best neighborhoods.
Young, observant travelers should look into staying at Iaacob House Hostel (iaacobhouse.com.ar). Located in Palermo, it offers single-sex accommodations and a kosher kitchen. Though I did not stay there, I was invited to its communal Shabbat dinner, where I had to switch into Hebrew mode to communicate. Most of the 30 or so affable young, religious Israelis who crowded the table were on post-army tours of South America.
Once (ohn-sey), the city’s traditional Jewish neighborhood, is home to even more synagogues as well as a number of kosher restaurants; one is Succath David, a large steakhouse with an extensive menu including delicious chorizo steak and parilla (pronounced “parisha”) tabletop grill options. The Abasto Mall is located on the Once-Almagro border and has the only kosher McDonald’s outside of Israel.
Located in the city center, the Libertad Synagogue has been a Buenos Aires fixture since the 19th century. It offers a daily minyan, both traditional and egalitarian Shabbat services, and houses the city’s Jewish Museum, which presents information about Argentina’s rich Jewish history. The Museo del Holocausto, the Buenos Aires Shoah museum, is a short walk away. A current exhibit there is titled, in translation, “Adolph Eichmann/ He Lived Among Us.”
A visit to the synagogue and museums could easily be paired with a tour of the Teatro Colón, which is, acoustically, considered to be one of the best theaters in the world, especially for opera; a stop at the Obelisk; the Plaza de Mayo square and La Casa Rosada, the executive office. If you’re in the area in the evening, stroll along Avenida Corrientes (“The Street That Never Sleeps”), and take in some tango (see more about tango below).
Nearby is Puerto Madero, the newly developed port area. Cafés and restaurants face the water as well as the Puente de la Mujer, a pedestrian bridge designed by Spanish “starchitect” Santiago Calatrava, who also has to his credit two bridges in Israel and the new PATH station here. The area’s Buenos Aires Ecological Reserve has nature trails and opportunities for biking, walking and birding.
Across town, make sure to stroll in Palermo Viejo, which contains art galleries, boutiques, bars and cafés. If you’re homesick, Palermo Soho and Hollywood will remind you of America (at least in name).
If time permits, spend an afternoon outside the city In Le Tigre, situated on the river delta, an hour train ride away. Boat trips and rental kayaks are available, and there are restaurants on the water.
Iguazu is a longer excursion from Buenos Aires, where one can see exquisite waterfalls. The tropical province of Misiones, and the monumental waterfalls of its Iguazu River on the Brazilian border are a short flight away.
Since many Argentinians have Italian lineage, Italian food is plentiful. Local dishes include empanadas; chipas, cheese-bread snacks; medialunas, sweet, doughy croissants and alfajores cookies. Keep in mind that porteños (Buenos Aires natives) tend to eat dinner on the later side, so a restaurant’s peak hour will be 9 to 10 p.m. Be sure to try mate (mah-teh), a strong tea that is sipped through a metal straw called a bombilla. A common sight is an Argentinian with a thermos in one hand and a mate cup in the other, who is constantly replacing the hot water. Don’t be surprised if someone offers you a sip of his mate; it is typically drunk communally. Visit a peña, or club, such as La Peña de Colorado, for the opportunity to see traditional music and dance.
A trip to Buenos Aires should include a tango show. La Confitería Ideal, an elegant, old salon de tango, and La Esquina Carlos Gardel are great places to catch one. For the tourist who would like to try a tango lesson, there are private and group options. La Catedral is an unpretentious and inexpensive venue that has a vegetarian restaurant. Academia Nacional del Tango on Avenida de Mayo offers group lessons and is conveniently located near Café Tortoni, an elegant and historic coffee house and hangout for the city’s native and visiting intellectuals since it was founded more than 150 years ago.
editor@jewishweek.org
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