And …. Done!
Only took me two weeks, but I'm finally done with my haul from Israel after posting the video below, a little culinary tour of Jerusalem. Maybe the beginnings of my future in production for the Jewish Food Network.
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Guest Post: Final Thoughts from Panama
Rabbi Joshua Kullock with some final observation about the UJCL convention, held last week in Panama.
The UJCL convention is now over, but the images and sensations of these last days keep ringing in our heads. For the first time in history, the host congregation in Panama received seven different rabbis from abroad. On Friday night, all those rabbis sang together, and on Saturday morning they taught Torah from several different perspectives.
For the first time ever, the event was transmitted through Twitter and broadcast live for all those who didn't make it to Panama. This is a huge leap towards meeting the challenge of reaching all those Jews on the continent who don't have the means to participate in this kind of event. Maybe in the U.S. it's not so unusual to broadcast or Tweet an event, but down here, this was a real novelty.
At the convention, we were able to present the first book on the weekly Torah portion written in Spanish, in this region, and by the five rabbis working here. For those who don't know much about Central America, let me tell you that this is a very unusual endeavor. We used to live on translated stuff abroad, and for the first time in many, many years, we managed to write a native commentary on the Torah. We presented this book also in English for the English-speaking congregations.
Personally, organizing this event had a special flavor, since I had the honor of working with Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, the Panamanian community's rabbi and the man in charge of the local organizing committee, who 17 years ago prepared me for my bar mitzvah. Almost two decades later, we work together in strengthening Jewish life here, and even though it is a bit personal, I think I cannot go without mentioning this.
The numbers speak for themselves: 177 attendees from 15 countries, each bring his or her own color, voice, and insights. For us, it is a noteworthy figure that we will try to improve at our next convention, which will be held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in January 2012. If you want to be involved in forging this region's future, you are more than welcome to join us.
Finally, I want to thank Ben for enabling us to share what is happening in Central America. As I wrote in my first post, it is not easy to sustain Jewish life at the margins. But if we are clever enough to build bridges, to open ourselves to real encounters, we'll be able not only to maintain but also to continue strengthening a vivid and transcendent Judaism in each and every place we step a foot in.
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Guest Post: Yes, We Can!
Abundant optimism from Panama. Joshua Kullock (second from left in the picture, and findable on Twitter: @kullock) reports from the first full plenary day on Thursday. He's promised us some more color in his next post, but in the meantime, here's the rundown.
Yes, we can. And we did.
The 12th UJCL Convention started this morning [Jan. 29] with a series of plenary sessions and workshops aimed to address some tough questions and to offer some challenging ideas for developing healthy and vibrant Jewish institutions in Central America and abroad.
During the opening session, Dr. Fabian Triskier, associate director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Latin American and the Caribbean, delved into the social action programs that his institution developed in order to deal with the economic crisis in Argentina during 2001. He also gave a theoretical framework to understand why tzedakah (charity) must be a central pillar in our organizations. Social justice, said Triskier, is not only an act of profound love but also of commitment to the law, and to the desire to amend what has being broken. Moreover, he affirmed that consequently "not every donation can be considered as tzedakah" -- that is, not every act of charity helps to mend the social order.
At the same session, Rabbi Joel Oseran, vice president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and the man in charge of the organization's international development, based his presentation on six pillars for successful community building, and stated, "Synagogues have to be purpose driven, not program driven."
Finally, the plenary ended with Rony Steinitz, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel in Latin America, who spoke on the role Israel has in our own institutions.
The day continued with a plenary on women and leadership and exposed the main challenges that we have down here giving women more opportunities for equal participation, especially in ritual issues.
But the most important event of the day was the last plenary session, where Raul Gottlieb, vice president of the World Union of Progressive Judaism in Latin America; Alan Silberman, president of Masorti Olami; and myself shared some thoughts about the importance of umbrella organizations setting a great example of what we can achieve working together in this particular region.
"Yes, we can" was the message that we said aloud. And, "Yes, we must," because pluralism and joint work are the only ways for the significant continuity of Judaism in our faraway lands.
Living at the margins of the Jewish map, at this gathering we are trying to show the world that there are places and specific projects where we can all work together, putting aside all the rest. From the UJCL region up to the rest of the world, we keep telling everybody that it is possible to build bridges between umbrella organizations for the sake of a vivid Judaism. And if this was the only achievement of this convention (which it's not!), we would have to say Dayenu.
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Guest Post: In the beginning, it was remembrance
Rabbi Joshua Kullock, the executive director of the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean, continues his guest series from Panama with coverage of the opening night of the organization's convention. If you're a Spanish-speaker, the plenaries are being broadcast live as we speak at the convention blog, as well as tweeted with the hashtag #ujcl2010.
The voices of the past were heard at a very emotive opening of the 12th UJCL convention. Commemorating a new anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, this first event -- co-organized by the UJCL, the U.N. in Panama, and Friends of Yad Vashem -- recalled those who had perished under Nazism and Fascism.
Some 200 men and women gathered at a theater in the center of Panama City for the homage. The U.N. representative read a message from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Yoed Magen, Israel's ambassador to Panama, also spoke. Then candles were lit and a documentary film, "A Bissele Mazl" ("A bit of luck"), was screened, showing the stories of five Holocaust survivors that had come to Panama to start over.
Far from Europe, this solemn commemoration brought back the words that Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, the chief rabbi of Rome. said less than two weeks ago when Benedict XIV first visited the Italian synagogue: "The silence of G-d about the evils of the world or our inability to hear His voice, is an inscrutable mystery, but the silence of man is a different matter. It confronts us, it challenges us, and it does not escape judgment."
Maybe it isn't a coincidence that the UJCL convention began by looking backwards to the deep waters of the past. Knowing from where we come lets us acknowledge where we stand today, and gives us the chance to focus on what we want in our future.
Tomorrow [Thursday] morning the plenaries and workshops will finally start, and they promise to address both the present situation of small congregations on the margins of Jewish life and the availability of a sustainable future in all these latitudes. In the meantime, if you read some Spanish and want to check the program of the event, just go to ujcl2010.blogspot.com.
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Collecting Jewish stories
Among my first stops in Europe this fall was Vienna to meet with Ed Serotta, the director of Centropa, which collects oral histories of pre-war European Jewish life. I rode with Serotta and a few dozen Holocaust survivors from Vienna to Linz for the opening of an exhibition of materials from the 15 countries in which Centropa operates.
Serotta has a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, in which he writes of finding a book in a Jerusalem shop with an inscription -- from a father to his son on the occasion of his bar-mitzvah -- that raises more questions than it answers.
Did Papa go with him? There's a good chance that he did not. Many parents stayed behind to watch after the family property, and to hold on to all they had built, hoping things wouldn't get too much worse. There's a good chance that Papa had served his country faithfully in World War I: 90,000 Jewish men donned the German army's uniform between 1914 and 1918, and 10,000 fell fighting for their fatherland. Papa probably would have felt that no one would dare come after a German war veteran, a patriot such as he. He might have even felt that way until the knock came at the door.
All we know (or can surmise) is that Richard brought this memento of German Jewry -- and of his father -- with him to Palestine. But there is so much more we'd like to know. Was Richard married when, in 1948, the state of Israel came into being? Did he build a life in the new country that made him happy? Did he have children? Grandchildren? And were they the ones who brought the book to Stein's?
Today marks the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, when Soviet troops entered this most infamous of the Nazi death camps to find only a few thousand emaciated survivors. More than 1.5 million Jews were murdered there. An additional 4 1/2 million met their end elsewhere by firing squad, in gas vans or in the other Nazi-built death camps.
For the past 10 years, the Jewish historical project I direct has been involved in an oral history project with Holocaust survivors. Unlike the many excellent projects that use video to record the horror stories of what people went through during the war, we have set ourselves a different task. We are interested in how people lived before and after the horrors.
Our subjects have allowed us to scan their old family pictures and documents, which they then go through with our researchers and talk about. So far, we have archived more than 22,000 snapshots, school report cards, wedding portraits and vacation pictures, and we've collected an array of stories to accompany them. We have memorabilia, but unlike with the book I found in Stein's, we also have context, the complete stories of what a book or photograph or document meant to those who preserved it.
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Guest Post from Panama
Back in September, I brought you the serendipitous story of how Rabbi Joshua Kullock had found TWJ on Twitter and me (and Z&M) ended up eating at his house on the evening before Yom Kippur. At the time, he told me about an interesting meeting of progressive Latin American Jewish communities that would be taking place in Panama this week.
Unfortunately, given my recent return from Israel, and Wandering Intern's recent trip to Jamaica, we couldn't be down there in person. But Rabbi Kullock has been good enough to offer us daily dispatches from the proceedings. Herewith is the first one:
Jewish life at the margins can be tough. Not a lot of people. Not a lot of resources.
As you already know from Gil Shefler's posts (aka The Wandering Intern), the future of Jewish congregations in places like Jamaica is a very complicated one. Great past and profound memories, but hard times trying to preserve this unique heritage in our days. The future keeps presenting itself surrounded by the dark clouds of incertitude.
Back in 1998, Jewish leaders from the progressive congregations of Panama, Costa Rica and Aruba established the Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean. The UJCL was founded with the objective of building a strong net of small Jewish institutions, working in a joint effort for strengthen Jewish life in the region. Thirteen years later, they have 11 countries planning activities together: trips to Israel, regional camps, and the publication of local Jewish materials both in Spanish and English.
Tomorrow night, more than 180 participants from all over the continent and abroad will come to Panama for the 12th UJCL convention. This gathering -- probably the most important Jewish event in the region -- will delve in all those delicate questions of small institutions trying to survive in the 21st century: how to deal with anti-Semitism (both from the outside and from the inside), why an open attitude to interfaith dialogue can help us develop strong ties with the general society, and how can we develop ecologically-minded institutions.
Over the next few days, Panama will be the promised land for Jews wandering from Mexico to Cayman Islands, from Curaçao to Argentina, from El Salvador to Brazil. Wandering (in kilometers) and wandering (for answers), these Jews will share questions and experiences, having a great time while learning from remarkable speakers. And I'll be honored to cover it for The Wandering Jew.
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Jerusalem Circus
Here's the first of three videos I'm hoping to get up this week from my Israel sojourn.
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Religious gays in Israel
Yes, they exist. And they're becoming better organized too. Check out this picture from a gay-friendly Shabbat service over Chanukah.
I had a chance to talk with several my last few days in Tel Aviv, and what I found boils down to this:
With non-Orthodox religious options still a rarity in Israel, young gays and lesbians like Grunberg who grow up in traditional, highly insular surroundings typically have found that they must choose between their Orthodoxy and their sexual orientation.
But that is starting to change with a number of recent initiatives that are creating a community for religious gays while gradually opening up a space in the Orthodox community to address what remains a highly polarizing issue.
Israel's paucity of alternatives to Orthodoxy, a fact liberal Jews frequently decry, is prompting religious gays to push for greater openness within the Orthodox world rather than decamp for more liberal options, as they often do in the Diaspora.
As a result, the issue of homosexuality is arguably one of the few areas in which Israeli Orthodox leaders are ahead of their counterparts in the United States, where a recent public meeting at Yeshiva University on homosexuality was pegged as a watershed event.
While no member of the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate has given religious sanction to a gay lifestyle, several leading figures have met with religious gays and offered words of encouragement and support.
"We are a fact here," said Ilan (not his real name), who recently returned to Israel after several years abroad and marvels at the sea change in attitudes. "We're found. We don't have to take off our kipah before we go into a bar. It's OK to be gay and Orthodox here."
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Jamaican Jewish ties: Belafonte and Farrakhan maybe, but definitely not Marley
After a week of attending a Jewish conference here, I'm starting to feel like everybody in Jamaica has some kind of connection to Judaism.
Ainsley Henriques, the don of the local community, says thousands of Jamaicans have Jewish backgrounds, though they don't identify as Jews. A scan of the local telephone directory seems to confirm his claim: Thousands of Cohens, Levys and Gabays are listed. But the local Jewish congregation numbers a mere 200 members.
Take Jamaican dance-hall musician Sean Paul, for example. His paternal grandfather was a Jew whose surname was Henriques, the same as Ainsley's.
Another famous islander with Jewish roots is Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records who made a fortune signing and promoting the likes of Bob Marley, U2 and Oasis. Blackwell's mother's maiden name was Lindo, which is one of the prominent Jewish families on the island.
Henriques believes there is strong evidence that Harry Belafonte has ties to Judaism, too. He says the famous calypso singer's father was born in Jamaica and his surname is a corruption of Delevante, one of the island's Jewish clans.
Perhaps the most surprising claim of Jewish ties may be from Louis Farrakhan. Henriques said that on a tour of the synagogue in Kingston, the Nation of Islam leader told him that he believed he had Jewish Portuguese ancestors on his paternal side who were Jamaican. No inquiries have been made to confirm the claim, however.
With so many people from Jamaica having Jewish connections, one cannot help but ask about Marley. But Henriques is quick to dismiss such speculation about the reggae king.
“No, I know the family quite well and they're not Jewish,” Henriques said. “One of his sons is married to an Israeli, but he himself has no Jewish ancestry.”
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