Caring for those who serve    

When you step off a 15-hour plane ride and face the stark realization that you will be without running water, a flushing toilet, electricity, a refrigerator, a microwave, or air conditioning for the next five months, that is when you know you have stepped out of your comfort zone. When you realize that you are unexpectedly the only white person in the village in which you will be living, let alone the only Jew (my coworker thought we were extinct), that is when you know your comfort zone is worlds away.

This is how I spent much of the last half-year, and I loved it. You might think I am crazy, and I will not disagree with you. However, when you throw yourself into a culture half-a-world away from your own, forcing you to challenge your own beliefs, you live in constant fascination at how the world operates so smoothly — after you learn to shower properly with a bucket, milk a cow, slaughter a chicken, and cook over a wood-burning fire, that is.

Few Jewish couples define their marriage as “mixed” just because bride and groom were born and raised 30 miles apart in the same country.

Linda and Bernard Levy, however, live in Belgium, a country whose long experiment in fusing two distinct cultures recently has been showing signs of breakdown. With the Dutch-speaking Flemish half of the country increasingly at odds with the French-speaking part, Belgium’s corresponding Jewish communities are finding themselves at loggerheads, as well.

Linda was born in Antwerp, the capital of Flanders in the self-governing Flemish region. She rarely uses Flemish (similar to Dutch), the language of her youth, since she married Bernard, a Francophone from Brussels. They live just outside Brussels with their three children.

As a long-time resident who is completing his first two-year term as mayor of Teaneck and was decisively re-elected to his third council term on Tuesday, Mohammed Hameeduddin has come to understand and revel in the commonalities between his Muslim community and the Jewish community which he serves, and which helped elect him.

Being on the campaign trail — such as it was, in the run-up to this past Tuesday’s municipal’s elections — highlighted one aspect of that commonality.

“The Jewish people of Teaneck are very similar to the Muslim community, because when you walk in, the first thing everybody makes sure to ask is ‘Did you eat?’ That’s the first question every grandmother asks. It’s very similar if you walk into a Muslim household from south Asia,” says Hameeduddin, whose parents came to America from India in the late 1960s.

As Shirah, the Community Chorus at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, prepares to celebrate its 18th year with a gala concert on June 10, founding director and conductor Matthew Lazar says he is proud of what the group represents.

“Shirah is a community,” said Lazar, known to his friends as Mati.

“It’s a group of people who care about each other, making music together, and expressing their Jewish identity together. Whatever differences there might be, when we make music together, we are one entity and one people.”

Matthew “Mati” Lazar’s passion for Jewish music will be showcased June 1-2 when he visits Teaneck’s Congregaton Beth Sholom as scholar-in-residence.

Adina Avery-Grossman, a member of the congregation who sits on the board of the Zamir Choral Foundation, knows Lazar well.

“My high school-age daughter sang for three years with HaZamir,” she explained, talking about the teenager’s participation in the international Jewish high school choir founded by Lazar.

The Bergen County chapter meets at Beth Sholom.

“It was a spectacular experience for my daughter, choral music of the highest standards.”

Last week, a U.S. district court judge sitting in Roanoke, Va., made an extraordinary suggestion about the document commonly referred to as “The Ten Commandments.” He suggested it be cut to six. He appointed another judge to oversee negotiations to accomplish that goal.

The case involves Narrows High School in Narrows, Va., a part of the Giles County school district, which is the actual defendant in the case. After Narrows High put up a display of “The Ten Commandments,” the American Civil Liberties Union objected and brought the case to the U.S. District Court in Roanoke. It cited the separation clause of the First Amendment, as well as a number of federal court decisions, as its reasons.