http://www.jstandard.com/content/item/ en editor@jstandard.com Copyright 2012 2012-05-25T07:59:15+00:00 /content/item/23339 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/shirah_still_going_strong_at_181/#When:07:59:15Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 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.”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. Matthew “Mati” Lazar“It was a spectacular experience for my daughter, choral music of the highest standards.” In addition, she said, the Jewish musical youth movement brings teenagers together from all over the country and Israel. “They bond through music,” she said. Lazar will give three talks at the Teaneck synagogue, and Grossman said she is particularly impressed by the “unique way he combines encyclopedic musical knowledge with tremendous Jewish knowledge and facility with text.” On Friday, following Shabbat dinner, the conductor will speak about “Jewish Music from Moses to Matisyahu,” discussing the history and influence of Jewish music and musicians. “We’ll look at the history of Jewish music, but also explore the history of Jews in western society,” said Lazar, indicating that he’ll “connect the dots,” tracking the changing position of Jewish musicians. For example, he pointed out, “Mendelssohn had to convert, but George Gershwin didn’t.” At the end of Shabbat services on Saturday morning, Lazar’s topic will be “Sermon and Song — Music as Prayer.” In this presentation, said Grossman, the speaker will give attendees an opportunity to experience the feeling of community that comes with singing together in a chorus. Lazar said that in this segment, the congregation will become like an “instant choir,” joining together to make music. He likened the experience to a word painting, “with music expressing the meaning of words.” For example, he said, “If the words say ‘We will ascend,’ the music will ascend. It’s a much more sophisticated version of that.” After Shabbat lunch, Lazar will talk about the “Power of Breath,” exploring ways in which Jewish tradition teaches about paying attention to breath. “We’ll pay attention to the ‘hay’ character,” said Lazar, noting that the Hebrew letter — which he called the “breath character” — has a singular place in Jewish text. For example, he noted, the letter was added when God changed Avram’s name to Avraham, and Sarai’s to Sarah. Grossman said Lazar’s strength is understanding that there are numerous entry points to spirituality, one being through music, “to bring people to higher levels of understanding and connection.” “We’re looking forward to his coming,” she said, describing herself as “a board member of his foundation, alumni parent, and Mati super-fan.” Noting the range of groups he has created — besides the Zamir Foundation, he established the North American Jewish Choral Festival, HaZamir, the National Jewish Chorale, the Mantua Singers, and Shirah — she said “his message is that everyone belongs to this music and is connected, whether teenagers, professional musicians, composers, or fans. There are multiple ways he has brought his vision of choral music to Judaism and to the community.” The Bergen County chapter of HaZamir currently has some 30 children and is one of the largest high school chapters in the country, said Grossman. The group rehearses every week from September to May, presenting a large concert at the end of March. It also meets several times a year with other regional groups, and joins together with them annually for a national concert. For additional information about the weekend, call the synagogue office, (201) 833-2620. Cover Story 2012-05-25T07:59:15+00:00 /content/item/23208 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/the_ultimate_top_ten_list1/#When:07:59:45Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 One case relevant to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski’s argument in The ACLU of Virginia and the Freedom From Religion Foundation v. the Giles County, Va., School Board is King v. Richmond County (Georgia), which was decided for Richmond County almost exactly nine years ago, on May 30, 2003. In that case, a panel of judges on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stunning ruling. The “Ten Commandments,” the majority ruled, has its secular side. At specific issue was a seal used by the Richmond County Superior Court.One case relevant to U.S. District Court Judge Michael Urbanski’s argument in The ACLU of Virginia and the Freedom From Religion Foundation v. the Giles County, Va., School Board is King v. Richmond County (Georgia), which was decided for Richmond County almost exactly nine years ago, on May 30, 2003. In that case, a panel of judges on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stunning ruling. The “Ten Commandments,” the majority ruled, has its secular side. At specific issue was a seal used by the Richmond County Superior Court. “The Seal is circular, with the words ‘SUPERIOR COURT RICHMOND COUNTY, GA’ inscribed around the perimeter,” the 11th Circuit decision noted. “The center of the Seal contains a depiction of a hilt and tip of a sword, the center of which is overlaid by two rectangular tablets with rounded tops. Roman numerals I though V are listed vertically on the left tablet; the right lists numerals VI to X….The Seal’s only function is to authenticate legal documents….[It] is affixed to all certified copies of court documents and real-estate records, witness subpoenas, certifications of juror service, notary certificates of appointment, and attorney licenses. Approximately 24,000 documents bore the Seal in 1999.” There was nothing constitutionally wrong with the Richmond seal, the court ruled. In doing so, it affirmed a ruling made in 2002 by a U.S. district court judge, who emphasized the role “the 10” played in the secular development of law. That argument, in turn, went back to one made by the late William Rehnquist, chief justice of the United States, almost exactly two years earlier, on May 29, 2001. That was when the Supreme Court, by a six to three vote, let stand an order to remove a granite display of the tablets from the Elkhart, Ind., town square. Rehnquist (who was in the minority with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas) argued that the court should hear the case, because the monument “simply reflects the Ten Commandments’ role in the development of our legal system.” The court majority, however, agreed with Justice John Paul Stevens, who had a hard time accepting that the monument was anything but religious in nature. After all, Stevens noted, these words were inscribed in type decidedly larger than the rest of the monument (and in this way): “THE TEN COMMANDMENTS — I AM the LORD thy GOD.” That, said Stevens, made it “rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference.” The 11th Circuit had no such “offensive” words confronting it in the King case. So its decision, written by Senior Judge Phyllis A. Kravitch, fell back on the “secular side” of the tablets. While she was at it, Kravitch also apparently fell back on her Hebrew School education. (By all accounts, Kravitch, a Georgia native who will be 92 in August, is a remarkable woman and a remarkable jurist. Among many distinctions, she was the first woman ever elected to Georgia’s Superior Court and the third woman ever appointed to a federal appellate court, put there by fellow Georgian Jimmy Carter.) “Although the Ten Commandments are a predominantly religious symbol, they also possess a secular dimension…,” Kravitch wrote. “[T]he first four Commandments concern an individual’s relationship with God….The final six commandments, however, deal with honoring one’s parents, killing or murder, adultery, stealing, bearing false witness, and covetousness; all of these prescribe rules of conduct for dealing with other people. Much of our private and public law derives from these final six commandments.” (The phrase “or murder” is where the Hebrew School lessons come in. Someone who has studied the text in its original — Hebrew — form is more likely than others to include “or murder,” since murder is what the text actually prohibits. The same holds true for dividing the tablets between “religious” and “secular” obligations; that is a very Jewish way of analyzing the text.) Kravitch’s decision was not appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, so it remains a valid precedent for the Virginia case, especially as it seems to foreshadow Urbanski’s “split decision” suggestion. Both Kravitch and Urbanski — and so many others — separate the “first four” commandments from the “second six,” and four plus six make ten, which is how everyone refers to the document, regardless of whether the next word is commandments or statements or whatever. Cover Story 2012-05-18T07:59:45+00:00 /content/item/23209 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/the_ultimate_top_ten_list2/#When:07:58:05Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 LOS ANGELES – Are the Ten Commandments (okay, the “Ten Declarations”) only to be heard, but never seen? And when they are seen, how should they look? Some groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, believe that public images of the Ten Commandments should be scarce. “That the increasing call by private citizens and public officials for the government to post the Ten Commandments in schools, government buildings, courts and other public places — while often well-intentioned — is bad policy and often unconstitutional,” the ADL says on its website. Other organizations advocate displaying them, even in schools. The conservative American Center of Law and Justice argues that the Supreme Court “should not prohibit their display in the absence of a clear showing that the display has the effect of endorsing a particular religion.”LOS ANGELES – Are the Ten Commandments (okay, the “Ten Declarations”) only to be heard, but never seen? And when they are seen, how should they look? Some groups, notably the Anti-Defamation League, believe that public images of the Ten Commandments should be scarce. “That the increasing call by private citizens and public officials for the government to post the Ten Commandments in schools, government buildings, courts and other public places — while often well-intentioned — is bad policy and often unconstitutional,” the ADL says on its website. Other organizations advocate displaying them, even in schools. The conservative American Center of Law and Justice argues that the Supreme Court “should not prohibit their display in the absence of a clear showing that the display has the effect of endorsing a particular religion.” Yet as we approach Shavuot, the pilgrimage festival that commemorates God’s declaring “the Ten” at Mount Sinai, just because there is a debate about the public appropriateness on displaying them does not mean we cannot surround ourselves with them at shul — or even in our front yards. Available for purchase online, there is an olive-wood Moses and Ten Commandments for your desk or dresser, and a dog tag imprinted with them. There is a matchbox cover emblazoned with the Roman numerals I-X to remind you of the commandments when you light a candle, as well as a refrigerator magnet printed with the words “The Top Ten” featuring the first words of the commandments in Hebrew. Then there is the version by Design Toscano of Illinois that is a foot-and-a-half high, 21 inches wide and weighing in at 12 pounds. It is cast in resin, with the text in English on one side and Hebrew on the other. “Our faux stone tablet is both historic and inspiring, and makes a defining statement in your home or garden,” the company’s online catalogue proclaims. Probably not right for the shul driveway. In the synagogue, however, where the Ten Commandments are read on Shavuot and two other timses during the year, what kind of imagery is okay? Just the usual twin tablet design? In the Torah, the Ten Commandments are called “Aseret Ha-devarim,” the Ten Words, or Statements, or Declarations, or Utterances (stop me when you get to one you like best), which although seen as a moral code of behavior are considered even more as the overarching basis for the 613 mitzvot, or commandments, found in the Torah. Growing up, the well-known double tablet image of the twin tablets welcomed me in front of my synagogue, as well as others that I visited. Many synagogues continue to have the image of the Ten Commandments prominently displayed, often above the ark, and many Judaica websites sell Torah covers that feature a design with the commandments sewn on, usually represented by the first 10 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Now I wonder how contemporary designers might interpret them. I called the New York design team of Michael Berkowicz and Bonnie Srolovitz-Berkowicz, who in San Juan, Puerto Rico, had recently dedicated a Holocaust memorial they created called “In the Shadow of Their Absence.” It was the same husband-and-wife pair that had designed a pair of chanukiot for the World Trade Center that were destroyed in the 9/11 tragedy, which they plan to replace using steel from the demolished buildings. Concerning the appearance of the Ten Commandments, I quickly discovered that there were more issues involved than if and where they should be displayed. “Not everyone accepts the same shape of the tablets,” said Berkowicz, who finds that every Jewish design project leads to a journey. Counter to what I thought, he told me that the oft-seen image of the tablets with rounded tops is not correct. “The biblical interpretation is that they were rectangular,” said Berkowicz, who was set straight, so to speak, by a Chabad rabbi with whom he was consulting. There went my lawn decoration. “As they are usually seen, some of our clients view the Ten Commandments as a cliche,” said Berkowicz, who was born in Poland. “The challenge is how to interpret them.” To meet that challenge, the couple designed a thought-provoking interpretation of the Ten Commandments for Congregation Micah, a Reform synagogue in suburban Nashville, Tenn. Srolovitz-Berkowicz noted that the couple won an award from the American Institute of Architects for the 1997 creation. Encouraged by the synagogue’s rabbi, Kenneth Kanter, who now serves as director of the rabbinical school for the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio, they made a pair of ark doors. Instead of the standard tablet form, however, with each commandment represented by either Hebrew letters or the first word or two of each commandment, they created a design that incorporated the entire text of Chapter 20 of Exodus, where the first version of the 10 are found the first time, into the copper doors. Using a high-powered waterjet programmed with the Hebrew text, the letters were cut through the metal. The doors are backlit by the ark’s interior lighting system. “When you first see it from a distance, the letters are not apparent,” Berkowicz said. “As you approach you have an aha moment.” To the synagogue’s current rabbi, Laurie Rice, the ark represents “accessibility. It’s approachable,” she said. “Cutting through allowed the light of the Torah to shine through,” Srolovitz-Berkowicz said. Berkowitz adds, “The light of the Torah is being received.” JTA Wire Service Cover Story 2012-05-18T07:58:05+00:00 /content/item/23049 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/focus_on_european_jewry1/#When:07:59:27Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 Lithuania’s 800-year-old connection to its Jewish population broke down in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the country and murdered nearly all of its 200,000 Jews — often with the complicity of local Lithuanians. Last month, 70 years on, Lithuania finally passed historic compensation legislation to provide some $50 million in compensation to Jewish families whose property was confiscated during the Shoah. Jewish groups hailed the move as a milestone for Lithuanian-Jewish relations. Lingering bitterness on both sides over the discussion of Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust remains an obstacle to better ties, however.Lithuania’s 800-year-old connection to its Jewish population broke down in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the country and murdered nearly all of its 200,000 Jews — often with the complicity of local Lithuanians. Last month, 70 years on, Lithuania finally passed historic compensation legislation to provide some $50 million in compensation to Jewish families whose property was confiscated during the Shoah. Jewish groups hailed the move as a milestone for Lithuanian-Jewish relations. Lingering bitterness on both sides over the discussion of Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust remains an obstacle to better ties, however. Some Jews are concerned that Lithuania has yet to confront its own role in the Shoah. “Relations have to be promoted within a context that is based on mutual respect and respect for historical truth,” said Jonathan Brent, the executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, which was founded in prewar Lithuania. “Everywhere you go searching for the truth, the truth cannot be found without conflict.” On the flipside, many Lithuanians say Jews focus too much on the Holocaust. Three years ago, during negotiations over Holocaust compensation between the Lithuanian government and the Jewish community, a Lithuanian tabloid ran a cover featuring an oversized Jewish official from the United States demanding money from a miniaturized Lithuanian prime minister. “Give it now!” screamed the headline. The president of a Lithuanian museum in Chicago, Stanley Balzekas Jr., said Jews should not take Lithuanian anti-Semitic inclinations “personally.” “The Jewish leaders have to be sensitive,” he said. “The terrible consequences that happened with the Holocaust aren’t going to go away. That shouldn’t be forgotten. But it shouldn’t cloud the future.” Harley Felstein, a Jew with Lithuanian roots who lives in Washington, wants to focus on positive aspects of Lithuanian-Jewish history. Last fall, he launched a campaign called the Sunflower Project to promote Lithuanian-Jewish events in the United States and organized Jewish trips to Lithuania, including exchanges of high school students between Israel and Lithuania. Felstein recently convened a group of Lithuanian and Jewish community leaders for a discussion in Chicago focused on improving ties. “If you’re going to do a reconnection between the Lithuanian and the Jewish people, you don’t want to enter into the situation through conflict,” Felstein said. “You want to do it through learning and nurturing. If our project is successful, there won’t be any negativity left.” The idea for the project was born when Felstein’s 16-year-old, Benjamin, traveled to Lithuania in 2010, found Jewish cemeteries in disrepair, and sent photos to his father. Felstein, who works for a cemetery as a funeral counselor, was inspired. “We want to reconnect the Jewish world back with the Lithuanian people,” Felstein said. “If we don’t take action now, the next generation won’t have that information available to them. Our time with survivors who have that linkage is limited.” Lithuania has a rich Jewish history. The country’s capital — Vilnius, known to Jews as Vilna — was the center of non-chasidic Orthodox Jewish life in Eastern Europe, home to the original YIVO and the hometown of Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman Kramer, the 18th-century Jewish sage known as the Vilna Gaon. Today, only about 3,000 Jews live in Lithuania. In recent years, ties between Lithuania and Israel have been improving. Between 2009 and 2011, Israeli and Lithuanian diplomats visited each other 20 times. Last year, Lithuania designated 2011 as the year of commemorating the Shoah. And last month’s compensation decision will send a portion of the $50 million to support the upkeep of Jewish heritage sites in Lithuania, including cemeteries and synagogues. The Lithuanian ambassador to the United States, Žygimantas Pavilionis, said he believes that differences between the communities will dissipate as Lithuania, which has been independent for about 20 years, moves away from the anti-Semitic legacy of the Soviet Union. Just as it took countries in Western Europe decades to examine their roles in the genocide of the Jews, so too it will take time in Lithuania, Pavolonis said. “It took some time to build from scratch, from the distortion of reality,” he said. Already, Pavilionis said, the Lithuanian government is training teachers to educate schoolchildren about the Holocaust. Alexander Domanskis, past president of the Lithuanian World Center in Chicago, said Lithuanians should learn about the Holocaust. “I’m agonized because this is part of my own tradition,” he said. “This is not Lithuania as a people.” JTA Wire Service Cover Story 2012-05-04T07:59:27+00:00 /content/item/23050 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/focus_on_european_jewry2/#When:07:58:22Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 ATHENS, Greece — Patricia Alcalay, 24, has been unemployed since she received her nursing degree in December 2010. Her father lost his job four months ago, a year shy of retirement. Meanwhile, her older sister, who was studying abroad, found work in the Netherlands and is not coming back to Greece anytime soon. Stories such as these have become common among the Jewish community in Greece, which, as with the rest of the Greek population, is struggling to stay afloat in a country engulfed in the fifth year of an economic crisis that shows no sign of abating.A child takes part in the weekly Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony at the Athens Jewish Kindergarten. Photo by Gavin RabinowitzATHENS, Greece — Patricia Alcalay, 24, has been unemployed since she received her nursing degree in December 2010. Her father lost his job four months ago, a year shy of retirement. Meanwhile, her older sister, who was studying abroad, found work in the Netherlands and is not coming back to Greece anytime soon. Stories such as these have become common among the Jewish community in Greece, which, as with the rest of the Greek population, is struggling to stay afloat in a country engulfed in the fifth year of an economic crisis that shows no sign of abating. Approximately 5,000 Jews live in Greece — about 3,500 in Athens, 1,000 in Thessaloniki and the rest scattered elsewhere — and community leaders say they are laboring to maintain Jewish institutions and deal with the additional heavy demands on welfare programs. Some of the leaders fear a greater threat to the community’s future: an exodus of young, unemployed Jews leaving a country where they see little hope. “It is a very difficult situation for us because of the financial crisis in Greece. It affects the Jewish community very heavily,” said Benjamin Albalas, the president of the Jewish Community of Athens, an association that provides funding for the city’s Jewish institutions. “We are supporting two synagogues, the school, the cemetery, a community center, and a number of needy people that is growing all the time.” As the need for community aid has increased, the funding to the communal institution has sharply decreased. Much of its revenue comes from Jewish community-owned commercial and residential properties dating back before World War II, when some 78,000 Jews lived in Greece — many in the northern port city of Thessaloniki, the community known also as Salonika that was almost wiped out entirely in the Shoah. In the past year, however, the Greek government, faced with chronic income tax evasion, imposed steep property taxes in a bid to raise state income. “And because of the general situation, the people who rent our properties have either left or they have asked us to lower rents,” Albalas said. In addition, he said, donations from hard-hit community members have dropped 50 percent. Albalas declined to give specific figures, either for income, or for the needs. As part of the harsh austerity measures imposed on the city of Athens, the Greek government has slashed pensions, lowered public and private sector wages, and reduced tens of thousands of state jobs, all of which have hurt the weaker sectors of the Jewish community. “Our two main problems now since the crisis are that pensions have gone down and there is very big unemployment,” said Isaak Mordechai, the deputy head of the Athens welfare committee. “Pensions have diminished so much, people cannot live.” The Jewish Community of Athens is providing direct assistance — financial help, supermarket food vouchers, and medical and psychological support — to some 60 people. “But it is clear that a lot more people are going to need help,” he said. In February, the Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) Board of Governors voted to grant about $1 million over two years to help Greece’s Jewish communal institutions continue operating. Other Jewish groups have offered aid, as well. However, community leaders in Athens and Thessaloniki say they have not been officially informed of the decision and the money has yet to arrive. The money, though, will focus on Israel education, and is earmarked to help the Jewish communities of Athens and Thessaloniki cover specific initiatives, according to JAFI spokesman Josh Berkman. Among those initiatives are sh’lichim (Israel emissaries to the community), counselors for the Jewish summer camp, and financial assistance to the Jewish school in Athens. “I can assure you we are in touch with the Jewish leadership in these communities,” Berkman said. As of late February, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee had donated $330,000 for welfare and school scholarship to the Athens Jewish Community, according to a news release. Such funding, however, will not keep the institutions alive and support the needy. National unemployment is at more than 21 percent and tops 50 percent among those under 25. Albalas says the levels are about the same in the Jewish community. For the young, the future looks like a wasteland. “I have occasionally had some part-time jobs, but nothing permanent. It’s very disappointing,” said Alcalay, who has been searching for work as a nurse for 16 months and is considering abandoning her profession. “I’m looking for a job in any field now because I need the money. I don’t have anything else apart from my parents, and both of them are also unemployed,” she said. Alcalay is not alone. “There are many of my friends who have just finished university this year or last, and can’t find jobs,” said Evie Leon, 24, a former head of the Jewish Youth of Athens. The community tries to help. Jewish businessmen network to find jobs for the young unemployed. Two young men receive stipends for taking part in daily minyan. “We are talking about simple jobs; we are not head-hunting,” Mordechai said. Ultimately, however, it is not enough. “The unemployment is so bad that unfortunately they are leaving for abroad, either to study or find work,” said David Saltiel, who heads Thessaloniki’s Jewish community, where the situation is equally grim, and is president of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece. Leon says her friends in Greece are “depressed and stressed.” The rest have left and “are not planning on coming back until the situation gets much, much better.” Even though she has a job, she also is “looking into opportunities to leave the country.” Alcalay’s 25-year-old sister is among those who left to study and did not return after she found a job with an IT company in the Netherlands. “She wants to come back in a few years, but I don’t recommend it,” Alcalay said. “Even though I love her, I say don’t come back because you will be unemployed.” Those who leave are doing what they can for themselves and their families. Leaders, however, know and fear the toll this will have on the community. “When our young generation leaves and becomes well established abroad, I think it will be difficult for them to return,” Saltiel said. “We will become a community of old people.” JTA Wire Service Cover Story 2012-05-04T07:58:22+00:00 /content/item/23051 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/focus_on_european_jewry3/#When:07:57:08Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 BRNENEC, Czech Republic — The windows are smashed, the doors stand agape, and the keys in the rusting padlocks have not been turned for years. Still, despite the plaster clinging to the crumbling bricks in leprous sheets, the front looks salvageable. The back, however, tells a different story. Piles of debris block gaping holes knocked through the walls when the owners tore out the big textile machines. Nearby, the erstwhile camp hospital decays in a sodden mess. This is the place where in the waning days of World War Two, Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jews from near-certain death.Lower part of the Schindler factory next to a demolished 19th-century building. PHOTO BY Eta MunkBRNENEC, Czech Republic — The windows are smashed, the doors stand agape, and the keys in the rusting padlocks have not been turned for years. Still, despite the plaster clinging to the crumbling bricks in leprous sheets, the front looks salvageable. The back, however, tells a different story. Piles of debris block gaping holes knocked through the walls when the owners tore out the big textile machines. Nearby, the erstwhile camp hospital decays in a sodden mess. This is the place where in the waning days of World War Two, Oskar Schindler saved 1,200 Jews from near-certain death. The Schindler buildings were last used by a company called Vitka, a once-thriving textile manufacturer. After Vitka went into bankruptcy in 2004, however, a series of corporations sold off its machines for lump iron and stripped the buildings of anything of value. In the course of last year, the latest owner of the property, Blue Fields, razed 80 percent of the factory buildings. Blue Fields also failed to pay the bank, which put a lien on the property. The bankruptcy administrator immediately put a halt to further demolitions, and the entire property, including the Schindler buildings, is now mired in litigation that could take years to resolve. “Those buildings are going to stand there in that condition for years to come,” said the bankruptcy administrator, Jiri Krejcerik. “No one is going to invest into property that isn’t theirs.” Blahoslav Kaspar, the mayor of Brnenec, the town where the factory stands, long has dreamed of turning the Schindler buildings into a Holocaust memorial. The town submitted a plan for the center to the regional authorities with a request for about $1 million. It has no chance of acquiring the funds, however, until the ownership issues are resolved. Horrified by the rapid destruction, historical preservationists scrambled to have the site declared a national monument. The request, now pending in the Czech Culture Ministry, hinges, however, upon the concurrence of Blue Fields, which has stopped communicating except via an electronic mailbox. Until a company representative re-emerges, the authorities say their hands are tied. Although a preliminary ban on demolition has been placed on all buildings, Blue Fields still destroyed several 19th-century buildings in better shape earlier this year, said Eliska Rackova of the Pardubice Historical Authority. “The owner produced a statement from the construction authorities saying that the buildings were decrepit and a danger to the public, and we were powerless to stop it,” she said. Now there is concern that the same fate awaits the rest of the Schindler buildings, possibly condemning a key piece of Jewish history to the dustbin. In the winter of 1944, as the war neared its end and the Nazis rushed to destroy concentration camps and prisoners, Oskar Schindler moved some 1,200 Jews from his enamelware factory in Krakow, where they faced near-certain death in Auschwitz, to Brnenec in the Czech Sudetenland. At the time, Brnenec resident Eduard Kubin was a 17-year-old worker at a munitions plant adjacent to the Schindler buildings. Kubin, now 86, still remembers the freezing winter night when the transport arrived. “It was the coldest winter anyone could remember, and 15 prisoners froze to death on the way,” he recalled. “They took them to the cemetery in the village of Brezova, but the priest wouldn’t let them be buried on cemetery ground. They had to dump them in a nearby hollow and pile old wreaths on them. “After the war, the Czechs made the local Germans dig them up with their bare hands and place them in a mass grave inside the cemetery. Schindler even brought in a rabbi to consecrate the ground.” Relics of those cruel times are everywhere: the latticework balcony where the guards took their smoke breaks; the courtyard where prisoners assembled; the iron gate with the peephole that still creaks open to grant a glimpse of the world; the low door (now marked with a sloppily painted D) that Schindler would emerge from for the review. “Around back there’s a window where we used to leave loaves of bread,” said Kubin, pointing to a narrow alley next to the factory wall. “It was next to the electrified fence, in a spot where the guards in the towers couldn’t see. We’d wrap them in oily rags to camouflage them.” “Giving them food was tricky,” said Petr Henzl, 83, whose father worked at the factory during the war. “A lady who lived behind the wall threw them some fruit once, but the guards caught them picking it up and gave them an awful beating.” Both Henzl and Kubin give much of the credit for the survival of the prisoners to Schindler’s wife, Emilie. “He was off on business mostly,” Kubin said. “She ran the kitchen and the hospital, and got the headman at the mill to give them the leftover groats and husks to make gruel. She was also the one who took in the last transport in December.” The few local residents who remember that time now look on in frustration as the property falls into further and further disrepair. Efforts to contact Blue Fields, which does not list telephone or email contacts, were unsuccessful. “It’s a world-famous site, and it would be a shame not to use it for educational purposes — there can never be enough of those,” said Tomas Kraus, spokesman for the Federation of Jewish Communities. “In the history of the Czech Jews it is but one stone in the mosaic, but a very important one.” JTA Wire Service Cover Story 2012-05-04T07:57:08+00:00 /content/item/22944 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/five_months_in_kenya/#When:08:00:20Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 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.In her first week on the job, Natalie Draisin poses with her office staff. Courtesy Natalie DraisinWhen 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. The American Jewish World Service Organization (AJWS) Volunteer Corps placed me in a rural village about four-and-a-half miles outside of Kakamega, Kenya, a medium-sized town in the Western province. Volunteer Corps sends Jews (and non-Jews married to Jews) to volunteer for three to six months in a developing country, pairing them with nonprofit organizations in need of a volunteer with their skills. The purpose is to transfer sustainable skills, which can sometimes be more valuable than transient financial donations. This season, 11 volunteers ranging in age from their 20s to their 50s set out for Uganda and Kenya, all of them in urban settings. All, that is, except for me, and that is the way I wanted it. AJWS gives you a choice of three placements, and I was the only volunteer who chose a rural one. I wanted to get a feel for international public health work at the grassroots level, not only working in the community, but also integrating myself into it. I wanted to understand why AIDS is sometimes believed to be a result of witchcraft; why people sometimes treat malaria with the boiled bark of a tree instead of a 50-cent medication; why people get teeth with cavities pulled for $2.50 instead of getting them filled; why women are forced to deliver babies on the side of the road; and why children are at home missing their education because it is impossible to come up with school fees of $80-$180 at the last minute. I wanted to become a part of the community in which I volunteered. I did not realize, however, the extent to which I would be welcomed, protected, respected, feared, and revered just because of the color of my skin. It sometimes made me uncomfortable, but it also put me in a unique position to transfer skills to an organization. The organization I worked with originally began in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, sending community health workers to the affected and infected. It later grew to respond to the disease more comprehensively, addressing interrelated issues such as gender-based violence, hunger, and the resulting need for women’s empowerment and financial security. The organization operates on donor funding and income-generating activities, but donor funding is not easy to obtain. In fact, some of the community health workers even had to be taught to read and write in order to fill out the necessary paperwork. The funding allows a salary of about $70 per month for each of the eight office staff, and the community health workers receive no salary, acting as volunteers. ‘Invaluable experience’ Working with a community-based organization with a network of over 1,000 community health workers who deliver care to over 1,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and 3,000 orphans and vulnerable children was an invaluable experience. I ran proposal writing workshops, taught computer classes, organized income generating activity trainings, wrote grants, created brochures for potential funders, and developed a five-year strategic plan and budget. I refocused the organization’s work into four areas — gender-based violence, community health and development, women’s empowerment, and household nutrition and food security. The need for the organization’s work became evident quickly by observing the issues people brought into the office. For example, community health workers, suffering from food insecurity (the unavailability of food), requested banana seeds to start a plantation to feed their families and the orphans they were raising. A girl came in reporting rape, but a paralegal could not be assigned to her case because she could not afford the police report, medical check, and transportation fee to the hospital, about $20 total. Instead, she settled the case with the rapist for $20. A four-year-old girl who was raped for months by her stepfather could not find any justice in a court system fraught with corruption. The judge refused to hear the case unless a birth certificate was submitted by the girl. A birth certificate, however, is something most Kenyans do not own because it is too expensive to give birth in a hospital, where they would be given a birth certificate upon delivery. The girl’s mother only exacerbated the situation by refusing to fight against her husband in support of her daughter. The little girl ended up in an orphanage. Hopeless situations Women are especially at risk for food insecurity, poverty, disease, and violence, even though they were recently granted rights in the new Constitution passed in 2010. Gender inequality is still shockingly ubiquitous. Women would come in during the day with open, gaping wounds from being beaten and raped by their AIDS-infected husbands, holding the hands of their malnourished children who were not in school because they could not afford the $1 exam fee. We would help them seek legal aid and health care, and they would usually seek refuge from their husbands by staying with their families for a while until things calmed down. Then, they would go back to the situation they came from, because they had nowhere to run and no money to support them. That is why the five-year strategic plan I created contains provisions for a women’s rescue center. Like women in many other cases we handled, when their husbands die of AIDS, these women will be evicted from their land. Although women were recently granted the right to inherit land, that right has yet to be fully realized. Their husband’s brothers will inherit the women and their land, as well as the death sentence of AIDS. Then, the brother will spread the virus to his two other wives, and their newborn babies. You might think this would be depressing, but the way in which people are able to overcome tragedy is quite inspiring. You will find these same women walking through the market with smiles on their faces, and if you show up at their doorsteps unannounced, tea and snacks will magically appear as if they have been waiting for you. If you stay a while, they will even try and fatten you up with what little means they have, to send you home as proof of food security. I am carrying around eight pounds of evidence. Perfect example My friend Jacob’s mother serves as a perfect example of this phenomenon. I almost never knew her, though; Jacob and I were almost never friends. I was terrified of him. He was homeless for three years, incarcerated for four months, and living in the same compound where I had been placed with three other Kenyan men in their 20s. The potential for horror stories mirroring my family’s worst fears about my trip to Kenya led me to avoid him and stay with my other friend’s family for his first week at the compound. I did not trust him or his friend who was also living with us, and had been homeless and in jail for a year. He perceived that I felt this way, and forgave me for it. I am embarrassed to admit that I had many preconceived notions about formerly homeless and incarcerated individuals. What I did not understand was that in a country riddled with corruption, people are thrown in jail for unsubstantiated accusations if they cannot afford to bribe the police. Jacob was jailed for a crime he did not commit, because he chose to plead guilty in exchange for a shorter sentence (he was certain to be convicted). He was homeless because his alcoholic father could not afford his school fee, so he dropped out, walked 220 miles to Nairobi, and took a bus across the country in search of a job to support his sisters through school. He was at the top of his class, but had to stop at the equivalent of sophomore year of high school, and wanted to ensure that his sisters did not have to do the same. Jacob was so poor, he licked pineapple rinds from the trash, ate food crawling with worms because it was better than no food at all, and sold his only pair of shoes to pay his sister’s school fees. Jacob is now trying to become a music artist, spreading the word of anti-corruption, and inspiring street children to let God help them get off the streets as He helped Jacob. Rude awakening Last summer, Jacob stumbled upon his mother’s HIV/AIDS medication. He had noticed that she had lost a lot of weight, but did not know why. He thought the weight loss was only a result of her diet — she could only afford a cup of porridge per day on her $60 per year salary, similar to that of 46 percent of Kenyans who make less than a dollar per day. She probably got the disease from her husband, who silently contracted HIV while disappearing with another woman for a while. He drank and beat her, as did her other son, who also gouged out his wife’s eye. She had returned late from the market one night after looking for food for dinner, and he drunkenly decided that an eye for tardiness was an appropriate punishment. You might expect a woman in such a situation to commit suicide, start drinking, or go straight to a therapist, a rare occurrence in Kenya. Jacob’s mom did just the opposite; she carried on with life as usual, trying to earn a little money to feed her three children and one grandson who live with her. Unfortunately, these circumstances are all too often normal, and representative of the population served by the organization for which I was working. She welcomed me with the biggest smile she could muster and a meal worth most of whatever savings she had. As her visitor, I was a blessing, she said, before sending me off with gifts for my mother and an open invitation to come back unannounced — her house was mine, too. Jacob and his mother’s situation is representative of countless others in Africa. ‘Sadly’ is a subjective term, however; Jacob and his family do not feel sorry for themselves, and they do not appear to be struggling. Like many Kenyans, they will literally give you the shirt off their backs, make you feel at home, and never ask you for anything. They do not see problems in life, just challenges, and despite all of them, they are happy and making the most of what they have in life. As Jacob said to me one day, “In Kenya, even when you’re crying, you’re laughing. Another kind of wealth If people got upset about everything there was to get upset about, they would never be happy — so instead, they laugh. As a result, many people are financially poor, but rich in happiness. They remind us that financial wealth is not always directly correlated with spiritual wealth. I believe I walked away from this experience leaving my judgments behind. Jacob’s lack of education, money, and consequent lack of opportunity did not mean he was any less intelligent than I, or less capable. It meant that the environment in which he lived did not allow him to realize his potential, imposing restrictions that I was blessed never to have known. Although this may sound like an obvious realization, it is not an easy one to reach when you are the only white person in town, sharing walls with a person who was formerly in jail and living on the streets, while putting up more walls of your own. Similarly, it is not an easy one to reach while sitting in your comfortable home in one of the wealthiest areas of America. Why I was born in a comfortable, happy, loving environment rife with opportunity instead of a situation such as Jacob’s or his mother’s has always dumbfounded me, and continues to do so. Jacob was born at his grandfather’s funeral, as his mother buried her father. Dirt was shoveled over the grave while Jacob came to life right next to it. My very opposite, fortunate situation makes me feel not only unbelievably lucky, but also obligated to work with those who were not born in such surroundings. I believe that understanding how much environment affects our lives is essential when it comes to social justice. We must realize that the opportunities we have been given are blessings, and that it is our duty as Jews to step out of our comfort zones and work towards achieving social justice, because we can. When I stood at the Natzweiler-Struthoff Concentration Camp in France last August right before I left for Kenya, that was the thought that affirmed my decision to volunteer with American Jewish World Service. This is the camp where 86 Jews were gassed to make a “members of an extinct race” exhibit. These prisoners were only there because of their environment. Like impoverished people suffering from HIV/AIDS, facing evictions and beatings from their family members, or lacking money to send their children to school, their circumstances were a direct result of the world around them — not the kind of people they were. Had they been in different situations, they could have thrived. A Jewish ‘mission’ Jews and Africans alike have a long history of overcoming social persecution, and as the Jews who escaped it, it is our responsibility to fight persecution and injustice wherever and whenever we have the chance. We cannot see ours as a responsibility to stop only anti-Semitism — for ethnic persecution, poverty, or any factor which restricts the opportunities afforded to an individual all fall under the umbrella of social injustice. I knew that as much as I could offer to the community, I would be taking more from them than I could ever give. I think that I came back a different, better person, and I hope that in the future, that I will be more cognizant of the little judgments I sometimes unknowingly make when I fail to recognize that a person’s current situation is merely a product of each opportunity they were blessed with or denied along the way. I will try my best to emulate the unparalleled Kenyan hospitality, and most of all, I will be more grateful for everything I have in life, from a solid education and family that has never known violence, to a refrigerator filled with food and a flushing toilet. Volunteering in a third world country with other Jews striving to advance social justice will hopefully change the lives of those you are there to help, but inevitably, it will change yours for the better, as well. Former Jewish Standard intern Natalie Draisin is currently working as a consultant in Washington, D.C. She graduated from The Johns Hopkins University and majored in public health, combining her interest in health, development, and policy. American Jewish World Service allowed her to combine her education with her previous experience in health policy. Cover Story 2012-04-27T08:00:20+00:00 /content/item/22837 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/emphasizing_the_j_in_jcc/#When:08:00:20Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 There was good reason for celebration in the board room of the Kaplen Jewish Community Center on the Palisades on Tuesday night. Two weeks before, the JCC had received a check for $1.5 million from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation — marking the successful conclusion to six years of fundraising and construction that renovated the JCC’s 40-year-old building and brought in $32 million in donations from the community. The board members had reason to drink champagne. They had succeeded in an audacious fundraising campaign — one whose scope had sparked heated discussions over the years. And they had reached into their own pockets to grow the institution they loved, that many of them had grown up in, giving to the original capital and endowment campaign and then, this past year, to what was called the Taub Community Challenge. That, in fact, had been a condition of Henry Taub, when he agreed, on his hospital bed shortly before his death last March, to donate $1.5 million: The JCC had to come up with $3 million from other donors, and within a year. “Henry wanted the community to step up and take ownership,” recalls Pearl Seiden, president of the JCC. There was good reason for celebration in the board room of the Kaplen Jewish Community Center on the Palisades on Tuesday night. Two weeks before, the JCC had received a check for $1.5 million from the Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation — marking the successful conclusion to six years of fundraising and construction that renovated the JCC’s 40-year-old building and brought in $32 million in donations from the community. The board members had reason to drink champagne. They had succeeded in an audacious fundraising campaign — one whose scope had sparked heated discussions over the years. And they had reached into their own pockets to grow the institution they loved, that many of them had grown up in, giving to the original capital and endowment campaign and then, this past year, to what was called the Taub Community Challenge. That, in fact, had been a condition of Henry Taub, when he agreed, on his hospital bed shortly before his death last March, to donate $1.5 million: The JCC had to come up with $3 million from other donors, and within a year. “Henry wanted the community to step up and take ownership,” recalls Pearl Seiden, president of the JCC. And those donors had to include all of the members of the JCC board. In the end, more than 700 contributors stepped forward. Tuesday’s meeting, however, was not just about congratulation and looking backward. The members that night began what they expect to be a series of discussions on how to make the JCC as relevant for the next generation as it has been for them. “We always said that we are going to renovate and revitalize, not only our building but all of our programs,” says Seiden. “We’re in the process of doing that. We are looking at everything we do and saying, should we continue doing it, should we not, how can we do it better, how can we make it more relevant.” When it opened in 1950, the heart of the JCC was “its athletic program,” recalls George Hantgan, the JCC’s founding executive director. It stood in contrast to the nearby “shul with a pool” Jewish centers — in Teaneck and Fair Lawn. Now, Seiden sees the JCC’s mission as it moves forward as “infusing Judaism throughout the center. I want people to see it in every department. I want them to smell it when they walk in the building. I want them to hear Jewish music. I want them to learn about Jewish cooking. I want them to see Jewish artwork. I really want to stimulate all their senses in a very Jewish way, to create a real Jewish ambiance. “You may be walking in the center to the gym to exercise, but along the way you’re picking up this Jewishness.” How this would work is still being worked out. “We’re in the process of talking about it. The executive committee has been talking about it. The Judaic department has been talking about it.” Ultimately, says the JCC executive director, Avi Lewinson, “We’re really looking at how Jewish values will become a part of every department.” He cites as an example the JCC’s Teen Adventures program of summer day trips for teens. “Now tzedakah programs are part of the schedule. Every week they volunteer in the community.” A heightened focus on Jewishness at the JCC will mark a sharp contrast to the direction being taken by one of the region’s two other Jewish community centers. Last year, the YM-YWHA of North Jersey in Wayne came under the operational control of a regional chain of YMCAs and was rebranded the Wayne Y. This came in response to declining membership, and with the stated goal of appealing to a wider, non-Jewish audience. Meanwhile, the YJCC of Bergen County, in Washington Township, is undergoing a self-evaluation as it considers new directions, including program cutbacks (although it has ruled out the sort of non-Jewish collaboration taking place in Wayne) Up on the Palisades, Seiden says that a process of information gathering coupled with self-evaluation has been under way for a couple of years. “We started having casual conversations. I would meet with different groups of people in the community, members and non-members. I would go with Robert Fried, director of the membership department, to talk to people, to find out why they join the JCC, what they like about it, why they retain their membership, why they don’t,” she says. “The real purpose is to come back with ideas. We’ve had many ideas we’ve put into place to be more accommodating to our members, to serve them in a better way, to give them the programs that they want.” Such discussions have already had an impact on an important measurement of the JCC’s health: membership figures. “Last year, we finished the year with over 3,500 membership units,” says Avi Lewinson, the executive director. “That’s a thousand more than before we started our capital campaign.” “We’ve made it easier to join. We’ve removed some barriers to entry,” such as the building fund. Lewinson also attributes the increase to the JCC’s renovations, “the fact we’ve renovated the health and fitness facilities.” Health and wellness continue to be a strong focus of the JCC. In fact, just as the JCC wants every department to be infused with Judaism, it is looking to make wellness a principle throughout all of its programs — not just the fitness center. “In terms of obesity being an issue in today’s world, a healthy lifestyle is becoming more important. We’ve dedicated substantial staff time in looking at how we can build a focus on a healthy lifecycle through all age groups. It starts in early childhood, teaching children to respect their body, to the teen fitness center, to programs for seniors. Promoting wellness, healthy lifestyles, is a priority,” he says. Lewinson says that he is also looking to increase the JCC’s work with “families in distress, populations at risk.” “We’re trying to do more programming for adults and children with special needs. We’re really looking at all the populations — like single parent families — to welcome them, to serve them, to make them part of our larger Jewish community,” he says. The JCC has also increased the availability of scholarships, to make membership available to those who would not otherwise afford it. “Some of the people who are now our largest donors,” says Lewinson, “are people who couldn’t afford JCC membership when they were growing up. One shared with me that membership at the time was five dollars a year and his father couldn’t afford it. They provided a scholarship and that made a difference. He’s given a lot more to help us than the the three dollars he needed to make up membership.” The JCC, however, is not only hoping to expand the populations that it serves; it is looking to expand its impact on the community through developing collaborations and relationships with other Jewish organizations. Currently, it provides music education programming to the Moriah School in Englewood, and it is discussing a relationship with the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County. “We’re looking to build those collaborations,” says Lewinson. This comes as collaboration between Jewish organizations has become a priority for the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey. The federation is planning to shift from providing block grants to the JCC and similar agencies to funding specific programming proposals — and agency collaboration will be a plus as proposals are evaluated. In short, with the construction no longer disrupting the JCC’s daily activities and with the six years of the capital and endowment campaigns coming to a conclusion, the JCC does not want to settle down into mission complacency. “We are reorganizing staff,” says Lewinson. “We have created new positions. We’ve looked at the staff that we have and how best to use them to do some of the things we want to do. We’ve brought on some new staff with new expertise. We’re looking at how we can be on the cutting edge of serving the community and better serve our members with the programs we’ve always had.” Lewinson recalls his conversation with Taub, in which the philanthropist explained why he wanted to donate the money in a time-limited challenge grant, only payable if $3 million was raised within a year. “I want this to be finished so you can go on with the more important work of running the center,” Taub told him. “This” is finished. Now the work begins. From generation to generationFor Pearl Seiden, its president, the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades is clearly a multigenerational endeavor. “As a child,” she says. “I attended the Englewood JCC and my parents were considered among the founders of it. I watched them go through the process of building this JCC,” the Tenafly campus where the JCC relocated in 1982, after being founded in Englewood in 1950. “They were envisioning it, talking about it, looking at the blueprints.” When she moved back to town after leaving for college, a mother of young children, she joined the JCC “right away. I got involved in the early childhood program, where my four children attended nursery school. That’s where I made my friends. It’s a very typical JCC journey story.” Now, her children are grown (and too far from Tenafly to be members), and it is her granddaughter who attends summer camp at the JCC and often accompanies her there during the year. “It is not unusual that I might have my granddaughter with me and see my mother in the hall coming from the gym,” says Seiden. “My mother does a lot of rehab in our fitness facility.” Yet despite being a link in a four-generation chain of JCC involvement, Seiden believes the JCC must constantly be changing. Anything less is a threat to that generational link. Cover Story 2012-04-20T08:00:20+00:00 /content/item/22796 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/hias_helped_them/#When:08:00:20Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 When I was little, I would spin in a circle until the dizziness made me collapse. Once on the floor, I’d close my eyes and feel myself move with the room. I’d pretend I was Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” and I would wish to be back in the place where I was born. Because I’d lived in America since I was three years old, my birthplace wasn’t really “home.” But the unattainability of that country — the one that housed a grandmother, uncle, aunt, and cousins I had never met — was appealing. What was in that place we had left behind for a better life? That country that had left impressions on every other member of my family, even my sister, Diana. She was eight when we came to America, but still remembered Minsk — school recitals, the courtyard outside our co-op, her first-grade friends — and grasped that language as I never would. Eventually, both the room and I would stop spinning, and I would be back in New Jersey, the only homeland I knew.HIASIt was 130 years ago when the small Russian Jewish community of New York City formed what became the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Its purpose was to provide meals, transportation, and jobs for the growing number of new immigrants fleeing an increasingly anti-Semitic Russia. Between 1880 and 1920, more than two million Jews would flee Russia, most coming to the United States, where HIAS helped settle them into American life. It was to HIAS that Jewish survivors of the Titanic turned to for help when they finally arrived in New York. More recently, HIAS played a lead role in resettling the nearly half-a-million Jews of the former Soviet Union who immigrated to America, beginning in the 1970s and peaking in the early 1990s. To mark its 130th anniversary this year, HIAS published a book of recollections by 30 of those recent immigrants. Four of them made their homes in northern New Jersey; these are their stories.When I was little, I would spin in a circle until the dizziness made me collapse. Once on the floor, I’d close my eyes and feel myself move with the room. I’d pretend I was Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” and I would wish to be back in the place where I was born. Because I’d lived in America since I was three years old, my birthplace wasn’t really “home.” But the unattainability of that country — the one that housed a grandmother, uncle, aunt, and cousins I had never met — was appealing. What was in that place we had left behind for a better life? That country that had left impressions on every other member of my family, even my sister, Diana. She was eight when we came to America, but still remembered Minsk — school recitals, the courtyard outside our co-op, her first-grade friends — and grasped that language as I never would. Eventually, both the room and I would stop spinning, and I would be back in New Jersey, the only homeland I knew. The country where I was born had an amusement park called Park Cheluskinsov, where my parents shared their first kiss. It had mountains on the banks of the Black Sea where my grandparents vacationed. It had a square where people gathered to greet concert singers or protest the government. And it had people who welcomed you with tables of red and black caviar, cake Napoleon, and black bread topped with thick yellow butter. But I remember none of this. All I remember is an elevator in my uncle’s apartment building. It was brown…. I can’t say that my curiosity about my birthplace had to do with understanding where I belonged. As a child, belonging meant a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, like all the other kids, not the caviar sandwiches I begged my mother to stop giving me. Belonging meant buying the pony tail holders with little suns on them, the kind Punky Brewster wore. I tried to be the same as all the other Jersey kids because that conformity linked me to the homeland I did know. I wanted to be a regular American girl who had crushes on the popular boys, not the girl who had crushes on bookworms and boys who could do long division in their heads. And yet, I longed to visit my birthplace. It was a selfish longing; I was tired of being the outsider in the family. I was jealous that I would never experience what my father had — passionately hating a government that discriminated against you because you were Jewish. I’d never experience what my mother had — sentimentally romanticizing those Russian places where she had met her husband, had her children, and rode high on her own father’s shoulders. My jealousy grew as I learned to read the Russian alphabet (at age ten), as I struggled to understand the nuances in Russian jokes told at family parties, when I tried to use Russian expressions, and everyone laughed in amusement. Jealousy that my sister carried Benetton bags and wore denim jeans with holes, just as her classmates did, but she also belonged in my parents’ world. Jealousy that I never would. Margie GelbwasserWhen [Soviet Premier Mikhail] Gorbachev came to power, and Russia ceased to be the Evil Empire, I thought the Cold War ending was a good thing — mostly because it would separate me less from my classmates. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, one of 15 newly separate countries was Belarus, the state of my hometown of Minsk. From that point on, I was no longer from the Soviet Union, but from Belarus. In tenth grade history, we discussed the implications of what had happened in the FSU. One classmate said to me, “You must be so sad because now you can never go home.” She was being kind, trying to be insightful. My urge was to ask her what she was talking about and remind her that my home was two blocks from hers. But I gave her the answer she wanted. “Yeah, a little,” I said, and she patted me on the arm. There was another reason I answered her as I did: I felt I was supposed to be sad. And why didn’t these events mean more to me? I remember huddling together with my family, in 1991, to watch TV images of tanks outside Gorbachev’s home where he was under house arrest. I longed to feel something. Tears filled my mother’s eyes and my father said, “Why are you crying? This is a good thing. It’s freedom.” Thinking back, I believe my mother longed to be in the midst of it all. As much as she bristled at the questions in people’s eyes when she said, “I am American” in heavily accented English, she felt for the Russian people on television. Part of her was with them. Russia was not only her homeland, but also her connection to her girlhood, the place where she learned about life and became the woman she was. Technically I was sad, but, again, it was because the connection to this land continued to elude me…; because I knew that I could never see Minsk in the way my family had. For 20 years, I voiced no interest in visiting Minsk. Then, in 1999, I began to write a novel, the story of three generations of a Russian-Jewish family not unlike my own. At first, I wanted simply to relate the characters’ emotions; but as I wrote, I found myself longing to experience the world I was creating in my novel. When I wrote about a tree, I wondered if it still existed today, and if it did, whether the initials my father had carved into it decades before were still there. Whether those initials were there or not seemed to make all the difference. I began searching through books and poring through photos, as if looking at the pictures often enough would connect me to something the rest of my family shared…. I wrote about Park Cheluskinsov and about my grandmother’s birthplace, Ragachov, and tried to make a connection through the keys on my computer. But by the time I’d finished a full draft of my novel, my desire to visit my birthplace had only increased…. But going back is no longer about finding a sense of belonging in my family. It is about understanding my characters. Understanding my family. Understanding myself. My husband is American, and I don’t know if he understands why I want to go, but he respects it. We have a son now who is almost four. He doesn’t know Russian, and this doesn’t bother me. I don’t think of it as his language. But, one day, I do want to take a family trip so he can see the roots of his family, the place I came from (even if not exactly). I want him to be able to piece together all parts of him. It can be something we can all learn from, one generation teaching the next. It’s been years since I spun in a circle, arms open wide. I do it now and collapse on the floor. I feel the earth spin below me, and I keep my eyes closed, picturing the images from my books. It’s a long time before I open my eyes. Cover Story 2012-04-15T08:00:20+00:00 /content/item/22797 http://www.jstandard.com/index.php/site/hias_helped_them1/#When:07:59:19Z Notice: Undefined offset: -1 in /var/www/vhosts/jstandard.com/httpdocs/system/core/core.functions.php(663) : eval()'d code on line 43 “Where are you from?” he asks. I don’t want to speak to him, but I seem to be suffering from a pathological, smiling complacence. It’s New York City, it’s summer, and it’s hot as hell. I’m working as a paralegal in a Manhattan law firm, a job that I hate, because at this point in time I’m still entertaining the notion that I will go to law school and be a lawyer — an idea that I also hate, but one that I think will surely save me from a future that is anything but certain. Right now, I’m on my lunch break and trying to maneuver my way back to the building where I work, sweat beads dripping down my spine, sweat stains on my white blouse. Oh my, that’s not professional at all. Tsk. The man, the one who asked me where I was from, is just some stranger. I have gotten lost again, because when I leave the building for lunch. I seem to run for my life — away! — and not pay attention to the streets I’m following. I had asked him for directions. I have honed my voice into a plausible New England dialect, but it gives me away again. It doesn’t do that every time. Sometimes, I pass. “Where are you from?” he asks. I don’t want to speak to him, but I seem to be suffering from a pathological, smiling complacence. It’s New York City, it’s summer, and it’s hot as hell. I’m working as a paralegal in a Manhattan law firm, a job that I hate, because at this point in time I’m still entertaining the notion that I will go to law school and be a lawyer — an idea that I also hate, but one that I think will surely save me from a future that is anything but certain. Right now, I’m on my lunch break and trying to maneuver my way back to the building where I work, sweat beads dripping down my spine, sweat stains on my white blouse. Oh my, that’s not professional at all. Tsk. The man, the one who asked me where I was from, is just some stranger. I have gotten lost again, because when I leave the building for lunch. I seem to run for my life — away! — and not pay attention to the streets I’m following. I had asked him for directions. I have honed my voice into a plausible New England dialect, but it gives me away again. It doesn’t do that every time. Sometimes, I pass. Sometimes, no one can tell that my accent is slightly off, a cadence here and an intonation there, and then I’m safe, I’m an American citizen and I was born and raised in a New Jersey suburb where my mother used to pack me peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches in a brown paper bag for my school lunch, and my friends and I would watch “Power Rangers” after school as light spilled across the floor of someone’s spacious suburban house. My name is Amanda or maybe Jessica, and my teeth are very straight and white…. Anya BochmanOf course, none of this is true. It’s a fantasy for millions of Americans, and certainly for me. Much of the time, people can tell. I can see it coming a mile away, the puzzled expression in the eyes of some girl named Kathy or maybe Katie or maybe Kate in one of my college classes. I’m reading a poem, or maybe talking at length about Talal Asad’s “Genealogies of Religion,’’ and after class she will inevitably turn to me and say, very nicely, “Where are you from?” Whoops! Busted again. The fantasy reel starts to smoke and burn, and my name is no longer Amanda. My name is Anya, and I was born in Moscow. My parents tell me that at first we lived in a tiny one-bedroom apartment, then moved to a slightly less tiny two-bedroom one. I remember only the latter, the subtle grays and greens of the world outside its windows, the sun, always pale and setting in my memories. We lived in a cookie-cutter five-story building, the whole block littered with them, as though some giant had dropped a bunch of rectangular bricks, leaving space in the middle. That middle was the yard I’d play in as a child. At the very edges of my memory, when I was just coming into consciousness, I remember the yard’s wooden play structures — some variation on Baba Yaga’s izbushka [cottage], and a fortress-like construction that has a slide attached to one side. There are swings, too, and a sandbox. For most of the time I spent in that playground, from two years old to 10, everything was broken except the sandbox. Undeterred, my girlfriends and I would play there with our dolls and toy tea sets. I have one random memory: It is 1993, and I am looking up from the sandbox because of a terrible noise, like a hundred jackhammers, coming steadily closer. Tanks. A whole procession of them, rumbling by. I realize later that they had been going to the center of Moscow to a fire at the parliament building. In Moscow, I’m almost like all the other girls, except my mother and I don’t share my father’s last name. That’s not because of any feminist ideals of my mother; instead, it’s to protect us. My father is a Jew with a Jewish last name; my mother didn’t want her daughter growing up with his name in an anti-Semitic environment. There are other reasons, too, but I will learn about them later, only after we move to America. Up until the move, I am a Russian child just like my schoolmates, as regular as they are, save for that whole last name business and the vague knowledge that I’m a Jew. But even that isn’t so bad, because there’s an Armenian boy in my class and his name is weirder than even my dad’s. I do remember the excitement of the move, of arriving in New York City in 1996, during one of its worst winters. New York City was submerged in dirty white snow, looking entirely gray — its streets, its sky, its people and its pigeons, all gray. We are staying in a ratty motel in Manhattan, where the lock on the door to our room is constantly breaking. Nevertheless, I’m excited. In the span of about three years, I go from a clueless Russian girl with a heavy accent to a clueless Russian girl with a very slight accent. Oh, and I live in the suburbs now. Then come the complications. Because America is essentially made up of immigrants, whether first-generation or tenth, and because it is a melting pot, with its contents not exactly melted together, there’s a desperate need for its inhabitants to establish ethnicity (“I’m Italian,” says the American girl whose great-grandparents came here from Italy) and, of course, religion. And I, now bearing my father’s Jewish last name, am at a loss. For one thing, I’m an atheist. What’s worse, my mother is not Jewish. I am anathema to the observant Jewish community. I’ve never been to temple, I don’t keep kosher, and I certainly don’t know the Sh’ma in its entirety, which causes my deeply religious aunt to scold me. I don’t mention to people that my mother isn’t Jewish, because I know what I’ll hear. It’s what I always hear. “So you’re not really Jewish, then.” What am I? There are facts, and there are memories. The facts are solid, like my frayed green Soviet birth certificate that lists my mother’s nationality as Russian, and my father’s as Jew. Both of them were born and raised in Russia. Or the fact that we are leaving Russia on refugee status, that I have Ashkenazi Jewish blood running through my veins, blood that cares little which parent donated it. My own memories, of sandboxes and tanks. And memories I’ve inherited, mostly from my father, memories of being called a kike. Memories of the crazy great uncle whose entire family was killed by Nazis. And then there’s me. A strange creature, too Americanized for the Russians, too Russian for the Americans. (“Where’s your accent from?”) A refugee Jew by Russian terms, but by Jewish law, not technically a Jew. “Where are you from?” the man asks me. “Sweden,” I say. Cover Story 2012-04-15T07:59:19+00:00