The destination

My drash - Torah sermon - at Temple Beth El-Mekor Chayim, this Shabbat. 
The Parasha (Portion) is "Masei," Numbers 33:1-36:13

TBEMC Dvar 7/26/14 Parashat Masei

Numbers 33:1 - 36:13

Shabbat shalom

I have been clearing out my office and packing up my things.

As some of you may know, I am leaving my job at "the Joint", the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Next week is my last week.

Leaving the Joint was a very difficult decision. I’m proud to be the next CEO of our Jewish Federation. Proud and honored. We do amazing things, with amazing professionals and volunteers.

But leaving the Joint was a very difficult decision.

And one of the things I've been doing these past few weeks is clearing out my office.

Some things I’m going to keep, some things I haven’t quite decided yet what to do with them. Some things - like a particularly strong bottle of horseradish vodka - are here today for our kiddush.

And some things went pretty quickly into the trash. For example, I don’t know why, I had a huge collection of itineraries and boarding passes from Continental Airlines.

Long-forgotten journeys from a long-forgotten airline. Although to be honest, I do miss Continental.

I’m not entirely sure why I kept all these boarding passes and itineraries. Maybe it was to reassure myself that I’d been somewhere.

Believe me, I've been to lots of places these past few years. More than most people would ever want to go anywhere. And I have no complaints. None whatsoever.

I've seen amazing things, met with incredible leaders, and have felt at every step of the way that I was serving the Jewish people and doing something good.

But … at the end … here I am.

Right back where I started.

Normally, on itineraries and boarding passes, you’d see that the journey is marked by the destination. Not the point of origin. Normally, when we talk about our journeys, we talk about where we’re going. Not where we’re coming from.

So it says, at the beginning of this week’s parasha, that these are the journeys of the Children of Israel who went to the Land of Israel,” right?

Nope. It says “these are the journeys of the Children of Israel who went out of the Land of Egypt.”

This isn't your usual kind of masa, your usual journey. This is a journey defined by the point of origin. Not the destination.

I was thinking a lot about this concept of journeys this last few weeks.

Now, for all intents and purposes, I am an American Jew. True, an American-Israeli-British Jew with an accent that isn't precisely ‘New Jersey.’ 

But I’m here, and this is my home. I love New Jersey. 

Fortunately, I love diners and I don’t see the need to pump my own gas. So that’s worked out quite nicely for me.

And like a quarter of Jews alive in the world today, I now live in a country other than the one in which I was born. My journey was – and is – defined by my origins.

Not by my destination.

My identity is mixed, and complicated, and somewhat messy. Which is why this concept of the origins of journeys in the parasha means so much to me.

There was a PBS show on recently about American-Jewish identity and the journeys we make. And in the episode that I watched was a fascinating quote by Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Los Angeles.

His grandfather, he said, came to synagogue because he was Jewish. His grandchildren go to synagogue because they want to become Jewish.

We've become about the journey. About becoming.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing. When I traveled around the world for the Joint I would frequently meet young people who were just now discovering their Jewish identity. Just now discovering what it means to be Jewish.

Once, in a far-off post-Soviet country, I was watching a young woman participate in an educational shabbat service. It was a teaching seminar, and there were hundreds of 'new' Jews. All halachic. All "Jewish" by any definition. But they didn't know what it meant to be Jewish and they wanted to learn. They wanted to 'become’ Jewish.

So … on the stage there were several educators from the local community. And one was doing the kiddush, one was doing the motzi. And this young woman was lighting the candles and explaining what she knew about them. And she was wearing a crucifix. The whole crucifix - not just the cross itself.

I was sitting in the front row looking at the big gleaming crucifix. And I leaned over to my colleague who was the netzig, the JDC Country Representative. "Nu?" I said.

"Give her time," he said. "She doesn't yet fully understand what it means to be Jewish."

He was right. It's a journey. We're all on this journey.

We’re all on a journey, like the masa of this week’s parasha, that’s defined by the starting-point.

We're all becoming Jewish.

Shabbat shalom.

Transitions - stuff I'm taking

I'm clearing out my desk and shelves from the collected memorabilia of nine years in the Joint. And there's a growing pile of things I'm taking with me:

1. My cigar-box covers from Cuba. So the story is ... you can't really "buy" empty cigar boxes in Cuba anymore, because the government is afraid of counterfeiters getting good boxes and putting bad cigars in them. But the artwork is beautiful. And having staffed over 20 missions to Cuba I picked up some lovely art; the cigar-box covers are my favorites. Incidentally, did you know why some cigars have the names of famous works of literature? Because cigar-rollers were illiterate, and they would have the news, stories - and great books - read to them at times. Hence "Romeo and Juliet" and [The Count of] "Montecristo."

2. My Kassam rose. Created by a terrific Israeli artist, Yaron Bob, who was helped by JDC to set up his business. Yaron turns the pieces of kassam rockets that fall onto Sderot into beautiful metal rose sculptures. It is literally turning the worst things you can imagine into works of art and beauty.

3. A bottle of "Red Moscow" (Kraznaya Moskva) Perfume.  I kept going into the homes of elderly women in former Soviet republics and smelling the same spicy floral fragrance. After a while I figured out what it was, and then I learned that pretty much everyone smells that way because that was pretty much the only perfume you could buy for much of the Soviet era. So everyone's mom, grandma, neighbor, smelled like Red Moscow. 
And because the alcohol content is so high ... well ... we'll leave that story for another blog post.

4. A nametag from a JDC educational conference in Vilnius, Lithuania. There were 1000 participants at this conference - a local Limmud - and JDC was helping to put it together. The conference was in English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian, Lithuanian, with a massive array of subjects. Israeli history, Lithuanian Jewish history, Jewish gastronomy, culture, the weekly parasha, public speaking, fundraising, you name it. It was an amazing experience, and a privilege to see the rebirth of Jewish life in Vilnius. 

Poland's Jewish Awakening

At the heart of Europe and the epitome of a changing continent, Poland and its Jewish community are redefining and rebuilding themselves in a post-communist Jewish revival. A pillar of this Jewish resurgence in Poland is JDC's introduction of Limud, a grassroots studyfest that brings together Jews of all ages and backgrounds for a shared experience of rediscovering and celebrating their Jewish heritage.

Special thanks and appreciation to the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island for their continued support for the renewal of Jewish life in Poland. 

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Szarvas and Memory

I loved this piece ... so eloquent and so compelling ...

Finding the Alte Heim

Pessy Katz - Times of Israel 

January 19, 2014

I found the alte heim — the old home — in the Hungarian countryside, right along the Koros River, this past summer. I did not know that I was looking for the alte heim, I no longer even believed it had ever existed as it does in the romanticized collective memory of the Hassidic community in which I was raised. But then I found it, more complex and vibrant than a Hassidic girl could ever have dreamed it to be, at Camp Szarvas, an international Jewish camp in Hungary.

Growing up in the Satmar Hassidic community in Boro Park, my world was enclosed but I was lovingly provided with everything I needed to grow into a modest, poised young woman who would marry a good learned man and build an ultra-Orthodox home that in my young imagination was always filled with a gleaming chandelier, pious sons and daughters that would carry on the traditions, and sounds of Yiddish wafting through the air mixing with the delicious aroma of freshly made kokos (babka).

Indeed, I knew from a young age that the sign of a talented hassidic balabusta (housewife) is the stuffed cabbage she lovingly prepares twice every year, once for Simchat Torah and once for Purim. I would watch my aunt as, on every Friday in the winter time, she would roast gesztenye (chestnuts) to serve after Shabbat dinner when her husband and sons would sit around the table and sing beautiful Shabbat melodies. My paternal grandmother would prepare large pans of rakott krumpli (potato casserole) for my aunts, uncles and many little cousins as a special treat for the yearly Chanukah party she would host, and my maternal grandmother would remind us at every bris, engagement party or other special occasion to praise her for standing over the stove to prepare hundreds of beautifully thin palacsinta (crepes) which she served filled with cheese, cocoa or nuts.

Long before I knew how to prepare these foods, they created the pattern of Shabbat and Jewish holidays through which our year revolved around in Boro Park. To me they became the representation of love, warmth and special Judaism. I knew that these foods and rituals were tied to the alte heim, much as everything we did was encouraged to be. We were at turns inspired and admonished to emulate the actions, clothes and emunah p’shuta (simple faith) of our not-too-distant ancestors back in Europe. Thus, even in our modern-day Hassidic lives in America, the alte heim, with the images our teachers would invoke of women in head-scarves knotted under their chins and somber men bringing freshly slaughtered chickens home for their wives to salt and kosher was very distant but also very real. It lived in our collective memory and in our aspirations of the insular Orthodox utopia we sought valiantly to recreate right here in New York City.

But as I grew older, I came to understand that insularity does not make one more virtuous, that piety as a woman did not have to be measured by what I wear, and that a broad education may be full of spiritual pit-falls but is also filled with joy. Though surrounded with love and food, I learnt that I could expand my experience as a woman, and as a religious woman, beyond the Hassidic community in ways richer and more meaningful than I had previously been allowed.

My pursuit of intellectual independence and greater religious expression as a woman – whether it was receiving a college education, completing political internships, or becoming an active participant in progressive Orthodox institutions – was from the beginning coupled with the desire to maintain not just a loyalty to halakha but the purity of the joyous traditions with which I was raised. I knew early on that this challenge would by no means be a simple one, that of trying to mesh traditions so rooted in a specific and enclosed world with a reality that strives for open-ness and intellectual honesty. But then, this past summer, this challenge found reprieve in the most unexpected, yet beautiful, of places.

It was while completing a year-long fellowship in Israel that I first visited Budapest. In Budapest the stuffed cabbage of Simchat Torah was sumptuously displayed in the Christmas markets; the many foods of my childhood literally filled the streets. The language I had heard only through the mutterings of my elderly bacsi’s (uncles) andneni’s (aunts), which we all delighted in, was now all around me, spoken by young and old in bars and in museums, and the humor and the sensitivities of the people in this foreign European country were intimately familiar to me. I knew after that first visit that I had to return and indeed, when I did this past summer as a staff member at Camp Szarvas, in the south of Hungary, I understood why. Camp Szarvas was my past and future melded in one perfect place in the present.

Every summer, 1,500 campers from over 25 different countries participate in Camp Szarvas, sponsored by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.  Under the clear Hungarian sky and searing sun, my days at Camp Szarvas with Jewish teenagers from all over the world, were filled with international sports competitions, art projects, peulot (educational activities), bonfires, talent shows and of course, as every Szarvas-er will tell you, the iconic wandering Jew, who led many educational and entertaining activities throughout each two-week long session. I was fascinated and delighted to see how in its unique, dynamic and joyous way Camp Szarvas allows each participant, whether Hungarian, American, or Latvian, to live and choose their own Jewish identity, while ensuring the possibility of finding community.

As a staff member for the Szarvas Fellowships, the American cohort at Camp Szarvas, it was a constant thrill to be able to facilitate these experiences for my campers. But one morning at camp I could not contain my enthusiasm and joy when we walked in from morning mifkad (line-up session) and I noticed the breakfast set on the tables. My campers looked on in confused amusement as I exclaimed excitedly over the bowls of steaming hot tejberizs. This special oatmeal broth, I explained, was the same breakfast that had previously been served to me only at the Hassidic girls’ camp I attended for eight consecutive summers in the Catskills, in New York. This food, to me, evoked warmth and Judaism and sincerity. It conveyed home.

At home now at Camp Szarvas, however, I sang and danced with people from all over the world, discussed ideas and thoughts, wore what I wanted, and explored Jewish identities, preferences, meanings and affiliations freely, as I once could have only imagined. And most thrilling of all, I could not only bond with them over our shared love of palacsinta (crepes), but I could share who I was, as a woman, as an American, as a Jew, as a Hungarian, and as a fellow human being, along with everyone else at the camp. And I knew this experience of open-ness, of sharing and of joy was shared every day by each of campers and the staff from all over the world there with me.

Somewhere along the way, between learning the camp cheers of Bulgarians and of Romanians, between facilitating discussions about the role of Israel in the lives of Jews worldwide and between dancing to Yaakov Shwekey’s v’hee sh’umdah and to Hava Nagila, my image of the alte heim began shifting. At Camp Szarvas, with the familiar foods and personalities around me, I knew that the alte heim was very real and in its own, even better way, continues to exist. It is filled not with black-hatted followers, but with Jews of all sorts who are vibrantly working to mesh their Hungarian lives with their dynamic Jewish identities and are creating their own niche in Jewish culture.

And as I was learning about my new-found Hungarian community, my Hassidic community was coming into focus too. On Friday night, a week into my Szarvas experience, we gathered our campers on an outside terrace. Campers and staff members of many different countries joined us as, swaying in unison, we sang Shabbat melodies together under the shooting-star filled Hungarian sky. Sitting at that circle I held a book of zmirot (Hebrew songs) that my mother had given me to take along on my trip. It was a special book because in addition to the traditionally found Hebrew zmirot, this one included old Yiddish songs too, and one Hungarian song. The song of szol a kakas, about a bird lost in the forest and longing to find its way out. This song, which also tells its metaphor of Jews in exile longing for the Land of Israel, is one that all the men and boys of my Hassidic community know.

My brother learnt to sing szol a kakas in both Hungarian and Yiddish when he was a bright eyed three-year old boy at cheder. During Jewish holiday meals he and my cousins would proudly sing the song in Hungarian along with my grandfather, who’s face behind his long beard would have a wistful look every time they sang this song. Was he truly yearning for the Land of Israel, as the bird in the song? As a child, I could never tell. But as I sang szol a kokos on Friday night at Camp Szarvas along with my many new Hungarian friends, I understood that my grandfather was longing too for the land of this song. A land that I too had come to love.

When moving beyond the Hassidic community in which I was raised, I understood that I was choosing to live a life of choices, of inter-weaving my Judaism with other facets of my identity.  When I came to Camp Szarvas with a community vastly different than the one in which I was raised, yet right near where it began, I found that it was a choice and challenge that many of my international Jewish peers share. But what I came to understand most deeply was that, like me and my peers at Camp Szarvas, my grandfather and the community he sings for has in their own way made those choices too.

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/finding-the-alte-heim/

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A Century of Service

I love this video ... yashar koach (well done) to my colleagues who created it. Makes me proud ....


Since 1914, JDC has been empowering the most vulnerable Jews around the world, bringing relief to those who need it most, and making a powerful investment in the Jewish people's future. Explore our global impact, from the former Soviet Union to Israel and Europe to North Africa. And join us for our next 100 years!

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An Indian perspective on Szarvas

Amazing video from my colleague Gideon Herscher. Gideon was in India, taking part in the first-ever Limmud conference there. He had a brief moment to interview Indian graduates of our Szarvas Camp in Hungary .... it shows you what we mean when we talk about a global effort for Jewish renewal ...

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¡Viva Jewish Buenos Aires!

With a quarter of a million Jews, Argentina is home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world — and one of its most vibrant. 

Aided by JDC support, creative programs, and dynamic community institutions, the community has rebounded from a devastating 1994 terrorist attack and the financial crisis that plagued the country at the start of the millennium.

Today Buenos Aires is at the vanguard of global Jewish innovation, and an exciting place to be Jewish.

Renewal

Lovely video from my colleagues in the former Soviet Union ... why do we do renewal, what's the purpose, and what's the inspiration ...

Know Your Impact

Pioneering Global Jewish Revival ...

Turf

On a mission recently in Europe I led a discussion about "turf."

Turf is one of those Jewish-community concepts that we all know what it is when we see it. It's a combination of institutional pride, territorial protectiveness and - sometimes - overeager delineations that block cooperation and detract from community-building.

So when we talk about turf in American Jewish community life, it's often seen as a negative. Someone is being overprotective, or mean-spirited, or overly competitive against a different organization, for example.

And yet ... increasingly I've noticed how important turf is, especially in some of the countries in which we work where the Jewish community is still building up its sense of identity.

When you look at countries that, for some seventy years were cut off from all organized aspects of Jewish community life, it's not surprising. And then, in the early 1990s, precisely when the Joint returned formally to these countries and started working with these communities, all those on whom we would have built leadership programs ... were precisely those who got up and left. All those with the strongest Jewish identities were among the first to make aliyah, or move to Europe or the States.

So the revival of Jewish life took time. It couldn't have happened in the early 1990s. And the way to build Jewish community was - and is - through pride in institutions, through belonging, through participation.

Brick by brick, JCC by JCC, Hillel by Hillel ... You need turf to build a community.

Jewish Rebirth in Estonia

Lovely piece by my colleague Asher Ostrin in "EJewish Philanthropy" on Jewish Estonia

http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/jewish-rebirth-in-estonia/

Posted on SEPTEMBER 15, 2013 Written by EJP LEAVE A COMMENT

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Children at a JDC-supported Jewish kindergarten program in Estonia.

by Asher Ostrin

A few days ago I held in my hand a copy of a legal document that will someday find its way into JDC’s contemporary history. It’s a testament to our years of investment in people and resources to achieve a first in Jewish history: the creation of Jewish community where none existed for generations.

Many reading this account would not be able to read the document in the original, but it’s not dissimilar to others of its type around the world. It is, after all, a bland, legal contract with no particular import. But for those who do understand the historical context, it is a gem, and has extraordinary value far beyond the sums of money mentioned in it.

The document is a mortgage and to understand its significance, we’ll need to go back over two decades.

Tallinn, Estonia. September, 1990. The Soviet Union is in its death throes but few, anywhere in the world, recognize that. Two senior JDC staff members are in Tallinn as part of a first time trip to several cities in the USSR with significant Jewish populations to begin to explore what will be JDC’s involvement in the USSR. We are there by invitation of the Kremlin as part of its efforts to “open up” Soviet society to the West. As one of several trips by several teams of JDC staff to scout out the territory, we’re there to formulate a policy for JDC’s re-entry into the USSR. This part of the world was a mystery and we knew little about the general environment, and even less about the Jews there. And so the first mission was fact finding:

Who are the Jews there, and how are they organized? How can JDC make an impact in this newly opened region? What are the potential obstacles? What are the resources available in each city? And so on.

This is the very beginning – the building blocks of program that we now associate today with JDC in the FSU and the Baltics. There was no welfare program. “Jewish Renewal” was not part of our lexicon. JCCs and leadership development were pipe dreams, if they were discussed at all. And to even talk about “Jewish Community” after the Nazi onslaught and the Soviets’ decades-long efforts to obliterate Jewish life, was too fantastic even to be contemplated.

But Tallinn was especially memorable because the Jews in this city were more organized than almost anywhere else. True, the odds were stacked against them: a small Jewish population of about 4,500, they were Russian speakers in a state beginning to emphasize its Estonian roots. They were members of a small religious minority whose calendar was suppressed, whose education system was nonexistent, and who lacked functioning synagogues or any Jewish property at all.

But there was a small welfare society, run by a few retired Jews (mostly women) who visited the needy elderly and provided some food and donated clothing (primarily from those who were emigrating). There was a newly established Jewish cultural organization that had just run a two-week camp. Its leaders told us of their plans to open a Jewish school in several weeks, but what impressed us most about that “dream” was its implausibility. They had no textbooks. No facility. No curriculum. And this was still, after all, the USSR.

In sum, some well-meaning people who wanted to revive Jewish life believed that they could make it happen and create community. We were inspired by their passion, but our enthusiasm was tempered by the reality we were familiar with from our visits to other cities. We promised to send in a library of some 900 volumes of Jewish interest translated into Russian. Perhaps the library would be a place for Jews to learn, to meet one another, and to begin rudimentary Jewish programming. That was Tallinn in 1990.

Last week I visited Tallinn again and was curious about the community I left behind so many years before. JDC’s work in Tallinn, as in the rest of the Baltics, is carried out by its Europe team, and not by the FSU department, and what I witnessed is wholly to their credit.

Today one can speak of something inconceivable during my visit 23 years ago: There is a Jewish community in Tallinn. A vibrant, pulsating Jewish community. A Jewish community that has a flagship campus that hosts a JCC, a synagogue, and yes, a Jewish school with classes from first grade through high school.

There is a Hesed, a welfare society, run by young Tallinn Jewish professionals, graduates of JDC’s leadership development program. Volunteers of all ages are the lifeblood of the program. Most of the young people were out of the city – in summer camps for which they pay tuition, begun by JDC.

And the library that JDC sent in more than two decades ago still functions, with pride of place in the JCC.

Is it real? Will it last?

During the last year the community reached a conclusion that the absence of a Jewish preschool was a problem for several reasons: the Jewish elementary school lacked a “natural feeder;” preschools serve as magnets to engage young families just beginning their Jewish odyssey; they are a tool for strengthening community cohesion. To address this lacunae, the community needed to have a stand-alone facility fashioned to meet the requirements of the European Union for an educational setting for that age.

In another time, and certainly in many other places, JDC would be the first address to which communities turn for funding. But in Tallinn the community put together a business plan that included demographic projections, projected income from tuition, local fundraising scenarios in a community committed to this project, a symbolic grant from JDC, and so on. And for the missing amount, they went to a local bank and took out a 25-year mortgage.

A mortgage means that they had to supply collateral, that they had to have faith in their community’s ability to sustain itself, that they had to present a plan that not only satisfies their members, but an external system that looks at these plans with a critical, professional eye. It requires vision, leadership, and commitment. And it is evidence that out of the ember we found in Tallinn in 1990, a community was born.

Asher Ostrin is a senior executive at JDC and the former director of their FSU department.

- See more at: http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/jewish-rebirth-in-estonia/#sthash.ArcbmOeN.dpuf

Szarvas 2013

Awesome video from Szarvas, the pioneering international Jewish summer camp operated in rural Hungary by JDC and the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation. Szarvas is an amazing chance to connect to Judaism and meet friends from around the world. 

It's a second home for participants. And it's a dynamic and vital part of the global Jewish revival.

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Restitution and Renewal

My drash at Temple Beth-El Mekor Chayim in Cranford, NJ, this Shabbat ...

Shabbat shalom.

So, there I was, about a year ago, in downtown Vilnius, Lithuania.

And I was standing with a small group in a communal building courtyard.

Around us were several huge apartment buildings, several hundred apartments in all. Nearly all owned before the war by Jews. Now all owned by Lithuanians.

We had a Lithuanian-Jewish tour guide who, uniquely for most Lithuanian Jews actually spoke Lithuanian as his mother-tongue and not Russian.

And it was particularly useful to have a Lithuanian-speaker with us, to translate those interesting moments that otherwise we may have missed.

For example, standing in that courtyard, we noticed two fourth-floor windows opening on each end of the courtyard. Two neighbors shouting hello to each other, some forty feet above us.

And looking down on this small group of American Jews, they waved to us.

And what did they say to each other?

Our guide translated: “Look,” said one to the other. “The Jews are here, coming to take back your apartment.”

It took me a few minutes to realize the history behind that comment.

The Jews are here. Coming to take back your apartment.

So that was Lithuania.

And a couple of weeks ago, I visited the Hungarian Jewish community. I’ve been there before. I seem to find myself at least six or seven times a year in currently communist or former communist dictatorships.

And in Hungary I found an interesting continuation of that Lithuanian story.

In 2010 the opposition center-right party – Fidesz - received 53% of the vote. But because of the electoral system they got 2/3 of the seats in the Hungarian Parliament.

Here’s where it got interesting: the Constitution allowed for a 2/3 majority in parliament to make changes – but no one ever thought that one party would receive that kind of a majority.

And they have made good use – or bad use – of that majority. They have changed the courts, the constitution, the election system. All of this in ways that smack of corruption, nepotism and one-party dictatorship.

What frightened everyone at the time wasn’t the massive 2/3 Fidesz victory – even though it should have. Instead, what frightened people was the surprising rise of the far-right Jobbik party, which succeeded on a xenophobic and racist platform in gaining 17 per cent of the vote.

And on the surface, being afraid of the far-right party seemed like a legitimate conclusion.

Jobbik excelled in making scapegoats out of Jews and Roma – what we used to call Gypsies.

One of the reasons that the far-right in Hungary is so much more viciously anti-Semitic than its counterparts in other European countries is that there’s no real Moslem presence in Hungary.
But there are some 120,000 Jews and maybe 700,000 Roma.

So Jews and Roma are basically the only visible and identifiable minorities in Hungary.

And if you live in a country like Hungary, with high unemployment, almost zero economic growth, and a traditional tendency to blame your troubles on others … then the Jews and the Roma are perfect for your needs.

There was a famous case last winter where one of the heads of the Jobbik party, Marton Gyongyosy, stood up in Parliament and said ‘now is the time to make a list of all those Hungarian Jews who are too loyal to Israel and not loyal enough to Hungary.’

It’s important to note that the issue of lists for the Hungarian Jewish community is particularly sensitive.

The Shoah, the Holocaust, in Hungary only lasted six weeks.

From May to July 1944, the Nazis rounded up hundreds of thousands of Jews and sent them to Auschwitz.

A Hungarian Jew living in the countryside in 1944 had less than a ten percent chance of surviving the following 12 months.

And how did they succeed in killing so many, so fast?

They took the lists of Jews from the Jewish community. Which is why the issue of lists is so sensitive.

So the problem last year wasn’t so much the noise of a few far-right fascists in Partliament who called for a list of Jews.

The problem was that the 2/3 majority government party said nothing.

And the reason for that is, in some ways, the real challenge ahead of us.

For Hungarian Jews, the Soviets were liberators in 1944.

When the Soviet Red Army overthrew the Nazi regime, Hungarian Jews were quite literally saved by the Soviet Union.

Without question.

But for most Hungarians, who weren’t affected by the Shoah or by Nazi repression, the opposite was the case: the Soviets were evil foreign invaders, and clearly unwelcome.

So … in a case like this, when the issue of reparations – the restitution of stolen property from the Jewish community comes up, there are two layers to the conversation.

Because: in many cases the government is working to restitute property that was stolen from Hungarians by the Soviets.

This was property that was “nationalized” and stolen from Hungarians.

But … some of these same Hungarian “victims” were themselves the beneficiaries of the same property that was “aryanized” maybe ten or twenty years earlier when it was stolen from Jews.

And sometimes they themselves were the ones who stole it from those Jews!

So …let’s review:

A significant number of Hungarians supported the Nazis. They saw the Soviet occupation as unwelcome. The Jews, on the other hand, saw the Soviets as liberators and life-savers.

So … there's an actual debate in Hungarian society on whether fascist rule and communist rule were essentially “the same” in terms of their moral depravity.

I was walking through a museum in Budapest and looking at some really shocking attempts to make a direct equivalence between German Nazi rule and Russian Communist rule. Particularly striking was a rotating set of two bodies, in fascist and Communist uniforms, meant to show how similar they were.

It was particularly graphic.

And completely unjustified.

It’s perfectly ok to insist that there were atrocities committed by the Communists, and to say that the lack of respect for human life in Communist times was appallingly low.

There were atrocities, and there wasn’t enough respect for human life.

But to jump from there to say that, essentially, there was no difference between the Fascists and the Communists, is too far.

To jump even further, and claim that Hungary was the victim of foreign occupation is also morally unacceptable. It ignores the dedication and enthusiasm of so many Hungarians from the right and left to turn to evil.

And it helps you understand, I think, why there is a tendency in some of these countries to feel that they have no personal or national responsibility for what happened.

Why, for example, they aren’t standing up against a small fascist growth in Parliament to stand up for minority rights.

And this is happening far too much around Europe today.

Because what you have here is a sleight of hand.

First you equate Fascism with Communism, and then you say that both are foreign intrusions.

Hungary has no responsibility.

Lithuania had nothing to do with it.

Austria was innocent.

This is the challenge that the organized Jewish community faces today.

If the Holocaust Death Camp is “the same as” the Communist Gulag  - then there’s not only a moral failure here, there’s also never going to be a genuine move to full reparation of stolen Jewish property and a decent reckoning with their past and responsibility.

And why is this still so important today?

Because there’s a very clear and – when you think about it – a very obvious – reason for why so many Jewish communities are so weak and so under-developed.

It’s because they had everything stolen from them.

By the Nazis and by the Communists.

And once you start restituting that property, bringing it back to the community – then you can start to see the beginnings of revitalization.

Because you can renovate restituted property, and turn it, for example, into rental apartments or gyms or retail stores.

And with the monthly income you can start to build community centers, and leadership programs, and send kids to summer camp and Sunday school.

But only if you get that first step started.

So, therefore ... two conclusions:

First, sometimes the enemy of democracy isn’t always what it appears to be.

Sometimes it can be much stealthier and quieter than what you’d expect.

Sometimes things aren’t what they seem.

And second, the weight of history can be so burdensome, so awful, that it will take us a very long time to recover, and correct the evils of the past.

But we know how to get there.

Thank you.

Shabbat shalom.


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Mission to Minsk … and more

Lovely article in the Jewish Voice of Rhode Island By Susan Leach DeBlasio

Friday, 16 August 2013 20:27

PROVIDENCE – Eddie Bruckner, Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island’s vice  president for financial resource development, and I experienced Minsk and Israel  on a Jewish Federations of North America mission with 96 other lay and professional  leaders from across the United States and Canada. Missions are peripatetic,  transformational summer camps for grownups. There’s no sleep, only days and  nights filled with inspiration, education, training, and bonding with our counterparts  and instant new friends. The mid-July mission was no different. In Minsk and Israel, we visited programs sponsored by the American Jewish Joint  Distribution Committee (JDC), the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) and World ORT.  Each of these organizations, collaborating on a continuum of services with the dollars  we (and other donor organizations) raise, ensures the renewal and vibrancy of Jewish  life all over the world. Today, about 25,000 Jews live in Minsk, the capital of Belarus (birthplace of Marc  Chagall, Shimon Peres and Meyer Lansky), the first country invaded by the Nazis  and the last liberated by the Allied Forces. The Nazis slaughtered 80-90 percent of the  Jews in Belarus, and the Communists imposed official anti-Semitism for decades after  the war, obliterating entire generations of Jewish knowledge, tradition and communal  life. We began our visit to Minsk by exploring Yama (“pit”), a deep depression carved  out of the earth where 5,000 Jews rounded up from the ghetto were shot to death in  just one day. There we recited Kaddish and heard from several young leaders of the  Jewish community as well as its head, Leonid Levin, an architect and sculptor.   Descending by the stairway into the pit is his statue of 27 soulful figures about to die.   In his remarks, Levin reminded us, “Each of us could have been in that line.”   Transporting us from those tragic moments in the pit, where “the ashes of our people”  are buried, he summed up the successful rebirth of Jewish life in Minsk with his  dramatic conclusion, “We are few, but we are Jews.” Jewish life flourishes in Minsk today. There are synagogues, schools, summer camps,  young leader and cultural enrichment programs, Shabbatons, family retreats,  newspapers and kosher food, with a robust infrastructure of Jewish social service,  cultural and philanthropic organizations.  The Minsk Jewish Campus, a thriving  social, cultural and educational center, is the central address for Jewish communal  activity.   JDC, JAFI and World ORT are partners in their efforts to promote and  sustain Jewish identity and care for the community’s needy and vulnerable. Together,  with support from the Alliance, they are saving a generation of young Jewish adults  who would otherwise assimilate into obscurity. JDC’s Hesed Rachamim Welfare Center provides medicine, food, home care,  cultural life, companionship, winter relief and home repairs for the last generation  of elderly victims of the Nazis and life under a Communist regime. As Dov Ben-Shimon of the JDC explained, “Jews don’t need our help getting out of  any country in the world today. They need our help in staying.” Their needs arise from hunger and thirst – hunger for food and sustenance, thirst for  Jewish community and belonging.  Eddie and I shopped for groceries for 86-year old  Tatiana, who lives alone in a tiny room of a communal apartment. We had an  allotment from the JDC of 100,000 rubles ($11) to spend. We bought chicken, oil,  tea, kasha, bread and noodles.  We all contributed to add oatmeal, fruit, potatoes  and eggs. Astonishingly, many young people we met exploring and celebrating their Judaism  did not learn they were Jewish until they were into their teens.  Sometimes a  grandparent or aunt let them know, or they discovered old family papers or a  siddur (prayer book) in a shoebox in the attic.  Yoni Leifer went to shul for the  first time when he was 11.   After Jewish summer camps and Hebrew school, he made aliyah, and then after  serving in the Israeli army and attending university, he returned home to Minsk to  work for the JDC. In Volozyhn, we visited the world-renowned Volozhyn Yeshiva, the site of the  Second Zionist Congress and the “Harvard” of yeshivas, attracting the greatest  Jewish intellectuals of the time (from 1803 until 1939).  There, we met Vladimir  Levitskiy from Moscow and other Jewish young adults participating in an  “Expedition” program where they do community service projects across the former  Soviet Union and learn about their Jewish heritage.  Vladimir is 21 and first learned  he was Jewish three years ago.  Since then, he has been to Israel on Taglit-Birthright,  traveled all around the United States, participated in a number of cultural programs  sponsored by JDC and JAFI, and hopes to return to Israel on a MASA program.   Together we spent several hours cleaning a Jewish cemetery next to a monument  memorializing the mass grave of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis. Recognizing that Jewish adolescents and young adults need multiple touch points in  their lives to concretize their Jewish identity, these agencies sponsor summer camps,  Birthright trips and Jewish schools, to create a long-term immersive experience in  Jewish life.  JAFI runs summer camps where children learn local Jewish history,  Jewish customs and practices. At one camp, I met Kseniye, 19 and a counselor, who  did not learn she was Jewish until she was 9 and had an opportunity to attend the  camp.  As they learn to engage young campers in the Jewish community, counselors  develop their own Jewish identities. In Israel, we traveled to Haifa, Afula, Jerusalem and other areas where programs  rescue children at risk, provide services to those in need and integrate immigrants,  including Ethiopians, into Israeli life.  At a World ORT science and math campus  focused on “program-based learning,” we launched rockets and enjoyed other  experiential learning opportunities with 14- and 15-year-old scientists. One personal highlight was a visit to a JDC-run father/son sports program in Afula.  Fathers and sons must commit to spend 90 minutes each week together with coaches,  counselors, and other father-son pairs. Together they practice and play soccer, but  what they really learn are social skills, teamwork, confidence, self-esteem and responsibility.  The program successfully strengthens the relationship between father  and son, and their lessons spill over into all other areas of their lives, generating  emotional wellbeing, family relationships and better school attendance and grades. The Alliance has been ensuring a vibrant Jewish community for nearly 70 years  both domestically and overseas. As the central address of Jewish philanthropy in  greater Rhode Island, the Alliance provides care for people in need and support to  Israel and collaborates to develop a strong Jewish community for the next generation. As the great Lubbavitcher Rebbe Schneerson cautioned, “If you see what needs to be  repaired and how to repair it, then you have found a piece of the world that God has  left for you to complete. But if you only see what is wrong and how ugly it is, then it is  yourself that needs repair.” I invite all of you to join the Alliance and me this year to help repair the piece of the  world left for us to complete. Susan Leach DeBlasio ( sdeblasio@apslaw.com) is vice chair for financial resource development of the Alliance. http://jvhri.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4381:mission-to-minsk--and-more&catid=41:community&Itemid=62

The Past and The Future

One of the greatest accomplishments we have in Hungary is the revitalization of Jewish life for the "new generation" and the "missing generation."

In 1948 when the communists took power, lots of Jews saw it as a very positive sign, finally they could look to a better future. Those who – on an individual level – emphasized their personal and religious Jewish identity, had already left. Those who wanted to be 'Hungarians' stayed. 

In 1956 there were anti-Semitic outbreaks as a reaction against the Communists. Many religious Jews left. 

Therefore, those who remained were - even more so - those who didn't take their Jewish identity as an important factor and didn't educate their children about their heritage. 

And others left when the regime fell in the 1990s.

So the revitalization of Jewish life, in places like the Balint JCC, is critical .... and it's happening on a scale that is unprecedented for Hungary. You can see the future of Jewish Hungary in this video.

Szarvas 2013 ... CJP Mission visit

Quite possibly the best mission video to Szarvas (with a minute or two at the beginning with the Balint JCC kids) I've ever seen. Kudos to Todd ...

Szarvas - 2013

I'm speaking this evening at the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County about Hungary and the revival of Jewish life there. There's no better example than Szarvas .... just received this terrific video about their "Donate Your Day" event there this week ...

How Good and Pleasant

Vera Goffman, Head of JDC's Hesed Minsk Choir, sings with the Campaign Chairs and Directors Mission of the Jewish Federations of North American (JFNA), July 2013, in Minsk. In the audience are Shoah (Holocaust) survivors and Righteous Among the Nations.

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The Twenty-Mile Radius

I have a few more things I need to write later about Minsk and Belarus. In particular there were some memorable and moving encounters with local Jewish leaders and participants in the Minsk Jewish Campus. But for now, back home, I want to reflect for a moment on the mission itself, the Campaign Chairs and Directors (CCD) Mission of JFNA.

I've always loved Jewish federation missions because the values that come out of them are the same values that the Joint believes in, and works towards – community (kehila), responsibility (areivut) and kindness (hesed). And a CCD mission is really where some of the most dedicated and articulate supporters of these values gather together. So there’s a lot of passion, a lot of dedication and … unsurprisingly …. a lot of caffeine.

It’s such an amazing pleasure to spend a few days in an inspiring and growing Jewish community, that is learning to take care of its needy and hungry, how to promote its young leaders, how to cooperate and educate, while at the same time build its future. And it’s even more of a pleasure, and a privilege, to do that with some of the most talented and enthusiastic storytellers and promoters of Jewish community life.

On one of our bus journeys inside Minsk we had a fascinating conversation about what it means to be “in” a Jewish community in North America. What does it mean when we say “domestic” Jewish needs (close-to-home) and “international” Jewish needs? What does it mean when we say there are allocations and priorities "abroad" compared to those "at home?"

And then, on a mission, you realize …

This distinction is false. It’s meaningless. It cheapens our understanding of what a Jewish community actually is. If you draw, say, a twenty-mile radius around where your federation building is located and say, “this is my Jewish community, and that’s it,” you’ll never understand the beauty, the depth, the impact of Jewish community and Jewish life.

But when you come to Minsk, or many other mission locations, you get it. You see the connections, you see the community. And then there’s a moment where you turn round, and look back “home,” several thousand miles away. And that’s when you understand what community means and what we can do. Together.

Shabbat shalom.


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