Rabbi Scheinberg's Blog

UJC Rabbinic Cabinet Mission to Ukraine and Israel
Rabbi Robert Scheinberg
E-mails to the Hoboken Jewish community

#1: Tues., Feb. 1

Shalom all!

I am happy to write to you - briefly - from Odessa, Ukraine. (I have major jet lag so please excuse my grammar mistakes!) As many of you know, I am here for a few days traveling with the United Jewish Communities Rabbinic Cabinet. I am one of 26 rabbis who have been selected to travel here to meet with Jewish communal leaders, and to find out about the activities in the Former Soviet Union that the United Jewish Communities makes possible.

Most of us have been ordained for 10 years or less; we are from all over the North American Jewish community. (FYI: The United Jewish Communities - UJC - is the primary communal fundraising and allocation arm of the American Jewish community. Funds raised by UJC basically go to three different places: (a) to social, environmental and humanitarian projects in Israel, funded through the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI); (b) to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which supports Jewish communities in crisis around the world; and (c) to support local American Jewish communal institutions. On this Odessa part of the trip, we are especially learning about the activities of the JDC and JAFI here.)

When I planned this trip, I didn't realize that Ukraine would be such an exciting place to visit! The mood here is one of exhilaration. If you've been following the political situation in Ukraine: Odessa is basically part of Western Ukraine, where Ukraine's new leader Viktor Yuschenko is popular. [note: this turned out to be incorrect - see part #3.] (Viktor Yanikovich, who lost the recent re-done election, has his base of support in the Eastern part of Ukraine, which is more closely aligned with Russia.) the people I have spoken with are very proud to have taken part in an effective 'bloodless revolution,' and they are very optimistic for the future. Hopefully I'll write more about this tomorrow.

Here's some of what I have learned so far:

(a) The Odessa Jewish community numbers some 30,000 people. Ten years ago, the community was even larger - over 100,000 - but large numbers of Jews made Aliyah to Israel or moved to Germany (which has a very quickly growing Russian-Jewish population). The Odessa Jewish community is now extremely active considering its size. This evening, we attended an evening of cultural performances at the Migdal-Or Jewish Community Center in Odessa. Children and adults of all ages performed Jewish and Israeli dance, song, and theater in honor of the 13th anniversary of the community center.

The Center's activities are funded by the JDC, whose goal here is to help Jews in Ukraine to affirm their Jewish identity and to connect with Jewish culture, history and tradition. Most Jews in the Former Soviet Union were unable to do anything to nurture their Jewish identity during the long years under Communism.

A point of special emotion for me was seeing the performance by the senior Jewish dance troupe -a group of men and women whose average age was probably 70. After their rousing and energetic performance of an Eastern European Jewish couples dance, the emcee of the evening confirmed something that I was actually thinking about during their performance - that every one of those men and women had been children in the Odessa Ghetto during the Holocaust.
Overall statistics on the Jewish community of Odessa
Migdal JCC web page

(b) As far as I can tell so far, the Jews in Odessa today feel that the level of anti-Semitism has never been lower than it is today. They say that certainly there is some anti-Semitism, but "far less than in France" or other countries in Western Europe. However, you can't ignore that this is actually the location where the Holocaust happened. And there were plenty of outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence in this area long before the Holocaust. In 1905 there was a notorious pogrom in Odessa that killed several hundred Jews. And seared into the collective memory of Jews in and from Ukraine are the Cossack massacres of Jews in the 1640's, led by the Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnicki, which killed well over 100,000 Jews. (It's only because the Holocaust has overshadowed the Chmielnicki massacres that many Jews have not heard of them.) But in the Ukraine, Chmielnicki is considered a hero - in fact, on the way from the airport to downtown Odessa, we passed by a monument to him. There is also a prominent monument to him in Kiev. Regardless of the perceived amount of anti-Semitism right now, there is certainly something disconcerting about being in a place where Jews have been persecuted.
Odessa Pogroms in 1905 and other years

I hope I have time to write more tomorrow!
Thanks to everyone for your good wishes.
Shalom -
Rabbi Robert Scheinberg
United Synagogue of Hoboken
Contact Rabbi Scheinberg

#2: Wed., Feb. 2

Shalom again from Odessa!

Throughout today, I have been thinking about my last opportunities to visit Eastern Europe. Many of you know that among the most transformative experiences of my life were my two opportunities, in 1992 and 1993, to travel to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (actually in '92 it was still Czechoslovakia) to perform Jewish music for those communities with the Pizmon a cappella singing group.

That was only a couple of years after the fall of Communism. The Jewish world in Eastern Europe was slowly beginning to awaken from a slumber of several decades. I realized that those experiences, from 12 and 13 years ago, were the frames of reference for this trip. I fully expected to see in Odessa what I had seen in Warsaw and Prague, and to a lesser extent in Budapest: Jewish communities cowering in fear, without much going on, without much cultural expression and without any meaningful contact with the rest of the Jewish world. And that WAS the reality here in Odessa not long ago. But it is very different now!

In the 48 hours we have been here, we have seen 4 Jewish choirs and 6 performing Jewish dance troupes. We visited with the students at a secular Jewish day school, and with the students at an Orthodox Jewish boarding school. We met Odessa's answer to Rachelle Grossman (more about that in a minute), and we saw an after-school program for 'at-risk' Jewish youth. We met the student leaders of the Hillel group at the Odessa State University, as well as the members of the youth group of the Reform movement. We stopped by a conversational Hebrew class for adults that had 35 people enrolled! (I am assuming that there was more than one teacher!) Some of the rabbis in our group remember - just 16 years ago - visiting Odessa and other sites in the Soviet Union for the purpose of smuggling in Jewish books and ritual items which were forbidden under Communism. Now, to see Jewish buildings proudly displaying signs in Hebrew, and Israeli flags, is nothing short of miraculous.

Now, some more details:

(a) The "Rachelle Grossman of Odessa" is a woman named Yulia who runs a program called "Mazal Tov" out of a 4-room apartment in downtown Odessa. It's part of the Jewish Community Center (see my comments from yesterday), but they don't have enough space for this program in the small JCC building. Picture "Kaplan PreSchool" plus "Toddler Time" plus "Echo of Art" - it's a drop-in program for parents and kids, age 0 to 5, which offers an age-appropriate introduction to Jewish culture and community through play, art, music and dance. It serves about 150 families on a monthly basis - all out of this one apartment. So what makes it different from Hoboken? The biggest difference is the financial situation of the people who attend. The program is basically free - a nominal donation of the equivalent of $0.60 is requested each week. Apparently there are also private programs that are similar to "Mazal Tov" (without the Jewish content), but since they cost $20/month, they are beyond the means of most people in Odessa. The average monthly budget for a family in Odessa is the equivalent of $70-100 per month. The program receives almost 100% of its funds from charitable sources - from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (what's that? - see what I wrote yesterday), and from individual contributions, mostly from the United States and Canada.
Mazal Tov program (in Russian, but with some cute photos of the kids and the space! Photo of the director, Yulia Maksimiuk, at the bottom of the page)

(b) Shocking statistic of the day: there are over 3,000 Jewish children and teens in the Ukraine who are essentially living on the streets, or whose parents are deemed unfit to care for them. After the break-up of the Soviet Union and the fall of Communism, as we know, the social service safety net collapsed in most parts of the FSU. We visited an orphanage run through the Jewish community as an effort to deal with this problem - which is of course only a small percentage of the general problem of child homelessness in the Ukraine. The orphanage provides a stable environment, 24/7, for these children - and also gives them a Jewish identity, makes them feel part of the Jewish community, and introduces them to Jewish tradition - hopefully all these things can act as stabilizing forces in their lives.
Tikva Jewish orphanage in Odessa
Other Jewish orphanages in and near Odessa
A listing of Jewish orphanage programs around the world, especially in the former Soviet Union

(c) On the sightseeing front: Odessa has many major sites associated with Jewish history and Russian history and culture. If you have seen Sergei Eisenstein's famous film from the 1920's, The Battleship Potemkin, you remember the horrible scene of a massacre of peaceful protestors on the Potemkin Steps (based on true events that took place in Odessa in 1905). This stairway overlooks the harbor in Odessa, on the Black Sea. Istanbul is just an overnight boat ride across the Black Sea. We learned today that in the early 20th century, the port of Odessa was known in Hebrew as 'Sha'arei Tziyon' - 'The Gates of Zion' - because it was the port of embarkation for most of the early Jewish halutzim - immigrants to Palestine from all over Eastern Europe. We also saw the monument to the great Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, who was exiled to Odessa for several years and did much of his best writing here. Appropriately enough for his general attitudes on authority, in his statue, Pushkin is standing with his back to Odessa City Hall.

Odessa also had a reputation as the 'sinful' Jewish city of Eastern Europe. The famous Yiddish writer Sholom Aleichem, who wrote many of his most famous stories in Odessa and set some of them in Odessa, wrote in a parody of a Talmudic passage, "God created the world with ten measures of sin -and allocated nine of them to Odessa." Another famous Yiddish writer from Odessa, Isaac Babel, is known for his stories of the Jewish underworld, of Jewish gangsters and bullies and prostitutes. (Isaac Babel was killed in Stalin's purges in the 1930's.) No famous rabbis were from Odessa; the maskilim, Jewish 'modernizers,' gained an early foothold in Odessa in the early 1800's and basically didn't let go. We saw the birthplace of Menachem Begin's political mentor, the early Zionist leader Zeev Jabotinsky - who remains, 65 years after his death, one of the most polarizing figures in recent Jewish history. We also saw the place where Chaim Nachman Bialik lived for many years. Bialik is considered the most important early Hebrew writer. After a very religious childhood, when he came to have doubts about the tenets of Jewish religion, he moved to Odessa, because he knew he would find like-minded people here.

Jewish literary Odessa - homes of Bialik, Sholom Aleichem, Isaac Babel, et al
History of Jewish Odessa
Odessa photos from 1991

Odessa was also the place of origin of such famous Jewish musicians as Jascha Heifetz and Mischa Elman.

The Jewish residents of Odessa whom we are meeting tend to be knowledgeable about Odessa's iconoclastic Jewish history and are very very proud of it!

Shalom --
Rabbi Robert Scheinberg
United Synagogue of Hoboken
Contact Rabbi Scheinberg

#3: Thurs., Feb. 3

Shalom all!

#1: an interesting development. We were supposed to fly to Kiev and then to Israel this evening - but because of snow, the flight from Odessa to Kiev was cancelled. The flight from Kiev to Israel took off as scheduled. The next flight from the Ukraine to Israel is on Saturday night - meaning that we are now, unexpectedly, going to be spending Shabbat in the Ukraine - probably in Kiev. Unexpected - meaning less time in Israel - but actually an exciting opportunity to see another Jewish community, which is, after all, our purpose here. This means that I will get to see the Brodsky Shul in Kiev, whose rabbi long ago was apparently Doug Klein's great-great-grandfather.

2. We've learned interesting things about religious options for Jews in Odessa - and throughout the Ukraine. During the Communist era, of course, there were no Jewish religious options to speak of. Immediately after the fall of communism, there were some Orthodox rabbis from Israel who moved to Ukraine immediately and did a very admirable job of establishing (or rather re-establishing) synagogues and Jewish institutions in the Ukraine. Chabad Lubavitch, in particular, has done an amazing job of creating communities and institutions throughout Ukraine, with a staff of several dozen throughout the country. (They had a special motivation to do so, not only because of the enormous Jewish population in the Ukraine, but also because Ukraine was the birthplace of Hasidism.) Reform and Conservative Judaism have established themselves more recently in the Ukraine. The Conservative movement has one of its Ramah camps in the Ukraine (near Kiev) but has no synagogues or other institutions. The Reform movement has recently begun to do major outreach in the Ukraine, and they have been remarkably successful. In Odessa, we met the students in the Reform movement youth group, as well as the one and only Reform rabbi in the Ukraine, who splits his time among over 40 (!) Reform congregations in the Ukraine, involving thousands of people. The Odessa Reform community has a Torah scroll that was recently donated by a synagogue in California. All their books, materials, etc are donated, mostly by Jews in the U.S. Slowly, with the participation of Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, the Jewish community that was dormant for 70 years is coming back to life. The various Jewish communities sometimes get along and sometimes don't - doesn't this sound familiar?
About Camp Ramah in the Ukraine
Article that discusses, among other things, the Chabad presence in Odessa

3. If yesterday I met the "Rachelle Grossman of Odessa"; today I met the "Howard Cutler of Odessa." (Howard Cutler was, until recently, the coordinator of the Jewish Family and Counseling Service of Jersey City, Bayonne and Hoboken.) He is the director of the Gemilus Hesed organization of Odessa. Similar to our JFCS, the Gemilus Hesed organization is the front-line service provider for needy Jewish elderly in Odessa. But the problems in Odessa are much more acute. As I mentioned yesterday, the social service safety net was virtually eliminated in the Ukraine after the fall of Communism. Whereas an elderly person can subsist minimally on the equivalent of $70 per month, most elderly in the Ukraine either have no pension whatsoever or have a pension of less than $35 per month. Gemilus Hesed is for the purpose of filling in the gaps. Services include: social worker and volunteer visits; food packages; home health care aides; medical care; senior drop-in centers and activities. It's amazing to think that just $35 per month - an amount of money that is trivial to many of us - can make such a huge difference in the life of someone here. (I was shocked to learn that there is essentially nothing analogous to Medicare here - without communal support, it appears, older people just die.)
On the JDC Hesed activities for the elderly in Odessa
An incredible story of one bat mitzvah girl's incredible act of generosity on behalf of elderly Jews in the Ukraine
Medical care for Jewish seniors in Odessa

But most amazing of all was my opportunity to visit a 'warm house' - a drop-in center meeting in someone's home - for 'righteous of the nations of the world' - non-Jews who saved the lives of Jews during the Holocaust who live in the Odessa area. The Gemilus Hesed organization has special programs for this extraordinary population. We met the woman named Evgenia who hosts this program one morning each week, in the living room of her tiny one-bedroom apartment. Around the table (in addition to myself, three other rabbis, and a translator) sat eight women, age 70 and up, who had all saved the lives of Jews during the Holocaust. Most assisted older relatives in saving Jews who were family friends. One woman assisted her father-in-law, a psychiatrist, in saving the lives of over 200 Jews by pretending that they were patients in his mental institution. Especially after seeing the film Hiding and Seeking from our synagogue film series last month, I can't begin to tell you how moving it was to have the privilege to meet these women face to face. I am so happy that, with its meager resources, the Odessa Jewish community makes it a priority to reach out to these people, giving them financial assistance and other social services.
About Eugenia, and also including the story of Valentina, the woman whose father-in-law had the mental institution

4. One more related comment on the Ukraine election. I gave some mis-information in my first e-mail. Odessa, while technically in the Western part of Ukraine, has a long history of identifying with Russia. It is a Russian-speaking city (rather than Ukrainian-speaking), and while it was divided, a majority of Odessa - Jews as well as non-Jews - voted for Yanikovich in the election. Today I spoke with some people who expressed concerns about the Ukrainian nationalism with which Yuschenko is identified, and also said that they voted for Yanikovich because they felt he would be better on social welfare isues. But, now that it appears we'll be spending Shabbat in Kiev, which was the base of Yuschenko's support, we'll probably get a different perspective.
Odessa during the Holocaust

Best wishes to everyone for a Shabbat Shalom!!
I hope my next e-mail to you will be from Jerusalem!!
Rabbi Robert Scheinberg
United Synagogue of Hoboken

#4: Mon., Feb. 7

Shalom from jerusalem!

Some brief thoughts since this past Thursday night:

(a) Sometimes it's the unexpected which is the most interesting and rewarding. Because of snow, we were unable to fly from Ukraine to Israel on Thursday night -- our flight from Odessa to Kiev was cancelled. (The regular flights from Ukraine to Israel fly out of Kiev, Ukraine's capital and biggest city.) This guaranteed that we would be unable to get to Jerusalem before Shabbat. And so we spent an entirely unexpected Shabbat in Kiev. This was especially emotional for me because my father's mother was from Kiev. (actually, born almost immediately after her parents moved from Kiev to Brooklyn.)

(b) There are now four functioning synagogues in Kiev, and we saw them all. The biggest, and the one in which we spent the most time, is the Brodsky synagogue -- named after one of Kiev's most prominent Jews of the late 1800's, Lazar Brodsky, who built it. (Brodsky's fortune was made in the sugar trade. Our member Doug Klein is a descendant of the Brodsky family!) From 1890 to 1920, it functioned as a synagogue -- but it was appropriated by the Communists in the 1920's and converted to various secular purposes. From the 1950's to 1990's, it was converted to Kiev's Puppet Theater. But shortly after Ukraine's independence, a law was passed that ensured the return of property confiscated from Jewish and other religious communities. In the late 1990's it was renovated into a synagogue again, now administered by Chabad Lubavitch. (Chabad is a ubiquitous presence throughout the Ukraine, the birthplace of Hasidism and the birthplace of most if not all of the Lubavitcher Rebbes.) The Chabad community in Kiev provided our Shabbat meals and demonstrated wonderful hospitality to our group of rabbis.
the Brodsky Synagogue - bottom right has a photo of Rabbi Asman together with Viktor Yuschenko
Pictures and history of the synagogue (but in Russian!)

(c) On Shabbat morning, I visited the Reform Jewish community of Kiev, which meets in a small basement room in the center of downtown Kiev. As I may have mentioned in a previous message, there is only one Reform rabbi in the entire Ukraine, and he serves some 40 congregations. While he respects the work of Chabad and other Orthodox groups in the Ukraine, he is not happy that Chabad has presented itself as the 'official' Jewish community that is eligible to receive confiscated Jewish property. His total budget in the Ukraine is $100,000 -- and more than half of that amount goes to pay rent for worship spaces in a couple of the major cities like Kiev and Odessa. He dreams of providing Humashim (Torah text and commentary books) to his congregants in addition to providing prayerbooks, but right now it is still a dream, as it's just too expensive. A couple of us made donations to his community to enable them to purchase some additional Hebrew/Russian Humashim, for about $30 each. It's another reminder to us that an amount of $ that may be nearly negligible to us, that many of us might spend on a dinner in a nice restaurant without even thinking about it, can make a tremendous difference in this part of the world.

And, of course, at the Kiev Reform synagogue, I met the "Louise Kurtz of Kiev" - the woman (I can't remember her name) who makes everybody's beautiful kippot! These are elegantly made out of wire, and the community sells them. Most of the women who were in attendance at the service on Shabbat morning were wearing Kippot that she had made. I suggested that they should sell the kippot on the congregational web site, just as we do! They said they'll think about it!
A bio of Rabbi Dukhovny. Unfortunately Rabbi Dukhovny is recently bereaved of his wife, Rabbi Erlene Wahlhaus z"l.
A list of Reform congregations in the Ukraine.
About Julia Grischenko, the 'para-rabbinic' professional in Odessa who we met

(d) More on the political situation: it certainly feels different in Kiev, the site of the "Orange Revolution" this fall, than it did in Odessa. In Odessa, in the Southern Ukraine where Russian influence is predominant, most people we spoke with had voted for the losing candidate, Yanikovich, against whom there were claims of corruption. Kiev, however, is in the Western Ukraine and is the seat of Ukrainian nationalism. We walked through the central square where hundreds of thousands of people had gathered to protest corruption in the election process and to support their candidate, Yuschenko. The mood of exhiliration still persists there, and people seem very optimistic. (In contrast, those in Odessa with whom we spoke were trying to be hopeful but were concerned about Yuschenko's nationalism.) We heard emotional stories about people who lived downtown and who let protestors they didn't even know come in to sleep on their floors.

Interestingly, both 'chief rabbis' in Kiev have connections with the Orange Revolution. Rabbi Alexander Duchovny, the Reform rabbi, was the only official Jewish representative to take part in the prayer vigils that were part of the Orange Revolution. And Rabbi Asman, the Chabad rabbi at the centrally located Brodsky Synagogue, distributed a lot of free (kosher!) food to the protestors during those weeks.

Some articles on the Ukrainian election from a Jewish perspective:
On the east-west divide in Ukraine
Jewish vote split in Ukraine
Preparation for 2nd election
Yanikovich's ties to the Jewish community
Optimism on Yuschenko

(e) My colleagues who had been to Kiev before remarked about the tremendous changes in the city. Every expensive Western store you can think of is now represented in Kiev. Real estate in downtown Kiev is almost as expensive as in Paris or London. Very different from the communist era! But the poverty that we saw in Odessa also exists in Kiev, just not in the downtown area. Kiev, with 3 million people, is the 3rd largest city in the entire Former Soviet Union. Its metropolitan area is enormous, and many people live in the kind of squalid conditions that we saw in Odessa (though in Odessa it appeared that most people lived in smaller buildings, and in the outskirts of Kiev we saw numerous massive Soviet-style austere apartment blocks.) All the Jewish social service projects we saw in Odessa (senior programs, senior health care, orphanages, programs for mothers and babies, etc.) exist in Kiev as well, in an even larger form.

Saturday night, we visited Babi Yar - the ravine in the vicinity of Kiev which was the site of the murder of over 100,000 Jews during a one-month period in 1941. This was before the Nazis came up with the idea of gas chambers. In Kiev, and in much of the Ukraine, Jews were killed using less 'efficient' methods -- the Einsatzgruppen (Nazi special forces) would line Jews in front of a ditch and simply shoot them, then bury them en masse in the ditch. The Jews of Kiev were rounded up and forced to march towards Babi Yar. As they got closer, the line stopped and 100 people at a time were forced to march up to the ravine and to their deaths. Whereas I cannot be sure, it seems extremely likely that that was the fate of those members of my grandmother's family who did not come to the United States or go to Palestine.
About Babi Yar
Yevtushenko's famous poem about Babi Yar
Photos of the memorials at Babi Yar

(g) Visiting Israel is like nothing else in the world.... each time I visit, it's different things that make me sit up and take notice. This time, I was thinking about how my relatives from Kiev, during many terrible times over the last two centuries, would have given anything to have been able to visit Israel. And now you can actually go to the Kiev airport and see El Al Israeli Airlines planes flying direct from Kiev to Israel and vice versa! I had to take a picture of the El Al sign in Russian or I wouldn't have believed it!

On the plane, I sat next to a young woman who lives in Israel, who had just been visiting the Ukraine, but for different reasons from our group. She had gone on a three-week religious pilgrimage to Uman, the site of the grave of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, one of the most important Hasidic masters. Apparently, there is now a small synagogue and yeshiva in Uman -- which is a 4-hour drive from Kiev, completely in the middle of nowhere -- and at any time there are 30 to 50 people gathered there to study and pray and commune with the soul of Rebbe Nachman. Not necessarily my cup of tea.... but how exciting that, for the last 15 years, it has been permitted for Jews to visit the Ukraine with the specific objective of visiting religious sites!
Our friend Rabbi Goldie Milgram - formerly of Jersey City - visits Rebbe Nachman's grave in Uman, Ukraine
Everything you wanted to know about Jewish Uman

(h) Because of our delay in Odessa, we were now scheduled to spend less than 24 hours in Israel -- which is a difficult prospect for those of us who were looking forward to spending at least a couple of days here. Like some others in my group, I arranged to extend my stay for two additional days .... so you'll see me back in Hoboken on Thursday morning instead of Tuesday morning as originally expected. But.... I am looking forward tomorrow to speaking by phone, from Israel, with our Learning Center students and answering their questions about Ukraine, Israel, and my trip.

(i) Today was a busy day travelling around Jerusalem, with two special goals: (1) learning about the political situation today in Israel, with special reference to the Security Fence and the Gaza Withdrawal; (2) learning about the experience of people from the Former Soviet Union who decide to move to Israel, once they arrive in Israel. I'll try to send you info on all of this tomorrow! I'm getting a little tired now that it is about 12:30am here.

Tomorrow I also plan to see Danielle Berke, who made aliyah last year from Hoboken to Jerusalem, and I hope to see some other people from our Hoboken Jewish community who now live in Israel.

"Sha'alu shalom yerushalayim...." ("pray for the peace of Jerusalem...." from Psalm 122)
Shalom......

#5: Tues., Feb. 8

Shalom from Jerusalem!

I am writing from a kind-of seedy and smoky internet cafe in downtown Jerusalem and am feeling like I would prefer to be somewhere else, so I will write quickly today, in two e-mails -- one political and institutinal, and one personal.

(a) Yesterday, our agenda was to see examples of programs funded by the Jewish Agency for Israel (known in Hebrew as the Sochnut, or by its English acronym as JAFI). JAFI was part of the organizational structure that served as a partial government of the Jewish community here before the state of Israel was created. JAFI funds many social services and educational programs in Israel and funds Jewish and Israel education around the world. Many of the projects we saw in Odessa and Kiev were funded in part by JAFI, and we met with many members of their staff.

Because the Jerusalem part of our trip was cut short, we saw only two institutions:

1. Kiryat Moriah, the headquarters of the JAFI education department. A special highlight was learning about the on-line courses they sponsor, on topics such as the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Israeli society through Israeli popular music, and Israeli history and sociology. I'll send you the link when I get back.
The JAFI "E-Academy"

2. Beit Canada, an 'aliyah absorption center.' When new immigrants arrive in Israel, they are offered the option of spending approximately six months in a 'merkaz klitah,' or 'absorption center,' where they can improve their Hebrew, ease their way into Israeli society, look for a job and a home, etc. We learned that for some immigrants from places like Ethiopia, the process also includes such things as learning how to go shopping in a supermarket and how to cook with a stove -- as these immigrants are unlikely to have had such experiences. Today, the largest groups of olim (immigrants) are coming from the former Soviet Union, France, Argentina, and Ethiopia.
About Beit Canada

b. We also spent some time traveling around Jerusalem with a political scientist from Tel-Aviv University, who showed us various sections of the 'separation fence,' or 'separation wall' as it is sometimes called. And indeed it is a wall at certain sections (approximately 6% of the length of the fence), principally in places where Palestinians have historically fired into Jewish neighborhoods.

Two things we learned about the fence:

1. This seems to be 'last year's issue.' The route of the fence continues to be modified regularly, often based on petitions brought by Jewish communities working in concert with their Palestinian neighboring communities, so that the route of the fence can be set in a way that reduces the hardship to the Palestinians. But regardless of the (in my opinion, misguided) decision of the International Court of Justice to declare the fence illegal, it seems to be arousing very little controversy around the world. In fact, many nations have declared, in Israel's support, that they have similar structures in their own countries that seem to be arousing little controversy.

2. most surprising to me: the fence is not complete. There are large gaps that people can walk right through, including right near downtown Jerusalem. This seems to be a cause for concern... but our guide said that the purpose of the fence is psychological rather than as a genuine impenetrable barrier. The Israeli message to the Palestinians is: if you continue with terror, we can put this fence everywhere. Plus, of course, there can be a greater security presence (but no checkpoints) at those gaps in the fence.

RE the summit in Egypt: people here are cautiously optimistic, but no one's jumping for joy. People are saying: let's see how it turns out.

Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan has completely revamped the Israeli political landscape. People on the left, who always tend to vilify Sharon, are now thinking that he's not such a bad guy after all. And people on the right, who were Sharon's base of strength, are now vilifying him. In general - of Israel's Jewish population - the disengagement plan has the broad support of 85% of the population -- most of whom are not too optimistic about this either, but who just feel that it's insane to continue to have 8,000 Jewish settlers living in relative luxury in the middle of more than a million angry and impoverished Palestinians. Interestingly, the 15% who actively oppose the disengagement plan are telling Sharon to call a referendum on the issue - interesting because it's almost certain that they would lose. It seems to be a stalling tactic - if they hold out long enough, they may be thinking, Sharon's government will fall and someone else will become prime minister.

This concludes the political / institutional e-mail .... and now to the personal....

shalom
Rabbi Robert Scheinberg
United Synagogue of Hoboken

#6: Tues., Feb. 8

Shalom again from the same increasingly smoky internet cafe -

The Jewish world is remarkably small. Let me tell you about 4 special Hoboken experiences I had in Jerusalem today.

(a) A friend and I hailed a cab in downtown Jerusalem because we wanted to visit Machon Schechter - the Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies - Jewish Theological Seminary affiliate in Jerusalem, where Naomi and I studied for the 1994-95 year. When we gave the cab driver the address, he asked what the location was, and we told him that it's a Masorti (Conservative movement) institute for Jewish studies. He then said, "Are you Conservative rabbis?" We said yes, and he said, "That's great. I once drove a Conservative rabbi, and it was the first time in my life that I could actually talk to a rabbi like a regular guy, just another human being. The rabbis here tend to be so different from me.... I think he was from Palm Beach."

And I said, "I wonder if it was Rabbi Isaac Jeret.' (founding director of the Children's Learning Center at the United Synagogue of Hoboken in the early 1990's, who then moved to Florida). And the driver said -- "Yes! Isaac! That's right!".... so Isaac, if you're reading this, Doron Mordechai, the cab driver from in front of the King David Hotel, sends you his warm regards.

By the way, the cab driver expressed how terrible business is now. He mentioned that his good friend used to have a Judaica / gifts store on the Midrechov (the pedestrian plaza in downtown Jerusalem), but he moved the store because things were damaged in a terror attack, and also people were less likely to shop downtown because of fear of terror. But now the store is in Rechavia, no longer centrally located, and the business is terrible now for that reason.... he offered us an opportunity to drive to that store for free... my friend will take him up on that offer tomorrow. This just seems emblematic of the effect of a constant campaign of terror on Israeli lives. Even when lives are not lost or injured, livelihoods are.
the Schechter Institute for Judaic Studies

(b) then we arrived at Machon Schechter, and I saw some of my teachers.... and it occurred to me that one of the world authorities on the work of Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn, the most famous rabbinic personality to live in Hoboken (he lived in Hoboken from 1903-1933), has his office at Machon Scechter. I am teaching a class on the life and work of Rabbi Herschensohn on Sat. April 2, the day of our Alumni Weekend at U.S.H. Not only was this professor, Yossi Turner, excited to see me and make the Hoboken connection, but he was sharing an office with another professor, Ari Ackerman, who has also written articles on Rabbi Hirschensohn. He is apparently a very influential figure in the history of Zionist religious thought. (If you want to find out more, come to my class on April 2!!). And in fact, later in the day, I stopped by the Conservative Yeshiva -- a non-degree Jewish study program sponsored by the Conservative movement - and ran into a friend from college, Shaya Rothberg, who is teaching there. He is working on his dissertation in Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and writing his dissertation on -- guess who! -- Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn! So please know that there is an entire group of scholars in Israel poring over influential Jewish texts that were written in Hoboken, by a rabbi who we know visited our Star of Israel sanctuary frequently, and whose books were sponsored by the Hoboken Jewish community....
The Conservative Yeshiva. Check it out!
The most extensive book about Rabbi Hayyim Hirschensohn

(c) I also got to have lunch with Danielle Berke, who made aliyah from Hoboken to Israel this year. Danielle now lives in Jerusalem, not far from downtown. Some adjustments are difficult - she's currently working outside her field as she searches for work in her field of publishing - but she is really enjoying and appreciating life here, and she sends her regards to all her friends in Hoboken!

(d) This evening I walked into a book store and the proprietor said, "I know you - Robert Scheinberg!" I was blown away.... he remembered me because he used to work at a different bookstore in Jerusalem where I had bought some (!) books several years ago. (If you've seen the quantity of books in my office, you may realize why bookstore owners might want to remember me....) I had spoken with him on the phone a few times after getting back to the U.S. several years ago, about an order that I had placed that needed to be shipped overseas. We chatted a little about Hoboken, and the decision of Ktav Publishing company at 900 Jefferson Street - one of the largest publishers of Jewish books in the U.S. - to sell their warehouse and relocate to Jersey City. Apparently, they made more $ by selling the warehouse than they ever did from selling books! Now there are a couple of large apartment buildings going up where their warehouse and office used to be.

So I hope I have convinced you that the world is smaller than you thought..... I had 4 Hoboken experiences, only one of which was planned...and I'm sure I could have had many more if my trip were longer. When we think about "Israel" and "Israelis," we ought to remember that these are people with whom we have multiple special connections, even for those of us who have never been to Israel before.

I'm hoping to write more of my experiences when I get back to the U.S. -- so the blog concludes here. Thanks to everyone for your good wishes!
lehitra'ot (see you soon)

Rabbi Robert Scheinberg
United Synagogue of Hoboken

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