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Aruba’s new rabbi comes out of retirement to lead a congregation in ‘paradise’
ORANJESTAD, Aruba (JTA) — One of Alberto Zeilicovich’s first duties as a Conservative rabbi was to officiate the funeral of a 20-year-old congregant, murdered by a drug cartel while enjoying a night out with his friends at a disco.
It was the late 1980s in Medellin, Colombia, and Zeilicovich had entered the pulpit at the height of the Colombian drug wars and the reign of notorious kingpin Pablo Escobar. Two years later, he would bury another member of the congregation murdered by the cartel.
“We felt fear,” Zeilicovich, who goes by Baruch, said about his six years in Medellin. “The president of the congregation told me you cannot walk on Shabbos to the synagogue. ‘You should come with a car.’ I asked, ‘Are you afraid someone is going to kidnap me?’ He said, ‘No, I am afraid somebody will kill you.’”
To give him a break, a congregant sent Zeilicovich on a trip to Aruba and Curacao, islands where, he recalled, he could “unplug a little bit from a situation that was very dangerous.”
That 1990 trip would ultimately result in the other bookend of his career: Zeilicovich recently came out of retirement to begin a three-year contract as the rabbi of Beth Israel Synagogue, a small synagogue on the Dutch island of Aruba in the southern Caribbean Sea. He had visited the island at least once a year for the past 32 years.
Temple Beth Israel, a Conservative-style synagogue in Oranjestad, Aruba, was consecrated in 1962. (Dan Fellner)
“First, the people are very friendly,” he says of Aruba, which has a population of about 100,000 and is officially called a “constituent country” of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. “Second, it’s a very safe place. And third, the island is a paradise. Everything is so beautiful.”
The synagogue, located in the island’s capital city of Oranjestad, is not affiliated with any movement of Judaism but operates in the style of the egalitarian Conservative movement. It is just a block from one of Aruba’s signature white-sand beaches and a five-minute drive to Eagle Beach, perhaps its most famous.
While Zeilicovich no longer needs armed security guards to accompany him to synagogue as he did in Medellin, he still brings to the pulpit the difficult life lessons he learned during those tumultuous years in Colombia.
“Being in Medellin made me realize how a rabbi should teach the congregation about what are the most important things in life,” he says. “That shaped me in understanding what the role of a rabbi should be — a facilitator for everybody to be a better Jew, a better person.”
Zeilicovich, who speaks five languages, was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he experienced antisemitism and life under an oppressive military regime. He studied at a rabbinical seminary in Buenos Aires before completing his ordination at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.
Following his six years in Medellin, Zeilicovich moved to a synagogue in Bogota, the capital city of Colombia, before rabbinical stints in Puerto Rico, Texas and most recently New Jersey, where he announced his retirement from Temple Beth Sholom in Fair Lawn in late 2020.
Zeilicovich and his wife Graciela had moved to Israel when he got a phone call from Daniel Kripper, a friend and fellow Argentine who was retiring as the rabbi of Aruba’s Beth Israel.
“He called me and said, ‘Baruch, what are you doing in Israel?’ I said I’m going to the beach. He said, ‘Why don’t you come to the beach in Aruba where you can have a congregation again?’ And I said, ‘Why not?’”
According to Richenella Wever, a member of the Beth Israel board, Zeilicovich has been a good fit with the synagogue’s diverse congregation. “His way of thinking, teaching and his ability to connect the Torah with daily life is amazing,” she said.
Jewish life in Aruba dates back to the 16th century, when immigrants arrived from the Netherlands and Portugal. In 1754, Moses Solomon Levie Maduro, who came from a prominent Portuguese Jewish family in Curacao, settled in Aruba, where he founded the Aruba branch of the Dutch West Indies Company. Maduro paved the way for more immigrants but the island’s Jewish population has always remained small. It’s now about 100.
In 1956, the Dutch Kingdom officially recognized the Jewish community of Aruba; Beth Israel was consecrated six years later. The synagogue calls itself a “Conservative egalitarian temple keeping Sephardic and Ashkenazic traditions.” In addition to Beth Israel, there is a Chabad chapter on the island that opened in 2013.
With a membership of just 50 local families and a few dozen overseas residents, Beth Israel has limited resources. A Dutch law stipulating that the salaries of clergy in Holland’s overseas territories be paid by the government helps the synagogue remain solvent.
“This is really unique,” says Zeilicovich. “You can be a minister of an evangelical church, a Roman Catholic priest, an imam from a mosque or a rabbi from a synagogue — the government pays the salary.
“When I want to brag about myself, I say I am an employee of the Crown of Holland,” he added with a laugh.
Zeilicovich says the Aruban government has been highly supportive of the Jewish community, even erecting a life-sized bronze statue in 2010 of Anne Frank in Queen Wilhelmina Park in downtown Oranjestad.
A bronze statue of Anne Frank stands in the Queen Wilhelmina Park in downtown Oranjestad, Aruba, at left; at right, a T-shirt for sale in the Beth Israel gift shop in Aruba reads “Bon Bini,” meaning “welcome” in Papiamento, the local language. (Dan Fellner)
“That means they have respect for the Jewish community,” he says. “And they are very sympathetic with us about the Holocaust.”
Zeilicovich says a typical Friday night Shabbat service attracts about 20 people, about one-third of whom are tourists. Some arrive on the many cruise ships that dock just a mile away from the synagogue; others stay at condos or at one of Aruba’s posh resorts.
If there aren’t enough worshippers for a prayer quorum of 10 on Saturday mornings, a Torah study group meets instead. The synagogue’s small sanctuary can hold 60 worshippers, and is normally full for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each fall.
“We are a friendly, welcoming congregation,” Zeilicovich says. “We are family — mishpocha. When you come here, we try to make you feel that way.”
Indeed, a popular item in the synagogue’s small gift shop is a T-shirt imprinted with the words “Bon Bini Shalom.” Bon Bini means “welcome” in Papiamento, the Portuguese-based Creole language spoken in the Dutch Caribbean.
Zeilicovich says one of his priorities as the new rabbi is to improve the synagogue’s marketing efforts and revamp its website. He adds that Aruba’s Jewish community often is overshadowed by Curacao, its Dutch neighbor to the east that is home to the oldest synagogue in continuous use in the Americas.
“We are behind in marketing,” he said. “And we understand we are missing a huge opportunity.”
For now, Zeilicovich is enjoying his time in Aruba and can’t help but marvel at how his life has changed since his days as a rabbi in Medellin when just getting from his home to the synagogue was a dangerous ordeal.
“I think about that and look to heaven and say, ‘God, thank you.’”
—
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The mysterious case of Barbra Streisand and the missing half-pound of Zabar’s sturgeon
The whole story of Barbra Streisand and the sturgeon began a few months ago on a Thursday when I was at my regular spot at the fish counter.
A very pleasant, attractive woman ordered a pound of Nova and, before Slim, my long sharp slicing knife, and I started our journey through the salmon, she said, “I’m buying this for Barbra Streisand.”
I was skeptical, so I asked her what her relationship was with Barbra. She told me her name was Christine and that she was Barbra’s editor and had edited Barbra’s autobiography. Well, that made me look up and take notice. She must be genuine, I thought, who would make up such a story?
As I sliced, I heard Barbra in my head singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and lost all track of time. I threw the lox I had sliced up on the scale with flair; one pound it was.
While I continued to work, an idea popped into my head. I spotted a succulent block of sturgeon in the showcase of fish and thought, “I’m going to cut as perfect a slice as I can, wrap it carefully in tissue paper and place it neatly in the Zabar’s wrapping on top of the pound of Nova.” I didn’t disclose what I was doing because I wanted it to be a lovely surprise — if she happened to like sturgeon, that is.
Two Thursdays later, when I arrived at work, I found a small square envelope sitting on my board face-up. It read “For Len.” Inside was a folded card on which was printed in raised gold letters “BARBRA STREISAND.”
I opened the card, looked inside and found a handwritten note: “Dear Len, What a lovely gift! Did you know how much I love sturgeon? Thank you. It was delicious!” She signed it “Barbra” in a nice, swirly signature.
That night at home, I just couldn’t get it out of my mind: I actually had a handwritten note from Barbra Streisand. How many people could say that? Now that I knew she liked sturgeon, I decided I would personally send her a pound as a gift. But then I stopped.
“You don’t know her,” I said to myself. “It would be inappropriate and silly. I went back and forth until I gave up, watched Yentl instead, then went to sleep.
That night, I had a dream.
Barbra was in Zabar’s, walking up and down the aisles, smiling, going through each department, carefully selecting items when, suddenly, she noticed that her shopping cart was full. At that moment, she found herself standing opposite me at the fish counter.
“Welcome to the heart of the store, Ms. Streisand,” I said.
She smiled, I smiled back. I invited her to step behind the counter so she could have a better, closer look at all the fish. Next thing I knew she was standing there beside me, asking about my slicing technique and, for that fleeting moment, I was the star — a master lox slicer.
“Look who’s here, guys,” I told my co-workers. “It’s Barbra Streisand paying us a short visit,” at which point Barbra and I began a duet — “People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” I wanted so much to finish the song with her, but I woke up before I could.
In the morning, as I considered Barbra’s thank you note and our unfinished dream duet, I realized that she and I have a lot more in common than meets the eye.
We are both old. She is 83 and I am 95. We’re both Jewish. We both like sturgeon. But most of all we are both professional singers — my career started in 5th grade, at P.S. 180 in Brooklyn, when I was chosen to sing the lead in Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.” Then, in 6th grade, I played Nanki-Poo in The Mikado. And, when I was 12, I sang in the Oscar Julius Choir at Tempel Bethel in Borough Park. I also sang at Jewish weddings — 50 cents as part of a choir, $1 when I performed a solo.
Suddenly, I realized that maybe it wouldn’t be so inappropriate to send Barbra a half-pound of sturgeon as a belated 83rd birthday present. Except I didn’t have her address.
Enter Christine.
On another Thursday, as I was cleaning my knives, one of my co-workers tapped me on the shoulder and told me there was a woman looking for me. And there she was. Did Barbra want more Nova, I wondered, or some sturgeon?
She told me she had an appointment in the neighborhood and thought she’d stop in and say hello. I told her how I had considered sending Barbra a belated birthday gift, though I added that it would be just as easy for her to order some online.
Christine gave me her phone number, so later I texted her and asked if I could send Barbra the sturgeon. “Sure,” she texted back and gave me an address.
I got to work.
I selected the best-looking block of sturgeon in the display counter, sliced off half a pound and wrapped it up. Then I removed the dorsal fin from the most succulent whitefish in the showcase, wrapped it and placed it on top of the sturgeon. I walked over to the bakery and retrieved one of Zabar’s rugelach, wrapped it in foil and placed it alongside the dorsal fin. There was a paper plate on the shelf behind me. I took out my black marker and wrote “Happy Birthday” to Barbra and signed my name.
I finished the package and brought it up to Bernardo in the shipping department, and gave him instructions as to where and to whom it should be sent. I returned to the fish counter thinking a job well done. But — she never got the sturgeon
I set the wheels in motion with the appropriate department at Zabar’s to investigate “The case of the missing sturgeon.”
In the annals of crime, there are those cases that go down in the books as unsolved; so too in the world of undelivered smoked fish. This is one of those cases.
As for the replacement sturgeon I sent to Barbra, a recent call to Christine revealed somewhat anticlimactically, that Barbra did receive it, but due to some confusion, it was sliced and sent as a regular shipment with no indication that it came from me, her fellow singing professional. Perhaps she sent a perfunctory thank you note to Zabar’s, perhaps she wondered why she was getting another round of sturgeon, without explanation, so close to her birthday, or maybe, just maybe, she suspected it was from her new friend, Len.
Still, I’d like to think that I’ll have another opportunity to wish her a happy birthday. When her 84th comes around in a couple of months, I’ll be at the fish counter. And I’ll be ready.
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Nick Fuentes says his problem with Trump ‘is that he is not Hitler’
(JTA) — In the fall, a video of Nick Fuentes criticizing Donald Trump drew the praise of progressive ex-Congressman Jamaal Bowman.
“Finally getting it Nick,” Bowman commented, apparently recognizing some common ground between himself on the left and Fuentes, on the far right, who said in the video that Trump was “better than the Democrats for Israel, for the oil and gas industry, for Silicon Valley, for Wall Street,” but said he wasn’t “better for us.”
Now, Fuentes says there is actually no common ground between him and those on the left.
“My problem with Trump isn’t that he’s Hitler — my problem with Trump is that he is not Hitler,” Fuentes said during his streaming show on Tuesday, which focused mostly on the potential for an American attack on Iran.
He continued, “You have all these left-wing people saying, ‘Why do I agree with Nick Fuentes?’ It’s like, I’m criticizing Trump because there’s not enough deportations, there’s not enough ICE brutality, there’s not enough National Guard. Sort of a big difference!”
Fuentes, the streamer and avowed antisemite who has previously said Hitler was “very f–king cool,” has been gaining more traction as a voice on the right. His interview with Tucker Carlson in October plunged Republicans into an ongoing debate over antisemitism within their ranks, inflaming the divide between a pro-Israel wing of the party and an emerging, isolationist “America First” wing that’s against U.S. military assistance to Israel.
Once a pro-Trump MAGA Republican, Fuentes has become the leader of the “groyper” movement advocating for farther-right positions. The set of Fuentes’ show includes both a hat and a mug with the words “America First” on his desk.
In a New York Times interview, Trump recently weighed in on rising tensions within the Republican Party, saying Republican leaders should “absolutely” condemn figures who promote antisemitism, and that he does not approve of antisemites in the party.
“No, I don’t. I think we don’t need them. I think we don’t like them,” replied Trump when asked by a reporter whether there was room within the Republican coalition for antisemitic figures.
Asked if he would condemn Fuentes, Trump initially claimed that he didn’t know the antisemitic streamer, before acknowledging that he had had dinner with him alongside Kanye West in 2022.
“I had dinner with him, one time, where he came as a guest of Kanye West. I didn’t know who he was bringing,” Trump said. “He said, ‘Do you mind if I bring a friend?’ I said, ‘I don’t care.’ And it was Nick Fuentes? I don’t know Nick Fuentes.”
Trump flaunted his pro-Israel bona fides in the interview, mentioning the recent announcement that he was nominated for Israel’s top civilian honor and calling himself the “best president of the United States in the history of this country toward Israel.”
Fuentes, meanwhile, spent the bulk of his show on Tuesday speculating that Trump will order the U.S. to attack Iran, and concluded that “Israel is holding our hand walking us down the road toward an inevitable war.”
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Larry Ellison once renamed a superyacht because its name spelled backwards was ‘I’m a Nazi’
(JTA) — Larry Ellison, the Jewish founder of Oracle and a major pro-Israel donor, has recently been in the headlines for his media acquisition ventures with his son.
The new scrutiny on the family has surfaced a decades-old detail about Ellison: that he once rechristened a superyacht after realizing that its original name carried an antisemitic tinge.
In 1999, Ellison — then No. 23 on Forbes’ billionaires list, well on his way to his No. 4 ranking today — purchased a boat called Izanami.
Originally built for a Japanese businessman, the 191-foot superyacht was named for a Shinto deity. But Ellison soon realized what the name read backwards: “I’m a Nazi.”
“Izanami and Izanagi are the names of the two Shinto deities that gave birth to the Japanese islands, or so legend has it,” Ellison said in “Softwar,” a 2013 biography. “When the local newspapers started pointing out that Izanami was ‘I’m a Nazi’ spelled backward, I had the choice of explaining Shintoism to the reporters at the San Francisco Chronicle or changing the name of the boat.” He renamed the boat Ronin and later sold it.
The decades-old factoid resurfaced this week because of a New York Magazine profile of Ellison’s son, David Ellison, the chair and CEO of Paramount-Skydance Corporation.
Skydance Corporation, which David Ellison founded in 2006, completed an $8 billion merger last year with Paramount Global. Larry Ellison, meanwhile, joined an investor consortium that signed a deal to purchase TikTok, the social media juggernaut accused of spreading antisemitism. Together, father and son also staged a hostile bid to purchase Warner Bros. but were outmatched by Netflix.
After acquiring Paramount, David Ellison appointed The Free Press founder Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, in an endorsement of Weiss’ contrarian and pro-Israel outlook that has been challenged as overly friendly to the Trump administration.
Larry Ellison, who was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive Jewish parents, has long been a donor to pro-Israel and Jewish causes, including to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. In September, he briefly topped the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the world’s richest man.
In December, Oracle struck a deal to provide cloud services for TikTok, with some advocates hoping for tougher safeguards against antisemitism on the social media platform
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