Uncategorized
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.’”
—
The post Aruba’s new rabbi comes out of retirement to lead a congregation in ‘paradise’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Berlin rabbi makes history as first European to head Conservative rabbis’ association
(JTA) — BERLIN — Gesa Shira Ederberg was not yet a rabbi when she was tapped to lead a seder, to teach Hebrew, and to organize an egalitarian minyan in her home city of Berlin. She happened to be in the right places when help was needed, recalls Ederberg, who was pursuing a degree in Jewish studies at the time. She wondered: Could she be doing more?
Three decades later, Ederberg is a veteran rabbi of Berlin’s first official egalitarian congregation on Oranienburger Strasse — and this month she reached a new milestone.
She was installed last week as the international head of the Conservative/Masorti movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, the organization representing more than 1,600 rabbis worldwide. For the first time, the group is being led by a European rabbi.
Her installation marks another milestone as well. “As far as the Rabbinical Assembly is aware — Rabbi Ederberg is the first Jew by choice to serve as president,” said a spokesperson for the organization.
For observers of Jewish life in Germany, the moment carries symbolic weight.
“This is quite an extraordinary deal, actually, because there’s never been a non-American or non-Israeli to head the Rabbinical Assembly,” said Deidre Berger, an American who has lived in Germany for more than 40 years and serves on the boards of both the German and worldwide Masorti organizations.
“It’s also a major step forward in relations between a broader group in the American Jewish community with Germany — with being willing to acknowledge that postwar Jewish life did get relaunched in Germany and is here to stay,” added Berger, the former head of the American Jewish Committee office in Berlin.
Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal, CEO of both the Rabbinical Assembly and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said Ederberg’s election also reflects the movement’s embrace of Jews by choice.
“Welcoming converts is one of the ways in which our communities are growing and thriving,” he said. “So to have a colleague who made this choice to lead a Jewish life and then to become a rabbi is certainly something to celebrate.”
Ederberg’s installation took place in two parts: last week at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, followed by a second ceremony on Tuesday in Berlin, where her synagogue received a Rabbinical Assembly Torah mantle that remains with each president during their term.
“I will see it every time we open the ark,” she said. “It will be a reminder of my new responsibilities.”
Born in 1968 in the German city of Tuebingen, Ederberg grew up in a Lutheran family. Her father was in charge of his church’ youth exchanges with Israel, and Israeli teenagers often visited the family home. She traveled to Israel for the first time at age 13, an experience that helped cement what she said was “a deep connection” with the country and its people.
Ederberg later earned a master’s degree in Protestant theology. But her involvement in Jewish-Christian dialogue deepened her interest in Judaism, leading her to pursue Jewish studies in Berlin and eventually convert in 1995 at the Jewish Theological Seminary there.
Her decision grew partly out of her fascination with Jewish texts. “I was loving the texts,” she recalled early in her rabbinic career.
But it was also theological. She had come to believe that “the anti-Jewish tradition was an intrinsic part of Christianity,” she said at the time, and rejected interpretations portraying Judaism as obsolete.
Conversion, she added, was “a long and difficult process. You only get there if you really want it.”
Ederberg was ordained in 2002 at the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Her husband, Nils Ederberg — whom she met when both were Protestant students of Jewish studies — is also a rabbi. Ordained at Berlin’s Abraham Geiger College in 2014, he now serves as a military chaplain in Hamburg. The couple has three children.
After serving her first pulpit in Weiden, Ederberg returned to Berlin in 2007. There she became the first woman to serve as a rabbi in the city since Regina Jonas, a Liberal rabbi ordained in 1935 who was murdered by the Nazis, and only the second woman to hold a synagogue pulpit since the Holocaust.
She has helped build institutions for Germany’s small Masorti movement, founding Berlin’s Masorti elementary school in 2018 and serving as a founding member of Germany’s General Rabbinical Conference for non-Orthodox rabbis. She also served as a rabbinic adviser to the Zacharias Frankel College Conservative seminary at the University of Potsdam.
At the same time, she rose through the leadership ranks of the Rabbinical Assembly, serving in several voluntary roles before being elected vice president two years ago. She was elected president in December, succeeding Rabbi Jay Kornsgold of New Jersey, becoming the third woman to hold the role.
Ederberg’s installation comes at a challenging time for what was once America’s largest Jewish denomination, but has for years faced declining membership. As a centrist movement committed to what has been called “tradition and change,” it sits between a growing Orthodoxy on one side and a liberal Reform movement that has historically been far swifter to innovate.
Her installation also comes as broader changes in attitudes toward Jewish life in Germany have shifted. For decades after World War II, many American Jewish institutions viewed Germany as an unlikely place for Jewish communal revival.
Ederberg’s mentor, Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the former chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America who encouraged her to pursue ordination, described her as “both the agent and the symbol of the potential of Conservative Judaism to flourish once again in Germany.”
That revival has taken place alongside a transformation of Germany’s Jewish population. Before World War II, about 500,000 Jews lived in the country. After the Holocaust only a small community remained, but immigration from the former Soviet Union beginning in the late 1990s helped rebuild Jewish life. Today roughly 100,000 Jews belong to congregations in Germany, with a similar number unaffiliated.
There are currently two Masorti congregations in the country: Ederberg’s in Berlin and another in Cologne.
Her congregation meets upstairs in a chapel attached to the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse in former East Berlin. The mid-19th-century building was heavily damaged during World War II; its windows overlook the empty courtyard that once held the synagogue’s Torah ark and pews. Today, congregants gather in restored spaces, including a hall above what once served as the women’s gallery.
While other synagogues now offer egalitarian services, Ederberg’s congregation once served as an incubator, giving many women their first opportunity to read Torah from the bimah.
“On the one hand, it’s an intimate setting in her synagogue,” Blumenthal said. “But also you see the depth of both knowledge and commitment of the folks who are part of her community.”
Ederberg knows that for some people, her German Christian background remains a hurdle. Jewish identity in Germany today often reflects complicated family histories shaped by the upheavals of the 20th century.
Not only are there numerous converts like herself; there also are many Jews with a mother or grandmother who survived the Holocaust and a father or grandfather who served in the Wehrmacht, she noted. The question of Jewish identity in Germany, Ederberg said, “is a broader question about individuals and their family history.”
Her own family history reflects that complexity: Both of her grandfathers served in World War II, one dying at Stalingrad and the other working as a mechanic.
Ultimately, she said, the mentorship she received from three German-born Jewish figures — Schorsch as well as Israeli educators Alice Shalvi and Zeev Falk — proved decisive.
Back when she was an accidental rabbi, called upon to lead seders and services and to teach in a pinch, Ederberg hadn’t made up her mind whether to pursue ordination. She might have chosen to become a diplomat, she says, if it had not been for those three mentors who took her by the hand.
“Their encouragement, their push towards rabbinical school, their push towards, ‘Yes, you should go back to Germany and do what you’re doing,’ was really crucial,” she said.
The post Berlin rabbi makes history as first European to head Conservative rabbis’ association appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Fox’s Bible story miniseries puts women front and center
Depending on where you start the clock, the founding of the Jewish nation was partially born of an act of extreme cruelty.
When Sarah welcomed Isaac, after decades of trying for a child, she persuaded Abraham to send away her handmaiden Hagar and her son by him, Ishmael. That God provided for the child and his mother in the wilderness, and made a great nation of Ishmael’s descendants, was a worthy consolation. But could Sarah have known this blessing would come to pass?
In the first installments of Fox’s shiny new six-part, Sunday school miniseries, The Faithful: Women of the Bible, debuting March 22, it is Hagar (Natacha Karam) who narrates the story of Sarah. Though their dynamic was complicated — the OG Handmaid’s Tale — Hagar concludes that Sarah was a friend, and through the ages, “came to symbolize motherhood” as the “first of the great matriarchs.”
The mission statement of The Faithful, devised by an interfaith team and written by Star Trek alum René Echevarria and directed by Danny Cannon (CSI, Judge Dredd, Geostorm), is to foreground the stories of women in the biblical narrative. To that end, Sarah —played by Minnie Driver, using her natural British accent, forcing Yank Jeffrey Donovan’s Abraham to match her Received Pronunciation — has more agency than she did in Genesis.
It is Sarah (then still Sarai) who tells the pharaoh that Abraham is her brother and dodges the monarch’s advances with the help of some divine intervention. Leaving the palace, she manages to liberate Hagar, who was enslaved there.
Billed in the first episode title as “The Woman who Bowed to No One,” this Sarah is strong-willed, petitioning the almighty, with screams and some hurled offerings, to open her womb. As in scripture, it is her idea to give Hagar to Abraham to produce an heir. Only in this iteration there’s a quid pro quo: If Hagar gives Abraham a child, Sarah will help her return to her homeland. When the baby comes, Hagar reneges, sparking Sarah’s jealousy and the pretense that Hagar is not Ishmael’s real mother.
When Isaac arrives, heralded by three hooded strangers who stop by Abraham’s tent before firebombing Sodom and Gemorrah, the friction between Ishmael and his younger, legitimate brother is too much for Sarah.
“Cast them both out,” she tells Abraham. “We have to protect Isaac no matter the cost.”
The scene is uncomfortable. The actor playing Ishmael is brown with a different accent than Driver or Donovan. The child actor playing Isaac is blond, and Abraham hoped he’d have his mother’s light eyes.
Josephus and Jewish tradition regard Ishmael as the founder of the Arab nation. In Islam, he, not Isaac, is Abraham’s heir and the son who experienced the would-be sacrifice of the akedah. It will perhaps be difficult for some to watch white actors settle Canaan and exile people of color and not recall the narrative now surrounding Israel, and the meme of just about everything being promised to Jews 3,000 years ago.
But The Faithful is too dull to be truly provocative.
A common refrain has Abraham describing his wish to stand with his bride, “shoulder to shoulder, no matter what.” We see their early courtship beginning when Abraham (then Abram) helps her to disrupt an arranged marriage and gifts her a blue shawl — the fact that they may have been half-siblings is duly glossed over. It’s Tanakh by way of Nicholas Sparks.
Making Hagar a passive protagonist is an interesting twist, but the proceedings are too rooted in the mythic to fully capture the human drama at the story’s core. (Her journey, in which she grabs a rock from her homeland, and decades later places it on Sarah’s grave, dubiously suggests the origins of a familiar Jewish custom.)
The series has reasonable production values — which will go on to track Rebekah, Rachel and Leah — and since it’s based on the most popular book of all time, there’s a built-in audience that could certainly overlook some hackneyed writing and soap opera acting. As far as entertainment of this ilk goes, the show is of the highest caliber, admittedly faint praise.
The tales were meant to be retold, and we see Abraham developing the Jewish oral tradition, speaking of Eden and the Tower of Babel around the campfire. One night he teases the story of Sarah’s cunning escape from Pharaoh’s court.
Sarah laughs, chiding him for presenting the incident “as if it were one of the sagas.”
“Who knows,” Abraham all but winks at the viewer, “it might be one day.”
It is, but not all tellings are created equal.
The post Fox’s Bible story miniseries puts women front and center appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Israeli couple killed by Iranian cluster bomb as Israel continues assassinating Iranian officials
(JTA) — A couple in their 70s were killed overnight Tuesday by an Iranian missile, apparently as they tried to reach a bomb shelter, amid an especially intense barrage of missiles aimed at the Tel Aviv area.
Yaron and Ilana Moshe were killed near their home in Ramat Gan, an upscale suburb of Tel Aviv; a walker found near their bodies suggested that they were on their way to shelter but could not move quickly, officials said. Damage from the cluster munitions, which shed smaller bombs as they land, was also reported at other sites including a main train station in Tel Aviv.
The barrage, Iran said, was retaliation for the killing the day before of Ali Larijani, the country’s security minister and a close ally of its assassinated supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Shortly afterwards, Israel announced that it had assassinated another top official, intelligence minister Esmaeil Khatib. The Israeli military said in a statement, “Khatib played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, including the arrest & killing of protestors and led terrorist activities against Israelis & Americans around the world.”
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, warned that “significant surprises” would be ahead as Israel continued to pummel targets in Iran.
A Wall Street Journal story published Wednesday details how Israel says it is choosing its targets, describing an extensive list of sites and people who are in its crosshairs. Israel knew security officers would gather in sports complexes after their offices were destroyed, then bombed the complexes once they were full, for example, according to the story, which says Iranians say order is beginning to fray on the streets but the regime appears far from falling. Israel said earlier this week that it had three more weeks of targets to work through.
Israel has also stepped up its campaign in and around Beirut, where it is targeting forces affiliated with Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy that operates out of Lebanon and has been bombing Israel since earlier this month.
The post Israeli couple killed by Iranian cluster bomb as Israel continues assassinating Iranian officials appeared first on The Forward.