Thoughts on Late Spring Travels

Our synagogue administrator, Marilyn Katz, has just gotten back in the last few days from a two-week visit to Israel. She had a 50 year reunion with a number of old friends from her Young Judaea Year Course in Israel and reported back on the situation in Israel at this time. She noted a strange combination of attitudes. She said on one hand, there is a deep sadness as people continue to deal with the losses from the attack on October 7th as well as the many casualties among the Israel Defense Forces from the ongoing war. Everywhere you go, she said, there are yellow flags and ribbons, and posters with the pictures of the hostages still being held by Hamas. Huge posters line the streets in English and Hebrew - Bring Them Home Now!. She mentioned the yellow ribbon pins which are worn by many people throughout the land as they pray for the safe return of those still being held. She brought one back for me to wear. From time to time, she reported, there were sirens sounded due to missiles sent from Yemen, and, on three occasions, she went into the maamad - saferoom in the home in Modiin where she stayed with friends. Even so, this precaution has become routine for many people and it has become part of daily life. They go to the saferoom and wait for the required 10 minutes before returning to whatever they were doing before.

At the same time, Marilyn told me, life goes on. The restaurants are filled. People go out to eat and sit in the cafes. There are movies and plays and people visit with friends and relatives. In the background in areas close to Gaza, one may hear booms from the ongoing war in Gaza, but she noted that people tended to take them for granted and ignored the sounds of battle as they continued their conversations. Marilyn visited a friend at Kibbutz Nirim located on the Gaza border. During her visit there were frequent booms. This is the IDF bombing Gaza - not Hamas bombing Israel. Kibbutz Nirim is one of the kibbutzim that was attacked by terrorists on October 7. Members were murdered and/or taken hostage. All of Nirim's members held hostage have been returned. For many other kibbutzim, this is not true. Marilyn also visited the Nova Festival memorial site and other locations along the roads which now stand as memorials to those killed on October 7.

The twenty-seven-year-old twins, Ziv and Gali Berman from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, that we chose for this congregation to represent all of the hostages are still being held and people are aware of them and praying for their safe return with the others. Marilyn has set up two new chairs on the bimah here to remind us of them. As before, their pictures are taped to the chairs. To this she has added the national flower of Israel, the anemone or calanit, chosen in 2013 for that distinction. She noted that synagogues in Israel on Shabbat continue to read the names of those 58 hostages who have not yet been returned to Israel and asked that we include that custom in our services as well. So, I will be adding a special prayer once again for the hostages and reading the names at our worship services. 

 Last week, I took a shorter trip myself geographically to New York City. Though for me it also was a journey back in time to the mid-70s when I was a student in New York. I had been invited along with all the other 1975 graduates of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America’s various schools to mark the 50th anniversary of our degrees or ordination. We were to be recognized as a part of the commencement exercises for the class of 2025. The alumni office run by Melissa Friedman (no relative) arranged for a tour on Wednesday for those who wished, of the Seminary’s famed rare book room and a special exhibit shown there. We also were offered a tour of the campus that has undergone incredible change since I last visited there in 2012.

I was fortunate to learn that one of my cousins had an additional apartment available for guests where I was able to stay, a short distance from the Seminary on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It was great to catch up with her, since I had not seen her in many years and also to have a bite to eat with another cousin with whom I had been in touch by Facebook. On Wednesday, I walked up Broadway to the Seminary and encountered crowds of graduates from Columbia and Barnard heading in the opposite direction in their caps and gowns. There were large numbers of police officers and police barriers all along the street to avoid problems with a large number of demonstrators opposite the campus, who were wearing kaffiyehs around their necks, chanting slogans, and banging on drums, as I walked by. No violence, just noise. The Seminary itself had extensive security at its front gate including security guards and metal detectors as one entered.

A handful of us met at the gate and Melissa Friedman escorted us into a building which had some familiar elements but was otherwise totally new and rather disorienting. The Seminary building originally was a kind of quadrangle extending out of a high tower. To the left was the old library and offices. In front was the Brush dormitory where rabbinical students and, later, cantorial students lived. It had a cafeteria downstairs and more offices for professors and administrators upstairs. We remembered an old-fashioned elevator where frequently one would encounter what visitors took for a bearded elevator operator in my day, who turned out to be Professor Louis Finkelstein the Chancellor Emeritus. Dr. Finkelstein graciously held the door for everyone and had them enter first before getting on himself to return to his office. To the right of the tower was the Teacher’s Institute and various classrooms and more offices. When I attended from 1971 to 1975, much of the open space in the quadrangle was taken up with a temporary structure where many of the books water-damaged in the Seminary’s fire in 1966 had been taken for restoration. Most of the tower was unusable because it had become like a chimney for the flames which devoured many as yet uncatalogued volumes stored there.

Some years later, the fourth side of the quadrangle became the new home of the library in a multi-storied building which I had visited in 2001 when my classmates and I were invited back to receive honorary doctorates on the occasion of our 25th anniversary in the rabbinate. I had occasion to visit again in 2012 for an orientation prior to my taking a one-year interim position on Long Island. At that time, the tower had been renovated and reopened. It became the Kripke Tower recognizing a very generous donation by Rabbi Myer and Dorothy Kripke of Omaha. The story was that they had given an inheritance and some royalty money from children’s books that Dorothy had written to an old friend, Warren Buffett, whom Myer knew from the Rotary Club, to invest for them. Buffett took their savings and returned some $25 million to them in earnings years later, much of which the Kripkes gave away including seven million toward the restoration of what became the Kripke Tower at JTS.

Returning last week, however, I had no idea what had taken place at my Alma Mater. The “new” library was gone. Two old buildings in the neighborhood that had served as dormitories for students in various schools of the Seminary had been sold as well as the air rights behind the previous library building and a new building now stood there, a brand-new dormitory for students studying at the Seminary. Before we even got to the dormitory, however, there was directly in front of us, where the temporary building had been in the past, a large indoor space set up for the commencement exercises the next day. While one could still find some remnants of the old buildings, they were mostly hidden by brand new structures all with accessible walkways replacing many of the steps that one had to navigate in the past. The cafeteria area was redone, though I missed the big old portrait of Solomon Schechter in his red Cambridge gown that graced that room in the past. No one seemed to know where that picture had gone. The former reading room in the library was now a sanctuary for the services held on weekday mornings and afternoons. I had been there before, but it was now totally redecorated in majestic form. The room below it where weekday prayers had been held is now a study hall lined with major Jewish texts that students can refer to if they wish. We were greeted in the library by the Librarian of Special Collections who gave us a personal tour of the current exhibit of the earliest Hebrew Codex, a collection of prayers and liturgical poems and the earliest text of the Haggadah discovered near a trade route through Afghanistan dating back some 1300 years. We were shown some other beautiful old rare books as well in the library.

We continued around the new building and entered into the dormitory building and learned more about the revised and reconceived Seminary programs. I can’t cover them all, but what was most interesting was the fact that only the Rabbinic and Cantorial programs are preparing Conservative clergy. The other schools are open to students of all backgrounds and levels of observance who are interested in Jewish studies. The new dorm features study spaces and meeting rooms, but also kitchen facilities with different styles of kosher observance depending on the students who reside there. Some expect all food to bear a rabbinic certification and others accept kosher ingredients as sufficient for their food preparation. Most striking to me as an inveterate book lover was the absence of bookcases in the tiny dorm rooms. While printed books are available on request, many students prefer electronic texts available on their laptops and tablets or phones. We were told that there were no longer Shabbat services held at the Seminary. Students were encouraged to attend services in synagogues throughout the city and in some instances were sent to congregations throughout the country to serve their needs. They thus got a better picture of the people they would be serving.

The commencement exercises on Thursday were beautiful as always with the formal presentation of the honors and degrees all scripted in advance. One of the honorees, a professor of Rabbinic studies from Yale whom I had met once in New Haven, Christine Hayes, was the commencement speaker and exemplified the diversity now to be found throughout the Seminary and the community. Dr. Hayes spoke of her enchantment by the minyan at Harvard during her undergraduate years and of her studies later at Berkeley with the gentleman sitting next to me, Dr. Daniel Boyarin, who was marking the 50th anniversary of receiving his PhD. The other honorees were all Jewish, including Amy Eilberg, marking 40th anniversary of her ordination as the first female rabbi ordained at JTS. Today many of the rabbis, cantors, and faculty are distinguished female colleagues.

One disappointment for me was that most of my classmates chose not to attend the commencement in person and so only a small group of rabbis and other graduates from the Teachers’ Institute were present marking our 50th anniversary. It still was good to catch up with a few of my colleagues and to see several people from the Seminary administration whom I know as well as and a couple of retired administrators who were among the first contacts I made with the Seminary as an undergraduate. I sat with them at lunch. I also had a chance to congratulate a couple of the honorees who received honorary doctorates during the commencement ceremony whom I knew from other meetings in the past.

We were invited to dine after the ceremony with the honorees and other guests who had come for the occasion. After greeting the chancellor, Dr. Shuly Schwartz as I left, I departed for an all-new LaGuardia Airport for my return flight. It has been many years since I last flew into LaGuardia and it was totally unrecognizable, a brand-new facility, greatly expanded and beautifully appointed. All in all, it was a nice getaway, though much too short.

Though we struggle here in Aurora to continue to keep Jewish life and activity going, it is exciting and invigorating to experience the centers of Jewish activity whether in Israel or in this country and to connect once again with the sources of learning and Jewish culture and to share the vision of those heading out to serve the Jewish people throughout the world.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Edward Friedman