The Jewish Week, Wednesday, June 16, 2010

An Obligation To The Dead

 The oldest Jewish cemetery in the United States would probably be an official historical landmark site today, but no one knows where it’s located.

Shortly after the original group of 23 Jews from Brazil arrived in then-New Amsterdam in 1654, they founded Congregation Shearith Israel then successfully petitioned city authorities to establish a Jewish burial ground on “a little hook of land,” most likely on the sparsely developed island of Manhattan.

The site of that first Jewish cemetery is lost; Shearith Israel, the only Jewish congregation here from 1654 until 1825, set up a series of cemeteries over the subsequent years.

This week the congregation completed the first phase of renovations on an 80-by-120-feet patch of land in lower midtown that is known as the Third Cemetery but is really the fourth.

In a brief ceremony under an overcast sky and the branches of dogwood and crabapple trees, Rabbi Hayyim Angel of Shearith Israel read Hebrew blessings and spoke of “the religious obligation of cemetery upkeep.”

The ceremony marks the end of the initial, decade-long removal of debris and repair of gravestones in the site, usually locked, which is bordered on three sides by towering apartment buildings. A stone path cuts across the field of neatly cut grass and repaired gravestones.

Designer-educator Christine G. H. Franck explained  that the area was restored to look like it did in photos dating back to the 1930s.

The cemetery “has been transformed,” said Edward Kirkland, chair of the Community Board 4 landmarks committee “The stones were all over the place.”

Kirkland was part of a small group of invited participants that included preservation officials and descendants of Shearith Israel’s long-gone congregants.

“They are our spiritual ancestors,” Rabbi Angel said, pointing to the resting places of some 250 onetime members of the congregation. “Were it not for their efforts, we would not be here today as an organized committee.”

The cemetery on West 21st Street off of Sixth Avenue served as an active burial ground from 1829 until burials south of 86th Street were banned in 1852. Among the approximately 150 gravestones there are some from the 1700s, moved from the synagogue’s First Cemetery on St. James Place opposite Chatham Square.

Congregation Shearith Israel Welcomes Ireland's President Mary McAleese on May 23, 2010

Click here for video from Channel 11, WPIX

Click here for article from Ireland Independent

Click here for article from New York Times

163 Years Later, a President Visits to Say Thank You

By JIM DWYER

Published: May 21, 2010

Jacques Judah Lyons had a strong tenor voice, one that people were glad to hear in song or speech. One March night, he used it to challenge a crowd in Lower Manhattan. Strangers in a far-off place needed their help, he said, but he knew that members of his audience had principled objections. So many of their own people, they pointed out, other Jews right there in New York, were also destitute and needed assistance.

But were these objections real, he asked, or just “excuses which the lips utter while they are rejected by the heart?”

He was speaking in a synagogue on Crosby Street on March 8, 1847, where he was the chazan, or prayer leader. His subject was relief for people in Ireland who were starving to death in a famine caused by failures of crop and government. By the end of that evening, Mr. Lyons had collected about $200 from the congregation, Shearith Israel, according to an account in the April 1847 issue of The Occident, a monthly on Jewish subjects.

On Sunday, more than 163 years later, the congregation, now at 70th Street and Central Park West, will be visited by the president of Ireland, Mary McAleese. She will give thanks for the generosity of Shearith Israel and another New York congregation, Shaaray Tefila, during the famine years. About $1,000 for relief was collected by Jews in New York.

“In some of the conventional histories, the story of the contributions of the Jewish community here has been lost to sight over the years,” said Niall Burgess, the consul general of Ireland in New York.

The story, however, is part of the tradition at Shearith Israel, said Rabbi Hayyim J. Angel, the leader of the congregation. “I knew about this growing up,” Rabbi Angel said. “We speak about it all the time in the synagogue. Chazan Lyons made a fund-raising appeal on behalf of humanity, nothing to do with religion or race.”

The Irish famine, which ran from about 1845 to 1852, was among the first humanitarian crises to be reported in the early days of global media. People and religious groups from around the world responded with donations, as described by Christine Kinealy, a professor at Drew University, in the current issue of Irish America magazine.

The first major contributions came from Calcutta, where about 40 percent of the occupying British Army was Irish-born. The Choctaw Indians, who were displaced from their homelands in the southeastern United States earlier in the 19th century, sent $174 to Ireland. Money was raised from prisoners in Sing Sing, former slaves in the Caribbean, convicts on a prison ship in London, slave churches in the South. Major sources of donations included the Society of Friends and the British Relief Association, led by Lionel de Rothschild.

The famine began with a blight on the leaf of the potato, a staple of Irish tenant farmers, and accelerated through a system of absentee landlords and colonialism. The relief efforts became tangled in bureaucratic snares and rigid commitments by British authorities to free-market solutions. . Some evangelists saw an opportunity to swap soup for the conversion of Catholics.

But there was no such agenda for most of the donors, including Shearith Israel. The congregation was formed in 1654 by Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had been living in Brazil and were driven out. When 23 refugees reached New Amsterdam, the Dutch West Indies Company ordered Peter Stuyvesant to accommodate them, “provided the poor among them shall not become a burden to the Company or to the community, but be supported by their own nation.”

Mr. Lyons became the chazan in 1839. He helped found Jews Hospital, now known as Mount Sinai. His appeal in 1847 on behalf of the Irish bluntly stated that the Jews who gathered on Crosby Street had almost nothing in common with the people on the tiny island. “There is but one connecting link between us and the sufferers,” he said. “That link, my brethren, is humanity.” When Mr. Lyons died in 1877, his niece, Emma Lazarus — author of the “Give me your tired” inscription for the Statue of Liberty — wrote a verse in his honor, “to requite the just man’s service with a just man’s death.”

Mr. Burgess, the Irish government’s senior official in New York, learned about the gifts of the Jews here from a friend who saw some information about them in the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin. Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, connected the Irish officials with the Shearith congregation.

The congregation has continued its charitable works since 1847. The Irish are now among the leading donors of official development aid. Mr. Burgess said that was part of the famine legacy: “A few years back, President McAleese said, ‘We are a first world nation with a third world memory.’ ”

How New York's Jewish community tried to rescue Irish in Great Famine

President McAleese to hear how Jews raised funds for famine relief

Video of Rabbi Hayyim Angel Speaking at Press Conference on April 20, 2010 for Jewish American Heritage Month

A Rabbi's Rabbi Shares His Seder Secrets
Rabbi Hayyim Angel
Published in The Jewish Press on February 10, 2010
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/42505

The ideal drashah (sermon) combines science and art.
There is the scientific component, where the darshan embodies deep and authentic Jewish scholarship: breadth of knowledge, methodology, and faithfulness to tradition. Equally significant are the artistic elements of the drashah: eloquence, presentation, and a penetrating understanding of one's intended audience.
It is no easy feat to compose good Pesach sermons. One must envision creative twists to well-trodden ancient texts, emerging with new understandings that educate, inspire, and delight. 
As an accomplished scholar, and armed with a lifetime of experience as a community rabbi and then president and rosh hayeshiva of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm brings all his credentials as a master darshan to our Pesach Sedarim in his newly published commentary on the Haggadah, The Royal Table (OU Press). 
Perhaps the core philosophy of this treasure-trove of insights can be identified in Dr. Lamm's interpretation of the preface to the first half of the Hallel (Psalms 113-114), where we promise to sing a "new song" (shirah chadashah). 
Dr. Lamm expresses amazement that this "new" song is none other than "the old, tried, worn Hallel." His response: "Our people throughout the ages have instinctively understood that the rhythm of Torah combines the old and the new new insights are possible, insights that come with age and wisdom and experience . We must keep the old in sight; perceive in it the new through Insight; and as a result learn - to excite our souls and galvanize our spirits." 
That interplay between tradition and creativity receives magnificent expression throughout his elucidations of the classical Haggadah text. 
Dr. Lamm stresses that ethical living is central to Judaism: "The highest form of creativity is neither intellectual nor artistic; it is ethical." Elsewhere he even converts the korech sandwich into a lesson in balancing the different elements of our personalities - represented by the symbols of matzah and marror - to achieve perfection. Extremes must be avoided. 
There is a talmudic debate about whether we should begin the negative aspect of the storytelling from our physical slavery or from our idolatrous origins. Instead of tackling that debate, Dr. Lamm explores a more basic question. If the Talmudic sages cannot even agree on so fundamental a point, how can we ever speak about "tradition"? 
Dr. Lamm answers that uncertainty provokes machloket l'Shem Shamayim (debate for the sake of Heaven), and that uncertainty coupled with ongoing study makes life more interesting and energizing. 
Religious existentialism emerges in the discussion of the plague of darkness. Darkness and solitude can indeed be a plague, and this is how the Egyptians perceived it. However, one with a healthier perspective finds blessing in moments of solitude. Loneliness can be painful, but also can become a creative opportunity to hear the voice of God and discover ourselves.  
Dr. Lamm infuses ironic meaning into our practice of reclining. We recline as a relic from the Roman period, when nobles did so on couches while they dined. In an age of great technological advances such as chairs, however, of what value is this fossilized custom?  
Dr. Lamm responds that our Seder is profoundly lacking because there is no Temple, and it was the ancient Romans who destroyed it. We shall not allow that destruction to undo us as a people. 
Our response is to celebrate a living tradition from the era of the Temple with a Roman practice, while that once invincible Roman Empire is long gone.
               Along with his perspicacious discussion of the Four Children, Dr. Lamm delights the reader with another section that outlines traits of the Four Parents. Education should not be focused exclusively on children and their respective differences. Rather, our continuity as a people depends heavily on the religious-educational attitudes of parents and how they speak to their children. 
Dr. Joel Wolowelsky has provided an invaluable service in reading Dr. Lamm's sermons, selecting and abridging them, and placing them alongside the text of the Haggadah as a running commentary. He also has succeeded in retaining Dr. Lamm's authentic voice (as stated in the general introduction, Dr. Lamm reviewed the volume). 
The Royal Table is a veritable gold mine for rabbis and educators. In addition to the wealth of insight, it is a consummate model as to what makes a great drashah. The Royal Table similarly is a welcome addition for all committed Jews seeking to enhance their Sedarim and ultimately their personal religious growth. The book is accessible to Jews of all backgrounds, as Dr. Lamm combines his hallmark eloquence and subtlety with clarity and a keen understanding of a diverse Jewish community. 
            The Royal Table is a worthy bearer of the epithet shirah chadashah - a new song. In his capacity as master darshan, Dr. Lamm has discovered much that is new within the ancient text of the Haggadah, inspiring reflection, growth, and further discussion. A must read.

Hayyim Angel is rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel of New York (the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue, founded in 1654), and teaches advanced undergraduate Tanach courses at Yeshiva University. He has published two collections of studies in Tanach - "Through an Opaque Lens" and "Revealed Texts: Hidden Meanings."

Shearith Israel's Community Wide Yom Hashoa program (4-20-09) was featured on local television news reports recently:

WABC

NY1

Forward Article

Merengue, Flamenco, and a Side of Latkes

CELEBRATORY: The quintet Ansambl Mastika performed at Hanukkah concert, held December 23 at New York's Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue.

It was standing room only as concertgoers filed into Congregation Shearith Israel, Manhattan’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, for an evening of traditional Sephardic song. The December 23 event, part of the 4th annual Sephardic Music Festival — December 21–28 in New York — offered a tuneful lesson in the long and varied tradition of the music that originated, for the most part, on the Iberian Peninsula and traveled across the globe with Spanish Jews as they fled the Inquisition in 1492.

Congregants were still picking over the spread of homemade latkes and brownies when the Florida-based saxophonist Yehonatan Elazar began the evening with a roster of soft-jazz inflected tunes that fused Sephardic melodies with flavors of the Mediterranean and Latin America. Mr. Elazar jokingly apologized for injecting one of his compositions with a merengue rhythm — a product, he explained, of his Dominican heritage, and further testimony that Sephardic music, like the Jewish people, claims roots in nearly every corner of the globe.

As concert organizers restocked the food and jammed more chairs into the modest Levy Auditorium, the Israeli guitarist Dan Nadel and American vocalist Audrey Aviva Babcock took the stage to showcase their fine synthesis of Spanish, Middle Eastern, and European music.

“This music has a lot of ‘ay’ in it, which is Spanish for ‘oy,’” Ms. Babcock said of the duo’s repertoire, sketching a line of sorrow in song that began with 15th century Spanish Jews and gypsies, continued through the grand opera of George Bizet’s “Carmen,” and came to define, among other genres, the blues music that underpins much of our modern Western fare.

Clenching her fists and pulsing with the tremors of a diva, Ms. Babcock, her warm mezzo-soprano bounding from wall to wall, intoned tales of jealous lovers and dashed hopes in the anguished voices of Sephardim who were singing dirges long before the Christians ruled the Iberian Peninsula. She sang mostly in Ladino, an ancient, nomadic form of Spanish spoken by the Jews of the region that was nearly decimated after their expulsion.

Mr. Nadel laid an expert flamenco foundation for Ms. Babcock’s vocals, alternating furious strums of his acoustic guitar with dexterous flourishes up and down its neck. Later, he stirred in the slower arpeggiations of North American folk and the colorful chord structures of traditional gypsy music.

Moving from the soulful to the celebratory, the New York-based quintet Ansambl Mastika finished the program with a set of upbeat Balkan finger-snappers that managed to accomplish what the dwindling coffee supply could not. Led by the woodwind player/composer Greg Schneiderman (a.k.a. Greg Squared), the electric outfit set its feet in Eastern European folk music, weaving clarinet lines and blasts of trumpet into a tapestry that covered everything from Bulgarian wedding music to the big-band jazz of Benny Goodman (a first generation Polish-American Jew).

As members of the audience danced spontaneously through the aisles (okay, they were prodded), the abiding power of community that spawned each of the various strains of music on the program swelled like the warm heart of an ever-hopeful people.