efkaristo -- thank you

As we have delved deeper in different Jewish cultures and history in the context of global cultures and history, Frederic Brenner's Diaspora and his discovery of the worldwide web of Jewish history and the Jewish experience has increasingly resonated with me. We learn bit by bit the stories that create a whole. Each shul and the influence of its surrounding culture and each Holocaust history help me visualize my own narrative. Moreover, these small communities, ones that haven't received recognition in all of the Jewish programming and curriculum I've experienced in the last ten years, are vibrant and whole. Their Jewish experience and identity are not lesser than our North American one simply because of size. 

 

The Salonika Jewish experience is, in my opinion, an underrated and under-told one. Why would this unusual story of such an integrated and cohesive community lack such recognition? The Salonika Jewish community consisting of Ashkenaz, Sephardi, and Romaniote Jews lived together for 600 years under Ottoman rule; Salonika was at least 50% Jewish, yet the Jews integrated into Greek society. Salonika maintained approximately 60 shuls throughout the city and even the port of Salonika closed on Shabbos. How does a community with such life, one that claimed 23 Ladino circulating newspapers, stay in the dark so long in my Jewish education? The 50,000 Jews of Salonika were then deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps in spring of 1943; we visited the Holocaust museum and the deportation memorial next to the Aegean Sea.

In addition, we visited two shuls in Salonika. The first not only reflected the Sephardi decor we had observed before, with colorful stain glass and carved wooden doors, but also overwhelmingly Greek culture. Simplicity and clean lines characterized the shul; the bima stood on a marble floor and white Corinthian columns framed the Aron. Speaking of the present Salonika Jewish community, Israeli immigrant Rav Aharon described to us the small but growing Jewish population. With 1000 members of the Jewish community, a day school of about 60 kids exists. The fact that Rav Aharon lacks Greek roots or a connection intrigued me; what he did possess was commitment to sustaining Diaspora communities with deep Jewish histories. He therefore moved to Salonika with his wife and children and became associate rabbi of the shul we visited for Shabbos.

 

Visiting the shul Yad Lezikaron for Kabbalat Shabbat and Saturday morning, we constituted the majority of the shul's congregants. The service was also unlike Sephardi ones I have attended in France and the US. Not only did the trop of the Torah reading differ, but also some of the tefillot and songs included Ladino. Moreover, there was no silent davening; the chazan and the congregants chanted all of the tefillot out loud. 

Following Salonika, we visited the archeological site in Vergina of Philip II's tombs. We toured for two hours with the guide. Unfortunately, I found it difficult to connect to the lecture and the history. One major realization I've had, however, is that with the overwhelming amount of information, history, and culture to absorb, I can't and won't connect to everything. Rather, I should focus on what proves significant or meaningful to me. 

We then travelled to Ioannina, an exclusively Romaniote Jewish community. This community directly descends from the Greek Jews who lived in the Byzantine Empire. Leading us around what used to be the Jewish Quarter, our tour guide described to us the nearly 2000 Jews who lived there right before World War II. In 1944, 1860 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Fewer than 100 Jews live in Ioannina now. We visited their shul dating from at least the fourteenth century, preserved in the Bynzantine style. Revealing a large, rusted key, our tour guide unlocked the Aron to expose 360-year-old sifrei Torah written on deer parchment. 

Moreover, our tour guide led us to the deportation memorial in Ioannina, instituted by the Ioannina municipality. She emphasized her appreciation that "the memorial had not yet been vandalized," as apparently anti-Semitic (as well as general graffiti) vandalism appears commonplace in Greece. I found her gratitude ironic as she had expressed overall the good nature of the relationship between the Greeks and the  Jews beforehand. She even mentioned how Jews and Christians in Ioannina annually visited each other's places of worship as guests and friends. 

The monoliths and monasteries of Meteroa, Delphi, and Athens are still to come. 

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

adio, adio

The Balkan Peninsula is unlike any other part of Europe I've been to. I've been constantly and consistently amazed by its layers in history and my total lack of previous knowledge concerning this part of the world. Our last day in Sofia, we visited the Central Sofia Synagogue, which is remarkably beautiful and so so Sephardi in design and art. The walls are covered in colorful, graphic paint, and the ceiling in a blue with stars to resemble the heavens; their chandelier dominates as the largest in Bulgaria. Seating about 1300 congregants, the shul is barely used. Simply speaking, the Sofian or even Bulgarian Jewish community does not have the capacity or interest to support an active religious minyan. We then visited the Jewish museum there as well, attached to the shul. 

Upon finishing another classic Kivupicnic lunch, we left for Skopje, Macedonia. The predicted three to four hour bus ride totaled about six hours. By the time we arrived to Skopje for dinner, it was one hour behind and still about 9:30pm. The following morning, we visited the Holocaust Museum of Skopje and met with Roza Kamhi, an elderly Macedonian Jewish woman who joined the partisans and evaded deportation. Roza's story can be found on Centropa, which we watched in Civilizations and Society a few weeks ago:

http://centropastudent.org/?typ=subtitel&fLang=ENG&movID=46&nID=78&q=m

Centropa, which Beth Tfiloh introduced to my Jewish history class junior year, describes themselves as an "interactive database of Jewish memory." They collect oral histories and testimonies of elderly Jews from Central and Eastern Europe; their mission inspired my own junior year Jewish history class project of interviewing my paternal grandmother, Sylvia Berue (Abramowitz) Abbott, and her own experiences as a second-generation American born to Russian Jewish immigrants. 

Meeting and speaking with Roza constituted one of my favorite Balkan experiences thus far. Her testimony helped me recreate and visualize the Macedonian Jewish history class I had had previously and even her own Centropa video. Moreover, we sang Adio Querida, an old Ladino song, that she gleefully sang with us. The Sephardi Bulgarian elders of Sofia, too, knew Adio Querida.

A high point of the museum for me constituted a sculpture of 7144 beaded strands representative of the 7144 Macedonians deported to Treblinka. Each strand distinctive to each individual victim, "they form a tapestry, joining together as one image of struggle and survival" and creating an optical illusion of a flickering burning bush. Moreover, the theme of the memorial, the burning bush "burns intensely yet is not consumed."

Last night, we arrived in Thessaloniki or Salonika, Greece. I'll continue a Greek post tomorrow.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

blagodariya -- thank you

Uninformed and uneducated on Bulgaria with the exception of its Qudditch team and star Seeker Viktor Krum (and its Holocaust  history I just wrote a paper on), I had no expectations for traveling and touring Bulgaria. After spending all of Sunday flying to Istanbul, having a five-hour layover, having my tampons searched and scrutinized by Turkish security, and having a two-hour delay to our connecting flight, we finally arrived to Sofia, Bulgaria. My first impressions consisted of associations with other European countries. The historic, government buildings seemed French, and everything else seemed very Russian, Soviet-era. The atmosphere reminded me of Poland, but considerably less gloomy and more populated. 

Our days here are intense, but new and explorative and interesting. Yesterday, we first traveled to an unusual Bulgarian school: public, but also privately funded by American billionaire and philanthropist Ronald Lauder (who is known for funding Jewish and Hebrew charter schools across Europe). Though Jewish students only constitute 30% of the student body, the school teaches Hebrew and Jewish culture classes. When asked how and why non-Jewish students relate to this curious curriculum, the principal of the school (through a translator) spoke about the prestige of and competition to enroll in the school. Simply speaking, the school is well-organized and possesses substantial resources. Moreover, she articulated about the good nature of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Sofia; the idea of isolating the Jewish community is not present. When the question of anti-Semitism towards the school or the student body arose, the principal spoke of only a few isolated incidents, nothing recent. In addition, in response to a question about religious Jews, she mentioned that there are none in Bulgaria. The small, Sephardi Jewish community of Sofia is vibrant and culturally based rather than religiously based.

I found it hilarious to step into a second grade class learning Hebrew - with kids' names like "Petar," "Alexander," and "Stefan" - and watch them say "ANACHNU OCHLIM CHALLAH BASHABBAT." Their walls resembled BT's own with maps of Israel, Hebrew question words, shorashim, and more. Their colorful, graphic Hebrew workbooks far outshone our Neta books. How many of them were Jewish out of a class of twenty? Five? Fewer?

Following our visit to the Lauder School, we bought food from a local supermarket for a picnic in the park. Though we knew the Bulgarian economy is weak, we were surprised to discover how cheap everything else. Water bottles for less than the equivalent of an American dollar, fruit for forty people for approximately fifteen American dollars. We then gathered at the JCC to split into groups for a scavenger hunt to explore the city. We found the bank, the library, the Museum of Natural History, the theater, churches, and so forth. The layers of Sofia intrigued me the most: those left from Ottoman rule, the bombing of World War II, the rebuilding, Soviet occupation. 

Stopping at some sort of Bulgarian hybrid of a shuk and a yard sale, I was reminded of the tomato festival I attended in Cape May this past summer. Basically, it served as an opportunity for locals to rid themselves of their tchotchkes under the appealing alias of a festival. Similarly, the Bulgarian market was advertised as such a festival. However, the tchotchkes were not Cape May's beaten Vera Bradley purses: old cameras, films, and "war relics." This how an elderly Bulgarian man described to me a knife, Swiss army knife, pocket watch, and ring all inscribed with swastikas. I cannot imagine the tomato festival selling war relics (aka Nazi apparel) back in Cape May; however, I suppose you can compare it to selling Confederate uniforms and flags and kitchenware in the South. Still, whether Confederate or Nazi, the "war relics" confuse me to who would buy or collect something like that, especially in a country that struggled for so long to resist the Nazi influence and occupation.

This morning, we took the two and a half hour bus ride to Plovdiv, where the second largest Jewish community in Bulgaria lives. Visiting a 120-year Sephardi shul there, we also met with leaders of the Jewish community. They described to us the Bulgarian Holocaust story once again: a relatively unknown story in which all 48,000 Jews of Bulgaria survived (later there was a mass immigration to Israel to escape the communism). Bulgarian society, specifically Vice President of Parliament Dimiter Peshev and local Archbishops Kiril and Stefan, spoke out in protest of the Law of the Defense of the Nation, the Nuremberg-like laws enacted, and the plans for deportation. In addition, we lit a yarhzeit candle at the memorial thanking the Plovdiv community for saving the Jewish community, the only memorial of its kind in Europe.

During lunch, we walked to the JCC of Plovdiv to meet with the elders of the community. We communicated through a medley of Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Russian; few only knew Bulgarian. I had to remind myself that that despite their age and experience through the war, these were not Holocaust survivors depicting their journey to and at Auschwitz. Instead, they expressed to us how the Plovdiv community halted their deportation, after they had already been rounded up in the Jewish school's courtyard. One woman remembered Bishop Kiril leaning over the fence of the courtyard, referring to the Jews as "brothers and sisters" and promising that he would "lie in front of the train tracks before the Jews were deported."

Finally, we completed the mountainous journey to pay our respects at the graves of the archbishops at Bachkovo Monastery. These were two men who Yad Vashem recognized as Hasidei Umot Haolam, or Righteous Gentiles of the Earth. I have never said Kaddish for a non-Jew before, especially not in a monastery in the mountains of Bulgaria.

Today, we will continue to explore Jewish Sofia, and, later, drive to Skopje, Macedonia.

Rebecca Abbott

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org) - a gap year before Barnard

salvation at last

Today marks the fifth day of November and the fact that I have been in Israel for a month. Yet Kivunim packs in so much programming, I feel like I've been here several months to a year eating the same cucumber-red pepper-rice-soy milk-hard boiled egg meal variations. This weekend, I managed to escape the Beit Shmuel bubble (affectionately referred to as "Shmu") and its monotonous food for Ashkelon. Alhamdulilah (see post below) I was able to go in spite of the recent rocket attacks. I even managed to figure out the Egged bus system without finding myself in Syria or Egypt.

Sundays on Kivunim are an "experiential learning" kind of day, a sort of field trip where we explore Israel. Our first Sunday, we visited the ancient city known as Beit Shean in the Tanach, or Scythopolis in Roman and Byzantine times. Serving as a prelude to our Greece trip, Beit Shean exemplified the beliefs and lifestyles of our Jewish ancestors' non-Jewish neighbors. A core value in Kivunim, this idea emphasizes exploring others' cultures and histories, in order to better understand our own. Negative interactions, positive interactions, the development of any relations at all with non-Jewish neighbors: these relationships provide a better understanding of Jewish history within the context of larger communities and the world itself.

This is an idea that Kivunim introduced me too. Freshman year, I had a comparative religion semester in Jewish history; in addition, we did learn Jewish history in the context of world history. Maybe I didn't realize it, I wasn't aware, or I just wasn't paying attention, but I did not realize the effects and relationships and influences of Jewish communities within Christian and Muslim majority communities.

Further heeding this idea, we also visited the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. I cannot imagine visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with Young Judaea, with Diller, or with Beth Tfiloh. Not that any of the three sought to evade Christian culture or isolate us, but, to me, this simply communicates to me that interacting with world cultures is not a priority for Jewish-Israel education for high school students.

While the question of exploring Jewish communities in Christian communities will recur throughout the year, the question of a Christian minority within the divided city of Jerusalem within the Jewish majority of Israel is an unusual one. Though familiar with the fact that this place serves as a pilgrimage destination (Christians believe it to be the site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial), I was unprepared for the procession of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theopolis III, who is the head bishop of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.

Again, Kivunim focused on investigating Jewish identity when encountering Christianity in the Christian Quarter. Upon meeting and hearing the Greek Orthodox Patriarch (His Beatitude) speak on Friday, the relevance of Judaism to Christianity present-day became clearer. He spoke of how Judaism and its values and canon build the fundamentals of Christianity; in addition, he articulated the Church's role within the Arab-Israeli conflict and its relationship with the Jewish and Muslim communities. He bestowed to us small gifts (posters, books, keychains) depicting the Church to give to our Greek Orthodox friends. Unfortunately, I have no Greek Orthodox friends. (This doesn't mean I can't enjoy a large poster of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and His Beatitude above my bed, though).

In six days, we leave for Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Greece. Check back for an update on the status of the Greek euro, the best grape leaves, and if the fumes of the Oracle at Delphi have any effect...

- Rebecca

(Kivunim - www.kivunim.org)