What’s a nice Jewish boy doing in the crowded bazaars of Rangoon, Burma? Michael “Micki” Weinberg, a 16-year-old Beverly Hills High School senior, says he just “really wanted to do something nobody else was doing this summer.”
Weinberg’s intent to discover the remnants of Judaism in the Far East was sparked by his interest in travel, birds and colonialism. The stories he heard from the Baghdadi Jews of his Beverly Hills synagogue, Kahal Joseph, only fanned his desire.
Weinberg first visited Burma in winter 1999 to see the Rangoon synagogue, Musmeah Yeshua. He ended up meeting Moses Samuels, the son of a Jew and a Moslem, who is responsible for keeping the synagogue in good condition. Samuels told Weinberg that he cares for the synagogue in order to hold on to his Jewish heritage.
Weinberg decided to go back to the synagogue in Rangoon and spent this past summer sorting through its dusty cabinets. They contain the remnants of prayer books and documents, such as letters, newspaper clippings and records of Rangoon’s pre-World War II Jewish community. Since the community refuses to give any of the slowly disintegrating documents away, Weinberg spent his days cataloguing them. “If nobody attempts to preserve these, they will soon be gone. I found a place [where] I think I can make a difference,” says Weinberg.
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