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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

January 26, 2006

Wandering Jew – A Nosh of the Big Apple

Leave a Comment / Food, Travel, United States, Wandering Jew /

It seemed the perfect thing to do on a recent winter Sunday in New York — visit some synagogues and nosh on ethnic foods.

So my husband and two sons got in the car, drove through an amazingly empty Manhattan to the Lower East Side and joined the second annual Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy Noshing Tour Extravaganza.

Once home to 500 houses of prayer around the turn of the 19th century, now only about 20 remain active on the Lower East Side. The area has gone through numerous incarnations since after World War II, when many Jewish families moved up and out to other parts of the city or to the suburbs.

At one point the neighborhood was considered so dangerous, people were afraid to walk the streets at night, but now it is experiencing something of a renaissance among Jews and non-Jews alike.

We had no idea if we would be the only ones to brave the cold and damp but were pleasantly surprised; about 30 people made up our tour.

The first stop was Congregation Chasam Sopher, which was built in 1853 and is the oldest continuously operating synagogue in the Lower East Side.

The synagogue underwent a $3 million renovation and now is a stunning jewel boasting beautiful stained glass illuminating the 12 tribes, chandeliers and polished pews.

“This building was done from the ground to roof,” Eugene Weiser, president of the congregation, told us. The previous temple president, by the way, was his father, Morris Weiser, a Holocaust survivor.

The snacks, cookies and other sweets were a welcome treat, especially for our sons, Ben and Gabriel, ages 10 and 7.

Our next synagogue was Congregation B’nai Jacob Anshei Brezezan, also known as the Stanton Street Shul, where we gathered in the basement for herring, garbanzo beans and potatonik heated on the radiators, just as it is every morning for the men who gather for a minyan. (This nosh was appreciated more by my husband and me than our sons.)

Founded in 1894 by immigrant Jews from the town of Brezezany in Poland, the synagogue is tall and narrow, a classic example of tenement-style synagogue architecture.

Elissa Sampson, Lower East Side native, synagogue historian and enthusiastic speaker, stood on a table and told us about the stages her shul has undergone in trying to survive over the years.

She showed the synagogue’s constitution, which stipulated how much each member could expect in burial money as well as the amounts of aid tendered to the disabled, widowed or orphaned. She brought alive the sense that each of the synagogues that used to densely populate the area were tight-knit congregations that mirrored not just the recent immigrants’ home country, but their hometowns.

B’nai Jacob also is “one of the last functioning synagogues in the area that has old-timers and new arrivals,” she said. One of their youngest congregants, a 3-year-old, entered the synagogue, then grabbed a cane, so he could be like the old men he sees at prayer.

After our snack, we went upstairs to the shul. Divided by a curtain between men and women, it’s in shabby condition, with peeling frescoes, decades-old round fluorescent lights and a few boarded-up windows.

The good news is, the buckets once needed to catch the rain are gone, because the roof has been fixed.

“The windows still need to be repaired,” Sampson said. “It’s a race against time.”

The tour continued, but we almost gave up at that point. It was rainy, we seemed to be walking forever and, despite the delicious food, our spirits were flagging.

But we continued, and were glad we did. The final synagogue was Kehila Kedosha Janina, the last remaining Greek-language, Romaniote-tradition synagogue in the western hemisphere — and it is still operating in its original form.

We had never heard of Romaniote Jews, an obscure branch of Judaism, a tiny minority within a minority.

They are Jews who, after the destruction of the Second Temple, were sent on a slave ship to Rome. Instead, a storm forced them to land in Greece, where over the next 2,000 years they developed uniquely different ethnic and religious customs.

Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos, president of the Association of Friends of Greek Jewry and the synagogue’s museum director, showed us the beautiful Torah scrolls wrapped around such heavy tubes that during Simcha Torah, she said, they put out a call for some of the younger, stronger men to help carry them.

The synagogue has no paid membership, but a mailing list of 3,000 households nationwide, and its leaders organize annual visits to Greece to help revitalize its Jewish community.

“We are the remnants of the Romaniote Jews,” Ikonomopoulos said.

A Holocaust memorial sits in the corner of the shul, easy to overlook but breathtaking in its simplicity. It is a Mogen David, with shards of glass representing Kristallnacht. Six memorial candles burn, for the 6 million killed. And on the ground are stones taken from Corfu that Greek Jews walked on when they were rounded up on June 9, 1944, never to return.

The building is undergoing the first stages of interior restoration, which will replace the antiquated electrical system and add air conditioning, along with re-doing plastering and painting while staying as close as possible to the look of the original interior.

Our tour ended with stuffed grape leaves, sugary sweets and, of course, olives. We then stepped out into the streets of the Lower East Side, which now — to our newly educated eyes — seemed to have a patina of the 19th century overlaid on modern Manhattan.

For tours of the Lower East Side synagogues, visit Wandering Jew – A Nosh of the Big Apple Read More »

Emergent Jews

Leave a Comment / Community, Judaism, United States /

When Rabbi Sharon Brous leads a worship service, Jews dance and sing and pray — and talk politics. Her Los Angeles-based Ikar is not a traditional congregation but rather, as she describes it, a “spiritual community” of “modern, progressive Jews” who “boldly reclaim the essence of our tradition” by engaging in soulful worship and social justice.

Brous, 32, is one of a growing number of young Jews across the country who are creating unconventional sacred communities, unbound by expectations of what a synagogue is supposed to be.

About a dozen of these innovative Jewish leaders gathered together for the first time in mid-January at a two-day conference at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley. The event was organized by Synagogue 3000, a nonprofit group aimed at revitalizing the Jewish house of worship.

To help guide these “emergent Jews,” as Synagogue 3000 calls them, the group invited another network of religious leaders who had embarked on a similar quest — only theirs was focused on transforming the Christian community.

Nearly 10 years ago, these young Christians were dissatisfied with the typical ways of “doing church.” They had grown disillusioned with what they saw as the commoditization of theology by the megachurches, with their sleek marketing campaigns and business-management styles. So they formed a network called Emergent, focused on developing communities of faith that are authentically Christian and engaged with American culture.

Hailing from a variety of backgrounds — mostly evangelical but also mainline Protestant and Catholic — these so-called “emergent Christians” refused to align themselves with any political party, calling themselves, instead, postmodern, post-liberal, post-conservative and post-evangelical.

“We’re fiercely independent,” said Tony Jones, Emergent’s national coordinator. “Our primarily affiliation is with God.”

Today, Christian emergent communities are drawing young people across the country. Services often feature live bands and take place in coffee houses or bars. Pastors preach hospitality, individual participation and the notion that all of life — not simply the church service — is spiritual.

Sharing Songs and Sacred Texts

On a bright Monday afternoon at Brandeis-Bardin, more than two-dozen emergent Jews and Christians sit in a circle. Jones, the Christian emergent leader, explains “how blown away we were by this invitation.” To break the ice, he said, he will quote Jesus.

“Well, he was Jewish,” some of the Jews respond with a laugh.

After Jones reads from Matthew’s gospel, Jeremy Morrison, a 34-year-old rabbi who runs Temple Israel of Boston’s Riverway Project for 20- and 30-somethings, said: “Tony spoke about Jesus, so I’ll talk about Torah.” He speaks of Genesis and says he hopes that today, too, will be a beginning. “I see our time together as an opportunity for us to become free,” he said.

To the strum of a guitar, the Jews and Christians join in song, repeating the refrain: “How good and pleasant it is for us to dwell together.”

Seeking a Shared Vision Despite Differences

There’s a sense in the Jewish community that traditional synagogue services are simply not moving people, particularly young people.

In response, Jews like Amichai Lau-Lavie, 36, have created new communities and styles of worship that seek to reinvigorate worshippers with a sense of awe and spirituality.

Eight years ago, Lau-Lavie, who calls himself an “emerJew,” created Storahtelling, a traveling theater company based in New York, which reenacts Torah portions, accompanied by live music. Recently, he started a “ritual lab,” a sort of laboratory for sacred experiences.

“It’s an event,” Lau-Lavie said, “not a service.” It can take place in a mall or dance club and include a DJ playing electronica music. The worship experience is nondenominational. “If anything, it’s flexidox,” he said, a mix of everything.

Dov Gartenberg, a rabbi in Seattle, recently left his perch at a conservative synagogue to start Panim Hadashot, New Faces of Judaism, an outreach organization that welcomes Jews of all denominations and stripes — single, married, intermarried — into the community. Worship revolves around what he calls “Shabbat feasts,” dinners around town and at his home. Sometimes, he sets up at a table at Whole Foods Market, where he tries to connect with Jews by giving away samples of traditional foods.

At the conference, designed to introduce these visionary Jewish leaders to their Christian counterparts, Jews and Christians broke off into groups. Lau-Lavie took a walk with a Christian emergent from Atlanta, during which they discussed their paths toward God.

Afterward, Lau-Lavie talked with excitement about how significant this was. “My grandfather, who was a rabbi, probably didn’t take a walk together with a fellow on a different path,” he said. But here he was, taking “a walk on the wild side.”

Shawn Landres, research director of Synagogue 3000, wandered from group to group. “I overheard somebody asking what it means to have a calling from God,” he said. “That’s new, I think, Jewishly, to encounter people who are not afraid to talk about that urgency, that sense of mission.”

“I think it’s helpful to think of Christianity and Judaism as sister religions,” Landres added. “Really, we are heirs to the religion that was practiced by ancient Jews in the Temple. When the Temple was destroyed, our solution as Jews was the Torah.” For Christians, it was Jesus.

The Jewish and Christian emergent leaders echoed this feeling of compatibility as they sat together, distilling their experiences in front of an audience of established, mainstream Jewish leaders, who had been invited to observe.

Both “emergent” Jews and Christians share a progressive outlook, a philosophy of welcoming and hospitality, a commitment to community and social justice. Both are using creativity to build engaging, spiritual communities.

Still, some of the Jewish leaders expressed unease about collaborating with a group that, ultimately, might believe that the second coming of Jesus depends on Jews’ converting to Christianity.

“They have a religious vision that deems my religious expression ultimately secondary,” said Morrison, who teaches young people Torah over beer and wine in Boston. “I need to know where they stand.”

Jones, the Emergent leader, tried to dismiss the concern. “The goal of a dialogue with peers of another faith is surely not to convert them,” he said.

At this point, anyway, the dialogue is just beginning. The first date is over, and now both groups must decide whether to lean in for the kiss, as Synagogue 3000 research director Landres put it. The Jewish leaders say they would like to meet again — but next time, just among themselves. They need to get to know one another before they can collaborate with emergent Christians, they say.

As for Emergent coordinator Jones, he said he would like a second date. “But,” he added, “I think it’s more up to [the Jewish emergents] than it’s up to us.”

Synagogue 3000 Shifts Focus to Leaders

Synagogue 3000 is a new group aimed at revitalizing American synagogues. The Los Angeles-based nonprofit has organized a leadership network of 18 visionary rabbis, cantors, musicians and artists. Their task: figure out what it takes to engage committed worshippers and attract the unaffiliated.

So far, the group is getting tips from unexpected places. Last June, the Jewish leaders met with Christian evangelical Rick Warren, founding pastor of the Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest and author of the best-selling “Purpose-Driven Life.” In November, the network met in Houston with Ronald Heifetz, a leadership expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Synagogue 3000 also created a network of Jewish “emergent” leaders, who are starting nontraditional spiritual communities. Earlier this month, Synagogue 3000 brought this group together with their Christian counterparts and the Jewish leadership network at a two-day conference in Simi Valley. A fourth summit is scheduled for March in New York.

In addition to creating leadership networks, Synagogue 3000 established this month the first academic institute for synagogue studies. It aims to answer questions that have not been adequately addressed, such as why people go to synagogue, how to create spiritual experiences and what a synagogue space should look like.

Synagogue 3000 is the latest incarnation of Synagogue 2000, a group founded more than 10 years ago by Ron Wolfson, who teaches at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, and Lawrence Hoffman, a rabbi and professor of liturgy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.

The two shared a vision of what synagogue life could be like in the 20th and 21st centuries. Jews affiliate with synagogues more than with any other institution in the Jewish community, they agreed. But synagogues have not achieved their goal of igniting a spiritual spark in many worshippers.

Too many Jews were joining synagogues only when their children needed a religious education or a bar mitzvah. For many Jews, synagogues seemed unwelcoming places, cold and cliquish.

Wolfson and Hoffman set out to transform congregations across the country, creating a group called Synagogue 2000. The group worked with nearly 100 congregations, guiding them through a four-year process of change. But change had a price: about $7 million in grants and donations.

In 2003, Synagogue 2000 took a year and half to evaluate what it had learned and to determine the best way to move forward. The group decided that guiding congregations through a lengthy change process was too expensive. They also realized that change only happened when the leadership wanted it; willing congregations were not enough. “The clergy could make it or kill it,” Wolfson said.

So, Synagogue 3000 was a born, an organization dedicated to revitalizing synagogue life by cultivating spiritual leadership. —SPB

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Messianics Gather for National Meeting

Leave a Comment / Community, Judaism /

A Christian megachurch whose clergy has worked with local Jewish leaders in recent years to support Israel gathered last weekend to celebrate Jews who proclaim Jesus as the messiah.

About 1,100 people attended the Jan. 20-21 Road To Jerusalem conference, which took place at megachurch at The Church on the Way in Van Nuys. Christian Zionists bonded with Messianic Jews who maintain Jewish traditions but believe in Jesus.

The major national conference came at a time when Jewish leaders like Anti Defamation League head Abe Foxman have challenged the wisdom of Jews aligning with the Christian right solely because of its strong support of Israel.

Christian Zionists see the existence of modern Israel as a precondition for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, which they believe will be marked by the violent death of millions, including the ingathered Jews. Those who survive the Apocolypse will embrace Jesus.

Jewish defenders of the Christian Zionists say Christian support for Israel outweighs any concerns about end-time theology. But critics point to support for groups like Messianic Jews as proof that these groups pose a threat to Jewish continuity.

“It’s kind of like they have placards that say ‘Israel – yes’ on one side, but ‘Judaism – maybe’ or ‘no’ on the other,” Rabbi A. James Rudin, inter-religious affairs adviser for the American Jewish Committee, told the Associated Press.

Among the conference’s Saturday afternoon speakers was Don Finto, the longtime pastor of Nashville’s Belmont Church. Standing before an audience of more than 900, he said, “I want everybody to sit down except those who are Jewish by birth.”

About 80 people remained standing.

“Your destiny is to bless the nations,” Finto said. “You Jewish people are meant to bless us; we need your blessing, but you need ours. Let’s bless each other.”

These Messianic Jews, often seen as an aberration if not a threat by the Jewish community, have been embraced by evangelical Christians.

Those same Christian leaders are, in other local settings, welcomed by mainstream Jewish leaders for their Christian Zionism. Among those walking the line between the two worlds is the Rev. Jack Hayford of Church on the Way, who has spoken eloquently about Israel at Stephen S. Wise Temple, the Reform congregation in Bel Air. Hayford has brought busloads of his congregants to events sponsored by the Israel-Christian Nexus, which seeks to strengthen Christian and Jewish support for Israel. At the Road to Jerusalem event, Hayford spoke of, “helping the church understand what God’s doing among Jews today and how to relate to it.”

Despite their theological differences, Hayford’s mainstream Jewish friends include Reform Rabbi Steven Jacobs of the Woodland Hills synagogue Kol Tikvah. He holds High Holiday services at Church on the Way.

“Jack Hayford is no Pat Robertson, that’s the best way I can put it,” Jacobs told The Journal. “And you have to discern who you can live with theologically, and Jack Hayford is a person of integrity and never has pushed my buttons in terms of salvation. He respects the Jew for who he and she is.”

The Road To Jerusalem conference was organized by former University of Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, founder of the 1990s Promise Keepers movement for Christian men. As Promise Keepers rallies became smaller, in 2004, McCartney and the Rev. Raleigh Washington, a prominent African American pastor, developed Road to Jerusalem events to create Christian Zionist support for Israel and Messianic Jews.

“We believe according to God’s holy word, the Torah and the New Testament, that when a Jewish person recognizes that Jesus is his messiah, he becomes a Jew who has now found his messiah,” Washington said. “The Jew who believes that Jesus is the messiah believes that the messiah has come. The Orthodox Jew who does not believe Jesus is the messiah, he’s still waiting for messiah. So both believe in the messiah; the question that has to be answered is Jesus really the true messiah?”

Most attendees at the event were Christians, although it was dominated by images of Israel, as well as Jewish-themed vendors, kosher food and men wearing kippahs.

Performing at the conference was a dance troupe from the Messianic Jewish congregation Beth Emunah in Agoura Hills. The troupe’s leader said that out of her 15 dancers, eight were Jewish. Similarly, Messianic Rabbi Eric Carlson’s said he has 280 people in his congregation in Newport News, Va., but that out “of that 280, 100 are Jewish.”

David Chernoff is the son of a Messianic rabbi. He now runs his own Messianic congregation in Philadelphia and is prominent in the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America.

“We love our gentile brethren, but we knew we had to stand on our own two feet,” Chernoff said, recounting early Messianic movement growth in the 1970s. “I never imagined that we in Messianic Judaism would have friends such as this.”

The Rev. Mike Bickle of Kansas City, Mo., spoke at the conference about end-of-times predictions about Israel; in a passing comment, he used the phrase, “unsaved Jews,” and said a Satan-like leader, “will be required to exterminate the Jewish race.”

Messianic Jews at the conference complained about being harassed in Israel for their beliefs and facing immigration problems over Israel’s right-of-return law for Diaspora Jews. When asked about this while speaking at a separate event in Los Angeles last weekend, Israeli politician Natan Sharansky said, “If you change your religion, you don’t have a right to become a citizen by law of return … the change of religion means change of nationality.”

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‘One People’ Adopts Novel Plan on Book

Leave a Comment / Books, Community, Judaism /

Rabbi Brian Schuldenfrei knew his congregants at Westwood’s Sinai Temple loved reading when about 20 of them braved the evening rush hour last November for an event at the University of Judaism (UJ) celebrating the 1939 talmudic novel, “As a Driven Leaf.”

“This was sandwiched in between two major adult learning weekends,” said Schuldenfrei, still amazed two months later.

The novel by the late Rabbi Milton Steinberg is currently being read at two dozen local synagogues in the new “One People/One Book” program, an attempt to broaden Jewish communal learning by the Board of Rabbis of Southern California. It joins other Jewish book group gatherings at the Skirball Cultural Center and Orange County’s Bureau of Jewish Education.

The “One People/One Book” plan is for synagogue members to meet and discuss “As a Driven Leaf” in small groups at least four times between last November’s opening at the UJ and a closing event on May 24 at Milken Community High School.

“Every synagogue is sort of coordinating this in a different way,” said Rabbi Mark Diamond, the board’s executive vice president. “In some synagogues, it’s just lay people studying.”

Steinberg’s well-received book is a fictionalized portrait of Elisha ben Abuyah, a dissident talmudic scholar in Roman-occupied Jerusalem. The “One People/One Book” study guide mixes the book’s ideas with Torah texts.

“This book lends itself to so many profound themes,” Diamond said. “Modernity vs. tradition, forgiveness and repentance.”

The board’s president, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Pico-Robertson’s Orthodox B’nai David Judea Congregation, worked last year to develop “One People/One Book” with Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh of the Reform congregation, Temple Israel of Hollywood. The new learning program came after the board held annual interdenominational “Meeting in Torah” study nights for six years, but interest in that waned.

“For the first couple of years, it was very novel,” Kanefsky said. “Over the course of years, it became one part of the landscape.”

The new “One People/One Book” program replaces the one night of annual “Meeting in Torah,” with its opening and closing gatherings and smaller synagogue discussion groups.

“This way, we have two of those everyone-coming-together events and the four study groups in between,” Kanefsky said.

At Temple Emmanuel in Beverly Hills, a Reform congregation, people are absorbing the book in clusters.

“We are reading the book in different settings around the congregation,” Senior Rabbi Laura Geller said. “Two different classes are including it in their reading, so it’s happening all around the congregation.”

Geller said she feels that her 50 to 60 congregants who are reading Steinberg’s book together are gaining “a deeper understanding of rabbinic Judaism. It’s putting flesh and blood on names. I also think that they are finding themselves in the book.”

Schuldenfrei said Sinai Temple will start discussing “As a Driven Leaf” in March, with the Conservative synagogue currently busy marking it its centennial anniversary.

Beyond “One People/One Book,” the Jewish community has other ongoing book groups.

The Skirball Cultural Center’s book group has an “Echoes of the Past” theme set around five novels and nonfiction books to be discussed at monthly meetings through June. The first meeting, on Feb. 14, will examine Australian writer Anna Funder’s “Stasiland: True Stories From Behind the Berlin Wall” (Granta Books, 2003).

Skirball book lovers in March will read Brian Morton’s “A Window Across the River” (Harcourt, 2003), followed in April by Edwidge Danticat’s “The Dew Breaker” (Vintage, 2005). In May, the book group will read James McBride’s “The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother” (Riverhead Trade, 2001) and in June Andrea Levy’s “Small Island” (Picador, 2005).

In Orange County, the Bureau of Jewish Education is in the midst of 30 weeks of Tuesday morning book club meetings around the women-driven theme, “Foundations: Making Our Wilderness Bloom.”

The bureau’s Web site lists six books anchoring the theme: Haviva Ner-David’s “Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination” (JFL Books, 2000); “A Spiritual Life: A Jewish Feminist Journey” (State University of New York Press, 1999), by Merle Feld, and Kim Chernin’s “In My Mother’s House: A Daughter’s Story” (Harper Perennial, 1994).

Also listed are the Rebecca Goldstein novel, “Mind-Body Problem” (Penguin, 1993); Anzia Yerzierska’s, “Bread Givers: A Struggle Between a Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New World” (G. Braziller, 1975), and Gina Nihai’s “Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith” (Washington Square Press, 2000).

In addition, the Santa Monica Public Library is exploring Jewish books with its program, “Between Two Worlds: Stories of Estrangement and Homecoming,” meeting the third Tuesday of each month. It will start on Feb. 21 with Eva Hoffman’s “Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language” (Penguin, 1990), followed March 21 by a discussion of Saul Bellow’s “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” (Penguin reissued edition, 2004). Scheduled for April 18 is the Andrea Aciman memoir, “Out of Egypt” (Riverhead Trade, 1996).

 

‘One People’ Adopts Novel Plan on Book Read More »

Proposal Advocates Shoah Forgiveness

Leave a Comment / Community, Judaism, Personal Voice, Worldwide /

Sam Oliner wants to help an estimated 200,000 Jewish survivors worldwide free themselves of their psychological bondage. The time, he believes, has come.

In the 1970s, several years into teaching Holocaust-related studies at Humboldt State University, Oliner, now 75, experienced his own dark night of the soul. A German student tearfully told him that she was dropping his course because she could no longer stand her guilt at what her ancestors had done.

Unwittingly, she helped move Oliner toward his own epiphany.

Had he, he wondered, unfairly pushed onto this woman his rage from when the Nazis murdered his family in Poland? Had he forgotten how Balwina Piecuch, a Catholic peasant, had taken him in, saving his life?

Through these memories, Oliner turned a personal corner to come up with an admittedly controversial proposal. It is time, he says, for Jews to collectively forgive the new generation of Germans for their parents’ atrocities.

No, Oliner is not advocating forgetting Nazi atrocities, which would be contrary to the spirit of the Holocaust Memorial. Rather, he wants to find ways to forgive the younger generation of Germans, who have acknowledged their nation’s collective responsibility and made bona fide reparations. This, he contends, would allow survivors to finally let go of a bitterness eating at their own souls.

Oliner’s personal turnabout resulted in studies, which still continue, at his Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt. From there, Oliner and his wife, Pearl, have interviewed more than 500 rescuers who risked everything to save others, while seeking no personal reward.

What, he wondered, makes these altruists, spanning from the Holocaust to Sept. 11, different from the rest of us? Are they happier, more at peace with themselves? And what can we learn from them?

Oliner was surprised that neither high self-esteem nor degree of religious observance correlated with altruistic behavior. Rather, rescuers tend to be exceptionally empathic, including fascists driven by visceral outrage at witnessed inhumanity, their private empathy overpowering their public ideology.

Rescuers also tend to have been raised in integrated neighborhoods and tend to identify less with their own ethnic group and more with humanity at large. Their families also usually stress reason over physical punishment in discipline, allowing for development of a more nuanced sense of right and wrong and lesser fear of authority.

They share strong social skills, allowing them to work well in networks. One Polish rescuer estimated that saving a single individual required an underground network of at least 10 others to feed, transport and house their charge.

Rescuers also share a strong moral sense, which enables them to lie, as needed, to authorities to safeguard their charges. Yet, they also valued family and truth. Rescuers, then, could see the grays and maintain a balance between when to tell the truth and when to shade it. And yes, rescuers also like themselves better and tend to be more successful at business.

After publishing his initial findings in “The Altruistic Personality” (Free Press, 1988), Oliner co-sponsored dozens of inter-group reconciliations, developing his model calling for victimizers to publicly acknowledge their wrongs and make restitution. The final part of his model calls for victims to grant collective forgiveness.

He recently helped lead an intergroup reconciliation in Humboldt County, where whites in 1860 slaughtered more than 100 Native Americans on Indian Island, off Eureka, in a land grab. At the reconciliation meeting, white civic leaders expressed remorse and, with money they had raised, deeded part of the island back to Indian descendants who, in turn, granted this new generation forgiveness. It wasn’t perfect. But it represented considerable progress.

Not everyone buys into Oliner’s model. His former mentor, Rabbi Harold Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, calls it “ill timed and ill conceived. Only the brutalized people have the right to forgive. It’s wrong for others, even their children, to do so in their name.”

Instead of one people forgiving another, he said, each people should promote its own rescuers from within its own ranks, thereby modeling healthy behavior.

David Harris, executive director of the New York-based American Jewish Committee, which co-sponsored Oliner’s studies, endorses the model in principle. Still, he acknowledged, “It is impossible for some survivors to let go of their anger. And so, it is up to their children to look at a changed world with new eyes.”

Harris, whose father fled Berlin in 1933, reopened the committee’s Berlin offices eight years ago with his father’s blessing.

“I was convinced that Germany has made a good faith effort to face its past directly, and to indemnify those hurt,” he said.

Like Oliner, Harris sees the five-acre Berlin Holocaust Memorial, which opened last May just a stone’s throw from Hitler’s bunker, as another step in putting the past behind. Having turned their personal corners, each now sleeps better. This is the gift they would bestow upon their own people.

Joseph Hanania is a writer based in Los Angeles. He is currently writing, “The Baghdad Blues,” a memoir of growing up as a Jewish Iraqi American.

 

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