Be'chol Lashon Update 11/1/04
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Growing up in a LGBT Family: A Teen Perspective
Please join educator Sue Bojdak and Rabbi Camille Shira Angel as they facilitate an informative and lively panel discussion with Jewish teens who are growing up in LGBT families.This is an exciting opportunity to learn how we can empower our youth and create a Jewish community in which all families are valued and supported.
Sue Bojdak is the Director of Children's and Family Education at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav. Rabbi Camille Shira Angel is the Rabbi at Congregation Sha'ar Zahav.
Fee: $5 donation - For more information or to register, please call 510-848-0237 x110 or info@brjcc.org
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All in the Family: Bay Area Jewish Parents Accept Joys, Struggles of Interracial Adoption
It isn’t too hard to pick out Ruthie Heller in her 12th birthday photo, even if she weren’t wearing colorful balloons fashioned into a hat atop her head. Among the four Orthodox Jewish girls, arms around each other and flashing wide grins, Ruthie’s creamy bronze skin, dark brown eyes and facial features are a dead give-away. Though they’re her best friends now, for a long time new classmates, even her good friends, hounded her: Why are your parents a different color? “I’d stop and ... lecture, ‘I’m adopted, and that’s the reason I’m a different color,’” says the Chilean-born Ruthie, her eyes rolling back in mocked exasperation. “It made me feel uncomfortable a little, but I kind of got used to it,” she says in her matter-of-fact, adolescent way.
The Sunnyvale teen may be OK with the difference now, but many adults who have adopted African American children or kids from China or Latin America wonder: Can the Jewish community, not to mention the community at large, get used to it? With its numerous mentions in the Talmud, adoption would seem to be no stranger to Jews. After all, who wouldn’t be happy for a nice Jewish couple who overcome infertility to expand their family by adopting a cherubic baby? But some Jews who have adopted transracially are discovering the Jewish community is not always as welcoming as imagined — although that seems to be changing, slowly. Still, being another minority within a Jewish minority can be extra difficult.
Nevertheless, because Jewish women face lower fertility rates than other U.S. women, and tend to marry later as well (which also could affect fertility), more Jewish couples and singles are looking to adopt. With many of those adoptive parents bringing home children from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, the old “Funny, you don’t look Jewish” saying is taking on new meaning. None of that concerned Marie Roskrow, 38, of the Rockridge area of Oakland. Once the British transplant learned that — because she wasn’t a U.S. citizen — she wouldn’t be able to adopt a child from China, her first choice, she adopted an African American baby domestically. Says the single mother, who was raised in a Conservative Jewish home by a single mom and her Polish Jewish grandparents, “I just wanted a baby, quickly.”
Although the number of Jews adopting transracially is hard to come by, the National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 indicates there are about 35,000 adopted children being raised in Jewish homes — slightly more than 5 percent of all Jewish households with children. How many of them are children of color or multiracial is unknown. But more and more Jewish couples and singles are looking at domestic transracial adoptions, according to Elyse Flack, national director of the Stars of David International Inc., a Chicago-based support group and informational network for Jewish adoptive families. Still others are bringing children home from overseas — mainly from China, Vietnam, Russia, South and Central America and Korea. Most Jewish families want to adopt a Jewish child, says Flack, but “the likelihood of a Jewish family adopting a Jewish child is slim to none, about 1 percent.” Adopting a Jewish child is “extraordinarily difficult,” acknowledges Lynne Fingerman, co-director of Adoption Connection, which, at about 100 adoptions a year, Jewish and not, places more children than any other Bay Area group. But, she says, Jews living here are more open to adopting transracially because of the area’s diversity, and many are marrying people of other races or have family members who are.
“Jews have always been at the forefront of accepting diversity,” she says. “But to go from there to having a child [of a different race] is a huge jump.” In her agency, a project of the S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services, about 70 percent of the adoptions are domestic, the rest international. Of the domestic ones, a little more than 25 percent are transracial. There’s no problem halachically with transracial adoption, according to Rabbi Michael Gold, author of “And Hannah Wept: Infertility, Adoption and the Jewish Couple,” which many consider as the adoption bible.
But Gold, himself an adoptive father of three, does see a problem in the attitudes of the Jewish community. “Many Jews are not prepared to fully embrace as Jewish, youngsters from another race,” he writes. Diane Tobin, associate director at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco and an adoptive mother, takes it a step further. “Racism does exist in our culture,” she notes. “But [adoptive parents] have greater expectations from their religious community.” The odd thing is, the Jewish community always has been a rainbow, from white Ashkenazi to olive-skinned Sephardics to the dark-brown Jews from Ethiopia and Africa. A more colorful Jewish community already exists — about 15 percent of all Jewish families in the Bay Area are interracial, says Tobin — but many American Jews hold fast their rather rigid ideas about who does and doesn’t “look” Jewish.
Finding a congregation that reflects the changing face of Jews is daunting, even in the multiethnic and racially diverse Bay Area. The answer for Julia Weber and Charles Fineberg was joining Congregation Sha’ar Zahav when the San Franciscan couple adopted Zachary, now 2 1⁄2, who is African American. “I saw more adopted children and more multiracial children there,” says Weber, an attorney for the state on family law policies. “I almost became a rabbi; I am very committed to him having a sense of what it is to be Jewish.” Rabbi Daniel Kohn of Mill Valley is the parent of an African American daughter. “We’re fairly observant, spiritually inclined people,” says Kohn of himself and wife Deborah Stachel. They adopted Nava Abigail, now an active 2 1/2, as a newborn. “For us, the issue has always been: Where are we going to go to synagogue? Where are we going to find families who look like ours?” That’s why Tobin and her husband, Gary, founded Be’chol Lashon (“In Every Tongue”) in 1997, the same year they adopted Jonah, also African American. One of Be’chol Lashon’s top goals is building a community for Jews of color. Another is giving transracially adopted kids role models to relate to, so they don’t have to chose between their racial community and their religious community — so they won’t know just African American people and Jewish people but African American Jewish people.
The Tobins had five children between them when they married in 1991. Adopting Jonah, now 7, “brought our family together,” Tobin says. It also changed Diane Tobin’s way of viewing the world. “I’m so conscious of race now,” she says, “and I truly recognize what a privilege it is for white people not to have to think about it.” The Tobins wanted to send Jonah to a Jewish day school, but they worried about the lack of diversity. He’s now a second-grader at Brandeis Hillel Day School in San Francisco — the only African American in his class — and they have found the school to be open and empathetic. “Part of what all of us are doing is educating the institutions,” she says. But before that, the adoptive parents-to-be themselves must answer the questions: What would it be like to raise a child who doesn’t look like me? How will she be accepted by my family, my synagogue, by the larger Jewish community?
For Ruthie’s parents, Dorothy and David Heller, it meant hours and hours of research, endless phone calls to others who had adopted and to attorneys, and nights of soul-searching. “We thought about the implications,” says Dorothy Heller, who, because of political turmoil in Chile, had to wait almost a year to bring Ruthie home at age 2. “We talked to a number of people. We both were afraid of domestic adoption.” So were Judy Levy and John Polumbo, who adopted 8year-old Anna from China when she was 7 months old. “We didn’t want to go through the potential heartache of [a domestic adoption] being retracted,” says Levy, a psychologist. “I just knew I couldn’t handle that.” And when Levy discovered the group Families with Children from China, she took comfort in knowing that she wasn’t alone. “It’s a strong community ... and we assumed we’d be a part of that community.” Kohn and his wife worried, too, but for different reasons. “As Jews, as religious Jews, as a rabbi, that puts a lot on a child to be adopted into that,” says Kohn, a stay-at-home dad, author and educator at Lehrhaus Judaica and the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. “We were thinking about the welfare of the child ... but it wasn’t so insurmountable in our minds.”
Weber and Fineberg, an Internet engineer, shared similar concerns. So they are “constantly vigilant about the environments in which he spends time,” Weber says, making sure they are as diverse — and Jewish — as possible. Even if the couple hadn’t adopted an African American child, they would still choose to be part of those communities because “it wouldn’t be healthy to be a white child who’s marginalized” either, Weber says. Nonetheless, he acknowledges, “I think we are forced to [seek diverse Jewish environments] because we love someone of another race. But I’m thankful for that. It’s the right thing to do.” The Hellers, too, have bought their share of multicultural books to read to Ruthie, attend Camp Tawonga’s Mosaic Camp for multiracial families, and participate in multicultural activities run by other groups — events that Ruthie has one word for: “boring.” “I shlep Ruthie to all these activities,” says her mom, surrounded by Ruthie’s brilliantly colorful oil paintings in their Sunnyvale home. “And she’s hated all of them,” she adds, laughing. “I know I’m adopted,” says Ruthie, with just a hint of a grumble in her voice. “I don’t need anyone else to tell me.” Judy Levy, who is Jewish, and her husband, a first generation Italian, are struggling to find the right balance for the Chinese-born Anna, who is being raised Jewish. “We thought we’d somehow figure it out. It seemed overwhelming, and it still does,” Levy says.
Anna takes Mandarin classes twice a week, and Jewish education classes at Chochmat HaLev. But Levy and Polumbo put Anna in a private secular school instead of a Jewish day school because, says Levy, “I wanted to have her in a multicultural setting, not just Jewish.” Some parents believe, political correctness aside, that if they’re going through all the trouble to raise an adoptive child Jewish, why confuse the child further by inundating her with Spanish lessons or books and posters about Peru or Africa and so on? “Culture is not genetic,” says Michael Tejeda, a member of the East Bay chapter of the Stars of David. He considered an international adoption before finding Walnut Creek-born Elena, who is white and now 15 years old. What parents should want, he says, is a child who doesn’t identify as either African American or white but as a Jew. “It’s hard enough on a kid’s identity [to be adopted]. Why do you want the give them two or three identities?” asks Tejada. “Do you want the kid to think, ‘Do my parents not consider me 100 percent theirs?’”
But Fingerman of Adoption Connection says that kind of thinking worries her. “Yes, be Jewish, but you can’t throw out the rest of the parts. To say you just raise them Jewish is very naive. We have to celebrate what that ethnicity and race is because the world is going to identify him by that and he has to feel good about that.” Ruthie Heller doesn’t feel particularly inclined to learn any more than the rudimentary Spanish she knows or more about her Latin American heritage, although she wrote a report on Chile for school. And she hates all that I’m-adopted-but-I’m-special stuff, too. “It’s always annoyed me. She’s my mom. I don’t need books to tell me that,” Ruthie says. Still, the community that adoptive parents and kids live in — Jewish or not — apparently does.
Kohn recalls a moment that defines the experience perfectly. A new teacher had joined his daughter’s preschool, and after a few weeks she approached him and said, “Nava seems so attached to you. What is your relation?” Kohn chuckles when he recalls the look on her face — that wide-eyed, partly shocked, partly embarrassed grimace one makes when instantly recognizing one has committed a major faux pas — when he said, “Why, she’s my daughter!” And he’s used to strangers approaching Nava, inquiring, “Where’s your mommy?” if she is far enough away from him that people wouldn’t make a connection that they’re together. The Weber-Fineberg family gets that, too, and worse. “There’s an assumption we are these wonderful saviors who saved Zachary from a life of poverty, that he’s ‘out of the system,’ which is a very racist assumption.” For Scott Rubin, trying to look like a typical family was never even considered.
Rubin’s son, Zeke, an almost 4year-old whose background is both Latino and African American, has two dads. “There’s nobody who would ever look at us as if we were a biological family anyway,” says Rubin, a research associate at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, who, along with his partner, Steven Moore, adopted Zeke when he was a week old. “Our intention was always to just be a family.” Their first brush with discrimination came within days of bringing Zeke home as they searched for a mohel. They contacted a popular local Orthodox mohel who had done a brit milah for some friends. “I called and said, ‘My partner and I adopted a mixed race child ...’” and the conversation quickly ended, Rubin recalls. Another rabbi wouldn’t even return their calls. They were forced to call Susan Romer, the attorney who arranged the adoption, with a plea: Help. “So we got an ob-gyn convert who was born in China. She did the bris on the dining room table, with her Chinese and Hebrew accent,” says Rubin with a laugh. “It was a very San Francisco bris!” Concerns that he will be one of a few, and possibly the only, child of color in class is one reason Rubin, who was raised Reform, and Moore, a real estate agent with a Southern Baptist background, won’t send Zeke to a Jewish day school. With a Latino and African American background, not to mention two dads, “he’s got enough going on,” Rubin acknowledges.
Single mom Roskrow, an investment banker, won’t send 15-month-old Jacob, who is African American, to a Jewish day school, either. “It’s forcing too much Jewishness on him,” she says. But raising their boys Jewish is important to them all, and they look forward to the day they step onto the bimah to become bar mitzvah. Getting to that point is another issue for adoptive Jews. Because most transracially adopted kids aren’t Jewish, they face conversion under Jewish law. The various streams of Judaism follow different procedures, and the more traditional branches may not recognize conversions by the more liberal ones. Which choice the adoptive parent makes “can have lifelong consequences for their children,” writes adoptive mother and educator Shelley Kapnek Rosenberg in “Adoption and the Jewish Family.” “It is devastating for an adopted person who has been raised as a Jew to be told that he or she ‘isn’t really Jewish.’” But no one could convince Ruthie Heller of that. Much to her parents’ surprise, Ruthie, who was converted at a mikvah in San Francisco with a combined Conservative Orthodox beit din, decided to become Orthodox a few years ago. She is 100 percent Jewish, period. “I walk around with long skirts. My friends are all Jews, practically,” says the seventh-grader at South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, as she proudly shows off a new silver plate Shabbat candelabra. “I just feel like a Jew.”
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Three Denominations Sizzle in San Juan
At San Juan’s Congregation Sha’are Zedeck, religious services are conducted from a bimah graced — on special occasions — with the flags of the United States, Puerto Rico and Israel. Yet 90 percent of the congregation’s 255 member families trace their heritage to a fourth country — Cuba. With up to 2,300 Jewish inhabitants, Puerto Rico has both the largest Jewish community in the Caribbean and the richest. It also is the only Caribbean island on which the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox movements are represented.
Still, because Jews weren’t permitted to settle here for more than 400 years following its discovery in 1493, the crowded, prosperous U.S. commonwealth has virtually no Jewish history. But that’s changing. Israel Zaidspiner left Havana in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro came to power in Cuba. He lived in New York for a stint and eventually settled in San Juan, where he and his brother-in-law opened a chain of thriving retail stores. “I intended to stay in Puerto Rico for three years, and here I am 40 years later,” said Zaidspiner, 69, who still has cousins in Cuba.
Today, the retiree volunteers as the administrator at Sha’are Zedeck, also known as the Jewish Community Center of Puerto Rico. More than 100 children are enrolled in the congregation’s Hebrew school, and 40-50 people usually attend Friday night and Saturday morning services. Members, who largely are affluent — annual synagogue dues are $1,200 — are unusually active in Jewish and Zionist causes, and the congregation sponsors a one-hour radio show about Israel on Thursday nights.
“Here, the JCC is an exact replica of JCCs in the United States,” said Diego Mendelbaum, the center’s director. “But language is a problem: Some of our members don’t speak English, and some don’t speak Spanish. If we give talks in Spanish, there’s a group of English-speakers who won’t come and vice versa.” Puerto Rico, which was a Spanish colony until the Spanish-American War of 1898, prohibited Jews from settling on the island for more than four centuries. As a result, Puerto Rico lacks the ancient Jewish cemeteries and synagogues commonly found on Caribbean islands that were under British, Dutch or Danish rule.
Jews began arriving on the island almost as soon as Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory in 1952. Within a year, a handful of American Jews had established Sha’are Zedeck — the island’s first synagogue — in the former residence of a wealthy German family. In 1954, the Conservative shul hired its first rabbi. The fledgling community got a boost five years later, when Castro’s revolution forced almost all of Cuba’s 15,000 Jews into exile. Most of them fled to Miami, though a handful ended up in Puerto Rico. More recently, the community has welcomed new arrivals from Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela.
Both Mendelbaum and Sha’are Zedeck’s current rabbi, Gabriel Frydman, are originally from Argentina. “There’s no anti-Semitism in Puerto Rico, but there are local journalists who once in a while write articles very unfavorable to Israel,” Mendelbaum said. “They say, for example, that what the Jews are doing against the Palestinians is the same as what the Nazis did to Jews in World War II.”
Virtually no Jews are active in Puerto Rican politics, yet the clear majority support making Puerto Rico the 51st state. A small number of Jews here favor retaining Puerto Rico’s present commonwealth status, while only a handful of Jews support independence for the island. A few years ago, Pedro Rossello, Puerto Rico’s pro-statehood former governor, attended a Yom Hashoah service at Sha’are Zedeck.
In addition to the Jews — almost all of whom live in the San Juan metro area — about 4,000 Palestinians live in Puerto Rico. But Jewish officials say they don’t think Jewish institutions are particularly threatened. “After Sept. 11, we’ve taken some minimal security measures, such as an armed guard. No one can enter without identifying himself,” Mendelbaum said. “But if you ask me, it’s unnecessary.” It’s only a 10-minute drive from Sha’are Zedeck to Temple Beth Shalom, which was founded in 1967 as the Reform alternative to Sha’are Zedeck.
Harry Ezratty, a veteran Beth Shalom member who now lives in Baltimore, said the Reform congregation is not nearly as wealthy as Sha’are Zedeck and differs in one other major aspect: About 15 percent of its 67 member families are converts to Judaism. Until recently, its spiritual leader was Rabbi Mordechai Rotem, the first Israeli ever ordained as a Reform rabbi. “We have a lot of Puerto Ricans who have converted, not only as individuals but as entire families,” Ezratty said, adding that “for many years, we have been involved with non-Jewish charitable organizations on the island.”
Beth Shalom boasts an active religious school and community life and has its own way of celebrating major Jewish holidays. Earlier this year, for example, the congregation paid tribute to Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day with a special shofar service at El Morro, the ancient Spanish fortress facing the Atlantic Ocean. The smallest and youngest of the island’s three congregations is Chabad de Puerto Rico. Led by New York-born Rabbi Mendel Zarchi, Chabad occupies a large, yellow house in the heart of San Juan’s Isla Verde hotel strip.
In the winter months, when Puerto Rico’s tourist season is at its peak, Chabad holds twice-daily services. Depending on the month, anywhere from 15 to 80 people attend Shabbat services. Major holidays are celebrated at the nearby Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Last year more than 250 people attended Chanukah services. “People participate not out of a sense of obligation but a sense of willingness, which is really what the theme of Chabad is,” Zarchi said.
A bearded, 30-year-old Orthodox rabbi is perhaps not what most people would expect to see on the streets of Isla Verde, which is packed with bikini-clad Puerto Rican girls, beach bums and tattooed sailor types. Even many longtime Jewish residents of Puerto Rico seem unaware of Chabad’s existence. Mendelbaum admits he’s never set foot in the Chabad shul. “Geographically, Puerto Rico is a challenging environment in which to set up a center of Jewish life,” Zarchi explained. “We consider ourselves Jewish marketers.”
“Today, it’s not just about content but also how you package it,” he continued. “Judaism is a very rich product that has endured centuries of challenge. It just needs to be presented in the right setting.” Though Chabad representatives had been visiting Puerto Rico for many years, the group did not establish a permanent presence on the island until 1999, when Zarchi and his wife, Rachel, moved to the island. Chabad now is spending $1.5 million to build a proper shul, complete with a kosher kitchen.
“It’s very expensive to keep kosher here, so we try to organize bulk deliveries of meat, which we store in four big freezers here at the shul,” Zarchi said, adding that nearby five-star hotels frequently call him to cater bar mitzvahs and Jewish weddings. A year ago, the Ritz-Carlton hosted a special Sefer Torah completion ceremony, the first in the island’s history. Zarchi said Puerto Ricans have a “tremendous curiosity” about Judaism and what distinguishes it from Catholicism. “We’ve been very much accepted here,” he said. “When it comes to religion and devotion to God, the local population is very respectful, especially when they perceive a person as being God-fearing.”
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Tostones and Matzoh: A Puerto Rican-Jewish Journey
I am a Catholic woman, born and raised in the sunny island of Puerto Rico. I went to Catholic school from kindergarten to twelfth grade, the same school my parents attended, the same school all of my friends (and their parents) attended, and the same school my children would one day attend when I married a nice Catholic Puerto Rican boy.
Oh, by the way, my last name is Levy, pronounced LEH-vee in Spanish. Being a Levy in a predominantly Catholic country was not a big deal: we were like everyone else. As is often the case, it wasn't until I left the comforts of home that I learned what a big deal my last name seemed to be.
When I moved to New York, although being Puerto Rican was not unusual, being a Levy from Puerto Rico was. How did a Catholic Puerto Rican (not unusual) end up with a Jewish last name (very unusual)? The questions were endless: Are you Jewish? Is Levy your married name? Did you convert and change your name? Was your mother Jewish? The answer, simply, was always, "My father was a Levy, and so were his father, and his grandfather, and his great grandfather..." Well, you get the point.
The Jewish question was more interesting. The Levys that came to Puerto Rico were conversos, Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism during the years of the Spanish Inquisition. Later, during the Spanish conquest of the Americas, Levy males settled on the island, looking for better economic opportunities than those available in their native Spain. Some married local women, others sent for their families, but they have been in Puerto Rico, and Catholic, ever since.
When I met my partner four years ago, he was the nice boy my parents (and I) had always hoped for. He has a Ph.D., is a talented professional musician, speaks Spanish perfectly, and is a sophisticated New Yorker. He is also Jewish. He was very clear from the beginning that he wanted to live in a Jewish home, complete with a kosher kitchen and Jewish kids. On the other hand, I was very clear that, although I did have a Jewish last name, I was not interested in conversion and felt great affinity to my own traditions. After many conversations, workshops, and experiments, we decided to move in together. This meant that I would support and participate in a Jewish home and that he would support and participate in my need to celebrate major holidays with my very Catholic family in the island.
Two years later, we have created a loving home where the mezuzah on the doorway complements the vejigante Afro-Puerto Rican mask on the wall. We celebrate Pesach (Passover) with his family, and Christmas with mine. I read from a Spanish hagaddah (book that tells the Passover story) and he sings aguinaldos (traditional Puerto Rican carols) to my elderly aunts. The challenges have been, and still are, many. But the rewards, the love, and the joy in our daily life make it all worth it. I have relished the learning that has taken place, on both our parts, to make this relationship work.
When I told my parents about the nice Jewish boy I met in New York, my father said, "He's Jewish? Great! The Levy's are going back to our roots!" And in many respects, I feel that I have. One day, I will teach my children how to dunk tostones in a garlicky sauce to complement the Christmas dinner of roast pork and rice in their abuela's (grandmother's) house in Puerto Rico. And I will hide the matzoh during Pesach knowing the fun that the kids (and their bubbie!) will have when they go looking for it. When I walk my children to their Jewish day school and say a kiddush (blessing over wine) before Friday night dinners, I will rejoice in their living in a Jewish Puerto Rican home.
I am a Catholic, Puerto Rican woman, and yes, my last name is Levy. Being a Catholic Puerto Rican with a Jewish last name is no longer unusual, it is my life.
Teresita Levy is the Administrative Director of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies of the City University of New York and a full-time doctoral student in the Latin American History program at The Graduate Center. Teresita lives with her husband in a "New-Jew-Rican" home in Brooklyn, New York. This article was an entry in the InterfaithFamily.com Network's Essay Contest, "We're Interfaith Families...Connecting with Jewish Life."
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The guests crowded the beautifully set tables in Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz's tiny Jerusalem apartment. After celebratory l'chaims and impassioned singing, the world renown sage, the dean of the Holy City's Mirrer yeshiva, stood up to speak. The festive atmosphere immediately turned solemn. There was silence. "My dear Reb Avraham," the rabbi began warmly, "may you merit to grow in Torah and yiras Shamayim, in line with the aspirations of your pure heart. May you become a true son of Avraham Avinu [Abraham our forefather], after whom you are now named."
The blessing was one that might be bestowed upon a lad at his bar mitzvah, when, as an adult, his life starts anew. Indeed, a new life, complete with a new name, was beginning for Avraham Kotsuji — at the age of sixty. His story, of how a Japanese college professor became an Orthodox Jew, is perhaps one of the most unusual human dramas of World War II. "We will never forget what you did for us when we were in Japan," the sage continued. "Nor how you risked your life to save us. The merit of that mesirus nefesh [self-sacrafice] is what stood in your stead and led you to seek shelter under the wings of the Shechina [Divine presence] and to become a genuine member of the Nation you helped so much."
Setzuso Kotsuji was born in 1900 into an aristocratic Japanese family. His father was a prominent Shinto priest, descended from a long-line of well-known priests. Kiyoto, Setzuso's birthplace, was the center of the Shinto religion and the Shinto's main house of worship was located there. Quite naturally, Setzuso's father hoped that he would follow the family tradition and also study for the priesthood. Divine Providence, it seems, had other plans. Ones that would impact the lives of thousands and continue to do so til this very day.
When Setzuso was thirteen, he visited an antique bookshop and discovered a Tanach (complete Hebrew Bible) which had been translated into Japanese. It was the first time he learned about monotheism. Thirstily, he devoured the sacred work. In time he began to embrace the belief in a single G-d as Truth. Gradually he veered away from his polytheistic heritage. After marrying, Setzuso's search for Truth brought him to America, where he began to study Tanach and Hebrew at a university. When he eventually returned to Japan with a doctorate in Hebrew and Judaic studies, Setzuso continued to broaden his knowledge in these fields.
In 1937, Setzuso published his first book in Japanese on Hebrew language and grammar. He also founded the Tanach and Hebrew Department at Tokyo University. The department attracted many non- Jewish students and, quite rapidly, Professor Kotsuji gained acclaim in Japan as a scholar and thinker of repute. Soon thereafter he became highly esteemed in government circles, where he made many friends. The professor would eventually put those connections to good use in the saving of many lives. At that time, a number of Japanese researchers were publishing studies that linked their nation to the Ten Lost Tribes. Though erroneous, the claims evoked a wave of interest in Judaism among Japan's Intelligentsia and Prof. Kotsuji's books became widely read.
During his studies in the United States, Prof. Kotsuji had never actually met Torah-observant Jews. His first encounter with such individuals would come in Charbin, the capital of Manchuria, where a large community of former Russian Jews had existed since 1890. When Manchuria was conquered by Japan, the emperor invited Prof. Kotsuji to serve as his Jewish Affairs Advisor. Prof. Kotsuji accepted this offer and moved to Charbin, where he remained for a few years. While there, the professor formed warm relationships with its Jewish community and its Rav (spiritual leader), Rabbi Moshe Aharon Kiskilov.
Prof. Kotsuji's friendship and admiration for Jewry peaked in 1941, when the Jewish refugees of the Holocaust began to stream to Japan in search of a haven. When the Mirrer Yeshivah, one of the most prominent bastions of higher Jewish learning in pre-Holocaust Europe, arrived in the Japanese city of Kobe, Prof. Kotsuji saw an opportunity to finally familiarize himself with the Torah world. In Kobe, he became very close with the academy's roshei yeshivah (deans) and talmidim (students), whose refinement and nobility of spirit, he would later relate, had a profound impact on him.
The Jewish refugees' entry permits to Japan were in actuality only transfer visas, which expired within two weeks of their arrival. Although the Japanese authorities extended these visas a number of times, after a while there pressure was exerted upon the yeshiva to leave Japan and continue to their "destination" — which was, of course, non-existent and would have meant certain death. For purely humanitarian reasons, Prof. Kotsuji became involved in the refugees' plight and made vigorous efforts to have their visas extended. Toward this goal, he utilized his friendship with Japan's foreign affairs minister. When top ranking members of Kobe's police force opposed the extension of these visas, Prof. Kotsuji, in an effort to preserve lives, bribed the officials with large sums of money, which he borrowed from his wealthy brother-in-law. He repaid the debt himself.
As a result of Prof. Kotsuji's intervention, the Japanese authorities agreed to extend the refugees' visas several times, letting them stay for eight months instead of the original two-week period. Later, when the Japanese decided to banish the Jews from Japan, they did not expel them completely but instead deported them to Shanghai, China, which was then under Japanese rule. As more and more Jewish refugees streamed into Japan, anti-Semitic sentiments skyrocketed. Germany, at the time Japan's ally, attempted to persuade Japan to expel its Jews. Poisonous anti-Semitic propaganda flooded the Japanese media and revolting caricatures of Jews were regularly plastered throughout Japanese newspapers.
In 1941, on the eve of Japan's war against the United States, Japan and Germany became closer still. And anti-Semitism in Japan, a country which had barely any Jews, intensified to the point that high ranking Japanese leaders publicly blamed the Jews for both World Wars, claiming that wherever Jews go, they spread havoc. Prof. Kotsuji countered these accusations by waging a vigorous and brave battle against anti-Semitic incitement. Determined to halt it, and to portray the Jews to the Japanese in a positive light, he published a book, titled "The True Character of the Jewish Nation". In it he exploded all of the German myths and lies about the Jews, and portrayed the Jewish Nation as highly ethical and as the Chosen Nation to whom G-d bequeathed the true faith.
Prof. Kotsuji also began traveling throughout Japan, delivering lectures in which he praised the Jewish Nation and again refuted the lies of her enemies. He even appealed to the Japanese to assist the Jews, declaring, "Divine Providence has brought thousands of unfortunate refugees to our shores, so that we should grant them a safe haven, where they will find peace and tranquility. This is our mission in life. Let us not betray it." Prof. Kotsuji practiced what he preached, and much of the humane treatment the Japanese accorded the Jewish refugees may be attributed to his efforts.
When a delegation comprising the leaders of the Jewish refugees — headed by the Amshinover Rabbe, Rabbi Shimon Kalisch, and Rabbi Moshe Shatzkes — met with Japanese government representatives in Tokyo, they were greatly aided by Prof. Kotsuji, who acted as their mediator and translator. As a direct result of his intervention, the Japanese improved their attitude toward the Jewish refugees and withstood Germany's pressure to banish the Jews from Japan — at least temporarily. In 1941, when the Japanese government changed its attitude, and indeed banished the Jewish refugees to Shanghai, Prof. Kotsuji continued to maintain warm and active ties with the Jews. Even though Japan was relatively empty of Jews at that time, he still delivered lectures on the fine attributes of the Jewish Nation.
Such activity was particular risky since the Japanese government was led by a pro-Nazi nationalist group which wrathfully persecuted all of its opponents. But this did not deter Prof. Kotsuji, who refused to stop speaking out against the Nazis. When the publisher of his forthcoming book asked him to delete the denouncements of the Nazis, Prof. Kotsuji refused.
Prof. Kotsuji was warned by many that he was risking his life by publishing such material and delivering his lectures. But the courageous professor paid no attention. Towards the end of 1942, the Japanese Bureau of Investigation began to believe the German reports that Jewish subversives were planning to gain control of the world. Prof. Kotsuji was accused of encouraging that plot and of abetting Japan's enemies, the Jews. Prof. Kotsuji was arrested and interrogated under torture, in which his interrogators demanded that he reveal his role in the plot. When he said that it was all a figment of the imaginations of the anti-Semites, he was further tortured to the point that his life was in danger. Then a miracle occurred.
At the peak of the interrogation, a high-ranking Japanese colonel who knew Prof. Kotsuji very well suddenly appeared at the prison where the professor was being held. The colonel was startled to see one of Japan's most-respected academics incarcerated on blatantly false charges and locked up with criminals. Immediately, the colonel demanded that Prof. Kotsuji be released, and that all of the charges against him be dropped. This incident heightened Prof. Kotsuji's already strong belief in the Divine, and induced him to conclude that the Creator protects those who defend Jewry.
When the war ended, the Jewish refugees, who by then left the Far East, remained in close contact with Prof. Kotsuji. When the American army arrived in Japan, Prof. Kotsuji became friendly with its chaplain, the observant Rabbi Mental, who taught him more about Judaism. A few years later, Prof. Kotsuji finished his translation of Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs), a project which enabled him to better understand the relationship between the Divine and the Jewish Nation. During that period, Prof. Kotsuji continued to correspond with his friends from the Kobe period — the talmidei chachamim (scholars) of the Mirrer Yeshivah. When he felt that he was ready to accept himself the beauty and depth of Jewish observance and belief, he informed those friends that he would be coming to Jerusalem to convert.
In 1959, sixty-year-old Professor Setzuso Kotsuji converted to Judaism. He was renamed Avraham ben Avraham Kotsuji and warmly welcomed to the Jewish faith by his friends from the Mirrer yeshiva, which he was responsible for preserving and which today with its Jerusalem and Brooklyn campuses is again among Judaism's most prominent institutions of higher learning. Professor Avraham Kotsuji spent the final years of his life in Brooklyn's fervently-Orthodox community. The heads of the Mirrer Yeshivah formed a special committee that rallied to his aid and raised money to support and care for all of his needs.
Avraham ben Avraham Kotsuji returned his soul to the Creator on the 5th of Cheshvan, 5734/1974. His casket, in accordance with his will, was brought to Jerusalem, where he was buried atop Har HaMenuchos. His funeral was attended by a large throng of the worlds's most prominent rabbinical authorities, communal leaders and students of the Mirrer Yeshivah. May his name be forever remembered and blessed.
D. Sofer is a writer for the Monsey, New York-based weekly, Yated Neeman.
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Status of Falash Mura Children Debated
The department in charge of conversion in the Prime Minister's Office has indicated that it favors allowing single mothers of Falash Mura families to have their children declared Jewish without the consent of the child's other parent, the legal adviser of an Ethiopian advocate organization said Wednesday. Currently the single mothers must locate their former spouses, who for the most part remained in Ethiopia, and secure their signed consent before their children can be recognized as Jewish.
Some 10 percent of all Falash Mura families are single-parent families, Jasmin Keshet, the legal adviser for the Ethiopian advocacy organization Tebeka, told The Jerusalem Post. A letter written to her by the deputy head of the department, Rabbi Moshe Klein, said: "Our position is that everything must be done to ease the conversion process of every member of the Ethiopian community belonging to the Falash Mura."
The Falash Mura are an Ethiopian community whose members were originally Jewish but converted to Christianity many decades ago in order to escape persecution. The Chief Rabbinate has declared that if a member of the community can prove a consistent matrilineal descent from a Jewish woman, the members of his family are Jewish and do not need to convert to be considered Jewish. Instead, they must undergo a procedure known as "return to Judaism," which involves study and observance of the religious strictures.
Despite the fact that Falash Mura are considered Jewish, the religious authorities in Israel have demanded that single parents obtain the written consent of their former spouses in accordance with a law that deals with the conversion to Judaism of single-parent families. Tebeka protested, pointing out that a law aimed at non-Jewish single parents seeking to make their families Jewish should not be applied to families that are Jewish to begin with.
Yitzhak Dasa, the director-general of Tebeka, charged that the requirement to obtain the consent of the other parent for single-parent families returning to Judaism applies only to the Falash Mura. "In this way, they are discriminated against and their rights are violated," charged Dasa. Dasa added that it is virtually impossible to track down the husbands of the Falash Mura women; in many cases, the men are dead. Klein wrote to Tebeka that the matter is now in the hands of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, who must decide on the proper interpretation of the law in light of Tebeka's arguments.
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Chief Rabbi Issues New Rules on Conversion on the Sly
The Prime Minister's Office is investigating how new rules governing state-sanctioned conversions in Israel came to be published without the prime minister's knowledge. The rules were published on September 13 in Reshumot, the official government gazette, but the PMO learned of it only last week. The rules impose a series of draconian demands on conversion candidates and grant the chief rabbis total control over the conversion courts, which are supposed to be under PMO jurisdiction.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon established a conversion taskforce last July in the PMO and appointed Rabbi Haim Druckman to head it. In a meeting on September 6, Sharon tasked Druckman to draft the new conversion regulations together with president of the rabbinic high court, Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, but the new regulations appeared a week later in the official state record under Amar's signature, without Druckman's knowledge. The rules make Amar the authority for appointing all officials in the conversion establishment, including Druckman. They also give the courts extensive new powers, including the prerogative of retroactively annuling conversions they deem "mistaken."
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Interfaith, Interracial, Intercultural.... and Loving It!
In September of 1976, as my family and I were getting ready to flee the institutional anti-Semitism of what was then the Soviet Union, my future husband, Scott, was in the United States, preparing to become one of the first African-American students at an exclusive, all-white prep school on the Upper East Side of New York City. While he attended M.I.T to study nuclear engineering, I was majoring in broadcast communication arts at San Francisco State University. I was president of my Hillel--a pro-Israel activist on a campus famous for its anti-Israel activity. Scott, while supporting his own community through volunteer tutoring and mentoring programs in Harlem, nevertheless could only pinpoint his religious affiliation down to: "Christian. Well, some kind of Christian."
By the time we met in 1997, both of us knew exactly who we were and what we wanted in a partner. It took about a half-hour before we were both certain that what we wanted was each other. He hadn't been looking for an immigrant Jewish girl. I hadn't been looking for a Black man (in fact, Scott was the first non-Jew I'd dated in five years). And neither of us was so blinded by love that we couldn't see that the other person looked (and acted) somewhat...differently.
We'd been seriously dating for about a month when I told Scott I expected my children to be raised Jewish. Not half and half, not both, not "we'll let them decide when they're older." 100% Jewish. In response, Scott told me that he expected his children to be raised as New Yorkers. Not upstate New York. Not Brooklyn, New York. Not Riverdale. 100% New York City.
We could both live with that.
Cut to 2004. We have two children. Adam, born in 1999, and Gregory, born in 2003. Both boys had a bris (ritual circumcision) and received Jewish names (Adam Shimon and Barak Zion). The whole family goes to temple for the major holidays, and I take the kids by myself (almost) every Shabbat (Sabbath). We also celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and visit Scott's parents for Christmas and Easter. They come to our house for Passover. When Adam asks, I tell him, "We go to Grandma and Grandpa's to help them celebrate Christmas, like they come to our house to help us celebrate Passover. And like we went to help your friend from school celebrate Chinese New Year."
Sometimes (usually around December 25--go figure), Adam tells me, "I wish I were Christian." (He also, for the record, periodically tells me he wishes he were a jellyfish and a Telletubbie). I tell him, "There are some things you can't change about yourself. You were born a boy, you were born with black hair, and you were born a Jew. Those things are forever." (I think he's too young to be introduced to the wonders of hair-dye and sex-change clinics, quite yet). So now, the religion question has been tackled. Let's move on to race.
Adam, and, to a lesser extent, his brother, are very light-skinned. They could "pass" if they wanted to, not that I'd encourage it. Our biggest problem at this point is that in America, where so much about race is defined by skin color, my boys don't fit the stereotype. They don't "look" Black. And yet they are. The pithy one-liner I've been able to come up with so far is, "Just because you're not Black, doesn't mean you aren't African-American." Will such semantics be enough to help them survive on the playground? I can only hope. So, far, in his new kindergarten class the other children seem to accept that my blue-eyed, light-skinned boy has an African-American daddy and that his daddy is (more importantly) a whiz at making paper airplanes that fly really far!
Finally, there is the intercultural issue. I didn't arrive in the United States until I was 7 years old and, even then, I was still raised by Eastern European parents. Scott grew up in Harlem, hardly a typical, middle-American upbringing. Certainly, we have cultural things on which we differ. Scott, for instance, cannot stomach beet borscht, while the sight of fried food swimming in grease and fat doesn't do wonders for my digestion, either.
And yet, the vast, vast majority of things that we argue about have nothing to do with who's Black, who's Jewish, who went to a fancy prep school and who to merely a state university. We argue about opening the window on winter nights (I'm for, he's against). About whether Adam needs a hat to go outside (he's for). About whether salt belongs on every dish (I'm against), does an ear infection really need antibiotics, whose turn is it to change the baby, and, most importantly, what to watch on TV. (After all, immigrant or inner city, in the 70s and 80s, we all grew up watching the same TV; it's the great equalizer).
People who don't know us very well inevitably ask, "How do you do it? How do you balance everything?" The question always blindsides me because, until it's asked, I forget that what we're doing is supposed to be in any way challenging. We live in a racially mixed neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper (90s) West Side. The streets are filled with Conservative Jews heading to one temple and Socialist Jews rushing to another. Working-class Hispanics chat in Spanish at the bus stop with Mexican executives. Caribbean nannies sit at the playgrounds alongside middle-class African-American professional moms. Asian students on their way to Columbia University stop to buy a bagel from Arab storeowners.
Because Scott had Jewish friends and I had Black ones long before we met, it was never a matter of "integrating" our social circles. My sons' friends include other children who are Black and Jewish, as well as children who are Jewish and Asian, Black and Catholic, Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, even one blonde and blue-eyed little boy with a Black and Jewish mother! We couldn't have an "us" versus "them" because there simply aren't enough people who are exactly the same to form any homogenous group!
So how do we "do it?" I guess we "do it" by not doing it. We don't talk about race, we don't talk about religion outside of specific situations, such as, "This is a Jewish holiday," "This is an African-American tradition," "She doesn't eat meat because she's a Buddhist," "This song is in Russian." We simply live our lives as Jews, as African-Americans, as immigrants, as ourselves. The hard part comes with the (over) thinking and (over) discussing and (over) defending. The easy part is just the being.
Alina Adams has written for Lilith, Shofar, American Jewish World, Midstream, Jewish Action, and The Jewish Bulletin. Her latest novel is On Thin Ice: A Figure Skating Mystery (Berkley Prime Crime 10/04).
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Identifying with Israel's Suffering, Native Americans Visit Jewish State
The Native Americans in the Israeli president's sukkah were in full regalia -- eagle feathers, turquoise and red beads, leather moccasins. Beating on drums, they chanted honor songs blessing the people of the Jewish state. By coming to Israel this week after a brief trip to Poland that included a visit to Auschwitz, a group from the First Nations Peoples, as they call themselves, sought to connect with the Jewish people, whom they see as sharing a similar history to their own. "We feel like we have a connection with them in terms of what we have lost," said Natalie Proctor, of Maryland's Conoy people, whose Conoy name is "Standing on the Rock." "We have a similar history." Only about 2,000 members of the Conoy remain, said Proctor, 45. In the past they have wandered between Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland and were known historically as "A People Looking for a Home."
Many of the Conoy were wiped out by an outbreak of smallpox that coincided with the arrival of European settlers in America. Proctor, who works educating the public about the First Nations People, garnered the attention of Israelis young and old during Sukkot festivities at President Moshe Katsav's official residence. Her dark hair woven into two braids and long, beaded earrings dangling, she laughed when 16-year-old Doron Paris asked her, "How can I become an Indian? It looks cool." Proctor recently played the role of Pocahontas' mother in a movie starring popular Irish actor Colin Farrell. Lynda Price, grand chief of the Carrier-Sekani Nations of British Columbia, Canada, is the driving force behind this visit by 16 representatives of First Nations Peoples, who came from as far afield as Hawaii, Arizona and Costa Rica. Price began bringing delegations here in 1998. "I identified with the" Jewish "people because of the Holocaust, because of their suffering,"she said.
She spoke of the painful assimilation policy of the Canadian government, which forced First Nations children to attend boarding schools where, she said, the government worked to stamp out their culture. She said that by coming to Israel she and the others want to project their kinship with the Jewish state. "We wanted to send a message that Israel is not alone, not everybody hates them," she said. En route to Israel, the group spent several days in Poland, fasting with the Jewish community there on Yom Kippur, studying Jewish texts and visiting Auschwitz. While at the site of the Nazi death camp, they danced and chanted traditional songs of mourning just as they would on their own ancestral burial grounds. "When we pray, we dance our prayers," Price said. While in Israel the group performed for children at Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, met with victims of terror attacks and took part in Sukkot celebrations. "I wanted to help bring joy to Israeli people and show solidarity with them,"said Julie Hill, 29, a member of the Cherokee nation from the Washington area. Katsav was delighted by the Native Americans' visit. He danced along when they performed for him and smiled as the group gathered around him for a photograph. "This is an expression of world unity," Katsav said.
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