When Jewish families and individuals move to Memphis, we want them to feel welcomed and embraced by their new neighbors and friends. Part of our work involves finding new Jewish Memphians and helping them plug into congregations, communities, and causes that fit their lifestyle. If you know of any new Jewish Memphians, drop a line to Gila Golder, Jewish Community Partners’ community impact associate: ggolder@jcpmemphis.org or 654-2151. 

 

Where did you grow up?

I “grew up” in Great Neck, NY, spent my young adult life in San Francisco and raised my family in the Los Angeles area. I retired from “gainful employment” in 2012.

 

Where did you live before Memphis?

Since I retired I’ve lived in San Francisco; Bali, Indonesia; Lakewood, NJ; and spent two years being itinerant, without a fixed residence.charles-in-the-tropics

 

Why did you leave that community?

In retirement there are so many options- endless travel, isolated island paradises, urban capitals- but after a while I realized that being part of a community was an essential part of my happiness.

 

What attracted you to Memphis?

I considered a lot of sources: internationalliving.com, bestplaces.net, www.forbes.com, livablity.com.  

My initial assessment was that the most important factors were available quality medical care, cost of living, climate, culture, a Jewish community (not just a number of Jewish people), and academic institutions.

 

What clinched your decision to move here?

For me retirement is not about unlimited leisure. In Memphis I am part of the Jewish community, which the anonymity of both big city living and endless travel hinder. Everyone knows of everyone and there is a sense of belonging both within your chosen shul and as part of the larger community whatever your level of observance (or non-observance).

But more important, Memphis is a place with many challenges and there is important work to be done here to heal the world (Tikun Olam). Whether you see it as poverty, race, crime, segregation, environmental or economic justice there are good people engaged in the work who are overjoyed to have you lend an oar help move the boat.

charles-up-close

What do you do professionally?

I was a lawyer. Now I see myself as a transit advocate, trying to increase ridership on the “train to freedom.”

 

How old are your children and where do they go to school?

 

My older daughter lives in Bali. She was active in Hillel at the University of San Francisco when she was an undergraduate. My younger daughter is at City College in San Francisco, pursuing credentials to become a teacher.

 

What do you like best about Memphis and/or what makes it different or better than other places that you have lived?

 

Memphis has all the resources of a large city but is small enough to get anywhere in under half an hour. It is different because of the history of segregation and the fact that this history is still alive. The Jewish community is where it is, and what it is, for historical reasons.

 

How do you manage being far away from family?

 

My family has always been spread out. While airfare is higher here, I am hoping to attract a lower cost carrier (like Jet Blue or Virgin America) to bring prices down.

 

Where are your favorite places to go in Memphis with and without your kids? 

 

The new downtown is a very pedestrian friendly environment as are the Rhodes College and University of Memphis campuses. Overton Park, the Memphis Botanic Garden, Shelby Farms and the museums are also great environments. Entertainment venues, such as the Levitt Shell, Lafayette’s, Minglewood Hall and the Orpheum Theatre, are great for shows.

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The Memphis group traveled over the weekend from Poland to Israel, where they will visit many historic sites and diverse communities, including the city of Shoham, Memphis’ newly-named Israeli partner city. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts from the Negev Desert. 

A Day in the Desertnegev-ben-gurion-grave

Israel’s Desert: A place of contradictions. Hot and cold. Vast and intimate.  Intimidating and comforting.  Lonely and enveloping. Barren and beautiful.

Once considered the neglected periphery of Israel, the Negev today is a bustling center of activity.

The first Israeli who recognized the potential of the Negev was its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion,  and his serene and scenic Sde Boker grave was our first stop. 

Despite his monumental accomplishments in establishing and leading the State of Israel,  Ben-Gurion wanted to be remembered only as having made Aliyah (moving to Israel) and that is the only inscription on his tombstone.

Nearby is Midreshet Ben-Gurion, a satellite campus of Beer Sheva’s Ben-Gurion University. Here we saw cutting edge desert technology in the areas of water research, energy conservation and the environment. Ben-Gurion would be shocked to see how Israel is making the Negev bloom today and he would be proud of how Israel is sharing its technology with the rest of the world, including Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.

negev-agricultural-science

Then it was off to lunch in the development town of Yerucham with Moroccan immigrant Rifka, who cooked us a scrumptious, homemade Moroccan meal and shared with us her immigration story, as part of JAFI’s (Jewish Agency for Israel) Ethnic Cooks Program.

When Rifka and her family first arrived in Israel in the early 1960s, they asked to go to Haifa. Much to their surprise, they were sent to Yerucham, then an empty desert tent camp. Her family had left a comfortable life in cosmopolitan Casablanca. Despite a very rocky start, (pun intended), Rifka said that her family adjusted and thrived. She never looks back and if given the choice of Israeli cities today, she says she would definitely choose Yerucham.

negev-wanderers

Our desert journey concluded with a text-study and incredible sunset in a crater and wine-tasting and dinner at Kibbutz Kramim, our desert home for the night.

The following morning, at breakfast, a young woman excitedly came over to me. It was Joanna, one of the twenty-something Jewish leaders we met at the Krakow JCC. Who would have thought that in addition to everything else, we would find Jewish peoplehood in the desert as well.

negev-dusk

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The Memphis group traveled over the weekend from Poland to Israel, where they will visit many historic sites and diverse communities, including the city of Shoham, Memphis’ newly-named Israeli partner city. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts from the Shabbat dinner that welcomed the group to Jerusalem. 

Shabbat in Jerusalem

I have a confession: I didn’t cry in Poland. I wanted to. I expected to. I just couldn’t. The overpowering emotion was of wanting to scream out. In horror. In anger. In pain.

Friday night we had an incredibly powerful and inspiring Shabbat dinner in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. We were hosted by a warm and generous couple whose magnificent home overlooks the Temple Mount.

As the sun started its descent, amid the luscious fruit trees adorning our hosts’ multiple porches, we brought in Shabbat with music and song.

kehilla-group-temple-view

We then went inside to light Shabbat candles. Our hostess led us in the most beautiful, spiritual candle-lighting I have ever experienced. She spoke about the beauty of Shabbat, our transition from Poland to Israel, the significance of an independent Jewish state and her personal Jewish journey.

We lit the candles in front of a window facing the Kotel. We prayed for people who are sick, with each one of us calling out the names of our relatives and friends who need healing.

We stood there together, as a community that had only hours earlier witnessed the apex of human evil, now ushering in Shabbat in freedom, in the capital city of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

And that’s when the tears finally came. And they wouldn’t stop.

kehilla-beyond-gate

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A large group departed from Memphis International Airport Sunday, traveling to Poland to begin their journey from Warsaw to Israel. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts from the group’s experiences touring the ruins if Auschwitz. 

auschwitz-rail-2Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Challenges

After experiencing the stark evil of Majdanek, what shocked me at Auschwitz-Birkenau was its vastness – its size and the volume of its killing machine. The number of people starved, tortured, shot, hung, and gassed there and the precision of how it was all carried out are beyond human comprehension. But its vastness dilutes the horrors. It could just be that having been traumatized at Majdanek first, I was somewhat numb at Auschwitz.

Or, perhaps the enormity of it was just too much, in the same way that learning about one family who perished makes connecting easier than trying to relate to six million.

Another challenge I faced there was picture-taking. Yes, we need to document the atrocities and share the evidence with the uneducated, the doubters and the deniers. And, it is due to picture-taking that we have photographic evidence of what happened. But I felt like I was invading the privacy of the Jews who were murdered there by taking pictures of their personal belongings- their suitcases, shoes, eyeglasses and clothes.

It was definitely soothing to see so many non-Jewish groups there, especially groups of Polish young adults and I take comfort in knowing that the next generation of Poles is being educated in what happened there. But I kept seeing these young adults smiling while taking pictures in front of the infamous “Work Sets You Free” sign at the entrance. I can only hope that they regretted having done so after their visit ended.

auschwitz-crematoria

Auschwitz is now a museum. I understand that preservation of the artifacts requires them to be behind cases. And, managing one million visitors a year certainly demands a well- organized, structured protocol of how to visit the site. But the museum atmosphere made it more difficult for me to connect to  the horrors. At certain points, you have to wait in line to see something behind a case as if you are at an art museum eagerly awaiting an artistic masterpiece. How do you view cruelty, death and destruction from behind a museum case? Our Auschwitz Polish guide was quite knowledgeable and clearly the Holocaust really did mean something to him, but we walked through the Auschwitz gas chamber and crematorium as if we were touring an antebellum home. How do you stand in a gas chamber, listen to the technical details of how the gas was dropped inside, snap a picture and then move on to the next room because another group is waiting?

auschwitz-ruins

Fortunately, our wonderful tour educator later brought us into an empty barracks where some of us shared our families’ Holocaust stories and one of our trip participants read a letter from her liberator grandfather documenting what he saw at Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Afterwards, we sat in the restored synagogue of Osweicim and reflected on our four days in Poland.

We were all touched in different ways and on one point we all agreed: We are ready to leave the darkness of Auschwitz and engage with the light of Israel!

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A large group departed from Memphis International Airport Sunday, traveling to Poland to begin their journey from Warsaw to Israel. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts from the group’s experiences in Poland. 

Krakow

The contrast between Warsaw and Krakow is striking. While all vestiges of Jewish life in Warsaw were destroyed – save one Synagogue – the pre-war Jewish Quarter in Krakow survived. It is the best preserved Jewish Quarter in all of Europe. Pre-war Jewish culture comes alive in these narrow, cobblestone streets where we visited Synagogues and Yeshivot dating to the 15th century.

As an Orthodox woman who is actively engaged in Jewish learning, I whispered a thank you to the pioneer of Jewish education for girls, Sarah Schenirer, as we stood in front of the building that housed her Beis Yaakov, the first Jewish school for girls in Europe.

sarah-schenirer-plaque

Also in contrast to Warsaw, there are physical remnants of Krakow’s Ghetto. We saw a Ghetto wall fragment and the pharmacy building owned by a righteous Pole who refused to relocate his pharmacy when it ended up within the walls of the Ghetto. In addition to providing Ghetto residents with much needed medications, the pharmacy served as a hub of Ghetto underground activity.

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A large group departed from Memphis International Airport Sunday, traveling to Poland to begin their journey from Warsaw to Israel. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts from the group’s experiences in Poland. 

When we landed in Warsaw, I didn’t change any money because, honestly, I didn’t want to buy anything extra in a country where such horrible things happened to my family and my people. I was also relieved that it was cold and rainy, since it would not have felt right for the sun to shine while visiting death camps.

I have to admit that my exposure to the revival of Jewish life in Warsaw and Krakow has softened my perspective.

krakow-luncheon

Whether it makes sense to us or not, there are thousands of Jews in Poland – young and old- in search of Jewish content and meaning. We ate dinner in Warsaw with Agata, the young, dynamic director of the Warsaw JCC. In Krakow, we ate dinner at its beautiful JCC and heard from Jonathan, its engaging director,  as well as from several young Jews who are leaders in the community. We were all visibly moved by their stories of how they have found Jewish meaning and community at the JCC. Both JCCs offer Shabbat dinners, Hebrew classes, and informal Jewish education and engagement opportunities that draw in many Jews. Young adults from both cities are joining Birthright trips and participating in MASA programs. Our JFNA overseas partners, JDC and JAFI, are on the ground helping to develop a cadre of young, Jewish Polish leaders.

polish-jewish-bookstore

It is not uncommon in Poland for young Jews to discover that they have Jewish roots and for the JCC to be their first point of entry on their Jewish journey. The Krakow JCC actually has a genealogist on staff!

It’s not easy finding the balance between connecting to the horrors of what happened to us in Poland and supporting the resurgence of Jewish life there.

I do still think the weather was appropriate for our trip but the optimistic, vibrant and inspiring young Jewish leaders that we met taught me that the sun should be able to shine in Poland.

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A large group departed from Memphis International Airport Sunday, traveling to Poland to begin their journey from Warsaw to Israel. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts from the group’s tour of Majdanek death camp. 

Day 2- Majdanek

I’ve always thought that the many Survivors who were unable to speak about their experiences were silent because of the trauma of what they went through. While I am sure this may be a factor for many, after today, I understand their silence in another way as well. If you are not an Elie Wiesel or another gifted writer, how do you find the words for what happened? Death camp, gas chambers, crematoria. These words barely scratch the surface of conveying what went on. If I, a mere visitor to Majdanek, cannot adequately express the horrors of what we saw today, how could someone who actually experienced it?

majdanek-crematorium

Majdanek is a death camp on the outskirts of Lublin. Of all the death camps, it is the best preserved since the Nazis didn’t have time to destroy the evidence before Soviet troops arrived. We saw the actual gas chambers and crematorium. Not a replica. Not a reconstruction. Not a photograph.

We saw the ditches where 18,000 Jews were machine-gunned to death in one day. We saw real Jewish ashes with bone fragments. Are there words for this?

majdanek-ases

We did what Jews all over the world do when encountering death. We lit a Yizkor (memorial) candle and recited the El Maleh Rachamim prayer.

The camp was built on farmland in the city. Just outside the perimeter fence of Majdanek are residential homes. We struggled with the question of how the Poles who lived, literally, next door, were able to go on with their daily lives knowing what went on. And then we faced an awful truth- we knew about Rawanda and Darfur and other global atrocities. We know about Syria. And what do we do? We go on with our lives.

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A large group departed from Memphis International Airport Sunday, traveling to Poland to begin their journey from Warsaw to Israel. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts and images from the group’s tour of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto.  

After visiting the Warsaw Cemetery, we went to the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which documents the rich history of Jewish life in Poland. It is a beautiful, substance-rich, contemporary museum filled with several hours worth of exhibits. More interesting than the museum itself, though, is the concept of the museum. Nothing remains of the Warsaw Ghetto. The Nazis destroyed the Ghetto after the 1943 Ghetto Uprising so there are no physical structures to mark the Jewish presence and Jewish life in the Ghetto. There are monuments, memorials and plaques, but no buildings.

polin-museum-exterior

The Polin Museum tries to fill that void. It is built on land that was in the Warsaw Ghetto. The city of Warsaw donated the land and the Polish government provided some of the funding to build the museum. By starting with the Jewish arrival in Poland in the Middle Ages, the museum drives home the point of a longstanding Jewish history in Poland.

But does it really fill the void of not having any structures that would enable us to truly feel the Ghetto?

We passed by a building that served as SS headquarters in the Ghetto. Among other things, the SS tortured Jews in that building. What is that building today? I was hoping to hear that it stands unoccupied, bearing witness to what took place there. It’s an office building. As I was thinking to myself that I cannot understand how anyone can go to work in such a building, it occurred to me that our beautiful hotel was also “in the Ghetto.”

How dare I enjoy a good night’s sleep in this place?

polin-museum-relief

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Reprinted from the New York Times. Photo above by Mark Kauzlarich for The New York Times.

-By Joseph Berger

IF such events can be said to have an upside, the Inquisition had one for Spanish and Portuguese Jews: It propelled them to the Americas, where they largely found the tolerance and opportunities denied them in Europe.

The story of the havens Jews established in the New World is the focus of an exhibition opening on Friday at the New-York Historical Society. With rare manuscripts, Bibles, prayer books, paintings, maps and ritual objects, “The First Jewish Americans: Freedom and Culture in the New World,” chronicles how Jews, expelled from Spain and Portugal after being driven out in earlier centuries from England and France, established thriving communities in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, Newport and, even earlier, on Caribbean islands and in South America.

In the United States, they, like their fellow Americans, were tossed about in history’s currents, finding themselves on both sides during the American Revolution, the movement to abolish slavery and the Civil War. And their welcome was sometimes short-lived or illusory.

The exhibition’s most arresting artifact is a threadbare 4-inch-by-3-inch, 180-page memoir and prayer book handwritten by Luis de Carvajal the Younger in colonial Mexico in 1595, where the Inquisition had extended its sinister reach of torture and execution.

De Carvajal was a converso, forced to adopt Catholicism but suspected of clandestinely practicing Jewish rituals. At trial, he was pressured to denounce 120 Jews who secretly followed their faith, including his relatives. Then he was burned at the stake.

“They broke him down,” said Debra Schmidt Bach, a curator of the show.

The de Carvajal book mysteriously disappeared from Mexico’s national archives in the 1930s. Not long ago, however, Leonard L. Milberg, an American businessman with a major Judaica collection, learned that the document was for sale at Swann Auction Galleries in Manhattan, and he arranged to have it returned to Mexico. It is on loan for the show.

The exhibition features documents chronicling the vagaries of early Jewish settlements: an edict expelling Jews from France’s American colonies; a rabbinical paper certifying as kosher food shipped to Barbados; an 18th-century service for the biblically mandated circumcision of slaves and a list of circumcisers in Curaçao and Suriname; and a Christian missionary’s treatise speculating that Native Americans were the Lost Tribes of Israel. There are two nostalgic paintings of Caribbean scenes by Camille Pissarro, the French Impressionist who was born on St. Thomas to a Jewish mother. Seventy-two of the 170 items in the show are from Mr. Milberg’s collection.

If you need another reason to plan a trip to New York, read our story about the Jewish Museum and how one Memphis sponsor arranged for free tickets to tour it, available to all Memphians. 

Read the full story in the Times. 

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A large group departed from Memphis International Airport Sunday, traveling to Poland to begin their journey from Warsaw to Israel. The JCP/MJCC-sponsored trip will connect the travelers to their Jewish history, taking them to important sites from the recent past. Here, our director of community impact, Bluma Zuckerbrot-Finkelstein, shares her thoughts and images from the groups tour of the Warsaw Jewish Cemetery.  

Warsaw Jewish Cemetery. This cemetery wasn’t destroyed during the war, just neglected. It was cut off from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, so Warsaw Jews were no longer allowed to bury their dead there until after the war.

warsaw-jewish-cemetery-gate

Walking through, you really get a sense of the diversity of Jewish life in Warsaw before the Holocaust. Buried here are diverse Jewish leaders from Yiddish author and playwright Y.L. Peretz to the Chasidic Rebbe of Slonim, as well as Zionist, Socialist, Bundist and Universalist activists.

family-mausoleum

I was particularly moved by the story of Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat (Jewish Council) leader Adam Czerniakow, who committed suicide in 1942 rather than hand over to the Nazis names of Jews to be deported to Treblinka death camp. He is also buried here.

warsaw-jewish-cemetery

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