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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2011 • ELUL 5771/TISHREI 5772
Recharging While in Flight: An Interview With Roly SUSAN REIMER-TORN
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Today, right now, is the next big turning point. We have been able to reacquire our old building on 89th Street. ... Now we need to grow into it with the fullness of our essence, our values and our unique approach to Jewish community and Jewish life.”
In an interview for the occasion of his 25th anniversary at BJ, Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon offered a delightful retrospective of his own coming of age, his mentorship with Marshall, crucial turning points in the communal past, and his urgent concerns for the present. Roly once said that every life is an answer to a question that must be discovered. In that spirit, I have omitted my questions, allowing more space for the richness of Roly’s responses, thus inviting each of us to intuit the questions that hover invisible in all of our lives. — SRT Part One: Portrait of the Rabbi as a Young Man The Seeds Were Planted My grandfather was a very important figure in my life. He started out a poor immigrant, but he and his brothers became very wealthy. He was not a learned man, but he was very generous; he helped a lot of people in secret. He also became a leader of the Sephardic Jewish community in Buenos Aires. In general the religious leadership in those days in Argentina was obscurantist and rigid; the rabbis were not at all attractive to the generation of my parents. I loved my grandfather very much, and it was he who took me to the synagogue. Even as a young child, the prayers and the music already resonated with me. So, in that way, the seeds were planted early on. Then my grandparents became some of the early supporters of a young rabbi who had just arrived from the States. The rabbi’s name was Marshall Meyer. I was 6 years old when I met him.
PHOTO: BJ ARCHIVES
Roly and David Lieberman, 1996 or 1997. Read more about David, who will be honored as Hatan Bereshit on Simhat Torah, on pages 11 and 14.
I Searched From A to Z (Twice!) In the early 70’s the University of Buenos Aires was open to all and free of charge, and I just needed to choose a course of study. I examined the catalog from A to Z, and I just could not decide what career to study for. So, I went through it again, from Archeology to Zoology, and I couldn’t figure out what to do. Not having any better idea, I registered in the schools of Chemistry and Sociology. But in those days there was great political turmoil in Argentina. Because of all kinds of factional unrest and faculty purges, I never got to experience a single sociology course. The university was even shut down for several months, and it was getting harder to concentrate on studies. One Day I Just Had to Go Meanwhile I was studying with Marshall at the seminary and leading a kind of double life. I was observing Shabbat and keeping kosher, and this was not my parents’ lifestyle. They had been traumatized by the Old World rabbis, so my attraction to observance had them a little spooked. I (continued on page 4)
Social Action/Social Justice . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Board of Trustees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 A Closing and a New Beginning . . . . . . . . .3 Roly’s 25th Anniversary at BJ . . . . . . . .4-11 Doorposts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Youth & Family Education . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Member Spotlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Bikkur Holim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13 Simhat Torah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Rabbinic Fellows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16-17 Shabbat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Announcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19 Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
inside: Roly’s 25th Anniversary Special Issue Roly: Our Yedid Nefesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Perversion and Holiness Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Lunch and Learn With Roly and the Talmudic Rabbis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Roly: Song of the Life Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .10 Two Teen Tales. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11 Roly Was “The Bomb” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
SYNAGOGUE: 257 W. 88th St. • OFFICE: 2109 Broadway (Ansonia), Suite 203, New York, NY 10023 • TEL : 212.787.7600 • FAX : 212.496.7600 • WEBSITE : www.bj.org