Jewish Journeys

JEWISH JOURNEYS A SPECIAL ISSUE OF THE NEW YORK JEWISH WEEK AND THE NEW JERSEY JEWISH NEWS | WINTER 2014-15

OFF YOU GO! Take that, Borat!

Next year in Kazakhstan.

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Dolphins, exotic birds, lush flowers: Nature beckons in Eilat.

PAGE 12

Hummus in Berlin?

The Israelis are here.

PAGE 20

Aulus-les-Baines and the need to remember.

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Jewish Journeys â– December 18/19, 2014

CONTENTS

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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Dan Hotels Israel

Next Year In … Kazakhstan Conducting Passover seders in the former Soviet Republic reveals a place that Borat wouldn’t recognize.

Page 6

Nature Beckons In Eilat Leaving the hotels and shopping aside for dolphins, exotic plants and migratory birds.

Page 12

Spotlight on Poland

The Polish-Jewish Story Now Has A Home Warsaw museum illuminates country’s millennium-long Jewish history, and is sign of country’s Jewish revival. Plus, the museum’s ripple effects across Poland.

Page 14, 17

Where pleasure is a way of life Gorgeous beaches Thrilling destinations Endless sunshine Discover the ongoing pleasures of a Dan Hotel vacation.

Whether it’s the legendary King David in Jerusalem or resort hotels on the Mediterranean and Red Sea, every Dan hotel is a landmark destination that reflects the spirit of its surroundings.

Hummus In The Prenzlauer Berg The Israelification of Berlin.

Page 20

Tel Aviv After Dark Journey into the fictive underbelly of Israel’s cultural capital in short story collection ‘Tel Aviv Noir.’

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A Costa Rican Casa That’s Kosher Exquisite beaches, tropical scenery — and a private chef to cook for the kashrut-observant family.

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Back To The Borscht Belt Updated version of Kutsher’s documentary captures the eclectic legacy of a Catskills relic.

Page 26

In Downtown L.A., Everything Old Is New Again Remaking the city’s now-hip (and touristy) Grand Central Market, whose deep Jewish roots go back nearly a century.

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Experience The Best

Beautiful beaches, a welcoming Jewish community and even a ghost, all just south of San Francisco.

A Dream Trail Unchosen Aulus and the need to remember.

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My Girona The Catalonian city and the reclamation of its Jewish past.

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Spring Ahead For Tourism?

Israeli hoteliers remain upbeat ahead of Passover vacation season.

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next Year in … Kazakhstan

Jewish Journeys ■ december 18/19, 2014

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Conducting Passover seders in the former Soviet Republic reveals a place that Borat wouldn’t recognize.

Steve Lipman Staff Writer

F

or much of America, 2006 was the year of Borat. Kazakhstanishly speaking.

Borat, of course, was the “hero” of Sacha Baron Cohen’s farcical movie (officially, “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious”) about a malevolent, anti-Semitic, crude, oversexed and undereducated journalist from a Kazakhstan that bore no resemblance to the actual, former Soviet republic.

I should know.

For me, 2006 was the year of the Kazakhstan seder.

Every year for more a decade, I’ve volunteered as a seder leader overseas at Passover, mostly in former communist countries. 2006 was Kazakhstan’s turn. Sandwiched between overnight stays in Almaty, the former capital of the sprawling republic (and the country’s largest city), and Astana, the current capital, I spent a week in Karaganda, an industrial city of some half-million souls in the middle of the country.

Kazakhstan was a revelation to me, someone familiar with the rhythms of lands behind the former Iron Curtain; someone who finds a special energy in societies that had within a generation emerged from the darkness of totalitarianism; someone who feels at home in places where Cyrillic and other foreign alphabets are everywhere and Westernstyle consumer items sometimes are scarce — and especially someone who had unwisely viewed Borat in preparation for my trip.

It’s a safe, friendly land whose architecture is a combination of Communist-era concrete, utilitarian look-alike apartment buildings and ultramodern malls and office towers that have risen since Communism fell.

This was especially evident in Karaganda, which was founded 80 years ago as the urban center for the area’s network of slave labor camps where more than a million Soviet citizens, according to a JTA story, “were worked to death or near death.”

In Karaganda you see no ancient ruins.

My base there was the Chaika Hotel — Chaika is Russian for seagull, a strange choice for a name since the Barents Sea, 2,000 miles away, is the closest major body of water. It’s a serviceable, non-pretentious building down Krivoguz Street from the Cosmonaut Hotel, a state-of-the-art facility by Russian 1972 standards that was built for the Soviet heroes who blasted off from and returned to earth in Kazakhstan.

An eight-hour plane ride from Frankfurt (as far as the German air-hub city is from New York), Kazakhstan still plays host to relatively few Western tourists; the Jews I met there showered me with small gifts, grateful that I made the effort to come.

The actual country, the largest of the USSR’s 15 now-independent republics, besides Russia itself; the furthest east of the republics, beside Russia, itself; the most famous of the republics, besides Russia itself, during its 15 minutes of Borat-inspired fame … bares no resemblance to Borat’s Kazakhstan, which was filmed largely in rural Romania.

Once part of the USSR, Kazakhstan is not an Eastern European country.

It’s Central Asian, sandwiched between China and Siberia. The residents, largely descended from the followers of Genghis Khan, who occupied the land in the 13th century, are related to the Mongols. Their appearance is Asian. (Kazakhstan’s official language is Turkish Kazakh, but most people speak Russian.)

Kazakhstan, at least the part in which I stayed and over which I flew, is not dirt poor. With oil riches, and income from the export of uranium and other natural resources, the country has a flourishing economy. I

Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, still the country’s largest city, lies in the foothills of the Zailiysky Alatau mountains. Wi ki m edia Com mon s

saw new buildings under construction everywhere and people dressed in fashionable, Western-style clothing.

The country is not uncivilized, as Borat portrayed it. Although its longtime president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who in 2000 led a delegation on an official visit to Israel, does not have a sterling human rights record, it’s no police state.

Visitors can travel freely; you see few police or soldiers on the street.

Kazakhstan is not wildly anti-Semitic, a la Borat. No “running of the Jew” competitions.

And no Borats.

The leaders and community members I met, including readily identified Jews like Chabad rabbis who are based in the major cities and bring Judaism to Jews in far-flung communities, said they had experienced virtually no incidents of anti-Semitism. The media carry reports of occasional anti-Semitic attacks, and according to an international study of anti-Semitism released by the ADL last year, the citizens rank as average — neither the most nor least hostile to Jews.

I walked around with a visible kipa and experienced no problems.

Kazakhstan is an officially secular but ethnically Muslim (about 65 percent) nation with a sizable Eastern Orthodox population. Mosques are a common sight. It’s mellow Islam, with strong diplomatic ties to Israel.

The country has hosted international, interfaith Jewish-Muslim religious tolerance conferences that adopted resolutions condemning terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations.”

One sign of this respect-your-neighbor’s-faith attitude: a wooden monument in a Karaganda park on which are carved a cross, a crescent and a Magen David.

The Kazakhstan I experienced was simply one of the former Soviet Union’s many “stans” that were largely unknown to a Western audience (it’s the ninth-biggest country in the world, the largest landlocked one), and whose reputation was besmirched by a “reality” movie that reflected little reality.

Fortunately, no one in Kazakhstan had heard of Borat. No one there, at least, asked me about the film. And no one shared Borat’s sleazy accent. ◆ azakhstan is the Wild West of the FSU — even though it’s far to the east of Moscow and St. Petersburg and the other Jewish population centers nearer to Europe. One of the world’s least-densely populated countries, it had a frontier feel. I met Jewish coal miners there, other Jews who had worked in factories. It’s a working-class community.

One afternoon I had the chance to interview one of the retired Jewish coal miners, who attended my seder. Dressed in a plain grey suit, he

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Next Year In … Kazakhstan

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talked of his career (no one thought coal mining an unusual career choice for a Jew), of his time in the Red Army (1942-47), of his early life in a Jewish home (his family spoke Yiddish) and of his life under Communism (nothing Jewish, because of fear of persecution).

“If we had met 20 years ago,” when Kazakhstan was still Communist, “I wouldn’t speak with you,” he told me; a conversation with a Jewish journalist from the West would invite danger.

Now, he said, he was an active member of Karaganda’s emerging Jewish community. “Because I am a Jew.” Kazakhstan’s Jewish community is a mixture of Ashkenazi and Sephardi. It’s where some Jews first arrived as early as the 17th century as Russian army conscripts, where Jews fled during Nazism, where Jews were sent into exile during the early days of Communism.

For Jews, it was the outer fringe of the Soviet Union.

Places like Moscow and Leningrad-St. Petersburg, where open practice of Yiddishkeit was verboten and dangerous during seven decades of atheistic rule, were thriving centers of Jewish life compared to isolated Kazakhstan, which was far more secular. For decades, the Soviet state was home to few rabbis, few educated Jews, few people who could pass on anything Jewish, even clandestinely, to their children.

Until freedom came in 1991. And that watershed was followed by Chabad, the Joint Distribution Committee and the JDC-supported Chesed social welfare organization, the Jewish Agency and other disseminators of Judaism. In Karaganda — and in brief stops in Almaty and Astana — I found Jews willing to learn how to lead a Jewish life, and Jews from abroad willing to teach them.

As in other parts of the former Soviet Union, Jews had been reluctant to publicly identify themselves as Jewish, to attend synagogue services or other Jewish activities, or to join the few extant Jewish organizations.

And this presented a problem for the Chabad representatives who came to spread Yiddishkeit in the early, post-communist days.

The Chabad shaliach in Karaganda when I was there told Danny Chameides, a Riverdale resident who spent several weeks there the same year to facilitate an adoption, how he, the Chabadnik, had done it. Who could tell him who the Jews are? The KGB. The Chabad rabbi, a proper bribe in hand, went to the Karaganda office of what had been the feared Soviet security agency, best known for spying on citizens. The rabbi emerged with a list of the city’s Jews; he went on to a successful career as a Lubavitch emissary. ike other former communist communities, Kazakhstan’s is experiencing its own Jewish revival.

The seder I led (in many emerging Jewish communities, few Jews go to a communal seder both nights of the holiday, and even fewer make

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Jewish Journeys â– December 18/19, 2014

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Next Year In … Kazakhstan

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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their own) took place in the cafeteria of Chabad’s Or Avner day school.

Sitting at the tables were a few dozen people, mostly pensioners, many outfitted with wartime medals. They exchanged yom tov greetings in Yiddish, and sang long-forgotten Pesach melodies in Hebrew. Few asked or answered questions that night. Afterwards, they lined up to take home boxes of matzah.

One afternoon I led a model-seder-style holiday lunch at the crowded apartment of a senior member of the community; the meal was part of the “Warm House” program the JDC has established in many venues for Jews, mostly older ones, who want to take part in Jewish activities but can’t get to shul or other communal events. Instead, the Warm House participants make Shabbos — or yom tov — for themselves, hosting meals and social events for their friends.

At the lunch we sang some songs, I gave some explanations of Passover rituals, we exchanged some Jewish jokes, I even hid the afikomen. The hosts offered a small, framed picture for the person who found the hidden piece of matzah.

I couldn’t eat a thing there; none of it was remotely kosher; my hosts understood my kashrut limitations, but felt bad that I couldn’t join the meal, which looked delicious; they were delighted when I finally accepted a small banana.

Before I left Karaganda, I was a guest at another Pesach celebration, a lunch at the city’s biggest café. Several dozen Jews, across the age spec-

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In recent years, Kazakhstan has developed tourist attractions and facilities up to Western standards. Birdwatching is a big draw for the ornithologically inclined; the country is home to 500 species.

In Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city, the Central State Museum (csmrk.kz) offers a look at history from the Bronze Age to the present.

A reasonably priced four-star hotel there, with double rooms for $88.50 a night, is the Saraishik (saraichik-hotel.kz).

In Astana, the capital, the yurt-shaped Presidential Cultural Centre (7 7172 22 33 19) is a museum whose highlights include national jewelry and historical artifacts.

Double-rooms at the Hotel Mukammal (mukammal.kz/en) start at $73.50 a night.

The Cosmonaut Hotel (cosmonaut.

kz/indexeng.html) in Karaganda, where the Soviet Union’s space heroes stayed, is a connection to history.

The Shabanbai-Bi Village (http://visitkazakhstan.kz/en/guide/places/view/482) at the foot of the Kyzylarai mountain range offers a slice of traditional village life.

No kosher restaurant is open in the country now, but Chabad in Almaty does kosher catering. Vegetarian restaurants there include The Green House (facebook. com/thegreenhousekz) and Govindas (http://restoran.kz/cafe/3002-govinda-s).

To make connections with the Jewish community, contact the Mitzvah Association (mitsva.kz), or the Chabad Houses in Almaty (http://lubavitch.com/centers/ detail.html?id=2806) and Astana (chabad. kz/19045.html).

trum, were there too.

Rabbi Meir Shainer, the Chabad shaliach in Karaganda, placed the city’s Jewish population at 1,000-1,500.

When I went there, Kazakhstan’s Jewish population was estimated at 40,000-50,000. Recent estimates put the current figure much lower — as low at 3,500, as high as 10,000. The rest have gone to Israel or the U.S. or other points in the West.

As in many isolated venues that I have visited, Chabad was the mostvisible Jewish presence, establishing day schools and outreach centers in the biggest cities, taking Judaism on the road in Mitzvah Tanks outfitted as rolling synagogues, most recently setting up kosher catering.

Also available: an extensive Jewish lending library, social clubs for cooks and children and veterans of the “Great Patriotic War,” programs for singers and dancers, a klezmer group, and an annual camp-culture festival for kids.

“Jewish life in Kazakhstan exists, and it is blooming and I hope it stays that way,” the jdc.org website quoted a young resident of Karaganda as saying last year.

Take that, Borat! ◆

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Photo: Itay Sikolski

Jewish Journeys â– December 18/19, 2014

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Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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nature beckons in eilat Leaving the hotels and shopping aside for dolphins, exotic plants and migratory birds.

Michele chabin Israel Correspondent

e

ilat, Israel — Israel’s southernmost city, adjacent to the Egyptian town of Taba, has many upscale hotels, scores of restaurants and good shopping along its beachfront promenade. My family and I consciously avoided all of the above during our most recent stay here, one of the country’s most popular resort areas.

Determined to spend our vacation visiting nature sites, we chose five destinations, three of which were completely new to us.

Even after three trips to Eilat we had never been to the Dolphin Reef (dolphinreef.co.il), a nature reserve for dolphins. The Reef is the only place in Israel where one can swim or snorkel with dolphins, though physical contact with them is prohibited.

Dolphin Reef’s goal, according to its literature, is to enable the dolphins to “live in their natural environment, the sea, with minimal intervention in their lifestyle.”

While the dolphins aren’t living in the wild — they swim in the sea, enclosed by a barrier — they aren’t trained to perform. It’s fun to see them swim up to the dock, where they receive supplemental food.

Anyone age 8 and older who wishes to snorkel with the dolphins must feel confident swimming in deep (45-foot) water for a half hour, with no flotation devices, in a group led by a guide. Good swimmers age 8 and older can dive

The Coral Beach Nature Reserve (dock shown) is the best place to snorkel or dive along the coral reefs, with their magnificent assortment underwater life.

P hotogr aP h s by M ich ele chab i n/JW

with the dolphins to a depth of 20 feet. There is a short introductory lesson prior to the dive, which is also led by guides.

Those who opt out of this special dolphin experience can still watch them from the dock, or swim or snorkel in the Reef’s crystal clear water or enjoy the relaxation pools (the latter at an extra fee).

Another first for us was the Eilat Botanical Garden (botanicgarden.co.il)

The Dolphin Reef Nature Reserve is the only place in Israel to snorkel or dive with the dolphins.

Located just a few minutes’ drive north of Eilat, right off the Arava Road (Route 90), this little garden oasis is all but hidden from view and a world apart from the surrounding desert landscape. It offers secluded trails, which lead you through a collection of local and exotic plants, and has one of Israel’s most varied collection of trees and flowers from all around the world, including a one-of-a-kind, climate-controlled rain forest you’d never expect to see in the Arava. It is a favorite stop for migrating birds.

During a guided tour the Garden’s owner, Eyal Arnon, explained how, in a scant 15 years, he and his two partners transformed this barren, rocky outcropping with their own hands, and largely at their own expense. The former military outpost is now an organic paradise with tiny waterfalls and secluded and shady nooks and handcrafted benches. The result is a model of sustainable gardening and ecological aesthetics.

The Eilat Botanical Garden is open to individuals and groups and offers walking trails for adults and easy climbing trails for kids. (Note: there are a lot of stone stairs.) There’s also a large plant nursery that features some of the partners’ unique handcrafted furniture and accessories, herbal teas, coffees and one-of-kind items. It’s a pastoral place to spend a mostly shady afternoon.

The Underwater Observatory Park (coralworld.co.il) is another great way to beat the heat. Plan to spend at least half a day here so as not to miss out on the shark feedings, to see the sea turtles and of course to tour the air-conditioned underwater observatory. The observa-

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in the country at various seasons in the year, despite the fact that the country is only 211 miles long.

Until it was transformed into an oasis, the Eilat Birding Center was a baked patch of rock and sand where nothing could grow. Today it boasts a handful of hiking trails, a man-made lake and a large variety of plants amenable to bird life.

A guide at the center demonstrated how they catch birds, weigh them in order to determine how far they have travelled and whether they are receiving the proper nutrition, and then “band” them in order to track their movements. She gently placed a banded bird into the hands of both my sons and helped them set them free.

The best times to visit are early in the morning and around sunset.

Even so, the birds tend to be shy. Admission to the park is free but a paid tour is recommended — and helps support the vital services the birding center provides: a place for birds to rest and recuperate after their long journey. ✦ The author and her family received free admission to the venues mentioned in this article.

13 Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

tory provides stunning views of the Red Sea’s fantastic assortment of underwater life and the coral reefs its creatures call home. Advanced reservations are a must for this super-popular venue.

Once you’ve seen the reef at the nearby observatory, you’ll want to go diving or snorkeling yourself.

The Coral Beach Nature Reserve, with its famous coral reefs, provides everything you need, including equipment rentals and purchase, for underwater exploration. Beginners, who might want to rent a snorkel safety vest, practice in the shallow water (the beaches in Eilat are rocky, so be sure to purchase water shoes along the seafront The Eilat Botanical Garden is an actual oasis in the desert. promenade or at Coral Beach). The art of snorkeling mastered, most route in the world because it’s in the center of the people head to one or another of the ends of two only land corridor between Africa and Europe. docks, between which is a wonderful snorkel- Every year half a million birds fly over Israel to ing trail. The beach offers free chairs and shaded and from warmer climes. spots with admission, and this is a perfect place to Exhausted from their long flight, the birds sit and read a book and stare at the turquoise sea arrive hungry. Without the opportunity to gather even if you never make it into the water. their strength and feed in Israel, many would die.

Our final stop was the International Birding The Israel Ornithological Center, which operand Research Center (http://natureisrael.org/Bird- ates three bird-watching centers (including the ingCenters), which is another oasis in the desert. marvelous Hula Valley Reserve) in Israel has Israel is the second most important migration counted more than 540 different species of birds

The polish-Jewish Story now has A home

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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Warsaw museum illuminates country’s millennium-long Jewish history, and is sign of country’s Jewish revival.

Michele Alperin JNS.org

G

iven that half of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust came from Poland, many descendants of Polish Jews may be surprised to learn about the current hospitable environment for the Jewish population of their ancestors’ country.

Poland experiences far less anti-Semitism than the typical European country and is home to a burgeoning — albeit Spotlight on relatively small — Jewish community (estimates suggest 10,000-20,000, but no definitive figures are available). At the same time, young non-Jewish Poles are increasing-ly curious about Jews and the Jewish religion.

polAnd

A portion of the “First Encounters” gallery within the core exhibition f the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

P hoto cou rteSy of M. Starowi eySk a, D.Goli k/Poli N M u Seu M of th e h i Story of Poli Sh J ewS.

Above: A portion of the “Paradisus Iudaeorum” in the POLIN Museum’s core exhibition. Top and bottom right: The “First Encounters” gallery and a wooden synagogue are parts of the core exhibition.

M. Starowi eySk a, D. Goli k, w. krySki / Poli N M u Seu M of th e h i Story of Poli Sh J ewS

Recognizing that this environment was fertile ground for a museum highlighting the history of Polish Jewry, a group of Warsaw-based orga-nizers invited émigré scholars and cultural activists in New York to help promote the museum concept and identify funding sources for what two decades later became the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened its core exhibition on Oct. 28.

The museum, located on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising directly across from the Monument of the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes, has received more than $60 million from the Municipality of Warsaw and Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The rest of the needed fund-ing was raised by the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, a nonprofit that has served as a caretaker of the country’s Jewish heritage for more than six decades.

As a civic initiative and state-funded institution, the museum’s target audience “is much broader than the Jewish community in Poland,”

A wooden synagogue that is part of “The Jewish Town” gallery within the core exhibition of the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

P hoto cou rteSy of M. Starowi eySk a, D.Goli k/Poli N M u Seu M of th e h i Story of Poli Sh J ewS.

says Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, program director of the museum’s core exhibition, which traces the 1,000-year history of Jews in Poland.

“It is intended for a much broader public: Poles, including Jews; the world Jewish community; and the European and world public,” she says.

From the perspective of Polish-born philanthropist Tad Taube, honorary consul for the

Republic of Poland in San Francisco, the significance of the museum’s content goes beyond Polish Jewish history. “In portraying 1,000 years of Jewish culture and history in Greater Poland, the museum traces the foundations of Judeo/Christian Western culture,” he says, referring to the contribution of Polish Jews to the various spectrums of Jewish and Christian faith in addition to significant Jewish cultural

The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews occupies a shimmering, glass-walled building that faces a dramatic sculptural monument on the site of the Warsaw Ghetto and Warsaw’s main downtown Jewish district.

Designed by the Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamaki, the building itself was opened to the public in April 2013. The core exhibition, which opened Oct. 28, uses state-of-the-art interactive technology to tell the 1,000-year-history of Jewish presence in Poland in eight galleries that cover 45,000 square feet of exhibition space.

Its name, Polin, means “Poland” in Hebrew, but also derives from a legend that when the first Jews reached Polish lands they heard birds chirping the welcoming expression “Polin.” In Hebrew, Polin means “Here you should dwell.”

The core exhibit’s galleries are arranged by both chronology and theme: Forest, First Encounters (the Middle Ages), Paradisus Iudaeorum (15th and 16th centuries), Into the Country (17th and 18th centuries), Encoun-ters with Modernity (19th century), The Street, Holocaust and Postwar.

Described by its director, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, as a “theatre of history,” the exhibit contrasts the grand sweep of epochal events with intimate glimpses of individual joy, pain, fear and reflection.

Highlights of the exhibition include: ◆ The dazzling “Jewish Sistine Chapel,” the reconstructed and elaborately painted ceiling and bima of the now-destroyed wooden synagogue in Gwozdziec (now in Ukraine), built by hand using traditional tools and tech-

niques by volunteers and students under the leadership of the Massachusetts-based Handshouse Studio. ◆ A larger-than-life-sized painted animation of 24 hours in the life of the famous yeshiva in Volozhin (now Belarus) founded at the beginning of the 19th century by a disciple of the Gaon of Vilna. ◆ A cartoon-like animation telling the story of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of chasidism. ◆ “The Jewish Street,” a multimedia mockup of a typical street in pre-World War II Jewish Warsaw with exhibits on Jewish life between the two World Wars. Its layout in the museum corresponds to the exact pre-war location of Zamenhofa Street, the heart of the prewar Jewish neighborhood of Muranow. ◆ Evocative shifting video installations of field and forest Polish landscapes where Jews settled. ◆ Hundreds of quotations by and about Jews culled from public documents, official decrees and intimate letters and diaries. ◆ Interactive installations that allow visitors to “mint” a medieval coin, “print” pages from historic books, and “trace” and translate the epitaphs of century-old Jewish gravestones. ◆ The Holocaust gallery, which narrates the story of the Shoah in the words of people who experienced it. ◆ Postwar images of the rebuilding of Poland and Jewish life.

Ruth Ellen Gruber/Warsaw/JTA

continued on following page

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15 Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

Highlights Of The POLIN Museum

influence in philosophy, literature, theater, music and the physical sciences. Taube is the chairman of Taube Philanthropies and president of the Koret Foundation, which together provided significant funding for the museum.

Retired Polish diplomat Krzysztof (Kris) W. Kasprzyk, who has been an enthusiastic promoter of the project for more than two decades, sees the museum as particularly important to the Poland of today. “Our national cultural heritage is really impoverished without all that Jewish history in Poland had been bringing for centuries,” he told JNS.org. “This museum is like bringing fresh water to the desert — maybe that is an overblown metaphor, but we needed this venue badly.”

The museum’s goal of reaching out to both the Polish Jewish and broader Polish communities stems from the country’s increasingly welcoming environment for Jews. Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich suggests two reasons for that trend: first, the papacy of Polish-born John Paul II, who he notes was “the first pope to ever say that anti-Semitism is a sin according to the Catholic Church.”

The second factor is the fall of Communism, which created not only political and economic change, but also a social upheaval. “People are willing to be more open to change than under normal circumstances,” Rabbi Schudrich says,

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

16

Polish-Jewish Story continued from previous page

adding that younger Poles are curious about Jews, who had been largely absent or secretive about their identity in the country for 50 years after the Holocaust.

The fall of Communism, adds Kasprzyk, gave people the gift of free speech, which has allowed them to explore painful events from the past. One of these was the 1941 murder of Jews in Jewabne, a small town in northeast Poland where a Polish mob, encouraged by German Nazis, burned Jews from several surrounding communities in a barn. This incident was revealed to the larger Polish public in the book “Neighbors” by Tomasz Gross (published in 2000) and was widely and openly discussed, a process that Kasprzyk says “heals the wounds.”

Although Kasprzyk had strong Jewish connections from an early age and today cooks gefilte fish and Jewish sweets, the definitive moment in his lifetime devotion to Polish-Jewish relations came during his sophomore year at the University of Krakow. That year, during the 1968 Polish political crisis, Kasprzyk recalls that he “witnessed the expelling from Poland of many colleagues from my high school and from the university [because of the anti-Semitic campaign sponsored by the Communist gov-

“For Poles with Jewish roots [the museum] can be an entry point into some kind of connection with their Jewish identity; they can learn more about their past and what Judaism is about.”

— Rabbi Michael Schudrich ernment], and I also witnessed labeling them simply as ‘Jews,’ as somebody who would be outside of the Polish community.”

“Ever since that time, the subject of Polish Jewry was always very dear to my heart,” he says.

About two decades after the political crisis, the fall of Communism in Rabbi Schudrich’s estimation marked “the first time in 50 years people [could] now think about, ‘Do I feel safe telling my children and grandchildren that they are really Jewish?”

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“Since ’89 thousands and thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of Poles, have discovered they have Jewish roots,” Rabbi Schudrich says.

Rabbi Schudrich, whose job is to create pathways back to Jewish identity for Poles, says the museum can play a role in that process. “For Poles with Jewish roots it can be an entry point into some kind of connection with their Jewish identity; they can learn more about their past and what Judaism is about,” he says.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett says the museum “can support the renewal of Jewish life” by showing to “Jews in Poland, who kept their Jewish roots a secret, that they have nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be afraid of, and much to be proud of.”

But the museum goes beyond a sense of pride, offering a tangible resource for Polish Jews to learn about their history. “[The museum’s creation] says Jewish roots are not enough — you also need to know who you are,” says Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. “And who you are is not simply genetic. It is also historical and cultural. While the chain of transmission may have been broken, because of the Holocaust and Communism, there is an opportunity to restore that chain of transmission, and the museum can play a very important role.”

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett suggests that Jews today are not aware that their coreligionists continued on page 19

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As crowds flock to Warsaw’s POLIN Museum, TripAdvisor puts Krakow Jewish institutions in the spotlight RuTh EllEN GRubER JTA

K

rakow, Poland — Crowds have been streaming to Warsaw’s POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews since its core exhibition opened Oct. 28 at a high-profile ceremony led by the presidents of Poland and Israel.

Thousands of visitors have toured the museum’s eight interactive galleries that tell the 1,000-year story of JewSpotlight on ish life in Poland and have flocked to events like the recent Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, some of whose screenings took place at the museum. Some 7,000 people visited the museum on a single Monday when admission was free.

But POLIN is not the only Jewish-related museum in Poland to win recent recognition.

At the end of October the Polish version of TripAdvisor listed the much more modest

PolANd

Revelers dancing at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, one of many Jewish culture festivals in Poland. Wojci ech K ar li n sKi

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New Museum Reflects Growing Interest In All Things Jewish

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

18

Preserving Jewish history in our nation’s capital…one building move at a time.

New Museum

continued from previous page

Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow as one of Poland’s 2014 top 10 museums. The Holocaust memorial museums at the former Nazi camps at Auschwitz and Majdanek, as well as the Auschwitz Jewish Center — a museum, study and prayer center in Oswiecim — also made the roster.

The TripAdvisor list is based on user reviews and is by no means a scientific study. But it reflects the widespread interest in Jewish heritage, culture and history that has been growing in Poland since before the fall of Communism. In many ways, POLIN is the high-profile tip of a very 1969 2014 big iceberg.

Visit D.C.’s oldest synagogue and tour our historic neighborhoods “It is a symbolic representation of all the changes that have taken place,” said the Galicia Jewish Museum’s director, Jakub Nowakowski. “It could Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington Lillian & Albert Small Jewish Museum not have been created if not for this. There is a genuine interest in Jewish

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The city also has three Jewish bookstores, a Jewish publishing house and a Jewish branch of the Krakow History Museum. A modern Jewish community center opened in 2008 and attracts local Jews, non-Jews and JULIE HASKOVITZ tourists alike to classes, courses, holiday events and kosher Shabbat dinJHTRAVELJULES@GMAIL.COM ners. Most of the dozens of young volunteers who staff the reception desk and help run JCC activities are not Jewish.

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Polish-Jewish Story continued from page 16

lived in the Polish territory continually for 1,000 years. “It’s quite baffling, because they assume it was one unmitigated story of anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust,” she says, explaining that if this was true, Polish Jewry would never have become a center of the Jewish world and also, for some of its history, the world’s largest Jewish community.

“We place the Holocaust within the 1,000-year history of Polish Jews, not a 1,000-year history of anti-Semitism,” Kirshenblatt-Gimblett says.

The approach of the core exhibit is what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett calls a “theater of history” that organizes the story of Polish Jewry “as a continuous visual narrative.” The exhibit intends to explore more than instruct, empowering the visitor.

“We are not offering a master narrative, but a rather more open story, asking visitors to engage in that story and engage with primary sources and engage with debates and with conflicting views on particular subjects,” says Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.

Regarding how the museum presents Poland and Poles, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett says, “We are a history museum and have to be intellectually responsible, so it is not our intent to improve anyone’s image and engage in any kind of polemic. We never start from the misconceptions.

We think Jews will be surprised, and Poles will

be surprised. Jews expect that the museum will whitewash Polish history, and Poles expect an unmitigated indictment of Polish history. I think the museum will be a revelation for both.”

Some highlights of the exhibit are a handpainted gallery of the medieval period based on Hebrew illuminated manuscripts; a comicbook version of the story of the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of chasidism; a painted animation telling the story of the modern yeshiva via 24 hours in the life of the Volozhin Yeshiva; and an 85-percent scale model of the painted roof and bima of the 17th-century wooden Gwozdziec Synagogue. The model, built over the course of two years by an international group of volunteers, is based on complete drawings and sketches of both the synagogue and its ceiling.

Emphasizing why he believes this museum is as important for young non-Jewish Poles as it is for Jews in Poland and worldwide, Kasprzyk says, “The Jewish world of Poland was exterminated during the Holocaust, and I feel the Jewish world of Poland as the phantom pain — we don’t have this limb but it hurts; we feel it; it’s still there.”

“This museum somehow closes the gap or brings back, very often in virtual form, what we had had for centuries,” he says. “It is very important, especially for the younger generation, because the younger generation don’t have Jews around. They don’t have Jewish colleagues or Jewish friends.” ◆

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explore their Jewish roots,” said JCC Executive Director Jonathan Ornstein.

Nationwide, there are various academic Jewish studies programs, new or revamped Jewish museums and permanent exhibits, and hundreds of grassroots initiatives ranging from Jewish cemetery cleanups to more than 40 annual Jewish culture festivals.

Given that only 15,000 to 20,000 Jews live in Poland today, most of these are run by non-Jews — about 200 of whom have been honored by the Israeli Embassy since 1998 for their role in preserving Jewish culture and heritage.

“The number of these initiatives is really impressive,” said Edyta Gawron, a Jewish studies professor at Jagiellonian University who said about 95 percent of her students are not Jewish. “It is not just in the big cities, but also in small towns, where people are trying to build the future of Jewish heritage. And it is important and unusual that most of the people behind these initiatives are not Jewish.”

The more than $100 million POLIN museum, which draws about 60 percent of its funding from the city of Warsaw and the Polish government, is dramatically larger than the other Jewish projects around the country.

It aims now to use its clout to reach out far beyond its walls to lead the process of integrating Jewish history into Polish history.

“With its very public and very prominent place in Poland, the POLIN museum validates local initiatives,” said Brandeis professor Antony Polonsky, the museum’s chief historian.

“We want to find out what’s going on and give them encouragement and expertise.”

In early November, the museum convened more than 100 local Jewish heritage and culture activists from around the country to exchange experiences, network and meet with museum experts. And POLIN’s Museum on Wheels project takes material, information and educational programs prepared by the museum curators to far-flung communities all over the country.

“It is very important. It goes everywhere — to towns where people never saw a Jew, or that they didn’t know that they did,” said Krzysztof Bielawski, director of POLIN’s interactive web portal Virtual Shtetl. The site posts news and information about Jewish heritage and history in more than 2,300 towns, cities and villages — and attracts 5,000 unique visitors a day.

“There are many myths about Jews,” Bielawski said.

“If you don’t know about something, you can be afraid of it. The first step is knowledge, and we are providing knowledge. Our museum shows that Jews are normal people,” he added. “It demystifies Jews.” ◆

Hummus in The Prenzlauer Berg

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

20

The Israelification of Berlin.

Hilary larson Travel Writer

T

his winter, the relentlessly modern city of Berlin is taking a hard look back — at the fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 years ago last month, and at four-and-a-half decades of Communism that divided a people.

But for Jewish travelers, the more interesting look is toward the future. Few cities east of Paris have a Jewish presence as dynamic and unexpected as that of Berlin. A recent influx of about 20,000 Israelis has lent a distinctly Levantine flavor — OK, a smorgasbord of hummus joints — to a community artificially reconstituted from Soviet emigrés after the Holocaust.

“It’s like two parallel communities,” reflected Nirit Bialer, a Tel Aviv-born Berliner who has lived here since 2006. “And it’s not a continuous community. It’s quite new.”

Given how many Jewish communities are in decline around the globe, novelty is welcome — even if “it’s very vague, and hard to put your finger on,” as Yoav Sapir, an Israeli-born historian and tour guide (www.jewishberlin.com), described contemporary Jewish Berlin.

While 50,000 Jews in a city of four million is a mere drop demographically, the sudden prevalence of hummus on menus and Hebrew on the street reveals the Israelis’ outsized cultural influence. And given that Tel Aviv and Berlin have two of the hottest club scenes on the planet, the arrival of Tel Aviv DJs has brought a new edge to nightlife in the German capital.

The Israeli presence is not limited to hummus and electronica. There is also Spitz, a Hebrew-language magazine published in Berlin; a crop of new synagogues, including the trendy Fraenkelufer Synagogue in the city’s Kreuzberg neighborhood, which draws a diverse crowd for Shabbat dinners; and an evolving scene of Israeli-language social groups, arts

series, and Sunday schools that cater to a generation now in its 30s and with children of its own.

I recognized myself in this evolution. I was barely 30 and unmarried when I first went to Berlin, drawn by the same things — an underground arts scene; impossibly chic clubs; cafés that felt like an endless party — that lured the first wave of Israelis a decade ago. Like me, they were mostly young and single, and many were “militantly secular.” As Sapir put it, joining a religious Jewish diaspora was not on their agenda.

But also like me, many of those Israelis got married, had children, settled into careers. A new wave came, mostly Sephardic, interested more in a good job and a high standard of living than in parties or art galleries; approaching their fifth decade, many Israeli immigrants are seeking community among fellow Jewish expats. So while the original creative spirit still flourishes, enriching not only Jewish life but the stylish neighborhoods where Israelis cluster — Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg, Friedrichshain — there can be no doubt that Israeli Berlin is coming of age.

Many Americans find irony in the fact that many of the most desirable (and most gentrified) neighborhoods are in the former East Berlin. But it’s easy to see why Israelis are drawn to these districts. Centrally located and buzzing with life, they are among the best-preserved and aesthetically harmonious areas of a city famous for having been destroyed and rebuilt.

Prenzlauer Berg, where families have gathered for Shabbat dinner specials at Sababa Kitchen since 2011, abounds in lovely prewar architecture and kids in strollers, giving it the feel of a German Park Slope. Kreuzberg — a sprawling central district famous for its immigrant diversity — has seen a wave of Spaniards, Slavs and other EU expats join its Turkish population, and its historic boulevards have never felt more vibrant.

The Israeli enclaves have redefined the concept of a Jewish neigh-

borhood. Until recently, Jewish enclaves had been more closely identified with religious institutions — Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, where many Jews live within walking distance of a synagogue, or Mitte, home to a yeshiva, said Tamar Gablinger, an Israeli sociologist and tour guide.

With her husband, fellow Israeli Nadav, Tamar operates Gablinger Berlin Tours, showcasing Jewish attractions past and present in a variety of multilingual walking tours.

Jewish life today is likely to take place around fluffy, fresh-baked pita at Zula in Prenzlauer Berg, where outdoor tables spill onto a picturesque street. Or over a debate about the garlic and lemon ratios of the hummus at Djimalaya or Shiloh Vegetarian Café, both in Mitte. (The argument over which of the Israeli hummus joints has the best and most authentic hummus is, as you might expect, a favorite pastime.)

Many of these eateries consider themselves kosher or kosher-style, a standard more cultural than religious. Feinberg’s, an elegant place in Schöneberg with exposed-brick walls and a menu of Sephardic specialties, is open on Saturdays and has no rabbinic supervision — but meat and dairy are rigorously separated, as are the dishes used to pre-

pare and serve them, and the kitchen handles no traif.

The past couple of years have seen the opening of a number of these outfits, like Gordon Café and Record Store, a 2-month-old, fastidiously hip establishment in Neukölln, which is wedged just south of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. Here are all the tropes of expat Berlin: heavily bearded men, skinny pants, bicycles, judiciously sourced coffee and vegan pastries such as banana-chocolate cake.

Gordon, which has a parent branch in Tel Aviv, decorates with blond wood and plenty of vinyl, showcasing the beats that make both cities groove. Its Israeli roots are also evident in a carefully prepared menu that includes the requisite hummus, bourekas, olives and so forth.

Hummus is “the core of our culture,” said Gablinger. Like many Israelis I spoke to, she seemed bemused by all the hype — her word — surrounding Berlin’s Hebrew renaissance.

Food is only the beginning.

Hebrew culture is flourishing, evidenced not only by Spitz, the magazine, but also by the popularity of Michal Zamir’s 2,500-volume Hebrew Library Berlin. Twice a month, Zamir — another Israeli transplant — opens his collection

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Habait, a cultural series, is among the highestprofile Israeli activities in Berlin, with events showcasing Israeli musicians, filmmakers and writers (its main portal is a Facebook page, for those interested in attending). Habait is a project of Nirit Bialer, who initiated the outreach program when she realized that for many Berliners, Israelis culture is intriguing but misunderstood.

Many Germans know only “the Mideast conflict, the Holocaust, some shtetl and klezmer,” said Bialer, who — having participated in German-Israeli exchange programs as a youth — has a passion for cross-cultural understanding. Previously, she added, the few Israeli cultural events in Berlin had been mostly formal gatherings organized by the Israeli embassy or by what she referred to, in the curiously removed way of many Israelis, as “the Jewish community.”

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2015

tel Aviv After Dark Journey into the fictive underbelly of Israel’s cultural capital in short story collection ‘Tel Aviv Noir.’

Beth Kissileff JTA

A

sked by a literary magazine to name an Israeli author deserving of English translation, Etgar Keret — the Tel Aviv-based writer whose short stories have been published to worldwide acclaim — named novelist Gadi Taub.

A year later, Keret has been instrumental in bringing Taub’s prose to an American audience with the forthcoming anthology “Tel Assaf Gavron, left, and Etgar Keret have Aviv Noir,” which Keret edited alongside Is- stories in the “Tel Aviv Noir” raeli novelist, translator and musician Assaf collection.

Gavron.

The anthology, which probes the Israeli gle, it looks upside down. I’m not trying city’s underbelly, opens with Taub’s short to say that’s where you see the truth. It’s story “Sleeping-Mask,” a modern fable about a half-truth, the half most people don’t a young woman who enters into prostitution in want to see.”

Taub’s words could be a manifesto for an effort to pay off her father’s gambling debts.

Of the women who put out prostitution ads, the anthology, which was published in the story’s narrator explains, “We all walk in- October by Akashic Books.

“Tel Aviv Noir” exposes through short side the grid of normal life. But they walk under it, crossing all the lines diagonally. The fiction the seamier sides of the Israeli city world doesn’t just look different from that an- known as “the Bubble.” Akashic has preA TE

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Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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viously published “Noir” volumes focused on some 70 other cities, including more obvious candidates like Las Vegas, Miami and Manila.

The 14 stories in “Tel Aviv Noir,” all original and commissioned for this volume, are divided into three categories: Encounter, Estrangements and Corpses.

Keret and Gavron agreed that a major goal of the anthology was to bring a younger generation of writers to English-speaking audiences. At 49, Taub, whose bestselling novel “Allenby Street” was made into a popular Israeli television show, is the oldest.

A few of the writers, such as Lavie Tidhar and Silje Bekeng, write in English, (Tidhar’s contribution takes a look at what could have been if Tel Aviv had grown according to Herzl’s dream.) But the work of most of the writers, including Gai Ad, Matan Hermoni, Deakla Kaydar and Yoav Katz, had never been accessible to English-speaking audiences.

“Tel Aviv is a city built around the tension between never-ending life: pubs open all night, a weekend at the end of every day — and death itself: terrible slums, crime, war, terrorism, poverty and addiction,” said Gon Ben Ari, who contributed to the anthology, and whose Hebrew-language novel “Sequoia Children” is being translated into English. “The fullness of the senses is only defined in its relation to the imminent death.”

Kaydar told JTA that her attitude to the anthology changed with the Gaza war this summer.

“I remember thinking to myself that Tel Aviv is so lightened, happy and hot — not very ‘noirish,’ ” she said. “And then came July and the war hit us. I found myself with my two little girls sitting in a shelter, hiding from bombs whistling over our heads nonstop, every day and night for 48 days straight. These were the darkest days, not only in Tel Aviv but all over Israel — and for both sides — Israelis and Palestinians. I guess I miss the days when I was looking for a good noir-darkness to write about.”

23

many things that are totally not normal and extreme become part of your daily routine.”

— Etgar Keret Keret’s contribution to “Tel Aviv Noir” is about a couple who adopts a dog and does increasingly strange things — like killing pigeons and eventually other living beings — to feed it.

In an interview with JTA, he said the story was an allegory for life in Israel.

“This universe in which many things that are totally not normal and extreme become part of your daily routine,” he explained.

And we come to take these extremes for granted.

“In Alaska, you don’t know how cold it is,” Keret said. “Tel Aviv is one of the safest cities I’ve ever known. A girl can walk at 4 a.m. and not feel scared. At the same time, a bomber can get inside and explode. Which side are you more focused on?”

For his part, Gavron said it is interesting to note that the anthology is coming out at the same time as “Tehran Noir,” which is focused on the capital city of Iran. In an interview from Omaha, where he is American Israeli Cooperative Enterprise Scholar at the University of Nebraska, Gavron said, “Tel Aviv deserves its status as an interesting city, with culture and literature and with noir as well as everywhere in the world. I like to be grouped with other cities in the world, and not in [the] usual context that Israel is given.”

Gavron’s story in “Tel Aviv Noir” centers on a murder at a start-up that has developed “an application that helps you find misplaced things.”

It takes place at Dizengoff Center, a Tel Aviv shopping mall and office building.

Keret happens to live near Dizengoff Center and visits it frequently. Still, he was surprised to learn of the “boxing club, huge parking spaces and secret places I don’t know” described in Gavron’s work.

“It is a bit like meeting your neighbor every day, and one day he invites you home and there is a shrine for Elvis,” Keret said. “You think, ‘I thought I knew this guy.’ ” ◆

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

“This universe in which

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

24

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A rental in Guanacaste. “There is a niche, and there is a need,” says kosher rental broker. COU RTESY OF KOSH ER C ASAS

HILARY LARSON Travel Writer

A

nytime she traveled off the proverbial beaten path, Riverdale’s Bryna Landes, like many Jews who keep kosher, used to pack heavy. Really heavy.

Suitcases full of canned tuna, shrink-wrapped bread, pots, pans and peelers amounted to a portable kosher kitchen.

Then one year she had a villa kashered before her arrival in Costa Rica, a destination popular for its exquisite beaches, tropical scenery and security in a volatile region.

Landes lined up kosher meat and hired a private chef to cook for her family. “It was life-altering,” recalls Landes, a former event-marketing professional from Montreal who travels with her husband and three teenage children.

“When I got back, everyone asked me, ‘How did you make that happen?’ And I realized there was a market for it.”

This year, Landes and Eve Berman, a friend and fellow parent from SAR Academy in Riverdale, launched Kosher Casas, a business aimed at giving kashrut-observant Jews the same experience Lnades had: a choice of 90 properties across

Costa Rica that run the gamut of size and price. All are koshered by the local religious authority before each arrival and stocked with kosher meats and groceries. Clients can pre-order from a wide selection of kosher prepared foods, hire a private chef, or assemble any combination of options.

With a new generation of observant, globe-trotting Jews, you might think this sort of service would be more widespread. But after combing the Internet and asking around, I couldn’t come up with anything similar — a full-service kosher lodging network in a vacation area that isn’t in America or Israel. “There is a niche, and there is a need,” said Marc Cohen, a founder and executive vice president of Kosher Mansions, a Brooklyn-based firm launched three years ago that brokers kosher rentals.

“When you go to a hotel, you can’t leave the kids upstairs and hang out in the lounge. People are looking for a homey experience.”

Most kosher rentals cluster in the tri-state area and South Florida/ Miami — areas with ample kosher dining and shopping. While numerous outfits can broker the rental of a kosher home in Europe or elsewhere, Kosher Casas may be among the first to offer a total kosher experience in a place not known for its

stainless-steel pots, and enlisted the help of rabbinic authorities and Jewish residents in San José, where the 4,000-member, mostly Orthodox Costa Rican Jewish community is based at the Centro Israelita Zionista.

Then there was the challenge of arranging to coordinate services between San José — a gritty, not particularly tourist-friendly city — and the three far-flung resort areas where villas are located.

Precisely because this is not a vacation in the well-trodden precincts of Miami, New Jersey or Tel Aviv, personalized service is key to making guests feel comfortable. “It’s a very individualized approach,” said Landes, who offers a Shabbat package with hot plates, hot water heaters and tea lights. “Regardless of your level of kosher observance, we wanted to re-kosher every time.

I want everyone to feel comfortable that the kashrut is at a high level.”

That level, obviously, does not come cheap — but kosher travelers are generally willing to pay the premium. Kosher Casas rentals range from about $3,500 a week to more than $25,000 a night, with variables including time of year and add-on options like golf carts, butlers and chefs.

Landes and Berman spend hours on the phone advising clients on the minutiae of a particular property: Do the families need a large, open space? Two homes next to each other, for a bigger group?

For Fuchs, as a parent, it was reassuring that Landes knew the size and depth of the pool, as well as whether the property had a swing set in the back.

“Because we keep kosher and we have vacationed there ourselves, we know every home,” Landes said.

They also know how tiresome it can be to travel while kosher. Landes said she has always relished adventure — but there came a low point a few years back when her husband, Joshua, had forgotten to pack the Riverdale family’s cooking pot until the last moment and tossed it into his hand luggage, where it was removed by Westchester Airport guards for inspection. continued on page 36

25 Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

kosher infrastructure.

Both Landes and Berman say the response has been enthusiastic, with winter booking fast — especially yeshiva week — and the first clients having vacationed just after Kosher Casas launched in late summer.

Daniella Fuchs and her husband, Jeff Wechselblatt, were among those initial clients. They had enjoyed Costa Rica as a childless couple and had always wanted to return with their children, so when they heard about Kosher Casas, they booked right away.

“It was just so easy,” said Fuchs, an organizational psychologist and fellow SAR parent, of her vacation last summer. “You could go out all day and come home to a home cooked meal, with your ingredients, in your kitchen.” With three boys, various allergies and two weeks of vacation, “to know we were going to have meals, and be taken care of, that was very comforting.”

Fuchs said Costa Rica is an ideal family destination: “There is a kosher infrastructure, it’s not a very expensive country, and there’s so much to do for families.” Indeed, with beach-lined coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific, rainforests, jungles and a well-oiled tourism industry that caters to recreational sports, Costa Rica is decidedly trendy.

“The weather is always great,” said Berman, who had worked in real estate investment banking and also vacationed in Costa Rica before starting Kosher Casas. The country is a relatively short flight away from New York; many locals, who are known for their friendliness, speak both Spanish and English. “And with what’s going on in the world today, Costa Rica is a pretty safe place,” Berman added, noting that she and Landes felt comfortable traveling throughout the country as women alone.

Given the demand for foreign travel, however, Landes and Berman say they hope to expand to more destinations. Amazingly, laying the groundwork for this complicated venture took just a year — but it was a year of pounding the oft-uneven pavement of rural Costa Rica. The two women negotiated with a kosher slaughterer and prep kitchens, sourced glass dishes and

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Back To The Borscht Belt

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

26

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hen young independent music enthusiasts descended on the an-tiquated Jewish resort of Kutsher’s for an international indie rock concert series in 2008, it was “kind of like ‘Cocoon’ meets ‘The Shining,’” Barry Hogan recalls in the documentary film “Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort.”

The comment by Hogan, founder of the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival organization, exemplifies the widening generational gap that ultimately forced Kutsher’s to close in December 2013. Yet despite the hotel’s obvious state of physical decline, Hogan observes, the venue still had the right charm and “intimate” stage for bands and

indie “nerd” fans to raise the roof during electric performances.

Similar nostalgia, pride and humor characterize the other interviews in “Welcome to Kutsher’s,” an updated version of which premiered last week in Palm Beach, Fla. (The new version contains newly discovered archival material as well as the latest information on the sale and demolition of the hotel, according to the film’s website.) Viewers will be treated to a quirky smorgasbord of “Borscht Belt” culture. Directors Ian Rosenberg and Caroline Laskow explore the origins of Jewish American investment in the Catskill Mountains, beginning in the late 19th century.

Next, the filmmaking pair visits Kutsher’s Country Club. This prominent hotel was a magnet for

family vacation ultimately outgrew the resorts that had nurtured their prospering culture. The Catskills no longer appealed to newly affluent Jews.

One poignant moment in the film recounts the effect the advent of jet travel had on the hotel. “As things went on, people were asking for all the amenities with the hotel,” family matriarch Helen Kutsher, regarded the “First Lady of the Catskills,” says.

“Do you have an indoor pool? Do you have a golf course?” callers would often ask before making a reservation, according to Helen. “They wanted everything. … I asked many people, ‘Do you play golf? Do you like swimming?’ ‘No,’ they’d answer, ‘but I like to know that you have it.’”

Competition for Kutsher’s was intense, as luxury hotels proliferat-ed around the country, offering deluxe packages with no discrimi-natory barriers to entry. Likewise, Caribbean cruises came into vogue. Even more alluring, the prospect of buying property in Florida, where aging patrons could live on what became known as “permanent vacation,” defined decades of exodus from the Catskills tradition.

Perhaps the most nostalgic description of a vacation culture in decline can be found in the

continued on page 40

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27 Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

vacationing Jewish families, as well as a springboard to success for prominent entertainers and gifted athletes throughout the latter half of the 20th century.

Now that the Catskills region is in decline, the film, which first played the Jewish festival circuit in 2012, honors the legacy of those who made summer memories so colorful for so many generations, and sheds new light on a vibrant chapter of the American Jewish experience.

Mark Kutsher, then the hotel’s owner, A still shot from the forthcoming film “Welcome to was proud to host the indie rock concert Kutsher’s.” kutsh er sDoc.com. series in 2008. Staying true to his family’s inviting and experimenting business style, tury through the 1930s,” Rosenberg reminds he admires the youthful spirit and dedication audiences. of the festival participants, even though he “The phrase, ‘No Hebrews or Consumpfinds their loud music “physically damaging.” tives’ were included in advertisements for Indeed, the famous concert hall at Kutsher’s these restricted hotels,” he says. is a cherished relic of an illustrious past. Ray The culture of Kutsher’s and other Jewish Charles performed there. Jay Leno, Jerry Sein- hotels in the Catskills evolved to accommofeld, the late Joan Rivers, and many other stars date religiously observant patrons, providing made regular appearances at the hotel at some Friday night and holiday services as well as point in their careers. Assembling this cast of kosher cooking. For the first time in history, characters epitomized the inclusive spirit that it was possible for strictly religious Jew-ish was at the heart of the Borscht Belt experience. families to go on holiday.

We shouldn’t forget that the Jewish resorts The story of Kutsher’s is also a tale of asin the Catskills “were created in large part similation. Ironically, the oppressed populabecause other hotels in the region refused to tion that initially sought refuge and release admit Jews around the turn of the [20th] cen- in the form of an affordable and accessible

28

In Downtown L.A., Everything Old Is New Again Remaking the city’s now-hip (and touristy) Grand Central Market, whose deep Jewish roots go back nearly a century.

ANTHONY WEISS JTA

L

os Angeles — At 97 years old, Grand Central Market has become one of the hottest destinations in this city, drawing long lines of foodies eager for the finest in artisanal cheeses, coddled eggs and pour-over coffee.

In August, the historic food market in downtown Los Angeles was named by Bon Appetit magazine as one of the country’s 10 best new food venues. Long a bustling bargain mart that catered to the city’s poorer denizens, the market has been reborn as a gourmet spot and tourist attraction.

At the heart of the market’s cavernous, industrial-era space sits one of the stars of that revival: Wexler’s Deli, the latest offering from wunderchef Micah Wexler, who has brought deli classics such as pastrami and corned beef back to Grand Central after a decades-long absence.

Wexler’s, along with the rest of the eclectic fare newly arrived at Grand Central, reflects the upscale, diverse crowds — including a burgeon-

ing Jewish population — that is moving downtown, drawn by the historic architecture, urban street life, newly converted lofts, and thriving bar and restaurant scene.

But Wexler and his deli are also the most visible and recent symbols of the market’s deep Jewish roots, which weave continuously through its history from its earliest days to its current renaissance.

The primary author of Grand Central’s latest chapter is Adele Yellin, a spry 67, the owner and hands-on manager of the market.

An interior designer by trade, she took over the market after her husband died and is in the process of overhauling it even as she seeks to retain its charm.

On a recent morning, Yellin shakes off a lingering cold to lead a brisk tour of the market, describing its history, newest vendors, recent upgrades and plans for further renovations. She points out the raw bar under construction, the expansion of a successful juicery, and the brisk business at the combination butcher shop and grilled meat counter.

Yellin’s late husband, Ira, purchased Grand

Central Market in 1984 for $5.5 million as part of an effort to restore the historic core of the then-moldering downtown. A lawyer who had studied urban planning, Ira Yellin believed that Los Angeles needed a thriving center if it were to survive as a world-class city. He poured money into some of the iconic buildings downtown, including Grand Central Market, the Bradbury Building and the Million Dollar Theater.

The market opened in 1917 to serve the mansions of the adjacent Bunker Hill neighborhood near the iconic Angel’s Flight funicular railway, which took passengers up and down the steep hill. As wealthy residents moved away and downtown expanded, Grand Central became a hub for the German, Italian, Russian and Jewish immigrants flooding into the growing city. The immigrant communities were both the customers and the vendors.

According to Grand Central’s website, the market in the 1920s featured some 90 stalls of

29

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The People Before the Book: The Great Judaica Manuscript Collections of England Micah Wexler at Wexler’s Deli, above. Opposite page, inside the Grand Central Market.

P hotos by Anthony Wei ss

fishmongers, dry goods salesmen and Jewish delis.

By the time Filomena Eriman arrived at the market in 1969 to work as an accountant for the family who owned it, the customer base had changed to reflect the new immigrant populations of the downtown area — East Asians and Latin Americans. Still, Eriman estimates, roughly half the vendors were Jewish, including a hole-in-the-wall deli that sold some very tasty pastrami, as she recalls.

As the vendors grew older and retired, they sold their businesses to a new generation of owners who were increasingly Korean, Chinese and Mexican. One of the last of the older generation who hung on was Bill Dolginow, who into his 90s would take the bus downtown to the market to oversee his deli, even when he could barely walk.

By the time Ira Yellin purchased the market, architect Brenda Levin says, there were “lots of burritos and tacos, but not much pastrami.”

The market had become a haven for Latino shoppers looking to stretch their food budgets.

Its main selling point, as a 1985 Los Angeles Times article put it, was that “the prices can’t be beat.” Vendors specialized in items that could be sold cheaply, such as day-old bread, overripe fruits and vegetables, and deli meats that had passed their sell-by dates, alongside fresher fare.

Despite the downscale reputation, the market was still booming. By some estimates, it continued on page 40

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Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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Wildflowers color the scene on a hike to Mori Point. GEORGE M EDOVOY

GEORGE MEDOVOY Special To The Jewish Week

P

acifica, Calif. — About 20 minutes south of San Francisco is a stretch of the California coastline filled with charming little towns far removed from the fast-paced urban life.

Pacifica, with a population slightly over 37,000, is one of these lovely towns, with everything from good food and a pier to surfing and hiking.

And if you happen to be looking for Jewish life, well, there’s that, too, in the form of the Coastside Jewish Community, a non-affiliated group of about 75 families that has been a fixture of this area — including the small towns of Pacifica, El Granada, Moss Beach, Princeton-by-the-Sea and Montara and a sprinkling of people from up the peninsula and the East Bay — for 23 years.

“One of our strong values,” says Cathy Hauer, president of the board of Coastside, “is that we are inclusive and welcoming, and we embrace the diversity of people from different Jewish backgrounds.

“Some of us came from Reform, some from Orthodox, some from completely non-practicing [backgrounds]. Some of us had Jewish educations, some of us didn’t, but we all find sort of common ground in just being together as Jews in all the different ways that can be described.”

The group uses a Reconstructionist prayer book, but it is “not locked into that,” says Hauer, a practicing psychotherapist. The CJC, notes Hauer, is a member of the Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations and has created a community “where members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community can feel welcome and just at ease.”

Friday night services on the sec-

noting about the castle: it was once used to watch for Japanese naval craft after the invasion of Pearl Harbor, and it even doubled as a speakeasy during Prohibition.

After hiking and castle-going, there’s a lot to do in town. For starters, you can visit the Oceana Art Gallery in Eureka Square to view works by local artists, and then you can enjoy the eateries near Rockaway Beach.

Nick’s, a rousing place since 1927, is where I went in the evening to enjoy live music, drinks and a monster ice cream dessert.

Across the street from Nick’s it was dinner at Moonraker Restaurant, located within the Best Western Plus Lighthouse Hotel; the local King Salmon Pinwheel was served with beluga lentils, braised greens, lemon thyme sauce, and spicy aioli.

Around the block there’s an intimate place called A Grape in the Fog, where guests enjoy wine tasting and live music. During happy hour, there were sparkling wine cocktails, like one imaginative drink, meant to capture the spirit of Pacifica, called “Pacificaaahhh.”

This memorable drink was made with sparkling wine and raspberry rhubarb syrup — a nod to Pacifica’s memorable sunsets.

Beyond Pacifica, one town I like a lot is Half Moon Bay, where the Ritz-Carlton overlooks the Pacific.

Thirty-five miles south of Half Moon Bay, you’ll find Ano Nuevo State Park, where elephant seals give birth to their pups between December and January.

If, by chance, you go in for ghost stories, you can always visit Moss Beach Distillery for drinks or a meal and learn about a mysterious ghost called “The Blue Lady,” who is always dressed in blue.

Legend has it that this sorrowful ghost, forever searching for her lover, has been involved in all kinds of mischief at the restaurant.

It’s a legend that only adds to the charm of the coastline so close to San Francisco. ✦ More information at: www.coastsidejewishcommunity.org, www. pacificachamber.com, www.visitcalifornia.com, www.parks.ca.gov.

31 Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

ond Friday of the month are held at Holy Family Episcopal Church in Half Moon Bay. “We call it our Holy Family shul,” says Hauer, who points out that the group’s ark resides in the church. Gatherings also take place in members’ homes.

And what can you do in Pacifica if you’re a visiting tourist, perhaps spending the day from San Francisco?

Well, there are Pacifica’s beautiful open spaces, including a hike to Mori Point, which includes a beachside trail bordered by colorful wildflowers and crashing waves.

All 110 acres of Mori Point are part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and when you reach the top, you can see all the way from Point Reyes to Pedro Point — an incredible, breathtaking California vista.

High above the ocean on my own hike, I discovered the very spot where the famous drive-the-caroff-the-cliff scene was shot for the 1971 film, “Harold and Maude.”

And not too far from where Harold’s car goes careening into the ocean there’s a piece of history of a different sort: the watery location where ships once braved the waves to unload liquor destined for Depression-era speakeasies, like the one at Sam’s Castle (read on) or another one that was housed in the historic Sanchez Adobe, an important example of Mexican-era California architecture worth visiting.

Close to nearby wetlands on my hike, I stopped on a wooden bridge to peer down at California’s very own red-legged frog — most likely the one made famous in Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.”

McCloskey Castle, a rather modest affair as far as castles go, but a castle nevertheless with a panoramic view of the bay. Open for tours, the castle was built in 1907

by Henry Harrison McCloskey, an attorney in San Francisco who wanted to remind his wife of her childhood home in Scotland.

The castle was purchased by the late San Franciscan, Sam Mazza, who filled it with Hollywood movie memorabilia he had collected; thus, the place came to be known as “Sam’s Castle.”

Other historical tidbits worth

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Aulus and the need to remember.

FreemA GoTTlieb Special To The Jewish Week

‘A

re you a big-city girl?” our burly host, Jean-Michel, inquired over breakfast in a centuries-old bishop’s palace he had bought from a friend and converted into a bed-and-breakfast in St. Lizier, one of the oldest, loveliest villages of the Ariège, in southern France. My husband and I were following a dream trail from Barcelona, through Catalunya, the country of medieval Jewish mystics, across the Pyrenees and to the land of the Cathars.

I replied that, yes, I may have come to the Pyrenees to escape the strains of urban life but that I’m a New Yorker.

“I’m from a place even smaller than this, about 35 kilometers from here, called Aulus, said JeanMichel. “My mother still lives there.”

From my question about whether there was animal rennet in the huge brown fragrant cheese he brought to the table, it must have been apparent that we were observant Jews; he replied that he did not know. The locals put in their traditional ingredients and produced the superb fare as they always had. We ended up eating bread and locally produced jam,

A memorial plaque in Aulus telling the story of Jews who died trying to escape the Nazis. avi D Kor al

drinking infusions of the natural herbs produced in the area.

Our host then told us of a Jewish friend, Izzy, who lived part time in the States and partly in Paris but regularly came to visit, particularly with his mother, every year. “He lived in our village,” Jean-Michel said. “Many Jews did during the war. A Jewish family was billeted with my grandmother.

Really good people, she always A sign pointing the way to one of the area’s thermal springs.

Davi D Kor al

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The Casade d’Ars waterfall in the mountainous Aulus region.

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said. “Very intelligent. And educated. They never returned.”

Aside from the dairy products of the shepherds of the area, Aulus-les-Bains, once known for its bear trainers, was already famous in Roman times for the medicinal properties of the minerals in its four springs. Over time it came to specialize in treatment of high cholesterol, diabetes, and metabolic malfunctions. Many large hotels that flourished in the 19th century were largely vacant during the Great Depression. Unfortunately, they presented an ideal place to concentrate Jews of southern France as well as “foreign” Jews from central Europe, with even a few from the east.

From the town’s 400 original inhabitants, the village population almost tripled with the arrival of people with entirely different lifestyles.

At first the Aulusiens could not understand why all avail-

able hotel space had been requisitioned by the authorities and there would be no “season” that year. Remarkably, despite the anti-Semitic propaganda from the national radio, once they became acquainted with the Jewish arrivals, they got along with them. It didn’t hurt that the Jews provided a little extra income SCALE: 100% Save Time: 11/ and employment, and CLIENT: for theKosher Casas LINE SCREEN: Notes: JOB#: KC2014-01 detainees, it certainly helped PROOF#: 1 DESC: to Kosher Casas Ad FOLDS: 0 The Jewish Week have fresh eggs, milk, andPUBLICATION: butter, Fonts: Helvetica Neue 75 Bold, HelvetiPUBDATE: mushrooms, trout, and greens at BAR-BAT MITZVAH FAMILY TOURS AD: JLH ca Neue 85 Heavy very reasonable prices. TRIM: 4” x 5” Small Groups - Personal Attention - Fine Hotels - Unique Itineraries Images: KosherCasasLogo Ad2.eps, “Some of them were wealthy,” BLEED: icon desktop.eps, Paraiso09_0117 LA.tif SAFETY: File Name: KosherCasas QP JewishJean-Michel continued.

“One GUTTER: Week 4x5 Ad.indd family drove in from Antwerp in a Rolls-Royce, full of diamonds. All that disappeared. We don’t know where. As for the family, they Signoff: never returned.” To remember all this, he felt, was very important.

In the first rafle, or raid, by TOVA GILEAD, INC. the French gendarmes on Aug. www.tovagilead.com • 1-800-242-TOVA 26, 1942, 226 foreign Jews were

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continued on page 37

My Girona

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

34

The Catalonian city and the reclamation of its Jewish past.

Abby Meth KAnter Special To The Jewish Week

I

n the charming port town of Castello d’Empúries, municipal guide Paul Andreu tells Jewish visitors about the “call,” the town’s Jewish district — “Sepharad is your home.”

Catalonia is indeed a Jewish home. While the physical evidence of vanished Jewish life is slight in such towns as Castello, Figueres, Tortosa, Besalu, Cadaques and Barcelona, Catalonians are proud to tell you about their strong commitment to reclaim the Jewish heritage of their community.

The courtyard of the Nahmanides Institute for Sephardic Studies and the Museum of the History of the Jews. P hotos by Ab by M eth K Anter

The heartbeat of this effort is in Girona. “No other city in Spain is doing this,” says Assumpció da Hosta, director of the city’s Centre Bonastruc ca Porta. By “this” she means furthering the discovery, exploration, restoration and revival of the religious and cultural heritage of Catalonian Jewry.

This enterprise is being carried out principally by non-Jews. Ex-

cept for the few visiting professors or diplomats in the region — and the relatively small but vibrant Jewish community of Barcelona — there are no Jews to undo what centuries of anti-Semitism and decades of oppressive rule by Francisco Franco accomplished: the suppression of the region’s rich Jewish past. (Franco was nondiscriminatory; much of Catalonian language and culture was also quelled.) And, says da Hosta, the history of Girona, of Catalonia, and of Spain is incomplete without the history of its Jews.

The “voices of the Jews were silenced by force for 500 years,” she says. Now, with freedom, she and her colleagues “must bring that voice to life.”

That voice emanates strongly from Girona — named by the Romans who founded it in the first century BCE, it was one of the most important towns of the kingdoms of Aragon and Catalonia. It is a cosmopolitan city of 75,000, with a picturesque, walled Old Quarter across the Ter River from the city’s “new” section. “The pearl in its oyster” — its medieval section — “is the call,” according to da Hosta. Its Jewish quarter, one of the best-preserved in Europe, is a warren of steep stone stairways, dark alleys, mysterious courtyards, and ancient buildings that remains essentially as they were 800 years ago. (The Catalonian word call may be derived from calle, Spanish for street, or kehila, Hebrew for community. Whatever its origins, it denotes a Jewish district alone and is used nowhere else in Spain but Catalonia.)

The genesis of Girona’s Jewish community dates to the ninth century. Over the next 700 years, it flourished, becoming one of the most significant centers of Jewish philosophy and study of Kabbalah in Western Europe, earning it the name “Mother Town of Israel.”

At the height of its prosperity, Girona’s call was home to 1,000

Jews — artisans, merchants, doctors, bankers, moneylenders, poets, and philosophers — representing 10 percent of the city’s population.

By the middle of the 12th century, the call was centered around the Carrer de la Forca, a winding street leading to the cathedral in the oldest part of the city. The call’s proximity to the cathedral is not atypical; protection offered by the clerical authorities — in exchange for exorbitant taxes, of course — was key to the Jews’ security. This location, however, often gave rise to laws forcing the Jews to seal windows or doors that opened onto routes taken by Christian worshipers. Documents provide the locations of vanished landmarks, including the town’s three successive synagogues.

It is on what is believed to be the site of the city’s last synagogue, built in the 14th century, at the head of a dark, narrow climb up Carrer Sant Llorenc, that one finds the Centre Bonastruc ca Porta.

(The name, meaning “door of good fortune,” refers to Girona’s — and Spain’s — most prominent Jewish scholar and rabbi, Moshe ben Nahman, Nahmanides, the Ramban.

Home to the Nahmanides Institute for Sephardic Studies and the Museum of the History of the Jews, the large, well-appointed facility has a foliage-adorned inner courtyard, with a huge Star of

In Tuleda’s archives, remnants of documents record the lives of the town’s 15th-century Jews.

A winding alleyway in the “call,” Girona’s Jewish distict.

David embedded in its stone floor.

This serves as an occasional gathering place for the center’s scholarly workshops and seminars.

The several outbuildings that form the complex served the ancient Jewish community as a school for women and as a mikvah.

The center’s exhibits illustrate the region’s Jewish daily life, religion, and culture from the ninth to the 15th century. Among its treasures are 27 Hebrew gravestones — the most important such trove in Spain — from the medieval Jewish cemetery on Montjuic outside the city walls, where only scattered fragments were found. Their Hebrew inscriptions reflect a touching poignancy as they recall the Jews who lived and died in the call. One lovingly designates the resting place of “Zion, a pleasant child of delights. May he rest in Eden.”

The center’s vast collection of manuscripts includes those written by noted Catalonian kabbalists: Nahmanides, of course, Ezra ben Solomon, and Ariel of Girona,

In the courtyard of Salvador Dali’s house in Cadaques, on Catalonia’s Costa Brava.

Jewish heritage. Destinations for those seeking Catalonia’s — and Spain’s — Jewish past are well mapped out on the “Red de Juderías de España-Caminos de Sefarad” — a route through the centers of preexpulsion Spanish Jewry.

Each Catalonian call has its own timeline of prosperity and hardship, persecution and acceptance, forced conversions and expulsion.

What distinguishes the call in the jewel-like village of Besalú — reached by a magnificent Romanesque stone bridge over the Fluvia River — is its ancient mikvah, the

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The mikvah in Besalu is one of only two ancient ritual baths discovered in Spain.

only one of its kind in Spain and one of only a very few in Europe.

Discovered by chance in 1964 by a homeowner digging a well, the ritual bath was authenticated only after a rabbi came from Paris and confirmed its halachic specifications. Built in the 12th century, the mikvah is reached by passing through the Plaça dels Jueus to a flight of stone steps leading down to the cavern-like, Romanesquestyle underground chamber.

Medieval Besalú had a community of 250 Jews — among them Dr. Abraham d’Escallar, identified by a surviving record as physician to King James I — and was served by one synagogue, built, according to a 1264 document, with James’

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Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

among others.

Interest in Spanish Jewry has been growing since the death of Franco in 1975, and particularly since 1992, the 500th anniversary of the expulsion. (Earlier this year, Spain passed legislation offering dual citizenship to those with Sephardic ancestry.) The infamous aspects of Spain’s past regarding its Jews inform the center’s commitment to furthering study and research. “If children know about history,” says da Hosta, “they won’t repeat the mistakes.”

To further that educational effort, the center conducts research, sponsors scholarly symposiums, mounts cultural exhibits, organizes programs on the arts, and provides guided tours.

The museum thoroughly covers the history of Girona’s own Jewish community — a dizzying chronicle of alternating periods of persecution and relative calm and freedom.

The benchmark year of 1391 saw pogroms throughout the region; Girona’s Jewish community was essentially destroyed, forcing many to leave, others to convert.

Following the decree that expelled the Jews of Castile and Aragon in 1492, the last remaining Jews of the city departed.

Girona is an ideal base for further explorations of Catalonian

36

Casa Kosher

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

continued from page 25

The Romanesque bridge of Besalu.

My Girona

continued from previous page permission.

By papal bull, a wall was built around the Jewish quarter in 1391 in response to pogroms that were decimating other Jewish communities. The end of Besalú’s community came in 1436 when most of the town’s Jews left; the few remaining families were exiled in 1492.

In Tortosa — embraced by the Beceite mountains and the Ebro river — Mayor Joan Sabate I Borras tells a group of Jewish visitors, “We are proud of our Jewish history and past.

We teach with an open mind,” as he offers an historic survey of the Jews of his ancient and beautiful city.

In Tortosa’s Remolins district is the medieval Jewish neighborhood, one of the most important in Catalonia. Little more than street names reflect its Hebraic past, but the antiquity of its Jewish community is attested to by the important find of the trilingual tablet dating to the time of the Visigoths. The Hebrew, Latin, and Greek inscriptions on the stone memorialize Meliosa, a young woman who lived in the sixth century and died at the age of 24.

Just outside Catalonia in the adjacent province of Navarra, Tudela is an important stop on a quest for Spain’s Jewish past, as it was the home of the famous Benjamin of Tudela, the “Jewish Marco Polo.” The lovely Plaza de Fueros shows remnants of the Judería, the Jewish quarter that began when craftspeople arrived in the ninth century and founded a community that prospered until the 12th. Some of Tudela’s 900 Jews managed to remain past the expulsion year of 1492; in 1498, the king moved them to the cathedral area for protection.

Because of its rectangular shape, raised platform, and balcony, Tudela’s 15th-century Christ school, an outstanding architectural echo of the Middle Ages, is thought to have served as a synagogue.

Most evocative of Tudela’s vanished Jews is a cache of Hebrew documents lovingly preserved in the municipal archives.

In Hebrew and Catalan rendered in Hebrew script, the documents mark business transactions, marriages, and other milestones in the lives of those who hid the parchments or used them as book covers to conceal the religion they were outwardly forced to abandon. Some still retain the shape of the books.

One ketubah records the marriage of “Dr. Maestre Natan de Narbona with the daughter of Semu’el Alisbili (el Sevillana) in Borja near Tudela 1 March 1482,” another between “Moseh, son of Levi, son of Gabbay and Solbella, daughter of Semuel Sar Salom in 1487.”

Examining these fragments that so vividly recall lives lived, loves consecrated, children born, and souls departed, dramatically underscores the enormity of the loss of the Jewish world of Catalonia.✦

Berlin

continued from page 21 And language — perhaps even more than hummus — is central to Israeli Berliner culture (though everyone I spoke with for this story was fluent in German and English). When I talked to Bialer, she was headed to Zula Café to meet a crowd of fellow Israelis for the bimonthly gathering of Hasholchan Hamitchadesh, a Hebrew-language social group.

Bialer’s co-hosts are Tal Alon, a Spitz editor, and Revital Szekely, who organizes Israeli children’s programs and a Hebrew-language Sunday school.

For any Jew — Israeli or American, expat or tourist — Germany, and Berlin in particular, represent a complex moral and sociological conundrum that cannot be easily resolved. This city, after all, was the headquarters of Hitler’s Third Reich, which orchestrated the destruction of European Jewry. That the State of Israel was born out of the ashes of the Holocaust only makes this

“I’m the guy with the pot!” he shouted from the other side of the security checkpoint, eliciting titters as the guards looked on askance. Joshua Landes is no drug smuggler, but he wouldn’t have been the first kosher traveler to risk having his loot confiscated at security. Every time a family tries to haul a suitcase full of frozen meat across borders, there is a chance that a gimlet-eyed guard won’t let it pass, “and then you have nothing,” said Berman.

“Also, nowadays, paying for [shipping] luggage. ... Can you imagine, a whole container of frozen meat, what that weighs? More than your plane ticket!”

That’s why, until now, many kosher travelers venturing to the Caribbean (or farther afield) have opted for kosher resorts, kosher bed-and-breakfasts and the like. Carting around heavy luggage is a drag; so is eating out of a suitcase for two weeks in a place where kashrut is nonexistent and local cuisine is vegetarian-unfriendly.

“If it were just myself and my husband, I could survive,” reflected Landes, a sentiment probably shared by many of her clients. But kids are picky eaters. And while you could theoretically buy a blowtorch and spend three hours koshering the grill, Berman said, “on your vacation, do you really want to?”

For kosher travelers abroad, “eating the local fare is not an option, and we wanted to change that,” Landes said. “Part of the vacation is eating real food. I notice that is the first thing people ask when you come back from a trip — not even about the place, but how did you eat? We Jews are people who like our food.” ✦ equation more complex for Israelis.

Every Jewish Berliner wrestles with this, as does every Jew who steps into Berlin’s stunning, immersive Holocaust Memorial and eyes the commemorative plaques tucked into cobblestones. Perhaps because they grew up knowing firsthand the challenges of building a multiethnic society, the young Israelis seem less gung-ho enthusiastic than cautiously optimistic about their role in a new Jewish Berlin.

“There are things taking place the way they never took place before, but on a much smaller scale than people would have imagined before,” reflected Sapir. He means before the war, of course.

Today the goulash is less likely to be kosher, but more likely to come with a side of hummus and pickles. And the bourgeois burghers of prewar Berlin could never have imagined the raucous spirit of a Habait kibbutz party, with 30-something Israelis whirling to an electronic hora.

The scene may be small, but in this season of memorials and reflection, it’s a joy to be part of something new. ✦

Dream Trail

deported to the camp of Vernet, and from there to Drancy and Auschwitz; clearly an enforced stay at a spa or a hotel that may have been luxurious under other circumstances could become a deathtrap. One survivor who was a child at the time called his time at Aulus a “respite.”

But after the raids, villagers and inmates were under no illusions. On the day of the raid, the town’s mayor, Auguste Calvet, who owned two of the hotels, told his guests to vacate, and locals helped them hide.

“But no more of these horrors,” said Jean-Michel, “Go enjoy yourselves! There is a superb market in St. Girons.” But at our earliest opportunity, and without planning to, we found ourselves a day or two later in Aulus-lesBains.

Nestled in the Garbet valley at an altitude of about 2,500 feet, the village is embraced by majestic mountains blanketed with pine and rising over deep cols with lush, brilliant green meadows. Already as we drove there, the scenery changed, becoming wilder and more beautiful with every bend in the road. It became clear why Vichy chose to plant its ghetto there. Aulus’ isolation at the most remote end of the Couserans region, separated from Spain’s Val de Cardos by a six-mile mountain wall, made it a natural prison, easily monitored by a single sentry from an outpost on the one road between the village and St. Girons, and the police blocked all access to the valley. For all but the fittest, unacquainted with the trails and ill equipped for extremes in the weather, Aulus was almost impossible to escape. Yet escape across the mountain frontier to Spain and Andorra was the Jews’ only hope. This perilous journey was undertaken by the intrepid few with the help of local guides, or passeurs, some of whom took a fee, while others led them out without remuneration and at risk to their lives. One woman,

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Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

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Jeanne Rogalle, whose father and fiancé were passeurs, and who received the Legion d’Honneur and the medal of the Righteous of Yad Vashem, explained that she wanted to fight the Nazis not only because her brother had been captured, but also because of the terrible suffering she saw.

More than 100 passeurs were arrested and deported.

After the Free Zone was invaded by the Germans in November 1942, entire networks of escape routes were opened by the Resistance to get French partisans, Jews, and downed Allied pilots across the Pyrenees. In all, about 33,000 individuals succeeded in making that break for freedom, of whom 782 crossed the peaks of the Ariege. What for us are picturesque mountain trails were then nothing less than lifelines. These are commemorated today by walking itineraries (http://chemindelaliberte.fr/ les-steles-de-l-itineraire).

The village, we noticed, is divided — half of it the original Roman village, with clusters of modest stone houses around a church, from which begin the escape routes; across the way, in the lower part of the village near the baths, are the splendid spa hotels, whose exteriors still shed an ambience of fin de siècle glamour, with names like Hotel Majestic, Le Grand Hotel, Hotel de France, and Hotel Beauséjour, which no longer receive guests.

Nearest accommodations are to be had at Residence Les 3 Césars.

From the hotels, we moved on to the monument listing the names of the 640 Jews who had lived there, and the victims who had perished. Though plaques were erected in their memory in the 1990s by the Swiss Red Cross, a memorial of gray granite was unveiled as recently as 2008, telling the story of what had occurred.

Today, Aulus is both a spa and an adjunct to the ski station of Guzet-Neige. We ourselves hiked to the nearby Cascade d’Ars, which was the first lap of one of the escape routes, and picnicked in the sublime setting. ✦

Spring ahead For tourism?

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

38

Israeli hoteliers remain upbeat ahead of Passover vacation season.

Steve k. walz Special To The Jewish Week

w

ith nearly 25 percent of their annual income at stake, Israeli hoteliers and travel operators across the Jewish state are scrambling to lure American tourists for the Passover vacation period. Last summer’s war in Gaza and the sporadic bursts of violence in Jerusalem during the past few months put a dent in the country’s tourism industry, but there are reasons for optimism in the run-up to Pesach.

According to tourism officials, before the start of the Gaza war, foreign travel to Israel was up 15 percent over 2013. Those numbers, understandably, slipped as the country lost about a half-million tourists, or more than $900 million based on average spending per visitor, in the second half of the year, relative to 2013.

Despite this, reservations for Passover appear to be holding steady.

“Sure, some of our regular clients and potential new customers ask about the security situation, but when it comes to hotels that are located in central Jerusalem, there is very little impact on bookings and in fact the demand remains high,” said Rafi Baeri, the Dan Hotels’ vice president of sales and marketing.

Motti Verses, a spokesman for Hilton Israel hotels, which includes the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem and the Hilton Tel Aviv, agreed: “Traditional and Orthodox visitors from North America will not skip over Jerusalem because Pesach is more than just a vacation period. It is also a religious pilgrimage festival. Based on advance bookings, we are optimistic.”

Meira Goren, a well-known Israeli tour op-

The elegant King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

Pesach at the Inbal Jerusalem Hotel.

erator who offers a variety of Pesach vacation packages in hotels ranging from suburban Jerusalem to the pastoral Galilee region, added, “As far as I can tell, very little has changed in terms of reservations. As our company caters to a mostly Orthodox clientele, the religious crowds will continue to come to Israel no matter what the security situation might be.”

The variety of quality accommodations and amenities at major Israeli hotels have become major recruiting inducements for American tourists, who can choose between dozens of high-end Pesach programs offered by hotels and tour operators in the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Caribbean.

From Jerusalem to the Galilee A transformed Jerusalem, including the enduring pull of the Old City and the presence of the restored train station, now dubbed First Station, are natural draws for tourists, and good news for hoteliers. The Dan Panorama and Dan Boutique hotels, Baeri said, “attract large

numbers of Americans because of their proximity to attractions such as the Old City and the ‘Tachana’ [First Station], which has been transformed into a great venue for shows, shopping, eating etc.”

The chain’s King David Hotel in Jerusalem, he added, lures back many families for Pesach.

“In a number of cases, we are talking about multi-generational repeat clients. As the children of parents who regularly came to the hotel have now become adults themselves, they have continued the tradition of returning to the hotel for the holiday.”

Over at the Inbal Jerusalem Hotel, e-commerce manager Joanne Odes promises a “special holiday atmosphere” along with such amenities as renovated rooms, fully equipped swimming pool, fitness room and sauna, children’s club for kids of all ages and a gourmet Pesach menu.”

The new kid on the block in Jerusalem, the ornate Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem Hotel, which opened its doors in the spring, has been actively promoting itself as “the new standard of luxury accommodations in Israel.”

The Hilton’s Verses promised that the hotel’s seders, set in its ballroom, “will be one of the most prestigious events in the city.”

For tourists in search of serenity in pastoral settings, Goren Tours highlights an array of “out of the way” hotels. “There are growing numbers of tourists who don’t want to spend Pesach in mid-city hotels where thousands of guests are on top of each other,” said Goren Tours’ Meira Goren. She offers “smaller hotels in the mountains or among kibbutzim where there’s lots of fresh air, open spaces and many historical and cultural sites to visit.” Day trips with a sense of adventure are also available, she said.

Among the hotels that Goren Tours features are the Kfar Blum Hotel in the Upper Galilee, where guests can cascade in rafts along the nearby Jordan River; the Hagoshrim Kibbutz and Resort Hotel, which faces the Golan Heights and Mt. Hermon and the new Cramim Resort; and Spa hotel, a luxury facility built by the Isrotel chain in the Judean Mountains amid lush wine vineyards.

Two other facilities in Northern Israel have also attracted interest among English-speaking tourists from North America.

During the past decade, the Kinar Galilee Hotel, located along the banks of Lake Kinneret (opposite the city of Tiberias) has become a popular vacation spot for Anglos living in Israel who wish to spend a quiet Shabbat or summer vacation at the gateway to the Galilee and Golan Heights regions. The positive feedback to relatives back in the U.S. spurred additional bookings for the holidays, bar mitzvahs and summer vacations. “We are proud of the fact that more and more English-speaking families are coming to our hotel from the U.S. for Pesach and all year around. They have discovered the beauty of the region and the inviting atmosphere that permeates throughout the hotel,” said Yael Eliya Madai, the hotel’s

Seders, Skiing in Austria’s Newest Kosher Resort Hotel A new kosher hotel and resort, the 92-room Victoria Kaprun, located in the picturesque Kaprun/Zell am See ski region of Austria, will soon be opening its doors to guests who wish to experience a unique Pesach holiday and summer vacation in Europe.

The hotel’s complex features a modern-

L A I C E P S ENT EL V A E R S I TO N NJ P I R T R O EI

designed glass bridge with the main building offering a bar, restaurant, Spa & Wellness area, Karaoke bar, conference room and more.

The main building also is home to 30 superior rooms, three deluxe rooms, seven junior suites and 10 apartments that can accommodate two to six people. The adjoining building features 38 economy rooms and two apartments that can accommodate two to four people.

In the evenings during the holiday, the Victoria Kaprun will showcase a restaurant with an open live grill. (Kosher supervision is by Kedassia [Badatz]). The Pesach holiday services will be led by renowned Chazan Tzudik Grunvald and the Zimroh Choir.

The spa area includes an indoor pool, Finnish sauna, steam bath, and Jacuzzi. The outdoor activities range from visiting the famous Kitzsteinhorn glacier to skiing at Schmitten in Zell am, as well as hiking, bicycling and golf. There is also a kid’s room and daily entertainment for children.

Avi Fine, the Victoria Kaprun’s spokesperson, added, “The hotel will feature 92 impeccably designed rooms and highlight Kedassia (Badatz) kosher supervision, one of the most respected in England and Europe. This is a completely refurbished facility that will enable guests to enjoy one of the most unique vacations during the forthcoming Pesach holiday and summer vacation seasons.” ✦

UR O Y N PL A

ER H T H R IG

ent vice ev . r e s l l u Israel + is a f ia Plus ny based in ed in s x e t o r P compa s, locat events nning ssional cialize in a e pecial l f S p o r & p s gs , spe am of Simcha Weddin Our te Unique he USA simchas and t ahs • v z s n r i it u M o d t n ed eT d, Bar/Ba Israel a ustom design • Uniqu the lan t ms u a ations o r c d g h o g o g r n u m le o yp ccom creati Holida emorab eys thr n • es m r ic Hotel A u t p v s o u r j o k e s ic ent ip a m unique port p anagm VIP air your tr more! e ls & m h a k ience. c t a u n e m m r to ent l exper And u f g n i n Apartm a and me

Contact Shari Alter in ENGLEWOOD for more information: 973.715.8132 or shari@protexsiaplus.com Contact us in ISRAEL: 011.972.50.529.1629 or harvey@protexsiaplus.com

www.protexsiaplus.com

39 Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

The lobby lounge of the new Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem Hotel.

spokeswoman. “We offer a variety of indoor and outdoor activities for adults and children, well-known rabbis that offer inspiring lectures in English and Hebrew, as well as one of the top culinary experiences during Pesach.”

Zichron Yaakov, the picturesque Northern Israeli town located on a mountaintop overlooking the inviting Mediterranean, now features one of the country’s most off-beat, luxury hotels. The Elma is a new boutique facility that has been built amid a cultural complex, highlighted by an art gallery and concert hall. Guests can choose from rooms in the main building or two-bedroom cottages. As Zichron Yaakov already features a fast-growing Anglo community, the hotel believes that American tourists will be intrigued by the new facility. The Elma will feature special packages for the Pesach holiday and summer 2015 tourist seasons. ✦

Jewish Journeys ■ December 18/19, 2014

40

Back To The Borscht Belt continued from page 27

“hungry” for details. The documentary focuses on the Jewish home cooking that earned the region its “Borscht Belt” nickname. Viewers will enjoy learning about the unique personalities in the Kutsher

popular film “Dirty Dancing,” which de-picts a Jewish resort “largely believed to be based on Kutsher’s,” says Laskow. Towards the end of the film, Max Kellerman (Jake Weston), a fictional hotel owner, watches the season-ending pageant and remarks, “It all seems to be ending. You think kids want to come with their parents to take foxtrot lessons? Trips to Europe, that’s what the kids want. Twentytwo countries in three days.”

From the 1970s through the 1990s, diverging interests and a widening generation gap unraveled the A Kutsher’s postcard. COU RTESY MAR K KUTSH ER close-knit traditions that Jewish families had established at their favorite family that contributed to the hotel’s family-oriCatskills resort. What exactly are these tradi- ented atmosphere. Dedicated employees recount tions? “Welcome to Kutsher’s” won’t leave you the warm feelings they harbor for the owners,

Downtown L.A.

and guests share fond memories of their family vacations.

Rosenberg and Laskow admit that they arrived late to the Kutsher’s scene, making their first trip to the hotel in 2002. But thinning crowds and unrented rooms aside, there was still plenty of magic and the experience inspired them.

“Ian learned to ice skate after an impromptu lesson with Celia Duffy, whom we would later feature in our documentary,” Laskow recounts. “We took the Seabreeze special cocktails out to the pool, attended a still-life art class, and enormously enjoyed our many meals.”

Perhaps time was running out for this form of entertainment and the Catskills resort atmosphere, but it’s clear that this filmmaking duo taps into an essential aspect of Jewish American culture. “Welcome to Kutsher’s” offers a heartfelt view of an iconic Jewish establishment, chronicling memories to be cherished. ◆

on top of a potato puree.

She also reached out to Wexler, continued from page 29 whose Middle Eastern restaurant, Mezze, had drawn rave reviews but drew about 25,000 shoppers on a nonetheless closed in 2012 after weekday and 60,000 on Saturdays. only a year. Wexler, a Los AngeAdele Yellin said that the rents of $8 les native, decided to switch gears per square foot were comparable to and revive the deli foods that he Beverly Hills. loved as a child. He smokes his Ira Yellin, aided by Levin, spruced own meats and fish onsite, and on up the market, uncovering skya recent afternoon was busy behind lights that had been painted over, moving the truck loading docks to the counter wrapping sandwiches make space for diners, and setting and conferring with his cooks. design standards for vendors’ signs “Obviously Wexler’s Deli is a and stalls. He also built an adjacent new-school Jewish deli, but I don’t parking garage and brought in a few The primary author of Grand Central’s latest chapter is Adele Yellin, think of it as a Jewish restaurant,” new eateries, including a juice bar the owner and hands-on manager of the market. ANTHONY WEI SS Wexler told JTA in an email. “To me it’s an L.A. restaurant. It’s urowned by co-investor and television ban, it’s soulful, it’s in the place of comedian Flip Wilson (named “Geraldine’s” after Wilson’s signature character). exploded to 52,400 as of 2013, according the people and it’s for the people.”

For Yellin, Wexler and the new crop of restauAdele Yellin took over in 2002 after Ira to a study by the Downtown Center Business died of lung cancer at 62. At that point, the Improvement District. The prosperous new resi- rants reflect her vision of a Grand Central Marmarket’s fortunes were in decline. Competi- dents, in turn, were eating at a host of hip new ket that is a busy and welcoming place for all, tion from other Latino-oriented markets cut eateries that were opening in the neighborhood where immigrants and businessmen and tattooed artists can shop and eat alongside one another, into its customer base, she says, and the re- — but not at Grand Central. cession that began in 2008 forced a number “The population that was actually living partners in the perpetual urban dance.

“It’s exactly what Ira and I always talked of the vendors to close, leaving the market downtown never came in here,” Yellin recalls. some 40 percent vacant at its nadir.

Yellin set out to change that. She reached out about the city of L.A. needing,” Yellin says.

At the same time, downtown was finally to more upscale vendors, bringing in a place “This is a place to gather, and that’s what we beginning to fulfill Ira’s vision, as other de- specializing in Thai street food and one focused have to keep working on — creating more velopers raced to convert historic buildings on coffee. Another specialized in eggs, from egg reasons for them to gather here. It’s family and the once-sparse residential population salad to steak and eggs to a coddled egg poached giving back. It’s tzedakah.” ◆

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