Many Nationalities, One Ethnicity

By Laura Yanushpolsky
New York University

"Page seventy-four, shiv’im v’arba, soixante-quatorze, čtyřiasedmdesát, vierenzeventig, settantaquattro, vierundsiebzig," the Rabbi of the Bloomsbury Chabad in London said every Shabbat throughout the four months I spent in England in the spring of 2010. The Rabbi was always prepared to welcome his guests from around the world and even offer a few lines of conversation in various languages. With British Jews comprising a minority of the guests at Shabbat meals and Jewish holidays, the diversity of our gatherings was impressive. On Passover, for example, each paragraph of the Haggadah was spoken in a different language as we made our way around the seder table. The familiar song "wherever you go, there's always someone Jewish" felt quite appropriate as I sat and enjoyed this unique experience.

My stay in London and travels throughout Europe provided many opportunities for me to meet Jews from other countries. In London, I shared Shabbat meals with Jews from Britain, France, the Ukraine, Portugal and South Africa. While in Prague, I attended a Passover Seder with the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. In Venice, I shared a Shabbat meal with close to a hundred Italian Jews and visitors like myself along the water in the Jewish ghetto. As I traveled throughout Europe, it was incredible to visit Jewish areas and to learn about the extraordinary achievements and diverse communities of Jews in every country. Visiting the synagogues of Prague, I learned about the literary and cultural contributions of Jewish writers such as Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Franz Werfel. In Gerona, I visited one of the oldest Jewish quarters in Spain; the "Call" was an important center of Kabbalistic learning and once the home of Maimonides. It was inspiring to see and feel the Jewish presence in each country I visited.

Even as I experienced these wonderful Shabbat and holiday gatherings and explored the rich history of the Jewish people, my travels reminded me of the enormous struggles that Jews have faced and the choices that we must make about assimilating to national customs and retaining our religious traditions. Frederic Brenner’s Diaspora: Homelands in Exile, a collection of photographs of and commentaries by Jews throughout the world, highlights this struggle. One of Brenner’s pictures portrays Jews in Rome selling religious and secular souvenirs outside of the Vatican. One of these vendors, Massimo Misano, who studied at a rabbinical college and became a cantor before engaging in Christian souvenir selling in Rome, explains that "I found myself, let’s say, in a very awkward position having to reconcile this activity with the fact that I am an observant Jew." Another one of Brenner’s photographs depicts Solly Alain Law, an investment banker in Geneva, Switzerland, whose family originally came from Baghdad. Expressing the challenge to maintain his Jewish identity as well as his Middle Eastern heritage, Law describes he tries to "give my children reference points, values, limits, and openings, as I myself oscillate between the clan and the exterior world. They must sense how I feel so often on the outside and on the inside at the same time, part of a people and a tradition that appear everywhere and belong nowhere."

Writing about his work, Brenner says, "I believe that what Jews have in common is their differences…I spent 25 years going around the world from India to Sarajevo, from Rome to New York, from Beijing to Buenos Aires, and to Morocco and Ethiopia trying to understand what makes a people." Brenner continues, "I really see these portraits as a puzzle and each fragment is necessary and indispensable. Each place enabled me to express a part of myself and a part of what the Jewish people are." In light of these photographs, I realize the remarkable experience I had in sharing Shabbat and Jewish holidays with Jews from across the world. It is inevitable that we will adopt some of the cultural norms and traditions of the country in which we live. Yet, one’s national identity and Jewish identity do not need to conflict. We can celebrate the differences and the knowledge and culture we absorb from the countries in which we live while continuing to enrich our Jewish traditions. Finding the right balance between assimilating and retaining one’s Jewish customs can be challenging. However, it is this struggle that brings us together as a people; a people that is dispersed throughout the world and yet, no matter what country a Jewish person finds himself in, he can come together with other Jews and share in the celebration of our common traditions. Our diverse national cultures help us to realize the significance of our common Jewish ethnicity.

On a Friday night at the Chabad in Bloomsbury, I passed the Gefilte fish and Challah to the Jewish Dutch man who sat next to me. We may not have been able to speak the same language, and some of our traditions and perspectives may have been different, but when it came to the Shabbat meal that we were sharing, we understood each other perfectly.

Laura Yanushpolsky is a rising junior, majoring in economics with a minor in business studies. She enjoys playing violin, traveling, and being outdoors, and is an active member of the Jewish community at New York University. 

[Posted 6/11/10]