Members of the Tribe

by Zev Chafets

  While I pondered this approach, Loring turned again to his father and, in a voice that indicated an oft-repeated routine, asked, “Dad, when was the Hebrew Union College founded?”

  “1850, Loring.”

  “1850!” he exclaimed. “Well, who did ordinations before 1850? I mean, who ordained Moses? Or Jesus? Or, ah, Rabbi Hillel? There was no college back then, was there, Dad?”

  Emmet Frank feigned surprise at the question. “You know something, you’re absolutely right.”

  “You’re not really going to do this, are you?” I asked him, the icy self-control of an afternoon melting fast in the blaze of Loring’s enthusiasm. Loring himself must have sensed he had gone too far with the Moses comparison. In a concerned voice he sought reassurance from his father. “Dad, do you have to get a special license in Florida to perform weddings? I mean, if you tell them that I’m a rabbi, isn’t that enough?” Frank confirmed this. “In Florida, all you have to do is be inspired by God, and you can be considered a clergyman. And any notary public can perform weddings.”

  Relieved, Loring turned to me again, this time for help. “You’re an Israeli, what does Zipporah mean?” Frank beat me to it. “Zipporah was Moses’s wife, son.” Suddenly animated, Loring leaped out of his chair. “Hey, I just met this Israeli chick named Zipporah. I’m gonna give her a call, I’ll be right back.” He bounded out of the room.

  Loring’s girlfriend reminded Emmet Frank of Israel. “It’s my spiritual home,” he said. “I’ve been there a number of times. I’m not an aliyah Zionist, but I tell people in my classes that Israel is the distillation of four thousand years of Jewish history. I make certain that they understand that support for Israel is central to the Jewish experience.”

  Loring came back into the room and plopped back down in his easy chair. Zipporah was out, and her roommate didn’t know when she’d be back. He listened dejectedly as his father explained the other requirements of his one-day conversions.

  “I have four things I ask them to do. First, they must recite the Shema. Then I ask them: ‘Do you wish to be a Jew? Do you promise to live a Jewish life to the best of your ability? Do you agree to circumcise your children according to Jewish law? Do you cast your lot with the Jewish people?’ If they answer yes to all four, then I go ahead with the conversion.”

  Loring, dejected no longer, shook his head in admiration. “If you listen to this for every day of your life for thirty-seven years—that’s how old I am—do you still have to go to religious school to be a rabbi? I mean, what more do you need?”

  “Exactly,” said Rabbi Frank without false humility. “My family is related to the Vilna Gaon, and back in the old days, his kind of scholarship made sense. But today? I’m not going to make Loring study Talmud for a whole year when I can pick out the highlights for him. He needs to know the essence of Judaism, how to help people; and believe me, he can learn a lot more watching me than from a bunch of outdated laws.”

  Emmet Frank suddenly snapped his fingers. “I just had a great idea. Remember when Loring mentioned Rabbi Hillel. Well, Hillel once converted a man standing on one foot. You know that story. Supposing I put an ad in the paper: ‘Come to Rabbi Emmet Frank. He’ll convert you while you stand on one foot.’ How about that for a slogan?” Loring shook his head in admiration and Emmet Frank closed his eyes in sweet contemplation of the next big breakthrough in American life cycle Judaism.

  Emmet Frank’s philosophy, neatly summed up by his son, is that people don’t need to change their lives just to be Jewish. But not far away from the corner of Collins and 75th, in the posh oceanfront high-rises and sprawling haciendas of Miami, live a group of people with an opposite view. They are the Hispanic Jews of Florida, and they are determined not to change their Jewish lives just to be American.

  There have been Latin Jews in Miami since the late 1950s, when Cuban refugees fled the Castro regime. Lately they have been joined by Jews from South American and Central American countries plagued by political instability. Today there are between five and six thousand Hispanic Jewish families in Miami, roughly half of them Cuban, and experts predict that there may be twenty thousand by the end of the century.

  These Latinos differ in two important respects from other immigrants. First, they are very rich; there isn’t a taxi driver, street peddler, or short-order cook among them. And second, they have no ambition to become “real Americans.” They don’t even want to become real American Jews.

  “When I first came to this country—to Miami—I went to the Jewish Community Center,” said Rafael Russ over dinner at Patrino’s. Russ, called “Rafa” by his friends, is an athletic, darkly handsome man in his late twenties, with serious eyes, a well-attended mustache, and the self-confident charm of a Latin American diplomat. He came to America from Guatemala and, using family money, established himself as a successful entrepreneur. At home he had been active in the Jewish community and he naturally gravitated to the Jewish Center in Miami. His reception there left him shocked and angry.

  “I met a man, and we played racquetball together,” he recalled in careful, precise English. “We played racquetball every Wednesday for many months. But this man did not ask me about myself. He did not ask me about my family. And he told me nothing about himself. We played racquetball and he went home. That, to me, is what an American Jew is—he is a racquetball partner.”

  Rafa’s companion, Valerie Shalom, nodded in agreement. A willowy young woman who looks a little like Jacqueline Bisset, she grew up in Barranquilla, Columbia, and came to the United States to study at Brandeis, and later earned an M.A. in education at Stanford.

  “When I first came to Brandeis I experienced a kind of culture shock,” she said in nearly accentless English. “At home, we lived in a Jewish world. We lived in Colombia, but we were Jews, not Colombians. I chose Brandeis because it was supposed to be a Jewish university. And then, when I got there, I found kids who were just Americans. They said they were Jews, but there was nothing Jewish about them. It was not at all my idea of what being a Jew is.”

  The waitress approached, and Valerie ordered for me: “bistec de palomilla and moros y cristianos.” Her years in America have taught her that gringos like a little folklore with their Latin food, and she automatically translated moros y cristianos—a dish made of white rice and black beans—into “Moors and Christians.” The waitress assumed that Rafa was also a tourist and asked in English for his order. Offended, he replied emphatically in rapid Spanish.

  Both Rafa and Valerie socialize mostly with other Hispanic Jews. Rafa often attends the Cuban theater or goes to Latin nightclubs. Valerie, who loves to dance, frequents the Club International, where they play salsa music. Neither is married, and neither wants to marry an American.

  “I have an affinity for Latin men or Israelis,” she said. “We seem to have more in common. It is hard for me to understand the American Jewish mentality, even after all these years.”

  “How about non-Jewish Americans?” I asked.

  “Never,” she said. “I would never consider marrying someone who isn’t Jewish. My identity means too much to me, my obligation to my people.”

  “I once had an American Jewish girlfriend,” recalled Rafa, with a mirthless grin. “We were together for almost a year, but it did not work out. Why? She said that I was too macho, too Latin, ah, too chauvinist, although I do not consider myself to be macho. So I believe that I will be happier with a woman from the Hispanic community. And there is another reason. I do not expect to live all my life in America. I believe that it would be very difficult to take an American woman to another place.”

  “Yes, me too, Rafa,” said Valerie. “I myself like America, but I see myself moving to Israel. My eyes are looking to Israel for the future.”

  “I’m not certain about Israel,” said Rafa, “but I cannot see myself remaining in this country permanently, that is certain.”

  For many Hispanic Jews, the United States has retained something of its “evil giant to the north�
�� image. These Jews were raised in places where Yanquis are resented; many of them came to Miami more out of necessity than choice.

  “It is not safe any longer for people like us in Latin America,” Valerie explained. “I know a man, a Jewish industrialist, who was kidnapped by the guerrillas and held for four months. His family paid the ransom of one million dollars and he was returned unhurt. Now he has a bulletproof car and bodyguards, and wherever he goes he carries a gun. But these will not protect him, and he knows that. He is just waiting to be kidnapped once again.”

  “Why does he stay?” I asked. Rafa, who knew similar stories from Guatemala, shrugged. “This man cannot legally transfer his money outside of the country. And many such people have businesses so large that no private person in the country can buy them. And so they stay.”

  They stay, but their children are free to leave—and perhaps to take some part of the family fortune with them. They are safe and prosperous in Miami, but they are homesick, too; they miss the close-knit Jewish communities where they were raised.

  “At home, on Shabbat, everyone went to the Jewish Center to be together,” said Valerie. “Here, except for the Orthodox, Shabbat is just another day. People go to shopping malls, health clubs. The Jewish Center is just a place to go for a workout. None of us is Orthodox, but we need more than that for our Jewish lives. And we need a place to be by ourselves. It’s nothing against American Jews, but we’re different.”

  “American Jews think the Hispanic Jews are shit!” said Yosi Teitelbaum, the director of Hebraica, when I went to see him the next day. “The Cuban Jews have been in Miami for twenty-five, twenty-six years, and not one has been on the federation board. Why? Because they think we are shit. The truth is, we Latinos have been rejected by the gringos.”

  Teitelbaum put his feet up on his cluttered desk and peered out the window at the manicured lawn. Hebraica is located in a former country club in one of Miami’s wealthiest residential areas. That day its tree-shaded grounds and spacious clubhouse were undergoing renovations. It is not the kind of place usually associated with persecuted minorities.

  Teitelbaum is in his mid-forties, a potbellied man with a ready smile, a brash, bombastic manner, and more than a little charm. By profession he is a social worker, by temperament an activist with a confrontational style. Born in Argentina, he moved to Israel as a young man. The Jewish Agency sent him to Miami to help the Hispanic community organize itself; and he has chosen to interpret this task as a mandate for taking on the local establishment.

  “The Cubans, who were the first to arrive, had a religious tradition but no community spirit,” he told me, speaking in Hebrew. “They established two synagogues, one Ashkenazi and one Sephardi. Both of them were Orthodox, of course; Latin Americans had no concept of American Reform or Conservative temples, and they still don’t feel comfortable in them. The Cubans were happy just going to their synagogues and living their lives. It was enough for them.

  “But then, the other Latinos began to come. They had a community tradition as well as a religious one. Most of them aren’t what you’d call Orthodox, but they have good Jewish educations, they know Hebrew, at home they were all wrapped up in the life of the Jewish community. The main thing was that they were taught from birth to feel different from gentiles, from the people surrounding them.”

  Suddenly Yosi banged his hand on the desk for emphasis. “When the Latinos came to this country, they looked around at the American community and found a system that was a total disaster. Total shit! They want their own children to be Jews and marry Jews, the way it has always been. If the price of America is not being Jewish, or hardly being Jewish, they don’t want to pay it. They say, ‘Amigos, let us preserve our Judaism.’ This is why they founded Hebraica.”

  Teitelbaum was interrupted by high-pitched children’s voices squealing in Spanish. He heaved himself out of his chair and led me into the clubhouse, where, in a side room, a nursery school class was in progress. We opened the door, which bore the legend, “MIS HIJOS ESTÁN EN HEBRAICA … Y LOS SUYOS? (MY CHILDREN ARE IN HEBRAICA … AND YOURS?).” “These are our children,” he said grandly, as if he and the nursery school teacher had produced them all personally.

  We walked out to the clubhouse, where workmen were tearing up the dance floor. It is a kind of kosher Club Babaloo, where people like Valerie and Rafa dance to Rubén Blades, Roberto Carlos, and David Broza, sip strong Cuban coffee or rum punches, and feel the warmth of community in a strange land.

  “This is an island,” Teitelbaum said, gesturing around the clubhouse. “American trends don’t affect us, and we don’t want them to affect us in the future. We want to be independent. And we will work to insure that independence. Believe me, these people know what it means to be Jews, to live real Jewish lives. It is something they will never surrender.”

  It was a fine speech, spoiled only by the fact that Teitelbaum and I both understood that he was talking about doing the impossible. Over the coming decades the Hispanic community in Miami will undoubtedly grow in numbers and influence. It will fight with the federated establishment and eventually become a part of it. The Latin Jews will send their children to the Hebraica nursery school, dance to Israeli samba singers, support their synagogues, and stick to themselves. Some will dream of moving to Israel, and a few may even do it.

  But no matter how much money they raise, no matter how hard they try to pass on their heritage to their children, no matter how stubbornly they struggle against America, America will win. Slowly, inexorably, their children and grandchildren will become American Jews—and then, Jewish-Americans. Like Jewish immigrants before them, the hijos of Hebraica will be enriched and impoverished by their new country. It is only a matter of time.

  Forty minutes from Hebraica, along a palm-studded highway, is Century Village at Pembroke Oaks. Near its entrance is a billboard with the Century Village motto—“Where Life Has No Limits.” The village is the kind of place where you can dream of living for a century, although most of its elderly residents would be delighted just to make it to the next one.

  Century Village is officially nonsectarian, but more than eighty percent of the people who live there are retired middle-class Jews from New York’s outer boroughs or from other large northeastern cities. (Midwestern Jews, by contrast, usually retire to Florida’s west coast.) Gentiles, mostly Italian-Americans, comprise a tolerated minority.

  The village itself consists of low-rise apartment buildings whose one- or two-bedroom flats are priced to attract retired civil servants, small-time merchants, and widows living on fixed incomes. In early 1987, the population was 3,600, but a recruiting drive aimed at attracting an additional 4,500 people was in full swing.

  Public relations director Shirley Klein, an elegant, fiftyish former New Yorker, took a few minutes to explain the Century Village concept. “We try to offer people a great place to retire,” she said with obvious sincerity. “Living here is like living at Grossinger’s or the Concord. Retirees have their own activities, their own culture.…”

  The phone rang. Someone in the New York office wanted to discuss an ad scheduled to run in Jewish newspapers that weekend. Before getting down to business, Shirley took a minute to gloat. “How’s the weather up there?” she asked. “Snowing? That’s terrible. Down here? Seventy-five today and sunny. Yeah, it’s perfect.” Climate is the constant preoccupation in Florida, the great justifier. “I couldn’t live up there anymore,” Shirley said when she got off the phone. “I mean, it’s nuts. Who needs that when you can have this?”

  The complex at Pembroke Oaks is built for fun in the sun. It has elaborate sports facilities—a golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools, and in the middle of everything the Clubhouse, a multipurpose community center. Shirley pointed out the facilities on a map of the village. “You know why people love it down here so much?” she said. “Simple. This is the sleep-away camp they couldn’t afford when they were kids.”

  Century Village is, indeed, a strikingly juv
enile place. Gray-haired men with crooked brown legs wander around in play clothes, carrying golf clubs or tennis rackets. Women (there are four or five for every man) in leisure suits stroll the grounds in pairs, glancing flirtatiously at the geriatric Jewish jocks, or toss Frisbees to each other across the manicured lawn. Unlike the old people on Collins Avenue, the golden-agers of Century Village have energy to spare.

  The local newspaper, The Century Village Voice, mirrors the obsession with fun. Its pages are full of articles about the acts due to play the Clubhouse nightclub—Keely Smith, Jack Carter, Patrice Munsel, and Freddie Roman—sports news, such as the results of the recent walkathon and exercise tips from the staff.

  At first glance, Century Village seems to have everything. But something is missing. In this village of three thousand elderly Jews there are no children—no toddlers, no teenagers, and except for the staff, barely anyone under sixty. Nor are there any bearded elders on benches, gabbing away in Yiddish. The Century Villagers are a new breed of Old Jew—bronzed, vigorous, dedicated to a happy ending. Life without limits, Century Village style; a life without family or the friendships and obligations of a snow-filled lifetime.

  “Most people here don’t seem to miss their children very much,” Shirley Klein confided. “Our society has gotten away from traditional, close-knit family units. Young people go away to college, old people go away to retire. Now, a lot of them do miss their grandchildren, but we tell them, ‘Don’t worry about your grandchildren, they’re fine. Do what’s right for you.’ ”

  Century Village has a number of rules, but only one commandment: NO CHILDREN IN THE CLUBHOUSE. And since the Clubhouse is the heart of village life, site of the nightclub, theater, sports facilities, and meeting rooms, the rule might just as well be: No children in the village. Sometimes grandchildren do visit, of course; but they are second-class citizens. Considering the traditional Jewish obsession with children, it is an astonishing policy.