Living in Interesting Times

By JUDITH BOLTON-FASMAN

HOME LANDS
Portrait of the New Jewish Diaspora
By Larry Tye.
336 pages. Henry Holt. $27.50.

Argentine Jews are tenacious. For over 350 Mondays and counting a representative group has gathered at Argentina's Supreme Court to remind the world that justice has been, at best, delayed for Argentina's Jewish community. In 1994 a bomb ripped through the Argentine Israelite Mutual Aid Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires killing 86 people and wounding 236 more. The explosion also devastated the institutional memory of the Argentine Jewish community by destroying thousands of books and documents.

Since the terrorist attack the sound of the shofar is heard outside of that courthouse every week, with the hope that at least symbolically it will have the same effect as it did on the walls of Jericho three thousand years ago. And as Larry Tye amply demonstrates in his new and original book, Home Lands: Portraits of the New Jewish Diaspora, the weekly demonstration in Buenos Aires is more than just the rallying cry of a single community, it is a manifestation of a thriving Jewish diaspora, one that is evolving and, in Tye's estimation, here to stay.

Tye, who is forty-six, reported on foreign affairs for the Boston Globe for over fifteen years. While on assignment he took side trips to the Jewish communities to the places he was sent. "My editors would indulge me," he said in a recent telephone interview with JBooks.com. "If I wrote stories they wanted from each country—be it environmental devastation in the old East bloc or the spread of Pentecostalism in China—they'd let me write about the Jewish community wherever I was. I explored local communities in places like Hong Kong, Belfast and Moscow and I started seeing a pattern of renewal not reflected in the current literature such as Alan Dershowitz's The Vanishing Jew. And I was determined to write a book explaining that renaissance."

The process of choosing the seven communities profiled in the book was a daunting yet invigorating experience for the author. Tye was lobbied by several communities and in his introduction to the book he writes, "I was eager to explore. I did library research and live interviews in each [community], finally narrowing the list to seven that I felt had appealing stories, reflected the wider situation in the diaspora and balanced one another."

Balance is among the admirable achievements of the book. For example, Tye presents a vivid case study of Dnepropetrovsk, a Ukrainian city undergoing a profound renewal of Jewish culture and observance. All of it was initiated and much of it is still sustained by Shmuel Kaminezki, an emissary from the Lubavitcher movement headquarters in Crown Heights, New York. Kaminezki is a man of unlimited energy, a master fundraiser and diplomat blessed with the gift to inspire people. Under his tutelage synagogues, community centers and medical clinics have been built over the past decade in Dnepropetrovsk,. Tye writes that Kaminezki's critics say that "Dnepropetrovsk has its own Jewish czar—a benevolent dictator—as ill-fitting as the titles might seem for this jovial, rotund rabbi from Brooklyn. They all admire the work Shmuel is doing, are charmed by his charisma, and acknowledge that he and Chany [his wife] were pioneers during a period when few others would venture there. They also admit that lots of rabbis around the world, especially ones in the Lubavitch movement, like to be the only show in their town, although few have succeeded to the extent Shmuel has. While they may have made sense at the beginning, many insist the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk now is mature and secure enough that it should be run more democratically and more pluralistically."

Jewish history in the Ukraine, much of it tragic, shadows the renaissance that is happening there. Whether Jews see this renaissance as "limiting or liberating," there is an overriding feeling that such "history has been a defining experience" for the community—one that bridges the past to the future.

And what is a Jew without history? Tye's personal experiences animate the chapter exploring the dynamic Jewish community in Boston. He says that all along "this book has been for my grandfathers—the two Shmuels. One was eighth in a line of Rabbis, the other was an immigrant. They died worried that subsequent generations wouldn't be Jewish. Not to worry. Judaism is alive and well in a way that they couldn't have dreamed of. I'm very optimistic about the future."

That optimism begins with the profound effect that writing the book has had on him and his family. "The experience of researching this book, writing it, and traveling the country to talk about it has fueled my own commitment to and interest in Judaism. I go to shul more often now, if only to deliver talks on the book, and read more Jewish nonfiction and fiction, and generally am more passionate about my own commitment to my faith, my culture and my people. What I have written about our family history has driven them to explore it more deeply and connect to their particular branches. For others it has helped them to pursue issues of what Judaism means in their lives, how to relate to a Jewish community, and how to involve non-Jewish friends or spouses in that history, culture and religion."

In his profile of the Jews living in Düsseldorf, Germany, Tye observes that Jews from the former Soviet Union are immigrating to former Jewish communities throughout Germany. With Germany's array of generous social services and economic opportunities, it has become the perfect proving ground for reviving Jewish life there. Tye also discovers that some long-time Jewish residents, German Jews who returned after the war, are hoping to see Germany "as forging a paradigm for a pluralistic Judaism that could be a model for the diaspora, uniting denominations and nationalities."

Places like Dublin, with a dwindling Jewish population, are also looking to Soviet Jews, South African Jews and Israelies to repopulate the community in Ireland. Tye says that Dublin is a unique case study because "so much of the population is willing to give up the Irish half to affirm their Jewish identity." Young Irish Jews are leaving for places like London, New York and Tel Aviv to marry other Jews. But Tye says "it's not a full-fledged abandonment of their motherland." Irish Jews stay in touch via the Internet and have banded together in various countries. Tye also presents an in-depth look at Parisian Jewry from Napoleonic times through the post-Holocaust era. It's a thriving community which in many respects compensates for the stories of the presumed death of communities such as Dublin, Glasgow and Liverpool.

But perhaps the most compelling story that Tye tells is that of Atlanta's Jewish community. Atlanta's community was originally settled by German Jews who assimilated all the mores and manners of Southern gentility while still remaining outsiders. It is a community that has weathered the vicissitudes of American history. To understand Atlanta Jewry, writes Tye, "means ensuring that they [the influx of Jews from the north and elsewhere], along with the children and grandchildren of Jews from Atlanta, understand that being Jewish in Atlanta carries a special inheritance. It's the legacy of Leo Frank [a Jew accused of murdering a young employee at his pencil factory and lynched for it in 1913] and the Temple bombing [in 1958], of civil rights and self-help. It is knowing that Atlanta's Jewish growth was built in part around the slow decline of smaller Jewish communities in southern cities like Cleveland, Mississippi, and Demopolis, Alabama. It is sensing the place's intimacy and civility."

And then there is Israel. Tye writes, "we're in an equal relationship [with them] now. Israel depends on the diaspora and there is also a reverse diaspora going on. 'Next year in Jerusalem' is not the reality." Instead the reality is "a sense that the worlds of free trade, global culture, and the Internet, which could make an ancient faith like Judaism seem quaint, have in fact pushed people to reach out for the very sort of spiritual meaning and uncompromised identity offered by Judaism."

That kind of "uncompromised identity" has enabled the Argentine Jewish community to more fully explore its Jewishness while still memorializing the 1994 bombings. Tye says that the September 11 terrorist attacks in America resonated with the community and also offered profound hope. Seven years after the AMIA bombing, the perpetrators are still at large. Yet rather than exclusively dwelling on revenge, the community looks towards the future, demonstrating that a bomb may temporarily scatter one's existence, but it can't destroy Jewish identity.

As the old Chinese proverbs goes, these days we are challenged (some may even say cursed) with living in interesting times. But after two thousand years in the diaspora, Larry Tye has skillfully proven that Jews not only have a knack for outwitting that old Chinese proverb, but an iron will to do so.