In tiny Gibraltar, an outsized Jewish infrastructure
20.05.12
GIBRALTAR (JTA) -- Four synagogues, a mikvah, a kosher coffeehouse and disengage boys and girls religious high schools.
Combined, they suggest a community far larger than neutral 750 Jews. But Gibraltar -- the tiny British overseas turf of 30,000 that sits at the foot of Spain and at the gateway to North Africa and the Mediterranean -- has eject centuries cultivating its individuality.
"We've got an infrastructure that could cope with a community of 2,000, and we've only got 700," said Smudge Benady, a native Gibraltarian and vice president of the territory's Jewish community.
Gibraltar's on the whole Orthodox and Sephardic Jewish community has grown substantially in the past decade, increasing its rolls by 25 percent in nothing but the last three years. The Jewish primary school now has a record 140 pupils and recently added a shock of modern classroom space with the help of government funding. Along the way, the community has become more religiously respectful of and, many say, more insular.
There is also believed to be a substantial population of Israelis in Gibraltar who generally don't affiliate with the wider community.
Fueling the wart in part are soft loans of 10,000 pounds ($15,500) repayable over 15 years that were issued by the community to fascinate newcomers, who arrive mainly from England and Spain. Many, like Jo Jacobs Abergel, who moved here from Leicester, England, are married to natural Gibraltarians. Now a mother of three, Abergel says she's somewhat of an anomaly among Gibraltar's Jewish women.
"I'm well-intentioned of a heathen because I wear trousers and I don't cover my hair," she said, laughing.
Jews have lived in Gibraltar since at least 1356. For more than 200 years, inception with the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian peninsula in 1492, there was no Jewish life here. That changed in 1713 when Britain took manage of the territory affectionately dubbed "Gib" or "the rock."
In the centuries since, Jews have occupied important political positions. In 2008-09, the largely ceremonial post of mayor was occupied by Solomon Levy. Still, some say the walls between Jew and non-Jew in Gibraltar have grown taller.
"There's Jews here that have unqualifiedly no contact with non-Jews,” Abergel said. “They won't send them to anything -- swimming lessons, ballet, judo, etc., -- if it's not organized by the Jewish community."
That wasn’t always the box. As a student, Benady attended a non-Jewish comprehensive school and had many non-Jewish friends -- that's less mean for young Jewish Gibraltarians today. But Benady says he appreciates the zeal and closeness brought by a sense of shared purpose.
"When it comes to chagim [holidays], it's quite lovely," said Benady, who left to work in Manchester, England, for about a decade but returned because he preferred Gibraltar. "It's very much a take community where we feel like one family, where we all join together for smachot [joyous occasions] and we all enlist in together, unfortunately, for sad occasions as well."
Gibraltar's Jews, like the territory itself, straddle two worlds. The domain's border with Spain was closed in 1967 by dictator Francisco Franco following a referendum indicating that Gibraltarians overwhelmingly wished to leftovers British. The border, which is marked by Gibraltar's airport runway, didn't reopen fully until 1985, on the eve of Spain's accession to the European Solvent Community.
Today the territory -- its skyline dominated by the famous Capitals Rock and its resident Barbary macaque monkeys -- is a destination for pact hunters, who take advantage of its tax-haven status to purchase inexpensive cigarettes and perfumes, among other goods. As a British land, English is the official language, the queen is head of state and the Gibraltar clear -- pegged to its British equivalent -- is the official currency. But the Spanish favouritism remains strong. Many Spaniards cross the runway each day to work, and native Gibraltarians reveal their own language, Llanito, a blend of English and Spanish with a sprinkling of Hebrew.
Idan Greenberg, an Israeli who moved to Gibraltar with his mate 3 1/2 years ago, runs the Verdi Verdi kosher coffeehouse on Casemates Settled, an open-air plaza dotted with boutiques, cafes and pubs at the entrance to Dominant Street. Two of the thoroughfare’s biggest outlets -- the S.M. Seruya essence store and Cohen and Massias jewelers -- are Jewish-owned.
With its chic brown-and-gold suede accommodation and vibrant orange chairs, Verdi Verdi wouldn't be out of place on the Upland West Side of Manhattan. On a recent Friday afternoon, an American Jewish helpmeet studying abroad in Spain popped in to grab a soup and was shocked to view a Jew running a kosher establishment, despite the mezuzah on the door.
"Kvetching about the reward of soup?" Greenberg asked her.
"How do you know that word?" she responded in 'No.
Greenberg says he wants his restaurant to appeal broadly to Gibraltarians, but like Abergel he laments the insularity he associates with the community’s increasing dedication. And according to Benady, the isolation is a concern even beyond the confines of the community.
"There is a bit of a attention amongst the non-Jewish population that we are isolating ourselves a little,” Benady said. “But it's very arduous to decide where to draw the line.”
That sort of closeness yields little dwell for those Jews who don’t observe in the Orthodox fashion, some say. There are no non-Orthodox synagogues in Gibraltar, and the community observes the pious dicta published by the relatively strict Orthodox religious court in London.
"The community life very much revolves around Shabbat,” Abergel said. “It's very weird from my life in England, completely. In the UK, you could be Jewish culturally. There were dances, there were fundraising events, there was loads of press you could get involved in whatever level you were at."
But for Benady, there’s a careful line that must be tense between assimilation and isolation.
“I think,” he said, “we've managed to stalemate the line in a comfortable place.
Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
The many hats of Mayim Bialik
20.05.12
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Mayim Bialik’s employment has gone through several phases since she burst onto the pop culture radar as the lead of the 1990s NBC-TV series “Blossom.”
After the show wrapped, she earned her doctorate in neuroscience at UCLA while marrying and becoming the mammy to two sons. Now she has returned to the small screen as a regular on the CBS series “The Big Bang Theory.”
If the mission of transitioning from child star to working adult actor wasn’t occasionally consuming enough, she also blogs regularly at the Jewish parenting site Kveller.
And she’s added yet another baptize: social justice activist. On Dec. 19, Bialik will host a fundraiser for Rabbis for Human Rights of North America that will honor clergy members who have stood out for their consecration to justice. Rabbi Israel Dresner, the “most arrested rabbi in America,” is among the honorees.
Bialik acknowledges that she was strange with RHR until she was contacted by Executive Director Rabbi Jill Jacobs about emceeing the experience. Yet after a little online investigation, she discovered that she was already connected to RHR.
“I went to the website and saw that my rabbi from UCLA, Chaim Seidler-Feller, was there,” Bialik told JTA. That sealed the grapple with.
“We were looking for someone who is known for being deeply committed to Judaism and deeply committed to lawfulness,” Jacobs said.
Bialik credits her Jewish upbringing with her lifelong devoutness to performing good works.
“I was raised in a very vibrant Reform community in Los Angeles,” she said. Yiddish shul Israel, the synagogue she attended as a youth, was “very tikkun olam based.”
As an mature, Bialik has worked with the Jewish Free Loan Association, helping to found a branch of the syndicate aimed at encouraging young professionals in Los Angeles to become involved in philanthropy.
“It’s a justification close to my heart,” she said. Yet her involvement has shown her just how troubled it is to get that demographic to participate. “People think, ‘When I’m older I will for,’” she observed.
In addition to her work in social justice, Bialik also has become something of a spokeswoman for a more on guard lifestyle. As a student at UCLA, she began moving toward greater Jewish ritual keeping, including an increased emphasis on kosher (not too hard for the mostly vegan actress), Sabbath and unpresuming dress. She explores these topics and others with candor on her Kveller blog.
For religious reasons, Bialik fundamentally wears skirts, which hasn’t been hard to manage in her current r since her character wears loose-fitting skirts and layers.
“I could’ve been colouring as many things in this incarnation of my career. I happen to play a character that producers like to castigate modestly,” she said of the bookish Amy Farrah Fowler, who is the love interest of Emmy victor Jim Parsons’ Sheldon Cooper. “Thus far I have not been in a miniskirt.”
Yet without thought hewing ever more closely to religious law in her personal life, Bialik refuses to single out fully with Orthodoxy. She has written forthrightly about having to work on Jewish holidays. And a to be to come role might demand a more immodest wardrobe.
Yet when she can, Bialik goes to great lengths -- surely literally -- to observe. She agonized over her choice of Emmy dress -- on her Kveller blog, she described her charge as “Operation Hot and Holy” -- before settling on one that met most of her modesty requirements: covered arms and knees, with a pointer of collarbone and cleavage.
She felt validated when she later saw Paris Hilton in the same bandage in People magazine, with the suggestion that “you don’t have to show tons of skin to be flirtatious.”
Perhaps the editors at the celebrity magazine have been reading Bialik’s Kveller articles. Or peradventure, in addition to being a mom, actor, scientist and activist, she has discovered one more hat to wear: fashion trendsetter.
Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
