Short Hills pilgrims note Jewish diversity on trip to European capitals

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer
12.29.05

For 10 days in November, some 45 congregants of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills came face to face with dramatic evidence of the survival and endurance of people still struggling with the aftermath of genocide more than a half-century after the Holocaust.

When they returned home Nov. 15 from a tour that included Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, they carried something “more important than tangible souvenirs,” said the Reform temple’s cantor, Howard Stahl.

“It was an appreciation for the diversity of the Jewish people,” said Stahl, who organized the trip. “When you live in essentially a Jewish world, as we do in the MetroWest community, you begin to think that everybody is like everybody else. When you travel to other parts of the world you realize that everybody is not alike.

“Everybody comes from a different socioeconomic and cultural background, and within each community there are different ritual practices, different cultural and economic practices, and you begin to realize that somehow wherever you find Jewish people, the kinship is our heritage.”

Visits to three key European cities where Jewish populations were virtually destroyed during the Shoa gave the suburban travelers insights into the ways three disparate Jewish communities are continuing to put their past into perspective, even as they struggle to ensure their cultures are carried on by future generations.

One prime example was the Stadttempel, the oldest of the 70 synagogues that were in the Austrian capital and the only one to survive World War II.

“The reason it survived was that when it was built in 1925, the Kaiser mandated that no buildings could be built unless they looked like office buildings — so it couldn’t look like a synagogue. If you see it today it looks like an office building on the outside,” said the cantor.

“So when the Nazis bombed, they didn’t see it as a synagogue. In a way, the Kaiser saved it from being destroyed. It was a classic Reform congregation in the 1820s, but today it’s an Orthodox synagogue,” Stahl explained.

“Vienna has a very small Jewish community — mostly Holocaust survivors and people who have come from other parts of the world. It is not a very dynamic Jewish community.” How well it will endure, he said, “remains to be seen.”

Budapest, on the other hand, “has several hundred thousand Jews and is very active,” Stahl said.

In the Hungarian capital, the visitors received a tour of the Dohany Synagogue. Opened in 1859 and with nearly 3,000 seats, it is the second-largest Jewish house of worship in the world. Only Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan is said to be larger.

It took four years to rebuild the synagogue on Dohany Street after it was destroyed in World War II, and, according to Stahl, “it is a magnificent structure.”

The cantor said he provided “color commentary” at each stop along the way, while professional tour guides “did the play-by-play.”

Among the most moving events during their visit to the Czech Republic was a pilgrimage to the Nazi concentration camp at Terezin, where some 35,000 people died and several hundred thousand more were imprisoned during the war.

Despite such grim reminders of the past, Stahl believes the future looks reasonably bright for Czech Jews. “Prague is rebuilding its Jewish community,” said the cantor. “There are people coming out of the woodwork in Prague who are telling their grandchildren they were really Jewish but had to convert to survive the war. Now their children and grandchildren are just discovering their Jewish roots and embracing them.”

All through their travels, the Americans listened attentively to the oral histories of men and women who had known the cruelties of World War II.

“The survivors all want to share their stories of how they managed to outwit the Nazi machine and how they managed to live to be in their 80s. It’s a marvelous feat,” said Stahl. “You can just imagine the horrors they had to endure, but they are proud they survived.”

To him, such narratives were part of the real “souvenirs” the travelers brought home to MetroWest.

“It is inspiring to think that what you see is still existing, because if it wasn’t, that would be a posthumous victory for Hitler. Whatever it is — even if it’s small — it’s going to grow; it’s going to be nurtured,” he said.

Stahl said he believes the European Jews he met “are a bit more accepting of diversity than we might be. They have Russian immigrants and Polish immigrants in Vienna, for example, and people who have grown up in Israel.”

When his group attended services at the Stadttempel, Stahl was called to the bima and found himself in quiet conversation with the chief rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg.

“I asked him where he came from originally, and he said, ‘I grew up in Vienna, but my wife is from West Orange.’ It makes you realize it’s really a small Jewish world.”