In January I did what thousands of American Jews do every winter—I went to Florida. My final destination was Miami, but on the way I stopped at the University of Florida in Gainesville to give a Friday night lecture at the Hillel House. “You’re going to love the rabbi,” a friend of mine who knew the campus told me. “His name is Gerald Friedman, but everybody calls him Yossil. He used to be a Satmar Chasid. There aren’t too many people like him in northern Florida.”
That seemed like an understatement; it was hard to imagine a Williamsburg yeshiva bocher among the tan coeds and fraternity boys of one of America’s premier party schools.
I met Friedman in his office near campus on Friday around noon. He turned out to be a pudgy man in his late forties whose appearance didn’t betray his Chasidic origins. He was cleanshaven except for a neat little mustache, wore black framed glasses, and had a square, even-featured face that made him look a little like Steve Allen. On his head he wore a red knit yarmulke, which he took off when we went out to lunch.
I had been expecting to stay at a hotel, but Friedman wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted I spend the night with him and his wife, Dora, a concentration camp survivor. I could, he said, share a room with his twelve-year-old son, Akiva. It didn’t seem like the ideal arrangement and I tried to get out of it.
“I wouldn’t feel right smoking at your place on Shabbat,” I said, but he waved away the problem. “If you don’t feel right about doing it, don’t do it. But if you want to smoke, smoke. We’re not that strict, and I want you to feel comfortable.” I couldn’t think of any other objections. Cornered, I accepted his invitation.
After lunch, Friedman suggested that we go to his place to “freshen up for Shabbes.” Dora was preparing a kosher meal for the more than one hundred people who would be at the Hillel that night, but Yossil had nothing to do until sundown, when he was supposed to lead services. “Friday nights are sweet at our Hillel,” he said. “We make a real Shabbes. You’ll see.”
On the way to Friedman’s suburban tract house we talked about Israel, which he knew well. He was diffident and a little shy, and I wondered why my friend had thought I’d love him. To me he seemed like a more or less normal Hillel rabbi—intelligent, serious, and a bit ponderous. It would, I thought, be a long weekend.
When we arrived, Friedman pulled his car into the driveway and got out. The house next door had a basket mounted on its garage. A basketball lay on the lawn. Friedman took off his jacket, exposing a large potbelly, and picked up the ball. “Do you play basketball?” he asked. “I used to,” I said, recognizing the moment when the rabbi demonstrates that he is a regular guy by tossing up an awkward shot.
Instead he gave me a long, appraising look, whipped the ball around his back and, tie flying, faked a move to his right, dribbled gracefully to the left, threw a head fake and hit an eighteen-foot jump shot. “Bob Cousy!” he yelled, retrieving the ball.
For the next five minutes I watched, astonished, while Yossil Friedman of Williamsburg put on a show. He moved around the court, sinking jump shots and hooking with both hands, or charging the basket with leaping, grunting aggressiveness. He rarely missed, and although he was sweating heavily he didn’t seem at all tired. Finally he invited me to try to guard him.
I got between him and the basket, and he dribbled slowly. Suddenly he faked to the right, switched hands and flashed by me to make a lay-up. “How many Jewish guys you know can go to their left like that?” he crowed.
Friedman brought the ball out again, working toward the basket, with me following. “What are you, five-eleven?” he guessed with expert accuracy. “I’m five-eight. Watch this.” He pivoted and threw up a graceful hook that swished through the net. “Guys six-eleven can’t stop that shot,” he said with the pride of a high school letterman.
For half an hour Friedman and I bounded around the court. He played with the happy abandon of a teenager, and seemed disappointed when his son, Akiva, came out to tell us it was time to get dressed for services. He eyed the basket, yelled “Bob Cousy,” and hit a twenty-foot set shot. Grinning, he threw an arm over Akiva’s skinny shoulder and started walking toward the house. Suddenly he broke away, scooped up the ball, and tossed in a long running shot. “Bob Cousy goes in to dress for Shabbes,” he hollered, and broke into a Chasidic melody.
As we were dressing, Friedman, no longer shy, told me about himself and his voyage from Williamsburg to Gainesville. In Brooklyn his father had been a kosher butcher and his uncle, Lipa Friedman, had organized the Satmar sect politically. “He taught them how to vote, how to get poverty money, how to deal with America, the whole shmeer,” Friedman said.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Yossil spoke Yiddish at home and attended a neighborhood cheder and, later, Torah V’Das Yeshiva. As a boy he looked and talked like the other Satmar children, but he was different. Unlike Mendel the Chasid, he wasn’t satisfied with a single glimpse of Roy Rogers. Yossil Friedman wanted America.
“It all started with basketball,” he said. “I was crazy about the game.… Well, I guess I still am. But as a kid, I couldn’t get enough. I used to skip school and go out to playgrounds in other neighborhoods, dressed in a black suit and white shirt with tzitzes hanging down and my payes flapping. I might have looked a little strange, but I played on every tough court in New York—Bridge Park Plaza, Manhattan Beach, Avenue B in Brooklyn—you name it, I played there. In those days, I wanted to be a professional basketball player.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Friedman smiled, knotting his tie and slipping on a dark suit coat. “I didn’t become one. I became a Hillel director. Come on, let’s go to services. It’s Shabbes.” On the way to the car, Friedman, dressed in a suit, took an imaginary jump shot at the basket in his neighbor’s driveway.
There were more than a hundred people at the Hillel House when we arrived. Friedman threw a tallis over his shoulders with practiced ease and began to chant a Chasidic tune. The congregation of students and faculty joined in and within seconds the sanctuary was full of music. Friedman sang with his eyes closed and a dreamy half smile on his face.
As the service progressed, someone handed me a mimeographed sheet. It had the words to a couple of Chasidic tunes, and several short Chasidic parables that all began, typically, with variations of “One day Reb Moshe was walking in the woods near Vilna …” In America, Jewish stories usually take place someplace else.
When the prayers were over, Friedman invited the congregation to the roast chicken and kreplach soup dinner that his wife had prepared. The food was delicious and Dora, a curly-headed, vivacious woman, raced around the room to make sure everyone had enough. Every few minutes, Friedman burst into a melodic chant, keeping time on the table by banging his knife and fork. He seemed almost unaware that he was singing, but people looked over at him and smiled fondly. “Yossil’s still a Chasid at heart,” Dora said to me as she sailed by with a tray of dark meat and baked potatoes.
After dinner I talked about Israeli politics. It was a speech I had given before, and it seemed to go over well enough. But later that night, after we got back to his house, Friedman took me aside and gently protested.
“You were very good, very informative,” he said, making the word a pejorative. “But on Shabbes, a Jew needs more than information. A Jew needs something for the ‘neshama,’ the soul. You can’t talk to Jews about Eretz Yisrael and just give them information. To a Jew, Eretz Yisrael is a sweet place, not just another country.”
I was stung by the criticism and began to argue that information—and not schmaltz—is exactly what Jews need to hear about Israel. Friedman cut me off gently, putting his hand on my arm. “Listen, I might be right, I might be wrong. Think about it, that’s all I’m saying. To another person I might not mention it at all, but I feel I know you. I know more about you than you think. After all, we played ball together.”
Dora came in, after supervising the cleanup effort at the Hillel. She is a warm, articulate woman who came to the States as a girl after World War II and was raised in an Orthodox home in Philadelphia. She gave Yossil an affectionate hug, went into the kitchen, and emerged a minute later with three cups of tea.
We sat in the Friedmans’ living room, talking quietly about Akiva’s upcoming bar mitzvah. Yossil had just received a letter, in Yiddish, from an aunt in Brooklyn, imploring him to make sure that the affair would be kosher. He was amused by the letter—it never would have occurred to him not to have a kosher party—and dismayed that his family has so little confidence in him.
“It must have been hard for you to get out of that world,” I said, thinking of Mendel and the chopsim patrol of Williamsburg. Yossil laughed and looked at Dora. “It wasn’t easy. In those days I lived a schizophrenic existence. By day I was a yeshiva boy, by night I used to get into regular clothes and hang out in the Village. That place was like magic for me back then, all the coffeehouses and the clubs. And then one summer I worked as a bellhop in the Catskills. That was the beginning of the end. I went to the Concord and drank a daiquiri and watched people dancing the cha-cha-cha. I promised myself I’d learn to dance, and when I got back to the city I began to hang around Killer Joe Piro. I got so good that I wound up as a Latin dance instructor at the Dale Institute in Manhattan.”
Yossil also studied English literature at Brooklyn College; his first job was teaching English at his old yeshiva, Torah v’Das. By this time, though, he was out of the Satmar community for good.
“I still go home to visit,” he said. “People are happy to see me, and I’m happy to see them. They have no idea what a Hillel director does, but they know where I come from and who I really am. Their attitude is, ‘You’ve come for a visit, it’s good to see you again.’ My family accepts me with love, but they don’t understand my world.”
Yossil and Dora want their son to know his Satmar roots, and occasionally they take him to visit Brooklyn. “Akiva’s bar mitzvah has caused us to seriously consider sending him to New York to a Jewish school,” Yossil said. “You can’t carry Yiddishkeit on the narrow shoulders of a nuclear family. Our son needs hard learning and a Jewish environment. We want him to have that, but we won’t send him to Satmar. Even I couldn’t survive there anymore. It’s very hard to find the proper balance for Akiva.”
Yossil Friedman has no illusions about the power of America. He himself was seduced by Bob Cousy and Killer Joe, and although he has enough residual Jewishness to last a lifetime, he can’t be sure even about his own children. He and Dora have created a Jewish home in Gainesville; but, like the mimeographed Chasidic stories at the Hillel, it draws its sustenance from other times and other places.
“You know, I named our Akiva after Rabbi Akiva,” said Dora. “He was always a special hero of mine, a real ‘ohev israel’ [a lover of Israel].”
Friedman looked at her fondly. “He was a hero of mine, too,” he said with a smile.
“Yes,” she replied with gentle insistence, “but that name was my idea, Yossil.”
Friedman gave her a look of mock disagreement and then broke into a Chasidic song about the famous rabbi. “I could sing six or eight songs about Rabbi Akiva right now,” he said, smiling. “That’s a yeshiva thing to do. Not just to know, but to show that you know. That’s what my kind of education gives you—that, and a feeling of pity for other Jews who don’t know what you do, Jews who have traded a place in the Palace for a condominium in Florida.”
We sat up late talking about family things. Strangely, I felt very close to the Friedmans. I grew up as an assimilated kid in the Midwest; in those days I never even met a Chasid or a Holocaust survivor. But after twenty years in Israel, I understood the Friedmans perfectly, and they understood me. That night at their place we talked Jew talk—not Israeli politics or federation business, certainly not religion—just simple conversation among members of the same tribe, people with shared values and a common understanding of the world.
“You know what the saddest thing is?” said Yossil. “People down here don’t understand that Judaism isn’t just about being—it’s about doing. I can teach if I have to, and I can counsel if I need to, but first and foremost I’m not a Hillel director, I’m a Jew. Jews do. They lead Jewish lives.”
“I went to a conference not long ago,” said Dora, “on ‘Intermarriage: Prevention and Cure.’ There was a whole room full of Conservative rabbis, and not one had any idea what to do. One got up and said, ‘The converts I have are better than born Jews.’ Imagine that. I’ve got nothing against converts, but how could he say a thing like that? How much Yiddishkeit can a convert have?”
Friedman sighed. The Jewish students at the University of Florida don’t have much Yiddishkeit either. “There’s so much alienation here. People don’t want to come even to your sweetest programs. They have no Jewish imagination, no Jewish knowledge or growth. They come to college knowing four Jewish songs, and they leave with the same four songs.
“Look, can you call yourself a basketball player if you can’t play?” he said. “Jews down here settle for so little. The boy comes home with a girl and the mother says, ‘Thank God she’s Jewish.’ What’s that? What does it amount to?” Yossil leaned over and gave Dora a warm, un-self-conscious hug. “They should ask, ‘Does she sing like a Jew? Can she make love like a Jew?’ ”
Dora giggled and ruffled her husband’s hair. Yossil seemed suddenly abashed, and he smiled like a little boy. “Don’t get excited, I got that last line out of a Marvel Comic,” he said, and broke into a Chasidic tune.
“Conversion to Judaism in one day,” read the ad in The Miami Herald. “Six months of instruction in one eight-hour seminar. Join others in this spiritual adventure.” I was in Miami to meet the man behind the ad, Rabbi Dr. Emmet Allen Frank,* founder of the All People’s Synagogue of Miami Beach, the Crazy Eddie of American Judaism.
I called the number listed in the paper and got a recorded announcement. It began with a lilting baritone voice (which turned out to be Emmet Frank’s) singing the opening line of “Oh What a Beautiful Morning.” The recording then invited me to leave my name and number, which I did.
It took a couple of days, but Rabbi Frank eventually returned my call. I introduced myself and asked if he would be willing to explain his brand of Judaism to a puzzled Israeli. At first he was plainly unenthusiastic, a reticence I mistakenly attributed to a bad conscience. Later I learned that Frank had been having trouble with Meir Kahane’s toughs, and he was afraid I might be setting him up for a hit.
Frank finally agreed to meet me at his synagogue, which was appropriately located over a branch of Citibank, on the corner of Collins Avenue and 75th, in Miami Beach. It is a Jewish corner, two blocks from the ocean, inhabited mostly by old, discouraged-looking people from New York. A kiosk carries the New York Post and The Jewish Press. There were challas and bagels for sale at Abraham’s Kosher Shomer Shabbat Bakery. At Goldstein and Sons Strictly Kosher Meat Market, butchers in “Kosher Treat” baseball caps cut cheap pieces of brisket and rump for the elderly customers. A station wagon with HEBREW HOME FOR THE AGED on its doors cruised the quiet street like a truant officer looking for delinquents. The midday silence was reproachful; the people on Collins Avenue have no energy to waste on idle noisemaking.
On the door of the All People’s Synagogue was a multicolored modernistic mezuzah and a warning: VANDALIZING A CHURCH OR SYNAGOGUE IS PUNISHABLE BY FIVE YEARS IN JAIL AND A $5,000 FINE. I rang the doorbell and after a considerable interval, during which I was inspected through a peephole, I was admitted. Throughout America, Jewish offices and institutions are guarded by sophisticated security precautions—bulletproof screens, closed-circuit television, and rent-a-cop guards. Usually these measures are directed against the threat of Arab terrorism; but at the All People’s Synagogue, the danger was from other Jews.
Emmet Frank did not look like the kind of man who lives behind locked doors. In his late fifties, he was a cheerful, open-faced fellow with ginger hair turning gray and a reddish beard. That day he was dressed in a pink, yellow, and blue argyle sweater, matching socks, saddle shoes, and a blue silk racer’s jacket. A huge diamond ring shaped like the Ten Commandments extended to the knuckle of his left index finger, and gold chains—one holding a small Chai, another a Star of David—were draped over his chest. The effect was splendid and eclectic, as if he had been dressed in shifts by Liberace, A. J. Foyt, and George Bush.
Rabbi Frank greeted me suspiciously, but after a minute or two of small talk he broke down and took me on a tour of his synagogue—a suite of three spacious rooms linked by connecting doors. The room on the left was dominated by an exhibit of his paintings—large, skillfully rendered oils on Jewish themes, many of them featuring ornate Hebrew calligraphy. Frank’s artwork, according to a brochure he gave me, has hung in the Smithsonian Institute and in the lobby of the B’nai B’rith building in Washington. The brochure also listed his other accomplishments: “Artist, Violinist [with the Houston Symphony Orchestra], Singer, Writer [of an unpublished novel, I Am God’s Janitor], Photographer, Teacher, Minister of God.”
The room on the right was the rabbi’s study, its walls festooned with plaques and awards. Back in the 1950s, Emmet Frank was considered a talented, promising young rabbi, a political liberal and something of a charismatic figure in the Reform movement. His walls bore witness to his period of respectability: a rabbinical ordination degree and doctor of divinity diploma from the Hebrew Union College, a certificate of appreciation from the Mid-Atlantic Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a plaque from Israel Bonds, and an award from the American Jewish Congress lauding his achievements as a civil rights pioneer in the state of Virginia.
The pinnacle of his career came in the early 1960s, when Frank served as the rabbi of a large temple in Alexandria, Virginia. Although he was happy there, he decided to go to Seattle, to an even larger pulpit. The move ended in disaster—he couldn’t get along with the congregation and was fired.
Emmet Frank moved back East, to a small temple in Pennsylvania. But he didn’t last long there, either. Like a former big league ballplayer on the way down, he drifted from one tank town to another, eventually winding up—unemployed—in Miami Beach. “I believe it was God’s plan for me to come here. There are thousands of Jewish people who need my help and my services, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I found this place,” he told me with a faraway look in his clear blue eyes.
The center room of Frank’s synagogue was a miniature chapel with stained glass windows, blond wood pews, a small organ, and an ark covered with what appeared to be a Danish tapestry. The sanctuary resembled a tasteful Las Vegas marriage parlor—the right decor for a rabbi prepared, in his own words, “to marry anybody to anybody, anytime and anyplace.”
“I advertise interfaith marriages,” he said proudly, displaying his listing in the Greater Miami Yellow Pages: “Intermarriage, conversion, bris, bar mitzvah.” There is a rabbi in New Jersey who publishes a kind of tout sheet of colleagues who will perform intermarriages, and under what conditions. Most of them demand that the non-Jewish partner study Judaism, or at least promise to raise the children as Jews. Frank was proud of the fact that he was the only rabbi on the list who has no conditions at all.
“I’ll do a wedding in a Catholic or Protestant church, co-officiate with a minister or priest, whatever the couple wants. I sing, I chant, I have a beautiful robe. Believe me, nobody does a wedding like I do,” he said. Frank’s matrimonial services included a chauffeured ride to the chapel in the rabbi’s $90,000 Silver Spirit Rolls Royce, driven by his son and disciple, Loring.
“Rabbis think that by not doing interfaith marriages they’re saving Judaism. I suppose they think that if a couple can’t find a rabbi, they won’t get married,” Frank told me, shaking his head at the innocence of his colleagues. “Actually, I’m saving Judaism, not harming it. I increase the number of Jews. If you chase Jews away, all you do is make them non-Jews. Besides, I’m not that different from a lot of other rabbis. They do interfaith marriages in the closet. I advertise, that’s all.”
It was the advertising that got Emmet Frank thrown out of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the professional body of the Reform rabbinate. Although Frank had been an embarrassment for years, there were no grounds for his dismissal from membership. But advertising—unlike eight-hour conversions or performing weddings in a church—is a violation of Reform rabbinical ethics and his colleagues used it as an excuse for booting him out.
Rabbi Frank responded with a wounded defiance, stepping up his advertising campaign and sniping at his fellow rabbis on local talk shows. He also founded his own rabbinical association, FAIR (the Free Assembly of Independent Rabbis). Emmet Frank was its only member, but he hoped to attract followers. “Someday I may even open my own rabbinical school,” he said grandly.
Emmet Frank was born and raised in the South and educated in Classical Reform congregations. His classmates at the Hebrew Union College remember him as an engaging young man, but an indifferent student. “There are still a lot of things about Judaism I don’t know,” he admitted. “But really, I don’t need to know all that much. I’m a life cycle rabbi.”
A life cycle rabbi, according to Emmet Frank, offers services to people who couldn’t otherwise get them. Frank himself had no formal congregation—his experiences in Seattle and Harrisburg turned him against organized religion—but he claimed to have several thousand followers in Miami. He led Passover Seders for them at hotels or country clubs, conducts bar mitzvah ceremonies in backyards or on the beach. But most of his life cycle business came from performing weddings, more than one hundred a year, sometimes for couples who have traveled thousands of miles to be married by a rabbi.
The far-flung nature of Frank’s ministry and the publicity surrounding it aroused considerable controversy and opposition. One of Frank’s most vocal critics was Jewish Defense League chief Meir Kahane, who visited the All People’s Synagogue a few months before.
“I invited him in and we talked for a while,” Frank recalled. “He was actually quite pleasant. But then I heard a lot of noise downstairs. I looked out the window and saw a bunch of his supporters demonstrating. They were carrying signs that said EMMET FRANK WOULD MARRY A GOAT TO A SHEEP. You know, they actually had a goat down there, with a yarmulke on its head and a tallis on its back, and they yelled up at me to marry it to a sheep. I hated that. I’m the chaplain for the local humane society, and I felt terribly sorry for the goat.”
Frank called the police, and Kahane finally left, but the demonstration marked the beginning of a campaign to harass the spiritual leader of the All People’s Synagogue. “I got abusive phone calls in the middle of the night, they put ads in the paper offering free phone sex and listed my home number. I got sent doo-wop records C.O.D. They made my life miserable. That’s why I was afraid to meet you. I thought you might be one of them,” he said in an apologetic tone.
Naturally Rabbi Frank never married a goat to a sheep. The closest he had come was a wedding he performed for a Jewish elephant trainer with the improbable name of O’Brien and his tightrope-walker bride. The ceremony was carried out in the elephant tent, a venue that allowed the groom’s closest friends—three elephants with whom he worked—to take part by holding poles of the bridal canopy in their trunks. The fourth pole was held by a clown in whiteface. Frank showed me pictures of the groom and his extravagantly tattooed bride under the canopy. It was, he said, perhaps his finest hour as a life cycle rabbi.
The wedding business had its satisfactions, but it was in the area of conversions to Judaism that Frank was a pioneer. “I convert people in one day, and that’s controversial,” he said, “but let’s be honest. How long do other rabbis take? Six months? A year at the most. Okay, so let’s say a rabbi does a conversion in six months, one hour a week. And during that time, the student is sick once or twice, the rabbi can’t make it once or twice, maybe they meet twenty times, something like that. That’s, what, twenty hours? Thirty hours at the most. Mine takes eight hours. Now, what’s the difference? You know, a lot depends on what kind of a teacher you are.
“I cover all the major holidays, teach them the symbols, the whole life cycle,” he said. “I give a special emphasis to the Sabbath blessings. Then we finish up with a ritual baptism, right here.” He pointed out the window in the direction of the beach. “I tell them, ‘When you step into the ocean, you’re stepping into God.’ ”
Frank estimated he had converted several hundred people since the seminars began. “Look, they don’t remember everything. But I tell them, ‘If you forget something, just give me a call.’ ” It was the only conversion program in the country that came with its own warranty.
There was a knock on the door. Rabbi Frank was immediately wary, afraid perhaps that it was more doo-wop records. He looked through the peephole before opening the door and welcoming his son, Loring, who joined us in the rabbi’s study.
Loring Frank, a thin, nervous man in his late thirties with the credulous manner of a teenager, introduced himself as a marketing consultant; but his main job was serving as his father’s acolyte. Like the sons of other successful men, he was being groomed to take over the family business.
“I’m training Loring to be a rabbi,” Frank said blandly. “He’s only been at this about six months, but someday I want him to take over my synagogue and FAIR.” Loring nodded his enthusiastic approval of this master plan. I asked him if he had much Jewish background before entering upon his rabbinical training.
“Well, I believe in lighting candles on Friday night, and I go to temple once in a while, but I don’t say a prayer after going to the bathroom or just go around praying all the time like the Orthodox, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “And my dad has taught me a lot. But you don’t need to know everything. I mean, let’s say that somebody wants to know about kosher. Then I’d send him to another rabbi who knows those rules. Personally, I’m macrobiotic, that’s my style, but I can respect other people’s beliefs, too. I’m just not worried about tiny details.”
Loring acquired his knowledge of the big picture by accompanying his father on his rabbinical rounds—getting hands-on experience, like a plumber’s apprentice. “We do brises, weddings, everything. I still haven’t taught bar mitzvah training yet, but I will soon, won’t I, Dad?”
Rabbi Frank nodded, a proud father. “I didn’t push my son to become a rabbi. The Lord did.”
“Hey, Dad, who was that guy who became a rabbi when he was about my age?” Loring asked.
“That was Rabbi Akiva, son,” Frank said, clearly pleased with the boy’s erudition. Loring slapped his knee. “Right, well, it’s never too late. You know, I don’t know why these Orthodox attack us. I mean, we don’t attack them for doing their thing. What we want to do is to cater to the people, give them what they want. We don’t necessarily expect them to change their whole lives just to be Jewish.”
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 juvenile 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.
But then, the residents of Century Village are not traditional Jews; they are the first generation of American Old Jews, people like Laura and Jake.
Laura is a crisp, rosy-cheeked woman of about sixty-five who left Brooklyn after forty years as a union clerk. Jake, a few years older, came down to Florida after selling his small clothing shop in Queens. A ferret-faced chain smoker, he has the teasing patter of a neighborhood retailer. Neither one lives within a thousand miles of their children.
“I came down here not just for the sunshine,” Jake said. “I came down for a new life, a brand new start. Sure it’s hard at first, but you meet friends, you forget about the street you lived on. As far as kids are concerned, it depends. Lemme tell you, a lot of people here created monsters. Plenty of them don’t even come down for a visit.”
Laura disagreed. She is a placid woman, and she discussed the issue with the detachment of a pop psychologist on Donahue. “It’s true to some extent that we created takers. We never taught our children to give, but that’s our fault, not theirs. Don’t forget,” she said, turning to Jake, “our generation was raised the same way. We were brought up on doing our own thing, only they didn’t call it that in the old days. Our parents came from Europe and they gave us what they didn’t have. They taught us to take care of ourselves first. And that’s the way I still feel today. You have your own life. I don’t want to live near my kids. I brought them up to feel the same way I do. I love ’em, and I love those grandchildren, but I’ll tell you, I don’t want them calling me every time the baby has a stomachache.”
It was a perspective I had never considered. The people at Century Village are not Portnoy’s mother but Portnoy himself—selfish, individualistic, pleasure-oriented. Their accents are Flatbush or Jersey City, not Minsk or Vilna. Their furniture isn’t covered with plastic slip covers. Their kitchens have only one set of dishes (and that rarely used; they prefer to eat the half-price early bird special at the nearby mall). There are no kugel bakers, minyon makers, or cheek pinchers here—just guys and gals having a blast at summer camp.
“These people are in such good shape that you can’t even tell how old they are,” said Angela Varone, the clubhouse director. But they can easily tell how old you are, and visitors under fifty feel a certain amount of hostility. “They tend to be a little defensive with outsiders, especially younger people,” Angela explained. “A lot of people treat the elderly like they were retarded or something. But their attitude here is, ‘Hey, I’m no dummy, I’ve been around. I want some respect.’ We try to keep them from feeling inferior just because they’re getting older, but sometimes that feeling of inferiority comes out in a basic dislike of younger people.”
Age is the great common denominator at Century Village; it creates a sense of solidarity against the outside world. The Italians occasionally complain that the Jews dominate the entertainment schedule, but there is very little friction. “Age gives them more in common than ethnic differences divide them,” Angela told me. “And they do have a lot in common. There isn’t that much difference between a Jew from Brooklyn and an Italian from Brooklyn. They’re all just people. There are even Italians in the Yiddish club.”
Lou Steiner confirmed this when he joined Laura, Jake, and me at the clubhouse. A spare, dapper man who still works as a union organizer, Steiner came down to Florida after the death of his wife and immediately began trying to raise Jewish consciousness among his fellow Villagers. One of his pet projects is the weekly Yiddish sing-along. “Sure we have gentiles,” he said. “Why not? Most of the Jews down here don’t know Yiddish any better than they do.”
Steiner led us to the sing-along—sixty or so senior citizens in shorts and alligator shirts sitting on folding chairs in a large rec room. On the stage in front of them, a flabby, middle-aged man with an Israeli accent sat at an upright piano and went over the words of a song. I wasn’t surprised that the conductor was Israeli; increasingly, American Jews, even elderly ones, need to import Israelis to help them carry out Jewish activities.
Someone handed me a mimeographed sheet with lyrics written in English transliteration. Laura, who is the head of the Yiddish speakers group, doesn’t read the language; most of the group’s members can barely speak it. They repeated the words of a Purim song—“Hynt is Purim Brider”—in tentative voices, and then sang the song in powerful American accents.
“Sixty years ago I heard the great Yiddish entertainer Tomaschevsky sing this song,” Jake said to me in a loud whisper. “Now listen to it.” He waved his hand in disgusted dismissal. “Feh!”
Lou Steiner, who was standing nearby, caught the gesture and waved his own hand. “I’ve been trying to raise money for a synagogue down here,” he said. “You think it’s easy? These people don’t care about being Jewish anymore. We’ve got a little Conservative congregation, meets in one of the buildings here, but we need a real place of our own.”
“How many people attend services, usually?” I asked. A grim look came over Steiner’s face. “I won’t even tell you. The truth is, it’s a shame before God. You need a minyan here? After all, we got a lot of people need to have a minyan from time to time. You go in the clubhouse, they’re playing cards. You even mention a minyan, they say ‘Leave me alone.’ Sometimes they even tell you, ‘I’m not Jewish, I’m Spanish.’ ” He looked around and lowered his voice to a confidential tone. “You won’t believe it, but there are men here, right in this room, who refuse to say Kaddish for their own wives.”
Jake stubbed out his cigarette with an angry gesture. “It’s just assimilation. That’s all it is, nobody’s Jewish anymore. Believe me, sometimes I cry at night just to think of it.” He nodded at the group, singing now in their flat, broad American accents. “Just listen to them,” he said plaintively. “Tomaschevsky is spinning in his grave.”
The Century Villagers are the first generation of Eastern European Jews to run all the way through the American experience, from birth to retirement. They have the memories of immigrants’ children and these memories matter; but the real influence on their lives has been America—its language and rhythms, culture and ethos. They are charter members of the first Jewish generation taught, in Laura’s phrase, “to do its own thing.” And here, in Florida, at the end of the cycle, in the twilight of their lives, who can blame them if that thing has turned out to be mixed doubles, early bird dining, and the fox-trot.
* In December 1987, less than a year after my visit to Miami, Emmet Frank passed away.