{"id":1811,"date":"2018-09-09T20:31:51","date_gmt":"2018-09-09T20:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1811"},"modified":"2018-09-09T20:31:51","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T20:31:51","slug":"lshanah-tovah-balkan-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=1811","title":{"rendered":"L’Shanah Tovah, Balkan Style"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The synagogue in Dubrovnik, Croatia – a piece of culture that was lurking but hadn’t come to the fore until it was in front of me, a doorway on one of the many stone alleyways.\u00a0 I went up the stairs to the third floor and entered a single but luxurious room, all dark varnished wood and hanging oil lamps.\u00a0 Andrea Ferreira, standing in a corner, put down her phone. “Any questions?”\u00a0 She was a descendant of one of the original Sephardic families that fled Spain after the Expulsion in 1492 and found a free zone in the Ragaza kingdom, then sympathetic to Jews.<\/p>\n

In Belgrade, Serbia, I came across a synagogue, Sukkat Shalom, a large neoclassical structure dedicated after World War I with ill-founded optimism. Irina recounted that the community, some 200,000 Jews who had filtered mostly through the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, would be destroyed in the next war.\u00a0 Perversely, the temple stands now only because the Nazis used the cool elegant space as a brothel.\u00a0 The Sephardic community’s Moorish-design synagogue was leveled.\u00a0 Sukkat Shalom is the lovely shell of a hope of tolerance, serving the remaining 2,000 Jews in Belgrade.<\/p>\n

Back in Dubrovnik, Andrea Ferreira was cosmopolitan, soft around the edges with compassion and wisdom.\u00a0 She recounted her history with a similar world-weary optimism.\u00a0 Yes, her fellow Croatians were horrible, establishing home-grown concentration camps, treating Serbs maybe worse than the Jews they rounded up.\u00a0 Yes, in 1991-2, when Croatia fought for independence, Serbs bombed Dubrovnik for eight months, heavily damaging the historic synagogue.\u00a0 Yes, she smiled and shrugged, again, Croats are nationalistic, \u00a0again. \u00a0Were Jews better in Serbia?\u00a0 She shrugged: Six of one, half dozen the other. These countries all have their issues.<\/p>\n

Both synagogues will be celebrating the High Holidays starting tonight. They are stringing pearls across empires and centuries, across the energy of destruction.\u00a0 The diaporic Jewish world is not only American or Israeli. \u00a0Coming back to America, I got quickly undone by reentering the stream.\u00a0 It seems the madmen have taken over, and to even debate it is madness.<\/p>\n

Although the Jewish holidays are early this year, it’s none too early for a reset, a prayer. \u00a0I am remembering Andrea’s implicit message.\u00a0 Don\u2019t hold your breath waiting for goodness to land in your lap.\u00a0 Keep your head down and do what you do.\u00a0 Be good, live well, love life.\u00a0 Have a happy New Year, 5779.\u00a0 L’Shanah Tovah.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The synagogue in Dubrovnik, Croatia – a piece of culture that was lurking but hadn’t come to the fore until it was in front of me, a doorway on one of the many stone alleyways.\u00a0 I went up the stairs … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[739,763,746,766,765,762,764],"class_list":["post-1811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-belgrade","tag-croatia-war-of-independence","tag-dubrovnik","tag-high-holidays-5779","tag-jewish-diapora","tag-sukkat-shalom","tag-yugoslavian-jews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-td","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1812,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811\/revisions\/1812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}