From the Rabbi
“Graduation”
Last Thursday, I was privileged to stand with more than 70 fellow graduates on the campus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, which this year celebrated its 130th commencement ceremony. Wolf Blitzer, the CNN anchor, delivered the commencement address, which offered inspiring personal stories about his Jewish upbringing. He also shared his observation regarding the surge in antisemitism, but was still hopeful about the Jewish future in America.
Reflecting on that experience, I was reminded of a message I wrote for the January 2023 issue of The Shofar, titled “Back to School.” I wrote about heading back to school and my first day back on JTS/Columbia campus after a decade, noting that I felt like a fish returning to water. In that message, I observed that “…the spirit of learning is the humility of the soul. Going back to school is a mindset, a way of life. It is also the way of light, a hunger for knowledge and a thirst for wisdom.” I quoted Mark Twain, who said “I never let my schooling stand in the way of my education.” That statement could not have been more true during the past year.
Since Oct. 7, education has shifted from inside the classroom to the outside. All of it was taking place in the “public square.” The whole campus and beyond becoming one big educational lab. The separate buildings and facilities did not separate us any longer. Students studying nuclear physics joined students focused on journalism and architecture to demonstrate, to protest, and to make an encampment.
Nobody expected the next developments. Seeing Hamilton Hall, where my classes took place, being taken over by students in the name of a political agenda means that the campus is no longer defined by its boundaries, even when the gates are locked. The real education, perhaps, was to realize how quickly things can escalate or deteriorate — like a sunny afternoon disrupted by heavy rain clouds, thunder, and lightning. On the beautiful campus of Columbia University, the stately old buildings steeped in history were giving birth to new realities.
In a year fraught with pain and anxiety, we need the light of education to see a way through the unforeseen challenges. As we approach Lag B’Omer, the holiday of great light and bonfires on the 33rd day of the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, we can experience that light. On that day in ancient history, according to the Talmud, the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva stopped dying in a plague. But why did they die in the first place? The Talmud answers, because they lacked respect for each other. The light of education illuminates the main message, that respect for each other and fellow students is the first lesson.
Perhaps that is the meaning of graduation — to be given the principles to seek truth, to discern what is true and what is false but knowing that the ultimate truth hides in the method, in the process, in the attitude, in showing respect to everybody and everything that contributes to one’s education, on campus and beyond it.
As we witnessed on campuses across the nation, the Jewish world is under attack. The first step in repelling darkness is by coming together in an illuminating respect. May it be so.
May God bless us with a bright summer,
—Rabbi Gadi Capela
[Photo credit: Havi Miller]
Indigenous Jews on Columbia Campus
My experience at Columbia University before and after Oct. 7
It was a profound time to be on the Columbia University campus during the October 7th events and their aftermath. I returned to school to finish a master’s degree I started 10 years earlier and found myself in the middle of the Jewish people and Israel’s toughest battles.
I found out that in the frequently discussed notion of Jewish indigenousness to the land of Israel, the perception in the West is firmly set on Jews being white. Similarly, Israel being a “Western” country and is somehow a “white, settler-colonialist” and an “Apartheid State.”
This rhetoric is so commonplace, it has made it into literature published by Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and Critical Race Theory. It also inspired the curricula across the United States. Ironically, in Europe, Jews were considered insufficiently white. But when they arrived in America, right into the paradigm of black or white, Jews gradually were considered “white” and assimilated.
Following one of the big anti-Israel demonstrations on campus, my professor asked me to narrate my parents’ story of forced migration from Yemen as children in 1951. I said, “I wish someone told my parents when they were wandering on foot for over a year in the Arabian Desert, that they were colonial oppressors.” I realized that my classmates have never processed who lives in Israel and how they got there.
There is at be
st, an informational disconnect between the reality of Mizrahi (Eastern) Jews and these demonstrably false notions. Despite millennia of documented history, there is a sheer lack of awareness of the indigenous Middle Eastern Jews, whose ancestors never set foot in Europe, and share genetic markers, physical features, language, and culture, with the surrounding non-Jewish populations. For this reason, they are referred to as the “Forgotten Refugees.”
The story of the Forgotten Refugees, which is the story of most Jewish Israelis today, is commemorated annually on November 30. It is known as The Day to Mark the Departure and Expulsion of Jews from the Arab Countries and Iran. It tells the story of nearly a million Jews displaced from Arab countries as a consequence of the events surrounding 1948 and the establishment of the State of Israel.
In order to explain this critical piece of Jewish history, with help of other students and alumni, I created an educational event the following month, on November 30, 2023. [See attached video]
Furthermore, for the past 18 years I have been involved with interfaith teaching and traveling with Christians and Muslims around the world. Our message all along has been that the conflicts in the Middle East, which are in no doubt influenced by geopolitical, economic, and other reasons, are essentially motivated by religious convictions. Therefore, interfaith dialogue and activism are key to the promotion of peace in the region. I would like to turn the journey of the Forgotten Refugees into a roadmap to peace in the Middle East.
Pursuing peace goes hand in hand with truth and justice. I hope to open a window into the context of Mizrahi communities within the story of the Jewish people. Tracing it through ancient manuscripts, I would like to show the diverse face of the Jewish people and the tapestry of Israeli society.
Columbia University accepted my proposal to make November 30th an annual affair on campus. I will use the next few months to plan the next event in November 2024. The goal is to provide a comprehensive understanding, aiming to educate and prevent future conflict arising from ignorance, and to amplify the often forgotten and unheard voices of the indigenous Middle Eastern Jews and their descendants.
“Passing Over to Nicaragua”
We had a wonderful Seder at the synagogue with about 30 people — young and old, men and women, members and guests, children, all colors. Our B’nei Mitzvah, Julian Graf and Ayla Eisenberg, were chasing the afikomen under the watchful eye of Julian’s older sister, Savana. A festive Seder. Yet a bittersweet Seder this year with the posters of kidnapped Israelis on Elijah’s and Miriam’s chairs.
I wore a white cotton shirt, embroidered in blue at the open-necked collar, with lace connecting the two sides of the V-neck. Ma nishtana halayla hazeh? How is this night different from all other nights? Different from the dress shirt and tie I normally wear?
A week before Passover, I was invited to speak at a small prayer conference near San Jose in Costa Rica. Among mango trees and the hot sun, the conference was a low-budget, high-spirited weekend. All the attendees spoke Spanish, many exclusively, so we had to use a translator. I became Rabbino Gadi to them, half of whom never in their lives had met a Jew.
At the end of the conference, we continued to travel north until we arrived at the Nicaraguan border. The country, which is known for its water, as the second half of its name indicates, gave me a passing over water experience. But it wasn’t the only passing over experience. This was a border I never thought I would cross. As a kid growing up in the ‘80s, I kept hearing the name Nicaragua in connection to revolutions and arms deals.
In a way, the Nicaragua experience was, for me, exactly the opposite of the Passover I would soon experience here at home, where the Seder table would be laden with good food and the symbols of freedom.
But there, once we crossed the border, I felt the change immediately. Even the dramatic terrain — the volcanoes and lakes — couldn’t hide the poverty and the simple living conditions. We hired a couple of locals to show us around, and we tried to be kind to the people there, generous, buying food from the fruit stands as we passed by.
Crossing the border back into Costa Rica, we passed many street markets and booths along the way. At one of them, a white shirt hanging on a hanger and blowing in the wind caught my eye, and my heart. Its blue and white colors and its spirit connected me to it. I knew right then that I would wear it at the Seder I would lead at the shul. The shirt symbolized freedom in a place where it felt more like Egypt. Somehow, it reminded me of the spirit of the Israelites, who felt freedom blowing under their wings before liftoff — the wind that penetrates the humble body and resurrects it.
Like the crossing the Israelites never imagined passing over, I, too, passed over a simple border line that left an indelible impact — a profound experience of passing over that we celebrate all these thousands of years later.
The Talmud states that in the month of Nisan, the people of Israel were redeemed, and in the month of Nisan they will be redeemed in the future. May it be this year.
Moadim Lesimcha,
— Rabbi Gadi Capela
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