A Young Man From Omaha, Who May Perfectly Represent Brooklyn

Moments before Yosef Abrahamson, 16, accepted an award for the essay he’d written in a competition sponsored by the Police Athletic League, an officer approached him to complain about his fedora. The hat, an essential wardrobe item for Hasidic men, was gaudy, the policeman told him, and what’s with all these kids today and their nose rings and their attitudes. A second police officer, overhearing the conversation, came over to steer away the first one, who reappeared a few minutes later to apologize. He’d never seen a Hasidic Jew, he told Yosef.

A policeman working in New York who’d never seen a Hasidic Jew? What he probably meant, Yosef theorized, was “that he’d never seen a Hasidic Jew of color. I think he was probably making some assumptions there.”

Thanks to his Egyptian father, who left the family when Yosef was young, and his maternal grandfather, who was of African descent by way of Panama, Yosef looks African-American (though his family prefers to describe themselves as Jews of color, believing their culture to be exclusively Jewish). Yosef moved to Crown Heights only a year ago, until then having lived in Omaha, where his mother’s maternal family, German Jewish merchants, had settled several generations earlier.

If Yosef, who attends the yeshiva Darchai Menachem in Crown Heights, ever finds himself writing a college application essay, his advisers would have a hard time choosing which of his compelling story lines would most dazzle those college admissions officers: The story of growing up in the only Hasidic family in Omaha? Or the story of being the only student of color in his yeshiva? Or maybe the story of being the only Hasidic person of color in Omaha’s competitive ice skating circuit?

Despite the friendships he made while ice skating, a hobby his mother encouraged to round him out, life in Omaha was “a bit lonely,” Yosef admitted last week while eating a Kosher hamburger on Albany Avenue with his mother and his older sister, Sarah, 22. His mother, Dinah, who joined the Chabad-Lubavitch movement after seeing videos of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson several years ago, home-schooled both of her children.

Yosef was obviously sheltered from too much scrutiny from the outside world, but the surprising combination of his race and his particular form of religious observance fazed no one in Omaha — for all the average person knew in Omaha, all Hasidic Jews were of African descent, his mother said. When friends from Nebraska first visited New York, they were fascinated to meet some white Hasids for the first time.

It was easier for Ms. Abrahamson to raise her children in Omaha than it would have been in Crown Heights, she said.

“People are laid-back in Omaha,” she said. “It’s different there.”

Omaha is not, for example, a place where race relations between Jews and blacks have exploded into days of riots, as they did in Crown Heights in 1991; nor have the police in Omaha ever deemed it necessary to set up mobile command centers to monitor simmering tensions between Jews and blacks, as the New York police did last month in the Brooklyn neighborhood in response to two unrelated physical altercations.

A young man like Yosef could easily start to feel like a powerful symbol, rather than just a kid, the human embodiment of that famously controversial Art Spiegelman New Yorker cover depicting a Hasidic man embracing an African-American woman.

But life in Crown Heights is somehow less complicated than that for Yosef, a tall, athletic young man who seems to have internalized Omaha’s easygoing ways (and its broad Midwestern accent). Beyond the misunderstanding at the awards ceremony — of which Yosef said, “It was a bit strange, but really, I understand” — he says he has felt comfortable in Crown Heights from the moment he came there to advance his education.

Through summer camps and occasional trips to New York, the Abrahamsons were already familiar to the Jewish community in Crown Heights when he arrived last fall (the community has only a handful of other black families). The response from the African-American community has been, if anything, amazement. “Now I’ve seen everything,” an African-American man said three or four times as he passed Yosef and his mother and his sister walking home from synagogue.

Some black neighbors recently asked Ms. Abrahamson questions about the meaning of some Lubavitch fliers they had received in the mail. The family sensed that the neighbors had long been harboring those questions but had felt a certain comfort level with the Abrahamsons because of their shared skin color.

If there have been resentful or disapproving responses from either side, they have apparently gone as far over Yosef’s head as the references his ice skating friends used to make to movies or television shows he’d never seen.

The ease with which both communities have received Yosef seems a little unlikely, but appropriate in the year of what some call the country’s first post-racial presidential campaign. Except that the Abrahamsons consider themselves “post-racial, for real,” said Ms. Abrahamson, a Republican delegate in Nebraska who is not a fan of Mr. Obama. To the contrary, the whole family strongly supports John McCain, and Yosef will be a page at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities in September.

One more item to add to that list of possible essay topics.

E-mail: susan.dominus
@nytimes.com

Van crash kills Sydney Chabadniks

The bodies of a Lubavitch couple killed in a car crash Dec. 20 were buried in Sydney on Monday.
More than 700 mourners joined 19 immediate family members for the burial of Zev and Rochel Simons, who were killed when their van veered across the median strip on a major highway and plowed into a truck. Their deaths have stunned Sydney’s Orthodox community.
The couple, who have 10 children, were traveling to Melbourne for a wedding. None of the children were with them at the time.
The 39-year-old driver of the truck was thrown from his vehicle and died at the scene.
The truck was carrying 50,000 liters of gas, prompting emergency personnel to close the highway for more than 12 hours for fear of an explosion.
Zev Simons was a former director of Jewish studies at the Yeshiva Primary School. Rochel Simons was a teacher at Kesser Torah College and also worked at the local mikvah, or ritual bath.
Kesser Torah College’s president and principal sent a letter on Friday to the school community grieving over the “terrible tragedy took the lives of two of our beloved. We are all in varying stages of shock,” they wrote. “At KTC, we are trying to digest the monumental proportions of this heartbreaking loss.”
The couple's son-in-law, Rabbi Yossi Cunin, the co-director of Chabad of the Hills in Beverly Hills, Calif., told the Chabad.org Web site: “They gave their lives to the community.”

Row In Rostov

Allegations fly between chief rabbis after 13 Chabad students are arrested in southern Russia.

by Walter Ruby

Special To The Jewish Week

Following the recent arrest of 13 visiting students in a Chabad-sponsored yeshiva in the southern Russian city of Rostov, charges flew among various Lubavitch factions.The chief rabbi of Kfar Chabad in Israel accused the chi ef rabbi of Russia of conspiring to close the yeshiva and thereby causing the arrest of the students. And the Russian chief rabbi shot back, charging “slander.”But after a Nov. 8 meeting in Crown Heights attended by both Rabbi Berel Lazar, chief Rabbi of Russia, and Rabbi Yosef Aronov, chairman of Chabad in Israel and head of the yeshiva in Rostov, a strained peace seemed to be holding. A statement specifying that the two will put aside their differences and work together for the reopening of the Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim appeared to have ended the controversy, although perhaps not all of the bad blood.The school was was closed by order of authorities in Rostov after they arrested the yeshiva students on Nov. 1, citing visa and registration issues.The students — most of whom were Americans — were held for two days in filthy and overcrowded conditions in a prison in Rostov, without access to kosher food for the first 24 hours of their imprisonment.They were released after the intervention of high-level diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The yeshiva in Rostov is of special importance to the Chabad movement because it occupies the site where Sholom Dovber Schneerson, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, lived during his final years.The controversy over the yeshiva is a potential embarrassment for Rabbi Lazar. For the past seven years he has been the most powerful Jewish leader in Russia and the only one to enjoy a close relationship with President Vladimir Putin. But last month, Rabbi Lazar was not invited to take part in a meeting Putin held with a delegation from the European Jewish Congress that included his archrival, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow. An exchange of angry letters reveals the animosity the incident has engendered between leader of the Russian and Israeli factions of Chabad.In his letter to Rabbi Lazar, written when it became clear the yeshiva was about to be closed, Rabbi Mordecai Ashkenazi, chief rabbi of Israel’s main Chabad enclave and a close associate of Aronov, did not assert that Rabbi Lazar was no longer influential enough with the Russian authorities to protect the yeshiva.Rather, Rabbi Ashkenazi claimed that Rabbi Lazar actively encouraged the authorities to close it, presumably because it operated under the aegis of the Israeli Chabad rabbinate, and not under his own Moscow-based Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia.After the Ashkenazi letter, which accused Lazar of mesirah (informing on Jews to non-Jewish authorities) became public, Rabbi Lazar fired back with a letter of his own. In it he accused Rabbis Ashkenazi and Aronov of “slander” and lashon hara, stating that the reason for the closing of the yeshiva and arrest of the students was that Aronov “never legally registered the yeshiva’s students. And where they did register, they did it under the name of a straw organization, using faked registration, a severe breach of Russian law.” Rabbi Lazar also claimed that he sought to intervene with Russian authorities on behalf of the arrested students, but was unsuccessful.Informed of the gravity of the situation Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of Chabad in Washington and Mark Levin, executive director of the Washington-based NCSJ (formerly the National Conference on Soviet Jewry), worked the phones late in the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 2, contacting U.S. government officials. The following morning two high-level U.S. Embassy officials flew from Moscow to Rostov and managed to convince local authorities to free the students, who were immediately expelled across the border to Ukraine. According to Levin, “It seems to me that the most significant part of the story is that we were able on short notice to reach out to those in a position to help to free the students and thereby managed to prevent what could have been a tragedy.”At the Nov. 8 meeting of the top leadership of Agudas Chassidei Chabad (the umbrella organization of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Crown Heights), Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, chairman of the Executive Committee, said in the official statement that after reviewing the events surrounding the Rostov yeshiva controversy, the committee “became convinced that the insinuations and accusations [by Ashkenazi and Lazar] were erroneous and were a result of misunderstanding and confusion.” Rabbi Shemtov commended both Rabbis Lazar and Aronov “for their efforts to solve the problem of this crisis.” And he added, “We remain optimistic about Rabbi Lazar’s commitment to work with Russian authorities and ensure resumption of the activities of the Rostov Yeshiva.”Privately, however, high-level sources within Chabad acknowledged that it is likely to take months before the Russian authorities give the necessary authorizations to reopen the yeshiva.The sources confirmed that the results of the Executive Committee meeting in Crown Heights amounted to a reassertion of authority by the Chabad leadership in Brooklyn over the movement’s seemingly autonomous and often-combative Russian and Israeli branches.According to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, “Agudath Chassidei Chabad is the ultimate policy authority within the movement and the fact that it was involved helped to mitigate the situation.”

Chabad House takes yeshiva on the road

Volunteers bring lessons to students

BLADE RELIGION EDITOR

School may be out for the summer, but not at Toledo’s Chabad House-Lubavitch.The Jewish outreach center is offering free classes on Jewish studies taught by six students from yeshivas, or Jewish educational institutions, around the country.And if it is inconvenient to come to Chabad House for classes, then Chabad House will come to you with its “Summer Yeshiva on Wheels” program.Andy Golding signed up for classes at his Sylvania home because he wanted his children to see that studying the Torah, Talmud, and other Jewish texts is important.“I want them to have a sense of Jewish identity, and I think identity is created in the home,” said Mr. Golding, a member of the Temple-Congregation Shomer Emunim in Sylvania. “Having a rabinnical student come to the house is another layer of that identity.”He and his wife, Cami, have four children — Joey, 6; Benny, 5; and twins Sammy and Sophie, 2.“My kids are young. I think the important thing for the kids is that they see their father studying Jewish things,” Mr. Golding said. “And studying Jewish things is a mitzvah, a good deed. This is an easy one.”Mrs. Golding said she has the highest regard for the programs offered by Chabad House, which is part of the worldwide Jewish organization that carries on the teachings of the late Rebbe Menachem Schneerson.“They have such passion. They are the most extreme in being observant [of Jewish traditions], and yet they are the most liberal in how they love and accept people.”Henoch Rosenfeld, a Pittsburgh native studying at a Detroit yeshiva, came to the Goldings’ home this week to teach a class on Jewish ethics.Wearing a black suit, white shirt, and wide-brim black hat, Mr. Rosenfeld brought three books written in both Hebrew and English.As Joey sat on Mr. Golding’s lap, both of them wearing kippahs, or head coverings, Mr. Rosenfeld spoke of how Moses received the Torah from God on Mount Sinai and passed it down from generation to generation.“Listen up,” Mr. Golding told his son. “This is very important!”Benny joined them briefly, then wandered off. Same with Sophie.Mr. Rosenfeld jokingly told Joey to pay attention because he had to teach the lesson to his younger brother. “You repeat this to Benny. I’ll give you a test,” Mr. Rosenfeld said with a grin.Joey just smiled shyly.Mr. Golding read two sentences and Mr. Rosenfeld launched into an enthusiastic lecture, for more than half an hour, about the need to be patient in judgment, and to raise up disciples. “Wow. That’s a lot,” Mr. Golding said with a laugh. “And it’s only been two sentences!”Rabbi Yossi Shemtov of Chabad House, said the Summer Yeshiva program started July 25 and continues through Aug. 15, with classes available almost any time of day or night, at Chabad or in an individual’s home.The program is made possible because the yeshiva students are willing to give up vacation time to teach others, the rabbi said.“Instead of jet-skiing, they graciously offer to come and teach and we are truly grateful,” Rabbi Shemtov said.More information on Summer Yeshiva and Summer Yeshiva on Wheels is available by calling Chabad House-Lubavitch at 419-843-9393. Toledo’s Chabad House is at 4020 Nantucket Dr., off Sylvania Avenue in West Toledo.