Being Jewish around the world

PAT JOHNSON

What's Jewish?" This was the response Michael Geller and his wife, Sally, received in a restaurant in Malaysia, after realizing that their impromptu seder was attracting attention.

Finding themselves away from familiar surroundings at Pesach, the Vancouver couple sought out local items that could fill in for the traditional Passover foods. With some kneidlach-like balls and other local substitutes for the ceremonial meal, they improvised the seder marking the Exodus. When it was time to repeatedly dip a finger in the wine while recollecting the 10 plagues, they realized they were the object of fellow diners' attention.

"We're Jewish and we're having a ceremonial dinner," Geller explained, to which the server indicated her unfamiliarity with the broader concept.

"What's Jewish?" she asked.

The anecdote was part of Geller's recollections during a slide show at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver Oct. 2. Geller spoke in the Norman Rothstein Theatre about his and wife Sally's year-long adventure with a round-the-world plane ticket. The topic was Jewish Life Around the World, or Is There a Good Jewish Deli in this Country?

At times, the presentation stretched the bounds of the topic. In many cases, like Malaysia, no, there was no good Jewish deli, or any other hint of Yiddishkeit. But Geller's amiable wit and urban-planning eye filled the gaps.

Elsewhere in Asia, the Gellers had slightly more luck finding mishpochah, thanks in several cases to Chabad, the Jewish outreach organization noted for meeting Jews wherever they may be, including places where post-army Israelis and young Jewish Europeans and Americans backpack. In Luangprabang, Laos, the Gellers stumbled upon the welcoming site of the Beit Chabad.

"There, in the middle of Shangri-La, was Chabad," he said.

There was less luck in Hong Kong, where they tracked down a restaurant called Shalom.

"But it was really Chinese food," said Geller, who salvaged the experience by observing from the waterfront restaurant how much Hong Kong, like Sydney, uses the waterways for commuter traffic.

Geller's eye for urban innovation comes from decades in the real estate development and planning field. He is adjunct faculty at Simon Fraser University's Centre for Sustainable Community Development and, as president of the SFU Community Trust until 2006, he oversaw the first phase of UniverCity, the sustainable community created on Burnaby Mountain.

Geller is a Non-Partisan Association candidate for Vancouver city council in the Nov. 15 elections, a fact to which he made only brief reference in his presentation. For politicos, Geller could not have picked a less opportune evening for his talk, competing with not one but two blockbusters: the English-language Canadian federal leaders' debate and the American vice-presidential candidates' debate.

"There's a lot of competition tonight," he acknowledged.

The Gellers had more luck in the Jewish realm when they got to Europe. In the Greek island city of Rhodes, they found the 500-year-old Kahal Shalom Synagogue – and an example of an interesting new phenomenon. The 16th-century structure in the Sephardi style is part of World Monuments Watch, an effort to draw attention to structures and locations the nonprofit organization believes should be recognized as World Heritage Sites.

Built in 1577, the synagogue dates back to the era after the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, when many Sephardi (from the Hebrew word for Spain) Jews travelled across the Mediterranean to Istanbul and Izmir, in Turkey, and to Thessaloniki (Salonica) and Rhodes, in Greece. The Ladino-speaking Jewish population of Rhodes was at its height of 4,000 in the 1920s. But, like the much larger Jewish population of Salonica, which, before the Second World War, numbered more than 50,000, the Holocaust massively ruptured the longest cultural interaction in history: that between the Jews and the Greeks. An estimated 98 per cent of Salonica's Jews perished at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

As an aside, Geller noted there is a community of Jews from Rhodes living in Seattle.

In Bulgaria, the Gellers visited Sofia Synagogue, the largest Sephardi synagogue in Europe, which was built in the Bulgarian National Romantic style and seats 1,170.

"I don't think I'd ever seen such an impressive synagogue," Geller said. "Sure enough, there was a women's auxiliary" that raised revenue for the local Jewish community by knitting kippot purchased by visiting Jews like Geller.

In Dubrovnik, Croatia, they enjoyed a tour given by Chabad in the old Jewish quarter. In Bratislava, Slovakia, they experienced their first taste of a philo-Semitic revival taking place in parts of Europe.

"The buildings were magnificent and were slowly being restored" after decades of neglect under communism, Geller noted. The Gellers were moved by an impressive Holocaust monument and Jewish museum, but they also experienced the revival of European Jewish culture as it is being experienced in some central and east European cities. The restaurant in Chez David Hotel in Bratislava has old images of great rabbis on its walls and a plasticized sheet of old, and some newer, Jewish jokes. An example: when Rabinovitch is seen reading Pravda and is reminded day after day that the Soviet regime has ended and there's no longer any need to read Pravda, Rabinovitch replies, "I know, but I just love hearing you say it."

In Krakow, klezmer is the rage among non-Jews and it's the site of the world's largest klezmer festival, Geller said.

"It's a whole industry in Krakow," he said, adding that they discovered chicken-liver-filled goose necks in a restaurant there.

The trip – and the presentation – was not a comprehensive analysis of Jewish historical sites, so much as an anecdotal reflection on a long adventure. As often as not, the urban-planning eye found more than the Jewish-trained eye. For example, flying into Moscow, over horizons of suburban sprawl, reminded Geller of Surrey or Richmond. In Auckland, New Zealand, Geller was impressed that the traffic lights turn red in all directions and pedestrians cross at every angle – when he returned home, an old-timer told Geller that this had once been the practice in Vancouver.

In all, the Gellers covered 31 countries, taking 31 flights, with never a lost piece of baggage. They may not have found many traditional delis and the Yiddishkeit may have been scant in many locations, but there were unexpected discoveries of how Jewish migration and tastes are changing still, as they have altered with their surroundings through the millennia.

"The best sushi we had on our entire trip was in the JCC in Sao Paolo," said Geller.

The Gellers' comprehensive reporting on their travels are online at gellersworldtravel.blogspot.com.

Pat Johnson is, among other things, managing director, programs and communications, for the Vancouver Hillel Foundation.

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