Yesterday, I went to the grand opening ceremony of the Ohel Rachel synagogue on Shaanxi Bei Lu. After numerous years of being a museum dedicated to the memory of the kind Shanghai mayor who, all those years ago, issued 30,000+ passports and visas to Eastern European Jews who would have otherwise died at the hands of the Nazis. I read about it on the Chabad Jewish web site, and asked Rabbi Alevsky about it when he returned my email. I invited some people, most of them work in the admin office with me; although I told Trevor a few days beforehand, I waited until the day of to send out a mass email to everyone in my program, which said “Anyone who is Jewish, you should go with me to this opening.” I also told Max Parasol, a Jew who works in the Australia pavilion, and in the end he was the only one to accompany me to the ceremony.
The ceremony was lovely: attended by Jews of all shapes, sizes, levels of religiosity, and nationalities, it was truly an amazing time and place to be a Jew in Shanghai. There Chinese women holding their babies, and though I assumed they had converted to Judaism, I did not ask; there were many French Jews of both genders and multiple age groups, and in fact the copies of the Chumash in the foyer were translated into French: Le Pentateuch. There were many Israelis, all speaking Hebrew, some with large families and others were mid-twenties, and some of them work in the Israel pavilion at the Expo. There were also Australian Jews, some of whom Max already knew, some he hadn’t ever met but because Australia has a small population and a small number of large cities they had visited several of the same places. Out of the American guests, there were New Yorkers, a guy from Atlanta, two from Mississippi, one from Boston and one from Los Angeles. Some of them had been to Memphis and some had been to other parts of Tennessee, in fact even some of the foreigners (we were all foreigners last night! That is, except for the Chinese staff, Chinese wives and children, Chinese reporters, and Chinese photographers. There might even have been some Chinese politicians in attendance) had visited Memphis. One of the New Yorkers sang parts of Johnny Rivers’ “Long distance information, give me Memphis, TN,” and wanted me to sing along with him.
During the opening ceremony, several rabbis and prominent Jews in Shanghai talked about the fact that we were all there at an amazing period in time. Indeed, when one thinks about how the last time the synagogue was used for prayer it was for refugees from the Holocaust, and this time it is for people who had the right to leave wherever they were to come here, it is quite significant. Three groups of prominent men, including rabbis and the president of Ohel Rachel, were invited to cut ribbons and say prayers before posting the mezuzot to the door frames. Next, we located prayer books and entered the large chapel to say Shabbat prayers Orthodox/Chabad style. We prayed, sang songs like Lecha Dodi, danced around the room, clapped our hands and so forth. When it came time for the Mourner’s Kaddish, it was especially significant for me: I said the Mourner’s Kaddish for my mother, for the first time since her funeral last year. A tear came to my eye and I kept thinking about her the rest of the night. I stood next to an old man who said it too, and he looked at me as if to say, “Why are you saying this?” I explained to him and asked him how long I should say it during prayers, and he said “For 11 months following her death, according to the Hebrew (lunar) calendar.” Following prayers and announcements, there was Shabbat dinner!
It was my first Shabbat dinner, Orthodox-style, in a long time, so I was happy. Bottles of wine and challot were placed on the tables and, sorry to say, we grouped together by native language spoken. I met some interesting Jews there, including a teacher from NYU who has been teaching Chinese students about the business world in China. He wants me to lecture his class about what it’s like to work in business in China, especially about delivering progress reports, which I will actually have to do for the first time before I speak to them. I met a man who owns and rents out apartments in China, a student from Atlanta who studies Chinese and business like I do, an Israeli who works at their pavilion, a French woman, a French family (so not totally by first language), and a couple other Americans whom I didn’t talk to that much. The menu for the evening included vegetable salads, noodle salads, salmon, meat, potatoes, soup, couscous, cookies, brownies, and more, so it was traditional and wonderful. Towards the end of the meal, we were treated to a couple of sermons.
The second and more memorable one, was about a couple of Chabad rabbis who traveled around to various synagogues and Jewish communities to investigate. One man they visited, who lived in Chicago, tried to offer money as a donation to the rabbis, which they turned down. He was surprised, and asked “Why then did you come? Who am I that you should come see me?” The rabbis responded “Every Jew is significant and as important as a letter in the Torah,” referencing the fact that if a Torah scroll is missing even a single letter, it is invalid. This implies that all Jews are a part of Judaism and, in turn, significant and holy. They relayed this story to the rabbi who told them to go and he turned ashen white before saying “We are more important even than that: a letter on a Torah scroll can be erased or cut out, while a Jew is as indestructible and important as an engraving of a letter in the original tablets of the Ten Commandments; once the Jew has been created, there is no way to totally erase him/her.” Sermons (Dvar Torah) that talk about the importance of Jews and how we should all feel significant and valuable, like the world was created for me, to be a light unto the nations, etc., always make me feel good and worthwhile. This is the perfect lecture to hear when one is depressed or just having a bad day, if one takes it to heart and actually listens to the rabbi during his speech.
After the meal, we said the Birchat Hamazon (after meal prayer), and some of us hailed taxis, others walked to their hotels, and still others remained behind to sing/pray/talk about Torah lessons. Considering my religious interest, desire to be part of something great, and senior project which I intend to turn into a longer paper, it was the perfect place for me to be last night. Baruch Hashem for helping me find out about the opportunity and actually attend it. The world is a beautiful place, “and worth fighting for.”
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