Yesterday began with our meeting Rabbi Roberto Arbiv, Italian born, oleh, graduate of Machon Schechter, in Jerusalem. running a conservative congregation near Dizengoff Center, talked about the failure in recent years of many synagogues in Tel Aviv. I want to make sure I heard him right -- he said the the TLV Great Synagogue didn't get a minyan on Rosh Hashanah!?!? Huge numbers of synagogues here have just closed. Buildings are now houses or businesses.
A major effort to revive Jewish religious life is coming through the attention of Los Angeles Federation as a 'sister city.' But in any case, everyone is starting to realize the importance of Tel Aviv if one wants to have influence on the real country -- there's no point, he said, in talking in Jerusalem -- so full of extremists.
His current project, for which they just held a successful and exclusive fund-raising concert, is to create a JCC in Neve Tzedek, with a shul, a school, a cafe, and an arts/performance center. I have to say that the focus on Jewish culture and Jewish civilization we've heard everywhere, is very gratifying listening for a Reconstructionist rabbi. Kaplan would be very pleased. Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, would be extremely satisfied.
Rabbi Arbiv does work now within area public schools, an interesting alternative to 'separation of church and state,' that gives families opportunities to do Jewish learning together. My understanding is that it's privately funded through the Conservative Movement (Tali programming....someone correct me if I got this wrong). In South Tel Aviv, he is teaching a class on Judaism in the Weizman school that is 60% moslem. The only school in the TLV-Yafo system that gives classes 1 teacher each in Hebrew and Arabic.
Finally his other project for the last 5 years is teaching "The Path of Avraham" -- together with a Sufi leader, an a Muslim one, they start with meditation, then study alternately and Islamic spiritual text and something from Zohar, then close with and interfaith prayer for peace.
I'll add more later!!
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