Recife's Old-New Jews

The first Jews in the New York were Sepharadis fleeing from the Inquisition in Recife, Brazil. The Jews had enjoyed a hundred years of tranquility in Northeast Brazil under the Dutch, they founded the sugarcane industry and prospered. When the Dutch transferred the territory to the Portuguese, most Jews left for Amsterdam … and New Amsterdam, that is, New York. There they became well established and assimilated.  But what happened to those Jews that did not leave Brazil?

They became crypto-Jews, underground Jews, living under a Catholic cover identity. Three hundred years later many in Pernambuco and Recife are aware of their roots, and are "returning" to the old faith. Led by charismatic leaders, they form "anusim" communities and adopt what they believe to be Judaism. I compare them to the small evangelical communities appearing all over Latin America. They don't mix with the old wealthy Ashkenazi communities, and they are not accepted as Jews by the Israeli rabbinate. Some individuals and families, eventually, will make Aliyah and melt with the people, others will wander off to local Messianic cults.

Pic.:  Many in Brazil have converted to Judaism under the supervision of Gilberto Venturas, an Orthodox rabbi, shown here with his wife, Jacqueline. (Courtesy of Sinagoga sem Froteiras)

Eli Landau Obit.

Eli Landau was the Mayor of Herzliya while I managed the Wastewater Treatment Plant. He was called the Sheriff because of his authoritarian manner and because he was a man of general Arik Sharon, a Likudnik. I admired his style. 

In my time, the Engineering Dept. was nominally in charge of the largest civil engineering project of the country, the Marina of Herzliya, but Eli was never seen in the office: he managed all from his home. As a result, he was suspected of corruption, and brought to trial for changing the terms of the Marina contract, which required the use of Hebron natural stone blocks for the sea wall, for cheaper and better prefab cement pentapods. The police interrogation caused him a quadruple coronary infarct, but he was acquitted and lived twenty years more.

He transformed this poor coastal town of maabarot (refugee camps) into Israel's most exclusive residential area, Herzliya Pituach, with the American Ambassador and Israel's tycoons building their homes there. He also developed Israel's "Silicon Valley" in what was his industry-less Industrial Area. There was a fancy restaurants street that I called the Valley of Gluttony - עמק ההסבעה -  and the name caught. In a secondhand bookstore I discovered a detective book written by Eli Landau (pic) - he had started his life as a journalist of Ma'ariv. He married the daughter of Oved Ben Ami, owner, one of those socialist pioneers of Israel that emerged as its landowner and capitalist class.

A mensch. 

Jaszbereny

I was born in a provincial town in Hungary, south of Budapest. My father and grandfather were also born there. Jewish traders started to settle in the town around 1860 and prospered. The pic is the only picture of the old synagogue, in the nineteen twenties another pretentious one replaced it, with two Moorish towers, as was the fashion among provincial Jewish communities. I think the Hebrew letters represent the year of the building, but I cannot read it. BTW, there are no Jews living in Jaszbereny. 

Gifts to the Slave

וְכִי-תְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ חָפְשִׁי, מֵעִמָּךְ--לֹא תְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ, רֵיקָם. הַעֲנֵיק תַּעֲנִיק, לוֹ, מִצֹּאנְךָ, וּמִגָּרְנְךָ וּמִיִּקְבֶךָ: אֲשֶׁר בֵּרַכְךָ ה' אֱלֹהֶיךָ, תִּתֶּן-לוֹ"

free translation: When you liberate a Jewish slave, you shall not send him off with empty hands, you shall give him from your sheep, from your foodstuff (?) and from your winery that Elohim gave you, give him.

Meaning that in Judaism everything is relative: My flock and my wine stock is not really mine but a gift from God, that eventually I shall have to share with my slave. And my slave is not really a slave working free for me but as I have to compensate him/her after her service, in fact, almost a salaried employee.

Reminds me of a Soros anecdote. Before the war, a friend of his father asked him for some money, as he was leaving for Vienna. The papa, a wealthy lawyer, was not generous, and the friend warned him: "You think your money is yours, you don't realize that it is Horthy's".  Effectively, a few months later all the gold and monies of the Hungarian Jews were expropriated by the Nazis. 

We are living on DOSADI

The DOSADI experiment is a Frank Herbert sci fi book of a toxic planet where the population is concentrated in one City with advanced technology that produces eatable food, while the unfortunate rest is eking out a marginal living in the poisonous environment of The Rim. The City is under permanent attack by Rim infiltrators that are trying to get into the fortified, walled City. The book represents faithfully the current state of Planet Earth.

People on the Rim is so desperate to get into an advanced City that they are willing to pay 10,000 USdollars per year (see this sting operation), are ready to become sex slave/marry any creep, are ready to walk a thousand miles (from Honduras) and risk their lives, etc. - for just escaping from their Rim horror and get into the City.

Unfortunately the book does not develop this subject, it focuses on racial conflict inside the City. 

More facts about Flint Water Emergency

I am always learning new facts about the Flint water contamination with lead. It appears that Flint Water workers did not steal the buffer chemicals as prejudiced I  had presumed. Somebody had decided not to use them. A critical cost-saving decision made by Flint not to use corrosion inhibitors, especially when water previously supplied by Detroit did contain them, should have raised concerns. Evidence to demonstrate that inhibitors were unnecessary was a minimum common-sense requirement.

"Ignorance among utility personnel and water quality engineers of the importance of corrosion control management and its subtle linkage to decisions made elsewhere in the treatment plant unfortunately also played a role in this story of unintended consequences. "  (Now, what is the meaning of this sentence?) 

By not adding a corrosion inhibitor, Flint was going to save about $140 per day. 

My present understanding is that somebody made the stupid decision to save the buffer cost. Was it taken by the EPA in the capital or was it the utility personnel? I think it must have been a low level decision. May be they really stole the money for the buffer.  

Cat Lady

Amalia Kahana Carmon died and nobody noticed it. She had been a celebrated Hebrew writer, Prize Israel in Literature, Prize Bialik and many others. Born in kibbutz Eyn Harod during its heroic period, a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, she was a failed product (*) of the Zionist movement. Balaban, in the anti-Semite fishwrap HaAretz, compares this silence with the international media lament for another writer of her generation, Amos Oz, who died a days ago. Balaban suggest that the media silence was mandated (by whom?) for her feminist opinions. But she had no such opinions, she was born in another time (she was 98 y.o.) but yes, biologically, she was a female. If we can call a childless cat lady so. Look at that horrible cat.

(*) In my world, a Jewish woman with no children because of her lifestyle, is a failure.