Flashback 2009: Fortified by faith in a foreign land

    One way Jews are reacting to rising antisemitism is by manifesting their Jewishness in public more. To show they're not afraid. Not an issue for me. I've never been afraid to write about my religion, and may be the only daily newspaper columnist in the country who regularly explores Judaism (of course, some days it feels like I'm pretty much the only daily newspaper columnist in the country, period, so that might not be saying much). 

     Though even I'm trying to stand a little taller lately — I recently flagged down a pair of cheder boys and put on tefillin in the parking lot of Sunset Foods, which is not my style. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures....

     Anyway, I was looking through the vault for Fourth of July columns, and found this.

     While many a sailor finds religion crossing the stormy seas, my faith tends to tap me on the shoulder while I'm safe in foreign ports. When I travel, I find myself visiting synagogues.
     Perhaps "faith" is too strong a term; maybe it is mere curiosity, but I've been to temples from Bridgetown to Vilnius, attended services from Charleston to Taipei. Oddly, I never intend to go, it seems to just happen.
     Last Saturday morning, I was checking the map to go shopping at Harrods and noticed that the Western Marble Arch Synagogue was a few blocks from my hotel. Services were just beginning; Harrods could wait — on went the dark suit, and I walked over, worried about being 45 minutes late.
     "I have to ask you a few questions," said a man — security — standing at the synagogue door. "What is your Hebrew name?"
     "Yitzhak ben Rachkmiel ben Schmuel," I said, and he waved me in. I entered, thinking it was sad that this is necessary, but not too sad — police with machine-guns guarded the synagogue I went to in Rome, and worshippers had to pass through a narrow, L-shaped security airlock designed to thwart bombers.
     Inside, a man held me back until the prayer ended. "Whoever you are," he said, "wherever you are from, welcome."
     The sanctuary was large, rectangular — the traditional set-up — with the ark holding the Torah scrolls at one end and a raised platform where the service is conducted — the bimah — in the middle.
     I almost made a beeline for an empty part of the room — and there were many, the place was sparsely populated. But that seemed to defeat the purpose of coming, so I forced myself to take a seat among the knot of men sitting in the center.
     And it was all men. Women — I counted three — were exiled to the balcony above.
     Marble Arch, whose congregation traces its roots to 1761, comfortably seats 1,000 worshippers. I counted 27 men at prayer. Most were older, their hair gray or white. Maybe three men were under 50.
     Rigorous attention to the services seemed optional. The men occasionally stood up, strolled around, visiting with each other, shaking hands, talking, laughing. At times, it seemed like a tableau from a Rembrandt painting, these older gentlemen in their capacious wool prayer shawls, leaning over pews, whispering to one another.
      More congregants walked over and shook my hand during the first hour at Marble Arch than in my sporadic attendance at various synagogues around Chicago over the past 25 years.
      I was jotting in my notebook until someone stopped me. "We're Orthodox," he said. "It isn't done."
      Just a few notes, I pleaded, to help me remember.
     "God will help you remember," he replied. I put the notebook away.
     All religions are melting under the bright light of modern society, but Judaism is melting quicker, as it was so small to begin with and faces, besides assimilation, the added challenge of enemies periodically trying to kill us.
     There are roughly 13 million Jews in the world today — a sum equal to the population of Zambia. Nowhere near the number in 1939 — 17 million — and since our population growth hovers at zero, we may never get back to where we once were.
     That is the grim view, but one of the benefits of religion is it can cast a positive spin on grim reality. About 10:30 a.m., a small boy in a white yarmulke and linen shirt came charging across the sanctuary, running full speed, fringes flying, exuberant. There was a change in the room; the boy was like a rocket announcing the start of a festival. Suddenly, more people began arriving. It turned out that, at Marble Arch Synagogue, 45 minutes late is early, and by 11 a.m. another 50 people had arrived.
     Howard Richenberg, the "warden" of the synagogue, announced the birth of a granddaughter, Hadar, to the rabbi, Lionel Rosenfeld, and the men on the bimah began an impromptu dance of celebration, holding hands, arms raised high.
     After that, I slipped over to Richenberg to check the new arrival's name, and he wondered if I wished to participate in the service.
     "Would you have objections to saying a prayer for the royal family?" he asked. "You do speak English?"
     I said that yes, I speak English and no, I would have no objection to asking our distracted God to bless the British royal family. A few minutes later, I was gestured to come up.
     "May the supreme king of kings in His mercy preserve the Queen in life, guard her and deliver her from all trouble and sorrow," I read, slightly startled to find myself addressing a congregation in London.
     The men of Marble Arch synagogue seemed to get a kick out of that — a big joke, to get the American to bless the queen. While we in this country have gotten past the whole Revolutionary War unpleasantness, it stings here, apparently.
     "I still have trouble being in the United States on the Fourth of July," one man told me when I returned to my seat.
     The service complete, we repaired to a small social hall — which the group filled nicely — and went at a spread of gefilte fish, herring and other masterworks of our faith.
      I stayed a while, eating, talking, and left much more confident than I had been mid-service. Yes, the demographic slide is a true worry. But when did the Jews not face worries?
          — Originally published in the Sun-Times, October 4, 2009