Good Tikvah Fund Shabbos from Newport, Rhode Island: Sephardi-Hater Meir Soloveichik is Now "Acting Rabbi" of Ahavas Israel Synagogue!
David Shasha
Judge Rules to Evict CJI from Touro Synagogue
By: Lynne Tungett
https://groups.google.com/g/Davidshasha/c/V1zb7VRbK3g
With Rosh Hashanah approaching on Sept. 15, Newport’s Touro Synagogue, the home of the oldest Jewish synagogue in the country, is facing a major milestone.
Barely one week following the reading of George Washington’s famous letter, “To Bigotry No Sanction, To Persecution No Assistance,” Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Maureen B. Keogh ruled on Aug. 24 in favor of Congregation Shearith Israel (CSI), a New York City synagogue that has been seeking to remove the leadership of the Congregation Jeshuat Israel, (CJI), which meets at the synagogue.
The ruling is the latest salvo in the bitter battle between the congregations, and allows the New York congregation to evict Congregation Jeshuat from the synagogue where it has met since the early 1900s.
CSI, also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, owns the Touro building and has complained in recent years that CJI has failed to be a good steward of the site. The decision, which can be appealed, has led to the rise of yet another congregation to meet at Touro, Ahavas Israel. It was incorporated as a Rhode Island nonprofit corporation in early April.
The articles of incorporation state, “The specific purpose or purposes for which the corporation is organized is to be and operate as an Orthodox Jewish congregation.”
“Congregation Ahavath Israel and Congregation Shearith Israel welcome the entire Newport and greater Rhode Island Jewish community to join together in Touro Synagogue for prayer services and special programs,” said Paul Tobak, president of Ahavath Israel. “As we head into the High Holiday season, we extend wishes for a year of good health, peace and success for the Touro Synagogue and the entire Newport community. We look forward to the future.”
Louis Solomon, the president of Congregation Shearith, welcomed the court’s ruling. “With our partners at Ahavath Israel, we are committed not only to reviving the Newport Jewish community, but to reviving the place Touro Synagogue has in the hearts and minds of Jews all over America,” he said.
Solomon said CSI is excited about the future of Touro Synagogue under a new board of managers that will include both CSI and Ahavath Israel, as well as a board of overseers from greater Rhode Island and elsewhere.
“We have a great many things to accomplish for the Newport Jewish community and for Touro Synagogue,” he said. “Among other things, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, [the] rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel and acting rabbi of Congregation Ahavath Israel, will deliver special lectures there. We want to have scholars there. We want people to come up for the summers there. CJI members are welcome and encouraged to attend services at Touro Synagogue whenever they like and become members if they wish. Now is a time to heal and a time to grow.”
Each year, the congregation celebrates the open-mindedness that allowed Touro Synagogue to flourish with a reading of a letter proclaiming the ideals of religious tolerance that was written to the congregation by Washington in 1790 at a time when the faith was often unwelcome elsewhere. The letter states, “The government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
This year, Washington’s letter was read on Aug. 20.
The annual event has a long tradition of distinguished keynote speakers and letter readers, including Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan. The theme of this year’s event was public service.
Nellie Gorbea, a former Rhode Island secretary of state, was selected for the honor this year, the 76th reading of the famous letter. Angela Johnson, a social studies teacher at Rogers High School and the 2021-22 Newport Public Schools Teacher of the Year, read the letter Moses Seixas of Newport’s Hebrew Congregation sent to Washington, inspiring the president’s famous response. U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, now president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, delivered the keynote address.
From Newport This Week, September 7, 2023
Touro Synagogue partnership focus of Town Hall session, lecture
By: Newport Daily News Staff
A special opportunity for the Jewish community of Newport and visitors will take place on Sunday, Aug. 6 at 2 p.m.
“Two Paintings at Yale, the Jewish History of Newport” a lecture by Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, senior Rabbi, Congregation Shearith Israel, of New York, and acting Rabbi, Congregation Ahavath Israel, of Newport will be followed by an Open Town Hall Session led by Congregation Shearith Israel and Congregation Ahavath Israel to address the New Partnership between those two congregations to benefit Touro Synagogue and its worshippers.
The lecture and Town Hall session will take place at the Newport Historical Society, 82 Touro St. Admission is free and light refreshments will be available.
For information about this event or about Congregation Ahavath Israel contact Dr. James Herstoff at bm...@cox.net. Learn more about Rabbi Soloveichik at meirsoloveichik.com.
From The Newport Daily News, August 1, 2023
Rabbi’s talk delved into U.S., local Jewish history through paintings
By: Aaron Ginsburg
NEWPORT – On Aug. 6, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik spoke about“Two Paintings at Yale, the Jewish History of Newport” for an audience of about 60 people gathered at the Newport Historical Society.
Soloveichik is the senior rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel, in New York City, and an assistant professor of Judaic studies at Yeshiva University. The event was sponsored by Shearith Israel and a new congregation, Ahavath Israel, of Newport. It was Ahavath Israel’s first public event.
Rabbi Soloveichik started his talk by presenting the painting “The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776,” by John Trumbull. A larger version hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol, and it’s also on the back of $2 bills.
In the painting, Jefferson seems to be the center of attention, but Soloveichik warned: “Let’s be careful not to let our eyes deceive us.”
Jefferson is taller than John Adams, and his image is more detailed, but it is Adams who is in the exact center of the picture. Adams was a workhorse during the American struggle for independence, from fighting the Stamp Act of 1765 to providing the reasoning for independence and getting the Declaration of Independence passed, to mention a few things.
While praising Adams and Jefferson, Soloveichik also called attention to their foibles, particularly Adam’s vanity. But he also pointed out that Adams and Jefferson were intellectuals and politicians, a combination that is rare in today’s America.
In terms of religion, Jefferson was a deist who believed that God is not active in the world he created. To Jefferson, he said, ancient Israel was “a nasty sect, which had presented for the object of their worship a being of terrific character, cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.”
Soloveichik said Adams was more tolerant, “... the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations.
“If I believed ... that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and to propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme intelligent, wise, almighty sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.”
The American Revolution, said Rabbi Soloveichik, was a union between religion and reason.
The second painting Soloveichik presented was a portrait of Ezra Stiles by Samuel King. Stiles was a Congregational minister in Newport, and his diary has many references to the local Jewish community. In 1778, he became president of Yale.
The portrait includes a disc on the wall with the Hebrew letters for God in the center, and a bookcase with Hebrew titles of the Babylonian Talmud, Ibn Ezra and Rashi.
Then Soloveichik revealed a surprise third painting: A portrait of Rabbi Raphael Haijm Isaac Karigal (1733–1777), also by Samuel King and commissioned by Stiles. Karigal was a Talmud scholar who studied in Safed and Jerusalem. He traveled to America, including the West Indies, New York, Philadelphia and Newport. Stiles studied with Karigal in Newport.
After Rabbi Karigal’s death, in Barbados, Stiles asked merchant Aaron Lopez to send Karigal’s portrait from Newport to New Haven, Connecticut, the home of Yale University.
In his diaries, Stiles wrote that his interest in Judaism was to learn about Christianity. Rabbi Soloveichik said that after encountering Karigal in Newport, Stiles took his interest to a higher level, even to the extent that his children recited the Shema!
After the talk and a snack break, Shearith Israel leader Louis Solomon led an upbeat discussion about the relationship between Shearith Israel and Ahavath Israel.
AARON GINSBURG lives in Stoughton, Massachusetts, and blogs at jewishnewport.blogspot.com.
From Jewish Rhode Island, September 3, 2023