Gabriel Negrin, Chief Rabbi of Greece: “The [Jewish] future has to be in the diaspora.” (12/4/17)

Face to face(s) -- in the middle of the night -- with the Chief Rabbi of Greece, Rabbi Gabriel Negrin. I reflect on our interview in the car regarding Diaspora culture and change in religion.

Illustration by Gabrielle Amar.

I was convinced that I had spent Erev Shabbat in a church when we visited Athens.

On Friday night, from a square balcony, I watched a man on an elevated marble platform pace back and forth below. He donned a black, floor-length cloak that resembled the vestments of Greek Orthodox clergy. A tall, black cylindrical hat adorned his head.

He opened his mouth and began to sing. Out came melodies so unrecognizable -- hauntingly slow, deep and morose -- that the prayers themselves seemed foreign.

From the outside, Athen’s Beit Shalom Synagogue, built in 1935, is a mass of cloudy-gray marble; inside, it holds colorful stained-glass windows and a nave separating pews of dark wood. The bimah is at the head of the synagogue, closely resembling a chancel with menorot instead of Catholic candelabras. Chained metal lanterns hang above it. Its steps lead to the Aron HaKodesh, a slab of metal with gold adornments.

The prayers were traditional Hebrew prayers, the symbols on the arc were Jewish symbols, and wrapped in the black cloak was Rabbi Gabriel Negrin, a close friend of our program’s director and the Chief Rabbi of Greece.

After a week of driving through Greece's northern countryside, my program settled in Athens for the weekend, and had the privilege of spending most of Saturday with Rabbi Negrin. In addition to attending his shacharit and erev Shabbat services, we ate dinner together on Saturday night, chowing down on coconut milk korma and quinoa burgers and salads. And earlier, on Shabbat afternoon, I and a few other stragglers from lunch strolled through Athens with him. We made our way through the wide cobblestone roads of the main square, passing Socrates’ grave and the Acropolis, and trekked uphill, passing white and red bougainvilleas and graffiti-covered residential corridors to reach a wide-sweeping panoramic view of the city. On the way, it had started to rain. My flats had been hurting my feet since the day started, and I decided, early on our walk, to go barefoot. Rabbi Negrin made generous jabs at my black soles and clear lack of reasoning. (When he saw me with shoes on that night, he congratulated me heartily.) He also entertained -- before quickly capping -- others' curiosity about Greek profanity, and sporadically dead-legged some of us, while conspiring the surprise attacks with others in the group. Here was a youthful spirit, a playful authority.

Negrin is as incredible of a character as he is curious: not even 30, extremely well-versed in Greek mythology, well-educated in the hard sciences and music theory and world history, and also a devout Orthodox Jew.

Our limited time in Athens -- and Negrin’s jam-packed schedule -- didn’t allow much time for an interview. But about two weeks later, I learned that Rabbi Negrin would be flying into Jerusalem for a conference, and would have time to talk after -- literally right after -- his flight. The next night, I found myself in the back of a sadan at 1:30 in the morning, asking the Chief Rabbi a list of half-legible, messily-scribbled existential questions in the 50 minute car ride back to Jerusalem from the airport, wondering what I had gotten myself into.

The lights were dizzying, the hills around the freeway still and dark. Jay (my program’s director) was in the driver’s seat; his son, Boaz, in the passenger seat. Poor Rabbi Negrin sat in the back with me. He didn’t display any signs of fatigue or grogginess, or, even more plausible, resentment towards the annoying and persistent American teenager desperate for any piece of his time -- even at two in the morning.

He pulled out a jumbo-sized jar of Greek olive oil from a Duty Free bag and presented it to Jay. Jay had requested the oil to light his Hanukkiah for the following week.

That simple interaction reminded me of why I so desperately wanted to interview Rabbi Negrin. A Hellenistic Orthodox Jew seemed like an utter oxymoron to me.

I had learned in school that the ancient Greeks were enemies of the Jews. The Seleucids persecuted us, outlawed the Torah and circumcision, placed Greek statues of their gods in public domains, and under Antiochus, totally desecrated Jewish synagogues. While growing up, two of the most popular Jewish holidays in school were Hanukkah and Purim, most likely because their narratives of Jewish resistance intertwined with a narrative of glory and triumph. So, going into the interview, I compiled a long list of conflicts between Hellenism and Judaism, because, well, how else was I supposed to approach seemingly-opposing cultures? Empiricism vs. faith. Aestheticism vs. the mind. Polytheism vs. monotheism. The conception of gods in man’s image vs. the conception of man in G-d’s image.

When I mentioned these conflicts to him, and asked Rabbi Negrin how he reconciled them in his own identity, he reminded me, simply and unabashedly, “I’m a Greek Jew, not an ancient Greek Jew.”

My question was both shallow and deep in scope; shallow because it discounted and assumed a lot; deep because it reflected the question back at me, leaving me to consider the shallow conception of my own identity’s tensions. I am a Persian Jew. Like the Seleucids, the Achaemenids persecuted the Jewish people in ancient times, and under Ahmedinijad's current regime following the Iranian Revolution, anti-Semitism has resurged in recent times. With Iran’s current revolutionary uprisings, my identity as a Persian Jew may seem much more controversial than that of a Greek Jew’s. I’ve often thought about the cultural and historical tensions facing Persian Jewry. How are Persian Jews supposed to reconcile Judaism with Persian culture, which is heavily influenced by Islam? What are we supposed to support, Israel or Iran? Should we support regime change even if revolutionaries consider the Zionist state and the U.S. among its enemies?

These questions are interesting, but just like my approach in trying to comprehend the complexities of Greek Jewry, they are also reductive. Such "contradictions" divert from the Jewish reality. They distract from the one experience that binds any and every Jewish community in the history of the world: the adoption of majority culture. The Jewish people, for about two thousand years up until 1948, were only residents of other people's’ countries. Some of our ancestors fully adopted the cultures of their societies; others' Jewish traditions had been lightly influenced. Regardless, the Jewish people’s existence has always developed alongside and with other cultures.

I recognize now that external culture defines us just as much as it defines (rather than contradicting with) Judaism.

This leads me to our conversation's main question(s): What it that makes or keeps something Jewish? How does culture, or multiple cultures, reaffirm religious identity?

In early October, we met Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder in Be’er Sheva. Sarab is the first Bedouin woman from the Negev to receive a phD in Israel. She talked to us about her lifelong struggle of trying to reconcile Arab culture with Israeli culture, and tradition/religion with progressivism. She warned our group that “culture is never sacred.” It’s constantly changing. I asked Rabbi Negrin for his thoughts on change.

He said yes and no; culture is and isn’t sacred. Th written law (The Torah) is fixed, but the oral law (the Talmud) allows for discussion and change. The written law symbolizes the core of our identity (the meaning of and intent behind our words, our monotheism). Our core should never change. But the the expression of our core identity can change. "We are children,” Negrin said. Culture is something for us to “play around” with, to “start decorating."

That’s why Negrin sees no contradiction, or issue, with the different melody of his prayers or his style of dress. That’s why, he further explained, other Jews are different from each other: Mizrachi Jewish prayer sounds Islamic, and European Jewish prayer sounds like opera. And that’s also why he had no issue with his yeshiva mixing Greek philosophy with Jewish philosophy, or with his Rav Yeshiva, who modeled Socrates’ teaching style of pacing around Athens when assessing his own students.

So, when I described his marble synagogue as both a symbol of Jewish distinctiveness and assimilation, Negrin shot back: “I don’t call that assimilation,” he told me. “Assimilation is negative. You leave your own identity for another one.” He saw his synagogue, his dress, the decorations around his Judaism, as all examples of acculturation, instead.

This point introduced a second question: where do you draw the line between what can and can’t be changed? When does acculturation become assimilation?

“What about modification to prayer?” Jay asked while looking into the rearview mirror. “What about the addition of the imahot in the Amidah?”*** His response astounded me: “It’s okay,” he said, if the individual community agreed with the change. In Negrin’s eyes, such changes to prayer -- like his dress or chanting -- are modifications made to fit the natural course of time, not concessions to another culture or religion.

Changing the wording of Jewish prayers has always been problematic to me. On one hand, I can appreciate attempts at making Judaism more egalitarian and inclusive; on the other, changing tradition, throughout history, has often led to its total obliteration. If that were to happen to the Jewish people (or perhaps it has already started happening in more reform/ liberal Jewish circles), then what would bind us, if not cultural traditions and practices?

Near the end of our interview, I asked Rabbi Negrin what he believed to be his greatest responsibility as Greece's Chief Rabbi. And just then, we entered Jerusalem. And a wave of nostalgia hit him. Moments from his yeshiva years in Jerusalem flooded his memory. While passing Nachlaot, he recalled very fondly of walking on the same street we were driving on to go home after debating the whole night with his rav yeshiva. While passing the shuk, Jay slowed the car.“Wait...wait...wait...wait...that was my apartment!” Rabbi Negrin pointed.

For my last question, I asked Rabbi Negrin about where he believed the Jewish future was headed. “I think it’s important for the Jews to have a Diaspora,” he told me. "Diaspora" is a Greek word for the “spreading of seeds.”“I am spreading seeds,” he told me. “There must be a strong spiritual center in Israel, but a stronger Diaspora for sure. [The center will always be the center], but the future has to be in the Diaspora.”

Here I was, talking to the world representative leader of one of history’s oldest Jewish populations, at 3:30 in the morning, cruising through the streets of Jerusalem, recognizing all of its personal significance all the while discussing the greater importance of the Galut.*

Before writing this piece, I was scared to look over my interview with Rabbi Negrin. Before the interview, I had recognized the time restraints and the fact that the interview would be conducted in a car -- and with an audience -- as all challenges .

But these initial concerns were all eclipsed by the movement of our conversation. Our mobile interview taught me that tradition, likewise, has been eclipsed by the movement of world culture. And while no longer in the car, we’re still moving…

Click here to listen to my interview with Rabbi Negrin:

https://audiomack.com/song/kayla-1583/interview-with-ravi-negri

Transliteration help:

**Jewish evening and morning services

***Jay was referring to some Jewish communities’ addition of the Jewish matriarchs in an ancient prayer that originally only recognizes the patriarchs.

*Diaspora

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Wisdoms from Rabbi Negrin:

“If you’re secure with your faith, then you won’t feel guilty for questioning your faith.”

“We learn from them; they learn from us. That’s how we grow.”

“Before the war, when [a Jew would marry outside of the community], their family would say that they died, so [the community didn’t] have proper numbers [to conduct an accurate census. I think this is a cruel thing. [We are now focussed on] keeping family close and [educating] kids.”

“The Jews made their contribution to Greek culture through Christianity!”

“I am opposed to assimilation, not assimilated Jews.”

“The Romaniyot tradition was influenced and created [during] the Byzantine Empire. Rabbis wore [the cloak] to identify themselves, not for religious, but let’s say political reasons… ottomans needed to know who were the religious leaders of every community.”

“We disagree with each other, but we are one.”

Paraphrase: Our very existence was built on disagreement with G-d. Negrin cited the Creation story, where G-d commanded for there to be “trees and fruits,” and instead, the earth produced trees bearing fruits. And since we come from this earth, it’s only our nature to change, grow, and deviate.