PARK EAST
SYNAGOGUE
Happy Birthday,
Rabbi Arthur Schneier
By
TIM BOXER
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU
was a surprise guest at the 110th anniversary dinner of Park
East Synagogue and70th birthday of its esteemed rabbi, Arthur Schneier.
Bibi said that when he was Israel’s UN ambassador, one responsibility
was to spend a lot of time in the synagogue. “I chose my synagogue very
carefully. I logged a lot of time at Park East.”
Bibi recalled another Park East Synagogue dinner in the early ‘80s when
a member of the administration in Washington spoke. The non-Jewish
gentleman, reading from prepared notes, concluded, “Arthur, yasher
coach!”
The worthy gentleman must have
thought the congregation looked like
a baseball franchise.
The recent dinner at the
Waldorf-Astoria was an appropriate occasion to mark the beloved rabbi’s
70th birthday. The tributes came from several high-ranking
dignitaries, including the Most Rev. Theodore McCarrick, archbishop
of Newark.
“To
be blessed,” the archbishop said, “you should count among your friends
a brilliant, lawyer, a skilled physician and a good priest. Every
congregation deserves the rabbi it gets. You must be a wonderful
congregation.”
Marc Feuerstein,
who just finished a film with Mel Gibson titled, What Women Want,
said he got his start in an amateur talent contest at Park East. He had
his bar mitzvah there and remains a devoted member.
“Park East Synagogue,” he
said, “has fortified our Jewish existence. It holds a lot of memories
for me.”
Israel Meir Lau,
Israel’s chief rabbi, praised Schneier for being among the first to
fight for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate.
“For Rabbi Schneier,” Lau
said, “’Let my people go’ was not just a slogan but became a
reality.”
Schneier took his activism
worldwide when he founded the Appeal of Conscience, an ecumenical
organization that seeks to preserve religious freedom on a global scale.
Schneier’s son, Rabbi Marc
Schneier of the Hampton Synagogue, remembered fondly the daily walks
he used to take with his father in Central Park. His father, a Holocaust
survivor from Vienna, would often stop to watch the kids play baseball.
“Hitler took away from my
father a normal childhood,” Marc said. “He knows nothing about
sports.”
One day Hank Greenberg
came to Park East and brought along Sid Luckman, the greatest
Jewish quarterback ever to play the game.
The elder Schneier announced
proudly, “This Shabbat we’re honored to have with us Sid Luckman, one
of the greatest quarterbacks in baseball.”
“Actually,” Schneier said,
“I played soccer in Vienna until they put up signs ‘Juden verboten.’
“Both my grandfathers were
consumed by the furnaces of the Shoah. Hashem tried me, tested me. I came
through the furnace and I never lost faith.”
As
a token of gratitude, synagogue president Michael Scharf presented
Schneier with his own personal Torah.
|
