The Lander Legacy
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this highly intelligent and devoted man who was clearly intent on repairing the world around him. She was also impressed with Bernard’s level of religious observance. After being surrounded by the highly assimilated young Jewish men she encountered at NYU, meeting a serious, knowledgeable and committed Jew like Bernard was like a breath of fresh air. Bernard proposed marriage and Sarah agreed to meet him under the chupah of marital unity. The wedding date was set for Monday, November 1, 1948. The following day, the politician who had been the most instrumental in implementing the panoply of social programs that Bernard had been advocating over the past four years, Governor Thomas E. Dewey, was defeated in his bid for the presidency in an upset victory carried out by President Harry S Truman. A new era had surely begun. 71 Chapter eight New Horizons Your eyes shall behold a land stretching afar. —Isaiah 33:17 It was the first day of November 1948, and the well-trained catering staff of the Riverside Plaza Hotel was busy readying the main hall for a traditional Jewish wedding celebration. The venerable establishment, located on Manhattan’s West 71st Street, had hosted many such simchas (celebrations) in its day, but there was something unusual going on at the Lander / Shragowitz nuptials. In the wedding invitations that Bernard and Sarah had sent out, the ceremony time was listed as 5:30 pm. At exactly half past five a distinguished Columbia University professor, Dr. Robert McIver, had entered the hall, peering about expectantly. He was soon followed by a contingent of other academic and political types, all looking a bit mystified. Bernard’s non-Jewish Columbia colleagues and Mayor’s Committee members were evidently unfamiliar with J.S.T., Jewish Standard Time, which typically added at least fifteen minutes to any scheduled appointment time. Over the next half hour guests began filing in steadily and by 6 pm the hall was filled with a diverse and potent blend of personalities from all quarters of Bernard and Sarah’s lives. The interfaith and inter-racial guest list included Lander, Shragowitz and Koenigsberg family members, Mayor’s Committee members and city officials, learned Yeshiva scholars, Urban League leaders, congregants from Beth Jacob in Baltimore, RIETS professors, researchers from Columbia and BASR, NYU classmates and faculty members, childhood friends, and many more. The non-Jewish guests, many of them attending an Orthodox wedding for the first time, were easily swept into the atmosphere of the evening at the Kabbalas Panim (bride’s reception) and the groom’s tisch (literally: table) as they observed the signing of the K’tubah (wedding contract) 72 The Lander Legacy and the ceremonial breaking of the wedding plate. All guests came away with a new or renewed appreciation for the warm Jewish spirit, or Yiddishkeit, that permeated the event. Rabbi Aharon Kotler, the same respected rabbi who had married Sarah’s parents some twenty-five years earlier in Kletsk, and a relative of Sarah’s family, officiated under the chupah. As a custom and a courtesy, any other rabbis in attendance were invited to stand alongside the couple during the wedding ceremony. In all, nine rabbis crowded under the chupah as the bride circled the groom seven times and the Sheva Brachos (seven blessings) were recited. Such honors were bestowed upon one of the Roshei Yeshiva (heads) of RIETS, Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz, as well as Rabbi Samuel Sar and Rabbi Joseph Lookstein from the Yeshiva faculty. Sarah’s grandfather, Rabbi Joseph Shragowitz, from Fitchberg, Massachusetts and her sister Bessie’s husband, Rabbi Aaron Kra, the rabbi in Ansonia, Connecticut, were also so honored, as were Bernard’s brother, Rabbi Nathan Lander; his cousin, Rabbi Herschel Koenigsberg; and his brother-in-law, Rabbi Max Posnansky. As custom dictated, a wineglass wrapped in a cloth napkin was placed under Bernard’s foot at the conclusion of the ceremony. The popping sound that arose as his foot came down—a perpetual reminder of the destruction of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem—was met with cheers and shouts of “Mazel Tov” and “Siman Tov” as the gathered guests pelted the newlyweds with a shower of candy. Some of the honored dignitaries in attendance who were introduced during the Simchas Chasan v’Kallah (the wedding feast) included leaders of the American Mizrachi Organization such as its president, Pinkhos Churgin; Dr. David Petergorsky, executive director of the American Jewish Congress; Isaiah Minkoff, executive director of the National Community Relations Advisory Council; and Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik. As Bernard Lander scanned the long tables filled with family and friends from his seat of honor at the head table beside his beautiful young bride, he felt supremely blessed and fortunate. At the same time, he could not suppress a feeling of urgency. He felt an insurmountable impetus to move ahead and pursue both his personal and professional destinies. While he understood that a new chapter of his life had been opened, he was unsure where life’s road would lead him. His only certainty was that from this point on, he would no longer be traversing that road alone. New Horizons 73 As Rabbi Lander pondered his life’s path, he sensed that his destiny would take him beyond New York’s five boroughs and out into the larger world. He recalled how, in recent years, he had already stretched his horizons and had begun to act on a global stage. In January 1946, at the behest of the American Jewish Committee, he had travelled to Mexico City. The group had established a local agency there to combat anti-Semitism, and Lander was asked to examine and report objectively on its effectiveness. He remained in Mexico well into February as he conducted an in-depth investigation of the fascist forces at work in the capital and throughout the nation. As he conducted interviews with community leaders, local politicians and U.S. embassy staff members, Lander soon learned of a strong and sinister force known as the Sinarquista. The Sinarquista was an outlawed fascist political organization that promoted synarchy, a structured hierarchical social order intended to transcend conflict between economic classes through an ideology known as synarchism. Synarchism was born as a reaction to the pro-anarchy political movements popular during the late nineteenth century, but the term had now come to serve as a euphemistic code word for fascist and anti-communist ideologies. The Sinarquista, active in Mexico since the mid-1930s as an extension of the Roman Catholic extreme right, was violently opposed to the populist and secularist policies of the ruling Mexican regime. The group, somewhat dormant since the 1938 assassination of its leader, Jos. Urquiza, had recently regrouped and was being revived under the banner of the extremist Popular Force Party (PFP). The more Lander learned about the politics of Mexico, the more evidence he saw of PFP influence in Mexican life. He brought his concerns to the U.S. ambassador to Mexico at the time, George S. Messersmith, to whom Lander explained that the PFP’s rising level of influence was posing a real threat to Mexico’s Jewish community. He presented evidence that numerous former Nazis, who had secretly fled to Mexico after the war, were exerting their sinister influence within the Sinarquista movement and implored the ambassador to raise the issue with the Roman Catholic archdiocese. “I’m asking that you urge the church to halt its support of the PFP.” Messersmith turned a deaf ear and showed Lander the door. Lander concluded that Messersmith, along with a cabal of government officials, was sympathetic towards the Mexican fascists. Upon his return to New York, Lander decided to report his findings directly to 74 The Lander Legacy Washington. He recalled that during an outbreak of anti-Semitic incidents in 1930, when an economic slump prompted Mexican storekeepers to target Jewish bankers—whom they blamed for the crisis—that the U.S. State Department had intervened and had pressured the Mexican government to quash the protests. Lander presumed that the State Department would again respond in kind. He quickly drafted a report and dispatched it, along with supporting documents, to Spruille Braden, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs. Disappointingly, his efforts were met with polite indifference. In 1946 the United States State Department was preoccupied with the emerging spread of communism. Fighting fascists was old history. Hadn’t the United States just won the war in order to rid the world of fascism? Lander’s report succeeded in one regard, however; it resulted in his being labeled as a “communist sympathizer” or “comsymp” by the U.S. State Department, a sobriquet that would dog him for years and result in his ostensibly being denied needed government funding during the following decade’s McCarthy era. As Bernard Lander recalled the disappointments of this first foray onto the international stage, he was buoyed by the fact that his second attempt was one he could look back upon with some pride. The Partition of Palestine vote that had taken place at the United Nations exactly one year before, in November 1947 was a monumental event marking the end of the nearly 1,900-year exile of the Jewish people. Fifty-six countries were then represented in the U.N. and the vote to partition passed with thirtytree in favor, thirteen against, and ten abstentions. This vote was closer than it may have appeared since, in order to secure passage, the measure required a two-thirds majority of those nations voting. As anticipated, the European nations voted as a bloc in favor of partition and the Arab nations also voted en masse against it. This placed the decision squarely into the hands of the nonaligned nations with no obvious interest in the outcome. In what seemed to some observers as an inexplicable act of solidarity, thirteen nations of the Caribbean, Central, and South America also voted as a bloc in favor of partition. These votes made the difference and succeeded in bringing the State of Israel into existence. Much has been written about figures such as David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann and their roles in forging the new Jewish state. But there New Horizons 75 remains a short list of unsung heroes whose activities outside the spotlight were every bit as vital. One such individual was Samuel Zemurray, the Russian immigrant to the United States, who rose from dire poverty to become the owner of the United Fruit Company, the world’s largest purveyors of bananas. A devout Zionist, Zemurray not only donated a banana boat to the Sochnut (the Jewish Agency, the recognized “government in exile” of the Jewish people) that would later be famously renamed the Exodus and used to transport Holocaust survivors to Eretz Yisroel, he also used his economic clout to convince the Latin American governments he had been dealing with for decades to cast their votes at the U.N. in favor of the partition motion. Another name that should unquestionably be placed on the unsung heroes list is that of Bernard Lander. Spurred into action by the Sochnut, which had early on recognized the pivotal role to be played by the Latin American nations, Lander, at the behest of the Sochnut called upon the contacts he had been cultivating for the prior three years. In those early years of the struggle for civil rights, Jews and blacks regarded each other as soulmates, both victims of institutionalized racism and discrimination. This bond was manifested as a political coalition that would endure through the mid-1960s. Lander became a member of a Pro-Palestine committee and began knocking on the doors of the black leaders he knew through his work on the Mayor’s Committee on Unity and elsewhere. Lander first pled his case to Walter White, the Secretary of the NAACP who agreed to go into action. White, who had a particular interest in Haiti, spent months lobbying the Haitian U.N. delegation in an ultimately successful effort to gain its vote in behalf of the Zionist cause. Lander also contacted a black member of the Mayor’s Committee with whom he had worked closely. Channing H. Tobias, who held a doctorate of divinity, had spent his life devoted to the YMCA, a role that often led him to Latin America as he strove to resolve racial issues with local political leaders. Tobias had been appointed to the Committee on Civil Rights by President Truman in 1946 and sat on the national board of the NAACP. Once again, Lander made his case to a respected black leader, asking for his intercession on behalf of Partition among his many contacts in Latin America. Tobias was sympathetic and assured Lander that he would give it his best effort. 76 The Lander Legacy The narrowly won U.N. vote was regarded as a victory for Jewish diplomacy. Pro-partition advocates had managed to summon the support of black national and international leaders who enjoyed close ties to Jewish activists, such as Bernard Lander, through their years of working together in behalf of civil rights. In the final tally, the thirteen of the thirty-three aye votes at the U.N. General Assembly tendered by non-aligned Latin American members were the result of outside influence. Lobbied by banana peddlers and black civil rights leaders, the votes cast by these Roman Catholic countries, far removed from the affairs of Jews and the Middle East, made all the difference in the world. One characteristic that benefited Rabbi Lander’s effectiveness as a civil rights activist and Zionist was his modesty and willingness to remain out of the limelight. When a harsh article criticizing Jewish settlements in Palestine appeared in the Reader’s Digest, Lander did not respond directly. He called upon his colleague Dan Dodson. Dodson, at Lander’s request, wrote to a friend who was a senior editor at the magazine, asking him to publish the other side of this issue. The editor agreed, and the rebuttal piece soon appeared. Lander, throughout his career, firmly believed that a bridge is often a better defense than a wall. He urged his rabbinic colleagues to reach out to other local clergy when taking on social issues or community relations. “A public statement on an issue by an Episcopalian or Methodist Bishop from Kentucky has more sway over the State Department than the largest mass convention in New York City sponsored by the most well-known Jewish organization,” he once commented. Lander’s distaste for self-aggrandizement was also a decided asset in his new role as a husband. Bernard and Sarah transitioned into married life as many young couples do. They rented a small apartment in Long Beach as Sarah embarked on her studies towards a master’s degree in sociology at the New School for Social Research. The NSSR, founded in 1919, was located in downtown Manhattan and served as the home of the “University in Exile” in 1933 for Jewish scholars driven from Nazi-controlled Europe. Bernard was still involved with the Mayor’s Committee on Unity during the day and continued teaching at Hunter College in the evenings. One evening, Bernard again complained to his friend, Morris Lifschitz, about the long commute that both he and Sarah had to endure each day. Lifschitz, who lived in New Horizons 77 Queens, urged the Landers to consider Forest Hills, with its many vacant tracts of land, easy commute to Manhattan, and young Jewish community. The rabbi of the community, Morris Max, was a scholar of stature. He was originally from Baltimore, and Bernard had been friends with his brother there. After spending one year in Long Beach, Bernard and Sarah relocated to Forest Hills in Queens. It was to remain their home for the remainder of their marriage. When Bernard Lander arrived to Forest Hills in late 1949, he was met by a dismal picture of a struggling Torah community in disarray. It was becoming obvious that Lifschitz had encouraged Lander to move to Forest Hills not only because he wanted his friend as a neighbor, but also out of respect for his outstanding leadership and organizing abilities. Lifschitz, a gifted and community-spirited lawyer, had served with Lander for several years on the Executive Committee of Mizrachi and recognized that his skills would make him a first-class collaborator in Lifschitz’s push to “remove the shame, the helplessness, and the hopelessness” that characterized the Torah-true Jewish community of Forest Hills. The community’s only visible organization was the shul, known as the Queens Jewish Center and Talmud Torah (QJC), which was housed in a pitifully overcrowded storefront on 66th Avenue. This was supposed to serve as the synagogue’s temporary quarters at the time it was first established in 1943, but the congregation had been unable to make any real progress. It had, at one point, purchased land, Lander was told, but was forced to halt construction of a new building due to a lack of adequate funding. Dr. Lander immediately joined the congregation and soon found himself on the board. Within one year of his arrival, he was elected president and quickly appointed Morris Lifschitz to head a new building fund campaign. The October 1950 edition of the QJC’s newsletter heralded the news under the banner headline: “Dr. Lander Elected President.” The article’s depiction of the Landers is noteworthy: A quiet and unassuming young fellow, (Dr. Lander) immediately impresses all those with whom he comes in contact with his level-headed logic and his ability to address an audience in a man-to-man, friendly tone that is most engaging. Although he Download 1.89 Mb. Share with your friends:
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