Members of the Tribe (34 page)

“I’ll do a wedding in a Catholic or Protestant church, co-officiate with a minister or priest, whatever the couple wants. I sing, I chant, I have a beautiful robe. Believe me, nobody does a wedding like I do,” he said. Frank’s matrimonial services included a chauffeured ride to the chapel in the rabbi’s $90,000 Silver Spirit Rolls Royce, driven by his son and disciple, Loring.

“Rabbis think that by not doing interfaith marriages they’re saving Judaism. I suppose they think that if a couple can’t find a rabbi, they won’t get married,” Frank told me, shaking his head at the innocence of his colleagues. “Actually, I’m saving Judaism, not harming it. I increase the number of Jews. If you chase Jews away, all you do is make them non-Jews. Besides, I’m not that different from a lot of other rabbis. They do interfaith marriages in the closet. I advertise, that’s all.”

It was the advertising that got Emmet Frank thrown out of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the professional body of the Reform rabbinate. Although Frank had been an embarrassment for years, there were no grounds for his dismissal from membership. But advertising—unlike eight-hour conversions or performing
weddings in a church—is a violation of Reform rabbinical ethics and his colleagues used it as an excuse for booting him out.

Rabbi Frank responded with a wounded defiance, stepping up his advertising campaign and sniping at his fellow rabbis on local talk shows. He also founded his own rabbinical association, FAIR (the Free Assembly of Independent Rabbis). Emmet Frank was its only member, but he hoped to attract followers. “Someday I may even open my own rabbinical school,” he said grandly.

Emmet Frank was born and raised in the South and educated in Classical Reform congregations. His classmates at the Hebrew Union College remember him as an engaging young man, but an indifferent student. “There are still a lot of things about Judaism I don’t know,” he admitted. “But really, I don’t need to know all that much. I’m a life cycle rabbi.”

A life cycle rabbi, according to Emmet Frank, offers services to people who couldn’t otherwise get them. Frank himself had no formal congregation—his experiences in Seattle and Harrisburg turned him against organized religion—but he claimed to have several thousand followers in Miami. He led Passover Seders for them at hotels or country clubs, conducts bar mitzvah ceremonies in backyards or on the beach. But most of his life cycle business came from performing weddings, more than one hundred a year, sometimes for couples who have traveled thousands of miles to be married by a rabbi.

The far-flung nature of Frank’s ministry and the publicity surrounding it aroused considerable controversy and opposition. One of Frank’s most vocal critics was Jewish Defense League chief Meir Kahane, who visited the All People’s Synagogue a few months before.

“I invited him in and we talked for a while,” Frank recalled. “He was actually quite pleasant. But then I heard a lot of noise downstairs. I looked out the window and saw a bunch of his supporters demonstrating. They were carrying signs that said
EMMET FRANK WOULD MARRY A GOAT TO A SHEEP
. You know, they actually had a goat down there, with a yarmulke on its head and a tallis on its back, and they yelled up at me to marry it to a sheep. I hated that. I’m the chaplain for the local humane society, and I felt terribly sorry for the goat.”

Frank called the police, and Kahane finally left, but the demonstration
marked the beginning of a campaign to harass the spiritual leader of the All People’s Synagogue. “I got abusive phone calls in the middle of the night, they put ads in the paper offering free phone sex and listed my home number. I got sent doo-wop records C.O.D. They made my life miserable. That’s why I was afraid to meet you. I thought you might be one of them,” he said in an apologetic tone.

Naturally Rabbi Frank never married a goat to a sheep. The closest he had come was a wedding he performed for a Jewish elephant trainer with the improbable name of O’Brien and his tightrope-walker bride. The ceremony was carried out in the elephant tent, a venue that allowed the groom’s closest friends—three elephants with whom he worked—to take part by holding poles of the bridal canopy in their trunks. The fourth pole was held by a clown in whiteface. Frank showed me pictures of the groom and his extravagantly tattooed bride under the canopy. It was, he said, perhaps his finest hour as a life cycle rabbi.

The wedding business had its satisfactions, but it was in the area of conversions to Judaism that Frank was a pioneer. “I convert people in one day, and that’s controversial,” he said, “but let’s be honest. How long do other rabbis take? Six months? A year at the most. Okay, so let’s say a rabbi does a conversion in six months, one hour a week. And during that time, the student is sick once or twice, the rabbi can’t make it once or twice, maybe they meet twenty times, something like that. That’s, what, twenty hours? Thirty hours at the most. Mine takes eight hours. Now, what’s the difference? You know, a lot depends on what kind of a teacher you are.

“I cover all the major holidays, teach them the symbols, the whole life cycle,” he said. “I give a special emphasis to the Sabbath blessings. Then we finish up with a ritual baptism, right here.” He pointed out the window in the direction of the beach. “I tell them, ‘When you step into the ocean, you’re stepping into God.’ ”

Frank estimated he had converted several hundred people since the seminars began. “Look, they don’t remember everything. But I tell them, ‘If you forget something, just give me a call.’ ” It was the only conversion program in the country that came with its own warranty.

There was a knock on the door. Rabbi Frank was immediately wary, afraid perhaps that it was more doo-wop records. He looked through the peephole before opening the door and welcoming his son, Loring, who joined us in the rabbi’s study.

Loring Frank, a thin, nervous man in his late thirties with the credulous manner of a teenager, introduced himself as a marketing consultant; but his main job was serving as his father’s acolyte. Like the sons of other successful men, he was being groomed to take over the family business.

“I’m training Loring to be a rabbi,” Frank said blandly. “He’s only been at this about six months, but someday I want him to take over my synagogue and FAIR.” Loring nodded his enthusiastic approval of this master plan. I asked him if he had much Jewish background before entering upon his rabbinical training.

“Well, I believe in lighting candles on Friday night, and I go to temple once in a while, but I don’t say a prayer after going to the bathroom or just go around praying all the time like the Orthodox, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “And my dad has taught me a lot. But you don’t need to know everything. I mean, let’s say that somebody wants to know about kosher. Then I’d send him to another rabbi who knows those rules. Personally, I’m macrobiotic, that’s my style, but I can respect other people’s beliefs, too. I’m just not worried about tiny details.”

Loring acquired his knowledge of the big picture by accompanying his father on his rabbinical rounds—getting hands-on experience, like a plumber’s apprentice. “We do brises, weddings, everything. I still haven’t taught bar mitzvah training yet, but I will soon, won’t I, Dad?”

Rabbi Frank nodded, a proud father. “I didn’t push my son to become a rabbi. The Lord did.”

“Hey, Dad, who was that guy who became a rabbi when he was about my age?” Loring asked.

“That was Rabbi Akiva, son,” Frank said, clearly pleased with the boy’s erudition. Loring slapped his knee. “Right, well, it’s never too late. You know, I don’t know why these Orthodox attack us. I mean, we don’t attack them for doing their thing. What we want to do is to cater to the people, give them what they want. We don’t necessarily expect them to change their whole lives just to be Jewish.”

While I pondered this approach, Loring turned again to his father and, in a voice that indicated an oft-repeated routine, asked, “Dad, when was the Hebrew Union College founded?”

“1850, Loring.”

“1850!” he exclaimed. “Well, who did ordinations before 1850? I mean, who ordained
Moses
? Or Jesus? Or, ah, Rabbi Hillel? There was no college back then, was there, Dad?”

Emmet Frank feigned surprise at the question. “You know something, you’re absolutely right.”

“You’re not really going to do this, are you?” I asked him, the icy self-control of an afternoon melting fast in the blaze of Loring’s enthusiasm. Loring himself must have sensed he had gone too far with the Moses comparison. In a concerned voice he sought reassurance from his father. “Dad, do you have to get a special license in Florida to perform weddings? I mean, if you tell them that I’m a rabbi, isn’t that enough?” Frank confirmed this. “In Florida, all you have to do is be inspired by God, and you can be considered a clergyman. And any notary public can perform weddings.”

Relieved, Loring turned to me again, this time for help. “You’re an Israeli, what does Zipporah mean?” Frank beat me to it. “Zipporah was Moses’s wife, son.” Suddenly animated, Loring leaped out of his chair. “Hey, I just met this Israeli chick named Zipporah. I’m gonna give her a call, I’ll be right back.” He bounded out of the room.

Loring’s girlfriend reminded Emmet Frank of Israel. “It’s my spiritual home,” he said. “I’ve been there a number of times. I’m not an aliyah Zionist, but I tell people in my classes that Israel is the distillation of four thousand years of Jewish history. I make certain that they understand that support for Israel is central to the Jewish experience.”

Loring came back into the room and plopped back down in his easy chair. Zipporah was out, and her roommate didn’t know when she’d be back. He listened dejectedly as his father explained the other requirements of his one-day conversions.

“I have four things I ask them to do. First, they must recite the Shema. Then I ask them: ‘Do you wish to be a Jew? Do you promise to live a Jewish life to the best of your ability? Do you agree to circumcise your children according to Jewish law? Do
you cast your lot with the Jewish people?’ If they answer yes to all four, then I go ahead with the conversion.”

Loring, dejected no longer, shook his head in admiration. “If you listen to this for every day of your life for thirty-seven years—that’s how old I am—do you still have to go to religious school to be a rabbi? I mean, what more do you need?”

“Exactly,” said Rabbi Frank without false humility. “My family is related to the Vilna Gaon, and back in the old days, his kind of scholarship made sense. But today? I’m not going to make Loring study Talmud for a whole year when I can pick out the highlights for him. He needs to know the essence of Judaism, how to help people; and believe me, he can learn a lot more watching me than from a bunch of outdated laws.”

Emmet Frank suddenly snapped his fingers. “I just had a great idea. Remember when Loring mentioned Rabbi Hillel. Well, Hillel once converted a man standing on one foot. You know that story. Supposing I put an ad in the paper: ‘Come to Rabbi Emmet Frank. He’ll convert you while you stand on one foot.’ How about that for a slogan?” Loring shook his head in admiration and Emmet Frank closed his eyes in sweet contemplation of the next big breakthrough in American life cycle Judaism.

Emmet Frank’s philosophy, neatly summed up by his son, is that people don’t need to change their lives just to be Jewish. But not far away from the corner of Collins and 75th, in the posh oceanfront high-rises and sprawling haciendas of Miami, live a group of people with an opposite view. They are the Hispanic Jews of Florida, and they are determined not to change their Jewish lives just to be American.

There have been Latin Jews in Miami since the late 1950s, when Cuban refugees fled the Castro regime. Lately they have been joined by Jews from South American and Central American countries plagued by political instability. Today there are between five and six thousand Hispanic Jewish families in Miami, roughly half of them Cuban, and experts predict that there may be twenty thousand by the end of the century.

These Latinos differ in two important respects from other immigrants. First, they are very rich; there isn’t a taxi driver, street
peddler, or short-order cook among them. And second, they have no ambition to become “real Americans.” They don’t even want to become real American Jews.

“When I first came to this country—to Miami—I went to the Jewish Community Center,” said Rafael Russ over dinner at Patrino’s. Russ, called “Rafa” by his friends, is an athletic, darkly handsome man in his late twenties, with serious eyes, a well-attended mustache, and the self-confident charm of a Latin American diplomat. He came to America from Guatemala and, using family money, established himself as a successful entrepreneur. At home he had been active in the Jewish community and he naturally gravitated to the Jewish Center in Miami. His reception there left him shocked and angry.

“I met a man, and we played racquetball together,” he recalled in careful, precise English. “We played racquetball every Wednesday for many months. But this man did not ask me about myself. He did not ask me about my family. And he told me nothing about himself. We played racquetball and he went home. That, to me, is what an American Jew is—he is a racquetball partner.”

Rafa’s companion, Valerie Shalom, nodded in agreement. A willowy young woman who looks a little like Jacqueline Bisset, she grew up in Barranquilla, Columbia, and came to the United States to study at Brandeis, and later earned an M.A. in education at Stanford.

“When I first came to Brandeis I experienced a kind of culture shock,” she said in nearly accentless English. “At home, we lived in a Jewish world. We lived in Colombia, but we were Jews, not Colombians. I chose Brandeis because it was supposed to be a Jewish university. And then, when I got there, I found kids who were just Americans. They said they were Jews, but there was nothing Jewish about them. It was not at all my idea of what being a Jew is.”

The waitress approached, and Valerie ordered for me: “
bistec de palomilla and moros y cristianos
.” Her years in America have taught her that gringos like a little folklore with their Latin food, and she automatically translated
moros y cristianos
—a dish made of white rice and black beans—into “Moors and Christians.” The
waitress assumed that Rafa was also a tourist and asked in English for his order. Offended, he replied emphatically in rapid Spanish.