Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

In this climate of war tensions it was a pleasure to write about a truly joyful event, the seventh annual Harvest in the Square, a food and wine tent meeting in Union Square Park on Thursday, September 19. This major 14th Street-Union Square LDC community fundraiser, occasionally postponed - last year it was the 9/11 outrage, when Union Square became "Unity Square" and the memorial site for the victims, in 1999 it was Hurricane Floyd - was scheduled to take place under the white canvas roof, rain or shine, with 53 participating restaurants and an equal number of wineries offering tastes of their most savory and exotic products. Danny Meyer, the honorary chair and a founder of the event, was eager to tell how proud he was of this neighborhood's recovery from 9/11, with the Greenmarket, the profusion of restaurants and theaters, and the Silicon Valley of NY (his description) leading the way, despite the blows. Nearly all the restaurants have come back from the period when visitors stayed home and in many of the eateries the main activity was contributing meals to the volunteers, the policemen and the firemen at Ground Zero.
As to the Harvest fare, early arrivals had a full choice of the 20+ fine hors-d'oeuvres from Kitchen 22 (duck prosciuto, salmon tartare in horseradish gelee), Le Madri (lamb and rice dolmades, Spanish mackerel with peperonata), Chango (crab quesadillas), Havana Central (mini Cuban sandwiches) and Knickerbocker Bar and Grill (crab cakes), accompanied by flutes of Pommeroy Brut Royal champagne.
The seafood was equally outstanding; Chicama's bay scallop ceviche with coconut gelee led, closely followed by Sushi Samba Park tuna sashimi ceviche and jumbo lump crab and salmon purses from Blue Water Grill. AZ was popular, with grilled squid and melon salad, Union Square Café had Spanish mackerel marinated with currants and peppers. Metronome's grilled shrimp skewers with cilantro pesto and mango vinaigrette and Candela's pumpkin and mussel risotto,Café Deville's coulibiac (salmon roll) with lobster mousse, City Bakery fish cupcake and City Crab's crab, tomato and corn salad over crispy potato nest provided more lively taste treqats.
Among the visitors, we noted fire- fighters from two companies, Engine # 5 (14th St.) and # 14 (18th St.), truck and all, ready to answer emergency calls. The firemen cast their ballots for the hearty food, sliced filet mignon with sauteed onions at Angelo and Maxie's, dished out by two nubile servers, Cara and Marisol. In the meats department very popular were also Park Avalon's pepper-crusted filets of beef with unusual Peruvian purple potato salad (from our Greenmarket, naturally), Strip House's New York strip steak with corn, mashed potato and roasted carrot salsa, Tabla's Black Angus brisket on brioche, The Tonic's duck confit and TanDa's lacquered duck hand-rolls, and Blue Smoke's pulled pork sliders with slaw. Bambou offered curry chicken salad with cumin-mango sauce, Bondi had oven-roasted chicken breasts with mashed potatoes, comfort food. Coffee Shop's lamb osso bucco with wild mushroom risotto and herbed goat cheese. Dos Caminos chochinta pibil (Mexican roast pork), Tamarind's chicken shahi Korma (saffron almond sauce)o and craftbar's (sic) braised rabbit with olives and polenta, Steak Frites pissaladiere de thon Provencale (French fish pizza) and Café Spice's noorie Malay kebab with saag paneer (spinach) and jeera pulao (rice) provided more gourmet exotica. I missed tasting Heartland Brewery's mysteriously named buffalo-chicken spring rolls.
Actually, tasting 50-plus dishes and wines is sinful, and impossible (though I try, heavens, I try), and other visitors' answers to my "what's good" questions helped. Nearly every restaurant had at least one admirer, and many remembered descriptions of dishes, if not those of the servers. Having catchy names helps. Winery names are difficult, and I found a pamphlet or card of great value. Hint, hint...
In pastas and soups Ribollita's crespella alla Fiorentina (crepes in bechemel and tomato sauce) rated high, followed by Gramercy Tavern's orechiette (ear-shape pasta) with summer beans and walnut pesto, Belmont Lounge's pennette with sausage and wild leeks, Campagna's lasagna, and Cat 'n Chew's Smithfield ham and cheese macaroni Todd English's Olives had chilled Greenmarket tomato soup with Parmesan spuma. The adventurous owner now has 12 restaurants, spreading his cuisine to Tokyo, Las Vegas and the future Cunard luxury cruise liner Queen Mary II. Verbena, perennial favorite, had Kabocha squash soup with grilled corn and mushroom oil, and the National Arts Club had its perennial favorite, chili.
For vegetable lovers, Galaxy Global Eatery served Korean seitan and water chestnut wraps with amaranth leaf, Gotham Bar and Grill featured warm vegetable custard with shell bean salad, Bolo had neat tomato and crispy bread salad with white bean humus, L'Express presented its leak and porcini mushroom aspic, Luna Parks' arugula salad with roasted red and gold beans was neat, Tocqueville Restaurant & Wine Bar had a tomato sonata in three movements, consomme, confit and sorbet. Republic had a unique service, of takeout noodle salad with fried wontons, which we gratefully had for lunch the next day. .
In desserts, outstanding were 11Madison's opera with black currant sorbet, The Tonic's banana tarts, and Tatin, with macadamia and rum ice cream. We also liked City Bakery's pear sandwiches with peanut-beer ice cream, Patria's goat cheese natilla (Cuban custard pudding), Pippa's goat cheesecake and Fleur de Sol's chocolate cornettes. Interesting coffees, teas, waters and beers were presented by Café Atomico, Heartland Brewery, 71 Irving Place Coffee & Tea Bar, T-Salon, Sam Adams and S. Pellegtino & Acqua Panna, with Maker's Mark intriguing all bourbon lovers with a sealed bottle (alas, the festival is unlicenced).
The wines, arranged with the aid of Union Square Wines and Spirits, who featured several varieties at their stand, were truly international, Two New Zealand Sauvignon blancs ( Crossings and Villa Maria) made their debut, as did a Sardinian vermentino (Villa & Mosca) and California sakis. Long Island was ten-strong , at least, with multiple entries from Castello di Borghese-Hargrave, Osprey's Dominion and Paumanok, followed by California, Italy and France. Spain (fine Osborne solarz), Australia, Alsace, and the Seneca Lake region were there, as was Hungary with a Disznoko Tokaji. The Chardonnay, Merlots and Chiantis still lead, with interesting samples from the Muscadet, Riesling, Gewurztraminer and Semillon domains
Thanks again to Eugene McGrath of Con Ed, Karen Shaw, Christina Brown and others at the BID, organizers Meyer, Eric Petterson, Michael Siry, Gary Tornberg and Martha Bell Dallis, and major sponsors Beth Israel, Buchbinder & Warren, Goshow Associates and Rothman's.

This was a week devoted to fundraisers. At the NY Historical Society, Scott Simon of WNYC's Weekend Edition described Saddam Hussein's tactics as straight out of the Dictator's Playbook,. In Albany we heard WAMC's banjoist and CEO Alan Chartock's Berkshire Ramblers deliver a rousing singalong of "Down by the Riverside (I won't study war no more)", in the new Linda Norris Auditorium (met that generous lady too). Next week we fast and save money, and worry about wars.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
That Iraq is planning and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction can be proven by a few hours' research. That Iraq would turn them over to the bin Laden terrorists is less evident, and may be a secret Iraqi propaganda threat - bin Laden once declared Saddam Hussein an enemy because of his secularity and mistreatment of the Sunni minority. Then came 9/11 and the US reaction, which may have brought them together. Looking at Iraqi history may be helpful in drawing conclusions.
Iraq, the ancient Mesopotamia, home of Abraham the father of both Jews and Arabs, fairyland of legends and of oil, was ruled 6,000 years ago by the of Sumerian city states, then by Sargon's Akkadian empire, then by Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It was governed by Persians for some 1,000 years, until Arabs took control of Baghdad in 652 , and it became the luxurious capital of the Moslem Abbasid Caliphate in 762. Remember tales of Harun-al-Rashid, Sheherazad and the Thousand and One Nights, as collected by the adventurous traveler Sir Richard Burton. The country, a bit larger than California, has Jordan and Syria as its neighbors on the west, Turkey on north, with long border lines with Iran in the east and Saudi Arabia in the south, and a short border with Kuwait between the latter two. The population of 22 million, 75 percent Arab, 20 Kurdish, 5 Turkoman and other, is overwhelmingly Muslim, 2/3ds Shiite (as in Iran), 1/3 Sunni (the faith of world's Muslim majority)
Mongol invaders came in 1258, destroyed Baghdad and the country fell into decline, until the OttomanTurks took over in 1534, remaining in control until WWI. Then the British conquered the Ottoman lands (remember Lawrence of Arabia and his Seven Pillars of Wisdom), and ruled them under a League of Nations mandate, forming countries and passing control to their WWI Arab allies.. Iraq fell to Faisal, the son of Hussein, Sharif of Mecca, a Hashemite,.in 1921, with a full monarchy in 1933. Britain was managing the country's economics by controlling the oil flow through a pipeline, traversing Transjordan to Haifa.
Iraqi nationalists sought to fight the British by coups, enrolling the Italians and Germans in 1941, but by 1943 Iraq declared war against the Axis powers. It joined the Arab League and briefly participated in wars against Israel in 1948. Most of the 85,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel. In 1955 Iraq broke ties with Nasser's revolutionary Egypt and the USSR, joining the Baghdad Pact with UK, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan,.
The Hashemites were overthrown in 1958 by leftist Baath party nationalists, and Iraq allied with USSR, fighting in the 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel.There were Kurdish rebellions, with bloody suppressions in 1975 and particularly 1979,.after Gen Saddam Hussein al-Takriti assumed control.. He purged the leftists in the Baath movement, executing thousands of opponents, including 21 alleged Communist plotters . The ties with USSR were disrupted. Saddam started buying arms from France and Western Europe. In June 1980 the only political party, Baath Socialist Party, was elected in power.
In September 1979 Shiite Iran, ruled by Ayatollah Khomeini, took 50 US diplomats as hostages in Teheran, and did not release them until January 1981. Border clashes between old enemies Iran and US-favored Iraq started early in 1980, and for months there was skirmishing over control of the 120-mile waterway to the Persian Gulf, Shatt-el-Arab, the confluence of Tigris and Euphrates. Heavy fighting began in September, with bombing attacks on cities, including use of poison gas on both sides, and continued, uneventfully, until 1988, when a UN conference led to a cease-fire. The casualties in the brutal war amounted to a million, a quarter of them Iraqis. Both enemy sides were doing nuclear research, started well before the war. Iraq bought a French reactor for nuclear research in 1976, and in 1981 Israeli bombers destroyed the Ozirak facility, as a military threat..
On Aug 2, 1990, Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait, subsequently annexing it. The universal outrage resulted in a UN Security Council's resolution that led to a US-organized coalition of 13 countries and an assembly of 500,000 troops that entered Kuwait and expelled the Iraqis in a four-day ground campaign (after six weeks of air war), occupying much of southern Iraq.. But the Coalition withdrew, leaving Saddam in power, presumably so as not to destroy the regional balance and install Iran as the dominant country, and to protect the West's oil sources. A revolt by the emboldened Kurds and southern Sunnis failed, and Saddam retained power.
Although the Coalition forced Saddam to destroy his atomic program in 1992, he continued research, and UNSCOM inspectors were sent to detect and eliminate his secret laboratories for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Iraq impeded the inspectors' progress, first in late 1997 and then in Dec 1998, causing the teams to withdraw. In return, the UN retained its sanctions against Iraq, demanding that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction be destroyed, and that Iraq improve the conditions of its Kurdish and Sunni Moslem minorities. As President Bush quotes, 16 UN resolutions have been ignored by Iraq.
Saddam has continued secret atomic research, as testified by Dr. Khidir Hamza, the program's director and author of Saddam's Bombmaker (with Jeff Stein, Nov. 2000), who fled the country in 1994. Two knowledgeable brothers, including Hamza's boss, Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel, both Saddam's sons-in-law, defected to Jordan in 1995 and were lured back to Iraq six months later. Executed as conspirators, they were blamed for a secret program of biological weapons. The evidence, one million pages of documents, was planted in Kamel's chicken farm. Saddam expressed his phony outrage over the "treacherous and illegal" program.
Hamza states that Iraq has 1.3 tons of low enriched uranium, smuggled from Brazil, and tons of yellow-cake extract from native potassium. A renegade German scientist, Karl Schaab, in 1989 smuggled in pirated German centrifugal technology, whereby literally thousands of small motorized precision tube centrifuges, deployed all over Iraq, can be used to extract weapon-grade uranium. Allegedly the Pakistanis used a similar pirated method to build their nuclear bombs, over a period of 17 years. Hamza, educated at MIT and Florida State University, heads a Council on Middle Eastern Affairs, and testified at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings in August 2002. Per London Times of mid-September date, Hamza has advanced his Iraqi nuclear readiness estimate to the next few months, which may account for Pres. Bush's request for UN action within weeks, if not days. More to come.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Dr Paranoia tells a story of a bar encounter with a Texan, a self-proclaimed Republican, who loudly complained about our President warlike Iraq policy. " As we say in Austin, the man needs to populate his matrix. He don't get granular enough. And he has to tune up his counter-intuitive thinking, he's no Reagan. .Just leveraging those hostile ideas don't fly in the world of of the towel-heads. There's no strap there, and no exit policy" Taken aback, Dr. P asked about the apparent Texanisms. Turned out respondent works for EDS, and the language is IT (information technology, what used to be data processing). Strap means strategic planning. .
When asked who his ideal President would be, the Texan declared, without hesitation: "Clinton, with a better zipper." Pretending to be totally shocked , somewhat like Capt. Raynaud upon discovering that there is gambling in Rick's Café, the good doctor asked for an explanation. "Come now, you know that Clinton is one of us, a moderate Republican. If he hadn't run the country with both hands tied behind his back and his gonads otherwise occupied, we would have a different world. That wife of his with her universal medical care fantasies, the babes of the week, and my own party tying him up with investigations, accusations, indictments and impeachments, it is a miracle anything got done in those eight years. That's the beauty of a two party system, two sets of characters with no ideological differences wying for one set of jobs, and stopping each other from performing. .It's not the pay, it's the influence that drives them. Jobs first, country second. I pass." Since the man was clearly unbalanced and in need of medical attention, Dr. P. retreated, to call 911. When he returned, the Texan was gone, leaving behind the delicious aroma of Maker's Mark bourbon and a trace of cowchips on the floor. Clearly a problem case.
Regarding the Iran policy, Dr. Paranoia has his own theory. Deep down, George W. does not want war, he wants Saddam to submit. Hussein, sees it as a bluff, and won't blink. To scare the Iraqi dictator, George W. has to act as a reckless mad dog, foaming at the mouth, the more opposition in Europe, the more in Arab countries, even in the US, the better for that image. He has tools to escalate it, such as convening the hapless Iraqi opposition leaders for a conference, tele-chaired by VP Cheney ( the leader of the potentially 70,000 Kurd fighters, Masud Barzani, did not come, for fear of another poison gas retaliation by Hussein). He ignores the oppositionists in his own Republican party, such as Richard Armey, who warns that under the cover of the American attack, the Israelis may attempt to expel the Palestinians from the West Bank, and the Indians may wipe out the Pakistani forces threatening Yammu & Kashmir.
The attack on the Saudis as supporters of the Muslim radicals, voiced in a Defense Policy Board meeting early in August by Laurent Murawiec an unknown Rand consultant, was a warning to the seven rulers and 5,000 princes to cool their ardor. (Murawiec, a former French intelligence agent, variously described by partisans as a Sharon person and an operative of the shadowy anti-Israeli racist Lyndon LaRouche, has been recently denounced by the latter. Go figure!) Although the Board is described as a quasi-official body, its chairman, Richard Perle, has been the voice of the Washington hawks, until Cheney and Rumsfeld escalated the stakes in September by speaking up themselves.
So far, the hawks have given the MidEast dictators cover, by not pressing them into anti-Iraq service. Outright support of the Bush policy would certainly threaten the governments of Egypt, Jordan, the Saudis and all the little princes in the Gulf states and the rulers of North Africa, given the amount of anti-American radicalization of the street Arabs that al Quaeda and Palestinian propaganda has generated. (Deep down, the sheiks want al Quaeda and the radicals to fail; Addam's Iraq is no longer a theat to them,as long as the US and Britain watch over their interests.) And there's denial - BBC interviewers find many educated MidEasterners insisting that 9/11 was an Israeli or CIA plot, despite the disclosures in the bin Laden group's own videos and statements. The Office of Global Communications has a job of marketing in its hands (America as the land of opportunity is not a bad sell to the people who burn the US flag one day and stand in line for a US visa the next.)
Dr Paranoia also maintains that there is also a bad cop/good cop psychology at work. Secretary Powell dangles unconditional admission of UN arms inspectors as the ticket of peace, and Scott Ritter goes even further. The former head of the UN team who withdrew it from Iraq in 1998, when Saddam Hussein totally inhibited its actions, has maintained that Iraq does not have the means to be a deadly threat to Israel and the West. This ex-Marine and admitted former (ha!) secret CIA operative has made five trips to Iraq, at the invitation of its puppet parliament, during the latest of which, in September, he invited them to open the doors to inspectors, in order to prevent annihilation. The President's speech, declaring that Saddam is still in contempt of the UN resolutions and claiming carryover authorization from the 1991 gulf war to initiate a change in Iraqi goverment, also leaves the opening. A good oilman, Bush 43 knows that Bush 41 did not pursue the gulf war for fear of leaving a vacuum of power in Iraq and swinging the MidEast balance of power toward Iran, not to forget the potential of destruction of the oil sheik regimes.
All this play-within-a-play should not give Saddam Hussein too much comfort. His brutal power rests on the support of the small tribe which he heads. To begin with, this secularist who puts on the Muslim mantle at his convenience, when needed, is still a long-term target of bin Laden's true Islamists, as are the plutocrat sheiks and rulers of the Arab states who keep their underdog happy by feeding funds to their young radicals, exported to expend their energies on subverting the great democracy of the West, US, where the tradition of civil liberties saves them from peremptory executions for treason, the tradition in their native countries.
And, second, Bush 43 may still lose his patience, should his last-minute public display of attempted multi-lateralism meet with continued outright refusal from Iraq, and blow the 22 million inhabitant Iraq to smithereens. Saddam has only the 80,000 Revolutionary Guard to trust (the half-million men Army is poorly trained and motivated.) How long can he wait for the OGC to turn the Mid East around.

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
By way of a preface, let me tell you why there is no article about 9/11. After a year of passing the Holy Site on my way to work, after months of inhaling the odors of death that lingered in the Fulton Street station of the IRT long after the fire was extinguished on December 20, after many silent bouts of weeping and of rage, and of reminiscences and therapy, this is a subject that we the first-hand witnesses no longer want to talk about it. Let us honor our heroes, help the survivors, love our families, guard our borders and go on living, as the Israelis have learned to do since 1947. But do keep the rage intact.
So, let me tell you about the miracles of the 45-foot tide on the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. It takes an effort to view it, and many tourists do not bother. We did, spending a day traveling from our South shore retreat of Oak Island, first two hours just to drive across N.S. on Route 12, to Kentville, a small town with many banks, where your ATM card supplies C$, in C$10 and 20 denominations, with no charge (presumably the exchange rate covers expenses.) . After another two dozen miles of country and ocean views one arrives at Hall's Harbor. We arrived at high tide, with the little harbor full of fishermen's boats, tied next to each other. The tide marker was at 35+ feet, with a maximum marking of 45, that would have flooded the dock, the simple outdoors restaurant and perhaps even the, God forbid, giftshop, where people were buying charming wooden boat and porcelain souvenirs, and takeout lobster at C$12 (about US$8.).
After dallying a bit, we took to the road and 20 miles further East. Passing a high point with an incredible view of all Fundy Bay, we came to a gradually descending beach alongside a cliff, Blomidon, where we could observe the water actually retreating. Bathers came out with muddy feet, explaining how the bottom might be treacherous. Submerged rocks came in sight as we were watching. Further down were the Elephant Rocks, sort of a letter A formation, which we did not get to. Nevertheless, the beach was formidable.
After two hours of watching, we returned to Hall's Harbor, By now the whole river bed was dry, and the boats were sitting on their keels, resting on sand.. The outermost boat in each row of three or four vessels, moored in a side-by side fashion, had a cradle or crib, strapped to its bottom, like a chair. This gear, strapped on when the outside boat reached harbor after a day of work, held the boats upright.
Hall's Harbor owes its name to a local scalawag, Samuel Hall. Dating back to 1779, he and his Micmaq girlfriend and some Yankee privateers preyed on the planters and some early loyalist transplants who had recently left the 13 colonies to settle in Canada. Forced to abandon their lair by broom-wielding young woman, Rachel Cross and her local militia allies, the pirates left, after allegedly burying their loot. A local man who soon opened a store, Sylvanus Whitney, was rumored to have found it, but hope still persists. If treasure is your game, this may be the place.
In Micmaq lore, a great whale offended the god Glooscap with a great splash of his tail, and now that water sloshes in and out of the uniquely shaped Minas Basin, every 6 ½ hours. Formed 350 billion years ago, 100 years before the dinosaurs, the 12 ½ hour flow is supposed to equal the 24 hour flow of all the rivers on earth. The numbers quoted range upward , from a conservative 14 billion tons of water flowing in and out four times a day. The muddy waters foster the growth of crustaceans and plankton, and shorebirds abound, finding abundant food in the 173 mile forked arm of the ocean, of which 620 square miles of floor are laid bare by the tides. About 15 varieties of whales come to the Bay of Fundy for nourishment.
The high tides are at the points on earth closest to the moon, during the rotation. Sea of Okhotsk, north shore of Australia and the English Channel also experience them, but the Atlantic at Fundy has the most dramatic bay configuration.
The thought of utilizing this great movement of water to create electricity, supplanting fossil oil and coal as the source of home energy, is not new. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose father James Roosevelt had built a cottage on Campobello Island, on the New Brunswick side, spent his summer vacations there, child and man. He sailed, camped and hiked. In 1921, while resting there after losing the Presidential election (he was the VP candidate), he fell ill with the then incurable infantile paralysis. Staying at Campobello while regaining strength, he would watch the tides and marvel at their power. After the presidency, he tried to form a partnership with Canada to utilize the energy. Alas, nought came of it. An 1,800 acre Roosevelt Campobello International Park, established since 1966, has attracted tourists worldwide.
As to energy, at present there is a modest effort to start thinking about a meaningful tidal energy plant, which might reduce the tides by 15 cm ( 5 inches). A small plant, at Annapolis, supplies a fraction of NS energy needs. There is a plant in France, at La Rance, and at Murmansk, Russia, The N.S./N.B. environmentalists are not willing to take the risk of endangering the bird, fish and crustacean varieties. This may be a short-sighted attitude.
As an aside to the Fundy Bay trip, we visited Peggy's Cove, site of the 1998 Swissair 111 tragedy. There is a touching seaside monument. As to the Cove village, natives wonder about its attractions. "A pile of rocks, if you ask me," we have heard. Yes, but what rocks. Like smooth sinews or fingers from a central point, stacked high, they extend into the ocean. Arms of the octopus, that's another expression I've heard. Picturesque simple houses sit atop the rocks, exposed to the elements. Simplicity and natural drama, what else can you ask for. The three gift shops, all carrying a different class of goods, do neat trade, with 20+ tourist buses coming from Halifax daily, during the tour season.
Nova Scotia is nice, safe, quiet and easy to get to, if you like driving.

Rabbi Block
Dr. Irving J. Block, founder of the Brotherhood Synagogue and one of the most esteemed religious leaders in the city, has.... after a long bout with Parkinson’s Disease. He was 8xs.
Rabbi Block retired in 1994, after 41 years of service. His retirement conicided with the 40th anniversary of the synagogue he founded, long known as a flagship instiution for bringing Jews back to Judaism, promulgating friendship and understanding between races, religions and ethnic groups, and caring for the homeless, the troubled and the disabled, the immigrants and the minorities. Its mission has continued under Rabbi Daniel Alder, who for six years had been Rabbi Block’s associate.
The synagogue was founded by Dr. Block and a group of like-minded associates in 1954, and for 20 years it shared joint quarters with Rev. Dr. Jesse W. Stitt and his Village Presbyterian Church on West 13th Street. The ideal of a community of faiths was shared by Drs Block and Stitt, and they traveled together, espousing their principles, in the U.S. as well as in Germany and Israel.They were honored with awards from Bucknell University, the Salvation Army, and many other civic and religious groups. They appeared on "The Big Surprise," quiz program on Tv, with Dr. Block answering questions on Christianity and Dr. Stitt on Judaism, and withdrewwhen the change in the seasons interfered with the observance of Sabbath. Only the death of Dr. Stitt and the appointment of an unfriendly minister terminated the sharing of the quarters, and ultimately, the existence of the Village Church.
After a year of "wandering in the wilderness," meeting in volunteered quarters such as the NYU Loeb Studebnt Center, in 1975 the sysnagogue settled into the former Friends Meeting House at 29 Gramercy park South, purchased from the United Federation of Teachers. Built in 1859, reputed to have served as an "underground railroad" stop in the pre-Civil War years, and landmarked under the threat of destruction for a high-rise project, it was the perfect match of the needs of a congregation and the preservationist-minded efforts of the Gramercy Park community. The relationship was a model of a interfaith community, and the local Christian leaders - Dr. Thomas J. Pike of Calvary/St. George’s Episcopal Parish, Msgr. Harry Byrne of the Epiphany RC Parish and others - formed a tight-knit ecumenical group, rotating the celebration of Thanksgiving in each other’s sanctuaries. It has survived throughout the years, a crowning glory of liberarism and tolerance that should set example for the world.
Rabbi Block was born in Bridgeport, Ct, served in the US Army in WWII, and went back to school, majoring in accounting at the University of Connecticut, Class of 1947. The call of his Jewish heritage brought him to studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, 1947-48, and subsequently to rabbinical studies at the hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York. During his studies in Israel he joined the Hagganah Defense League and participated in Israel’s war for independence, for which he was recognized with the Israeli Victory medal.
Rabbi Block was ordained in 1953 by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, from which he subsequently received the degree of Masrte of Hebrew Letters, and in 1978, an honorary Doctorate of Divinity.
While serving as a student Rabbi, he decided to form a synagogue that would attract alienated Jews and would emphasize the principles of interfaith brotherhood and community service. He followed these principles for 41 years, and his heritage has persisted in the Brotherhood Synagogue long after his retirement. In 1982, Brotherhood was the first Manhattan synagogue to heed the call of Mayor Koch, asking that religious indtitutions establish sheltrs for the homeless. The synagogue has an award-winning afternoon Hebrew School, providing religious instruction and Bar/Bat-Mitzvah prepsration for students attending secular schools.The synagogue has social services for the mentally challenged and provides space fot the AA and Alzheimer’s support groups. Since 10 years prior to Rabbi Block’s retirement the synagogue has provided a field service program for students of the General Theological Seminary (Episcopal). In 1992 Rabbi Block was awarded an honorary doctorate by the GTS..
In may 1994 Rabbi Block invited a leader of the the local Muslim community, the late Seif Ashmawy, publisher of the Voice of Peace and a voice of the Sunni Moslems on WABC’s Religion on the Line, along with the Consul-General of Egypt and some of their adherents and family members.The congregation opened its heart to their hopeful message and offered hope of their own. An ordinarily sceptical Holocaust survivor showered kisses and tears on Seif.. Peace was given a chance, but not for long, and not for want of trying.
Subsequent to retirement, Rabbi Block authored a memoir, A Rabbi and His Dream (Ktav, 1999), with much dramatic detail of Israel’s war of independence, his ecumaenical communion and subsequent clash with the Presbyterians, and the many conflicts that make Judaism a source of vitality and ideas. Post-retirement, he continued with his activities on behalf of Ethiopian Jews and Russian emigrees, as health permitted..
The survivors include his widow, Dr. Phyllis Rabinove, a French scholar and long-time synagogue volunteer, son Herbert, LLB, a link with the Jewish community during the David Dinkins administration and currently with the xxxx, daughter in law Judith (nee Greenberg), and grandson Joseph Alexander, and a brother, Rabbi Emeritus A. Allen Block of Canarsie’s Temple Emanu-el.
It is recommended that any donations in Rabbi Blocks memory be made to the Brotherhood Synagogue. Memorial services will be announced .