12/29/2010 2:23:00 PM Boosting international ties
Local rabbi raising money to ship books to India
Rabbi Howard Gorin, right, oversees a book sale last January to raise money to send books to Jewish communities in Africa.
by Aaron Leibel WJW Staff
The word apparently has reached all the way to South Asia: If you need Jewish books, contact Rockville's Rabbi Howard Gorin. That's
exactly what Navras Jaat Aafreedi - an assistant professor in
international relations at the Gautam Buddha University in India - did. And
in his letter to Gorin for help, Aafreedi congratulated the rabbi for
"his commendable work" supplying books to the Jewish communities of
Africa. Gorin has accepted the challenge. On Sunday, a
sale of Judaica works will take place at his synagogue, Tikvat Israel
Congregation, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with proceeds used for shipping
261 books to the Indian university. The sale will include Bibles, Talmud
and rabbinic literature and books dealing with philosophy, theology,
American Jewish history, Holocaust studies, Israel and Zionism. "The books are all high quality," says Gorin. "I don't sell books with torn covers or water stains. Some are brand new." The
books donated to India will support a course on Jewish history and
culture Aafreedi is attempting to organize at Gautam Buddha University -
the first such course in South Asia. His course would counter ignorance among Indians about Jews, he writes in an e-mail interview. "This
ignorance is dangerous as it gives birth to stereotypes, from which
emanate prejudices and biases, which ultimately lead to feelings of
hostility and hatred," he writes. "The only way to eliminate ignorance
is to create awareness and spread knowledge through the dissemination of
information, by various means. A course in Jewish History and Culture
would be one of those means." Ignorance also can lead
to violence. In that regard, he notes that one measure of the
importance of what he is trying to do can be seen in two of the most
visible murders of Jews in the 21st century - the attack on Chabad House
in Mumbai and the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl - both of which
happened in South Asia. It's the use that Aafreedi
will make of his books that most intrigues Gorin. The Indian academic is
not Jewish, but will be using the books to teach non-Jews in a Muslim
area of India about Judaism. "I look at it as using the books to promote understanding between people," he says. The
rabbi says he hopes to go to the university "to help people gain a
better understanding of Judaism and dispel some misunderstandings, but
that's far down the road," he says. The rabbi has
been collecting books and sending them to Nigeria and elsewhere since
2004 when he noticed a dearth of Jewish books for people in that country
trying to live according to Judaism's tenets. He has so far sent 12 to
14 tons of books to communities in need of Jewish books
(http://rabbihowardgorin.org/Book_Project.html). Gorin
receives books from a variety of sources, including congregants,
colleagues, seniors downsizing their houses and assisted living
facilities into which they move. When he receives
donations, Gorin says, he does "triage" with the books, deciding which
are going to be for sale and which going to be given away. The
book collection is not Aafreedi's first connection to things Jewish.
Last year, he organized what he terms "the first Holocaust films
retrospective in South Asia" in Lucknow, India. Forty-six films were
shown during two months and seen by some 4,000 people, he says. Those
who saw the films would help to combat Holocaust denial and
minimization, he writes. It was significant, he writes, that the films were shown "in the centre of the Muslim heartland of South Asia." A
self-described secular humanist, the Muslim-born Aafreedi says that
because of his work, he has been attacked verbally and his research and
social activism have often been misrepresented in the local press "as
Jewish or Zionist conspiracies against Muslims." In
an online discussion of his film festival
(http://sites.google.com/site/aafreedi/thefirsteverholocaustfilmsretrospective),
he notes that "Jewish/Israelite History had always fascinated me, but I
fell in love with Israel and the Jewish culture during the one academic
year (2006-2007) I spent in Israel ... ." For that
year, he received an Israeli government-funded postdoctoral research
grant to study "Traditions of Israelite Descent Among Certain Muslim
Groups in South Asia" at the graduate school of historical studies at
Tel Aviv University. He presented a paper based on
his research at the 19th annual conference of the Midwest Jewish Studies
Association in Evanston, Ill., in October 2007 and published it in
Purdue University's Jewish studies journal, Shofar. Asked what impressed him most about Israel, the Indian scholar answers in two words: "Its resilience."
Article Comment Submission Form
Please feel free to submit your comments.
Article comments
are not posted immediately to the Web site. Each submission must be
approved by the Web site editor, who may edit content for
appropriateness. There may be a delay of 24-48 hours for any submission
while the web site editor reviews and approves it.
Note: All information on this form is required. Your telephone number is for our use only, and will not be attached to your comment.
