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Rabbi Jordi Gendra: When we talk about conversos or we are talking about crypto-Jews, do not expect normativism, don't expect to find anything that looks like the normative Judaism that we know. Because it's not the case. Because those people have been for 500 years, they have been keeping a very low profile. So you don't want to do anything that's going to be too palpably Jewish.

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Rachael Burgess: Welcome to Trending Jewish. I am Rachael Burgess, here with my co-host Bryan Schwartzman.

Bryan Schwartzman: Good afternoon, we're actually recording in the afternoon. We're usually early birds.

RB: I know, this is... This is a little bit different for us but it's hard to tell in a studio with no windows in it. But it's...

BS: It's a downcast, miserable, rainy day outside but we are cheery in here.

RB: Yes. It's a... We keep the sunshine going in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and despite what television says, it is not always sunny in Philadelphia.

BS: I've never seen that show.

RB: It's very good.

BS: Yeah.

RB: It's a good...

BS: Danny DeVito. It's...

RB: If you kind of need some kind of dumb humor, like it's something you can kind of vegetate with, get a couple laughs out of it. You can also go visit the pub where they frequent quite a bit. That's, I think, right near Penn's Landing. You can get some good fish and chips there.

BS: All right, I'll put that on my list of things to do.

RB: All right, not that you don't have enough things to do, because we still have to eventually get an update with your running training with Jon Cutler.

BS: Let's delay that update.

RB: [laughter] So we are here at RRC with Rabbi Jordi Gendra. He's actually somebody else you can also work out with too. He's a... Very... Spends a lot of time at the gym, so he can be another...

BS: He looks very intense, I'm intimidated already. What? [laughter]

RB: So Jordi, welcome to Trending Jewish, our podcast.

RG: Thank you very much.

RB: I am going to need a little bit of help with your background. So Rabbi Jordan Gendra was born in Barcelona, Spain. And he was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2006. He holds a PhD in medieval Jewish history from... Is it Universitat de...

RG: Girona.

RB: Girona? 

RG: Yeah.

RB: In Spain and a Masters' in Semitic languages with a specialization in Hebrew and Arabic from the Universitat de Barcelona? 

RG: Yes.

RB: Ha. Yes I'm getting the Spanish. He taught an introduction to Talmud at RRC for several years as well as religious studies at Wilson College. He worked as a translator. He knows all sorts of languages and he has even translated websites for me in Norwegian. [chuckle] He teaches several courses on Jewish history and Jewish thought from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia? 

RG: Yes.

RB: And that's a prominent distance education university based in Spain.

RG: That's similar to Open University in England.

RB: He's also published several articles and books on Jewish issues, and I actually didn't realize this, but you actually completed the first translation of the Passover Haggadah in your native language of Catalan.

RG: Yes.

RB: And one of the things that I found was very curious about your background is that you are actually... Your family was a converso family? 

RG: Yes, part of my family is.

RB: Was it like an open secret in your family? Was it something that everybody knew that you were... That they were part of the converso family or was it something that was never talked about? How do you go about finding out what that history is in your family? 

RG: It depends on how you define an open secret but it was kind of an open secret. We knew... It's some... A tradition that comes down. So my granddad was the one who was telling me, this is how you pray. You pray with your head covered. You pray in this way. You pray... You know what I mean. There was an awareness that this is how those kind of other things that you have to do. Now, the issue is when you compare those traditions that are different from family to family -- because remember this is like a fragmented memory. Everybody remembers something different. This is like when you go into class, you skip class and you need the notes from that class and you're going to ask three of your friends, "Hey, can you pass me the notes?" and everybody's going to give you the notes and what's going to happen is that those notes are going to be totally different. And the question is were you exactly in the same class...?

RG: So the same thing happens here. Every family, every town will create its own tradition, will create its own fragmented memory of what means Judaism for them. We say that in Judaism we don't have a dogma. I'm going to say I do not necessarily agree with this. I would say that we have a dogma and it's very interesting because that dogma is the calendar. We know and that's what comes to me, I mean that was part of my family secret if you want. Do you know when Pesakh is? The question is how many times have you heard from someone who tells you, 'Oh I'm Jewish, but I'm a very bad Jew, I don't go to synagogue but I know that it's Pesakh. I know that I should be or I should not be eating this or eating that."

RB: Because you know where the holidays are, you're always going to... It's like it's ingrained in you that you're always going to know.

RG: Correct. It's ingrained in you. It's a sign of identity. This is what I mean. I may not do it. I may not fast for Yom Kippur. I may not eat matzah,  I may eat bread during Pesach, but somehow, it's ingrained in your mind that "This is what you're supposed not to do, what you're supposed to do." So, there is a sense of calendar. There is a sense of time. There is a sense that in such and such time, you're supposed to do such and such things. You know what I mean? So, that's... I found this very interesting. That overall, there is this kind of a thing.

RG: Then, for instance, talking about traditions that come through the families. I spent many hours in archives back in Spain. And from time to time, you see an inquisitional process and you can see the prayers that they confess during those sessions of, I'm going to say torture. You recognize that there is a Jewish background. But it's totally... It's a mismatch. Do you understand? It's a total mixing of Christianity with Jewish elements. You can tell what prayer they're trying to reproduce mentally, but it's all like... I remember one that talks about Saint Esther, Saint Queen Esther. It's related to Purim, but by saying Saint Esther, you're kind of making her like...

RB: Catholic.

RG: Yeah. Catholic... You're Christianizing the elements. So, you're Christianizing the element there. The other thing is that when we talk about conversos, or we're talking about crypto-Jews, do not expect normativism. Don't expect to find anything that looks like the normative Judaism that we know, because it's not the case. Because those people have been for 500 years, they have been keeping a very low profile. So, you don't want to do anything that's going to be too overtly Jewish. Because you're not in contact with each other necessarily. You will keep only fragmented memories of what Judaism means.

BS: This is the first time we've spoken. I'm fascinated to hear your story. Clearly, your journey has taken you on many twists and turns. I don't know the order but I understand you officially went through the conversion process to Judaism. You've studied Jewish text on an academic level. You decided to became a rabbi. Can you take us through that process? 

RG: Yes. Basically, this knowledge is in my family. I'm more curious about that background. So, I go back to the synagogue. I'm 14, 15. And we're talking about a country that has only at that point, Spain probably would [have] had only 5,000 Jews in the whole country. So, the Jewish community is very cliquish, it's very small, it's very closed in itself. Very different from what the Jewish community is today. Today in Barcelona, you have four synagogues. Back in the... I'm going to reveal my age. But, anyhow... [chuckle] Back in the '80s, [chuckle] you only had one synagogue. And that one synagogue was the only house for all the Jews. This has to do with... Remember during 40 years, we had a dictatorship. So that has to do with the political environment that I will not talk about here. But basically, we had only one synagogue. And everybody from all the spectrums, Ashkenaz and Sephardic, everybody was there. From Conservative to ultra-Orthodox. Everybody was there. So, I decided to go there. At the same time, I decided to study Hebrew. All by myself, nobody was pushing me to do that.

RG: So, I was attending Friday night services, I do the morning services. I was becoming more and more active. I mean what you can do as a teenager. You become more active in that community. In '92, there was a split in the community. And I went with the split. Basically, to make the story short, you have two big groups because of politics. In 1960s, you have the independence of Morocco and you're going to have many Moroccan Jews coming upto Spain. Especially from what was the Spanish protectorate in North Morocco. In the '80s, you have the dictatorship in Southern America. Then you have Southern American Jews immigrating to Spain. But those two groups have very different profiles. Because the North Northern Moroccan Jew is going to be a traditionalist Jew. It's going to be a Jew that's going to be very anchored in Sephardic traditions. It's going to be a Jew that it's basically [employed in] commerce. They're going to make their living based on commerce. On the other hand, the Jew that comes from Southern America, because you have to remember, they are escaping dictatorship.

RG: So, the Jew that's coming from Southern America, you're going to have lawyers, you're going to have architects, you're going to have dentists, you're going to have liberal professions. In other words, the profile is totally different. Those people from Southern America, they come from a non-Orthodox background. But because we only had one synagogue, Orthodox and non-Orthodox had to live together. Sooner or later, there was a split. In '92, that split happened physically. And we created a non-Orthodox community that is still working that's called Atid. "Atid" means "future" in Hebrew. So, in '92, we began our services in living rooms of people. So, every Friday night, it was the same show. I had a fax machine, I remember, [a] fax machine at home, [chuckle] back in those days. So I was passing fax, we had the phone tree, we were talking to each other, "Hey, this weekend, I mean this Friday is going to be at such and such, so you bring the Coke, you bring this, you bring that."

RG: So the classical system pot luck ... So this is how we began to create. In '97 we were able to bring the first full-time tabbi. That's when I began to be very active in the community. And I began to find myself in the position that I know how to read Hebrew, I know how to interpret the text, I know how to do this, how to do that. We began to lead services. Now at that point Rabbi Edgar Nof was the Rabbi that we had, he lives in Israel. So he was traveling between Israel and Barcelona three times a year. He was the one who said to me, "You need to go through a conversion process. Because this is abnormal. You are in the grey area. So you are not one thing nor the other. They'll have the paperwork to prove your citizenship into Judaism if you want." I said, "Yeah, that's true."

RG: So you have to go through a conversion process, as many conversions there was... In me there was kind of, "Why do I have to go through all of this? I'm already Jewish so why do you want to... " That was the discussion that I had that lasted for a couple of months between him and me. And what he says is, "Look, at the end a conversion... I mean, we can do whatever you want. The problem is that then it's not just how you identify yourself, it's also how you're being recognized. And in any identity process you have both the face and the tail in the same coin. It's how you identify yourself but you also need to be recognized as that thing." It's not enough to say at the guy at the border, at the airport, "Hey, I'm American." You need to prove it by giving him that blue booklet. And that's the proof and he will recognize that.

RG: So this is the exercise. So he told me, "You need to go through a conversion process because this is the standard process that nobody will challenge. Because a conversion is a conversion and it's the standard process for acquiring Jewish identity." Okay, so I went through that. It took three years to go through that. It was a group, it was the first conversion that ever happened in Spain since 1492, so you can do the math, it was 500 years. And we were a group of 20-something people from all of Spain. And we had the beit din in Barcelona. Rather than going to London or going to Israel, it was easier to bring the beit din to us than having 20 something people traveling around. So we did the mikvah at the beach in September. So that was right before High Holidays that year. So that was very emotional because for me, for many of us it meant the end of a process and the beginning of a new identity.

BS: So you don't resent having to go through that? We spoke the issue on our last episode, there came up patrilineal Jews in this country, and many resist the idea that they have to undergo or some people believe they have to undergo a conversion process. They are Jewish and that's how they see themselves. And so do you have any resentment or you feel like that was, maybe because of the historic nature, that was something you're glad you chose to go through or felt you had to go through.

RG: As I said at the beginning I had that resentment, because as I said I saw myself as a Jew. Now, I have gone through a process, a three year process, not even one year, three year process. And it implied also the zip zip, in tradition, we take tips. [laughter] Pun intended.

RB: Oh, my God.

RG: So I even had to go through a circumcision process. As an adult this is something, jeez, you're going to have a second thought, right? So we did that, I mean all the males in the group went through that process. The fact that I was part of a group, it was very interesting. The fact that I already knew what I was talking about, put me in my relationship with Rabbi Edgar at a different level, because it was not just... It's not about what's a mezuzah, what's this, what does it do, what's a chumash? It was beyond, in my discussions with him, it was beyond the regular discussion. So I saw that as another way of learning, also another way of building my own identity: who is the Jew that I want to be. It's not enough that... It's like when you have a Bar mitzvah, you give them the certificate, and then what? What are you going to do with that? You're going to put it in your pocket, then it's like the tribal ID? Native Americans have their tribal... Is that your tribal ID? 

RG: It's the question what do you do with that identity? It's an identity that's going to sit there in a corner, in the shelf in your house? Or it's an identity that you're going to put into action? For me that was important, and this is why I got very involved in the Jewish community. Later on in '97 I moved to Majorca and I was very active. In Majorca... Majorca has an Orthodox British community. That's when I had to improve my English. The prayer books, everything we used -- the Hersch Chumash and the Singers prayer book, so everything was in English. And I was invited from the very beginning, I was invited to address the congregation every Friday. So it was me the one doing the drash, doing the sermon every Friday. Which at the beginning was very interesting because I did several mistakes with the English. And then it's when I saw myself more and more, people were coming to me, inviting me, this is how I express it.

RG: People were inviting me to very private moments of their lives. One of the cases was a family in Majorca, whose child committed suicide. How do you address this with a family? In English we have a word for when you lose your spouse, you can be a widow or widower. You have a word to define when you lose your parent, you are an orphan. But which word defines when a parent loses a child? It's a pain that's beyond words. How do you address that with that family? I was calling Edgar. I was calling the Rabbi saying, "Hey Edgar, I have this problem, what I'm supposed to do?" It's this kind of a thing that I can tell you a couple more of these like people having cancer, people being in the hospital in Majorca, and they wanted some religious support or some pastoral care, what we call pastoral care today.

RG: So they wanted some pastoral care and I was thrown into that. The secretary from the synagogue, she would call me and, "Hey, Segal is at the hospital or Davies is at the hospital, can you go and visit?" So you go there and you talk and you are present. For me this is what -- there was a moment when I said, "Wait, wait, hold on. You are doing this without having, without being prepared for that." You're doing it from your guts but you are not doing it from your head. You don't have the technical preparation for that. It's like me being a journalist, I have no idea how to write an article. I know how to write, but I have no idea how to write an article. You understand? So I cannot go, can I submit something to the Inquirer, can I submit something to the Exponent? So for me it was like that. This is what brought me into looking for rabbinical training. Because I really like what I'm doing, I really like this contact with one-on-one, but on the other hand I was doing it like, totally, like, amateurish.

BS: I guess I'm curious in certainly North American Jewry, the liberal streams, the Reconstructionist movement, the Reform movement, is very focused on lowering barriers to entry in Jewish life, on diversifying the Jewish community, on welcoming non-Jewish family members as part of Jewish communities. Did sort of coming from outside the mainstream and having to undergo this process, does it help you break down barriers here? 

RG: Yes. First thing you need to understand that the role of religion in Europe and the role of religion in the States is very different. I'm going to say it's almost opposite. America has a very positive outlook on religion, in Europe it has a very negative outlook because in Europe, religion has been used normally as a social control mechanism. Here from the founding Fathers, churches have been in support of independence. Churches have been having a positive input in the running of the country. Think about the '60s, Martin Luther King what? 

RB: A pastor.

RG: A pastor, and like this, the people who were involved in the civil righst movement, many of them were religious people. And this back in the '60s, and even today, many people who are involved in social movements, they have some sort of a religious background. Back in Europe, the question is religious yes, religion no. And many people define themselves as not religious period, because there is a very negative perception of religion as a mechanism of control of the society. Also being a minority, a persecuted minority in Europe, and remember we are talking about 50 years, or 60 years, or 70 years now after the Shoah, the Jewish community is going to be very secluded. If you have been in Europe, remember that you have to go, it's like going through the airport. You have... Or even worse.

BS: Sure.

RG: And I'm not going to... You have many different security, steps that you have to do when you go into a synagogue in Europe. I mean from the metal ... police outside. I mean there are visual things that you can see from the outside, but there are also many things that happen inside. You have to identify yourself. If they don't know you, you have to bring your passport, you have to tell them, "Hey, I'm planning to come on such and such Friday or such and such Saturday." And this is the copy of my passport and this is my ID and this is where I will stay, so you can identify yourself, so there's... Here, one of the things that surprised me when I came here to the States for the first time, and also in Israel, was that synagogues have windows.

RB: Wow! 

RG: Back in Europe, synagogues don't have windows. Here, and I'm still something, I'm still in awe, is that you can get in and out of a synagogue without being stopped. Nobody is going to ask you for your driver's license. Nobody is going to ask you, "Okay, open your arms and open, spread your legs, and then we're going to pass the metal detector." Nobody's doing it. Here, you come and go from a synagogue as a normal place. I mean what I get here is a sense of normality. What I get there is a sense of abnormality. When you have such high degree of security around your places, that's not normal.

RB: Thinking about your background, where there's a lot of talk about being at the cutting edge and breaking boundaries. I wonder if you've thought much about it, where you seem to be really at a line that's breaking hundreds of years of pattern. You did that within your own family, where you had this big, this... I'm using air quotes, but a "secret" of being a converso family, and you were part of a movement that broke the way the synagogues were structured in Spain, where you were part of a movement that went more progressive instead of trying to be something to everybody, and trying to be in a place that was strictly Orthodox. Have you really kind of reflected on all of these changes? It almost sounds like you've been kind of at the forefront and you probably didn't really intend to be that. It seemed like it was more of a happenstance that you happened to be part of the synagogue at the time when the split happened. Do you reflect back on that and think like, "Wow, all of the changes" or do you think about what's new coming ahead? What kind of goes through your thoughts when you look back and then look forward? 

RG: I'm going to say that I'm a child of my generation. That I was attuned and I was just responding to what was happening in Spain at the time. I'm talking about the '80s. I mean it's the end of the dictatorship, it's the beginning of the transition. It's the beginning of the democracy. This is [a] "young" country. Remember, anti-gay laws were eliminated in 1980s. You could go through a legal process and you could be thrown into jail. Theoretically, not that that was happening at that point, but those rules were still in the books.

RG: This is a country that's growing, the '90s representing  Spain, it's the Olympic games, it's the opening of the country. The country is coming [of] age, if you want. Spain becomes part of the European Union. With European union you get that diversity, so that's what's very interesting there is that homogeneity that on one hand you have in the country, "one God, one King, one Country." And on the other hand, you have this diversity that being part of the European Union brings. So that was the element there. I was very open and attuned to that. It's not that I have... Now, with age and experience wisdom comes, one would say. So now I can sit down and see more like, where things can go. But back in the day, I was in my 20s, I was an early young man. So it was more like a reaction to something that X, Y or Z needs to be done. You need to lead. You are put into a situation, you have no choice, basically. The choice is to do it or not to do it. So for me, it was a call, if you want. You have been called to do that.

BS: Since we're talking about your homeland, I guess I'll officially open a can of worms and ask, what you'd like people to know or understand about the constitutional crisis that we're seeing play out now in Spain? I'm finding that the most of the reporting coming out of there is very shallow, and I'm personally sort off at a loss to really understand the forces at play.

RG: It's not different from... I'm going to say from many of the independence processes that you had in Southern America. When you look at the history of Mexico, you look at the history of Columbia and Venezuela, basically, you have like... The country has a right versus left, but also it has a tendency between being a central state versus being a federal state. The same thing happens in the Spain. You have the right or left, you have socialist party, you have communist party, you have this, you have that, and you have the right wing party. But then you have those tendencies between being a central state that goes towards the centralism or you have a state that goes towards the federalism.

RG: And the present system is something in between. It's what we call the system of autonomies, so you have autonomous regions. The question is then, of how much degree those autonomous regions have. And what has happened there is that there was a perception that there was inequality, and that you're supposed to be equal, but there was a sense of inequality and that sense of inequality has been in crescendo, crescendo, crescendo, especially since the financial crisis in 2008. So for the last 10 years, that upset, so that uneasiness with the financial situation has been growing. Add to all this that Catalonia in specific has a specific language or specific culture. A specific identity.

RG: And this is not necessarily well understood in the rest of the Spain. For many years, the political strategy has been, "Okay, let's negotiate." For the last 10 years, since the financial crisis because money is so tight, there is no room more to negotiate. You understand? So things are getting more and more tense. So the end, this is what we're seeing now. This constitutional crisis is the outcome of 10 years from my perspective. I'm not a politician. I have not been in Spain, so basically I'm talking theory, but from my perspective, the way I'm reading it is "This is the outcome of 10 years of wishy-washy attitudes, and not being clear, and not tackling issues. This has been an illness that has developed into a cancer, or has developed into something bigger.

BS: Is the Jewish community in Barcelona coming down on one side or another? Or is it split like the rest of society? 

RG: The Jewish community is not different from any other community. The Jewish community is split. You have people who are, especially the older generations, they're going to be more like pro-Spanish, more like what we call Unionist. And then you're going to have the younger generation that are going to be more pro-independence. And I can show you, I am in different chats, and I can show you the amount of chat [chuckle] in the WhatsApp groups that I belong to. The degree of activity that... Yesterday, I had a cell phone free day, so when I pick up the cell phone at 9:00 PM, I had 226 messages from one of the groups. They have been very active.

RG: Yes, there is a concern. There are people who are pro, there are people... Again, that goes back into that thing about being a minority. That was one of my discussions with one of the members. Now, he's the president of the Majorca Jewish Community. He's from Ceuta, Abraham Arcelon, he's from Ceuta. And we were discussing politics many, many, many years ago. My position was, "Hey, you are Jewish. You are a minority. You should be more... If you're logic, if you are coherent, you should be more attuned to the rights of the minorities. Because he was saying "Why Catalans want to be different? Why Catalans want to keep that identity? Why Catalans don't give up on Catalan language and Catalan identity? And they take Spanish identity and the Spanish language." That was his argument.

RG: And I said for the same reason that they can say "Why do you want to be Jewish? Why to keep being Jewish? Why do you want to eat strange things? And why do you want to keep a different calendar? Why do you want to do a different thing?" "Oh, because this is the way I was born, I was raised, this is part of who am I," I said the same thing for me. "I was born in Catalan culture. This is my first language. This is my culture." You understand? 

RG: So, I said being a minority you should be more attuned to the rights of the minorities. Because defending the rights of the minorities is defending also your right. That was the end of the discussion. [chuckle] That has been there for many, many, many, many, many, years. And at this point, again, as I was saying before and off the record, this is an issue of two values. On one hand, you have the legality and on the other hand, you have the problem of the legitimacy. Having a vote should be a legitimate exercise of democracy and freedom on one hand. On the other hand, I understand that you have rules in the books that you have to follow, which value trumps what. Can you have an illegitimate legality or can you have an illegal legitimacy? You know what I mean? Which value trumps which one.

BS: Right. And I said before we went on the air that I have a sense that most Americans would understand this through our own experience of secession and the feeling that despite our values placed on freedom, that secession is sort of out of bounds. I guess, it depends where in the country you were born and what your parents taught you.

RG: But in the country, you have one culture, one language. It was just a matter of political... It was from my perspective, and again, I am not a specialist in American history, but from my perspective, it was a matter of which is going to be the legal system that's going to rule this country, federal versus confederal? This is the Gettysburg address, Lincoln's Gettysburg address. That's a plea. That's a subscription of hate. Our fathers wanted a federal system. Doing something different would be... Again, this is what Abraham Lincoln says at Gettysburg: "Doing something different would be treason to the intention of our founding fathers."

RG: But here, you have from Maine to Florida, we speak the same language. More or less, we have a common culture with diversity. There's a common culture, there's a common approach, there's common values that define you as American. And wherever we are in the planet, we can identify each other. That's not the case of what we are talking here. We're talking Catalonia versus Spain, it's a matter of identity, it's a matter of language and cultural values that are different, that there is a diversity there and this is what's boiling now. It's boiling down to an identity conflict which is going to be a lose-lose. When you have an identity conflict, it's very difficult to manage. Yes, I understand what you're saying, but I say there is one key element, it's identity.

BS: Thank you so much.

RG: Thank you very much for having me here.

RB: Thank you so much and then you can also check out Rabbi Jordi's blog and his website so you can kind of keep up with his torah and learn more about him at rabbigendra.net. You can also see more at our website which is trendingjewish.fireside.fm. So I am Rachael Burgess here with...

BS: Bryan Schwartzman.

RB: You've been listening to Trending Jewish.

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