The winner of the 2023 Margolis Memorial Scholarship Essay Contest, sponsored by KC Lodge #184, B'nai B’rith, is Rafaela Grieco-Freeman.
Grieco-Freeman graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School and is attending the University of Chicago in the fall.
The annual Margolis Memorial Scholarship Essay Contest is open to all students graduating from a Kansas City area high school who will be entering college. The scholarship fund is managed by the Jewish Community Foundation.
The fund was established by Bernard Margolis, a former executive of Katz Drug Co., to promote better understanding between Christians and Jews.
Below is the text from the winning essay.
"The importance of interfaith dialogue between Christians and Jews"
I am a Christian, or more accurately, nominally Christian. Essentially it means is that I was baptized when I was almost two years old (but mostly that happened so my grandparents in Buenos Aires could throw a party for me). That was pretty much the only time I have been to a church service. On the other hand, my best friend since I was five years old, Matilda (Tillie) Feigenbaum, is ethnically Jewish. Most of the time I have not thought about what that means, especially living in Prairie Village, KS. Through sharing many years of friendship and reflection, I have come to understand Tillie’s identity and, in a way, value interfaith dialogue between Christians and Jews.
My mother is from Argentina, an officially Catholic country. My grandmother on my mother’s side is a devout Catholic and when we visit her in Buenos Aires there are images of saints around her house and a rosary on her bedside table. Visiting her is also where I first encountered practicing Jews. Buenos Aires is the city with the second largest Jewish population outside of Israel (the first is New York), with 230,000 Jews. They mostly live in the Once neighborhood, which is about a half hour away from my grandmother’s house. In the Abasto Shopping Center in Once, there is even a kosher McDonald’s. We often went to the kosher McDonald’s because the lines were shorter than on the regular one, on the other side of the food court.
The neighborhood where my grandmother lives in Buenos Aires (we stay with her when we are there) is called Barracas. That neighborhood is home to a sizable Orthodox Jewish community. In many ways, it is a Jewish neighborhood. The local little grocery store is called Autoservicio Emanuel (although it is now run by Chinese immigrants). There’s a kosher grocery around the corner and a kosher butcher down the street. Down the block from my grandmother’s house, at the next corner, there is a Jewish school and during drop off and pick up times, I see mothers and children walking past my grandmother’s house wearing traditional orthodox Jewish clothing. Many times, I bought candy or stickers at a kiosk at the same time as the kids from the Jewish school.
Seeing people on the street dressed differently and with different customs and traditions is fascinating. My parents explained many of those traditional ways to me as I grew up. In Barracas, Christians (like my grandmother) and orthodox Jews live side by side. The neighborhood is vibrant with an eclectic street life. It is clear that in the city of Buenos Aires, Jews and Christians flourish together. Despite that, while in Buenos Aires, I also learned about antisemitism and the attacks on the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center. Not too far from my grandmother’s house, in the Retiro neighborhood, there is a little memorial plaza, where the Israeli embassy once stood. In 1992, the embassy was attacked by an Islamic suicide bomber using a truck. Twenty-nine people were killed and 242 injured, with the embassy largely destroyed. In that plaza, there are little trees giving the urban area a green space and benches to sit, contemplate, and read the names of the victims. Unfortunately, the bombing of the Israeli embassy was not the only attack perpetrated against the Jews in Buenos Aires. In 1994, a Jewish Community Center (Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina or AMIA) was attacked by another truck bomb which, in this case, drove into the building, killing eighty-five people and injuring over 300 others.
With these dramatic episodes in mind, I understand the daily dynamics in our neighborhood of Barracas better. In front of the local synagogue there is always a policeman on duty and bollards protecting the building blocking the access of any vehicles. Bollards protect the school down the street from my grandmother’s house as well and a policeman is usually guarding that corner too. The front of my grandmother’s house is reinforced with steel to protect it against possible explosions down the street. These are all protections. However, I hope it all remains peaceful because it is a vibrant neighborhood, especially on Fridays and Saturdays, when Jewish families walk everywhere.
Four years ago, prior to the pandemic, my friend Tillie and I traveled with my parents to Spain. My parents were doing research at the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, but we also did a lot of “touristy” activities. In most of the cities of southern Spain we went to, we visited a Jewish site. Historically, during the period of Muslim rule in Al-Ándalus, the Jews lived under Islamic rule. However, it was a period of cultural diversity, respect, and tolerance. As Christians conquered or reconquered those areas, the experience of Jews in Spain changed for the worse. The peaceful coexistence and understanding that had been there was lost and, as a result, the Jewish community in Spain was also lost.
In Toledo, we visited the Synagogue of El Tránsito, which was built around 1357 as a private house of worship and yeshiva. The original owner was an advisor to the Catholic Castilian king, who later fell out with the king and was tortured to death. However, his synagogue remained. The building survived the anti-Jewish attacks in 1391 when part of the Jewish quarter of Toledo was destroyed though that synagogue was saved. After the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the synagogue was converted to a church. Eventually in the nineteenth century it was declared a national monument and in the early twentieth century turned into the National Museum for Hispanic-Hebraic Art. When we were there, I remember strolling through the museum with Tillie, looking at the architecture and talking about what had happened to the Jews of Toledo.
Similar was the fate of the Jewish community in Córdoba, which we also visited. The synagogue in Córdoba was originally built in the early fourteenth century and seized by the Catholic authorities after the expulsion in 1492. It was a little chapel for the shoemaker’s guild before also becoming a national monument in the nineteenth century. More famously, the Great Mosque of Córdoba was turned into a Catholic cathedral after the conquest of the city in 1236 and, due to its outstanding beauty, it is now a popular tourist attraction.
That summer in Spain, we primarily resided in Seville. The neighborhood behind the archive where my parents worked is called Santa Cruz and was originally the Jewish quarter. In 1391, the Jews of Seville were attacked, and the neighborhood seized by the Catholic Church. All the synagogues were turned into churches and the Jews of Seville were either killed or forced to convert. Like in Córdoba, the mosque in Seville was turned into a cathedral. Unlike Córdoba, little of the original mosque remains with the notable exception of the minaret, which was repurposed into a bell tower, known as the Giralda. Interestingly, we have a local version of that bell tower in Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza.
What’s my point with all of this about Spanish history? Well…, it is a classic example of what happens when there is not peaceful coexistence and mutual understanding between Christians and Jews. A lot of great Jewish art, architecture, and learning was lost to Spain. And, for me personally, the experience meant understanding my friend Tillie a little bit better. We have been flourishing together for the past 13 years, because we share what we have in common and we learn from our differences.
My father told me a story about Jewish families that were expelled from Spain in 1492 that brought their door keys with them and passed them down from generation to generation in the hopes of returning someday. He did not know if that was true or not, but it is a good story. He did say that the Spanish government offered citizenship to the descendants of the Jews expelled in 1492 and some were able to take Spain up on that offer. I hope that they returned to Toledo, Córdoba, and Seville and that my friend Tillie and I passed by them as we walked down the streets together, Christian and Jew.