Bronx Community students view ‘Decades of Fire’ fi lm
Beth El of City Island’s female rabbi announces retirement
Rabbi Shohama Wiener ofTemple Beth-El of City Island who retired after
more than 30 years. Photo courtesy of Ellen Ruth Topol & Paul Klein
BRONX TIMES REPORTER, NOVEMBER 2 BTR 9-DECEMBER 5, 2019 3
BY JASON COHEN
After more than 30 years as
a rabbi, Rabbi Shohama Wiener
is retiring at the end of December.
Wiener is an author, editor,
academician, composer
of contemporary Jewish liturgical
and spiritual music and
pioneer in the fi eld of Jewish
spirituality.
The rabbi, who has been at
Temple Beth-El of City Island,
known as ‘Your Shul by the
Sea,’ 480 City Island Avenue,
since 2002, held a luncheon in
her honor at Pelham & Split
Rock Golf Courses, 870 Shored
Road, on Tuesday, November
24.
Wiener, 77, has cherished
her time at the synagogue,
but acknowledged it’s time
to move on and enjoy the
later stages of life with her
family.
“I grew up when people retired
when they were 65,” she
said sarcastically. “I just kept
taking it year by year. It’s really
been amazing. It has been
a wonderful 18 years.”
Her path to becoming a
rabbi was not the typical one.
She was raised in Mount Vernon
by Dr. Albert and Edith
Harris in what she described
“as a Jewish, but secular
home.”
While they were a bit surprised
about her career choice,
they supported her.
“Once I decided to become a
rabbi, they were very pleased,”
she said. “They were a little
concerned because it wasn’t
the thing to do at the time.”
When she was younger she
wanted to be a social worker or
teacher and in a sense, a rabbi
is both of those things.
“I had a spiritual awakening
in my mid-30s that sent me
on my path to pray and study,”
she explained. “Once I started
really studying and going to
services all the time it felt
so right. You could say I’m a
‘born again Jew’.”
She graduated from Wellesley
College and Harvard University’s
Graduate School of
Education, but even after fi nishing
school, had a yearning
to do more with life.
At age 40, Wiener obtained
her rabbinic ordination from
The Academy for Jewish Religion
in Yonkers and her doctorate
from New York Theological
Seminary in Manhattan.
“What’s unusual about me
is once I came to the seminary,
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a
congregational rabbi,” she remarked.
From 1986 to 2001, she led
the Academy for Jewish Religion
and was the fi rst woman
in history to head a Jewish
seminary and introduce
meditation and spirituality
into rabbinical and cantorial
training.
The rabbi led High Holiday
services throughout the world
and even ventured to a synagogue
in Hawaii, Kona Beth
Shalom.
In 2002, she settled down
and found a home at Beth-El in
City Island. She stressed how
she cherished her time there
and will miss it.
The shul is inclusive and
has Buddhists, mixed marriage
families, different ethnicities
and even practicing
Christians. Through her
passion for music, meditation,
people and Judaism she
thrived there.
While it was an adjustment
at fi rst to being a congregational
rabbi, she couldn’t have
asked for a better synagogue.
“When I cross that bridge
(City Island Bridge) I really feel
like I’m on vacation,” she said.
In fact, under Wiener, Temple
Beth-El became a ‘training
synagogue’ for the renewal of
Judaism.
The rabbi, who resides in
Sarasota, FL and New Rochelle,
is looking forward to
spending time with her husband
Alan Dattner and their
children.
“I’ve been going through
the grieving process for a few
months,” she said. “For me,
it’s a lot of joy, knowing that I
have a lot of great places to go
to.”
BY JASON COHEN
In the 1970s the south Bronx
was engulfed in fl ames and left
to rot. No one cared if people
died, were evicted or lost their
homes.
Vivian Vázquez Irizarry, a
south Bronx native, dives into
the borough’s worst catastrophe
in her fi lm, ‘Decade of Fire:
The South Bronx is Burning.’
On Tuesday, November 19,
she screened the movie for students
at Bronx Community
College.
Vázquez Irizarry, 56, who
grew up watching her neighborhood
burn, didn’t understand
the implications of the
destruction until she began her
research a decade ago.
“The thing that kept me going
was that these conditions
were not created by (people of
color),” she said to the attendees.
“It made me realize that I
had to make this movie.”
The fi lm dives into the devastation
that took place in the
south Bronx in the 70s. What
was once a melting pot of working
class Jews, Irish, African
Americans and Latinos, became
a neighborhood of low-in-
come families.
In the 60s, there was the
‘white fl ight,’ where numerous
white families left the city and
relocated to the suburbs.
Then there was redlining.
Redlining is the denial of various
services to residents of specifi
c, often racially associated
neighborhoods or communities,
either directly or through
the selective raising of prices.
Then the 70s arrived
and fi re engulfed the south
Bronx.
The fi lm explains how many
people assumed it was junkies
or vandals committing arson,
but she discovered that landlords
were paying kids to set
the buildings ablaze. The kids
were arrested and landlords
pocketed the insurance money
and left town.
During her research, she
discovered that nearly half of
the fi res were never investigated
as arson until 1982.
But, the south Bronx at
that time was a community
where everyone knew everyone.
Unfortunately, the neglect
ruined lives and displaced
nearly a quarter of a
million people.
The fi res were brought to
national attention during the
1977 Yankees-Dodgers World
Series. As the game proceeded
a camera captured a church,
near the ballpark, in fl ames,
prompting the sportscaster,
Howard Cosell, to utter the
words that would stigmatize
the borough for decades, “The
Bronx is burning.”
“Quite frankly, as a young
kid, I never thought of the fi res
being that horrible,” Vázquez
Irizarry remarked. “I didn’t
know we had 40 fi res on average
a day for 10 years.”
The movie also touched on
false promises from presidents
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan,
during separate visits to
witness the devastation.
As the 80s arrived, grassroots
organizations like Banana
Kelly slowly began to revitalize
the community. While
they dealt with the crack epidemic
in the 80s and mass incarceration
in the 90s, slowly
things changed.
Looking back at 10 years it
took to make the fi lm, she said
the movie was a labor of love.
She hopes by showing the world
the injustice that took place, it
never occurs again.
“We barely survived and
some of us didn’t survive at
all,” she commented.
Looking at the Bronx today,
she feels it is in a much better
place. Gentrifi cation has
changed the south Bronx, but it
is only good if the community
has a voice, she stressed.
Decade of Fire Director Vivian Vázquez Irizarry.
Schneps Media/ Jason Cohen