FRIENDSHIP OVER TIME AND DISTANCE
While I was a post graduate student at Jackson Memorial
Hospital of the University of Miami, the
southern cone of the Americas was always within my world vision. Pablo
Neruda represented Chile; Jorge Luis Borges his favourite Palermo was Argentina
for me. Brasil had occupied a magical space ever since that distant afternoon,
when I first watched Orfeu Negro, and Brasilian music has been part of me.
My adventures into Brasil at first was limited to touch the
Border town of Puerto Iguazu/Porto Iguassu, with its magnificent water falls.
Sao Paolo and Paraty followed on another trip. With Brother Eliyahu, explored
Rio de Janeiro and Salvador do Bahia.
The Jewish connection to Brasil was never forgotten. Had the
pleasure and luck of meeting Moacyr Scliar who had written many novels, including
one about a Jewish doctor working among the Indians?, while working in the
Public Health Sector of Porto Alegre. The oldest synagogue in Brasil was in
Recife, now abandoned. Many of the merchants along the vast Amazonia and other
port towns were Jews from Morocco. And one of the two people on the expedition
of Pedro Alvares Cabral who claimed Brasil for Portugal , was a Jew with
connections to Goa and Cochin, he was known was Gaspar da Gama.
The magical realism of Jorge Amado was well present in my
heart, having devoured his Bahia novels, during our visit to Salvador do Bahia.
Anyone who has seen the film Fitzcarraldo, would remember the magnificent Opera
House at Manaos which I was to see later as well as the ship used in the
filming of Fitzcarraldo, now moored at the wharf at Iquitos, Peru not far from
the shop, once famous, Cohen Brothers .
On one such trip I met Lygia in Sao Paolo. University of Sao
Paolo was what we had in common, at that I was very interested in the Japanese
culture of Brasil, and she introduced me to Libertade, and also I met
brasilians of Japanese ancestry including a memorable elderly lady who was a
magnificent potter.
(faculty of Law, University of Sao Paolo)
Lygia was an architect, artist with special interest in
Islamic architecture. She had presented me a sketch of the mosque of Isfahan,
which decorates the Blue House of the Omaha in Walthill, Nebraska.
When I met Lygia, a documentary film festival was on and I remember
seeing a documentary about the notorious prison (carranduru?) and also one
about Jacques Derrida. At that time, DeLeuze and Foucault had not entered my
life. She also talked a lot about Iranian film makers, such as Makhmalbouf. All
these information were to come in handy when I began teaching at the University
of Havana about Disease being a Metaphor for Society.
I stopped going to Brasil in 2005 ( even though I had two delightful
trips with lovely friends, one to the North, to Boa Vista where I crossed into
Guyana and another to the Magnificent Iguazu falls, crossing from Buenos Aires
and Argentina.)
10 year absence from Sao Paolo. In 2015, I had visited
border towns of Tabatinga and Manaos in Brasilian Amazon. I had a procured a good ticket on Etihad
Airways from Sao Paolo to Johannesburg via Abu Dhabi and I decided to get in
touch with her.
I found the email address of Lygia from the entrails of the
computer. She now had a 7 year old son, and continued to lead, after the
completion of her P.hD, an artistic, intellectual and academic life.
We met at Avenida Paulista and went together to USP, very
emotional for me, since it was where Claude Levi-Strauss had arrived in 1934 to
open the first department of Sociology at USP. France ( Emile Durkheim,
considered the father of French Sociology was a son of a Rabbi and his nephew
Marcel Mauss had written a book which influenced my ways of behavior with the
indigenous people, and of course Claude Levi-Strauss and Musee de Branley) had
entered my life with all its glitter and
lights and intellectual glamour and my vision had altered a bit.
At USP, I had a wonderful conversation with Eduardo Goes
Neves, a professor of Archeology interested in Amazonia, afterwards we went to
see two exhibitions at USP.
As I left Lygia at Butanta metro station, to get back to
Maksoud Plaza, to catch the bus to the airport, she said: Now that you have more friends here at USP,
you will have to come back. I had a feeling I might be coming back.
As an aside, while I was at the Colombian Amazonian town of
Leticia, I talked to the Brasilian Consul general who said he could arrange to
get me a ten year tourist visa to Brasil! In Miami or elsewhere the process may
take up to 21 days, but he promised it wont take more than three days! Isnt it
worth that extra trip to Leticia, Colombia?
There is an epilogue to all these:
Lygia asked me, would you like to read my thesis, it is in
Portugese and I am sure you would find it most interesting.
The title was:
Diálogos da arquitetura no Cairo entre os séculos X e XIII:
a sinagoga de Ben Ezrá e o contexto da cidade islâmica
Dialogues of architecture in Cairo between the X-XIII
centuries: the Ben Ezra Synagogue and the context of the Islamic city
I couldn’t believe the coincidence. It was at Ben Ezra
synagogue that jewish traders deposited their papers of travels and histories
and jewish connections in the Malabar coast, at the Geniza of Cairo. I had
written somewhere else about Abraham ben Yiju who prayed at Ben Ezra synagogue
before he left for Malabar and after he came back, nearly two decades later.
Our Illustrious philosopher Moses ben Maimon or Maimonides was a regular there,
while writing the Guide for the Perplexed.
AS AMERICAN INDIANS WOULD SAY EVERYTHING IS RELATED
(door of the ark where torah is kept, from Ben Ezra synagogue, 11th century}
Summary of Lygia's PhD thesis, first in English and then in Portugese.
In studies of Islamic cities, there are few that deal with
buildings that belong to other faith groups other than Muslims, in the sense of
analyzing them as agents in the evolution of the urban configuration of the
cities that were under Islamic government. The existing studies about these buildings
always follows the line of analyzing them inside their own elements, in other
words, a Christian or Jewish building within their own context, which is to
serve its own confessional community. The thesis shows that the synagogue is an
element that also builds and participates in the dynamics of the city, and its
study helps both in the comprehension of the Arab-Islamic metropolis, but also
in understanding the dynamics of society between the X-XIII centuries. By
analyzing the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, located just in the context of the
Islamic city, not only in its aesthetics or stylistic aspects, aims to
understand how the building dialogues with the city in the sense of the
construction of its territorialities. And also, in reverse: how the city and a
kind of Islamic language dialogue with the Jewish building. The big geographic
extension conquered by the Islam produced a multiplicity of forms and loans
and, at the same time, due to the facility of coming and going of the people
and the new conquests forged a certain unification in the language. The
exchanges and the assimilations not only were and are inevitable, as they are
part of the relations and living together among the groups at any time. The Ben
Ezrá Synagogue was since its foundation, an organizing element of the urban
space around, organizer of the distribution of the inhabitants linked to the
jewish community not only the rabbinic of Palestine but for others jewish
communities babylonic and Karaite, between the X-XIII centuries. And it played
a role of articulator of multiterritorialities. This analysis comes to enlarge
the knowledge about this building, and mainly, of the relations among the
communities Judaic, Islamic and Christian - between the Fatimid conquest of the
Egypt (969 e.C.) and the end of the Ayyubid dynasty (1254 E.C)
Nos estudos sobre as cidades islâmicas, poucos são os que
tratam dos edifícios que pertencem a outros grupos confessionais que não o dos
muçulmanos, no sentido de analisá-los como agentes na evolução da configuração
urbana das cidades que estiveram sob governo islâmico. Os estudos existentes
sobre esses edifícios seguem sempre uma orientação em analisá-los dentro de
seus próprios elementos, ou seja, um edifício cristão ou judaico dentro do seu
próprio contexto que é o de servir a sua própria comunidade confessional. A
tese mostra que a sinagoga é um elemento que também constrói e participa da
dinâmica da cidade, e seu estudo auxilia tanto na compreensão da urbe
árabe-islâmica, como também no entendimento da dinâmica da sociedade entre os
séculos X-XIII. Ao analisar a Sinagoga de Ben Ezrá localizada no Cairo portanto
no contexto da cidade islâmica e não apenas sob seus aspectos estéticos ou
estilísticos, busca entender como o edifício dialoga com a cidade no sentido da
construção de suas territorialidades. E também, no sentido inverso: como a
cidade e um tipo de linguagem islâmica dialogam com o edifício judaico. A
grande extensão geográfica conquistada pelo Islã produziu uma multiplicidade de
formas e empréstimos e, ao mesmo tempo, devido à facilidade de ir e vir das
pessoas e as novas conquistas, forjou-se uma certa unificação na linguagem. As
trocas e as assimilações não só foram e são inevitáveis, como fazem parte das
relações e convívio entre os grupos em qualquer momento. A Sinagoga de Ben Ezrá
foi desde a sua fundação, um elemento organizador do espaço urbano ao seu
redor, organizador da distribuição dos habitantes ligados à comunidade judaica,
não apenas da comunidade rabínica da palestina mas das outras comunidades
judaicas babilônica e caraíta, entre os séculos X ao XIII. E desempenhou um
papel de articulador de multiterritorialidades. Esta análise vem ampliar o
conhecimento acerca desse edifício, e principalmente, das relações entre as
comunidades judaica, islâmica e cristã entre a conquista fatímida do Egito (969
E.C.) e o fim da dinastia aiúbida (1254 E.C.)
