Shaare Zion Legacy Video - Full Version

[Music] is much more than a synagogue it is the engine of this community charezione has been my home since i was a young boy charizion represents as it being the golden goose of the community it's where everything happens sharazan is the heart of the community shirazian was the start of the community for me sherifa zion is my upbringing my father aprico and alaba said it's the place from which everything grew it's our central point and it still serves as the central heartbeat point of our community every time people walked into charizard they knew they were in the foundation of our community it's a cornerstone of religious life in the community without a doubt share zion is a place that all the community members in our syrian sephardic community here in brooklyn know is their real home character represents to me a place to be as a community charity is the best no any shoe like charizard charlezion is our best undergrad [Music] there was no synagogue that's why synagogue from brighton beach to church avenue none zero the need was ah unbelievable the need so we opened up before roshana the place was a showplace you cannot believe it i had to hire security guards we saw ladders and they were installing the chandelier [Music] and i was like very impressed with the whole building abba shalom my daughter stephanie used to love to dress and come to shul during the holidays and i had an opportunity to dedicate the balcony to my daughter so it is called the stephanie jamal sultan balcony in the early 1990s the inherent community that had been here had been growing dramatically thank god and we were blessed with the our families being reunited from syria and here charizion as a mother congregation my father felt very strongly that this was the place for everyone and we had to accommodate the additional space needed so i'll never forget there was a shabbat morning when i i sat here in the third row and my father announced that there would be a 50 expansion in the size of the building i'll never forget the ruckus in the room and the push back in the room i'll never forget it and the and the lack of consensus to do so four years later my father was almost 80 at the time he and salash gennazi who was about 70 completed the expansion of the building to grow it almost 50 percent larger than it had been so the first project was during the 50s the second project was the late 80s early 90s and he had the strength in the stamina and at 95 years old 10 12 years later he was walking around with the plans to expand it further [Music] in the 90s the building next door was bought as well which we ended up dedicating in my father abe cohen and my mother jerry cohen alef shalom's honor it served as a building with tremendous amount of torah learning we learned in there for a while the young shadesyon beneshadowski envoy since then it's been a vibrant annex to our fabulous building here [Music] in 1994 the building was getting a renovation and i said robert we have all these clues back here what should i do with them because it says you start at torah center i want you to be involved i want you to take care of it i don't want to hear another word about it many years ago we went there i started coming to schule every morning my father passed away saying kadish and i started to learn we went downstairs in the basement there were only three tables at the time today we have over a hundred people every night we had one table young gindy on one table rani rafal was teaching me at the time and some of my friends all together it was very inspiring but it really grew so much when ramayana came into the picture his influence was tremendous in the growth of our torah i think it was about 20 something years ago that i was on the committee for a while and david sutton approached me and said would you like to be president and i was shocked taken about and and humbled by it i i couldn't believe it but i said david if you feel i can do it i will try my best and the rest is history so to speak i've been doing it for many years when we think about the people who brought this community to where it is today so of course we think about our gratitude for all those men and women who sacrifice so much that we can have what we have today we are the recipients of all the dedication i sharland was first the pillar of this community perhaps the very foundation of this community in so many ways i remember him uh at first at one time i worked for i shalom and company in the summers they used to give jobs to young young boys uh for summer work and i was one of the beneficiaries of doing that uh he had a very acquired presence and he just uh instilled on everybody that saw him the leadership i got actually from watching ape cohen and dave cohen for so many years was a tremendous inspiration for me i was able to watch and learn from their ways the way they were able to handle various situations in the school i got to learn from especially eve cohen he was a real diplomat and a big inspiration to me my father spoke about many many many meetings with people to bring them along to ask their support to ask for their loans to ask for their donations he was here on average every day until 12 1 o'clock in the afternoon when we were growing up he used to come home from work very late because he didn't get to the city to one two o'clock because he was here all day but um this was his passion this was his greatest love nothing made him happier my father bert wake up shalom the charezione building was the it was in his heart and he was uh very instrumental of making this building it was supposed to be a square building for many years they were planning the plans so sam canton told me they were sitting in a room and bert dweck got up in front of i shalom and said mr shalom this looks like a warehouse we have to change this design my father was very well in tuned with architecture he was a visionary and he looked he said bert if you could think you could make it better you handle it so my father said okay we'll make it better we can i'll handle it he went he hired morris lapidus one of the most famous designers that designed the fountain blue and he was a friend of him he called them up he got him to do it at an unbelievable course for the shule and today they changed my father's idea was to make this a dome around so everybody has a good seat in the cajao and nobody felt left out so anybody wherever you sat in this synagogue you have a good seat some of the other leaders that were very impressive to me was one of them was ralph towel in particular it was uh his charity was unlimited and he would teach people how to just give and don't worry about how you're going to pay the bill just give don't worry that was his motto it'll come to you and he was very today we have new people doing it you like cohen many other people in the community that that are so charitable to this synagogue and it means so much to them and we're still carrying it harry me they don't stop they just keep giving and giving to this to the synagogue because they love it here it's part of them it's instilled in them the question topic comes up of my father joe esses allah shalom i think when we think about him we have to look back to his father abraham assassi from what i understand he instilled in all his children a tremendous sense of community dedication community service it became second nature that our family and uh my father-in-law certainly got it and also his brothers each one of the brothers was active in community affairs no matter what no matter what the organization was it be the shiva the synagogue they were just instilled in community service my father joe esses was a quiet man but a very powerful presence he was a person that got a lot done he had vision he had dedication he had drive he was a reluctant leader in some cases he was serving on the committee at chatsyon he instilled in medium importance attitude from a committee perspective in fact i think a wonderful tribute to joe esses and his wife celia that eddie my brother-in-law was privileged and his wife sarah privileged to dedicate the dome in their mermaid and it's a wonderful thing to go into the building to go into the dome and see the dedication at the entrance of the dome as well as on the outside i think it's a fitting tribute to somebody who really gave his life to the community and very directly to charizard as well it's a wonderful tribute and really an act of generosity on the part of my brother eddie and his wife sarah my father was an extremely dynamic man he had a great personality and his voice carried very very far and uh he was a show it was a show to listen to him auction and they loved listening to him and people loved bidding because they were part of the process and i remember as a kid going to shul and people used to whisper norman jamal's going to go speak norman jamal's going to go auction let's go listen let's go listen so instead of people running out of the synagogue during the time my father auctioneered they'd run into the synagogue so they could listen to him my father joseph sultan was president about 25 years ago and his father judah sultan along with his brother abe sultan were on the building committee was saying over 80 years ago that's a true honor for us for my family that they were so involved for generations furthermore for my family the sultan family we've been honored with the courtesy of opening the nailah ark during yom kippur every day for generations 80 years now my father sam canton for a while was on the board of directors of chad ession he did like to teach the youngsters so we used to have as shannan kapoor and sometimes during the year he ran a youth minion teenagers and younger ones and everything who couldn't fit in this shule anymore and we had it downstairs in the terrace room and we had uh he used to bring down a lot of the hazard they didn't want to go down just lit the kids no no no i want you to come down and when my father sam canton told somebody some hazan come down they came down because that's how much they respected him and we we that's where we grew up that's where i learned to be a hazard they were used maybe seven or eight different masjidim being used in the shul and all of them were a little different and that bothered my father because his whole aim with the sephardic heritage foundation which he established a couple of years before that was to perpetuate our prayers and customs and to keep the syrian tradition that we all learn from our parents and grandparents that came from syria to keep it alive in america and worked on it for maybe three four years so the first day of russia of kippur i remember 1971 was the first year that those books came out and we got up to say the vidui on kapoor and he looked around he said harry eddie look look look all over look here look there everybody is using the same book and look everybody is saying vidui which they never used to do and his tears were streaming down and he was so happy and proud i never forget that my father stanley cheer i love shalom was a key part of not just my growth my family's growth but i also believe this community's growth and success the midot that he embodied and taught us all and taught his friends was really simply magnetic and his tolerance was simply amazing and it wasn't just something that was brought upon him it was something that was brought from his grandfather and his father and also his friends neighbors and the rabbis that were surrounding our community at this time when i think about the expansion of chadesillon specifically the social hall as it is today and the beneath bernie shadesion synagogue as it stands today in that whole back area i think a lot about my father-in-law and of course abe cohen who was his right-hand man they were partners in the initiative they had the two heads for many years they were in a dilemma should we do it can we do it how much who's going to do it we can't do it we could do it so my father-in-law was a very very talented man very talented man in many ways specifically pertaining to this subject he was a unofficial tremendous architect he was also very very very community minded as everybody knows abe cohen at the time who was president of the shul approached my father-in-law and asked him to please take on the project even though my father-in-law lived in deal full-time but of course my father-in-law considered the community whether it's deal florida brooklyn the city doesn't matter we're all one and he got it done he got it done it wasn't easy but uh my father-in-law saw leshkenazi once he put his mind to something he made it happen and stuck with it until he was able to finish the job and as you can see now it's a blessing my father gabriel shahebar allah shalom he uh we had a small maybe 20 people in bay parkway in an in a in the house behind the uh the magente virtual on 67th street when we first came and then when we moved to ocean parkway he would go to charission him and a crew of about 20 people egyptians some of his brothers some of my uncles on my mother's side marcel and and that's the way it was was a shul and a yeshiva in cairo egypt so we we wanted to open right here and we found a lot on avenue r and we decided to build the shul and it was you know we didn't have any money and we had to collect money to open the school we finally did and we had the help of a lot of the people from charission to help us build the show and we finally built it i think in 1975. so ah considers charizard the mother congregation of course and uh they love uh they are the shadowsyon community and we feel very attached to it and so they to us so has the name of my parents and it was very funny how it happened it seems somebody on the committee spoke to edmund safra and wanted a million dollar donation for something and it seems he wouldn't give it and finally they said okay we'll give you the social hall with it so i guess they gave him a two for one or whatever it was and he says okay if you're going to give me the social hole with it uh please give it in honor of my friend joe carey and he'll tell you who he wants to dedicate it to and that's how that came about we devised the idea of selling lifetime seats we never sold lifetime seats in the community ever i had a general meeting and finally i went to hakamatsu i told them trouble we're having you know with the seating because no we never did it just said we know haram there might be you can't do it i went to him he says you can do it on condition to find anybody who lost his money in business in the past 10 years and quietly give them a seat for nothing my father was very close with hakamaku he was his top student and they had classes with him all the time the hakamak loop used to shun the spotlight everybody used to push him to go up and sit on the pulpit he refused he used to sit in the back row over there amongst the people he used to say my father you and others try to get him go sit up there with rabbi kassin and rabbi hacked he said no ani your ship there's a saying in the in the bible somewhere i'm not sure where i sit amongst my people that's where i want to be i shun the cabord i don't want to sit up there he was very well learned in fact he came from israel there was talk that they wanted him to be the chief rabbi in israel but they wanted to bring him back from america but he says i could do more they have a lot of good rabbis in israel you don't need me i could do more for the jewish people and for religion and torah in america than i could do in israel so he stayed here he wrote many books magen baadi baadir's abadi halacha books he gave a lot of pissac deen like i said when anybody had halakhah questions they'd go to him what he said was law when i started here i remember the first time i saw hakamyakatina is the big sadiq big mekobal and i saw him the first time i feel wow wow my grandfather was very very focused on the youth on the young adults from a marriage standpoint from a socializing standpoint and obviously from a torah study and religious observance considered himself the father of the community i remember he told me verbatim that every person in the community are his children and it makes sense to me because the way he led the community the way he guided the community the way he protected the community it really was like a father image and very importantly the way he had patience he had tolerance he didn't disengage with anyone he never looked down on anyone regardless of their observance of the holidays and religion or their learned level or anything like that rabbi jacob cass and allah they they understood that this was a rabbi that could lead the community and building a building is one thing filling it up is another rabbi hecht was a tremendous force in the community a great communicator a rabbinic scholar and he had a lot of influence on people and because he had this very good close relationship with my grandfather i think it helped him and the community to be able to understand certain things that rabbi heck brought to the table every shabbat with his beautiful sermons that we used to wait for and he was always very very articulate very to the point and you really left the you left the shule going home knowing what the important message was so that was a very important part and i feel the key thing is that the mutual respect that they had for each other and the way they cared for the community and conducted themselves together back then rabbi hecht would have all of the dignitaries whether they were from the police commissioner whether the mayors at the time they would all come and this would be their stop to share a zion when i had my bar mitzvah you go up and you make a speech in hebrew and english afterwards rabbi hecht used to come would come out and give you a homash a sincino homash and uh it was it was it was like a million dollars for a kid getting that on his bum it's a day rabbi hecht was a very close friend of mine a very brilliant man he really knew how to speak and to hit the youth and as well as the adults of our community he was probably one of the best speakers that shared zion ever had my father came from israel in the beginning of 1950 he came originally to be the assistant to our chief rabbi rabbi jacob cassin who was my grandfather eventually my father really came here as a single man and eventually married the daughter of the chief rabbi it didn't even take that long it came in the beginning of 1950 by may 14th of 1950 they were actually married already he started in bensonhurst 67th street where i was born and then in the early 60s we moved to flatbush we came to sha'aritiyun being rabbis like to follow with rabbi jacob kassen was in my opinion the major event that catapulted this schule to another level it established the shul as the mother congregation of the community it allowed this shul to have tremendous growth with bringing the congregation to the synagogue the rabbi was also very very strong in his beliefs of what the community needed and when he set his mind on something it was it was really amazing to watch it all come to fruition he started the torah center that exists today and i i'm sure in shamayim he is smiling because you could see the hundreds of young middle age and elders learning on a constant basis in this school during maitanya as president i would be in khambaruk's house practically every other week going over issues getting advice from him whenever there was a machoket i would go to him he would handle it tell me aiki this is what i want you to do it was done nobody questioned him this is the way it would have happened and it just worked very nicely for me over the years rabbi jacob's cast and son shaol was also a giant of our community and we've lost him a few years back but i'm sure we have so many young rabbis who are learning from what they learned from these rabbis well my father was a hashem was his life so he was going to school every day rain snow even when there's an ice storm i went to pick him up i didn't want him to drive i had to go step by step because his sheet of ice so when i went there that day he's coming out running out of the house to come to shore running me i have to hold on and he's probably 90. he's falling like this he's i'm holding on like this he's running downstairs so he tells me i said dad what are you doing he goes i'm connected from the heavens i don't fall and i thought it was like just he's joking me but in hindsight it was true i could not walk like that he was not he's walking he's connected from the heavens and uh we the community all benefited from his connection to hashem that's the bottom line hakaminto may rest in peace he was the chief rabbi in halab and in his time over there he put all the community together and he managed the whole community with a very strong fist and put everybody in religion and when i when he came here to united states it was a very pleasant thing to see our rabbi chief rabbi in halak coming in here and he did continue on his paste of teaching and learning with all the community in america and he taught a lot of students as well in america my father loves shalom left halab and came here and continued what he was doing continued learning continue teaching rabbi indeed he had also one of his son-in-laws his rabbi leon gindi he is related to me and the rabbi leon guindy is great he is doing tremendous teaching in the school and his students are excellent student and they are very well known in the community as well probably all over the world so god bless him and keep him on the good pace of the good education and religion [Music] rabbi refereeil el who was a professional of professionals and he used to pray every shabbat and on the holidays and he really put this place on the map he came from turkey and israel and he knew the sla and the mahmat and the prayers beautifully and his voice was spectacular i i want to wait for him to go to pray for him in immunohim in mexico and this is the first time i meet edward and it's the best guy i i wish everybody work with some partner so nice so hakam so adi fish an honor for me to be a hazard charity on more than 43 years sharing all typing a lot foreign [Music] they came see from up above what's going on no question if my father was here but we believe that even from the shaman my father is smiling sees the growth of the congregation you see sometimes in institutions what was 40 50 60 years ago it's pretty hard if not impossible to maintain let alone we've maintained it it's only getting stronger and we know what i need we needed the synagogue to continue being what charizion was the way our fathers and grandfathers envisioned it to be and next thing you know rabbi mayer comes along rabbi mayor joins the charizard family um he he does a wonderful job of building up this torah center i don't think there's a torah center anywhere in america maybe not even in edits israel i'm sorry to say that but there's a this torah center here is thriving and it was only first started it but but rabbi may you took it to another level i consider it to be one of the best groups of rabbis to give and and continue to perpetuate the teachings of our great rabbis of the past today with bank hashem that the community has grown and flourished in different ways where the shul still represents a tremendous tremendous part of everybody's life a generation developed of people who love torah who loved gamiro who loved the synagogue and most of us are still here and thankfully so the space as time went on years later it started filling up more and more and more and at the point of today you can't even walk into a room without having a packed room every single nook and cranny of the synagogue of wherever you walk there's a packed room not enough space and it's just unbelievable it's probably one of the most successful things about saturday and it keeps growing to meet the needs of the community as the needs grow the synagogue grows and sometimes even anticipates the growth it's an amazing amazing synagogue amazing service to this community and it's the forefront of so many other synagogues as well i think it was the first torah center in the community and many other initiatives that were started shiretsuyon became uh adopted by other synagogues as well so it's it's a hallmark it's an anchor of the community [Music] everything is done here in champshire miami and that's why this building will continue for another 80 years inshallah and beyond and there's no secret and we should learn and teach the other communities around the world to continue to grow and build this network of judaism and sephardic middletown around the world i think everybody should realize that this legacy wall that we're building today is a paramount need if we didn't need it if it wasn't critically important financially to us we wouldn't do it this is not that kind of institution jerezyn we're very proud people all the former presidents you see how they've conducted themselves hopefully all the families in this community not just the people that pray and our congregants in our shul but all the families from the early years from their memories of when this was the only synagogue in the community should come here they should look at the wall and they should say we would love to our family's name on this legacy this new concept of a legacy wall is just a new way for people to donate towards the synagogue it's going to be a tremendous inspiration i think it's a great thing for the synagogue i don't think 80 years ago anyone could have imagined what's happening right now in our bedknessette the amount of learning the amount of all the different functions that go on it would be impossible to have imagined that 80 years ago we could only dream that the next 80 years will be as accomplished when we hold on to the last 80 years when we learn from the people who started this and we take from them their strength their wisdom and we make it work for the next 80 years [Music] you