Members of the Tribe (11 page)

Diane returned to the kitchen, where she was preparing an impromptu Italian feast, and Carbonara went into his bedroom, put away his pistol (“I was on the job almost thirty years and I never once had to use this,” he said proudly), and stripped off his shirt. He spent the rest of the evening in his T-shirt, his massive belly peeking out and his powerful arms flexing from time to time.

We joined Diane in the kitchen, and Carbonara hauled out an old scrapbook. He especially wanted to show me a yellowing article from the fifties—the account of a baseball game between shipyard teams from Brooklyn and Philadelphia that had been won by a John Carbonara homer. He wasn’t at all self-conscious about the small boast; his attitude was that I, as a friend of the family, would naturally be interested in and proud of the accomplishment.

Diane produced steaming plates of food, which we wolfed down without ceremony. The Carbonaras gossiped happily about family matters—including me, as if I were a cousin from Brooklyn instead of a stranger from Israel. Although he doesn’t drink, Carbonara produced a bottle of sweet yellow wine and poured me a glass, determined to make me feel at home.

It was past one when their younger son, Joe, joined us in the kitchen. He has his mother’s dark good looks and his father’s intense stare and slight hesitation of speech. He also has a Brooklyn accent that makes his father sound like a graduate of Sandhurst. In conformity with the Carbonara dress code, he was shirtless.

Earlier in the meal, John had spoken angrily about Joe’s decision not to attend college. “He’s a smart kid but all he wants to do is bum around with his friends, go out every night and chase girls,” said Carbonara. Seeing him now, I thought that he had
made the right choice. He reminded me of the kids who used to dance on
American Bandstand
; there was something sulky about him that, coupled with his thick Brooklyn dialect, made him seem unlikely college material.

Diane introduced me as an Israeli writer, and Joe regarded me with a surprising interest. I expected a wisecrack, but instead he blinked in concentration, his father’s mannerism, and then burst into a rapid-fire monologue, stammering occasionally over the words. It sounded something like—

“Ugh, uh, okay. Now, you’re from Israel, right? Okay, I want ya to straighten me out on somethin’. Now, Hizbollah, up in Lebanon, Hizbollah is supported by the Iranians, am I right? And the Iranians and the Syrians, they’re allies, right? Okay, now, wait a minute, Hizbollah works out of, like, Syrian turf—I mean, it’s in the Bekaa Valley but Syria controls it. Okay—now wait—the Syrians are also supporting the Amal, right? I mean, Nabih Bari, those guys. But then, what I don’t get is—why do the Syrians let Hizbollah attack the Amal guys who are supposed to be their allies? I mean, is this, like, a trick to soften up the Iranians, or does it have something to do with the, uh, rivalry between the two Bathist parties, you know, Hafez Assad and Saddam Hussein. Can you answer me that?”

I sat there, mesmerized by the performance. It was the kind of question American undergraduates pay thousands of dollars to learn how to ask; but Joe hadn’t been showing off. He was just curious.

“How do you know so much about the Middle East?” I asked, and he shrugged, embarrassed. “Hey, I’m innerested in foreign policy, okay?”

Carbonara listened to the exchange with frustrated pride. “Imagine, a kid like this not in college, not using his brains. Is it a waste or not a waste?”

Joe, in an effort to derail his father, broke in. “Here’s one more thing I don’t get, okay? I mean, Israel’s got the strongest army in the region. So why don’t you guys just go back into Lebanon and clean it up, ya know, just kick ass and clean the entire place up?”

This was too much for John. “Hey,” he bellowed, “I thought
you were smart. What kinda question is that. We can’t get you to stop smoking in your room, you want the Israelis to clean up Lebanon.” He may not know much about Hizbollah, but thirty years on the street have made a realist out of John Carbonara.

We sat up talking until almost four in the morning, and the next day around noon I awoke to the smell of breakfast. In the kitchen I found my place set at the table, and a copy of
The New York Times
next to the plate. Carbonara reads the
Daily News
—he had gone out especially to find me a
Times
. But when I thanked him, he brushed me off with a dismissive gesture. “It’s got a lousy sports section,” he said, digging into his scrambled eggs.

While we were eating, Diane brought in another scrapbook. “John’s a writer, too,” she said, and Carbonara nodded assent, without a trace of false modesty. “I like to write poems. Nothing published or anything like that, just for special occasions, ya know?” He opened the book and began to recite in his rough Brooklyn voice. The poems were mostly about family events, or couplets written to commemorate something that happened on the job. “Here’s one I wrote in honor of my friend Bernie’s son’s bar mitzvah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yes, my friend Bernie, it was quite an affair; filled with love and affection, steaks so tender and rare …”

I had to get into the city, and I thanked Diane for her hospitality. John offered to drive me to the train. On the way we chatted about the Ninth District election. Although he was a Berman man, he admitted that he liked Skelos, too. And in a discreet way he let me know that he thought Carol was making a mistake with her “I’ve been a Jew for five thousand years” routine.

“There’s all kind of Jews, I’ve noticed,” he said, driving carefully through the sparse traffic. “Some of them are what I call real Jews, but a lot of them, they’re Americans.” There was sarcasm in his voice when he said the word. “They might not like that Jewish stuff so much, you know?” (He turned out to be right; Skelos won the election, carrying a larger percentage of the Jewish vote than he had in 1984).

We arrived at the station and shook hands, but Carbonara had one parting thought. “You know, to my mind there’s nobody better than a good Jew, a real Jew. But last night? I dunno. I
mean, there you were and Carol’s introducing you to everybody, like, here’s Ze’ev the writer from Israel. And everybody came up to you and says, ‘Hey, Ze’ev, how ya doin’, Ze’ev, ya know my cousin in Tel Aviv?’ Like that. But I noticed one thing—none of those Jews asked ya if you had a place to stay, nobody said, ‘Come on back to the house for a meal.’ Who asked ya that? Carbonara, the Italian. Sometimes I just don’t know who the real Jews are anymore, know what I mean?”

F
rom the street, the Grace Building looks like any other New York City skyscraper. Located on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 42nd Street, its lobby promises nothing more than the standard Manhattan offices listed on the building’s directory. But unknown to most of its tenants, for one week every year, during the Feast of Tabernacles, the Grace Building is transformed into the pedestal of a penthouse shrine—the fabled Succah in the Sky.

The heart of the Succah is located twenty-four floors below, in the offices of Swig, Weiler, and Arnow, real estate. The company owns the Succah. It also owns the building on which it sits, and many other buildings in New York and around the country. And its principals, the Weiler and Arnow families, own a considerable chunk of Jewish community leadership in the United States as well.

In the pluralistic, mobile society of America, Jews can live anywhere and be anybody; but belonging to the Jewish community requires involvement in the decentralized but intensely organized web of synagogues, institutions, and organizations that circle the
country and are headquartered in Manhattan. Woody Allen, Sandy Koufax, Bob Dylan, and Henry Kissinger have all profoundly influenced the Jews of America, but none of them belongs to the community. David Arnow, the thirty-eight-year-old grandson of real estate mogul Jack Weiler, is the head of the New Israel Fund. He is not only a member of the community, but a leader.

Leadership in the American Jewish community is about money—raising it, distributing it, and then raising more. Every year, Jewish federations throughout the United States conduct fundraising campaigns that collect hundreds of millions of dollars. About half goes to Israel via the United Jewish Appeal; the rest is used to finance local community projects. In addition to the federation campaign, independent organizations like the New Israel Fund raise money for their own agendas. The money comes from federated Jews, people whose credo is, “I give, therefore I am.”

Those who give the most can, if they choose, become Jewish leaders. Dozens of megarich businessmen form an informal national network, dominating organizations, setting priorities, and overseeing the activities of the multifaceted community. Some of their names are well known, at least in establishment circles—Edgar Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress; Jerald Hoffberger, chairman of the board of governors of the Jewish Agency; Larry Weinberg of AIPAC; and Detroit’s Max Fisher. A few, like Ivan Boesky, former head of the New York federation, are notorious. And some, like David Arnow, are just beginning to come into prominence.

Arnow is a new-breed leader, a child of the sixties with a Ph.D. in psychology from Boston University, a left-leaning ideology, and an inherited fortune well into eight figures. His grandfather, Jack Weiler, came to America as an immigrant from Eastern Europe, made millions in real estate, and helped establish the United Jewish Appeal in America. The family tradition of philanthropy was carried on by Jack Weiler’s son Robert. Now the torch is being passed to a third generation, to David Arnow, a prince of the American Jewish establishment.

When I arrived at the office of Swig, Weiler, and Arnow I was greeted in the waiting room by Jonathan Jacoby, Arnow’s advisor on Jewish affairs. The room was quietly tasteful, decorated in subdued pastels and grays and dominated by a picture window
with a dramatic view of the skyline. A marble coffee table was stacked with Sotheby catalogues and copies of
The New Yorker
and
Moment
, a liberal Jewish journal published in Boston.

Like the decor, Jacoby was understated and mellow, a soft-spoken Californian in his early thirties with an open, friendly manner. Rich people dominate America’s Jewish organizations, but day-to-day operations are run by professionals with strong Jewish backgrounds. Jacoby, who was raised in a Conservative home in Los Angeles and spent three years in Israel, is no exception. Like David Arnow, he is a political liberal, dedicated to supporting left-wing causes in Israel. Unlike Arnow, however, he has to work for a living, and his job includes taking visitors like me on tours of the premises.

Our first stop was a small model of what was once Einstein Hospital in New York. “They took off Einstein’s name and now they call it the Jack D. Weiler Hospital,” Jacoby said without a hint of irony. Sic transit gloria—if Einstein had wanted a hospital, he should have gone into real estate.

Next to the model hospital hung a warmly inscribed photograph of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel. The picture is a family heirloom, a symbol of the Weiler-Arnow association with Israel since before the founding of the country.

There is an obvious lack of symmetry in the relationship. Israel’s prime ministers and presidents don’t hang pictures of American Jewish millionaires on their walls. In fact, they don’t regard them as leaders. The businessmen are considered go-betweens, tax collectors, field officers in the campaign for Israel’s survival and prosperity. This junior partner status is implicit in the American Jewish community’s relationship with Israel; clearly, people who have paid their dues take precedence over those who only foot the bills.

This disparity rankles Arnow and Jacoby, and they would like to change it. They grew up with Israel and take it for granted. Unlike their elders, they are not in awe of the country or its officials. They feel they have wisdom as well as money to contribute. Their goal is not to make life easier for the Shamirs, Pereses, and Rabins, but to prod them into making Israel their kind of place, the sort of country that would meet the approval of the ACLU,
The Nation
magazine, and the Sierra Club.

Jacoby led me down a carpeted hall to a large empty conference room, which he entered with the reverence of a high priest coming into the Holy of Holies. “If you’re looking for American Judaism, this is a good place to start,” he said, gesturing broadly. “This
is
American Judaism. In this room, Abba Eban and Yitzhak Rabin and just about every other important Israeli has come to meet with the establishment. And now, thanks to us, they can hear others, too—people like Rafik Halabi, for example.” Halabi, a Druze television newsman and author, is the kind of Israeli the New Israel Fund is anxious to support: bright, hip, and at odds with his country’s traditional policies and attitudes. As I contemplated the possibility that his autographed picture might someday hang next to Weizmann’s, we were joined by David Arnow.

Arnow is a small, neat baby-boomer with the suspicious, pseudodeferential manner of a rich kid who wants to be liked for himself. He let Jacoby talk about the New Israel agenda while he sized me up. After a few minutes, he suggested an elevator ride to the Succah in the Sky. “I think you’ll like the view,” he said shyly.

Fifty-eight floors is only halfway up in Manhattan, and when we reached the roof of the Grace Building we were still surrounded by buildings twenty or thirty stories higher. But none of them have a succah—Arnow’s is the tallest tabernacle in the world. During the holidays, VIPs take their meals there. When we arrived, just after lunch, white-jacketed waiters were clearing away the kosher dishes and gathering up the empty Israeli wine bottles. Jacoby and Arnow and I stood looking out at Manhattan from under a canopy of plastic apples, pears, and grapes. The artificial fruit is a ceremonial reminder of the sweet harvests of the ancestral fields of the Holy Land. But the Succah in the Sky is a modern symbol as well—a monument to the confluence of Big Money and Big Judaism that constitutes community leadership in America.