Singing a song of Shanghai

Shanghai, China – Dina Greenberg is back home in Shanghai. Back to her multiple leading lady and supportive roles at the Chabad Center of Shanghai; it’s headed by her husband Rabbi Shalom Greenberg, the first rabbi to serve in Shanghai in over 50 years. With school starting for the fall semester and the Jewish holidays around the corner, Rabbi Greenberg is happy to have his family back.

Dina and the four children — Mendel, 7, Chaya, 5, Levi, 3, and Chana, 11 months — spent several wonderful weeks of vacation on home grounds at the University Heights home of her parents, Devorah and Rabbi Leibel Alevsky. They were enveloped with love and warmth by Dina’s meshpochah and her many friends in Cleveland.

It was wonderful, Dina says, “not to have to disinfect vegetables and to drink water from the tap, niceties that we can’t do in Shanghai.”

It was also a working vacation, with Dina conscientiously planning the curriculum for her Chabad preschool and kindergarten classes and purchasing school supplies not available in China. She also conferred and brainstormed with her sisters, all Chabad shlichim (emissaries) and teachers: Miriam Greenberg, Solon; Estie Marazov, Beachwood; and Kaila Sasonkin, Akron.

She touched base with Sherrie Sperling, principal of general studies at The Hebrew Academy. Sperling has been of great help to her this past year, when Chabad Center was establishing its school system. Sperling e-mailed Greenberg in Shanghai to tell her that her colleague Jacqueline Blinderman was moving to Shanghai since her husband was being transferred there by American Greetings Corp. Greenberg swung into action, and Blinderman was named principal of the new Shanghai International Jewish School. That’s the way it works in Jewish geography.

Dini (as she is affectionately called) effuses about the progress of the Chabad Center in Shanghai, which she and her husband established eight years ago when they were a young married couple. Both the center and the Greenberg family have flourished and grown in that time. The four children are happy, healthy and engaged in a multilingual atmosphere of English, Hebrew, Yiddish and Chinese.

The center, which started with a membership of 80 Jews living and working in Shanghai, has swelled to a remarkable 1,000 individuals of all ages and from many countries of the world who participate in the educational, social and religious programs of the center. The center currently includes the Shanghai International Jewish School (a preschool, elementary school, and a twice-a-week Hebrew school), a synagogue, kosher restaurant, and mikveh. The staff of Chabad Center is mostly Chinese; the manager of the restaurant, for example, speaks Hebrew, having spent several years in Israel where he operated a Chinese restaurant. There is a women’s auxiliary, Shabbat and holiday programs, and ongoing social and educational functions.

“Our Jewish community is growing by leaps and bounds in China,” avers Dina. “Since we started Chabad Center in Shanghai, seven more Chabad Centers have opened in the country. This reflects the growth and expansion of international corporations and interests in China,” states Dina, 32, an attractive woman with an effervescent personality.

“On an average erev Shabbat, we have 150 people for dinner and a service. It is so great to see Jewish people meet each other and connect.” She recalls one incident when two Israelis in their 70s, both involved in a secret Israeli operation some years ago, met each other at a Shabbat service. And it’s so heartwarming to greet Clevelanders, she adds. “In the past several years, we have seen Anita and Michael Siegal, Mark Polster and Roz and Harry Abraham. Clevelander David Orenstein, a law student here, is a frequent presence at our programs.”

During our interview, 3-year-old Levi was bounding around the room while watching the Yeshivah Boys Choir on his portable DVD and singing along, “Yiru a-naynu, yismach le-baynu.” He knows all the words and is surprised when he hears that I don’t.

Dini smiles and says, “We sing and dance a lot in our home.”

I find myself singing “Shalom Aleichem” at the top of my voice all the way home!