Travel
New Zealand Focus,
An Auckland Adventure
Gateway Travel
GABRIEL LEVENSON
Special to The Jewish News
ROCHELLE LIEBERMAN
And The Staff Of
GATEWAY TRAVEL
wish all
our friends and clients
a happy and healthy Passover!
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Southfield
Timberland Office Park
5455 Corporate Drive
Troy, Michigan 48098
248-641-8877
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248-353-8600
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Wishing Everyone A Joyous Passover!
Moe Sell, Janet Randolph and Staff
book
cowers
4/10
1998
134
tr
first center building • suite 115
26955 northwestern highway
southfield, michigan 48034
phone: 248 / 262-1560
y the time this column
appears, I would hope that
uckland's power shortage
will have ended. The restora-
tion will again focus attention on New
Zealand's largest city as a major travel
destination — not least for Americans
seeking Jewish connections in a seem-
ingly remote corner of the Diaspora.
Our own stay in Auckland began
with a visit to the home of the
Gluckmans. Lady Ann and her hus-
band, Dr. Laurie. Both are prominent
members of the Modern Orthodox
Auckland Hebrew Congregation — in
1940, Ann celebrated her bat mitzvah
there, the country's first. Both were the
volunteer guides several
years ago, for a first
kosher tour of New
Zealand by a group of
Americans. And the
Gluckmans are also co-
editors of critically-
acclaimed studies of
Auckland Jewish history.
They exemplify the
extraordinary role that the
tiny Jewish community
— no more than 5,000 in
today's total population of
3.7 million — has played
in New Zealand life. Indeed, the tide of
the Gluckmans' two-volume work,
Identity and Involvement, is itself a state-
ment of Jewish history in the country.
Throughout New Zealand's 158-year
history, the Jews have steadfastly main-
tained their religious and cultural iden-
tity and have been deeply involved in
every aspect of New Zealand life.
Jews were on the first boatload of
settlers in 1840. Philip Phillips,
Auckland's first mayor, was the first of
six Jews who have held that post. Sir
Julius Vogel, the progressive prime min-
ister of New Zealand who has often
been compared with his contemporary,
Benjamin Disraeli, never abandoned his
Judaism, as Disraeli had done.
For her own part, Ann Gluckman
was awarded her title for her years of
service as a justice of the peace and,
more importantly, as one of the coun-
try's leading figures in multi-cultural
education — she was the longtime
principal of a famed secondary school
for Maori children. Dr. Laurie
Gluckman, a psychiatrist, has followed
the path of his late father, a pioneer in
the study and treatment of physical and
mental illness among the Maoris.
Over the proper ritual of Earl Grey
BA
tea and home-made fruitcake, Dr.
Laurie told us about the Jewish connec-
tion with the Maoris, the indigenous
Polynesian tribes which constitute 10
percent of New Zealand's population.
From the Bible thrust upon them by
early Christian missionaries, they
learned about the ancient Israelites and
have identified with them ever since. In
their own long struggle for equal rights
and for a return of some portion of
their own "Promised Land," Maori
chiefs have seen themselves as resurgent
Moseses or embattled Joshuas, even to
the point of declaring their peoples to
be descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of
Israel.
The claim of Jewish origin is certain-
ly more valid for the 6-year-olds we
observed at Kadimah, the day school of
Auckland's Jewish com-
munity and the first stop
on the city tour we took
with the Gluckmans. It
was shortly before
Waitangi Day, New
Zealand's "July 4th," and
the first-grade teacher was
explaining to her class
that the national holiday
— the anniversary of
New Zealand indepen-
dence—really signifies
something more than a
day off from school.
Kadimah is part of a complex of
handsome buildings which also includes
a community center and a magnificent
sanctuary-in-the round, as well as the
smaller, circular beit midrash, of the
synagogue. We met with Jeremy
Lawrence, the young rabbi and recent
graduate of Jews' College in London,
whose first post is a dual one, as both
spiritual leader of the Auckland Hebrew
Congregation and chaplain of the
Kadimah School.
Although only about half of the
almost-300 pupils are Jewish, kashrut is
strictly observed. The rabbi told us all
the boys at the school, Jewish and non-
Jewish, wear kippot, all school lunches
are kosher, and the curriculum covers
both secular and complete Jewish stud-
ies.
Lawrence explained that non-Jewish
parents choose Kadimah, first, because
of its high academic standards; second, E
because they believe that the study of
modern Hebrew, of Jewish culture and
of "an enlightened Jewish ethos" ensure
a better, all-around education than their
children cold get at any other school in
the city.
The proportion of Jewish pupils at
Kadimah is now increasing, the rabbi
Spend a
Sunday
Down
Under in
Auckland.