Youth Is Served for an Aging Congregation

The fate of the Lincoln Park Jewish Center might have been easily predicted. Members of the congregation were aging and membership was steadily declining. There was no sign of a revival.

Rabbi Rigoberto Emanuel Viñas might have seemed an unlikely savior.

The differences between the rabbi and the synagogue's members were plenty. He was Orthodox, they were not. At 34, he was young enough to be their son. His Cuban family traced their roots to Spain, while the American-born congregants were almost all descendants of Eastern Europeans.

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October 12, 2005

Cuban Rabbi Rejuvenates Yonkers Congregation

In today's United States, the permutations of people of various backgrounds coming together for a common purpose are virtually endless. Today on New American Voices we meet , a Cuban-American serving a very diverse congregation of Orthodox Jews in the city of Yonkers, just north of New York City.

Rigoberto Emanuel Viñas grew up in a community of Cuban Jews - 'Jewbans', he says they were called - in Miami, Florida. Two and a half years ago, he moved north to lead a very different sort of congregation.

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February 25, 2005

A tribe of many colors: S.F. conference brings together far-flung Jewish communities

Orthodox Rabbi Rigoberto Emmanuel Viñas , a New York City-based Cuban American and spiritual leader of the Lincoln Park Jewish Center. He has devoted his career to bringing back into the Jewish fold untold numbers of Anusim, a Hebrew word meaning "forced out." The term refers to New World Hispanics of Jewish origin forced to convert to Catholicism during the Inquisition.

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August 17, 2003

Rooted in the County, and Growing

Lincoln Park Jewish Center, which sits astride the New York State Thruway in south Yonkers, was for 65 years a Conservative synagogue and at times boasted 700 families. But it is now down to 125, half of them elderly members who live in Florida and pay dues for sentimental reasons.

''They were at the point where they couldn't get a minyan,'' said the congregation's new rabbi, Emanuel Viñas, referring to the quorum of 10 preferred for group prayer. In April, he decided to make the synagogue Orthodox and thus appeal to families who send their children to Jewish day schools. So far, the membership has gone up by five.

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