FS Interviews: Steve

This is a series of interviews, in which I’m asking FSOs two questions.  1. Please share your best FS story or greatest FS achievement. 2. What is the biggest foreign policy challenge the U.S. faces?  This week I’ve asked blogger/editor Steve over at Dead Men Working.  Here are his answers, an inspiring achievement and an important challenge:

The career of a FS Management Officer is filled with significant achievements. I negotiated landing rights for the Space Shuttle in Cape Verde. I presided administratively over the construction of the world’s first modular embassy in Bissau. I helped found three American schools and two cooperative medical clinics. I designed the compound where most American diplomats in Abuja reside. I helped reopen the American embassy in Belgrade. I helped create a plan that may someday ease retirement for 40,000 FSNs. Etcetera. All of these things I did in my official capacity on behalf of the U.S. Government and I am proud of them.

But the thing about the Foreign Service is that sometimes it places a person in a unique situation to do something that he or she might never otherwise have done. It places a person in the right place at the right time, to do something that has nothing whatsoever to do with his or her job, but is nonetheless important. And if you ask me what my greatest achievement in the  Foreign Service would be, I would say that by the grace of God and the Foreign Service, I brought the nearly-extinct  Jewish community of Mozambique back into existence.

To make a long story short, there had been a Jewish community in Mozambique for as long as anyone could remember, probably founded by Iraqi Jews before the Portuguese arrived. But certainly, throughout the Portuguese colonial period there had been a Jewish community, which in Maputo owned a synagogue, a school and a cemetery.

The first post-colonial government had, like many African governments, experimented with communism and that, combined with true post-colonial hatred of the colonial whites and their religions, had lead to the closure of the synagogue and either the emigration or the assimilation of the Jews. Most had left. Those that stayed had been raised agnostic. And time went on.

It came to pass that the Government ceased being communist, and sought better relations with the Western world, and eventually, wanted to establish relations with the Vatican. The Vatican said, in essence, “return to the churches that which you have taken from them, and then we will talk.”

So the Mozambican government returned to the Christian communities their churches, and to the Moslem communities their mosques, but they could not find, anywhere in the country, a Jew to whom to return the synagogue.

Eventually they learned that the DCM of the American Embassy, Michael Metelits, was Jewish, and with some ceremony, they turned the keys of the Jewish properties over to him. And in his spare time, Michael found donors who donated funds to renovate the properties, and set the renovations in motion, but then he had to leave. So he turned the keys over to the only other Jew in the country: me.

In my spare time, I presided over the renovations, and did not think much about it (just one more GSO job, sort of), until one by one, people started showing up at my door.

One by one, they had seen the workmen renovating the synagogue, asked the workmen who was in charge, and been directed to me. And they all told essentially the same story. They had been born to Jewish parents, but in the communist period had been raised without any religion, and knew nothing about their faith. But they wanted to learn.

So I, a Conservative and very American Jew of moderate religious education, began a class in my house one night a week, then two nights a week, and I eventually ended up being the de-facto rabbi for the Jewish Community of Mozambique.

I took them through one full year, including the first Passover Seder since independence (attended by the Mozambican Minister of Culture and Religion) and the construction of the first succah since independence (which made the South African papers). I was even interviewed, as the leader of the Jewish community, to give the Jewish opinion on the movement for the independence of East Timor.

And when the year was over, and my tour at an end, the group elected a leader, and I gave him the keys. By that time, we had also found a congregation in South Africa who agreed to donate a Torah, and a rabbi who agreed to visit the synagogue regularly.

This story was published in the book: A Day in the Life of the Foreign Service, and in the same month, my security clearance was suspended and DS began a fishing expedition that led to my co-founding of Concerned Foreign Service Officers.

As for the biggest foreign policy challenge that the U.S. faces, I would say that, right now, our biggest challenge is to restore the United States to the position of international trust and respect that it held for most of its existence, and until the last administration. For most of my life, being an American diplomat truly meant being a representative of the greatest country on earth, a country that was deeply respected and seen by most of the world as being both a moral and an economic giant among nations, and it is profoundly sad to me that those Americans who are in their early twenties now cannot remember a time when America was not at war and was not hated by half the world. And for every American in their twenties with that view of things, there is a counterpart overseas, with the same view in mirror image. The “War on Terror” has provided our enemies with the greatest recruiting tool they could ever have been given, and rather than strengthen us, it has divided our country, weakened our alliances, and brought out the worst results of fear in our own society.   

In the short run, we have to get out of Iraq and restore faith in our economy and in our values. I think that the mere fact of the election of Barack Obama has been a hugely significant step in that direction. But obviously, that symbolic first step has to be backed up by prolonged action. Much of that action has to take place domestically.

We have to replace the cult of fear with a cult of pride and service. We have to divert funds from the war effort to rebuild our economy. There again, I think Obama’s plans to create jobs rebuilding our infrastructure are on the right track.

And of course, we have to strengthen the State Department and restore the reins of foreign policy to those who actually know something about it. I see strong reason to believe that Obama’s administration will do this.    

And on that note, I see that it is four a.m. on the morning of the twentieth, and I have to go downtown to help get ready for the inauguration.

Tagged as: Day-to-day Diplomacy, Interview