Who is that yarmulke-topped man at Elian's side?

Jewish World Review Feb. 1, 2000/28 Shevat, 5760

Who is that yarmulke-topped man at Elian's side?

By Fay K. Greene

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- THE ONGOING SAGA of 6-year old Elian Gonzales has created an unprecedented outpouring of emotion both in the US and in Cuba. The adorable little boy who was miraculously rescued off the coast of Florida, clinging tenuously to a life raft, is at the center of a storm of controversy pitting him against the American political and justice system on one side and the frenzied rhetoric of Fidel Castro's oppressive regime on the other.

At the heart of the issue is whether Elian should be permitted to stay in the US with his maternal uncle and family or be returned to his father and two sets of grandparents in Cuba.

His mother and 10 other refugees drowned when the ship they were on capsized off the US coast.

The story tops network TV news regularly, particularly in Miami, where the saga is unfolding daily. To Jewish and Gentile viewers, an incongruous picture also appears regularly. The sight of an Orthodox Jew, with a black yarmulke and beard, who seems to be at the center of the debate.

His name is Spencer Eig, and he is the head of the 10-member team of attorneys representing Elian Gonzales.

Casually dressed and seated comfortably in the living room of his modest ranch home in Miami Beach, Eig, in an exclusive interview with Richmond's Jewish News, ruefully downplays his "15 minutes of fame" and skillfully steered the conversation toward Jewish matters.

Eig, who is now in private practice in Miami, was the US government assistant district attorney and had occasion to meet the Gonzales family previously on an unrelated issue.

"When I first got the call from a friend of the Gonzales family" says Eig " it was the 19th of Kislev, the day commemorating the first Lubavicher Rebbe's liberation from Czarist prison of the. I felt it was a sign that G-d wanted me to take this case."

Eig accepted the case on a pro bono basis and assumed that it would be a strictly local matter. "I felt bad for the child," he said, "and in my mind compared it to the case of a Jew from communist Russia making it to Israel and then having to be sent back."

"In Cuba, they don't recognize G-d or freedom or all the things we take for granted here.

"If Elian is returned to Cuba, he would be subject to severe psychological trauma. Elian is currently in need of counseling to deal with the loss of his mother and in Cuba he will be deprived of his positive feelings for her. We also can't be positive that his father actually wants him back. Is it parental love or the guidance of Fidel Castro? There's no way to tell."

And then, characteristically, Eig smiles and says, "let's not talk about the case anymore, let's talk about wearing a yarmulke."

Eig, a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Georgia Law School, was raised in a Reform family in Brooklyn and Long Island.
His first contact with Orthodox Judaism was at an Aish Hatorah Discovery Seminar in Washington, DC, while he was working for the Dept. of Justice. "I had no experience with Torah before," he says, "and I went for it right away."

Subsequently, Eig became the assistant US Federal Prosecutor in New Orleans, at the same time that David Duke was attempting his run for governor. "Friends would call me and say, 'are you okay down there, are you seeing a lot of anti-Semitism?'"

Eig says he made a "startling discovery. People in this country respect religious people. I found that when I started wearing a yarmulke publicly, I began getting the kind of deference that people usually reserve for clergy. Whether it was from my colleagues, jurors, judges, police or taxi-drivers, I was always treated with respect. It was totally undeserved and a very enjoyable surprise."

Eig's wife, the former Atara Sherman, is nine months pregnant with their third child. She was the catalyst for the oversize black yarmulke her husband now wears for his television appearances.

"The first time I saw him on TV," says Atara "I realized the cameras weren't picking up the smaller one he was wearing and he looked kind of funny with the beard and nothing on his head. Now that he's wearing this one, I think the cameras like it because they seem to always shoot him from that angle.''

As we went to press, Elian Gonzales is back on center stage. His attorneys are filing a civil suit in Federal court demanding that he be allowed to remain in the US

Eig, however, was absent today. He had a more urgent assignment -- being at his wife's side as she gave birth to their newborn daughter.