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Freshly-Ordained Ugandan Rabbi Gets Ball Rolling on Returning Home
By Roberto Loiederman, July 16, 2008, JewishJournal
(Photo: Yahel Herzog/Be’chol Lashon)

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the first black sub-Saharan rabbi ordained at an American rabbinical school, has had a very busy time since returning to Uganda in June, after not having lived there for five years. Among other activities, the American Jewish University graduate recently supervised about 250 formal conversions to Judaism: men, women and children, ages ranging from 4 to 80, who had been preparing while he was gone for their meeting with the beit din.

"We started the conversions on July 8," said Sizomu, who spoke with The Journal by cellphone from his Ugandan village. "And we have continued the conversions throughout the week. People not just from Uganda, but also from Kenya, South Africa and from Ghana.

"We are very happy about how Judaism appeals to Africans," he continued. "We are not going out there and asking people to convert. We are here, and people come to us and express their desire to make that commitment, their desire to immerse themselves in Jewish education."

The African converts also immersed themselves in nature's mikvah. "The mikvah was the river," Sizomu said. "So the women went to one part of the river, and the men went to a different part. It was so beautiful."

The mass conversions were not the only major event for Sizomu since returning to Uganda. During the same week, he hosted the first-ever meeting of PAJA, the Pan-African Jewish Alliance.

"Jewish community leaders [came] from black African communities in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia," Sizomu said. The idea for this gathering arose during a think tank session at Be'chol Lashon (In Every Tongue), a donation-driven, nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco. According to its Web site, Be'chol Lashon's mission is to increase the number of Jews throughout the world by advocating for "a more expansive Judaism."

"Instead of hand-wringing about our losses from intermarriage or low birth rate," said Diane Tobin, Be'chol Lashon's director, "we advocate for a different attitude and approach, which is to promote growth and inclusiveness. We're partners with Jewish communities in Africa and around the globe. We believe that the potential for the growth of Jewish communities is significant ... in countries that many may not think about when it comes to the Jewish people."

It was Be'chol Lashon that subsidized Sizomu's years of study at rabbinical school.

"We first met Gershom Sizomu over six years ago," Tobin said, "and we decided to provide him with a fellowship to complete his formal rabbinic training, in cooperation with the American Jewish University. His purpose was our purpose, also, for Rabbi Sizomu to go back to Uganda and live out his dream of growing Judaism in Uganda and other parts of Africa."

Perhaps one of the reasons that Judaism is increasing in Uganda is that, according to Tobin, the 39-year-old Sizomu, under the auspices of Be'chol Lashon, has been instrumental in improving the quality of life in his village and in nearby villages, as well.

"While he was at rabbinical school," Tobin said, "Gershom worked tirelessly to bring life-saving services and equipment to his country and his community. He believes that there can be no true spiritual life without those elements that preserve life and prevent disease. An enormous problem in his part of the world is malaria, and he's been very active in bringing in mosquito nets, as well as medicine."

Now that he's returned home, Sizomu can see the fruits of his -- and Be'chol Lashon's -- efforts. His village now has running water and electricity, services that will soon be available in neighboring villages, as well. Sizomu said that "there are very good changes that have taken place in these villages. We are making very good progress."

If there was culture shock for Sizomu, his wife and their daughters when they left their Ugandan village five years ago and moved to an apartment in Bel Air, it was nearly as much of a shock to come back to their village filled with mud-hut dwellings.

"Living in Los Angeles," Sizomu said, "my family became used to the conveniences of modern life: washing machine, cable television, high-speed Internet, so many conveniences. In the U.S., if you want something, you go straight to the counter and get what you want. Things here in Uganda are much slower. It's harder to get things done here. And there is a lot that needs to be done. But we are making progress every day."

Sizomu -- now the busy spiritual leader of his community -- said that since coming back home, he's had little time to reflect on what he misses about the United States.

"I feel that I gained a lot while living in Los Angeles," Sizomu said, "and now I can give that back to my people in terms of teaching Torah and community leadership. For me, the best part about returning here has been to see how eager the people are to learn about Judaism and to be Jewish.

"Five years ago, when I left this village, I knew I'd be back some day. And I knew that my return would be very special ... and it has been."

Judaist Leader Installed in Mbale
By Daniel Edyegu, July 13, 2008, The New Vision: Uganda's Leading Website

The Jewish community in Mbale on Thursday installed the first Rabbi (teacher), Gershom Sizomu, to lead the Judaism sect in Uganda.

Sizomu was installed by Rabbi Bradley Artson during a colourful ceremony on Kakungulu Hill in Namanyonyi sub-county after completing a five-year course at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in the US.

He becomes the first black Rabbi in East Africa and will lead about 800 followers spread out in Mbale, Namutumba, Bugiri, Budaka, Pallisa and Apac districts.

“I will greatly support both formal and informal education because in Judaism, we believe that it’s through education that God enriches the mind. We have already started technical, primary and secondary schools that will cater for our communities,” Sizomu said.

Sizomu pledged to work with other religious groups to ensure peace in the country.

“Peace gives glory to God and we should strive to make Uganda a model peaceful country.”

Bradley said the installation of Sizomu would create a foundation for the spread of the religion in Uganda and Africa.

Mbale LC5 chief Bernard Mujasi said Sizomu had made the Bamasaba proud, considering that Mufti Sheikh Shaban Ramathan Mubajje also comes from the Bugisu region.

Judaism was first introduced in Uganda in 1919 through the British colonial administrator, Semei Kakungulu. By the time of his death in 1928, Kakungulu reportedly left behind about 3,000 followers.

The followers believe in the Jewish traditional customs like the circumcision of male babies eight days after birth.

Judaists pray on Saturday, do not believe in the trinity and only preach from the books of Old Testament.

During the Idi Amin regime, the sect was banned and followers persecuted. About 10 survivors revived the religion after Amin’s ouster in 1979.

The Rabbi will preside over weddings, initiate youth into leadership and slaughter animals for the consumption of the followers.

Historic Day for Black African Jews
First Ever Gathering of African Jewish Communities

San Francisco - (July 10, 2008) - The Pan-African Jewish Alliance (PAJA) held its first multi-national meeting on July 11, 2008 with participants from Jewish communities in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, and the United States. The representatives from African Jewish communities gathered in Uganda to celebrate with Rabbi Gershom Sizomu on the occasion of his installation as community rabbi by Conservative rabbis from the United States.

"It is an honor to host the first meeting of the Pan-African Jewish Alliance," said Rabbi Sizomu, the leader of the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda. "We believe that PAJA will help Jewish communities thrive throughout Africa."

PAJA seeks to unite historic and emerging African and African Diaspora Jewish communities around the world. PAJA also seeks to strengthen connections between Jews of Africa and Jews of all racial and ethnic origins. The organization's mandate includes overcoming the divisions that inhibit global Jewish unity.

The Pan-African Jewish Alliance is an initiative organized by Be’chol Lashon. "We are partners with Jewish communities in Africa and around the globe," said Diane Tobin, director of Be’chol Lashon. "We believe that the potential for the growth of Jewish communities is significant in Uganda, Nigeria, and countries that many may not think about when it comes to the Jewish people."

Representatives of PAJA are engaged in a number of activities in their home communities. Dr. Rabson Wuriga is writing about the oral traditions of the Lemba Jews of South Africa Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Botswana. Rabbi Gershom Sizomu is creating a new rabbinical school in Uganda to serve Jews throughout Africa. Others are establishing synagogues, schools, and other projects.

PAJA spans the Atlantic to tie black African Jews to the growing number of black Jews in the United States. Rabbi Capers Funnye, associate director of Be’chol Lashon and coordinator of PAJA, frequently travels to Africa to help build connections among Jewish communities throughout the continent. "We are bringing together Jewish leaders of African heritage for the first time,” said Rabbi Funnye. “It is a blessing to be part of this historic work."

250 Africans Convert to Judaism
Many More Expected to Follow
(Photo: Yahel Herzog/Be’chol Lashon)

San Francisco - (July 16, 2008) - Over 250 people from Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa, Ghana, and Nigeria formally converted to Judaism in a ceremony held last week in the village of Nabogoye near Mbale, Uganda. They join a community of 800 Abayudaya Jews led by Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, who was recently ordained at American Jewish University, a seminary of Conservative Judaism in Los Angeles, California, through a fellowship from Be'chol Lashon.

The ceremony was conducted according to Jewish law. Rabbi Sizomu convened and participated in a religious court (beit din) of Conservative rabbis from the United States that supervised the ritual immersion (mikvah). The converts included men, women and children ranging in age from four to eighty years old, and are mostly rural farmers, but also include small business owners and professionals.

Mikveh Preparation "The relationship between God and the Jews in the Torah resonates for many spiritual seekers," said Rabbi Sizomu. "It is important the Africans and others know that they can choose Judaism as a spiritual path — and that we are open to them."

Rabbi Gershom Sizomu is the first black rabbi from sub-Saharan Africa to be ordained by an American rabbinic school. He returned home just a few weeks ago to Uganda to lead the local Jewish community, known as the Abayudaya ("people of Judah"). He is opening a school to train rabbis who will serve growing Jewish communities throughout Africa.

"Gershom is a visionary and charismatic leader. It has been an honor to support him over the past five years and we plan to stay involved in building the Jewish community of Uganda and others in Africa as well," says Diane Tobin, Be’chol Lashon Director.

The mission of Be’chol Lashon is to help global Jewish communities grow, and to facilitate active participation in Jewish life, working to dispel the myth that Judaism is closed to outsiders — a myth that Jews themselves sometimes promote.

As one convert told Rabbi Sizomu, "My search for God and a community where I felt at home brought me to Judaism. I am humbled and awed to take my place among the Jewish people."

CURRENT NEWS

Scandal in the Rabbinate
By Gershom Gorenberg, July/August 2008, Moment Magazine

Israel’s Supreme Rabbinic Court effectively accepted a radical stance that conversions can be retroactively annulled. The decision is a scandal.

Once, the rules seemed clear: Reform or Conservative converts knew that some Jews wouldn’t accept them as members of the tribe. Orthodox conversions were honored by everyone, including Israel’s state rabbinate. They were the gold standard.

It has actually never been so simple. Orthodox rabbis have cast doubts on one another’s conversions, and the Israeli rabbinate has become steadily more selective even about accepting Orthodox converts who come from the diaspora. But the idea of universally accepted conversions collapsed completely with a decision of Israel’s Supreme Rabbinic Court publicized in May. The panel of three judges upheld a lower court’s ruling that a woman who had converted 15 years ago—under state-sanctioned Orthodox auspices—was not Jewish, because she’s not currently living by Orthodox law.

The judges also cast doubt on thousands of conversions performed through the state’s Conversion Authority, headed by Rabbi Haim Druckman, a leading religious Zionist rabbi. (The Authority was set up to ease the conversion process, until then handled by state rabbinic courts.) What’s more, the court effectively accepted a radical stance that conversions can be retroactively annulled.

The decision is a scandal: People who made the choice to become Jews, studied Judaism and underwent the required rituals now find their identity challenged. Children born to female converts have been put in limbo.

But the implications go further. The decision undermines the last teetering arguments for state-established religion in Israel. It removes the basis for the controversial agreement on conversion between the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA)—representing modern Orthodoxy—and the Israeli rabbinate. And it demonstrates that ultra-Orthodoxy is not old-time religion, but rather a modern movement—one increasingly setting itself apart from the rest of Judaism.

Fortunately, a guide exists for those perplexed by the current crisis: Israeli scholars Avi Sagi and Zvi Zohar’s newly published book, Transforming Identity, traces how giyyur, the process of becoming Jewish, has developed in rabbinic tradition. Theirs is that rare scholarly study ofesoteric material that’s easily read by lay people.

As Sagi and Zohar demonstrate, the Talmud contains two views of giyyur. One describes it as joining a group defined by the discipline of religious practice — the equivalent of joining a religious order. In the other view, giyyur is a ritual process by which “an individual…born as a gentile is transformed into a Jew,” a member of a kinship group. When a convert immerses in a mikveh, a ritual bath, and emerges, it’s as if he has reemerged from the womb and been reborn into the Jewish family.

For centuries, the model of joining the tribe dominated halachic thinking. At the same time, rabbis have argued over whether a person had to show religious motives to be allowed through the gates of rebirth. But everyone has agreed on this: Giyyur is irreversible. A convert who doesn’t keep the commandments is precisely like a Jew born of a Jewish mother who eats treif. Both are still Jewish.

In the last century or so, as Sagi and Zohar show, a new approach to giyyur has developed in ultra-Orthodoxy. First, some rabbis began to require converts to have inner sincerity in accepting the commandments “for the sake of heaven.” Demanding an inner feeling was a fundamental innovation. Since the 1980s one Israeli rabbi, Gedalya Axelrod, has promoted an even more radical innovation: If a convert does not strictly follow religious law, we can deduce that she was insincere at the time of conversion. So the conversion is void. Therefore, all conversions are conditional on converts’ current behavior. Axelrod’s revolutionary view has gained support among Israeli rabbinic court judges and underlies the lower court decision that was just upheld by the Supreme Rabbinic Court.

In the past, many Orthodox Zionists defended Israel’s state rabbinate by arguing that it preserved “one Jewish people.” No one but the rabbinate could perform marriage, divorce or conversion, and everyone accepted the rabbinate’s decisions. Everyone knew who was Jewish, who was single or married. So went the argument, but the argument is dead. Now, one state-backed rabbinic body can convert you, but another can decide you’re not Jewish. You get the uncertainties of pluralism along with the tyranny of state-imposed religion.

In America, the RCA announced earlier this year that it was establishing a network of conversion courts following a standardized policy on who could be accepted for giyyur. The move followed pressure from Israel’s Sephardi chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar. Critics within the RCA said the new system would rob American rabbis of discretion in dealing with converts. Proponents claimed it would ensure that the Israeli rabbinate would accept American Orthodox converts.

The proponents were wrong. Rabbi Amar can agree to accept RCA converts. But tomorrow, an Israeli rabbinic court can declare those converts to be gentiles. The RCA has traded its birthright for less than a bowl of stew.

The court’s ruling is based on an ultra-Orthodox school of thought. Ultra-Orthodox Jews claim to represent Judaism as it was and criticize innovations made by other Jews in response to modernity. But ultra-Orthodoxy is itself a response to modernity, a new form of Judaism. Sometimes it makes innovations as radical as any coming from the other streams. Treating conversion as contingent and reversible is a case in point.

Given the ideological divisions in contemporary Judaism, there is no universal standard for who is Jewish. The ultra-Orthodox have fed the uncertainty. There’s no way that other groups, including modern Orthodoxy, can play by ultra-Orthodox rules, and no reason to try. Responsible rabbis will make their choices on conversion based on their own understanding of Jewish law and of the good of the converts and the community.

Multiracial Americans Surge in Number, Voice
By Mike Stuckey, May 28, 2008, MSNBC

If you want a good glimpse of the multiracial experience in America, get inside Louie Gong’s skin.

“I’m Nooksack, I’m Chinese, I’m French and I’m Scottish,” Gong tells viewers of a multimedia piece he placed on YouTube to help spark discussion of multiracial issues. “... When I was a kid, I drank my Ovaltine with real milk, and my cousins and I liked our fried rice with salmon.”

At the same time that the nation’s growing diversity and changing social attitudes are helping to swell the ranks of multiracial Americans at 10 times the rate of the white population, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, son of a black man and a white woman, has brought new attention, curiosity and discussion to their experiences.

Obama has faced an endless barrage of questions anchored to issues of race and class, from his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to whether, in his own words, he is “too black” or “not black enough.” As Gut Check America engaged msnbc.com readers in this re-emerging national conversation on race, it became clear that multiracial Americans offered unique perspectives on the topic and that the nation is far from entering a “post-race” era.

Gong, 33, is on the leading edge of what he calls the “modern multiracial movement.” A founder of the Mixed Heritage Center, a Web-based resource collection for multiracial Americans, Gong is also vice president and a key spokesman for the Mavin Foundation, a Seattle-based advocacy group for mixed-race people and families. As the educational resources director for the Muckleshoot Indian tribe’s college near Seattle, he is able to tailor programs to Native Americans of mixed heritage. He teaches classes and workshops on the topic and is helping prepare a museum exhibit on the mixed-race experience set to open in Seattle in the fall.

Obama candidacy drives new interest
As Gong’s schedule attests, it’s a busy, exciting time for folks who have worked for years to win understanding and acceptance of the unique path trod by multiracial Americans. “Barack Obama has stepped into the picture now and is shining a floodlight on these issues,” Gong told msnbc.com.

With interracial marriage illegal in 16 states until 1967 and racist sentiments against it remaining to this day in some places, the number of biracial and multiracial Americans is relatively small at less than 5 million. Although it includes a number of high-profile celebrities and athletes like Tiger Woods, Mariah Carey, Derek Jeter, Vin Diesel and Halle Berry, it’s well under 2 percent of the nation’s current 302 million residents.

“There’s kind of a lot of hype that makes people think there’s more, but there aren’t,” said demographer William H. Frey, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution.

Officially, the number was even a mystery until 2000, the first year the U.S. Census Bureau allowed Americans to say they were of mixed race.

Census counts vary

Even now, there is confusion over various tallies offered by the federal agency. Some surveys, including the 2000 Census, allow respondents to choose “some other race” in addition to every possible combination of all recognized races. That inflated the count of multiracial Americans to 6.8 million.

But the agency’s annual Population Estimate Program, considered its most current breakdown, does not include “some other race” and results in a count of Americans who claim to be of “two or more races.” Based on birth, death and tax records, the figure “really is our official estimate of total population and population by race,” said Census spokesman Robert Burnstein.

The most recent data, released May 1, shows the number of Americans of “two or more races” was 4,856,136 as of last July. The headline, though, is growth. Up from 4,711,932 the previous year, the tally indicates a 3 percent gain, which is 10 times the 0.3 percent growth of the white population in the same period and three times the overall U.S. population growth of about 1 percent. It’s about the same as the growth rates of the Hispanic and Asian populations.

America’s mixed-race population is up 25 percent since it was first calculated in 2000, while the nation’s overall population has grown 7 percent in that time. Although still small in real numbers, the multiracial category is larger that the combined total of Native American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

One thing in common: marginalization
Such statistical exercises bring a warning from Gong.

“One of the most important things to understand is that the multiracial population is not a racial or ethnic group,” he said. ”What we are really is a long thread that runs through the spectrum of race.

“The only thing that bonds us together as a group is the common ways that we’re marginalized,” said Gong, who himself “had a very dynamic experience with race” while growing up. Reared on tribal lands by his paternal Chinese grandfather and Nooksack grandmother, his home life was steeped in Native American culture and tradition. At school, “I was poked and prodded” into a more Asian identity because of his last name.

As mixed-race Americans, “although we don’t represent a consistent experience, the way society has tended to respond to us has been consistent,” Gong said. “Those are the issues that we rally around.”

Despite their growing numbers, multiracial Americans and their family members say society’s response to them often remains a mixture of ignorance, judgment and downright rudeness.

Dr. Maria P.P. Root, a psychologist and researcher on multiracial families who has worked with the Mavin Foundation, has catalogued “50 Experiences of Racially Mixed People” as “a launching point for sharing, discussing, laughing, debriefing, and educating.” The list covers everything from the ubiquitous, insensitive “what are you?” question asked of multiracial people to them being told, “You have the best of both worlds.”

“Gut Check America” readers shared hundreds of observations and anecdotes via e-mail and interviews with msnbc.com to illustrate their own experiences.

Confusion over racial identity a common issue
For many, the confusion of others over their racial identity is the biggest, and thorniest, issue.

Take Sara Dale, a 33-year-old daughter of a black mom from Jamaica and a white dad from Pennsylvania. Caucasian in appearance, Dale said she has often been the recipient of racist comments about African-Americans from white co-workers and classmates. “People just assume that I’m white when they see me, so they talk freely around me,” said Dale, a resident of Boynton Beach, Fla. “As soon as the conversation turns a certain way, I start getting really nervous. I’m not a confrontational person but I feel like I have to say something.”

Or Evelyn Marie Lewis-Keene, 42, a health-care worker from Huntington, W.Va., whose father is an African-American and whose Hispanic mother was born in Puerto Rico. “When they ask what race I am, I don’t check black or white,” she said in an interview. “I can’t deny my mother and I can’t deny my father.” But others can and do, often elderly white residents at the care home where she works who plug her neatly into their racist stereotypes. “When a patient gives me the N-word, you know what I say? I say, ‘Wait a minute, if you’re going to say it, get it right, because you can’t deny my mom.’” And she insists they add “Rican” to the slur.

It comes from all sides. Lewis-Keene says her mother was disowned for a time by her Puerto Rican parents because she married a black man. And Lewis-Keene believes some members of her father’s family treat her mother disrespectfully because her English is hard for them to understand. “You can’t choose your family,” she said with a sigh.

‘You have a choice to be white or not’
Non-mixed members of multiracial families face their own special struggles. “When you’re in a biracial family, you have a choice to be white or not,” said Mary Semela, a white mom of two biracial sons who is married to a black immigrant from South Africa. Semela, who lives in Ellicott City, Md., said some members of multiracial families can grow so weary of stares and questions when they are with their relatives of different colors that they’ll intentionally go to public places alone at times. “You have that choice just to walk away from your family,” she said, adding that she would not do so herself.

While her husband and sons have faced the all-too-familiar trappings of white racism against blacks, Semela, 51, said her sons also are seen by some African-Americans as less than full members of that community because, with their father a recent immigrant, “they don’t have slave heritage.”

Despite that, her older son, 20, a scholarship student at Colgate, “feels very anchored as an African-American,” which is in keeping with the view of Semela and many other American parents of biracial black and white children that “as soon as your kids are old enough, they are black people in America, they are not half of anything.”

But that view is changing, said anthropologist Marion Kilson, who wrote “Claiming Place: Biracial Young Adults of the Post-Civil Rights Era.” Kilson, who is white, is also the mother of two biracial daughters and a son. She has been married for nearly 50 years to Martin Kilson Jr., the first black professor to receive full tenure at Harvard.

New resources, support seen
“I think there’s a generational difference,” Kilson, 72, told msnbc.com. “My perception, when my kids were little in the ’60s, was that biracial Americans didn’t have a choice about their racial identity, that the wider society would view them as being African-American.” Because of that, “I thought it was important to emphasize that they were African- American.”

“Now, people have an opportunity to proclaim all of their racial identities,” said Kilson, who is at work with colleague and friend Florence Ladd on a new book about rearing biracial children. “One thing that’s different for younger mothers today, there are many more support systems, quite a number of multiracial groups that exist, that involve parents and children, Web sites, clearly there are books that weren’t available before. There’s a lot more out there to support them today.”

Indeed, it’s a veritable boom time right now, said Gong, who recently attended a Northern California gathering with leaders of 13 groups that work on mixed-race issues. “There seems to be a sense that it’s time for the modern multiracial movement to expand into new fronts,” he said. “College campuses in the past have represented the low-hanging fruit” for those interested in organizing multiracial Americans. Various groups represented at the summit are looking to expand their efforts into other institutions and corporate venues. Gong is particularly interested in multiracial members of low-income communities.

A tricky issue for organizers like Gong is apprehension among some leaders of minority communities that a new focus on multiracial identities could lessen their numbers.

“If we look at what was important for communities of color during the civil rights movement, it was solidarity,” he said. “Solidarity served African-Americans and Native Americans very well in the past so now we see a desire to maintain ethnic solidarity still playing out, especially among older folks. We’re worried that we’re going to dilute the voice we have if people identify as being black and white or Native American and black.”

So while drawing attention to the needs of mixed-race Americans, “We really need to respect those communities’ needs to maintain ethnic solidarity," Gong said. "Those needs are very real.”

Frey, the Brookings demographer and author of a February paper on “Race, Immigration and America’s Changing Electorate,” said that while “race does matter” in U.S. elections, it’s often hard to figure out just how. With the nation’s single-race minority groups skewing Democrat but still vastly underrepresented on voter rolls relative to their overall numbers, he said, the impact of multiracial voters is especially hard to divine. “They’re really pretty small numbers,” he said. “We’re going to have to look down the road quite a bit before they’re going to become a major factor.”

Inspiration drawn from Obama candidacy
But Americans from multiracial backgrounds and families (some 5 million Americans are married across racial lines and millions more are members of racially blended families) seem universally happy and proud that a biracial man is the front-runner for a major party’s presidential nomination. Over and over again, in e-mail and interviews, regardless of whether they agree with his politics or intend to vote for him, “Gut Check” respondents said they were heartened by Obama’s candidacy.

“I like Obama,” said Ken Woodard of Wichita. “This is something that I’ve always dreamed of, someone who has the issues down pat, not just running as a black man, but running as a man who is sort of all of America, not just the black race but every race,” said Woodard, 61, a black man who has a son and daughter with his white wife of 27 years.

Lewis-Keene, the West Virginia health-care worker, said she sees Obama as someone who is “wholly true-hearted in his feelings of unity from the simple fact of where he comes from. … I feel like he is the kind of person who would be able to solve conflicts with other countries just as well as here in the United States.”

Despite the positive feelings from the Obama candidacy and other strides, ambiguity and confusion over racial identity will persist for many mixed-race Americans, said Gong, a fact experienced even in families such as his own that have been multiracial for generations. The palette of cultural diversity has often been smudged by outside influences like “all these federal policies that were designed to deconstruct native identity,” such as off-reservation boarding schools, the Indian Removal Act and urban relocation programs.

The ambiguity caused by such policies made planning a recent funeral for one of his aunts a bit of a puzzle, Gong said. “We did an eclectic ceremony, which is now becoming a family tradition, where everybody had a piece of the ceremony. It was in a Catholic church, based on the reservation, and we had a traditional Coast-Salish funeral song, and also a Shaker Church ceremony.”

The lesson is clear, said Gong, whose own excitement and enthusiasm for America’s changing colors is indomitable: America’s melting pot isn’t going to create a bland, homogenous porridge so much as a deeply flavored, spicy stew.

“Mixed race isn’t post race. It’s not less race. It’s more race,” Gong said. “In order to dialog about mixed race, we need more understanding. It’s not a dialog to forget about issues of race.”

IDENTITY

Gay Rabbis Getting Married - and Marrying
By Amy Klein, June 17, 2008, The Jewish Journal

It's almost 9 a.m. on Tuesday, June 17, and the line at the West Hollywood Park snakes around itself, as some 400 people wait to obtain marriage licenses on this first official day that the State of California is issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples (aside from one wedding on Monday).

Some men wear tuxedoes, some men wear suits, a few women are in white (a few women are in suits), but most of the couples are decked out in California casual on this momentous day. By far the most interesting - and photographed -- group is situated in the middle of the line, holding up a white chuppah on bamboo poles and the banner of their synagogue: Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC).

The first gay and lesbian synagogue, located on Pico Boulevard, has brought 10 couples here to get marriage licenses. Some, like the Hales - Cara in a bridal outfit of an ivory lace top and trousers, and Heidi in a gray pinstripe suit and silver tie -- have had Jewish weddings already. Others, like Davi and Bracha Cheng, were married before (in San Francisco four years ago, annulled by the court two months later). Itay Seigel and Tony Gregory Smith had never been married at all -- not out-of-town, out-of-state or Jewishly.

"For us, it's the right time and the right place," they said. Another was the rabbi of BCC, Lisa Edwards, who was both obtaining her own license and marrying five couples in the park afterward. In the summer, she will perform more than 20 weddings -- and have a civil ceremony with her partner, Tracy Moore.

It is a momentous day for gay and lesbian couples -- but doubly meaningful for rabbis in same-sex relationships: Not only can they marry, but they can perform legal marriages for other same-sex couples, too. And as Jewish leaders -- who have fought a number of battles for civil rights, first for acceptance in the Jewish community and then for acceptance as rabbis -- this is one of the most important steps in the fight for equality. (The next hurdle would be to see gay marriage made legal and available in every state).

Three L.A. rabbis have taken different paths to solidifying their unions, and each has different feelings about the State of California's legal sea change. For Edwards, who will marry her longtime partner in a civil ceremony this summer, it was her Jewish wedding 13 years ago that was most meaningful. For Wilshire Boulevard's Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein, who just celebrated a 10-year commitment renewal for his Jewish wedding and will have a civil ceremony and party on July 13, the newfound right to a civil marriage offers much satisfaction. But for Rabbi Don Goor, senior rabbi of Temple Judea, the new law is meaningful, but he won't have to do anything. He already married his partner, in Canada four years ago. The California Supreme Court decision simply means that his marriage will now officially be recognized.

Rabbi Lisa Edwards and Tracy Moore

As the leader since 1994 of the first gay and lesbian synagogue, Rabbi Lisa Edwards couldn't be happier about the California court's decision to grant couples marriage licenses. Every day that led up to the decision -- whether the court would grant a stay, whether gay marriage would finally happen in California -- Edwards approached with bated breath, along with her partner, Tracy Moore and the whole of her Reform community. And then bam! The week before Shavuot the ruling came down, and "everything happened in a flurry," Edwards said.

"Our time has come!" she wrote in an e-mail to the community inviting them to the June 17 celebration. "Singles, couples, no intention of marrying -- no matter -- this is a momentous day in the history of our LGBT civil rights movement. Join the celebration!"

While Edwards and Moore, who have been together for 23 years, also obtained a license on Tuesday, and will have a civil ceremony "sometime this summer," Edwards looks back on their 1995 Jewish wedding as the event that moved her most.

"At the time, I said that that was more important -- and in my life, day-to-day, it probably still is more important," Edwards said last week as the couple sat for an interview on the sofa in her office at BCC, beneath a kitschy poster of "The Ten Commandments." Edwards, 54, was casually dressed in a sweatshirt and Crocs, with her signature bucharian kippah cap and Harry Potter black circle glasses. Moore, 64, came from her job as capital campaign manager at public radio station 89.3 KPCC wearing a crisp, linen white shirt and tan pants and silver jewelry to match her straight white hair, cut longer on one side than the other.

"We felt like this was community, that was becoming home," Edwards said of the decision to have a chuppah in just after she began leading BCC.

The women met in 1983, working together at a nonprofit company in Iowa City. Edwards was not yet a rabbi -- she wasn't even in rabbinical school -- and Moore wasn't even Jewish. They moved in together the following summer.

"When we got together, it was mutually liberating -- we were both able to follow what was authentic for ourselves," said Moore, who went for her MBA.

Edwards decided to become a rabbi - which meant spending a year in Jerusalem.

"Tracy had no idea what she was getting herself into," Edwards said.

It was 1988, and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the rabbinical school for the Reform movement, did not have an open policy toward gay and lesbian students (the movement's Central Conference of American Rabbis [CCAR] did not allow official ordination of gay rabbis until 1990), but Edwards and Moore were completely open about their relationship.

"I think it's true to say that we were the first out couple -- not the first gay people," Moore said. "There was a huge consciousness-raising among students and among the administration -- there were some real 'big' conversations, and Lisa was the leader of a lot of that and continues to be, in a way," said Moore, who spent her time in Israel working on a project that later became the book, "Lesbiot: Israeli Lesbians Talk About Sexuality, Feminism, Judaism and Their Lives," (published by Cassell Press, in 1995). She had no plans to convert at the time. "It didn't occur to me," she said.

But when the couple came to Los Angeles, where Edwards resumed study at HUC-JIR, the issue came up again.

"I want to point out what's really funny: We thought our fight was going to be about being gay," Moore said, but it turned out that the fact that they were an interfaith couple was a bigger problem. (Then, as now, most rabbinic schools prohibit interfaith relationships for rabbinic students).

Rabbi Laura Geller, a groundbreaker in the world of women rabbis, who at the time was at USC Hillel, told Edwards and Moore, "Look, you're working on the whole gay issue, you're pushing the movement in that area. You can't take on another issue." So Moore decided to convert.

"Lisa needs to be a rabbi -- she's born to be a rabbi. So make me a Jew," Moore remembers thinking. "I had no idea what it meant."

Perhaps it was the fact that Edwards was so invested in moving the Reform movement toward acceptance of gays that made a Jewish wedding so important to them. After Edwards took over BCC in 1994 -- she had been ordained at HUC-JIR in New York and Moore had already converted -- they began to plan the wedding.

"I think a small part of the motivation was to model it for the congregation," said Edwards, who in the 1990s conducted more "AIDS funerals" than weddings.

"We also felt in an indefinable way that having a chuppah would deepen and expand our relationship, that something ancient and Jewish would change us somehow," Moore said.

"And it did," Edwards added.

Ten of their friends organized a potluck party with 300 friends, relatives, congregants and rabbis, officiated by Geller and Edwards' brother, also a Reform rabbi. They had to create many of their own rituals, including liturgy, as at the time they were one of the firsts.

"You go into the chuppah as individuals, and you come out a couple," Moore said. "The purpose of ritual is to change your status in the some way, in the eyes of other people, who look at you in a way they haven't before."

Edwards added: "I think it deepened the bond. It made us feel more secure. This was who we are," she said.

What about a civil marriage? Did they have their eye set on what would take another 12 years to arrive -- on June 17, 2008?

"I want to paint you a picture," Moore said to describe the mid-1990s. "There were no civil rights organizations that were working on gay marriage: They were working on discrimination in the workplace, gays in the military and other issues."

At the time, both said they never would have dreamed this would happen, and a Jewish wedding was so meaningful.

"Jews have sort of lived outside the law in lots of places and at lots of times in their lives. So I think that Jewish marriage has a different meaning, or a different importance," Edwards said.

That is why they will have a civil ceremony next month, after they obtain a marriage license on Tuesday, after Edwards performed at least five weddings.

So even though when they met more than two decades ago, they never dreamed this day would come, it was like Lisa's 80-something-year-old mother said to her older sister at her chuppah: "If you live long enough, you see everything."


Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein and Stephen Ariel Miller

Whatever you do, don't say marriage to Rabbi Stephen Julius Stein unless you mean civil marriage. That's because the Wilshire Boulevard Temple rabbi is very particular about nomenclature.

"We had a Jewish wedding," Stein said with his boyish smile about the chuppah that he and Stephen Ariel Miller had 10 years ago, as well as the renewal of vows they took this Memorial Day. "We had a wedding -- we made it very clear we couldn't have a marriage. We desperately wanted one because it wasn't legal anywhere."

Stein, 50, is insistent on the wording (just as he prefers being called a "rabbi who is gay" rather than a "gay rabbi" - "I'm Jewish first"). "We have to be this way, because this is the reality of life as a gay couple in America." Stein said.

"It's been frustrating for us," said Miller, 52, who manages the litigation support department of a law firm. "If you say you're married, you have the same rights as [married people]. When you make a point we are 'wedded' we don't have the right to be married, it sets a different tone."

Of course they were happy with the tone of their Jewish wedding in 1998.

They sat relaxing, barefoot, with a glass of red wine in the living room of their Spanish-style house on Miracle Mile ("our first home together") as their two dogs tussled on the shag carpet before they were sent to the back of the house, and recounted in that intricate and familiar way of long-term couples how they met 12 years ago.

Stein was the conductor-in- residence of the Houston Symphony "in the midst of wondering if there was a different career path to follow," when his rabbi introduced him to Miller, a man in their Torah study group.

"We met in Torah study on Shabbat in a synagogue...That is beshert." Stein said, using the Yiddish word for "meant to be."

The meeting also came at a time of change in their lives. Stein had decided to leave his illustrious career and become a rabbi, which meant going to Israel -- by himself.

"It was important for me to have a wedding before he left," Miller said. "It was important we go through things together."

But what kind of Jewish wedding would they have?

"Did we want to utilize our wedding in order to make a public statement?" Stein recalled -- after all, Miller was well-connected in the Houston Jewish community, and Stein had performed for 13,000 people. "But instead we decided in order to maximize the sense of kedusha we wanted this to be our closest community of family and friends," he said about the sense of holiness.

They had 175 guests, and gave the seventh wedding blessing to the entire community.

"I will never forget hearing those sacred words and the power of that communication under our tallitot," Stein said about his experience under the prayer shawls under the chuppah.

The minute the glass was broken and the music started playing, he said, "Let's do that again."

Again they did - 10 years later, on May 24, 2008, at Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles. They'd been planning the party for a year, but by the time it occurred, the California Supreme had already sanctioned gay civil marriages.

"I think the best present for our 10th anniversary is to get legally married." Miller said.

"We're getting married!!" Stein said exuberantly, as if he still could not believe it. "It's very important to the millions who happen to be lesbian and gay, and to a growing number of people who see it as a civil rights issue," he said. "We're both of an age where we understand that things politically take time, and we're thrilled we're going to get married next month -- although we sure wish it was 10 years ago. We look forward to a time it will be legal in all the United States of America."

But in a way, he said, "we are glad it worked this way: we both really believe in the separation of Church and State."

That's why on July 13, they will have a "very American civil ceremony" -- reading bits of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., of the California ruling -- and serve brunch for 50 at their home.

"We had a Jewish wedding but it wasn't a legal marriage," said Stein, noting that for the last 10 years they could introduce each other as "partner," "other half," "domestic partner" or "spouse." But after they actually get married, "God willing, there will be one and only one term: 'He's my husband," Stein said. "As Americans, we're really looking forward to that."


Rabbi Donald Goor and Cantor Evan Kent

When Rabbi Donald Goor decided to hold his auf ruf (the groom's Torah reading the week before his wedding) on the bimah of Temple Judea in Tarzana, where he serves as senior rabbi, a number of members had problems with it.

"One long-time member who always knew I was gay but didn't want to see it publicly, quit the temple," said Goor, 50. "I felt sad for him -- I'm always sad when someone leaves the congregation that's been his congregation for a long time. I was also sad for him that he couldn't recognize our joy and the values for which our community stands."

For the most part, the community was very supportive of his kiddushin - as he calls a Jewish wedding to separate it from a civil marriage -- to Cantor Evan Kent, of Temple Isaiah in West Los Angeles. (One of the biggest challenges for the couple, who met when they were both studying at HUC-JIR in 1986, is finding time to spend together.)

Although the Reform movement officially approved gay Jewish weddings in 1992, like many gay couples, Goor and Kent decided to wait to be able to have a civil marriage before having a chuppah. So they wed in Canada in 2005, and then had a chuppah.

"It was important in our minds that the state was going to see it as a legal relationship, in addition to Judaism," Goor said, noting that he was sad to have to leave the country for the certificate. The public celebration with his community was also important.

"Having a chuppah and a wedding celebration enabled other people to celebrate our relationship -- there's a certain joy in going to someone else's wedding: you do that as part of a community. Jews don't elope," he said. "The chuppah speaks about the holiness in our relationship."

And as a rabbi and cantor couple, there was an extra element to the process.

"Leaders need to be willing to model their values and their beliefs," he said.

Now, four years later, as California's new law ratifies his Canadian marriage - Goor says he thinks his congregation is more accepting, that people have "really changed and grown from seeing gay couples in their everyday life. The fact that having same-gender couples married doesn't threaten their marriage, or threaten society, that having same-gender marriage expands the place for love in society; for loving and committed relationships."

For Goor, the whole issue is one of dignity.

"There are people who say, 'Why do you need a marriage, why not just have domestic partnerships?' And the answer is on one level, legally one wants the same protection that marriage provides, but on another level one wants the same dignity that every other relationship has."

A Young Man From Omaha, Who May Perfectly Represent Brooklyn
By Susan Dominus, June 16, 2008, The New York Times

Moments before Yosef Abrahamson, 16, accepted an award for the essay he’d written in a competition sponsored by the Police Athletic League, an officer approached him to complain about his fedora. The hat, an essential wardrobe item for Hasidic men, was gaudy, the policeman told him, and what’s with all these kids today and their nose rings and their attitudes. A second police officer, overhearing the conversation, came over to steer away the first one, who reappeared a few minutes later to apologize. He’d never seen a Hasidic Jew, he told Yosef.

A policeman working in New York who’d never seen a Hasidic Jew? What he probably meant, Yosef theorized, was “that he’d never seen a Hasidic Jew of color. I think he was probably making some assumptions there.”

Thanks to his Egyptian father, who left the family when Yosef was young, and his maternal grandfather, who was of African descent by way of Panama, Yosef looks African-American (though his family prefers to describe themselves as Jews of color, believing their culture to be exclusively Jewish). Yosef moved to Crown Heights only a year ago, until then having lived in Omaha, where his mother’s maternal family, German Jewish merchants, had settled several generations earlier.

If Yosef, who attends the yeshiva Darchai Menachem in Crown Heights, ever finds himself writing a college application essay, his advisers would have a hard time choosing which of his compelling story lines would most dazzle those college admissions officers: The story of growing up in a Hasidic family in Omaha? Or the story of being the only student of color in his yeshiva? Or maybe the story of being the only Hasidic person of color in Omaha’s competitive ice skating circuit?

Despite the friendships he made while ice skating, a hobby his mother encouraged to round him out, life in Omaha was “a bit lonely,” Yosef admitted last week while eating a Kosher hamburger on Albany Avenue with his mother and his older sister, Sarah, 22. His mother, Dinah, who joined the Chabad-Lubavitch movement after seeing videos of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson several years ago, home-schooled both of her children.

Yosef was obviously sheltered from too much scrutiny from the outside world, but the surprising combination of his race and his particular form of religious observance fazed no one in Omaha — for all the average person knew in Omaha, all Hasidic Jews were of African descent, his mother said. When friends from Nebraska first visited New York, they were fascinated to meet some white Hasids for the first time.

It was easier for Ms. Abrahamson to raise her children in Omaha than it would have been in Crown Heights, she said.

“People are laid-back in Omaha,” she said. “It’s different there.”

Omaha is not, for example, a place where race relations between Jews and blacks have exploded into days of riots, as they did in Crown Heights in 1991; nor have the police in Omaha ever deemed it necessary to set up mobile command centers to monitor simmering tensions between Jews and blacks, as the New York police did last month in the Brooklyn neighborhood in response to two unrelated physical altercations.

A young man like Yosef could easily start to feel like a powerful symbol, rather than just a kid, the human embodiment of that famously controversial Art Spiegelman New Yorker cover depicting a Hasidic man embracing an African-American woman.

But life in Crown Heights is somehow less complicated than that for Yosef, a tall, athletic young man who seems to have internalized Omaha’s easygoing ways (and its broad Midwestern accent). Beyond the misunderstanding at the awards ceremony — of which Yosef said, “It was a bit strange, but really, I understand” — he says he has felt comfortable in Crown Heights from the moment he came there to advance his education.

Through summer camps and occasional trips to New York, the Abrahamsons were already familiar to the Jewish community in Crown Heights when he arrived last fall (the community has only a handful of other black families). The response from the African-American community has been, if anything, amazement. “Now I’ve seen everything,” an African-American man said three or four times as he passed Yosef and his mother and his sister walking home from synagogue.

Some black neighbors recently asked Ms. Abrahamson questions about the meaning of some Lubavitch fliers they had received in the mail. The family sensed that the neighbors had long been harboring those questions but had felt a certain comfort level with the Abrahamsons because of their shared skin color.

If there have been resentful or disapproving responses from either side, they have apparently gone as far over Yosef’s head as the references his ice skating friends used to make to movies or television shows he’d never seen.

The ease with which both communities have received Yosef seems a little unlikely, but appropriate in the year of what some call the country’s first post-racial presidential campaign. Except that the Abrahamsons consider themselves “post-racial, for real,” said Ms. Abrahamson, a Republican delegate in Nebraska who is not a fan of Mr. Obama. To the contrary, the whole family strongly supports John McCain, and Yosef will be a page at the Republican National Convention in the Twin Cities in September.

COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD

Zooming In
By Linda Hirsch, July 10, 2008, Jerusalem Post

If anyone had told me seven years ago that I would become a Spanish-speaking advocate of Cuban Jews, I might not have believed them. I had been a psychologist and photojournalist and was focused on commercial photography. As I approached the age of 50, my desire for a new challenge grew and I turned toward sources of inspiration. A single movement of music, composed by a client, provided the catalyst for a trip to Cuba.

That visit to Cuba in 2001 evolved into a family reunion, an education in Cuban Jewish history and life and an effort to enable Jewish Cuban teenagers to create and share Jewish life stories with others throughout the Diaspora. I hope to inspire others by sharing my journey and the resulting connection with Jewish Cubans, particularly in Cienfuegos.

I have returned to Cuba, traveling to numerous provinces under a religious license granted to my congregation (Beth El, Sudbury, Massachusetts) by the US Department of the Treasury. The leap from US shores to Cuban ones was a direct consequence of my desire to refocus my skills and recalibrate my soul. I was intrigued by Cuba's role as a historical Jewish portal to the Caribbean and the Americas, the source of diverse cultural and ritual observance, the home of a distant relative and a haven for a small, but feisty Jewish community.

Cuba's Jewish population began to decline with the revolution in 1959. The new government collectivized all property ownership, resulting in the departure of most Jews with means, primarily to the US. Numbering 15,000 in the 1950s, the Jewish population diminished precipitously during the 1960s and stabilized at around 1,200 in the mid-to-late 1990s after Russian influence had waned. The Jews of Cuba have openly engaged in religious renewal since the end of Russian influence, around 1993. Cuban Jews proudly display Judaica, celebrate major holidays and strive to renew long-forgotten rituals. They receive assistance, especially from the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and have become the object of increasing, but not always beneficial, curiosity. Despite this interest and assistance, the population has dropped further since the Jewish Centennial in 2006 and hovers around 1,000.

Jewish influence in Cuba is inscribed on doorposts of homes, cemetery gates, gravestones, including a geniza for worn-out Torah scrolls and prayer books, and street signs in a restored "Jewish District" of Old Havana. Hotel Raquel, formerly a commercial building, has been restored to its original art deco beauty. Tourists (and as of spring 2008, Cuban nationals with sufficient funds) can stay in rooms named for patriarchs and matriarchs, purchase Cuban-created, Jewish-themed art, collect fine Israeli-crafted Judaica and dine on Jewish-style delicacies while listening to Israeli music. Nearby is a kosher butcher which opens infrequently to provide extra meat rations to Jewish Cubans.

MY PHOTO-DOCUMENTATION of and support for one tiny Jewish community, Cienfuegos, formed the basis for an evolving project, "Leap of Faith - Jewish Cuban Connections." This tiny community of about 35, including spouses of other faiths and children, is located more than four hours, by bus, from Havana. It had been outside the mainstream of assistance, ritual education and activity. Rebeca Langus Rodriguez, its dedicated leader, had been chosen by her predecessor in 1993, as he departed for Israel. This coincided with the beginning of the Jewish renewal and inspired Rebeca's discovery of her Jewish identity and Polish ancestry.

I first met the Cienfuegos community in 2001, as part of a group from Congregation Beth El, a synagogue that my husband and I had recently joined. Our trip was led by Cantor Lorel Zar-Kessler and husband Arnie and began in Havana. We worshiped at each of three synagogues and spent several days there.

It was during this visit that I reunited with a cousin whom I'd not seen since childhood. Susan is a trilingual journalist, anthropologist and eco-tourism guide. Her straight, black hair now untamed and silver, she had moved to California from New England during adolescence and became increasingly radicalized at University of California/Berkeley. She moved to Canada to protest the Vietnam War, traveled throughout Africa and fell in love with a Cuban engineer in Angola. They returned to Cuba, married and settled in Guantanamo, later moving to Vedado, a lovely section of Havana. Susan's skills, knowledge and facilitation of homestays have been invaluable.

Our group departed Havana, traveling by bus to Cienfuegos, at the suggestion of June Safran, founder of the Cuban American Jewish Mission (CAJM, in Berkeley, California). Communications prior to our arrival had been frustrating since e-mail was unavailable and phone service was unreliable. As our bus approached the Hotel Union, we saw Rebeca and others awaiting us with smiling faces. Their resourcefulness and faith are assets I've come to appreciate.

During the next few days, we gathered as one community, led religious services at Rebeca's home and hosted social activities at our hotel. Our presence allowed them unusual access, since prior to March 2008, Cuban nationals other than employees were routinely denied entry to tourist hotels. We shared rituals, games and meals, took day trips during which we shared Jewish life stories, teachings, hopes and gifts. We pledged to become sister-congregations, to facilitate their religious education and to help them enhance Rebeca's home as the center of their Jewish communal life.

OUR GROUP shared enthusiastic stories and images with the Beth El community when we returned home. Although the group eventually disbanded, I had found my new focus. The dedication and intelligence of this microcosm of the Jewish Diaspora and the warmth and candor with which its members shared with us their personal dreams and communal hopes inspired me to help sustain their faith and resilience in the face of adversity. "Leap of Faith" began to evolve.

My husband, Gary, and I established a Cuban assistance fund. I connected with an international support network, including the JDC, B'nai B'rith, individuals and organizations. Several of Cienfuegos' goals, set in 2001, have been achieved: religious education, improved communal/sanctuary space and e-mail access have all become realities. It has been wonderful to witness and document their achievements, especially two bar mitzvas in December 2004. Prayer books and Jewish literature fill new shelves; Judaica adorns doorposts and entry tiles; technology enables education and communication; kitchen appliances enhance food preparation; and their official e-mail account, approved in 2006, enables Rebeca to correspond frequently. Internet access remains limited.

Gary and I returned to Cienfuegos in 2002. We arrived just before Purim and encouraged the teenagers to tell the story. Their costumes not yet finished, they performed with dramatic flair to a raucous audience. We learned other lessons. Ingredients for holiday hamentashen were not abundant. We walked and drove with an entourage to six different stores in 32ºC heat. When a bicycle race stopped traffic, I found myself stuck in a hot car, cradling precious chocolate bars.

After discovering that Rebeca did not have an oven, we gathered the ingredients, including eggs donated by neighbors, and brought them to our hotel. I enlisted, Sixto, the jovial, full-bodied pastry chef, in a frenzied baking session. While we were preparing the hamentashen, I used the little Spanish I knew to share a creative Purim spiel with him and curious kitchen staff. Gary and I took a few celebratory photographs and delivered the hot pastries, just in time for our Purim party.

On our third trip to Cuba, in February 2004, Gary served as group coordinator. We brought with us Rabbi Al Axelrad, former chaplain at Brandeis University. He was the first contemporary rabbi to conduct Shabbat services in and do teachings from the Torah in Cienfuegos. There are no full-time rabbis in Cuba, only visiting ones. Every two years, young Argentine couples, representatives of JDC, arrive to lead services and run activities at Cuba's largest central synagogue, in Havana.

Departing Cienfuegos, Gary and I set off in a rental car to visit several provinces and towns untouched by tourism, in search of clues to Jewish and Cuban history. We witnessed changes in the landscape as cranes loomed above pristine sands, marking the encroachment of tourism, Cuba's fastest-growing industry. We visited with Rebeca's relatives in Remedios and stopped in Caibarien, a tiny Jewish community, delivering assistance and greetings to all.

In December, 2004, I arrived just in time for the bar mitzvas of two Cienfuegos youths, in Havana. One was Rebeca's elder son, David, whose role as a potential leader has grown in the ensuing years. By late 2004, my energies had shifted from assistance to enablement. During this visit, I brainstormed with Cuban colleagues about ways to mentor and enable the teenagers, whom we agreed are the key to Cuban Jewish survival. The resulting project should create multimedia Jewish life stories, utilizing donated cameras, technology and additional funds from a small Puffin Foundation grant, with mentoring by artists and teachers from Cuba and elsewhere. The DVDs the teenagers produce can then be shared throughout Cuba, with other Diaspora communities, in Israel and elsewhere.

During the first week of my 18-day centennial visit (2006), I learned more about Cuban life and values. Soon after arrival, I became ill and was cared for by the entire community. I was bathed, massaged, treated to homemade foods and a joyous Shabbat. By restoring my health and spirits, they restored my faith in humankind and in myself. A doctor who was also the outreach coordinator for the smaller Jewish communities arrived for Shabbat and I quipped, "I didn't know Cuban doctors made house calls." She proceeded to prepare a meal to restore my strength. During that evening's Shabbat service, she broke into tears, declaring it would be her last since she and her husband would soon leave for Israel. Families and communities are increasingly losing members and leaders who follow relatives and friends to new lands and possibilities.

Nearing the end of the week, I shared Jewish teachings, using Spanish language materials given to me by the Anne Frank House (Amsterdam). Many included a striking image of an Anne Frank statue defaced by a blood-red swastika on its back. I had photographed this in 1984 and contributed the image to the Anne Frank House for exhibition and publication. Interestingly, soon after my Cuban visit, letters from the Frank family were discovered (2007), revealing their unrealized dream of emigrating to Cuba. Connections between my personal journey and those of Diaspora Jews continued to grow.

BIDDING CIENFUEGOS farewell, Rebeca and David accompanied me by bus into Havana for the centennial celebrations. The centennial included an art exhibit in which David, who is training to become an art teacher and artist, participated. I socialized with Jewish community members who hungered for world news, and had the honor of attending galas, many of which showcased growing cultural and technological bonds with Israel. Representatives from many countries attended, bringing financial and moral support. In sobering contrast to these hopes for growth is the increasing exodus of Cuban Jews, further eroding potential leadership and participation.

Recent historical and political events are cause for both celebration and concern regarding the welfare and future of Cuban Jewry. The leadership changes in 2008 have resulted in limited transportation, agrarian and trade reforms aimed at improving the infrastructure and meeting the growing demand for jobs, goods and food. Despite these signs, community leaders, younger Jews and those with family in other countries have grown increasingly impatient about and suspicious of the sincerity of promised reforms. No one can say for certain what the future holds. A sea change on both sides of the Florida straits will be necessary for renewal to flourish rather than symbolize what was or might have been.

Being an outsider teaches one patience, compassion and fortitude. In the face of paradoxical and swiftly-changing circumstances, I have become increasingly aware of "glass walls" that separate visitors who have freedom of movement and choice from native Cubans who lack those freedoms. I have evolved from tourist to idealist, to pragmatist, eventually becoming a valued friend of the Cienfuegos Jewish community and trusted agent on behalf of Cuban Jews.

These efforts will be strengthened if Rebeca is granted permission to visit the US, to meet our congregation and some of her US relatives, one of whom lives in my hometown. It is my hope that the circle of connection will be unbroken and that their ner tamid, the eternal light of their Jewish faith, will be sustained.

Bolivia's Politics Has Jews Packing
By Daniel Bush, June 23, 2008, JTA

More than any other single event in recent years, the future of Bolivian Jewry may be determined by the outcome of the country's upcoming national referendum on a new constitution.

The proposed constitution calling for increased state control of private-sector enterprise is being fiercely opposed by many middle- and upper-class Bolivians, including the country’s Jews. Four of Bolivia's wealthiest provinces have launched autonomous movements in response to the proposal.

The referendum is scheduled for May 4.

Bolivia's Jewish community has shrunk considerably in the past decade. Young Jews are seeking larger Jewish communities, and both old and young have left to find professional opportunities unrestricted by the policies of Evo Morales, the socialist who became Bolivia’s president in 2005.

Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, is staunchly anti-American and has endorsed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's call for an anti-American "axis of good" comprised of Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba.

Ricardo Udler, the president of the Israeli Circle of La Paz, the country's main Jewish organization, says Bolivian Jews are increasingly uncomfortable about the direction the country of 9 million is taking under Morales.

"Since Evo was elected there's been a radical change," Udler said.

Though there is no overt anti-Semitism in Bolivia, he said, Bolivia's approximately 350 Jews feel threatened by Morales' close ties with Chavez and his growing relationship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Things could get worse for Jews in Bolivia," Udler warned.

Since Morales took office, the Jewish population of La Paz, Bolivia's capital and the home of its largest Jewish community, has fallen by some 10 percent. That has a significant impact on a community of approximately 180.

Bolivia's Jews find themselves in a predicament not unlike Jews in South America's socialist leader, Venezuela, which has lost approximately half its Jews since Chavez took power. As in Venezuela, Jews in Bolivia fear increased state control of their businesses and lives.

Morales' increasingly close relationship with Iran hasn't helped. Last September, Ahmadinejad on a visit to Bolivia pledged to invest $5 billion in the country over the next five years, including in the natural gas and oil industries. Those industries already receive support from Chavez.

The Morales administration also has announced the possibility of Iran opening an embassy in La Paz.

Due to these developments, said Bolivian Jewish businessman Joe Epelbaum, "a lot of Jews are planning to leave."

"This is a fast-shrinking community," he said.

The upturn in Jewish emigration from Bolivia represents a surprising reversal for a country that during World War II was among the few in South America that offered visas to Jews fleeing Europe. Jewish immigrants settled in La Paz as well as the cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, establishing communities that thrived in the postwar years.

During the 1950s, La Paz had between 12,000 and 15,000 Jews, according to Udler.

Harald Schoengut, the president of the Israeli Association of Cochabamba, said his city's Jewish population reached 2,000 half a century ago. About 110 Jews now live there.

In La Paz, some two dozen Jews recently attended Shabbat services at the Israeli Circle of La Paz building on a Friday evening. At a dinner later that night attended by about the same number of people, the host noted with chagrin that one-tenth of La Paz's once-booming Jewish community could fit under a single roof.

Most of those leaving the country are third-generation Bolivian Jews seeking better educational and professional opportunities in the United States, Israel and Europe.

“We’re trying to avoid this by enticing the younger generations to study here in Cochabamba,” Schoengut told JTA. Despite this effort, most young Jewish high school and university graduates continue to leave the country. “The future is very uncertain.” he said.

Udler said a similar exodus is taking place among young Jews in La Paz.

"We have a big problem that our children go to study abroad and they don't come back," he said. "My sons, for example, won't come back to Bolivia," from Israel, where they have moved, "because there isn't a Jewish community here. In Bolivia they don't have a Jewish future."

Since Morales came to power, older Jews also have been leaving in greater numbers than ever, according to Epelbaum, who owns a large textile factory here with two brothers-in-law.

"Families with bigger, more profitable businesses that are harder to leave behind are staying," said Epelbaum, 57, who was born in Poland and immigrated to Bolivia with his parents when he was 7. "But there's no future as a Jew in Bolivia even if you have a business that's doing well."

Jews in the country’s textile industry have been hurt by Morales’ unpredictable labor and trade policies, Epelbaum said. Morales has limited exporters’ access to international markets and restricted foreign investment in Bolivia.

Epelbaum's textile store, on a busy commercial street in the center of La Paz, is crowded with rolls of colored fabrics. A photograph of Epelbaum's three daughters hangs on the wall behind the counter at the back of the store. All of them have left the country.

"I'm basically still here for economic reasons," he said. "Eventually, though, I don't see myself staying here."

The professionally and socially driven emigration of Bolivia's younger Jews coupled with the politically driven emigration of its more established members means the days of Bolivian Jewry are numbered, Udler said.

"In the next 10 to 20 years," he said, "there will be no more Jews in Bolivia."

ARTS AND CULTURE

Film: El Salvador's Role of Aiding Jewis in WW II FInally Told
By Hadas Gold, June 21, 2008, Chron.com

During World War II, more than 25,000 European Jews became citizens of El Salvador, a country most had never visited and few ever would.

The country, roughly the size of Israel, would come to justify its Spanish name as "the savior" thanks to bogus certificates that made thousands of Jews citizens of El Salvador and kept them from being deported to concentration camps.

The signature on nearly all the certificates was that of George Mandel-Mantello, a Romanian Jewish refugee who in the early 1940s sought help from a Salvadoran acquaintance in Switzerland.

The El Salvador consul general in Geneva, Col. Jose Castellanos, appointed Mantello to the made-up position of first secretary, securing him a diplomat's passport.

The name Mantello was added to make his name sound more Latin.

The operation Mantello and Castellanos arranged to have blank nationality certificates with Mantello's signature taken to consulates in various countries of Geneva, where they received additional stamps.

The text stated that the holders were citizens of the Republic of El Salvador, which extended its protection to the holders and their families.

Other diplomats then smuggled the certificates to various locations in Europe — primarily Hungary — where they were filled out with the Jewish people's information.

Most of Mantello's and Castellanos' papers were smuggled to Budapest and issued by Carl Lutz, the Swiss vice-consul there, who was helping Jews obtain papers at his "Glass House," an abandoned glass factory he rented on behalf of the Swiss government, which became a safe haven for thousands of Jews.

After more than six decades, the story of how Mantello and Castellanos saved thousands of European Jews is coming to light.

Telling the story

A new documentary film, The Glass House, tells their story. The film's director and producer, Brad and Leonor Marlowe, said they hope that promoting the film at various museums and universities across the country will spread the word about El Salvador's unknown involvement in saving thousands of Jews.

Although El Salvador had declared war on Germany and was on the side of the Allies, neither Castellanos nor Mantello had the authority to issue the certificates.

El Salvador's government later played a role in the scheme when, in July 1944, its foreign minister contacted the Swiss government to officially request full protection and representation for the Salvadoran citizens in Hungary.

Although the certificates themselves granted some form of protection, Castellanos and Mantello had to convince the Swiss and Hungarian governments to extend protection to the new Salvadoran "citizens" in Hungary.

Suspicious of the arrangement, the Swiss government conducted a lengthy investigation during which Castellanos repeatedly claimed Mantello was a legitimate official. He wasn't, according to a recent news release the government of El Salvador prepared.

In the beginning, Mantello, with Castellanos' full support, issued citizenship certificates only to people he knew and involving names provided by Jewish organizations.

`A man with great courage'

In the midst of their operation, Mantello learned that his entire family, whom he believed to be living in relatively safe Hungary, except for his son living with him in Switzerland, had been deported and sent to concentration camps. None survived.

"This is the story of a man with great courage who stood up against a system," said Ricardo Moran Ferracuti, a Salvadoran official who has been pushing the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem to confer the title "Righteous Gentile" on Castellanos. Mantello cannot receive the award because he was Jewish.

A Righteous Gentile is a non-Jewish person who risked life, freedom and safety to rescue one or several Jews from the threat of death or deportation without exacting compensation or other rewards, according to the museum's Web site.

Art: Mexican Jewish Artist's Bronzes Featured in KCK Show
By Beth Lipoff, June 13, 2008, Kansas City Jewish Chronicle

If you’re looking for a cross-cultural experience, a new art exhibit may be just the ticket. The gallery of the YWCA of Greater Kansas City will host a show of 30 sculptures and paintings by Vicky Levy, a Mexican Jewish artist, from June 13 to Aug. 6. (See “Opening Party” for details)

“My Work, My Passion” features a number of bronze cast sculptures.

“I would describe it as more European influence,” said Patrick Alexander, arts and events coordinator for the YWCA. “I think, a lot of times, Mexican art is showcased more on the craft side, with wood carvings or pottery, whereas this is this classic form of bronze casting, which you don’t see in this area very often. We’re trying to break barriers and open up conversation.”

Alexander said the Mexican Consulate in Kansas City, Mo., contacted him, looking for women’s organizations that might be interested in showcasing Levy’s work. He was happy to offer the exhibition space at the YWCA, which has had an art gallery for more than a year.

“I thought it would be great to have an international artist in downtown Kansas City, Kan. We’re really trying to provide cultural activities for this area that has been somewhat lacking over the years,” Alexander said. “These are really museum-quality pieces, and I’m just so honored that we get to host them all summer long.”

Born in El Paso, Texas, Levy lives in Mexico City but will visit Kansas City for the opening reception.

“A big part of this exhibit is my work from the last 15 years. The paintings are older, and the sculptures are more new. I do much more sculptures nowadays than in the past,” Levy said via e-mail.

Much of her work features women and children, often in scenes of everyday Mexican life. A few of her pieces have Jewish themes, such as a Kiddush cup or a menorah, but on the whole, Levy doesn’t incorporate religious symbols in her work, though she said she’s very proud of her religion.

A sculptor since 1975, she’s been exhibiting her work in Mexico for more than 20 years. “My Work, My Passion” will have traveled to Kansas City from Phoenix. It’s her first exhibit outside of Mexico.

“I’m really enthusiastic about it. Being in Phoenix and now in Kansas are some of the best things that have happened to me,” Levy said.

For the length of the exhibit, the YWCA will offer related cultural programming each week, such as showing Spanish-language films and facilitating craft projects for holidays such as the Day of the Dead.

The gallery is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. There is no charge to view the exhibit. Groups can arrange for a tour of the exhibit with Alexander by calling (913) 371-1105.