Did You Hear the One About Apartheid
By Rian Malan, August 9, 2008, The Wall Street Journal

After losing power in 1994, South Africa's white right-wingers withdrew into psychic exile, leaving the chattering classes to pursue a political agenda so correct that it sometimes verged on insanity. Newspapers were soon filled with great billows of soft-left pabulum. Talk show hosts routinely used appalling terms like "gendered" or "Othering," and almost everyone observed an unwritten law stating that it was unfair to criticize black people on the grounds that any failings they might exhibit were attributable to poverty, oppression and bad education, otherwise known as "the legacy of apartheid." In time, I came to feel as if I were suffocating in a fog of high-minded pieties, a condition that often reduced me to cursing and throwing things at the TV set.

In the course of one such episode a few years ago, I switched channels and came upon a demented comedy sketch in which a gunman was tutoring a class of black schoolchildren in the finer points of armed robbery. "You got to have an inside source to tell you where the money is," yelled the gunman, "and when you get caught -- I just love this bit -- when you get caught, blame it on the legacy of apartheid. OK! So what have you learned today?" The children chorus, "Blame it on the legacy of apartheid!"

If you're not South African, you'll probably never understand how dumbfounding this was, but let's give it a try. What do you do, if you're young, gifted and African, when the Economist describes your home as "The Hopeless Continent"? Contest this assessment and you sound like a silly white liberal, which is anathema to a cool dude like comedian David Kibuuka. "The way the foreigners see Africa is sort of the way it is," he says. "Wars, people dying of diseases that were cured long ago and so on." But acknowledging such truths is dangerous, too, because some brothers are always going to accuse you of being a self-loathing sellout, and that's enough to keep most Africans quiet.

Not so for a group of young, black comedians who have taken South Africa by storm. Their attitude, says 30-year-old comic Kagiso Lediga, is, "Get lost if you can't take a joke. Our job is to talk about things that are wrong, and we'll keep doing it unless you kill us."

Based in Johannesburg, the comics first rose to prominence four years ago in a TV series called "The Pure Monate Show." The title meant "absolutely delicious scrumptious show" in a local African language, and its standard fare was outrage. The show lampooned the nation's obsession with crime, staged a conversation between sex toys of various races, and offered some comic sketches about life in neighboring Zimbabwe, which has been rocked by political and economic turmoil under President Robert Mugabe. In one such skit, a shady-looking character hands a great wad of cash to an underworld connection, who surreptitiously slips him a briefcase. Viewers think they're witnessing a Zimbabwe-style drug deal, but when the briefcase is opened, it contains a lone loaf of bread -- the consequence of a currency destroyed by an inflation rate that recently hit 2,200,000% a year.

On the domestic front, the show parodied the cultural peculiarities of racial and tribal minorities, and, in one memorable sketch, portrayed South Africa as a country where politics were so boring that most people stayed in bed on election day, thereby allowing the white rulers of yore to stage a comeback. This was presented as a trailer for a horror movie: "Apartheid II -- coming to a cinema near you."

The comedians' manager is Takunda Bimha, a 29-year-old lawyer who wears designer jeans and Italian smoking jackets and has a suite of offices in the trendy Johannesburg suburb of Greenside. Mr. Bimha forsook the law for TV production a few years back, and now he's a capo in Johannesburg's comedy underworld. As Mr. Bimha tells it, the comedians were middle-class boys with good educations who wanted to do a satirical comedy show in the style of "Saturday Night Live." Since most of them were young, gifted and black, state-owned SABC TV gave them a deal in 2003.

God knows what the broadcaster was anticipating, but what it got was renegade comedy of a sort never previously seen in South Africa. The show slaughtered sacred cows and lampooned important people. "Memories of apartheid were fading," says Mr. Bimha, "and the guys were like, 'Let's move on,' you know? They felt the culture had become boring, and that it was time we started laughing at ourselves."

If they were white, they would have been fired. But black authorities seemed dazed by the fact that those responsible for this mockery were bright young men from their own side of the racial divide. "They thought we'd care," says Mr. Kibuuka, 27, a leading light in the collective. "But actually, we don't. We didn't set out to be subversive. We just did it because we liked doing it. They said, hey, that's subversive! And we said, really? OK!"

Mr. Kibuuka is a droll young sophisticate who drives a convertible, writes clever pop songs and affects to be vaguely bored by almost everything, including my questions. Although the show drew complaints from audiences, he says he has no regrets, and no serious grievances about the show's ultimate demise. (It was axed in 2005.) "The SABC is a public broadcaster," he yawns. "Citizens were complaining, so they had to listen." The SABC declined to comment.

The gang packed their bags and moved on to greater things, beginning with a pseudo-documentary about young comedians and their girlfriends traveling into the backwoods to perform stand-up at a rock festival. Their film, the 2006 "Bunny Chow," directed by John Barker, did well on the local circuit, but foreigners found it a bit bewildering. There was an "Easy Rider"-esque scene where a small-town redneck threatens to murder the funnymen because they're trying to seduce his wife, but otherwise, this was a South Africa that was totally unfamiliar to outsiders. The whites were likeable slackers, the blacks cocky and urbane. Characters of various races were constantly hopping in and out of each other's beds, and apartheid cropped up only in jokes.

In short, the film was a fairly accurate depiction of the lifestyle and attitudes of, say, university students who were in grade school when apartheid ended and find their parents' politics passé. This in itself was a sin in certain eyes. "I thought politicians would be smart enough to treat comedians and satirists like court jesters," says Mr. Lediga, a veteran of the show. "You let them do their thing, and then you stand back and say, of course I believe in freedom of speech, look what I'm willing to put up with." But South Africa isn't like that. "They expect you to take sides," says Mr. Lediga. "That's one of our problems. They feel the black youth is apathetic and we should be inciting them to take up arms or whatever."

The source of one such critique was Christine Qunta, a black-power activist and writer who sits on the state broadcaster's governing body and is said to be close to South African President Thabo Mbeki. After the Cape Town premiere of "Bunny Chow," she fired off a text message to a relative who leaked it to the comedians. Ms. Qunta did not return several calls for comment, but Mr. Lediga says her reaction was extremely negative. "Christine was like, [this is] disgusting," says Mr. Lediga. His heart sank when he read Ms. Qunta's verdict. There was clearly no chance of "The Pure Monate Show" getting a second chance on state TV.

But hey, no worries. The boys were making good money on South Africa's live comedy circuit. In fact, some were making a great deal of money, wearing sharp suits and driving cars with TV sets in the back seat. It was time, as Mr. Bimha puts it, to start plotting "world domination." Their chosen vehicle was "The Dictator," a movie script about the rise and fall of Edson Nyrirembe, president for life of a fictitious African country named Jambola. Part Idi Amin and part Robert Mugabe, Nyrirembe is a sinister buffoon with certain painfully lifelike characteristics. In other words, Nyrirembe is stupid, arrogant, occasionally barbaric and always surrounded by quivering yes-men. Like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, he is perplexingly popular among foreign black-power fans, who invariably grant him a standing ovation when he appears on their shores. Mr. Lediga was sent to New York and Cannes to sell the project to potential investors, none of whom were willing to commit. "White liberals are happy to finance harmless African art movies," chuckles Mr. Lediga, "but they seem to get very anxious about ideas that might draw the attention of the Thought Police."

If failed "The Dictator" project cuts a bit close to the bone, one struggles to imagine the reaction to their other movie project -- a comedy about apartheid, loosely inspired by "Life of Brian," Monty Python's heretical parody of the story of Jesus.

What was funny about apartheid? Mr. Lediga shrugs. "It was absurd," he says, "and that's always funny. It was also painful, so there has to be a lot of comedy in there somewhere."

"Ja," says Mr. Kibuuka, "like white racists with black lovers and morons trying to free Mandela."

Did he say morons? Ouch. These guys are lucky to be working in Africa's most tolerant country. Elsewhere, they'd be in dungeons. Nearly every country in Africa has "insult laws" to protect the dignity of its leaders, and if those don't work, there are other forms of joke suppression: African culture commands youngsters to respect their elders, and Africa's embarrassments provide a powerful incentive for self-censorship.

Am I making these guys sound like raving neo-cons? That wouldn't be accurate. In person, they're thoughtful young men who lament the poverty in which most South Africans still languish and acknowledge how lucky they are to have escaped it. They are also staunch anti-imperialists, always delighted to find an American in the audience so they can crack jokes about moronic presidents and so on. Local whites get frequent lashings, too. The other night, Tsepo Mogale picked out some pale faces at a front-row table and said, "You whites are full of s-, you know." He proceeded to tell a story about how he pulled up at a traffic light alongside "a battered old Datsun carrying a white family" who locked their doors the instant they clocked black skin. "I'm going to hijack a Datsun?" he chuckled. "Get out of here. I drive a Mercedes."

This draws a laugh, but whites are a dwindling minority, not nearly as interesting as the "Afristocracy" that now holds power. A year or two back, comedian Loyiso Gola, 25, developed a fascination with the local political style that evolved into a one-man show titled, "Loyiso Gola for President." His absurd policy proposals brought the house down. "Crime?" he'd say. "You want to stop crime? Easy. For six months, anyone who commits any crime, blam, just blow him away. Pull a Giuliani, man. I guarantee you, crime will vanish." Mr. Gola says his follow-up show will be titled, "You should have voted for me."

This is not really a joke, given the perilous state of local politics. South Africa's ruling African National Congress hopes to install Jacob Zuma as the country's next president, in spite of his facing charges arising from the alleged acceptance of a bribe from a French arms manufacturer. Mr. Zuma denies the charges, and a judge will rule next month whether the trial will go ahead. Meanwhile, his followers portray him as the victim of a political vendetta orchestrated by "counter-revolutionaries." The dispute has precipitated a crisis in public life, with militant Zuma supporters threatening mayhem if the government attempts to jail their hero.

It was against this tense backdrop that dignitaries gathered at Johannesburg's Emperors Palace casino for the Black Management Forum's 2008 gala dinner. Mr. Zuma was the keynote speaker, and entertainment was provided by Trevor Noah, 24, the newest star in Takunda Bimha's stable. Trusting that Mr. Zuma was big enough to take a joke, Mr. Noah launched into a monologue that went something like this: In apartheid's dying years, he said, hundreds of thousands of terrified white South Africans moved to Australia rather than live under a black government. Those who remained were charmed by Mandela, but when the old man stepped down in favor of Thabo Mbeki in 1999, whites thought, uh-oh, and there was a renewed exodus to the Antipodes. Blacks were amused by these outbreaks of paranoia, Mr. Noah concluded, but now that a Zuma presidency is on the cards, they aren't laughing anymore. Now you hear blacks saying, "How much is a ticket to Australia again?"

The all-black audience howled, but Mr. Noah had broken several powerful African taboos here. The taboo that says 24-year-olds must respect their elders. The taboo that says it's treachery for a brother to criticize a brother. Heck, even the universal conventions of good manners. All eyes swiveled in Mr. Zuma's direction, and lo: "He was laughing like crazy," says Mr. Noah. "Killing himself." (A spokeswoman for Mr. Zuma confirms he heard the joke, and says, "it would be entirely in character for him to laugh" at it.)

Jokes rooted in pain are nothing new, but it was extraordinary to have a banquet-hall of glamorous black-tied Africans laughing at the notion that South Africa is now in such a pitiful state that even they might want to flee. Is this not a sign that they're transcending victimhood? "Learning to laugh at yourself is a great sign of human evolution," says Kagiso Lediga. Jews and the Irish went through the process generations ago. Black Americans made the critical breakthrough in the seventies. Indians followed suit about 10 years later, and look at them now -- rising giants of international trade and authors of every third work on the West's best-selling book charts. Take this as a joke if you like, but I think the crew might foreshadow a similar renaissance in Africa. Takunda Bimha liked my punchline. "Exactly!" he says. "Exactly!"

Zomer, member of the Jewish Community in Costa Rica Appointed Housing Minister
By JTA Staff, August 19, 2008, JTA

A member of Costa Rica's small Reform Jewish community was named to the president's Cabinet. Clara Zomer, 68, was appointed housing minister this month by President Oscar Arias. She becomes the first Reform Jew to join the Cabinet since Arias' term began in 2006. Zomer has been serving in the unicameral Legislative Assembly since May 2006. She succeeds Fernando Zumbado, a close Arias ally who resigned earlier this month amid reports that money intended to build housing for the poor was diverted to pay consultant fees for Arias cronies. A former head of the Urbanization Institute and a former university professor, Zomer is a member of the B'nei Israel Congregation, which was founded in the 1980s. Several members of the larger Orthodox Israelite-Zionist Center have served in the Cabinet. Two of its members - Luis Fishman and Rebecca Grynspan - have served as vice president. The center claims more than 2,500 of Costa Rica's estimated 4,000 Jews as members. As minister, Zomer will be charged with government efforts to reduce slums and is expected to coordinate designs of a zoning plan for the area surrounding the capital, San Jose. Arias upset many Costa Rican Jews when he moved the country's embassy in Israel out of Jerusalem shortly after taking office.

More Chinese Adoptees Being Raised Jewish
By Jenn Director Knudsen, July 19, 2008, The Oregonian

Heads bent over Hebrew texts, silky skullcaps facing about 220 friends, relatives and congregants, Susannah Hershberg and Susie Nieh complete their lilting chants with an enthusiastic high-five andrelieved giggles.

The girls, both 13, have just wrapped up a reading from the Torah, arguably the toughest part of becoming a bat mitzvah -- the Jewish rite of passage signifying entrance to adulthood -- during their recent Saturday morning ritual at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Southwest Portland.

Holding a joint ceremony, called a b'not mitzvah, was unusual itself. Not so unusual these days, in Portland and nationwide, is for adopted children of Chinese heritage -- as Susannah and Susie are -- to be raised Jewish.

Now some of those children, mainly girls, adopted after China opened its doors to international adoptions in 1994 are taking part in the Jewish coming-of-age ceremonies.

Figures on the number of Chinese children adopted into U.S. families and raised Jewish are hard to come by, according to Patricia Y.C.E. Lin, with the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

Overall, of the thousands of children adopted abroad by U.S. citizens, the largest number are from China, according to 2007 U.S. State Department figures.

As international adoptions have increased, Jews reflect that social trend, said Gary Tobin of the Institute for Jewish Community Research in San Francisco.

Rabbi Daniel Isaak, Neveh Shalom's senior rabbi, who presided over Susannah and Susie's b'not mitzvah, says increasing numbers of international adoptees are being raised as Jews.

Other places popular for adoptions among people of all faiths are South Korea, Vietnam, Russia, Ethiopia and South American nations.

It's not uncommon for adoptees to be raised in their parents' faith. Yet as more nonwhites comfortably call themselves Jews, the changing face of the religion still elicits uncertain responses, such as, "You look (or don't look) Jewish."

One friend, Oona Murphy, 13, at Susannah and Susie's service sheepishly admitted it looked "a little bit unusual" to observe Jewish girls of Chinese descent in traditional garb -- the tallit, or fringed prayer shawl, and kippah, or skullcap -- reading Hebrew effortlessly.

Susannah and Susie were born as Shi-ting and Shu-qun, respectively, in China. They were adopted as infants.

Susannah said friends may ask about her ethnicity but don't question her religion.

"Lots of people don't know I'm, like, Chinese," said Susannah, wearing her straight black hair past her shoulders, powder-blue Nike shorts and a purple T-shirt on a recent day at home in Washington County's Cedar Hills area.

She and Susie laughed knowingly. "They think I'm Cambodian or Hawaiian," said Susannah, an incoming eighth-grader at the International School of Beaverton.

Ethnic labels don't faze her or Susie.

Although Susannah and Susie attend different schools, they've been friends for most of their lives. As third-graders, they began talking about the possibility of doing a b'not mitzvah.

Both families say they chose to give their youngest children a multicultural upbringing, of which Judaism is a part.

"I view us as citizens of the world, and that's how I wanted to raise my kids," said Jill Poris, Susannah's mother, an ethnomusicologist who is married to Ed Hershberg, 55, an Intel engineering manager.

Poris is not Jewish, but her husband is. They also have two grown children.

Susie's father, Sidney Nieh, is originally from Shanghai. Nieh, 66, a retired engineering manager, and his wife, Carol, 61, have three adult biological children.

Like Susannah and Susie, Julia Staimer, 12, of Beaverton also feels at home in synagogue. Julia, who attends school with Susannah, is a member of Havurah Shalom in Northwest Portland, which also has a number of internationally adopted children of member parents.

Julia's parents, Alisa Blum and Marc Staimer, both Jewish, adopted Julia and her younger sister, Gina, from China.

Julia has begun intense study for becoming a bat mitzvah next July. Her mother notes that of the nine young teens in Julia's Hebrew classes, three are adopted -- two from abroad.

"I think it's pretty cool that I'm Jewish," Julia said. "Because a bunch of people are Christian, so it's kinda unique to be Jewish."

Lin, the Berkeley researcher, noted that for young, nonwhite Jews still living at home, practicing Judaism is comfortable.

"Of course you associate with your parents," Lin said.

But once that child -- adopted or not -- lives independently, it's different, she said.

Lin, 38, who was born to Taiwanese parents and converted to Judaism, said fellow Jews meeting her still flinch when she says she's Jewish.

She believes as an adult, a nonwhite Jew must "re-prove" a Jewish identity.

Groups such as the Institute for Jewish and Community Research and area synagogues want to avert Lin's prediction.

Once, a mother asked if her adopted Latino child would be welcome at Neveh Shalom. "It was a perfectly logical question," Rabbi Isaak said, "and I was embarrassed she had to ask it."

Julia Staimer's recent family trip to China, however, made her realize how progressive the United States is. The family of white parents and Chinese daughters attracted gawkers.

"Over there, it's different," Julia said. "Over here, it's normal."

Yeehaa! Oh...and Shalom
By Sara Cukerbaum, InterfaithFamily.com

My childhood was surrounded by all things Texas, the land of cowboys and football. Neither of my parents was originally from Texas. My mom was raised Lutheran in Oklahoma and my father, Jewish in Ohio. They met in Austin at the University of Texas and later settled down in Dallas, where they raised my brother and me.

My mother converted to Judaism before my parents were married and there formed our Jewish unit. I grew up wise to the ways of both Santa Claus and Chanukah Harry. Chanukah was always at home, followed by a Christmas extravaganza at my grandparents. Celebrating Christian holidays with my mother's family raised some tricky questions. My parents' response to these questions was very direct: "You are Jewish. We are Jewish. You are not Christian."

Texas imageI still needed more convincing. In a place like Texas where you can't drive a mile without passing a church and there are only three Reform temples in a city of 1.2 million people, it is clear. Jews are the minority. I took note of these details and became aware at a very young age of my family's minority status. So I took matters into my own hands. I decided my mother's conversion held little weight. I would be half Jewish and half Christian.

This desire to be Christian began one night in a pair of cotton flannel pajamas. I was 9 years old and I was invited to a slumber party at the house of one of the most popular girls in school. Hoorah! Unfortunately, this joyous occasion turned south when the discussion of religion came up. One of the girls started talking about her church group and all the other girls perked up with excitement. When it was my turn, I had to explain that I was Jewish. Looks of confusion faced me. They didn't know what this meant and neither did I. Lucky for me, one little smarty pants decided to clue everyone in. She looked at me with pity as she said, "Oh she doesn't accept Jesus Christ as her savior and she's going to hell. I mean that's what my dad said." For the next several months, I felt like a total misfit. Once word of this "Jewish" business spread, little Jewish Texans everywhere would be forced into hiding. Wait a minute, there is a loophole. I take it back! I'm only half Jewish. I had a good side, the Christian side.

Even at the age of 9, I knew I was lying to myself but the fear of slumber party exclusion made me scared to reveal the truth. I remember being aware of the fact that I was betraying my family, while still attending temple with a smile on my face.

Luckily, my desire to be half Christian faded over time and eventually I discovered my own appreciation for the Jewish faith. Finding this peace was, however prefaced by severe hostility towards Christianity, and religion in general for that matter. Childhood criticism leaves a sticky taste in your mouth. I'm not going to hell. You are all very confused and the source of this confusion is Christianity. Of course with time, I gained exposure and began to realize that the majority seemed to disagree with my little 9-year-old friend.

While the picture I have painted seems bleak, high school was fine. I had great friends, mostly Christian, and we laughed about our differences. They had clever nicknames for me such as "bagel" and I joined the team, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." No one knew I wasn't fully content, but I was aware something was still missing.

So I turned to NYU, land of young Jewish people. Finally I would be invited back to those coveted slumber parties! Then problem number two arose--the "I am not the same kind of Jew as you" problem. East Coast Judaism is a different ballgame. My Jewish identity was tied to the South and to my family. None of this mattered in the world of East Coast Jews, where traditions were different. The first time I went to a Hanukkah party and let slip the word latke, which I pronounced "lot-key," I was laughed out of the dining room.

Words like Ashkenazi and Sephardic meant nothing to me. Jewish summer camps and Yiddish slang constantly popped up in conversations. I had bubkis. Many of my Jewish friends could not explain my ignorance. They refused to believe my lack of pop-Jewish knowledge could be only attributed to the South. Once I explained that my mother had converted, several people made comments, inferring this ignorance was the product of a "mixed" marriage. Wait a second, this sounds familiar. Oh right, I'm back where I began. I'm stuck somewhere in the middle.

Luckily, I did not rebel and start wearing WWJD bracelets or publicly denounce my Judaism. Instead, I fought back with words. My NYU educated self, friend of many cool young Jews, had picked up some new lingo and ideas. I could finally articulate my thoughts on my mother's conversion and our family's participation in Christian holidays. Take that!

I told them that growing up surrounded by two families of differing beliefs provoked thought and acceptance. Instead of summing up any religion by its clichés or text, I saw tradition, faith and passion. I finally understand that religion is not about blood but choices. And my mother made this choice. Judaism was the example my parents put forward to guide my brother and me. What are technicalities when it comes to beliefs and spirituality?

Recently I crossed a young Jewish threshold. I traveled to Israel on a Birthright sponsored trip for young adults. Throughout the trip, we participated in programs that challenged us to think about Judaism and our role as young Jewish adults. One program asked us to define Judaism. For example, does being Jewish mean keeping all of the Jewish traditions or does it mean something else? One question that held particular interest to me asked whether or not we thought marrying a Jewish person was extremely important. I stood in the "Strongly Disagree" corner. While being raised surrounded by families of different faiths posed questions and even conflict, these were valuable questions to consider.

Many believe religion plays a significant role in a person's moral make-up. While I don't completely disagree, I think a person's character does not need to be defined by one god or one text. In fact, my character was defined by several gods. When asked today, I tell people I am Jewish. And I can say that with full confidence, having had exposure to challenging ideas. I'm older now and I know who I am yet I still identify with Christianity and its traditions. From where I am standing, this makes me a better Jew and a more understanding person.

Living Far Apart, Kerala's Jews
By Economist Staff, August 14, 2008, Economist.com

Yaheh Hallegua is the last Jewish woman of child-bearing age in Mattancheri. Her cousins Keith and Len are the last eligible bachelors. But she is not keen on either of them. So within a few decades the extinction of the 400-year-old Jewish community in the port-village in India’s southern state of Kerala is assured.

Mattancheri is Indian Jewry’s most famous settlement. Its pretty streets of pastel-coloured houses, connected by first-floor passages and home to the last 12 sari- and sarong-wearing, white-skinned Indian Jews, are visited by thousands of tourists each year. Its synagogue, built in 1568, with a floor of blue-and-white Chinese tiles, a carpet given by Haile Selassie and the frosty Yaheh selling tickets at the door, stands as an image of religious tolerance. India’s Jews have almost never suffered discrimination, except from European colonisers—and each other.

Despite what some of them claim, Mattancheri’s Jews are not Kerala’s last Jewish community, nor its oldest. In nearby Ernakulam there are about 40 Malabari Jews, of dark, Keralite complexion. Survivors of a community over 1,000 years old, with seven synagogues, now disused, and once extensive landholdings, the Malabaris were the privileged stewards of Kerala’s ancient kings. But they were usurped by the white Jews, who arrived from Europe in the 16th century.

Until the mid-20th century, the white Jews, who prospered as bookbinders and traders, enforced a cruel apartheid. Defying top European rabbis, they barred the Malabaris from their synagogue. The first white Jewess to marry a dark Jew, in 1950, was ostracised. Unsurprisingly, the two communities still dislike each other. Yet the whites now depend upon the Malabaris to make a quorum in their synagogue and supply them with kosher meat.

In caste-attuned India, there was always a Jewish pecking order. At the bottom was India’s biggest community, the Bene Israel. They arrived in western Maharashtra state many centuries ago, but in the 18th century were “rediscovered” and re-educated in the faith by Keralite and Baghdadi Jews (Arabic-speakers who arrived in India around the same time). Under the British, the Bene Israel were granted privileges and, like their Jewish compatriots, prospered. By 1940 there were some 25,000 Bene Israel, 5,000 Baghdadi Jews and perhaps as many Keralite Jews. Most have since migrated to Israel. Indeed, it was migrants from Kerala who first planted roses in the Negev desert and made it bloom. There are now some 5,000 Bene Israel Jews left in India and perhaps a few dozen Baghdadis.

Edna Fernandes’s material is fascinating. Alas, she tends to relate it in cliché-ridden and sometimes annoyingly gushy prose. To say the feuding Keralites resemble “a quarrelling old couple” is criminally unimaginative. And her insinuation that their looming extinction stems from internal rifts, not simply emigration, seems spurious. Yet the story of these Jews is so compelling, and the author’s reporting of it so assiduous, that she deserves leniency.

Indeed, she has unearthed gems. These include the tale of a pair of poor Tamils, who regularly cross India to deliver free vegetables to one of Mattancheri’s aged Jews. They have their eye on her house. In a futile effort to ingratiate themselves to her, one even gets circumcised. They are known in Mattancheri as “Fools Number One and Two”.

And then there is Anil Abraham, a lighthearted young Malabari, who does not want to leave Kerala but fears that he must. He wants “a Jewish wife who will not give me a headache”. Yaheh, it seems, does not fit the bill.

Book Information: The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community
By Edna Fernandes

Skyhorse Publishing; 256 pages; $24.95.

Discovering Jewish Jamaica: A Historical Tour
By Shelly R. Fredman, July 17, 2008, Forward.com

Follow the smells of jerk chicken, down the dirt road past Boston Beach, where the shifting azure waters hold surfers poised on the edge of a wave. Open the heavy bamboo gate at Jamaica’s Great Huts resort, and behold the colorful mural above the deck, a reproduction from the fifth-century Ma’on synagogue in Israel.

This is Jamaica? An unusual resort perched on a spit of land that juts into the Caribbean Sea near Port Antonio, on the island’s resplendently green east coast, Great Huts is the brainchild and life mission of Dr. Paul Rhodes, who was born and raised in Brooklyn in a Jewish family. Rhodes is currently offering Jewish cultural tours, unearthing a rich and varied Jewish past mostly hidden from the typical Montego Bay tourist. Wander Jamaica’s farther reaches, and you will stumble upon Jewish islanders living idiosyncratic yet compelling versions of Eden.

Rhodes, who eventually left Brooklyn to settle in Washington, D.C., first came to Jamaica as a medical student. His love for the people of the island developed as he worked in the almshouses. “I was so moved by what I found there,” he said when I spoke with him in the spring. “The old people were so prayerful and spiritually robust.” In their hymns and chanting, Rhodes heard echoes of his grandfather. The elders’ sense of community reminded him of his boyhood summers spent at Makowsky’s bungalow colony in New Paltz, N.Y.

After working for 25 years in a geriatric practice in a suburban office in D.C., Rhodes was tired and disillusioned. He won the acreage for Great Huts at an auction and opened this anti-resort: a scattering of huts and tented rooms built of local materials, an open-air kitchen, stone steps and hammocks galore. Rhodes is intent on keeping alive a more authentically Jamaican culture that he sees as threatened by the European villa syndrome.

Rhodes’s cultural tours touch upon 350 years of a continuous Jewish presence on the island that goes back to the first Marrano who came here on Columbus’s ships. The tours begin in a hotel in Kingston, the city that is the former home of the Matalone family, one of the early Jewish Portuguese settlers in Jamaica. Indentations in the paint of the right upper doorframes of the house — ghostly images of mezuzas — recall the hotel’s Jewish roots. On to the one surviving synagogue in Kingston, the United Congregation of Israelites, for Sabbath services, and then a stop at the cemetery, where of 300 Jewish graves dating back to the 1500s, about 50 are engraved with the skull and crossbones insignia. Jamaica’s history includes a chapter on Jewish pirates, a long-forgotten partnership of Jews and pirates in the 15th century against their common enemy — the Spanish government. There are around 200 Jews living in Jamaica today, according to a figure cited by Ben G. Frank in his book “A Travel Guide to the Jewish Caribbean and South America” (Pelican, 2005). Most are intermarried couples with multiracial spouses, according to Frank.

Another one of Rhodes’s favorite subjects is the connection between Rastafarians and Judaism. “The Rastafarians emphasize the Old Testament, they are biblically kosher, they follow the dictum of not using a razor, and their songs of peace and love are peppered with quotes from psalms,” he said. Themes of freedom and justice integral to the Old Testament were an inspiration to the early Rastafarians, and many classify their religion as Judaism and view themselves as the true Israelites. Rastas believe that they are descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Rhodes senses roots in Jamaica, real or imagined. Images of the Lions of David everywhere on the island — carved into church facades and painted on signs at the gas station — seem to tell us that although the Jewish population of the island has dwindled, a half-submerged legacy remains.

A rough 20-minute ride down a bumpy, pockmarked road studded with shacks sits Hotel Mockingbird Hill. Nestled in the emerald hills, the small, upscale, environmentally conscious hotel is the creation of Barbara Walker and Shireen Aga. When I met Walker, she was tending the gardens of the Mockingbird, fingers stained with dirt, placid in a virtual sea of pink, yellow and orange bougainvillea.

Walker and her partner, both daughters of women who survived the Holocaust, are living out an unusual version of tikkun olam at the Mockingbird, combining a holistic approach to environmental tourism with a commitment to social justice. “Whereas many think of the environment as air and water — the physical — we are defining environment as physical and social,” Walker said.

Besides running the hotel and open-air restaurant, which features authentic Jamaican cuisine culled from local farms, the women give financial support to a nearby school and a small transportation company, and participate in a women’s project that produces handmade paper by recycling old hotel office paper.

Walker speaks with a sense of mission that acknowledges a twin inheritance: her Jamaican father, who was an ambassador to the United Nations, and her Jewish mother, who was sent with a children’s transport to Holland and later escaped to the United Kingdom.

“She left religion to us,” Walker admitted, noting that her mother also instilled in Walker a love and reverence for the earth, a sense of the sacred that reaches back to Leviticus.

Tending her gardens in the looming green above Port Antonio, Walker seems to have found her jeweled splendor. And so has Paul Rhodes, the Jewish kid from Brooklyn. In their own ways, they reflect 350 years of an unbroken Jewish presence on this unlikely island in the Caribbean Sea. Half-hidden, they glimmer.

Hebrew Goes Platinum
By Arye Dworken, July 2008, Heebmagazine.com

Yael Naim does in fact have a MacBook Air Notebook, and yes, it was free. Apple gave it to her because she recorded the perfect song to launch its revolutionary laptop. You know the commercial—it’s the one in which a jaunty piano introduces a fragile female voice with a slight accent singing about a new soul while an anonymous hand pulls the tech desirable from an interoffice envelope. The delicately petite, Israeli-raised singer is keenly aware of the attention that 30 seconds gave her and appreciates it greatly, but still wants to set the record straight: “Steve Jobs did not pick the song himself…. It says that on the Internet [on her Wikipedia entry] for some strange reason, but this is not the story.” Naim found out the true story of how “New Soul” was chosen by a computer super-company to accompany the unveiling of a sexy piece of aluminum when the song was, at the time, still unavailable as a domestic release. “It was a guy at the company who heard it on a radio station there. I don’t know how they found the song. But he came into work that day and said, ‘We have to use this song.’”

Naim, along with her trusted collaborator David Donatien, has achieved a surreal kind of success, considering that nearly two-thirds of her album is in Hebrew. It’s also worth recognizing that an American major label (Atlantic) saw the self-titled debut as a sensible signing when, certainly, there is a handful of English-only coffee house sirens available locally. “David convinced me to sing in Hebrew,” Naim says about the impetus for the decision. “I was insecure about it, but he believed in my capacity to do the music without even understanding the language.”

“I saw the response of the people watching her sing,” Donatien explains. “And they reacted better to the songs in Hebrew. They felt more real. More sincere. This was her language and why not let her be herself?”

Donatien and Naim met when they both were asked to play for a mutual friend’s recording. “Her music was not that good,” Donatien says. The French session musician has been playing jazz professionally for over 15 years and he looks like it, with a frizzy ponytail and a goatee. “One day, we were improvising and Yael began to sing and I was impressed. I wanted to work with her.” The duo insists that despite Naim’s name on the album cover and the fact that she wrote the songs herself, their music is very much a partnership. “Yael Naim is not about me,” Naim says. “It is more like a project name. Yael Naim is me and David.”

Regardless of who’s in the recording studio with her, when Yael Naim performs live, the experience is all about the performance of the nearly 30-year-old singer, who can even turn Britney Spears’ “Toxic” into a transcendent experience. “I wanted to take something far from what I enjoy and make it mine,” Naim explains of the decision for recording the cover, which is also a live staple. “Britney Spears was far enough.” But the true highlight of her show is when she conducts the crowd to sing along with her in a four-part harmony with the composed confidence of a touring veteran. “I was a singer for the Israeli army for a few years. That’s where you learn how to handle any kind of audience.”

The Third Way: Sadia Shepard
By Sara Ivry, August, 2008, Nextbook.org

Growing up in Newton, a suburb west of Boston, filmmaker Sadia Shepard was an anomaly, with a Protestant father from Colorado and a Muslim mother from Karachi, Pakistan. The picture became even more complicated when she discovered, at age thirteen, that her grandmother, Rahat, who lived with Shepard's family and was called Nana by her grandchildren, was actually born Rachel Jacobs, and was a member of the Bene Israel—a Jewish community centered in what was then known as Bombay.

Nana died in 2000. A year later, Shepard headed to India, making good on a promise she'd made to uncover her grandmother's roots. She spent the next two years traveling the country, meeting members of the Bene Israel community, and documenting their history and rituals.

The result of that journey is a new book, titled The Girl from Foreign, and a documentary film which premieres this week at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Shepard talks to Nextbook about her travels among the Bene Israel, the evolution of their presence in India, and the thorny question of her own religious identity.

Listen to Interview Here

Save 10% - Sign up Now! Bay Area Be'chol Lashon Retreat 2008

Friday, Oct 10 - Sunday, Oct 12
Walker Creek Ranch, Petaluma, CA

You are invited to the 5th Annual Bay Area Be’chol Lashon Retreat for ethnically and racially diverse Jews, family and friends, at Walker Creek Ranch. The weekend is an opportunity to learn together, celebrate our Judaism and continue to strengthen our growing community. Sign up online!

Questions? Email Esther@JewishResearch.org

Sephardi Torah Dedications

September 12-14, 2008
Ahabat Torah
Contact ahabat.torah@gmail.com or 408.266.2342 for more information

Events will celebrate the arrival of two Sephardic Sifrei Torah. Rabbi Tessone, director of the Sephardi Studies Program at Yeshiva University will be the scholar in residence. The Sifrei Torah will be publicly marched to Ahabat Torah and a dedication auction will be held.

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Please send us information about events in your community or articles of interest that relate to Jewish diversity. E-mail newsletter submissions to Esther Fishman, Esther@JewishResearch.org. Submissions are subject to editing for content, clarity and style.

Special thanks to all the contributors who make the newsletter interesting and informative.

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