Diane Tobin Featured in Bubbe's Kitchen:

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Rosh Hashanah Egyptian Black-eyed peas
Submitted by Diane Kaufman-Tobin

Finding new recipes from around the world is a Tobin family holiday tradition. Diane directs an organization called Be’chol Lashon that celebrates global Jewish diversity. “This year’s recipe, Loubia or black-eyed peas from Claudia Roden’s The Book of Jewish Food, is an Egyptian dish that symbolizes fertility and good luck for Rosh Hashanah,” explains Diane, adding that the "good luck" traditions of eating black-eyed peas for the new year are recorded in the Babylonian Talmud. Originally native to Africa, the black-eyed pea was introduced into the West Indies and from there to the Southern United States. “Today, eating black-eyed peas is a New Year’s tradition among some Mizrahi, Sephardi, and Israeli Jews, as well as others throughout the Caribbean and the American South. We can learn much about the culture and tradition of diverse Jewish communities around the world through food.”

Diane says the recipe bridges both the racial and religious cultures of her youngest child, 11-year-old Jonah, an African American boy who was adopted as a baby through JFCS Adoption Connection program. Since 1985, Adoption Connection, a non-profit, licensed adoption agency—has helped place over 1,400 babies into loving families.

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped
3 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 garlic cloves, minced or crushed in a press
1.5 lb (750g) lamb or veal, cubed
1 lb (500g) tomatoes, peeled and chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 lb (500g) dried black-eyed peas, soaked for 1 hour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
Salt and pepper
1-2 teaspoons sugar

Directions:
Fry the onion in the oil till golden. Add the garlic, and when aroma rises add the meat. Stir to brown it all over. Add the tomatoes and tomato paste. Drain the black-eyed peas, and simmer on fresh water for 15 minutes, then drain and add them to the meat. Add cinnamon and allspice and cook for 2 hours, adding salt and pepper to taste and the sugar after about 1 hour.

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New Shul Reaches Out to a Diversity of Jews
By Adam Kredo, September 24, 2008, WashingtonJewishWeek.com

The tides of tolerance are rolling in this Rosh Hashanah at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in the District where a pioneering multicultural and multiracial congregation, Temple Beth Emet, is set to hold its first Rosh Hashanah services.

"You could [show-up and] be purple, gay, straight, have a family, no family, be Orthodox and everything in between -- that's who we are," said Sonia Rosen, 47, a program specialist at Sixth & I. "There is certainly an untapped need for more multicultural programming in the community."

Though the service will be entirely lay led, Rabbi Eli Aronoff, 48, of Beth Emet said he will be available to help conduct davening and otherwise lend a hand if needed.

"Why do we need a [new] synagogue?" Aronoff, who is African American, asked rhetorically. "Because you don't find a community in all these [local] synagogues that caters to these groups."

Aronoff said the nondenominational congregation, with its 17 initial members, will be that safe haven. "We're excluding nobody," he said. "This isn't about skin color or the texture or your hair ... it's about people who want to worship God."

Many multicultural Jews, such as African Americans and Asian Indians, Aronoff added, have trouble finding a "welcoming community" because area synagogues, barring Sixth & I, lack "outreach."

At least one rabbi disagreed.

Rabbi Ethan Seidel of Tifereth Israel Congregation in the District, said that his congregation has a number of multiethnic members. Other area shuls, he added, appear to be fully race-blind in their admissions policies, although they may not actively recruit multiethnic Jews.

"I don't think you'll find many shuls where a black person would feel uncomfortable," Seidel said. "Maybe 50 years ago" -- but not now, he said.

Beth Emet's multicultural services will feature traditional prayers as well as nouveau flourishes that are expected to enliven the proceedings --appropriately so, according to Aronoff. "Praise is not a kind of humdrum thing -- it is joyous and expressive," he explained, referring to prayer.

For example, Aronoff said, participants will be able to express their cultural norms through homegrown customs, such as singing, dancing and other native rituals.

"The music and singing will be a major difference from what you may typically see," Aronoff said, adding that his goal is to "create a spiritually satisfying place" for congregants who otherwise might feel "totally out of place."

While Aronoff said he immediately embraced the idea of unfettered congregational outreach, he had little to do with Beth Emet's creation. That was an outgrowth of a multicultural Havdalah service held in March at Sixth & I that was intended to invigorate and galvanize members of the area's multicultural community.

It was co-sponsored by the Jewish Multiracial Network of D.C. and Kulanu, an organization that locates and assists dispersed Jews. The service, which was attended by about 80 people, was jointly created by Rosen and Beth Emet founder/president, Shelliya Iyomahan; all 17 members of the new congregation participated in the original Havdalah service.

"Out of the Havdalah service, we found out there was a niche" for multicultural gatherings, Iyomahan said, noting that the large turnout indicated that they were onto something big.

Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, the leader of the original Havdalah service, said the event helped bring attention to multicultural needs in the community. Unlike Seidel, however, he mantained that discrimination "still takes place."

"Jews of color and their allies will have litanies of horror stories," he said. "The good news is that devotion ... is strong enough in many of them to overcome this."

Dobb, the father of a 3-year-old African American child, said there is "huge value in creating a safe space" such as Temple Beth Emet, "not that every mainstream suburban shul shouldn't also be a safe place" for multiracial Jews, he added.

Iyomahan, a Silver Spring resident whose parents immigrated from Trinidad, said she loves to experience Jewish prayers in various languages, and has done so in Spanish and sign language, to name a few forms of communication. Beth Emet, she added, will allow people to "come sing to a different melody."

She added that although she loves her Conservative synagogue -- Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase -- Beth Emet will be a place where members need not abandon their "doctrinal beliefs" or assimilate "[to] larger cultures."

Sabrina Sojourner, 55, who will serve as Beth Emet's cantor, said she has encountered synagogues where that was not necessarily the prevailing philosophy.

On the contrary, at certain points in her life, Sojourner, an African American convert to Judaism, said she has felt very uncomfortable in shuls around the United States, including some in the District.

"It's anywhere from mildly amusing to intensely infuriating," she said, adding that her chief congregation, Reform Temple Micah in the District, has always made her feel at ease. Organizers of the new congregation said more such venues are needed.

Sojourner, who is not a formally trained cantor, will aim to include global melodies in the Beth Emet services and alter some of the standards so they are "not strictly [sung] from a standard Jewish-European perspective."

To find the proper rabbi for Beth Emet, Iyomahan contacted the predominately black Congregation Temple Beth-El in Philadelphia, her cousin's congregation. A longtime friend of Beth-El's rabbi, Debra Bowen, Iyomahan asked if there was anyone who could head her new congregation. Bowen put her in touch with Aronoff, a longtime TBE member.

Because the multicultural Rosh Hashanah service has filled up quickly (nearly 100 have signed up, with a waiting list of roughly 100), Rosen added erev Rosh Hashanah, Kol Nidre and Yom Kippur services to be led exclusively by Aronoff. After Rosh Hashanah, Beth Emet will begin hosting weekly Shabbat morning services at Sixth & I.

Aronoff, who plans to commute to D.C. each weekend, grew up in a "very religious home" in Philadelphia and often performed services at Temple Beth-El, where he'd been a member since childhood. Ordained by Rabbi Morris Shoulson, an Orthodox rabbi and mohel in Philadelphia, he labels himself "Conservadox."

Beth Emet's holiday celebration is among four types of services being held at Sixth & I this High Holiday season. Conservative, modern Orthodox and family services are also scheduled, and the waiting list for services is some 600 people. All told, Sixth & I is expected to host at least 1,400 attendees during the High Holidays.

Gay Shuls Set to Release Prayer Books
By Ben Harris, September 16, 2008, JTA

Two of the leading gay congregations in the United States are gearing up to publish formal editions of their prayer books, marking the first time that a siddur drafted with the needs of gay and lesbian Jews in mind will be made available to a wide audience.

Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New York and Congregation Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco are both expected to publish their prayer books in the coming months.

The books, which evolved from spiral bound volumes the synagogues have used in various forms for years, include modifications to traditional liturgy as well as some innovative original works to be recited at life-cycle moments of particular relevance to gays and lesbians.

“I think that the lesbian-gay community has come of age,” said Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, the project manager for the Sha'ar Zahav siddur. “We're seeing the same-sex marriage laws. We're seeing a real sense that we've arrived. And there's a sense of confidence that the community can actually express itself to the general world and be embraced.”

The new books appear at a time of transition for historically gay synagogues. As society at large has grown more tolerant of sexual minorities, mainstream synagogues have become progressively more open to gay and lesbian Jews, causing some to wonder if the notion of a gay synagogue is anachronistic.

Meanwhile, an influx of straight members has led some synagogues, like CBST, to expand their original purpose as a sanctuary for gay and lesbian Jews, further diluting the notion of an exclusively gay synagogue. At Sha'ar Zahav, the three editors who oversaw the prayer-book project are straight.

Those involved in the production of both volumes stress that the books are not exercises in gay sectarianism but were created to appeal to a range of contemporary Jewish experiences that traditional prayers have overlooked.

“There are so many experiences that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people find in their lives as sacred moments that have been invisible,” said Rabbi Camille Angel of Sha'ar Zahav. “This siddur is our contribution to Jewish history and helps us see ourselves reflected in the text. We've retained tradition and adapted tradition, which has always been a Jewish project.”

Though both works include the staples of Jewish worship in traditional form, they also feature liturgical changes that aim to make the service less exclusively male and heterosexual. CBST's prayer book, Siddur B'chol L'Vav'cha (“With All Your Heart”), for example, compares God's rejoicing not to a bride and groom, as in the traditional version of the Shabbat evening L'cha Dodi prayer, but to the more general “heart [that] rejoices in love.”

Al Hanisim, a prayer traditionally recited on Chanukah and Purim to recall the miracles God performed in the past, is adapted to a service for “Pride Shabbat” and thanks God for the “miraculous deliverance” of the struggle for gay equality.

CBST's rendition of the Amidah prayer mentions the biblical Jacob's concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah -- both are mothers of several tribes of Israel, but traditionally they are overlooked because they were partners of lesser legal standing.

“We're very sensitive to the fact that legal marriage does not exist in our community,” said Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of CBST. “And yet family is very important, and this is a way of acknowledging that these women are our matriarchs as much as Rachel and Leah were.”

Sha'ar Zahav's prayer book goes even further with the Amidah, including several variations to reflect the multitude of orientations within the community -- non-believers, women and queers, among others. Worshipers are invited to choose the one they prefer.

“God of oneness, infinite eternal, how queer of you to have created anything at all,” reads the queer Amidah. “God of queerness, in whom are united all separations, we stand before you now queer ourselves made of heaven and earth, day and night, female and male, together all of us within your awesome holy oneness.”

Perhaps the most radical changes are in the Sha'ar Zahav siddur in a collection of blessings meant to consecrate various life-cycle events. In addition to the traditional blessings over food and the like are prayers for the onset of puberty and menopause, a first kiss, taking an HIV test, being single and coming out regarding one's sexual orientation.

It also includes a prayer for gender transitions, first published last year by the Reform movement, as well as a prayer for anonymous sex titled “Kavanah for Unexpected Intimacy.”

CBST's prayer book includes readings from poets such as Walt Whitman and Dylan Thomas, as well as from prominent gay Jews like the playwright Tony Kushner and the Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim.

Among Orthodox Jews, many of these changes constitute nothing less than a reinvention of Jewish tradition.

Rabbi Nosson Scherman, the editor of the ArtScroll siddur, the dominant Orthodox prayer book, said adding a reference to Jacob's concubines was “in effect, rewriting the Torah itself.”

The books are in line with a growing body of liturgical innovation to emerge in recent years from the progressive wings of the Jewish community. Gender neutrality is now standard practice in Conservative and Reform prayer books, while the new siddur released last year by the Reform movement, Mishkan T'filah, also includes multiple services in recognition of the community's diversity.

“Someone looking at this is going to find a groundbreaking siddur, graphically and liturgically, that's so deeply grounded in traditional liturgy, and then wanders off from it,” said Andrew Ramer, a longtime Sha'ar Zahav member who wrote several pieces in the new siddur. “I think that when it's published, what people will feel is this range of who we are.”

Singaporean Celebrity Becomes Jewish
By Boaz Arad, September 11, 2008, Israel Jewish Scene

He was a huge television star, an actor, and a popular radio broadcaster, but Andrew Lim always felt as though something was missing. Then, one day, he saw the light – in Judaism.

But Lim, father of three and one of Singapore's best-known celebrity faces, is not just another converted star. The product of a religious Catholic home, he used to attend church every Sunday as a young man.

Lim knew almost nothing about Judaism until he happened to arrive in Israel as part of a sight-seeing tour, in order to witness firsthand the sights he had read of so many times in the New Testament.

His visit to the Western Wall was the turning point. "I wanted to place a note in the Wall like the rest of the tourists, and to say a small prayer. I draped a praying shawl over myself because it seemed like the right thing to do to get the full experience.

"Suddenly a Jew with a long beard came up to me and asked me where my tefillin were. I told him I don't have any because I wasn't a Jew, but he just smiled and murmured a blessing, and told me: 'You're a Jew'."

When Lim went back to Singapore he discovered Jewish blood did indeed run in his family. He began reading up on the religion online, memorized the Bible, learned about the customs, and ended up falling in love.

Lim finally worked up the courage to spill his guts before the local rabbi. "The first question he asked me was why, in God's name, did I want to become a Jew," Lim recounted. "I told him, you have a great party going on here and I want to join."

Lim's wife, then pregnant with their firstborn, was taken aback. "She comes from a very Christian family," he explains. "I told my wife that if she didn't like it I would stop. She took some time to think, investigated the Jewish religion for herself, and arrived at the conclusion that she liked it, too."

Lim's parents were very supportive, but his in-laws were less than thrilled. "But they've learned to accept it," he said. "Though there are many people we used to call our friends, who have broken from us."

Lim, or Eliyahu Abraham as he is now called in Hebrew, converted to Judaism in Australia together with his wife and children. He kept his day job – a radio broadcaster – and in his free time runs his local Beit Chabad's Torah studies. He dreams of coming to Israel once again, this time with his family, to see where it all began.

New Jew Embraces New Jersey Shul
By Lois Goldrich, September 1, 2008, The Jewish Standard

In a few weeks, Yoko Orit Yamamoto will become a bat mitzvah at Temple Israel in Cliffside Park. Several days later, she will make aliyah.

Yamamoto, who will use the name Orit in Israel — "I don't use it in Tokyo because it is not very common there," she said — converted to Judaism last year, at the age of 38. But, she said, she became interested in Judaism long before that.

Yoko Yamamoto is taking the Hebrew name Orit, which means light.

"I was fascinated by the religion and by the relationship between God and the Jews," she said. Her parents — who, she said, have respected her decision — "don't understand, but they are supportive. They are Buddhists," she said, noting that "in Buddhism, you do not have this relationship with God."

Sent to Israel in 1995 by her employer, Kumon Publishers, she was inspired to learn more about Judaism, beginning a course of study on her return. In '003, she began to study for conversion with a rabbi in Tokyo.

Currently living in New York, where she is studying Hebrew with a friend in preparation for reading Torah and chanting the haftarah, Yamamoto said she began teaching herself English in '00'. She now speaks it fluently.

"I knew I would need English if I wanted to convert," she said, noting that there are many more resources in English than in Japanese.

Shortly before her conversion, she was sent to Teaneck on business. It was then that she discovered Temple Israel Community Center in Cliffside Park. Based at a hotel in Edgewater, she walked to Shabbat services — '5 minutes uphill.

"I didn't want to drive," she said. "I wasn't Jewish at first," she added, "and I was not sure if they would welcome me. But they gave me a very warm welcome and taught me a lot about Judaism. They treated me as a member of the synagogue family."

She came back on Purim. "I wanted to be there as much as possible," she said, adding that "practicing [for my bat mitzvah] is hard, but I want to make every effort. This is a big mitzvah as a Jew. The congregation here has been very helpful and I am very appreciative."

"It's difficult to express my feelings," she said. "Rabbi [Shammai] Engelmayer is very special to me. I have grown a lot as a Jew and as an individual. I read his articles [online] even when I'm in Japan. They inspire me."

Engelmayer told the Standard that Yamamoto's Hebrew name, Orit, is very appropriate, inasmuch as the Hebrew word "or" means light.

"She adds an extra light to the congregation," he said, "with her bright, young, cheerful face and so much enthusiasm. She chose the right name."

He noted that when he first saw her sitting in the sanctuary on a Shabbat morning more than a year ago, "I went over to her and she explained [her situation] and asked if she could stay. Before the service was over, she had been 'adopted' by the congregation."

"When a stranger walks in, they're made to feel like a long-lost relative" in the shul, said Engelmayer, noting that Yamamoto appeared comfortable with the ritual and came back to the shul almost every Shabbat during her stay in New Jersey. "She knew her stuff," he said. "She also participated in the Torah study."

Yamamoto asked to be put on the shul's e-mail list to receive Shabbat bulletins, said Engelmayer.

"She became part of the community, sending messages of congratulations and condolences" to fellow congregants. And while the congregation has offered to sponsor the kiddush at her upcoming bat mitzvah, Yamamoto — who will read the maftir aliyah, chant a haftarah, and deliver a speech — has insisted on doing it herself.

While she does not know what she will do in Israel, Yamamoto is hopeful that she will be able to find a job that uses her accounting skills. She will begin her life there on a kibbutz in the Negev, near Beersheva.

"She says she will keep coming back [to Temple Israel]" whenever she can, said Engelmayer. "We expect to maintain a close relationship."

The 'Secret Jews' of San Luis Valley
By Jeff Wheelwright, October, 2008, Smithsonian.com

One September day in 2001, Teresa Castellano, Lisa Mullineaux, Jeffrey Shaw and Lisen Axell were having lunch in Denver. Genetic counselors from nearby hospitals and specialists in inherited cancers, the four would get together periodically to talk shop. That day they surprised one another: they'd each documented a case or two of Hispanic women with aggressive breast cancer linked to a particular genetic mutation. The women had roots in southern Colorado, near the New Mexico border. "I said, 'I have a patient with the mutation, and she's only in her 40s,'" Castellano recalls. "Then Lisa said that she had seen a couple of cases like that. And Jeff and Lisen had one or two also. We realized that this could be something really interesting."

Curiously, the genetic mutation that caused the virulent breast cancer had previously been found primarily in Jewish people whose ancestral home was Central or Eastern Europe. Yet all of these new patients were Hispanic Catholics.

Mullineaux contacted Ruth Oratz, a New York City-based oncologist then working in Denver. "Those people are Jewish," Oratz told her. "I'm sure of it."

Pooling their information, the counselors published a report in a medical journal about finding the gene mutation in six "non-Jewish Americans of Spanish ancestry." The researchers were cautious about some of the implications because the breast cancer patients themselves, as the paper put it, "denied Jewish ancestry."

The finding raised some awkward questions. What did the presence of the genetic mutation say about the Catholics who carried it? How did they happen to inherit it? Would they have to rethink who they were—their very identity—because of a tiny change in the three billion "letters" of their DNA? More important, how would it affect their health, and their children's health, in the future?

Some people in the valley were reluctant to confront such questions, at least initially, and a handful even rejected the overtures of physicians, scientists and historians who were suddenly interested in their family histories. But rumors of secret Spanish Jewry had floated around northern New Mexico and the San Luis Valley for years, and now the cold hard facts of DNA appeared to support them. As a result, families in this remote high-desert community have had to come to grips with a kind of knowledge that more and more of us are likely to face. For the story of this wayward gene is the story of modern genetics, a science that increasingly has the power both to predict the future and to illuminate the past in unsettling ways.

Expanding the DNA analysis, Sharon Graw, a University of Denver geneticist, confirmed that the mutation in the Hispanic patients from San Luis Valley exactly matched one previously found in Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe. The mutation, 185delAG, is a variant of a gene called BRCA1. When normal and healthy, BRCA1 helps to protect breast and ovarian cells from cancer. An extremely long gene, it has thousands of DNA letters, each corresponding to one of four chemical compounds that make up the genetic code and run down either strand of the DNA double helix; a "misspelling"—a mutation—can occur at virtually any letter. Some are of no consequence, but the deletion of the chemicals adenine (A) and guanine (G) at a site 185 rungs into the DNA ladder—hence the name 185delAG—will prevent the gene from functioning. Then the cell becomes vulnerable to a malignancy. To be sure, most breast and ovarian cancers do not run in families. The cases owing to BRCA1 and a similar gene, BRCA2, make up less than 10 percent of cases overall.

By comparing DNA samples from Jews around the world, scientists have pieced together the origins of the 185delAG mutation. It is ancient. More than 2,000 years ago, among the Hebrew tribes of Palestine, someone's DNA dropped the AG letters at the 185 site. The glitch spread and multiplied in succeeding generations, even as Jews migrated from Palestine to Europe. Ethnic groups tend to have their own distinctive genetic disorders, such as harmful variations of the BRCA1 gene, but because Jews throughout history have often married within their religion, the 185delAG mutation gained a strong foothold in that population. Today, roughly one in 100 Jews carries the harmful form of the gene variant.

Meanwhile, some of the Colorado patients began to look into their own heritage. With the zeal of an investigative reporter, Beatrice Wright searched for both cancer and Jewish ancestry in her family tree. Her maiden name is Martinez. She lives in a town north of Denver and has dozens of Martinez relatives in the San Luis Valley and northern New Mexico. In fact, her mother's maiden name was Martinez also. Wright had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, when she was 45. Her right breast was removed and she was treated with chemotherapy. Later, her left breast, uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries were removed as a precaution. She had vaguely known that the women on her father's side were susceptible to the disease. "With so much cancer on Dad's side of the family," she said, "my cancer doctor thought it might be hereditary." Advised by Lisa Mullineaux about BRCA testing, she provided a blood sample that came back positive for 185delAG.

When Wright was told that the mutation was characteristic of Jewish people, she recalled a magazine article about the secret Jews of New Mexico. It was well known that during the late Middle Ages the Jews of Spain were forced to convert to Catholicism. According to a considerable body of scholarship, some of the conversos maintained their faith in secret. After Judaism was outlawed in Spain in 1492 and Jews were expelled, some of those who stayed took their beliefs further underground. The exiles went as far as the New World.

For the first time Wright connected this history to memories of conceivably Jewish customs, such as sweeping dust into the center of a room and covering mirrors while mourning a loved one's death. She read up on the Spanish "crypto-Jews" in the library and on the Internet. In 2001, she and her husband made an extended visit to the valley and northern New Mexico. Tracking down as many of her paternal relatives as she could find, she alerted them to their dangerous genetic legacy and their ethno-religious heritage. "I have 60 first cousins, some I never knew I had," she says. "So I went fact-finding. I made the trek because I needed to know where I was from. 'Did you know about our Jewish heritage?' I said. It wasn't a big deal to some of them, but others kind of raised an eyebrow like I didn't know what I was talking about."

Part of New Mexico Territory until the U.S. government delineated the Colorado Territory in 1861, the San Luis Valley lies between two chains of mountains, the San Juans to the west and the Sangre de Cristos to the east. The Rio Grande begins here. The town of San Luis—the oldest in Colorado—is the Spanish heart of the valley. With an old church on the central plaza and a modern shrine on a mesa overlooking the town, San Luis bristles with Catholic symbols. It seems a short step back in time to the founding of the New Mexico colony, when picaresque gold-hungry conquistadors, Franciscan friars and Pueblo Indians came together, often violently, in a spare and sunburnt land. As Willa Cather put it in Death Comes for the Archbishop, perhaps the best novel about the region, the sunsets reflected on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains are "not the colour of living blood" but "the colour of the dried blood of saints and martyrs."

The discovery of the 185delAG mutation in the valley and subsequently in New Mexico hints at a different story, with its own trail of blood and persecution. The significance of the genetic work was immediately recognized by Stanley M. Hordes, a professor at the University of New Mexico. During the early 1980s, Hordes had been New Mexico's official state historian, and part of his job was assisting people with their genealogies. Hordes, who is 59, recalls that he received "some very unusual visits in my office. People would drop by and tell me, in whispers, that so-and-so doesn't eat pork, or that so-and-so circumcises his children." Informants took him to backcountry cemeteries and showed him gravestones that he says bore six-pointed stars; they brought out devotional objects from their closets that looked vaguely Jewish. As Hordes began speaking and writing about his findings, other New Mexicans came forward with memories of rituals and practices followed by their ostensibly Christian parents or grandparents having to do with the lighting of candles on Friday evenings or the slaughtering of animals.

Hordes laid out his research in a 2005 book, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico. Following the Jews' expulsion from Spain, crypto-Jews were among the early settlers of Mexico. The Spanish in Mexico periodically tried to root out the "Judaizers," but it is clear from the records of trials that Jewish practices endured, even in the face of executions. According to Hordes' research, settlers who were crypto-Jews or descended from Jews ventured up the Rio Grande to frontier outposts in New Mexico. For 300 years, as the territory passed from Spanish to Mexican to United States hands, there was almost nothing in the historical record about crypto-Jews. Then, because of probing by younger relatives, the stories trickled out. "It was only when their suspicions were aroused decades later," Hordes writes, "that they asked their elders, who reluctantly answered, 'Eramos judíos' ('We were Jews')."*

But were they? Judith Neulander, an ethnographer and co-director of the Judaic Studies Program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, was at first a believer of Hordes' theory that crypto-Judaism had survived in New Mexico. But after interviewing people in the region herself, she concluded it was an "imagined community." Among other things, Neulander has accused Hordes of asking leading questions and planting suggestions of Jewish identity. She says there are better explanations for the "memories" of unusual rites—vestiges of Seventh-Day Adventism, for example, which missionaries brought to the region in the early 20th century. She also suggested that perhaps some dark-skinned Hispanics were trying to elevate their ethnic status by associating themselves with lighter-skinned Jews, writing that "claims of Judaeo-Spanish ancestry are used to assert an overvalued line of white ancestral descent in the American Southwest."

Hordes disagrees. "Just because there are some people who are wannabes doesn't mean everybody is a wannabe," he says. But he acknowledges that Neulander's criticisms have made him and other researchers more cautious.

Hordes, pursuing another line of evidence, also pointed out that some of the New Mexicans he was studying were afflicted by a rare skin condition, pemphigus vulgaris, that is more common among Jews than other ethnic groups. Neulander countered that the same type of pemphigus vulgaris occurs in other peoples of European and Mediterranean background.

Then the 185delAG mutation surfaced. It was just the sort of objective data Hordes had been looking for. The findings didn't prove the carriers' Jewish ancestry, but the evidence smoothly fit his historical theme. Or, as he put it with a certain clinical detachment, it's a "significant development in the identification of a Jewish origin for certain Hispano families."

"Why do I do it?" Hordes was addressing the 2007 meeting, in Albuquerque, of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, a scholarly group he co-founded. "Because the fabric of Jewish heritage is richer in New Mexico than we thought." His research and that of others, he said at the gathering, "rip the veneer off" the accounts of Spanish-Indian settlement and culture by adding a new element to the conventional mix.

One conference attendee was a Catholic New Mexican who heartily embraces his crypto-Jewish heritage, the Rev. Bill Sanchez, a local priest. He says he has upset some local Catholics by saying openly that he is "genetically Jewish." Sanchez bases his claim on another genetic test, Y chromosome analysis. The Y chromosome, handed down from father to son, provides a narrow glimpse of a male's paternal lineage. The test, which is promoted on the Internet and requires only a cheek swab, is one of the more popular genealogy probes. Sanchez noted that the test suggested he was descended from the esteemed Cohanim lineage of Jews. Still, a "Semitic" finding on this test isn't definitive; it could also apply to non-Jews.

Geneticists warn that biology is not destiny. A person's family tree contains thousands of ancestors, and DNA evidence that one may have been Hebrew (or Armenian or Bolivian or Nigerian) means very little unless the person decides to embrace the implication, as Sanchez has done. He sees no conflict between his disparate religious traditions. "Some of us believe we can practice rituals of crypto-Judaism and still be good Catholics," he says. He keeps a menorah in a prominent place in his parish church and says he adheres to a Pueblo belief or two for good measure.

At the Albuquerque meeting, the new evidence about 185delAG prompted discussion not only among academics but also among some of the subjects. Robert Martinez, no immediate relation to Beatrice Wright, teaches history at a high school near Albuquerque. During his summer vacations he helps Hordes sift through municipal and church records in Latin America and Europe, studying family histories and looking for references to Judaism. He traces his roots to members of the first expedition to New Mexico, led by Juan de Oñate, in 1598. The Spanish explorer himself had converso relatives, Hordes has found, and included conversos in the expedition.

When he went to work as Hordes' assistant ten years ago, Martinez, who is 45, was well aware of the disease in his family: several relatives have had breast or ovarian cancer. "Of course, I'd always heard about the cancer in our family on our mom's side," he says. "And then two of my sisters were diagnosed within months of each other." Both women tested positive for 185delAG and have since died. "I carry the mutation too," he says.

The Jewish connection caused no stir in his family, he says. "Me, I'm open. I want to know, Who am I? Where am I? We're a strange lot, New Mexicans. We refer to ourselves as Spanish, but we have Portuguese blood, Native American, some black too. We descend from a small genetic pool, and we're all connected if you go back far enough."

Teresa Castellano, the genetic counselor, has spent time in the San Luis Valley explaining BRCA to community leaders, patients and others. BRCA carriers, she tells them, have up to an 80 percent risk of developing breast cancer, as well as a significant risk of ovarian cancer. If a woman tests positive, her children would have a 50-50 chance of acquiring the flawed gene. BRCA mutations are passed down by men and women alike. If a family has mainly sons, the threat to the next generation may be masked.

A year and a half ago, Castellano got a call from a laboratory technician advising her of another patient with a connection to the 185delAG mutation. The patient's family had roots in the San Luis Valley and northern New Mexico. Their name was Valdez. At the top of the pedigree were eight siblings, two of whom, sisters, were still living. In the next generation were 29 adult children, including 15 females. Five of the 15 women had developed breast or ovarian cancer. Then came an expanding number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, who were as yet too young for the disease but who might have the mutation. Only one or two members of the disparate clan still lived in the valley.

Ironically, Castellano's initial patient, Therese Valdez Martinez, did not carry the mutation herself. Her breast cancer was a "sporadic" case, not associated with a known mutation. But Therese's sister Josephine and her first cousin Victoria had died of ovarian cancer. Their DNA, retrieved from stored blood samples, tested positive for 185delAG. "Something's going on with our family," Therese said. "We need to wake up."

Castellano offered to hold counseling sessions with members of the Valdez extended family in April 2007. With Therese's backing, she sent out 50 invitations. A total of 67 people, including children, attended the session in a hospital conference room in Denver. Therese said, "One cousin—he won't come. He doesn't want to know. To each his own."

The tables were arranged in a U-shape, rather like the mountains around the valley. Castellano stood at the open end. She pointed out that in addition to breast and ovarian cancer the Valdez family had several cases of colon cancer. "There's some risk, it appears," Castellano said, "and therefore everyone in the family should have a colonoscopy at age 45." That caused grumbling among her listeners.

"This family has a lot of ovarian cancer," she went on, "but appears not to have a breast cancer case under age 35. So we think the age for women for starting their annual mammograms should be 30 to 35. We recommend that our '185' families do it by MRI every year. And if you do have 185," she added bluntly, "get your ovaries out at age 35."

A silence, then a question from a young woman in her 20s: "Can't a healthy lifestyle help? Do you have to have your ovaries out at 35?"

"Taking them out will decrease your risk but not eliminate it," Castellano said. Looking for support for this harsh measure, she smiled down the table at Angelita Valdez Armenta. Angelita had undergone the operation, called an oophorectomy. "Angie is a great example of how someone here is going to get old!" Months after the meeting, Angelita had her DNA tested and learned she was indeed a carrier of 185delAG.

The point of the meeting, which Castellano came to quickly enough, was to encourage family members to sign up for the DNA test. "Do you have to be tested?" she said. "No. But then you have to pretend you're positive and be more proactive about your health and your screening." Noting that the men were also at some risk of breast cancer, Castellano urged them to check themselves by inverting the nipple and feeling for a pea-sized lump.

Shalee Valdez, a teenager videotaping the session, put down her camera. "If you have the mutation," she wanted to know, "can you donate blood?" Yes. "Can it get into other people?" No, you had to inherit it. Shalee looked pleased. Castellano looked satisfied. As of this writing 15 additional Valdezes have undergone testing for the 185delAG mutation, with six of them testing positive.

Even Stanley Hordes, whose two decades of historical research has been bolstered by the 185delAG findings, says that the greatest value of the genetic information in New Mexico and Colorado is that it "identified a population at risk for contracting potentially fatal diseases, thus providing the opportunity for early detection and treatment." In other words, genes are rich in information, but the information that matters most is about life and death.

As she prepared for the Valdez family meeting, Castellano recalled, she wondered how the group would respond to what she had to tell them about their medical history. Then she plunged into her account of how 185delAG originated in the Middle East and traveled to New Mexico. The revelation that the Valdezes were related to Spanish Jews prompted quizzical looks. But, later, Elsie Valdez Vigil, at 68 the oldest family member there, said she wasn't bothered by the information. "Jesus was Jewish," she said.

Casablanca Native Says Jewish Community Thriving in Arab Nation
By Dan Pine, October 17, 2008, j. weekly

Picture a modern city with 28 synagogues, 18 kosher butcher shops, Jewish day schools and a bustling Jewish community of 4,000. Now imagine that city lies in the heart of a Muslim Arab nation.

Raphael David Elmaleh says his hometown of Casablanca, Morocco, bucks the anti-Semitic trend when it comes to Jews in Arab lands.

Emaleh was in the Bay Area recently, speaking before Jewish audiences to share his knowledge — and love — of Morocco’s 2,500-year-old Jewish community. He is the only person in Morocco who gives guided tours of its Jewish community.

“We are only 1 percent of the population,” he says in a lilting French-Arabic accent, “but we’re still proud to be Jews and go to synagogue on Shabbat. Everybody knows us. Morocco is the only Arab country where the governor comes to read a letter to wish us a happy High Holy Days.”

Jews first came to Morocco after the fall of the First Temple 25 centuries ago. More came after the destruction of the Second Temple and, in Elmaleh’s family’s case, after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in the 15th century. Today, according to Elmaleh, the Moroccan Jewish community numbers 5,000, though some estimates run as high as 17,000.

Because of its distance from the heart of Islam and its relatively tolerant Berber heritage, Morocco never developed the same degree of antipathy toward Jews as other Arab countries.

Not that it was a paradise. There has been anti-Jewish sentiment, with Jews treated as dimmi (a Muslim concept of inferior peoples). Elmaleh remembers as a child being taunted for wearing his kippah. He eventually left his homeland, living in England for 17 years (where he says he experienced far worse anti-Semitism).

In 1995, his ailing mother begged him to come home. Elmaleh reluctantly returned to Morocco, initially just for a visit. But after landing a job as a social worker for the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, he decided to stay permanently. His work led him to remote villages all over the country.

“I started to do my own research on the Jewish heritage of Morocco, a history lost for 2,500 years. It made me fall in love.”

He recalls arriving in a Moroccan village to inspect an abandoned synagogue. Handing over the keys, an aged Muslim caretaker said, “What took you so long?” When asked how he would feel if more Moroccan Jews returned home, the old man said, “I would welcome them.”

With support from the JDC and the Moroccan government, Elmaleh expanded his scope. He restored several Jewish sites and opened a Jewish museum in Casablanca. Today, a steady stream of Jewish tourists visits Morocco, including many Israelis.

“I have authorization to go everywhere I want for the Jewish museum,” he says. “We have thousands of Muslim kids coming from all over, schools and universities. The new King Muhammad VI sends people.”

A previous king, Muhammad V, refused to enforce anti-Jewish laws decreed by the fascist Vichy government that ruled Morocco during World War II. Morocco was home to more than a quarter-million Jews, but after the birth of Israel, most left the country.

These days, Elmaleh guides visitors all over Morocco to explore its Jewish past and present. He also travels to Europe and North America, boosting his country’s image and urging Jews to visit.

And for those who doubt an Arab nation could harbor such friendly feelings toward Jews, Elmaleh returns to the tale of his encounter with the Muslim caretaker guarding the abandoned synagogue.

Upon meeting him, Elmaleh asked the old man why he did this job. The man replied that he been given a blessing.

Recalls Elmaleh, “This man who gave me the key, he still remembered the Jewish words: Sh’ma Yisrael.”

Beware the Evil Eye
By Hadara Graubart, September 26, 2008, Nextbook.org

Anyone who’s been to a Jewish wedding has witnessed the ritual of the groom stepping on a glass. And most of us have seen hamsahs, the hand-shaped amulets often displayed in people’s homes or worn as jewelry. But how many of us have had a chicken killed on our behalf to ward off bad luck?

Nextbook editor Hadara Graubart’s ancestors came from Spain, via Turkey, and like many Jews who have traversed the globe, they picked up a few traditions along the way. In her family, it’s a short leap from hanging a mezuzah on a doorway to flushing handfuls of salt down the toilet. For this podcast, Hadara spoke with her mother, Jean, about her family's preoccupation with protective rituals.

Listen to the story here

Tale of Tragedy and Triumph for a Struggling Hasidic Rap Star
By Simone Weichselbaum, September 13, 2008, NYDailyNews.com

He dodged bullets on a streetcorner. He watched his mother die from a cocaine addiction. But Flatbush's Yitzchak (Y-Love) Jordan is more Hasidic than 'hood.

New York's only known black ultra-Orthodox Jewish rapper left his native Baltimore at 21 for Brooklyn, converting to a religion that drew him into a far different world.

Jordan, now 29, travels the globe rhyming his views - as a black man and a Jew. "The entire way I look at the world is a fusion between Baltimore and Brooklyn," said Jordan last week, finishing a performance at the Knitting Factory in Tribeca. "Being black affects everything," he said. "I had kids stare at me like I was a gremlin in Borough Park."

In the song, "From Brooklyn to Ramle," Jordan raps about straddling two worlds: The same racist systems create the same victims

Half-hour in the pizzeria, they ain't even ask me, man ... hattan I could spend 1/2 hour hailing taxis That's how I live on the daily. Can't let these haters faze me 'cuz if I did, I'd go insane!

If Jordan's real-life story weren't rare enough, he raps in a mix of English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Arabic, Latin and Aramaic - a homage to his love of the Torah and other old-school godly texts. Judaism intrigued him at the age of 7 as he watched his first Passover commercial. But as a black kid in East Baltimore, he couldn't escape the city's violence.

"I was shot at in high school," he said, explaining that neighborhood thugs fired two bullets at him as punishment for "acting too white." Rapping became Jordan's outlet when he enrolled in a Jerusalem yeshiva at 21, two years after dropping out of Maryland's Towson University in 1996.

He ended up on Avenue H in Flatbush, staying close to his newfound brethren, working in Manhattan as a computer programmer. Hasids now make up Jordan's sense of family. An only child, Jordan lost his father to cancer, then his mother to drugs.

"I wanted to be Jewish my entire life," Jordan said. "Judaism is native to parts of Africa." Even though he wears a yarmulke, Jordan has street cred with the hip-hop elite.

Hip-hop magazine XXL pronounced his music "kosher," and URB magazine called Jordan a "proud individual."

While the bling intelligentsia praise his style, his Hasidic elders are far from fans. In Israel, ultra-Orthodox rabbis forbid rap music, calling it unholy. And in Flatbush, Rabbi Meir Fund, who converted Jordan, said hip-hop is harmful. "I am proud of Yitz Jordan's efforts," Fund said. But "music of this type will not benefit the listener spiritually."

Jordan said he has no plans to give up his music. "Dissing styles of music is counterproductive to the Jewish community," Jordan said. "I have faith that in the future it will change, and all Jewish music will be seen as equally Jewish no matter what style it happens to be in."

BookFest Co-hosted by Be'chol Lashon

Celebrate the Jewish literary landscape in a day-long extravaganza of panels, interviews and talks with distinguished authors and fresh new voices - only at the JCCSF!

BookFest is an annual, one-day literary event that provides a lively and intimate view of the thriving Jewish literary scene. Bringing together some of the brightest and most inventive writers from around the world, the festival fosters interest in Jewish literature and perpetuates a sense of the Jewish literary community.

November 2, 11 am to 6:30 pm

Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California Street, San Francisco

Keynote and closing sessions require registration and ticket purchase.

Author events: 11:00 am - 6:30 pm
Film screening: 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Drop-in childcare available: 10:00 am - 6:30 pm

For more information, click here.

Yasmin Levy Featured at Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival

It has been more than a half a millennium since the Jews were expelled from Spain. But beautiful Ladino (old Spanish with a mix of Hebrew) songs, of the Sephardic Jews continue to be heard throughout Europe, Israel and North Africa. The movie features Yasmin Levy who continues the legacy of her late father and develops a blossoming career as she presents concerts in Ladino to audiences throughout the world, including exciting presentations to enthusiastic crowds throughout Spain.

Thursday, Novmber 13 at 7:00 pm

Cubberley Community Theatre
4000 Middlefield Road
Palo Alto, CA 94303

For more information, click here.

American Sephardi Federation - NY Presents
Young Artists Exploring Our Heritage

November 19, 7pm

15 W 16th St
New York, NY 10011

Second in this series of encounters with young professionals reconnecting to their Sephardic roots through their own creative processes.

This evening features Los Angeles-based, Lisa Alcalay Klug, award-winning journalist and author of 'Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe'; Sarah Aroeste, musician and leader of The Sarah Aroeste Band, who focus on the Judeo-Spanish music of the Ladino-speaking Diaspora; and Erez Safar a.k.a. Diwon, formerly dj handler, the founder and director of Shemspeed, Modular Mood Records, Hip Hop Sulha, and The Sephardic Music Festival. Moderator: Michelle Ishay-Cohen, award-winning art director.

$5 for ASF Members
General Admission: $10 at the door.
For reservations, call: 212-294-8350 ext. 0

We welcome your participation in the Be’chol Lashon Newsletter!

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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