BECHOL LASHON UPDATE

Shanah Tovah!
The fall is a time of transition and change — the end of our year and the beginning of the new one. Our words and prayers in synagogue and the family gatherings in our homes will be spoken in every tongue, a celebration of the diversity of the Jewish people. We will also speak in Hebrew, a celebration of unity of the Jewish people. We at Be’chol Lashon wish you a good and sweet year, one that builds both our diversity and our unity.

CURRENT NEWS

Michelle Obama Has a Rabbi in Her Family
By Anthony Weiss, September 2, 2008, The Forward.com

While Barack Obama has struggled to capture the Jewish vote, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi — a fact that has gone largely unnoticed.

Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side, are first cousins once removed. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson) and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister.

Funnye (pronounced fuh-NAY) is chief rabbi at the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago. He is well-known in Jewish circles for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and the much smaller, and largely separate, world of black Jewish congregations, sometimes known as black Hebrews or Israelites. He has often urged the larger Jewish community to be more accepting of Jews who are not white.

Funnye’s famous relative gives an unexpected twist to the much-analyzed relationship between Barack Obama and Jews in this presidential campaign. On the one hand, Jewish political organizers, voters and donors played an essential role in Obama’s rise to power in Chicago, including some of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent families. But the Illinois senator has struggled to overcome suspicions in some parts of the Jewish community, including skepticism about his stance on Israel and discredited but persistent rumors that he is secretly a Muslim.

Funnye, who described himself as an independent, said he has not been involved with the Obama campaign but that he has donated money and was cheering it on.

“I know that her grandfather and her father and my mom and all of our relatives that are now deceased would be so very, very proud of both of them,” Funnye told the Forward.

Michelle Obama and the Obama campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Funnye told the Forward that he has known Michelle Obama (born Michelle Robinson) all her life. His mother and her father, Frasier Robinson III, enjoyed a close relationship, and Funnye said he saw Michelle several times a year when they were growing up, mostly at family functions and on occasional visits to her house.

“Her father was like the glue of our family,” Funnye said. “He always wanted to keep the family very connected and to stay in touch with each other.”

Funnye, 56, said he and Michelle, 44, were not especially close growing up, but he remembers her as “energetic and smart and very caring.”

The two fell out of touch when they grew older and went their separate ways but then reconnected years later when Michelle Obama was working for the University of Chicago and Funnye was leading a local social service organization called Blue Gargoyle. Funnye also worked with Barack Obama, then a state senator, who came and spoke at events for the organization. When Barack and Michelle Obama married, Funnye and his family attended the wedding.

Although Funnye’s congregation describes itself as Ethiopian Hebrew, it is not connected to the Ethiopian Jews, commonly called Beta Israel, who have immigrated to Israel en masse in recent decades. It is also separate from the Black Hebrews in Dimona, Israel, and the Hebrew Israelite black supremacist group whose incendiary street harangues have become familiar spectacles in a number of American cities.

Funnye converted to Judaism and was ordained as a rabbi under the supervision of black Israelite rabbis, then went through another conversion supervised by Orthodox and Conservative rabbis. He serves on the Chicago Board of Rabbis.

Funnye’s relationship with the Obama family was reported in the Chicago Jewish News in an article dated August 22. A Wall Street Journal article in April reported that the aspiring first lady had a cousin (whom the paper mistakenly referred to as a second cousin) who is a prominent black rabbi but did not mention Funnye by name.

The rabbi’s familial connection with the Democratic presidential nominee is also a matter of common knowledge in Funnye’s synagogue.

“He really jumped on everyone’s radar after the 2004 convention,” Funnye said. “That’s when some people said, ‘Isn’t he related to you or something?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he’s married to my cousin, and she’s making him everything that he is.’”

Editor's Note: Rabbi Capers Funnye is the Associate Director of Be'chol Lashon

Who Is an African Jew?
By O. Stav Hillel, September 29, 2008, The Jerusalem Report

The gently sloping campus of Semei Kakungulu High School, named for the founder of Uganda's Jewish community, lies in the shadow of the imposing Mt. Wanale, a volcanic massif which rises dramatically from the surrounding plain of Africa's Rift Valley and offers breathtaking views of the valley below.

Last July, in the city of Nabugoye, in Eastern Uganda, the group of Jews known as the Abayudaya ("People of Judah" in the native Luganda language) convened for the installation of Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, Uganda's first chief rabbi and the first black sub-Saharan rabbi to be ordained by an American rabbinical school.

For the past five years, Sizomu has studied to be a Conservative rabbi at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, sponsored by B'chol Lashon, a non-profit group dedicated to encouraging Judaism among non-traditionally Jewish groups; he was formally ordained there in May.

Preparations for this event have continued for some months in Nabugoye, roughly 20 minutes outside of Mbale, the largest town of eastern Uganda, itself located some 4.5 hours by car or bus from the capital of Kampala. The border with Kenya lies just beyond Wanale and, to its north, the more distant and more famous Mt. Elgon, perpetually swathed in mist.

Many of the visitors to today's celebration have passed through Mbale and have ascended to Nabugoye via rickety minibuses or noisy motorcycle-taxis, along the dusty roads of rural Uganda, passing the little shops and markets, flocks of goats and herds of cattle, and fields of cassava, sesame and millet from which the local population makes a subsistence livelihood.

Colorful striped tents have been erected around the school's central courtyard and an energetic band is performing traditional driving African rhythms. Then, as the music quiets, the overflowing crowds look to the flowered gate. Walking slowly, surrounded by members of his extended family and colleagues and mentors from America, Sizomu approaches the center to be formally greeted by the Abayudaya. Tearful, yet smiling, he and the other dignitaries take their seats.

The assembled guests include local religious leaders, political council members from the eastern region, numerous American volunteers and Israeli travelers, and the Abayudaya themselves, sitting in chairs carefully set up in the shade of the tents; dozens are standing outside because there is not enough room. Everyone seems to be wearing their finest clothing, and many of the women are wearing traditional colorful dresses.

In an atmosphere of inter-religious cooperation, integration and mutual understanding, numerous local dignitaries speak about Sizomu. A well-known imam conferred a humorous African name on each of the visiting rabbis, much to their delight. A local Christian leader thanked "Brother Gershom" for his part in providing medical clinics, boreholes and mosquito nets to some of the local neighborhoods, irrespective of the faiths practiced there. They all spoke in English, learned during the years of the British colonization, spiced with African expressions.

"Thank you, rabbi," said Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School. "Bless you for the inspiration you have provided. Let us pray for a world of peace and love, justice and compassion. Let it pour forth like the waters, shine like the sun."

Musical performances between the speeches energized the crowd as a professional Ugandan dance troupe - accompanied by a raucous band of musicians - performed in traditional brightly colored costumes. Several of the dances were explained as representing, by costume and movement, specific tribes and regions of Uganda.

Concluding, the three Los Angeles rabbis, who had accompanied Sizomu throughout his studies, presented him with a cup filled to overflowing with wine, which all the inducting rabbis had helped to fill. Sizomu received it gratefully, beaming and teary-eyed at once. In unison, the rabbis recited the traditional priestly blessing from Numbers 6:22-27.

Sizomu then spoke of the emphasis Judaism places upon education and his hopes for the newly constructed yeshiva - the most recent addition to the Nabugoye community center - and spoke for religious ties across boundaries: "We set aside our differences and unite around our common beliefs... I am willing to work with all religious denominations here in Uganda."

Later, Sizomu would tell The Jerusalem Report, "The moment I walked in and stood, I felt the kedusha (holiness) flowing through my veins. I felt a deep sense of obligation grasp me, obligation to my people." Seeing Sizomu's tears, Artson had said, "This means… that he holds the community's future in his hand, he is strong enough to carry them and he is aware of what needs to be done."

The installation of Sizomu was the central event of a weeklong series of significant events for the Jewish communities in Africa, and especially in Uganda, that took place this summer.

The festive installation was preceded by a two-day-long Beit Din (religious court), in which some 250 individuals, who had been living as Jews, were formally converted into Judaism.

The installation was then followed by the first convention, in Uganda, of the Pan-African Jewish Alliance (PAJA), an organization formed three years ago to identify and unite African congregations and integrate them into the wider Jewish world. PAJA has previously convened in Nigeria and the U.S. This meeting, which focused on the widely varied issues with which Jewish Africans must cope and contend, was attended by representatives of the native Jewish communities in Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe - communities totaling many tens of thousands of Jews - together with several African-American Jews from the United States.

In some countries, such as Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, with a Jewish community numbering several thousand, Jewish practice is constrained by its limited representation in societal institutions. There, Jews are involved in efforts to persuade members of the Nigerian parliament to recognize Judaism as an official religion, thus putting an end to state ostracism and bureaucratic disenfranchisement of the country's Jewry. They are also attempting to create Jewish pilgrimage boards, parallel to the pilgrimage boards for the Muslim hajj and Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land.

Most of the Jewish communities are also seeking Western contacts and are in need of ritual items such as tallitot [prayer shawls] and prayer books.

The Abayudaya community is a rarity in Jewish history. Comparable perhaps to the Khazars of the medieval Caucasus, they make no claims to Jewish lineage, but have adopted Judaism, identify as Jews and observe Jewish laws. Some peoples, such as the Lemba of southern African countries, believe themselves to be descendents of the lost tribes of Israel and DNA testing has confirmed that many of the Lemba do, in fact, share a common Semitic ancestry. And there are other scattered Jewish communities across Asia, Europe and Latin America, whose traditions claim descent from the lost tribes or other similar Jewish ancestry.

The Abayudaya community traces its Judaism to 1919, when a charismatic local leader named Semei Kakungulu, a wealthy landowner and military adviser to the occupying British, abandoned Anglican Christianity in favor of Judaism, which he believed to be more authentic to the Bible. It would appear that Kakungulu's rebellious spirit was directed not only at the missionaries but against the colonial rulers in general. The British refused to recognize his self-bestowed nobility status, to which he felt he was entitled because he had assisted the British in their conquest over the numerous tribes in the region. His conversion may thus have been strategically and politically, as well as religiously, motivated.

In 1919, Kakungulu led many followers into the faith and, at age 50, underwent ritual circumcision, together with his son, and convinced the males under his leadership to do so as well. For a number of years he conducted prayer services, gleaning what he could from his only Bible. Initially, his practice was an eclectic combination of Jewish, Christian and traditional local beliefs, but gradually he began to eliminate other influences, focusing on literal interpretations of Biblical injunctions. In the mid-1920s, two Jewish traders who happened through the area instructed him in tradition and ritual, including ritual slaughtering of animals. From then on, the Abayudaya ate only meat that they had slaughtered and began to give their children biblical names.

Over the ensuing decades, the Jews saw their numbers rise and fall. Uganda gained its independence from Britian, but Uganda remained politically and economically unstable. By the end of the 1970s, after Idi Amin's decade-long rule, the community had dwindled to 300, a tenth of its previous number, and more than thirty synagogues had been destroyed. The first synagogue, Kakungulu built on the hill, which decades later became Sizomu's Moses synagogue and now also includes the school campus, had been transferred to non-Jewish hands.

Amin was deposed in 1979; over the next decade, the community was re-established and revitalized. In recent decades, Uganda's government has stabilized - even if the country remains poor, with a per-capita GDP of $300, half of the average for countries of the region. The current democratic regime maintains full religious tolerance and in the capital city of Kampala (population three-quarters of a million), for example, one finds large cathedrals and mosques, a Sikh temple, and even Africa's sole Baha'i house of worship.

Although not genetically or historically related to other ethnic Jews, the Abayudaya maintain a strong Jewish identity. Following the conversions in July, the community numbers just over 1,000. Nabugoye Hill, the site of community founder Semei Kakungulu's original estate, serves as a kind of headquarters for the Abayudaya - with their main synagogue, primary and secondary schools, yeshiva and other facilities. Few Jews actually live here, however, and the community is spread among more than half a dozen remote towns in eastern Uganda. Each of these towns - some only half an hour's walk from Nabugoye, others as much as seventy kilometers away - has a synagogue for Friday night and Saturday morning services, and each synagogue has a distinctive style of prayer.

Most Jews attend synagogue services on both Friday night and Saturday morning; entire families often walk for miles to pray together. Sizomu is the rabbi at the Moses synagogue, located on Nabugoye Hill, a large brick structure, with a concrete floor, an elegant ark for the Torah scrolls and several bookcases full religious books. The services here follow the Conservative tradition; some prayers are recited in Hebrew while others have been translated and are sung in Luganda. Many of the melodies are clearly African in origin, some composed for the purpose by members of the congregation and are accompanied by thumping drums and acoustic guitar. Other synagogues hold their services exclusively in Luganda; some are quiet and solemn; others more boisterous.

Most of the Jews survive from farming and are as poor as most of the rural Ugandans. Family size is generally large, with some families having ten or more children. Many, but not all, of the Jewish children attend the schools in Nabugoye, as do some non-Jewish children. The Abayudaya maintain close relationships with the other religions in the region; one local coffee plantation is run as a Jewish-Christian-Muslim collective. Jewish homes are often decorated with Jewish symbols, such as the magen David (Jewish star), since the Abayudaya feel no need to hide their identity.

Many children have been orphaned by AIDS, and rely on a relative or other benefactor for support and school fees. While sub-Saharan AIDS rates are among the world's highest, Uganda's have been declining in recent years. Roughly 4% of Ugandans are infected, but all Ugandans continue to be affected by this and other health issues, such as a high frequency of malaria. Access to health services is limited and expensive; doctors are few.

Strict observance of the dietary laws, prayer and Shabbat are observed as part of daily life among the Abayudaya. Unlike the majority population, who circumcise their male children at a much later age, the Abayudaya perform the ceremony when the child is eight days old, according to biblical injunction. The festival cycles are maintained, and the community comes together during the high holidays. Rabbi Sizomu hopes to restore bar- and bat-mitzvas and traditional Jewish weddings to the community.

In the 1960s, with the opening of the Israeli Embassy, contact was established with Jews abroad. This contact came to an abrupt end with the rise of Idi Amin in 1971; Amin expelled the Israelis and persecuted the Abayudaya, imposing forced conversion among all religious minorities to Islam or Christianity.

Since the mid-1990s, however, with a more politically and economically stable regime, the Abayudaya have increased their contacts and relationships with other Jews, particularly in the American Jewish community. Numerous American Jewish organizations have done much to aid the community with running-water systems, public-health education programs and classroom facilities.

Rabbi Richard Camras, rabbi of Shomrei Torah Synagogue in West Hills, California, where Sizomu did his rabbinical internship, and Sizomu's mentor, says that Sizomu brought an "increase in joy, generosity of spirit and devotion to the Los Angeles community. Gershom is a man who dreams large and has the capability, fortitude and personality to achieve those dreams. He has a deep love for both Africa and Judaism and is very open to learning and self-improvement."

Sizomu, 39, is a fourth-generation Abayudaya. He grew up in Nangolo, a tiny community some five miles from Nabugoye. His grandfather and father before him were spiritual leaders of the community; it was in the caves near Nangolo that Sizomu and other Jews discreetly observed rituals during Idi Amin's reign of terror. He and his family always seemed to believe that he would grow up to be a leader of the community.

Artson remarks, "The adjustment of moving from Uganda to Bel-Air [where Sizomu resided with his family during rabbinical training] could be a made-for-TV movie. But now everybody in L.A. has an Abayudaya kippa!" Sizomu and his wife Tziporah have three children. Readjustment to village life will be, Sizomu realizes, challenging. Yet, Artson says, Sizomu "never considered going elsewhere but back to his home community. He came back here every summer."

Sizomu acknowledges that the liturgy and rituals that he brings from the Conservative movement in California are very different than the local traditions. The Abayudaya, isolated for decades, practiced a more primitive, nearly biblical form of Judaism, the result of much guesswork and African interpretation. However, he says, the adjustments will be ongoing as the Abayudaya slowly shake off African traditions, such as women's inequality, and evolve into a community with a more Western outlook.

Sizomu tells The Report that he wants "to make Jewish learning accessible for everybody and to teach Hebrew, so that the people will understand every aspect of our tradition." He intends, he says, to have students from all over Africa, who will eventually go back as spiritual leaders to their communities and to develop a curriculum specifically tailored to suit the needs of Africa.

He then adds, "But in the meantime, I also need a healthy community, well-nourished… So we will also focus on improving our health center and expanding economic opportunities. And academics must be emphasized - we will constantly try to improve our schools."

The July religious court was the third such court that U.S. Conservative rabbis have conducted in Nabugoye since 2002, when the Abayudaya community first decided to undergo official conversion. For many, that first conversion of 700 people was more of a confirmation of their belief, since they already felt themselves to be Jewish but recognized the importance of recognition from outside of their own community. In 2005, an additional 50 individuals were converted, and at that time, in addition to the conversions, Sizomu organized a general teaching seminar and health clinic from abroad.

During this two-day religious court, some 250 individuals chose to convert, bringing the total number of "official" Jews to approximately 1,050. Prospective converts arrived from their villages in eastern and northern Uganda, as well as some from Kenya, Nigeria and even from Ghana.

Most of the converts were young and some families arrived with ten or more children. Six rabbis from the United States, in addition to Sizomu, divided into two teams of three and four. Speaking English, with frequent translation by Sizomu or other members of the community, the rabbis asked the parents and children questions about spiritual faith and religious practice. Yet some of the rabbis were concerned about the subtleties of translation. Rabbi David Kalender, of Fairfax, Virginia, outside the District of Columbia, told The Report, "It's difficult to ask something like 'What is the presence of God in your life?' and be sure my meaning is understood." Artson concurred, expanding the anxiety to include a deeper cultural background: "As Western Jews, we can rely on common reference points. But when I speak to Rabbi Gershom, I can't always be sure that what I'm saying is what he's hearing."

Camras then performed the hatafat dam ritual, a symbolic circumcision, since most Abayudaya males are circumcised even before conversion. The last stage of the conversion involved a trip by all converts to the nearby mikve (ritual bath). But the organizers decided that the modest mikve was too small and trucks were rounded up to take the families over to the nearby Namatala River.

Observing the proceedings, Artson commented, "These days have been messianic for me. The vision of mashiach [the messiah] is a world where all people recognize their brotherhood, where borders and divisions fall away. I will tell everyone who will listen that we have brothers and sisters in Africa, and we have responsibilities in Africa."

Added Rabbi Jacob Herber of Milwaukee, president of the Wisconsin Council of Rabbis, "Jews in the West have much to learn from the Abayudaya. They have a keen sense of what [renowned Jewish philosopher] Abraham Joshua Heschel called radical amazement, a sense of awe that we should all try to rediscover. Their expressions of the covenant with God and the theodocy of God's justice are biblical, rather than contemporary."

And yet, despite their awed enthusiasm, the U.S. rabbis acknowledge that the conversion process presented religious and philosophical dilemmas. The Abayudaya, it could be said, present an African twist to the contentious, often politicized question: Who is a Jew?

"No American Jew would see their Judaism in terms similar to these people," Artson acknowledges. While insisting that the conversions are religiously valid, he also tells The Report that certain adjustments had to be made, given the recent development of their Judaism and their limited access to resources. "In America, people often think that you can be Jewish without being observant - so we educate first and only then do we convert. But here, the Talmudic approach [we have applied], according to which loyalty to God's rules and God's commandment is tested, seemed appropriate. This is the one true requirement to Judaism, both in antiquity and in contemporary times.

Kalender adds, "Three things ought to be tested during the Beit Din: education, commitment to mitzvot, adherence to ritual. At the Beit Din, the people expressed their love for Torah and explained how Judaism organizes their lives and brings them closer to Torah… So to meet people here, embracing this religion, with no resources but the purity of their faith, is... an inspiration and a wake-up call.

Kalender explained that these people ought to be rewarded for their accomplishment despite their distance from resources, rather than punished for their lack of access: "Here there is simply a hunger for growing Jewishly. Here, we find a commitment to God, in a community that interacts with God, so we must look into our history and our tradition, to the converts in our tradition. Yes, Judaism has transformed itself over the course of 3,800 years, but to set aside those aspects of our heritage and make it about politics, or details, is to do a disservice to the community and therefore to God."

Rabbi Ruven Barkan, of Chicagoland High School in Illinois, arrived several weeks in advance of the ceremony to familiarize himself with the community and prepare for the conversion process. "Even though we interviewed every family individually, it was clear that their commitments are reinforced by their tribal ties," he tells The Report. And, tribally and individually, he said, "their repudiation of ties to other religions was complete. Many have been practicing Judaism for years."

Referring to the controversy surrounding conversions in Israel, and the recent decision to annul conversions previously conducted by the official conversion court, the Conservative rabbis anticipate that these conversions will encounter resistance to official recognition in Israel. Kalender tells The Report, "The Chief Rabbinate has decided that the best way to protect and enhance Judaism is to put up one barrier after another, and call that halakha (Jewish law)."

These conversions and the ordination of Sizomu, Kalender continues, are "about the beauty of bringing people closer to their faith. Too often in the United States and Israel, the transmission of Judaism is buried under layers of politics or conflict, without depth of meaning... I am reminded of the concept of heshbon nefesh, of taking stock of our spiritual inheritance, which in the West we've come to take for granted. I've had to reframe my entire outlook on conversion and see it through the lens of Jewish history as a whole, with the same purity of experience of Avraham and Sarah".

Yet the tension between the Orthodox and non-Orthodox streams of Judaism has already penetrated into Uganda. Sizomu reveals that several years ago, in the town of Putti, half an hour's drive from Mbale, the congregation was told by visiting Orthodox Jews that their conversion was not valid. The members of the Putti community broke away from the Abayudaya and claim to be Orthodox - but receive no support, Sizomu says, from any Orthodox organization. The leader of Putti did not attend the formal installation ceremony.

Sizomu then says, "I am not worried about recognition as much as I am with halakha, and I am confident about the Judaism of the Abayudaya in terms of halakha… These people are choosing Judaism, so I trust that their desire is pure… Israel would be nice, but, at the moment, the problem is not with us, it's with Israel. Right now, I am working on expanding and consolidating the community here in Uganda."

Explaining the appeal of Judaism, Barkan tells The Report that rural Africans "seek a sustaining faith and practice that will strengthen their community and personal relationship to God. Judaism is providing an appealing avenue to realize these religious commitments."

He continues, "Shabbat is the linchpin for Jewish identity, affiliation, and affirmation. There are a few reasons why this is the case: It is a very visible and communal expression of Jewish identity. It parallels the expressions of faith of their Christian and Muslim neighbors. And Shabbat is a part of the larger commitment of the Jewish covenant through its rich symbolism and the observance of halakha in general."

Shmuel Odyek, 42, is a leader of the Apaci (pronounced Apatchi) district community, near the northern city of Lira, a day's travel from Mbale. Apaci is the newest of the congregations in Uganda, having gravitated toward Judaism from the Christian denomination of Adventism. Says Odyek, "We started investigating ways to Judaism around 1995, slowly building up our practice. We did not know of the existence of the Abayudaya when we started out. Most of us work as farmers, but we have no market for our crops, so we remain poor; our homeland region is very slow to develop."

Most of his community, says Odyek, stayed behind due to the cost of transportation - 12,000-18,000 Ugandan shillings, approximately $10-12. But some 52 people - men, women, and children - did make the full-day trip along badly maintained, often flooded roads. "We have now finished the process of conversion and will head back north. More people from Apaci will come to the next Beit Din. I feel very happy in my heart to have gone through this process of conversion."

Referring to the reasons that the converts gave to the rabbis about their reasons for accepting Judaism, Camras adds, "The most compelling answer, which was repeated often, was that these Africans were captivated by central ideas taught in our Bible, most particularly, the idea of being an am kadosh, a holy nation, whose task it is to be a light unto the nations."

And Rabbi Cheryl Peretz of the Ziegler School tells The Report, "Almost all of the people spoke of a real love for prayer and Shabbat, both of which were the major entry points for the members of the communities. This strikes me as different from Western communities, where people often struggle with both prayer and Shabbat."

Concluding his experience in the religious court, Herber says, "In seeking to determine their knowledge, commitment and motivation, I learned from their wisdom. I now have much intellectual and emotional processing to do with my own congregation."

And Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of the Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Chicago, reflected, "This represents the fulfillment of generations of dreams: to see an African lifted up by his peers as rabbi to serve in his community. We see the respect and admiration paid to him by the deans and rabbis with whom he has worked, and we see the excitement and esteem of the community here - not just Jewish, but Christian and Muslim.

"The native son has come home, with one dream fulfilled, and many more yet to be fulfilled... We will see many more Jews of African descent, cut from Gershom's cloth, rise to prominence in the future."

An Evening With Rabbi Sizomu
By Masada Siegel, September 5, 2008, The Jewish Advocate

The African drum beat was combined with the violin, clarinet and myriad musical instruments. The energy in the room was overwhelming and the room was filled with a sea of white faces, with dots of color interspersed. All eyes were on Ugandan Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, his brother JJ and his son, all wearing colorful African kippoth. They were surrounded by musicians from the Scottsdale (Ariz.) community.

Sizomu recently became the first ordained rabbi from Africa. He was able to pursue his dream after receiving a fellowship from the Los Angeles-based Be’chol Lashon. The organization brought Sizomu and his family to California, where he attended a five-year rabbinic program at the American Jewish University. He began to tell his story to the crowd.

“In the 1900s, Missionaries came to convert my tribe, the Mbale, to Christianity,” he said. “The leader of the community, Semei Kakungula, went home and read the bible he was given. He came back to the man who gave it to him, and returned half of it. He told him, ‘I believe in the first half and I want to be Jewish!’”

One can only imagine the look on the missionaries’ faces when Kakungula returned telling them that he and his household had all undergone circumcisions. They became known as the Abayudaya Jewish Community. In 1958, when Kakungula died, Sizomu’s grandfather took over as leader.

Sizomu finished his story and the music resumed. It was a combination of Jewish prayers with African melodies sung in both Hebrew and Luganda. Sizomu enchanted the audience with his story of struggling to practice Judaism in secret under the dictator Idi Amin. It reminded me of stories from the former Soviet Union and of Spain during the Inquisition.

Sizomu then recounted his first Pesach. “It was April 11, 1979,” he said. “I remember on that day in the morning the new government had overthrown Idi Amin and they announced freedom to worship. The next night we had 200 people at the Seder.”

Pesach, the celebration of freedom, was especially powerful that night because the Abayudaya rabbi spoke to his congregation freely for the first time in years. The community, once three thousand strong, was now reduced to 300 people.

“Our rabbi said it was more than a coincidence,” Sizomu explained. “It was a sign. It was God’s plan. He was watching our community. It was a turning point for me, a defining moment.

“To bring people back to their Judaism, the youth movement, led by my brother JJ, began to go door to door and tell people that the leaders of the community were ready to lead again and it was time to have religion again.”

But the story of the Abayudaya community and Rabbi Sizomu might never be known if not for Diane Tobin, Be’chol Lashon’s director and associate director of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. She invited Sizomu to the Be’chol Lashon International Think Tank.

“Gershom [Sizomu] is a visionary and charismatic leader,” she said. “It has been an honor to support him over the past five years and we plan to stay involved in building the Jewish community of Uganda and others in Africa and around the globe.”

I was intrigued by my first encounter with Sizomu, his music and stories, and so I asked Tobin to arrange an interview. Having myself lived in Los Angeles during college, I was curious about what it was like to move from Africa to California.

“It was like going to the Garden of Eden, coming from a place with no running water,” Sizomu said.

He and his family also spent a year in Israel. “Everyone there understands what being Jewish means,” he said. “We also loved speaking Hebrew. It was a wonderful experience, and it was like being home.”

Changing countries and continents is always an adventure, and not necessarily an easy adjustment. Upon returning to Africa, Sizomu explained that it was good to be home, though it is still a far cry from America. Just this week, Sizomu, his son and daughter were afflicted with malaria.

But there are many positive changes on the horizon, both for the Jewish community of Uganda and its neighbors. There is now a coffee company there comprised of Jewish, Christian and Muslim farmers. The Abayudaya community is helping neighboring villages by giving them access to clean water and an education. And B’chol Lashon is hoping to raise $500,000 to build a health center.

The Abayudaya Jewish community is just starting to make music again. They hope the changes they’ve brought can be an example to the African community and the world.

If you are interested in learning more and helping raise money for the much needed health center, contact Diane Tobin at Be’chol Lashon, 415-386-2604.

Rethinking Racial Progress
By Jonathan Kaufman, August 28, 2008, The Wall Street Journal

When Sen. Barack Obama delivers his acceptance speech Thursday -- on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech -- he will cap a journey that seemed unlikely 25 years ago.

To many civil rights leaders, the 1980s brought setbacks to racial issues. That era witnessed the rise of Reagan conservatism, court reversals on issues like affirmative action and busing, and growing despair and poverty of the inner cities.

But it was during the 1980s that many of the broader goals of the 1960s such as integration and equality in education began to be reached, changing the mind-set of both blacks and whites -- and benefiting Sen. Obama himself.

That has many students of civil rights rethinking their measures of progress.

"It's like the way most experts missed predicting the fall of the Soviet Union," says Jelani Cobb, a black professor of political science at Spelman College in Atlanta and an Obama delegate here. "We have millions of race studies. We were measuring some things -- but we weren't measuring the right things."

None of this has erased prejudice, provided full educational and job opportunities for blacks -- or now guarantees that Sen. Obama will win. The rise of Sen. Obama and the election of black mayors in cities around the country haven't prevented the development of a black underclass mired in poverty in the inner city.

But the changes since the 1980s were profound.

While segregation in churches, schools and neighborhoods has persisted, American workplaces became dramatically more integrated, leading blacks and whites to have more social interactions at work, scholars and analysts say, softening racial attitudes. Almost two-thirds of whites now say they have personal contacts with blacks often or daily, according to a recent CNN poll.

Rioting and the rise in crime in the late 1960s through the 1970s fueled white anxieties and fears about blacks, especially black men. Republicans played on this fear in 1988 when they ran the Willie Horton ad -- featuring the furlough of a convicted black murderer who went on to rape a white woman -- which proved devastating against Michael Dukakis in 1988.

But as crime dropped dramatically in the 1990s, white fears eased, diminishing the racially charged issue of crime in politics.

Even as Americans were voting more conservatively in the 1980s, their views on race were becoming more liberal. More than three quarters of whites in 1972 told pollsters that "blacks should not push themselves where they are not wanted." Two-thirds of whites that same year said they opposed laws prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale of homes. Forty percent said whites had the right to live in segregated neighborhoods.

By the end of 1980s, all those numbers had fallen markedly and continued to fall through the following decades. In 1983, Ronald Reagan signed a bill instituting the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday.

Shelby Steele, a black scholar who has written extensively about race, says whites were responding "to their loss of moral authority around race and poverty. Because of visionaries of the civil-rights movement, whites had to acknowledge that this was a racist society, even to its founding."

Sen. Obama, he argues, represents a "cultural breakthrough" as much as a political one -- a chance for whites to regain the moral high ground by showing that they aren't racists.

Colleges had begun to recruit blacks and admit black students in significant numbers starting in 1968. Boosted in part by aggressive affirmative-action policies in the 1970s, many of them were moving up and into the middle class by the 1980s. Over the past 40 years, the number of black households at or near the poverty line has fallen to 46% from 70% while 37% of blacks are now middle class, making between $41,000 and $107,000, according to a recent study by University of Michigan professor Reynolds Farley.

The growth of the black middle class and integration of the workplace didn't only reshape the black community, it transformed the attitudes of many whites as well.

Stephanie Campbell, a white Obama supporter, recalls growing up in an all-white community in Pennsylvania. "Although my parents hid it pretty well, you could tell the prejudices were there," she says. She never encountered blacks until 1969 when her boss was a black assistant bank manager. "He was a really nice person -- very open-minded, very even-handed," she says. "There was never a question of someone being treated any differently. It was a good example for me."

While black progress at the workplace has been fitful and in some areas very slow, "we haven't paid enough attention to the fact that there have been a heck of a lot of black people who have become midlevel white-collar workers who seem to a lot of white people around them to be very ordinary," says Sherry Linkon, a professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio who studies race and class.

The 1980s also marked the election of black mayors in many cities that weren't predominantly black, such as Harold Washington in Chicago in 1984 and David Dinkins in New York in 1989. Many of the current generation of black politicians, like Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, began their careers in white corporate settings where they learned to feel comfortable -- and make whites comfortable with them. At the same time, court decisions limiting affirmative action and school busing lessened many white anxieties about electing a black leader.

The 1965 overhaul of America's immigration laws -- an event overshadowed at the time by the civil-rights movement -- also reshaped the country from the ground up. It triggered a transformation in the country's demographic makeup as millions of Latinos and Asians arrived from overseas. The change in the country's ethnic makeup, coupled with the emphasis on "diversity" in schools and the workplaces, helped transform racial attitudes, especially among young people.

As a result, the ethnic and racial diversity inside American families has surged. More than 20% of Americans now say they have a relative married to someone of another race, according to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll.

That kind of diversity includes the two presidential candidates: Sen Obama with his mixed-race background and Sen. John McCain with his daughter adopted from Bangladesh.

Says Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, "Maybe we have been healing more than we thought."

IDENTITY

Canadian Participates in Israel Hoops Peace Program
By Rhonda Spivak, September 11, 2008, The Canadian Jewish News

Nine-year-old Winnipegger Dov Corne had the thrill of a lifetime when he took part in a special basketball clinic last month conducted by the Los Angeles Laker’s Jordan Farmar for Israeli and Palestinian children.

The clinic was part of a “Twinned Peace Sports Schools” program organized by the Shimon Peres Center for Peace.

Corne, this writer’s son, along with Israeli and Palestinian children, played with the 21-year-old Lakers point guard, who is the only Jewish player in the NBA. Farmar, who doesn’t speak either Hebrew or Arabic, communicated with the children using basketball as a common language.
The Palestinian children arrived from Jericho and Tulkarm and the Israeli children from Kiryat Gat. All the kids wore identical red jerseys provided them by the Peres Center. Each team was mixed with Israeli and Palestinian children.

Corne, who speaks Hebrew, sat with the Israeli children at the opening of the clinic, which was designed to promote teamwork and co-operation and help teach the benefits of coexistence.

“We are happy to have Dov come today to see the work we are doing to try to allow Israelis and Palestinians to get to know the other side, to break down barriers, and to foster an atmosphere of reconciliation,” said Israeli coach Shachar Elyakim, who has been involved in this unique program for the past five years. “The idea is that all kids can try to learn to play together. The kids find a way to communicate with each other. They give each other high fives.”

Corne was included in the program after the Peres Center was contacted and told that Dov badly wanted to meet Farmar. When Farmar saw that Corne didn’t have a red jersey, since he was not a regular member of the program, he handed Corne the jersey the Peres Center had made for him.

“Thank you,” Corne said, “but I can’t wear it because it’s much too long and I can’t run in it.”

At the outset of the clinic, Farmar, who is the son of a Jewish mother and an African-American father, told the children, “We’re going to have fun today… I’ve come a long way to spend time with you guys.

“I think it’s really beautiful that all of you guys can come together here to play.”

Farmar’s comments were translated simultaneously into Hebrew and Arabic by Palestinian and Israeli coaches.

“Having Jordan Farmar here gives the kids a boost of confidence. It means that heroes support a mixed group [of Israelis and Palestinians]. All of the children wear the same red jerseys, and when you mix them up on teams, you really can’t tell who’s who,” Elyakim said.

Corne had the opportunity to shoot baskets with the talented Jericho-born coach Ferris Sweetie, a Palestinian who lives in Ramallah and teaches basketball at a private American institution in both Ramallah and Jerusalem.

“The kids come here to see friends and make friends,” said Sweetie, who hugged the Israeli coach when he arrived.

Sweetie, who speaks English and some Hebrew in addition to Arabic, has been in the program for five years. “I have made friends in Israel and I come to Tel Aviv quite often to go to the beach. There isn’t a beach near where I live. I sometimes come for Shabbat to be with friends. I usually don’t have any problem crossing the checkpoints,” he said.

Michal Rubin of the Peres Center said, “We see our work here as starting to prepare the groundwork for a real peace that will occur at the political level one day.”

He added: “The situation can be complex. Parents of the children in some of the Palestinian communities are sometimes scared to send their kids to activities we have in Sderot. This kind of flips the situation on its head.”

At the end of the clinic, Farmar told the children, “Today you played together and that’s a start to finding a solution to the problems in the Middle East. Today you learned basketball skills together. If you keep working on them, you will get better. It’s the same in life. If you keep working on your relationships, things will get better.”

Actor Louis Gossett Jr. Gives Shabbat Sermon
By Aaron Leibel August 26, 2008, The Canadian Jewish News

When this reporter spelled his last name for Louis Gossett Jr.’s publicist last week, she began laughing. “Leibele is his Yiddish name,” she said.

Lou Gossett Jr. has a Yiddish name?

It’s true, confirmed the African American actor, who couldn’t recall the origins of his nickname.
“Maybe it’s because I used to take off Jewish holidays” from school, quipped Gossett, who delivered the Shabbat morning sermon in late August at Ohev Sholom – The National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., discussing his connection to Jews and Judaism and his nonprofit, The Eracism Foundation (www.eracismfoundation.org).

Gossett, 72, grew up in the Coney Island area of Brooklyn, N.Y., where many of his neighbours were Jews.

His warm relations with them and the sense of community they shared were “a beautiful thing,” he said in a phone interview from Kenya, where he was slated to go on Safari the following day. (He began the interview by saying, “Boker tov,” Hebrew for good morning, and ended it with “Erev tov,” good evening.)

“If my parents were late, I had the choice of [eating] gefilte fish or sauerbraten” at a neighbour’s house, he said.

Gossett said his experiences as a youngster in Brooklyn provided the “nurturing” that helped him succeed. And with his foundation, which he began in 2006 to fight racism through education, programs that foster cultural diversity and anti-violence initiatives, he hopes to initiate programs for kids that will re-create the values he learned.

He wants to help young people in the most distressed areas combat racism, sexism and violence. “I want to protect them against the evil of the streets,” he said.

He wants them to learn “self-respect, so they know where they come from and what is expected of them, respect for the opposite sex, respect for their elders.”

Gossett was enthusiastic about his appearance at Ohev Sholom and about the shul’s spiritual leader. “Rabbi Shmuel [Herzfeld] has adopted me,” he said. “I love him.”

Rabbi Herzfeld shares those warm feelings. He heard Gossett speak at the Conference on Race and Reconciliation at the National Press Club in Washington in July.

“I was very impressed by how he spoke and how his relationship with Jews has inspired him to want to make a difference in the lives of inner city youth,” Rabbi Herzfeld said.

After hosting the award-winning actor for Shabbat, the rabbi invited him to speak. Gossett is not the first African American to speak at the synagogue, but may be the first to deliver the Saturday morning sermon.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to see a person who was given a gift to be a good actor, but is utilizing his gift to better the world,” Rabbi Herzfeld said.

President of his senior class at Abraham Lincoln High School, Gossett got his start in acting when a Jewish English teacher, Gustave Blum, who had been a Broadway director, encouraged him to try out for the Broadway production of Take a Giant Step. He got the part at age 17.

Gossett’s acting career has included dozens of roles in movies, TV and onstage, most notable of which were his Emmy-winning portrayal of Fiddler in the TV series Roots; the sergeant in An Officer and a Gentleman, for which he received an Academy Award; and his Golden Globe-winning work in the TV film, The Josephine Baker Story.

Currently, he is starring in Stargate SG-1, a series on the Sci-Fi cable channel. At the end of August, he also appeared in the HBO documentary The Black List, which will present portraits of 20 influential African Americans.

The actor’s Jewish links extend into adulthood. He became interested in the role that black American soldiers had played in freeing Jews from concentration camps during the Holocaust, hosting reunions between survivors and rescuers in New York City in the 1990s. He also narrated, with Denzel Washington, The Liberators, a documentary on the subject.

IRAN: FEATURED COMMUNITY AROUND THE WORLD

Escape, Exile, Rebirth: Iranian Jewish Diaspora Alive and Well in Los Angeles
By Karmel Malemed, September 3, 2008, The Jewish Journal

Thirty years have passed since the massive and violent demonstrations against the Shah of Iran that began in September 1978, and for many, the start of that country's bloody revolution might seem a faded memory. Yet I have carried those shattering events with me all of my life: I was born on in Tehran on Sept. 11, 1978, as chaos unfolded on the streets outside.

For Americans, Sept. 11 has its own painful history, but for me, that day each year has always been, as well, a reminder of another horrific tragedy: Sept. 9 to Sept. 11, 1978, were among the first and most brutal days of a revolution in Iran that would result, among many upheavals, in the uprooting of the country's ancient and once-thriving Jewish population.

My family's story is no different from that of thousands of other Jews who fled Iran during and after the revolution, many of whom now live in Southern California, New York, Israel and elsewhere worldwide -- the Iranian Jewish diaspora.

While scholars have since debated the true cause of the revolution, it is well known that the massive public protests for "greater freedoms" and strikes crippled Iran's economy. Violence between the protesters and police erupted in Iran's capital in January 1978 and intensified later in the year.

These activities eventually resulted in the collapse of the government led by the shah, who fled Iran on Jan. 20, 1979. On Feb. 1, 1979, the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran, quickly dissolved the monarchy and shortly thereafter established a new fundamentalist Islamic state government.

The new theocratic regime eliminated practically overnight many of the freedoms and civil liberties once taken for granted by Iranians -- including the country's Jews, who under the shah's reign had experienced one of the greatest periods of peace and prosperity in their long history in the region.

A day perhaps best remembered in the United States is Nov. 4, 1979, when regime operatives took over the American Embassy in Tehran and held captive 52 Americans in a reign of terror that would last for 444 days -- the rationale for this act, in part, was retaliation against the U.S. government, which had granted the exiled shah permission to be treated for cancer in America.

The new regime's henchmen also quickly executed several prominent Jewish community leaders, accusing them of sympathizing with the fallen monarchy or "spying for Israel and America." For fear of what calamity might befall them, many Jewish families rushed to abandon their homes and businesses and fled the country -- often under cover of night. Others lost everything they owned, as millions of dollars in assets were confiscated by the new fundamentalist Islamist Iranian government.

Under the shah's rule, Iran's Jews, as well as other religious minorities in Iran, had become accustomed to being treated with respect, albeit as separate, distinct cultures. Now they were second-class citizens, and the atmosphere of hostility led thousands of them to flee the country.

Looking back, the trauma of that flight has left deep wounds within my community. Many Iranian Jews continue to live in disbelief at what transpired.

"It was unbelievable, unfathomable for us Jews to believe anything would happen to us in Iran because of the incredible power of shah and his government," Ebrahim Yahid, a local Iranian Jewish activist, now in his 80s, told me in a recent interview. "Nobody in our community believed of the calamity we would face under the new regime of Khoemini."

Jewish flight from Iran began in earnest, most community members agree, in May 1979, when the new regime's revolutionary guard executed 66-year-old "Haji" Habib Elghanian, a philanthropist and the leader of Iran's Jewish community. Elghanian's younger brother, Sion, who now lives in Los Angeles, recently spoke to me about his brother's execution, the first time he has spoken publicly about it.

"Haji was in America, and 10 to 15 days before Khomeini returned to Iran, he returned to Iran," said Sion Elghanian, who is now retired and in his late 80s.

The older Elghanian had been in the United States temporarily, hoping to weather the chaos of the early days of unrest, which had brought the country to a standstill through nationwide strikes.

It was expected that Habib Elghanian might become a target, because he was the wealthiest Jew in Iran and the leader of Iran's Jews.

"Everyone, including the late Israeli Prime Minister Begin, asked him not to return to Iran, but he said, 'I was born in Iran, I love my country, I have treated all Iranians -- Muslims and Jews alike -- with compassion, and I have not done anything illegal,'" his younger brother remembered.

The Islamic regime arrested Habib Elghanian on Feb. 17, 1979, and falsely charged him with being a Zionist spy, along with other trumped-up charges of treason against the state. He was executed on May 9, 1979, after a sham trial by the revolutionary Islamic court, which lasted just over an hour and consisted merely of a proclamation of the verdict, without presenting any real evidence. While he was in prison, family members and friends were able to get some messages to him and receive his replies.

"Haji knew that they were going to kill him," Sion Elghanian said. "Before he was executed, he requested that that he be given his tallit and kippah to wear. He recited the 'Shema' ... and then they shot him by a firing squad.

"Afterward, Iran's Jews were in total shock and grief," his brother told me. "We told him [Elghanian] that we wanted to arrange to have him sprung from jail in an escape, but he told us not to go forward with it, as the move might motivate the Islamic leaders of Iran to retaliate by executing thousands of Jews living in the country."

Sion Elghanian said that he respects his brother's wishes not to be sprung from jail and feels that the family did all that they could to rescue and save him. He views his brother as a hero who sacrificed himself for the good of the community.

Word of Elghanian's execution quickly spread on television and radio and by word of mouth. Immediately afterward, a huge wave of Iran's Jews decided to sell their assets at whatever bargain prices they could get and flee the country. They clearly understood then the brutality of the regime and feared that they, too, might face the same fate. Some Jews had left earlier, in late 1978 and early 1979, but a huge wave left after Elghanian's execution, and even more fled as other Jews were executed by the regime.

Since that emotional time, many Iranian Jews living in the United States have preferred to remain mostly silent about their experiences during the revolution because of several factors. They include fear of retaliation against relatives who chose to remain in Iran, a belief that perhaps one day they might return to Iran and reclaim their lost assets and a persistent sense of great shame -- albeit unwarranted -- at having lost their fortunes and a painful unwillingness to admit that they now have less money than before.

Yet today, even as memories of those days during the revolution's upheaval remain as fresh as ever in my community, what we learned then seems increasingly relevant today, as relations between the U.S. government and Iran continue to deteriorate. These days, the topic of how to deal with Iran's current regime are a prominent issue in the U.S. presidential race, and that new relevance has caused many Iranian Jews who did not want to talk about their hardship -- who wanted to look forward, not back -- to finally begin to reveal personal details of the horrors they faced in Iran during the revolution.

Last summer, at a Sinai Temple Men's Club meeting, my cousin, Abe Berookhim, a 60-year-old Los Angeles businessman, publicly shared the story of his escape from Iran for the first time, as well as the story of the execution in July 1980 of his Uncle Ebrahim by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. My cousin recalled an emotional exchange he had had with an Iranian ayatollah, pleading for the release of his 31-year-old uncle, who had been arrested and imprisoned on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel and the United States.

"With tears streaming down my face, I told him [the judge] about my uncle's innocence, but he rejected my pleas," Berookhim said. "They did not have any answer for killing him and [after the execution] said it was a mistake -- it was a mistake that my family and I have been haunted by ever since."

Jews were not killed en masse; the harassment, arrests and executions seemed random, which was equally terrifying for the community.

Asher Aramnia, who serves as the events director at the Eretz-SIAMAK Cultural Center in Tarzana, a center for Iranian Jews, said his family, too, remains haunted by painful memories of his cousin, Nosrat Goel, who was executed in 1979. Goel, then 38, was killed under the direct orders of the notorious Ayatollah Sadeq Khalkhali, head of Iran's then revolutionary courts, Aramnia said.

"She was imprisoned, held overnight in jail for operating her beauty salon in Tehran, which was illegal under the new Islamic laws," Aramnia said. "That very night, Khalkhali came into the prison and ordered all the prisoners be executed immediately -- her family didn't know of the execution until the next day, when they heard the news on the radio."

The violence has not ended. According to a 2004 report prepared by L.A. Iranian Jewish activist Frank Nikbakht, since 1979, at least 14 Jews have been murdered or assassinated by the regime's agents; two more Jews have died while in custody and 11 others have been officially executed. In 2000, 13 Jews from the Iranian city of Shiraz were arrested on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel and faced execution, but as a result of protests by Iranian Jewish groups, many of them here in Los Angeles, as well as activism and support from the larger Jewish community, they were imprisoned but not executed and later were released.

Most Southern California Iranian Jews believe that money was the primary motivation behind the executions of Jews by Iran's fundamentalist Islamic regime.

"The Iranian regime executed Jews just for the sole purpose of repossessing their assets, frightening some into abandoning millions of dollars in their assets and scaring off others from fighting back against the regime," Yahid told me.

The Jewish community had prospered under the reign of the shah's family. Author Habib Levy's "A Comprehensive History of the Jews of Iran" (Mazda Publishers, 1999) describes how during the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty, Jews and other religious minorities experienced unprecedented tolerance, allowing them to build successful businesses. After the revolution, the new Iranian Constitution proclaimed all non-Muslims inferior to Muslims and that non-Muslims must be humiliated and confined to prevent them from gaining any advantage over Muslims, according to Nikbakht.

"One of the first signals to all non-Muslims [in Iran] that they should give up their rights and status came about when new specific Islamic laws in Tehran stated that non-Muslims should not build buildings higher than the Muslim ones," Nikbakht said. "Elghanian had built the first high-rise building in the city -- 15 floors high, and it was blasphemy."

Iran's Jews and other religious minorities saw their lives paralyzed as a result of the new discriminatory Shiite Islamic laws. Fahrokh Askari, a 60-something Iranian Jewish grandmother who now lives in Tarzana, recalled her husband's depression after the revolution.

"My husband worked as a government-employed civil engineer for many years, but after the revolution, he was fired for being Jewish and also prohibited by the government from working in the private sector," Askari said. "As a result of not being able to earn money for our family, he went into a deep depression and shortly thereafter died of cancer -- I blame all of this on the revolution."

Eventually, Askari fled illegally, like thousands of other Jews who initially stayed on in their homeland during the early years of the revolution -- during the 1980s and 1990s, most escaped across the borders of Pakistan or Turkey. These Jews typically paid smugglers to transport them out of the country, a risky move because the punishment for illegally leaving Iran was imprisonment. After escaping, many of the Iranian Jewish refugees were helped by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and given safe haven in Austria while waiting for visas to immigrate to Israel or the United States.

The terror Jews experienced in Iran had a ripple effect on family members living in the United States during the revolution. In the spring of 1980, Kaveh Lahijani was a high school student living in Orange County when he learned that his father, Isaac Lahijani, who was still in Iran, had been kidnapped and held for ransom by unknown armed government thugs.

For the next 26 years, the family heard nothing of Isaac Lahijani's fate. Kaveh Lahijani's mother, Farzaneh, and her three children wept for months, unable to hold a memorial because they had no information on whether Isaac was dead or alive. The family continued living in grief until September 2007, when Farzaneh Lahijani finally received an official letter from the Iranian government informing her of her husband's death.

"After agonizing searching and denials from the Iranian authorities telling my mother to go and come [from Iran] for 26 years, she found out from a two-sentence letter that they indeed had killed my father and that they wanted to pay restitution for his blood," said Kaveh Lahijani, who, out of a sense of family privacy, would not reveal further details of the resolution.

As sometimes happen during a revolution, not everyone initially believed that the new government would be as destructive and hostile as it turned out to be. While the vast majority of Iranian Jews in Southern California say they opposed the Iranian revolutionaries at the outset, a small minority admit that they initially supported the overriding objectives of greater freedom that were promised at the beginning of the revolution.

Said Banayan, now a Los Angeles accountant in his late 60s, was among the minority. He co-founded the Enlightened Thinkers, a Jewish group that initially advocated support for the revolution against what he saw as an oppressive monarchy.

"We formed this group in order to show the rest of the people in Iran that we Jews were not woven from a different fabric of society than other Iranians, but that we also supported [the new government's professed] goals for democracy and freedom," Banayan said. "We hoped that we may be able to enjoy new freedoms under the new regime, but at that time, we could not foresee how the new government, run by the mullahs, would mistreat the people of Iran for their own economic gain."

Banayan said the Enlightened Thinkers was not popular among the majority of Iran's Jewish community at first but later received wide support within the community, faced with the fact that Iran's majority Muslim population had felt oppressed by the shah's reign and largely supported the revolution.

"This was a movement that we supported because we honestly believed in its principles of greater freedom and democracy," Banayan remembered.

The conflicted feelings among older Iranian Jews here also include a great deal of nostalgia and love for their former homeland, despite the difficulties and pain they endured as a result of the revolution.

"I miss Iran very much," said professor Nahid Pirnazar, who teaches Judeo-Persian studies at UCLA. "I miss my college days there. I enjoyed Iran very much, and I never personally experienced any persecutions, but I don't think they didn't exist."

According to various estimates, today somewhere between 40,000 and 45,000 Iranian Jews live in Southern California and between 10,000 and 15,000 in New York. Roughly 20,000 Jews are believed to be living in Iran, and 150,000 Jews of direct or mixed Iranian descent live in Israel. Approximately 3,000 to 5,000 Iranian Jews live elsewhere in the United States and 5,000 in Canada.

Some local Iranian Jews say the long-term impact of the Iranian revolution has proven beneficial for them. Despite their losses, many community members who resettled in Southern California and New York have regained their prosperity, benefited from greater educational opportunity and enjoyed far more religious freedom, while still retaining their sense of a tight-knit community that upholds many of the ancient Iranian Jewish traditions.

"After 30 years, I think we're doing very well as far as keeping our identity, and there is no reason we should lose our identity as Iranian Jews while we are becoming acculturated here," Pirnazar said. "For an immigrant community that has only been here for a short time, we have done very well, and I'm very proud to say that I'm an Iranian Jew."

So where are we today?

Some -- a very small minority -- of Iranian Jews were able to extract their wealth from Iran before the revolution, but the majority were forced to rebuild their lives and new businesses in the United States, Israel and Europe. During the last 30 years, the community in Los Angeles has established more than two dozen Jewish schools and synagogues. In 2002, one of the most prominent community organizations, Nessah Synagogue, acquired a location in Beverly Hills for more than $10 million.

As a result of their hard work, savvy business sense and their valuing higher education, a number of families in the community today have become very successful. Specifically, members of the Nazarian family are major shareholders in the telecommunications giant Qualcomm, along with ownership in hotels and nightclubs in the L.A. area. Other local Iranian Jewish families, including the Namvars and Delijanis, generated their substantial wealth as a result of their extensive real estate holdings in downtown Los Angeles and elsewhere.

In 2002, the Iranian Jewish Merage family sold their privately held corporation, Chef America, which manufactured the popular Hot Pockets frozen foods, for $2.6 billion to Nestle. Iranian Jewish businessman Isaac Larian heads MGA Entertainment, producers of the popular Bratz dolls, which since their introduction in June 2001 have grown into a billion-dollar franchise.

Iranian Jews in Southern California have also ventured into politics and fully embraced America's democracy since their exile. Most notable is Jimmy Delshad, a businessman in the computer products industry, who was elected a Beverly Hills councilman and then made national news when he became mayor of the city for one term in 2007.

Last January, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa named Iranian Jewish attorney H. David Nahai general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, overseeing one of the largest public utilities in the country.

Local Iranian Jewish leaders are optimistic about the community's future, despite having encountered difficulties in acculturation in America during the 30 years since the revolution.

"I believe a healthy integration, in which we are an active part of the American Jewry, will not eradicate a 2,500-year-old identity," said Dr. Morgan Hakimi, president of Nessah Synagogue. "On the contrary, I believe this will enable our younger generation to develop a stronger Jewish identity, as well as self esteem."

Younger Persians Seeking Greater Role in Community
By Karmel Malemed, September 3, 2008, The Jewish Journal

Many of Los Angeles' young Iranian Jews arrived in the United States as small children or were born here to immigrant parents.

Now young professionals in their 20s and 30s, they have fully embraced life in America and are championing greater political activity for the Iranian Jewish community in Southern California.

"For 30 years, our community has benefited from the opportunities of America, and now it's time to give back and embrace our responsibilities as Jews and as Americans," said Sam Yebri, 27, president of 30 Years After, a new, politically active nonprofit group. The organization was formed earlier this year by a group who wanted to make a contribution to the community but believed their voices were often ignored by the older leadership of local Iranian Jews.

"Our young members are not welcomed onto boards or committees, which are often governed by the same individuals for decades and which covet financial contributions over the creative energy and ideas of young leaders," Yebri said.

As a result, the group set out to create new opportunities for social action.

This summer, 30 Years After was awarded $200,000 by the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles. 30 Years After's planned activities include a communitywide conference titled, "The Iranian Jewish Community at a Crossroads," which will take place on Sept. 14 at the Beverly Hills Hilton.

The conference will feature speakers from within the community, including Jimmy Delshad. Other speakers will include Rabbi David Wolpe, whose Sinai Temple has a large Iranian membership; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks); Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and talk show host Dennis Prager. Topics will include life today in Iran and issues facing the Iranian Jewish communities in the United States and Israel.

30 Years After also plans to organize voter registration drives for the November election, host quarterly civic events and expand a pilot mentoring program for younger Iranian Jews, a project created in collaboration with Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters and Nessah Israel Synagogue.

Yebri and other 30 Years After members said they are also seeking greater political participation by local Iranian Jews in hopes of influencing local, state and national elected officials to address issues important to the Iranian Jewish community.

Over the past decades, nearly two dozen local Iranian Jewish groups have been involved with political awareness efforts, but no group until now has seriously pursued or organized communitywide political and civic activism.

Daryoush Dayan, newly elected chairman of the L.A.-based Iranian American Jewish Federation, acknowledged that the community's leadership does not include the younger generation. He has pledged to resolve the issue.

"It is our hope that we will be able to preserve and combine the best aspects of our culture and moral values with those of the American Jewish community," Dayan said. "However, this can only be realized to the extent we allow the younger generation to carry the leadership torch."

Joon
By Shelly R. Fredman, July 17, 2008, Forward.com

For as long as I've worked in the Jewish community -- 14 years -- I've heard insults leveled at Iranian Jews.

They're pushy, acquisitive, flashy, nouveau riche, cheap. They're grasping, insincere, clannish, suspicious, old-fashioned. "They've ruined Beverly Hills High." "They've invaded Milken High." "They've taken over Sinai Temple."

I repeat the invectives by way of making one point: Enough already.

This week marks the 30-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iranian Revolution. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the ascent of the mullahs led to the exodus of thousands of Iranian Jews.

Within months, one of the world's oldest and most vital Jewish communities had fled and scattered across the globe: Europe, Israel, the United States. It was the Jewish Diaspora, Take 392.

The bulk of the Iranian Jewish Diaspora ended up in Los Angeles. By some estimates, there are between 40,000 to 45,000 Jews of Iranian descent living in Los Angeles today, almost 10 percent of the entire Jewish population.

As these Jews integrated into American society, they also had to integrate into a Jewish community whose roots go back to the 19th century, and whose ethnic makeup was (and is) largely Ashkenazic.

On the surface, the differences are charming, but barely enough to sustain a good sitcom episode. We eat roast chicken, they eat fesenjan. We eat matzo brei, they eat kookoo sabzi (kookoo, by the way, is better). We finish dinner at 8 p.m. They start dinner at 11 p.m. (Granted, there are enough hors d'oeuvres beforehand to stuff Michael Phelps.) We honor the Torah as it passes us in synagogue by discretely touching our prayer books to it. They embrace it like a life preserver, and kiss it like a long-lost friend.

We say sweetheart. They say joon.

I learned joon at the bat mitzvah of my daughter's close friend Daniella, whose parents came from Tehran. On the pulpit, they kept referring to their daughter as Daniella-joon. They called their rabbi, Rabbi-joon. And when Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben got up to bless the family, he called everyone joon, as well. There were titters at that one, so at dinner -- around 11 p.m. -- I asked what the word means.

Joon means "darling" or "sweetheart" in the Persian language, as in, "Rabbi darling." You get the Yiddish equivalent by adding a -le at the end of a name, though I can't imagine many rabbis adjusting to being called, "Rabbi-le."

The sheer quantity of joons in Iranian Jewish speech points to some of the deeper differences between Los Angeles' Iranian and non-Iranian Jewish communities. The obvious one is language, which can reinforce a sense of separateness and strangeness.

There are strong cultural preferences that easily breed conflict. There is the battle within Iranian Jewish culture to preserve traditions and mores, even if that means appearing insular, or worse, to your new Jewish neighbors.

As one jilted Jewish woman told me of her ex-boyfriend, who came from a traditional Iranian home: "I was Jewish enough to date, but not Persian enough to marry."

For three decades now, Sinai Temple has functioned as our own laboratory for this historical moment of Iranian-Ashkenazi contact. The old, established synagogue in Westwood experienced a steady influx of Iranian Jews, who eventually comprised 30 percent to 40 percent of membership. Sinai Temple became our very own Jewish Cultural Supercollider.

Tensions rose until Rabbi David Wolpe delivered a sermon in 2001 that called on each group to do the hard work of integration and compromise.

"In order for us to be a community--not an 'us' and a 'them'-- we have to recognize certain things," Wolpe intoned. "When two communities merge, there is enough pain to go around. Nobody gets everything they want. It is not only called a synagogue. It is called life. Here is the crucial point: When I say I want one community, I mean it so much I am ready to tell you this: If you or your children or your grandchildren are not prepared to marry a member of the other community, then you do not belong in this synagogue. I do not want an 'us' and a 'them.'"

The sermon went a long way toward cooling the reactions in the Supercollider. An Iranian Jew, Jimmy Delshad, went on to become president of Sinai Temple (and eventually mayor of Beverly Hills), and from what I understand the synagogue has no more tension, infighting, gossiping and name-calling than is absolutely necessary in Jewish life.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Los Angeles, there are signs the worst of the nastiness is ebbing. The younger generation has integrated into both the Jewish and larger society with astonishing speed and success. America is the Land of Hyphenated Identities, and young Iranian Jews will no doubt succeed in navigating it as have previous tribes.

As for the established Jewish community, I'd like to believe we have become 100 percent accepting. I'd like to believe that on the occasion of this 30-year anniversary, those of us who still default to -- I'll be blunt -- racist generalizations, take the time to learn the remarkable recent history of Iranian Jewry -- a story as compelling, frightening and death-defying for those who lived it as any our own relatives experienced.

I'd like to believe we'll come to understand that there was exactly no -- zero -- difference between our antagonism of this greenhorn community and the cold-shoulder with which established German Jewish communities in America greeted the waves of our Eastern European ancestors 100 years ago.

"Many of these new arrivals . . . have brought with them unfamiliar customs, strange tongues, and ideas which are the product of centuries of unexampled persecution," wrote Louis B. Marshall in 1904 of your bubbe and zayde. "But what of that! They have come to this country with the pious purpose of making it their home; of identifying themselves and their children with its future; of worshipping under its protection, according to their consciences; of becoming its citizens; of loving it; of giving to it their energies, their intelligence, their persistent industry."

"The Russian Jew is rapidly becoming the American Jew," he continued, "and we shall live to see the time when [they] will step into the very forefront of the great army of American citizenship."

That process is well under way here in Los Angeles. Since 1978, Iranian Jews have injected into a stable, maybe even staid Jewish community talent, industry, a profound connection to their Jewish roots and a desire to have a positive political and social impact on the city. They have energized a Jewish community that could always use invigorating.

More than L.A. Jewry saved the Iranian Jews, the Iranian Jews saved L.A. Jewry.

They are, in a word, joon.

ARTS AND CULTURE

Eric Wong Showcases New Documentary on Capoeira

Bay Area Be’chol Lashon member, Eric Wong, recently completed a full-length film documenting an incredible international capoeira event in Brazil last year.  Capoeira Sul da Bahia - 3º Encontro Internacional was a week-long event with over 600 participants from 16 countries, and was shot entirely on location in Bahia, Brazil.  Eric has been involved with capoeira for over 7 years and his group, Capoeira Sul da Bahia, leads fun energy-filled workshops and performances at many Bay Area Be'chol Lashon events.

Co-producers, Daniel Yoshimi and Thang Truong are excited to spread the word about this Brazilian martial art/dance form and bring it directly to your living room.  Watch the trailer at www.capoeirasantabarbara.com/encontro.html .

Developed by African slaves in Brazil as a means to defy their Portuguese slave masters, capoeira incorporates martial arts, dance, music, and acrobatics. Capoeira is a unique and dynamic art filled with self-expression, and a demonstration of the potential of the human body and spirit.

More info on Capoeira Sul da Bahia in San Francisco at www.suldabahiasf.org and available for purchase here.

"Petropolis"
Reviewed by Poornima Apte, August 5, 2008, Mostlyfiction.com

Sasha Goldberg, the smart protagonist of Anya Ulinich's debut novel, Petropolis, is a biracial teen growing up in a small rundown town in Siberia. The town which was originally called Stalinsk and built as an administrative center for the Gulag has long since sunk into dire poverty and is now known merely called Asbestos 2 after the mineral that was discovered there. Asbestos 2 in fact, was named after Asbestos, “a larger town in the Ural Mountains, where asbestos was also mined, the weather was milder, and one could occasionally buy beef in stores,” Ulinich writes.

Much against her will, Sasha pursues art lessons, makes friends with a fellow student Katia, and soon suffers a teen crush on the friend's older brother, an art dropout named Alexey. Soon enough, to her mother's horror, Sasha gets pregnant at 15 and a bleak life gets bleaker still with very few options. Using fake documents, Sasha's mother insists on taking care of baby Nadia and ships Sasha off to an exclusive school in Moscow to complete her studies.

But Sasha has other plans. She applies to a mail-order bridal agency and when an American, Neal from Phoenix, Arizona, shows interest in her, she is instructed to only order breaded food when they go out on their first date. Soon, Sasha is in the United States but her existence in Phoenix gets stifling and Sasha decides to escape going first to Chicago and somehow becoming a housemaid in an very rich Jewish household. Here Sasha, who is not really attuned to her Jewish identity in Russia, is portrayed as the victim of religious persecution—an image that sits uneasily with her. Forever trapped in the huge house, she finally escapes from here too with the help of Jake Tarakan, the family's paraplegic son. This time Sasha decides to find her father, Victor Goldberg, who abandoned her mother and herself many years ago after emigrating to the United States. Incidentally Victor Goldberg is a product of a white Russian woman and an African man and Sasha herself struggles with her biracial identity for quite a while in her teen years.

Petropolis shows a lot of promise but its plot lines seem jolting quite often. While Sasha's initial start in Asbestos 2 is fairly absorbing, her sudden move to the United States and her subsequent travels all over the map, don't have much going for them. The characters she meets be it her husband Neale in Phoenix, or fellow Russian immigrants in New York, are not developed fully mainly because the reader doesn't spend enough time with them before traveling somewhere else.

That having been said, there are also many moments of genuine warmth in Petropolis. When Sasha goes back to Asbestos 2 from the United States, Ulinich portrays Sasha's mixed feelings toward her child beautifully. Also done well is the tender yet shaky romance that develops between Sasha and Jake.

While Petropolis might often be pitched as a novel about finding oneself in America or as immigrant lit, such classifications might miss the more subtle one that Ulinich beautifully describes in the book. At its heart Petropolis is very much about the conflict between the old Russia and the new. The book's best portrayal is that of Sasha's overbearing mother, Lubov Goldberg, who is a classic example of the Russian intelligentsia clinging to desperate crumbs of the high class style overlooking the reality of the extreme poverty in their lives. “Children of the intelligentsia don't just come home in the afternoon and engage in idiocy,” she tells her daughter, forcing her to sign up for art classes.

Sasha, however, is a post-Soviet kid worried more about her mixed-race identity than about being a “child of the intelligentsia.” Ulinich, in drawing out the conflict between mother and daughter, also subtly sheds light on the difference between the old Russia and the new. Lubov Goldberg is a wonderfully sketched character clinging to romantic visions of the old Russia even when she is just about the last resident in the ghost town that is now Asbestos 2. Her assertions of class keep her going even until the very end when she is caught dead bent over a book of poems in an abandoned library, displaying a set of perfectly manicured fingers.

Buy the book here

BAY AREA EVENTS

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

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

The time has come to gather around in the great outdoors for an extraordinary adventure with family and friends. Give thanks for the fall harvest and celebrate the festive holiday of Sukkot.

You are invited to the 5th Annual Bay Area Be’chol Lashon Retreat for ethnically and racially diverse Jews, family, and friends.

Sign up online!

Questions? Email Esther@JewishResearch.org

History of Moroccan Jews

Monday, September 22, 2008 @ 7:00 pm
Temple Emanu-El
2 Lake Street, San Francisco

Be'chol Lashon, JIMENA, and Emanu-El present: Raphael David Elmaleh, founder of the Museum of Moroccan Jewry in Casablanca and Morocco's sole remaining Jewish guide. Raphy has traveled the length and breath of his native land, gathering artifacts, costumes, photos, books, manuscripts and stories and continues to restore abandoned synagogues in small villages throughout the country.

Raphy's stories and slides will intrigue and inspire you. Please join us for teh unique experience.

For more information, click here.

Arial Sabar: My Father’s Paradise:
A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq

Thursday, October 02, 2008, 7:00 PM
Book Passage in Corte Madera

For more information, click here.

EAST COAST EVENTS

Exploring Race in Contemporary Jewish Life: A Symposium on Jewish Diversity

October 6, 2008, Temple University, PA

Join us on October 6th for a symposium at the Paley Library Lecture Hall at Temple University, located on the ground floor of of Paley Library. Guest participants include John L. Jackson, Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania, Edith Bruder of the University of London, and Avishai Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen, who will show and discuss their film 400 Miles to Freedom. Temple University participants include Zain Abdullah, Rebecca Alpert, Jane Gordon, Lewis Gordon, Laura Levitt, and Terry Rey.

Click here for flyer

THANK YOU

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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