 African American Art & Culture Complex
762 Fulton @ Webster, San Francisco -- Parking Avaliable
Free Holiday Event
On March 16 from 1-4pm, at the African American Art & Culture Complex in San Francisco, Be’cho Lashon will host a family Purim Festival celebrating the diversity of the Bay Area with costumes, food, games, and holiday traditions from around the world including West African Drumming and Dancing, Chinese Lion Dancing, Capoeira/ Brazilian martial arts and the Pact Multicultural Book Fair. Although a Jewish holiday, the Purim themes of courage and triumph are universal.
By Ruth Eglash, September 6, 2007, The Jerusalem Post
Come hear author Len Lyons at the Be'chol Lashon Purim Festival, March 16, 2008 in San Francisco.
Click here for more info.
The Ethiopian Jews of Israel -
Personal Stories of Life in the Promised Land
By Len Lyons
Photos by Ilan Ossendryver
Jewish Lights
240 pages; $34.99
What is a white, presumably Ashkenazi American Jew doing writing about Ethiopian Jews living in Israel?
In seeming anticipation of this challenging question, Len Lyons states in his Preface that "through the use of portrait photography and interviews they [the Ethiopian Jews in Israel] will have written this book indirectly."
And true to his word, the Bostonian succeeds in an effectual retelling of the incredible journey Beta Israel Jews undertook to arrive here throughout the 1980s and '90s. Lyons also captures, using the words of the many people he interviewed, some of the high and low points of perhaps the country's most difficult aliya. He is not afraid to address some of the difficult topics such as racism, poverty and alternative cultural practices.
The interviews recorded here are straightforward and inspiring. Lyons captures some of the better-known Ethiopian Israelis, such as politician Shlomo Mula, activist Avraham Neguise and actors Tehitina Assefa and Sirak Sabahat, retelling their personal stories in question-and-answer format. And he does not leave out the "little people," the regular Israelis who are still waiting to fit in.
Lyons begins with a description of a personal visit to an Ethiopian synagogue in Ashkelon. The scene that unfolds before him during a Saturday morning prayer session highlights both the differences and similarities this former African community has with the general Jewish population. While Lyons manages to understand the general rhythm of the service, he also picks up on the basic set up of the community - where the kessim lead the population and the emphasis is placed on the Ethiopian Jews' original texts written in the ancient language of Ge'ez.
While Lyons's presentation of this experience makes for an excellent first chapter, it is the book's later sections that most captivate the reader. Whether it is because of our society's obsession with voyeurism or glimpsing into other people's lives through popular reality TV shows, or because each one had an incredible story to tell, I am not sure, but in any case, the author has asked pertinent questions of each person interviewed and received some poignant responses.
In one interview, with Emebet Adago, a security guard at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Lyons captures some of the hardships faced by many in the Ethiopian-Israeli community.
"I heard recently about the principal of a school in Ashdod who separated the recess of the Ethiopian kids from the others," Adago tells her interviewer emotionally and goes on to describe the poverty that she lived in as a child in Netanya. Together with her difficult childhood, Adago is still hopeful for the future and in response to Lyons's question "Does your mother regret coming to Israel, because it has been so difficult for her?" this young woman answers: "Never, never."
Along with the negative challenges facing the community, Lyons also succeeds in showing some of its positive achievements, interviewing some more high-profile Ethiopian-Israelis such as comedian Yossi Vassa, whose one-man play It Sounds Better in Amharic pokes serious fun at the immigrant experiences faced by many in his community.
Coupled with solid and, in some cases, powerful photography by Ilan Ossendryver, The Ethiopian Jews of Israel is a recommended read for anyone interested in understanding the basics of where these black Jews come from and how they fit into Israeli society.
"They're always surprised," Levi said, "and they should not be."
By Kirubel Tadesse, Febrary 12, 2008, Capital Ethiopia
 The Ethiopian government has pardoned twenty five prisoners who were found guilty in connection to the unrest that rocked the nation following the May 2005 elections. The twenty five prisoners who had been sentenced for up to 20 years were pardoned after the continued mediation of the Council of Elders council led by Professor Ephraim Yishak.
Dr. Yacob Hailemariam, Engineer Gizachew Shiferaw, and Birtukan Medeksa were negotiating for prisoners pardon. Birtukan told Capital that the prisoners were released on Friday, February 8, 2008. She added that there are still ten prisoners who are expected to be pardoned soon. Few others whose case is still pending are awaiting sentencing prior being pardon.
In a recent development, after electing twelve Members of Parliament to the supreme council last week, Birtukan’s group is making continuous attempts to bring other MPs who are participating in the House of Peoples Representatives outside Temesgen Zewde’s (MP) group, which is now forced to abandon the ‘CUD’ name in parliament following Ayele Chamiso’s win in the battle for the name.
Engineer Gizachew Shiferaw told Capital that the attempt falls under the overall plan they are working on to bring all former ‘members of the family together. “We wanted to gather the MPs so that when they go to their respective woredas they were elected from, they can explain to the people what is really going on,” Engineer Gizachew explained. “What is happening is not forming a new party or collecting some group and discarding others to create another party. We only demand a democratic system and respect of the party laws.” Engineer Gizachew added that they are working with all parliamentarians without excluding anyone so that they can get legality under a new name but with the former structure and policy.
Some reports claimed that MPs outside the group led by Temesgen Zewde, who claim to represent some 25 members, denounced the election of twelve MPs from Temesgen’s group to the Supreme Council. The election was approved by nine executive committee members of the former CUD.
Temesgen told Capital the number of MPs who are not included in his group is below ten and they don’t have good intentions at heart. “This should be a time to unite and work together but from the beginning these parliamentarians were not willing to do so. First they went after the leadership then they tried to side with one of the groups and disturb the process and now they say they are trying to mediate the two groups,” Temesgen added.
Engineer Hailu Shawul’s group still hasn’t given up the CUD name. It was reported that Abayneh Berhanu, who is acting on Hailu’s behalf, announced that he has requested the Electoral Board to return the election emblem which is now a property of Lidetu Ayalew’s (MP) party, as well as the ‘CUD’ name which Ayele Chamiso now owns.
By Rabbi Capers Funnye, Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Congregation, Chicago
 Good evening to all of you, it is my extreme delight and an honored blessing to be in your midst this evening to speak about two men that I believe, were indeed the Preacher’s Preacher and the Rabbi’s Rabbi. Dr. King and Rabbi Heschel came from two very different worlds’. Rabbi Heschel was born in Poland in 1907 and lived through the Holocaust and God blessed him by providing away for Rabbi Heschel to come to the United States after losing most of his family to the ovens of Nazism. Dr. Heschel served as the Professor of Jewish Ethics and Mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary, located in New York City from 1945 until his death in December of 1972. His world was one of academia and scholarship, which is evidence in the many books that he penned during his illustrious career. I never met Rabbi Heschel in person, but I do believe that I met him through reading his wonderful writings and studying with one of his students in the presence of Rabbi Dr. Byron L. Sherwin, one of my revered teachers at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, in Chicago, Illinois. Like Rabbi Heschel, Rabbi Sherwin is a professor of Jewish Mysticism and Holocaust Studies at Spertus and until recently Dr. Sherwin served as Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Spertus.
The world of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was thousands of miles away from the world that Heschel knew in Europe, however, the world of Martin Luther King, Jr. was also a world filled with violence and dehumanization of African Americans, in America itself. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a gifted student and he demonstrated exceptional intellect at a very early age. Martin Luther King graduated form Morehouse College at the age of sixteen-years-old and went on to study Theology at Corzine College in Boston, Massachusetts, where he earned his doctorate in Theology.
How did these two men from so radically different worlds, find themselves united together in the struggle of Black folks in America, looking for civil rights and equal justice in the eyes of the law of our land. I believe for Heschel their coming together might be summed up in this quote from Rabbi Heschel, “A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.” Alternatively, perhaps, if we look at another saying of Rabbi Heschel, when he said, “Racism is man’s gravest threat to man, the maximum of hatred for the minimum of reasons.”
In the case of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I believe that we can get a sense of his character, in a sermon that he gave titled, “What does it mean to serve”. Dr. King spoke saying that, “It’s important to want to be great, because greatness is wonderful. It’s important to be smart and to know your subject verb agreement, it’s important to attend college and learn the theories of Plato and Aristotle, but it is more important to serve, through a soul that is generated by love.”
I see in the words of both Heschel and King a common theme, that theme is love of humanity, and having the inner strength to stand-up, to any system, which causes us to coward away from truth and righteousness.
Many of the leading clergy in the African American community assisted Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s work in the city of Chicago and his work in Chicago was the impetus for the development of another Jewish organization, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. Rabbi Robert J. Marx founded the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, in 1964 to fight against racism and anti-Semitism in Chicago and its surrounding communities. Dr. King and Rabbi Marx worked together to fight against unfair housing practices, inadequate education in the Black community and other social accommodations that the African American community was being excluded from sharing with other communities in Chicago. Rabbi Marx answered the clarion call of Rev. King and he was apart of the Selma march.
As a young man, I remember attending a rally held at Soldiers Field in Chicago were Dr. King was the speaker. I will never forget the look of determination that I saw in the Dr. King’s face as his car passed our group. I gained a great deal of inspiration from that day and reading about the marches led by Dr. King in Chicago in communities like Cicero, Illinois and Marquette Park, which was the home of the American Nazi Party. Dr. King’s march in Marquette Park was filled with hatred and violence. Dr. King would later say that he had never experienced the amount of hatred anywhere in the south that he felt in Marquette Park on that day. In fact, the synagogue that our congregation is now housed within had been a designated safe house for Dr. King. However, the violence was so intense that the march never made it to Kedzie Avenue.
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was also a student of the philosophy of Gandhi. Gandhi led the non-violent movement in India against the oppression of the British government. I believe that Dr. King also applied the words of Gandhi in his philosophy. According to Gandhi, there are Seven Sins of Modern Man; Wealth without Work; Pleasure without Conscience; Knowledge without Character; Science without Humanity; Worship without Sacrifice; and Politics without Principal.
In many respects, our society is still guilty of these sins, because we want everything and we do not want to sacrifice anything.
The work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is not finished we have much work left to do. We need each other as African Americans and Jews, to continue the task before us. We need a National Health Care Policy that will serve every American. We need more than empty words concerning the education of our children, other than leaving no child behind. We need politics that really exclude race that truly judges every candidate on the content of their character.
Therefore, I repeat the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, on the eve of that terrible day in Memphis, Tennessee on April 3, 1968 when Dr. King said, “Well I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountain top. I won’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I might not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I am happy tonight. I am not worried about anything. I am not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
So I ask you tonight are we afraid to lock arms together again, in a struggle that still goes on for Justice and Equality. Will we speak up and stand up to any force that will keep all Americans from partaking in the promises that our country has to offer? We cannot wait we must act to keep the dream from only being a dream and make the dream a reality.
Shalom Alikeium, Peace be unto you and God bless all of you.
By Ainsley Jenriques, February 8, 2008, CWJamaica.com
 The Union of Jewish Congregations of Latin America and the Caribbean (UJCL) have just concluded their eleventh annual conference. This was held in Kingston, Jamaica under the auspices of UJCL's President, Hilda ten Brink. It was hosted by Congregation Sha'are Shalom, the United Congregation of Israelites, Jamaica's Jewish community.
Some 60 persons attended from overseas to join with the local community to participate in the workshop, lunches, tour and gala dinner dance activities of the conference. The theme for this year's conference was "The UJCL in the Diaspora: Connecting to Israel". The workshop presenters came from member congregations aided by representatives from many Jewish organizations such as the WUPJ, MASORTI, WZO, HIAS, MACCABI, JDCLA, ICJW, B'NAI BRITH INTERNATIONAL, WORLD JEWISH CONGRESS, LATIN AMERICAN JEWISH CONGRESS and TAMAR. Delegates came from congregations in Aruba, Bahamas, Costa Rica, Curacao, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Surinam, Trinidad and of course Jamaica with regrets from Cuba.
Professor Lewis Gordon gave the keynote address on the opening morning with a discussion of who is a Jew today in the Diaspora. The new Israeli Ambassador to Jamaica, Amos Radian, was the guest speaker at the first day's luncheon. He spoke to the theme of the Diaspora and Israel. Ed Kritzler gave the address on our survival in the New World in the second day's lunch program. Ainsley Henriques, UJCL Secretary and Hon Secretary of Sha'are Shalom spoke to the history of the Jamaican Jews on the opening evening.
Other significant activities were the Jamaicans hosting of the Cocktail reception at their Hillel Academy poolside, the Oneg Shabbat family dinners for overseas guests, and the Dinner Dance which was celebrated with an amazing Pirate decoration theme. All the guests had Pirate hats and eye patches to add to their regular dress and the chief pirate, David Matalon, was resplendent in full pirate costume. Shabbat services were held in the beautiful Jamaican synagogue on Duke Street, Kingston under the direction of lay reader Stephen Henriques and the Choir led by Dr. Winston Davidson.
The amazing highlight of the conference was the surprise tour of one of the three oldest Jewish cemeteries in the New World. The oldest grave found was dated 1672. This cemetery, named the Hunt's Bay Cemetery, was the resting place for Jews who fled the Inquisition in the Iberian peninsula and the anti-semitism of northern Europe. They came to Port Royal, the 17th century Entree Port, a desolate sandy spit at the end of what is now known as the Palisadoes peninsula enclosing Kingston Harbour. They sought and found the freedom to worship and pursue their lives without persecution, only restrictions and higher taxation. Here they settled and thrived. The land could not be used for burials so they rowed the departed across the harbour and interred their ancestors in this now isolated cemetery. During the course of the past year Ainsley Henriques arranged for it to be cleared. With the assistance of the Caribbean Volunteers Expedition headed by Anne Hersh and Rachel Frankel, seven other volunteers made their way to spend the week photographing, copying inscriptions, measuring and inventorying this historic site. The entire conference traveled to the cemetery on Friday after lunch, inspected the graves, heard a short set of lectures on the work being done and then holding hands in a large circle recited the Mourners Kaddish. A fitting tribute in a wonderful conference, retiring to Jamaica's Jewish Heritage Centre and the Shabbat service.
For further information, please visit our website http://www.ucija.org
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By Ezra HaLevi, February 4, 2008, Arutz Sheva, IsraelNN.com
 The Ethiopian Jewish holiday of Sigd will soon become a national holiday. Preliminary legislation submitted by MK Uri Ariel (National Union) was approved Wednesday.
The proposal was supported by MKs from National Union, NRP, Shas and Likud, as well as Labor and Meretz.
The ramifications of adopting Sigd as a national holiday would be that the Education Ministry would teach about it in schools and employees would be given the option to take the day off, such as is currently the practice for days like Jerusalem Day and the holiday of Purim. The Prime Minister’s Office would also be assigned the responsibility of funding the yearly Sigt festivities in Jerusalem.
Sigd takes place on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, exactly fifty days after Yom Kippur. The holiday is pronounced Sigd (one syllable), which means prostration in Amharic and shares its root with the word for temple. The ceremony resembles the one held for the renewal of the Divine covenant by Ezra the Scribe during the Second Commonwealth, described in the Book of Nechemia. "All the people gathered themselves together as one man into the broad place that was before the water gate; and they spoke unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded to Israel" (Nehemiah 8:1)
Prior to their immigration to Israel, the Beta Israel (meaning 'House of Israel') or Falasha (meaning ‘strangers,’ a term used by their non-Jewish neighbors in Africa) community would observe Sigd each year on mountaintops outside their villages. The Kessim, the community's rabbis and ritual leaders, would ascend the mountain, which was meant to represent Mount Sinai.
Upon the Aliyah (immigration to Israel) of Ethiopia’s Jews, the holiday has become both a celebration of returning to Zion and a longing for the rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Ethiopian Jews gather from all across Israel at the Armon HaNetziv Promenade, overlooking the Temple Mount.
MK Ariel says he submitted the bill to share the beauty of the holiday with all of Israel, as well as to give the Ethiopian Jewish community the recognition it deserves. “The Ethiopian community has preserved customs dating back to the days of the Holy Temple and even Biblical times,” the bill states. “The acceptance of this holiday by the Knesset and the State of Israel will allow for the revival of an age-old tradition and the strengthening of the Ethiopian community's identification with and involvement in the Israeli community at large.” The bill will next be voted upon by the Knesset’s Labor and Welfare Committee.
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By Ruth Eglash, January 30, 2008, Jerusalem Post
The Ethiopian spiritual festival Sigd was one step closer Wednesday to becoming a national religious holiday in Israel after legislation presented by MK Uri Ariel (Ichud Leumi-Mafdal) received initial approval from the Knesset plenum. The motion, which was supported by MKs from Shas, Meretz, Labor and Likud, calls for the Prime Minister's Office to take over responsibility for organizing the annual Jerusalem-based ceremony and for the Education Ministry to dedicate part of the curriculum to learning about the festival.
Additionally, employees will be entitled to choose whether to observe the day by not working, similar to certain other national holidays such as Jerusalem Day. Taking place 50 days after Yom Kippur on the 29th of Heshvan, Sigd is traditionally marked by members of the Ethiopian community in a religious ceremony on Jerusalem's Haas Promenade. Kessim lead the people in a series of prayers in the Ethiopian Jewish language of Gez, calling for a Jewish return to Jerusalem and individuals are urged to repent for any wrongdoings in the past year.
Traditionally, those who observe the ancient festival spend the day fasting, but in recent years the Jerusalem event has become a showcase for Ethiopian Jewish food, culture and other customs, with members of the community being bused in from across the country. "Ariel believes that this festival should be recognized by the entire nation," commented a spokesman for the MK. "We all know that the situation for Ethiopian immigrants is not easy, and he believes that this is one way to help improve their image and recognition within Israeli society."
"This is a significant step by the country in recognizing the spiritual contribution of the Ethiopian community to Israeli society," commented Avi Masfin, spokesman of the Israel Association of Ethiopian Jews, which organized a petition during last year's Sigd festival and has been actively working with the religious authorities and establishment to recognize it.
"The Sigd festival is a unique Ethiopian Jewish tradition that has been passed down through generations and has helped us throughout the centuries to keep up with Jewish traditions and continue believing in our right to make aliya." He also said that Ethiopian immigrants had managed to keep up the Sigd tradition even after moving to Israel. 'Sigd is another religious and social contribution by the Ethiopian community to the nation," said Masfin.
The legislation will now pass to the Knesset Committee for Labor, Welfare and Health for its official readings.
By Stanley Urman, January 28 2008, The Cutting Edge News
For the very first time, President George Bush raised the issue of Jews from Arab countries. He did this while on his official visit to Israel. In an article headlined, "Bush aware of Jewish Refugee' Plight," The Jerusalem Post said the U.S. President was "very conscious" that Jewish refugees fled to Israel from Arab lands after the 1947-49 war, and that one of the points that came up in Bush's discussion was the number of Jewish refugees that were created in the period after 1948.
This report of President Bush's interest in the plight of Jews from Arab countries, comes after the December visit to the White House by Maurice Shohet, a long time member of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries’ (JJAC), International Steering Committee. Joining Mr. Shohet at the White House were Professor Judea Pearl and Ruth Pearl, parents of slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, all of whom spoke to President Bush on the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab counties. This followed the recent Annapolis Peace Conference, where JJAC issued a declaration which stated, inter alia: "The exclusion and denial of rights and redress to Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries will prejudice authentic negotiations between the parties and undermine the justice and legitimacy of any agreement." In preparation for Annapolis, JJAC sent a letter to President Bush asking that the issue of Jews from Arab countries be discussed in the context of Middle East refugees.
JJAC was grateful that the President had become cognizant of this important narrative - the violations of rights, and the displacement, of up to one million Jews from Arab countries. President Bush's words came at the opening of the 2008 Congressional session, at which consideration was being given to two bi-partisanship resolutions which called attention to the fact that Jews living in Arab countries suffered human rights violations, were uprooted from their homes, and were made refugees.
The Resolutions, Senate Res. 85 and House Res. 185, signify that, "it would be inappropriate and unjust for the United States to recognize rights for Palestinian refugees without recognizing equal rights for former Jewish, Christian, and other refugees from Arab countries." Far-reaching and comprehensive, these Resolutions instruct the President to ensure that in all international forums, when the issue of 'Middle East refugees'is discussed, representatives of the United States must ensure that any explicit reference to Palestinian refugees is matched by a similar explicit reference to Jewish and other refugees, as a matter of law and equity.
Over the next several months, JJAC will be working with Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) on promoting the Resolutions. JJAC is a coalition of Jewish communal organizations operating under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the American Sephardi Federation in partnership with the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation League, B'nai Brith International, the Jewish Public Council for Public Affairs and the World Sephardic Congress.
By Rachel Axelbank, January 3, 2008, The Jewish Advocate
 School pioneers with transdenominational curriculum
The year 2008 will infuse the global Jewish community with a wave of new leadership, as the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton ordains its first students.
The institution – the world’s first accredited, full-time transdenominational rabbinical school, which will see its inaugural class graduate in June – came about largely in response to the evolving nature of Judaism.
“Looking at what’s happening in American Judaism, most observers have been convinced that for individual Jews, the importance of the denomination label is far, far less than it was a decade ago,” said Rabbi David Gordis, president of Hebrew College. “If you go through the individual seats in a synagogue, you’ll find that people have different patterns of belief and religiousness – rarely does it correspond to the labels on the door. We became convinced that there should be a way to train rabbis that was not divided along denominational lines.”
According to Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, dean of the Rabbinical School, Gordis and Rabbi Arthur Green (the school’s rector and founding dean) shaped a program that would be defined not by denominational ideology but by several core values, which include: immersion in the classical texts through an intensive bet midrash approach; bridging the gap between the yeshiva and the academy; considering klal yisrael (the whole of the Jewish community); engagement with other faiths; social justice and responsibility; and nurturing the rabbinic students’ own spiritualities.
Since its inception, the program has attracted rabbinic candidates with a diversity of religious backgrounds.
Tiffany Gordon, an African-American native Bostonian who was raised in the Southern Baptist tradition and converted to Judaism, is now a first-year student at the Rabbinical School as well as a board member of the Jewish Multiracial Network and a Hebrew School teacher at Kesher in Cambridge. “I realized that helping children shape their Jewish identities is one of my passions,” Gordon wrote in the school’s orientation packet.
Israeli-born Lila Veissid discovered her faith and Jewish identity while living in New York and, since moving to Boston in 2004, has begun leading kabbalat Shabbat services for the Jewish residents at the Goddard House in Brookline, founded a local Israeli Women’s Rosh Hodesh group and embarked on her first year as a Hebrew College rabbinical student.
Chaim Korazinsky, a Madison, Wisc., native who lived in Jerusalem for three years before moving to Brookline in 1999, expects to be ordained in June. “While I have been influenced by all the denominations, I don't affiliate with any particular one of them,” Korazinsky told the Advocate. “I view myself as ‘traditional’ – informed by and in constant dialogue with the tradition.
“Nearly all of the personal and professional experiences that led me to rabbinical school were based in the community rather than in a particular denomination,” he added, naming his work in the former Soviet Union and for Hillel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, among other organizations. “All of these experiences were transdenominational, so it made sense to continue this path in rabbinical school.”
The graduating class is split fairly evenly between those who wish to pursue pulpit work and those who are interested in other types of rabbinical work, Anisfeld said, noting that a number of the soon-to-be-ordained students have already accepted positions.
The “other types” category includes positions in chaplaincy, communal work and Jewish education and at Hillel houses, as well as in what Anisfeld and her colleagues refer to as “entrepreneurial” rabbinates, which involve creating new models of community.
“In terms of non-pulpit positions … our students’ transdenominational training is a tremendous advantage because they will be serving such diverse communities,” she added.
For those who do wish to pursue congregational work, however, the transdenominational curriculum presents questions that did not exist previously. Anisfeld explained that rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College or Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion are ordained with the school’s denomination. Hebrew College’s new rabbis, on the other hand, will not automatically be affiliated.
Anisfeld said that the school has received inquiries from both affiliated and unaffiliated congregations; however, those rabbis seeking positions with the former will have to first become affiliated themselves.
According to Gordis, the process of building the program has included ongoing conversations with the Reform Movement’s Central Conference on American Rabbis, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation and the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly on how the Hebrew College rabbis will gain affiliation.
“They are concerned with maintaining connections to their congregations, and rabbi placement is one of the main issues – we are not unsympathetic to that,” Gordis said. He and his colleagues have pledged to only support a student’s application to a denominational position if the student has affiliated with the rabbinic association; in return, they have asked that the associations welcome applications from Hebrew College rabbis. Added Gordis: “The denominations know that our students will be superbly trained.”
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By Sue Fishkoff, February, 5, 2008, JTA
When Ruach Ami, a small, lay-led Conservative congregation in Santiago, Chile, began looking for a rabbi, it did not turn to the movement’s Latin American seminary.Formed last April after the disintegration of Santiago’s only other egalitarian congregation, Ruach Ami members wanted to preserve the spiritual and progressive focus of its parent synagogue, says member Victor Grimblatt. They feared a rabbi from the Masorti seminary would take them in a different direction.
Then they heard about Hebrew College in Newton Centre, Mass., whose rabbinical school is set to graduate its first class of 11 transdenominational rabbis on June 1.“When we found out it was not affiliated with any movement, we said, 'That’s interesting,' ” Grimblatt told JTA. “Our group of 20 families is partly Conservative and partly Progressive.”
This summer, if all goes well, newly ordained Rabbi Chaim Koritzinsky will take that pulpit. “I’m learning Spanish fast,” Koritzinsky says from his Boston-area home.
The rabbis Hebrew College expects to ordain this year, and the 41 others coming up in four classes behind them, will join a fast-growing group of rabbis produced by a handful of seminaries not affiliated with the major Jewish streams. These rabbis, and their teachers, say they are answering a growing need. They are training to serve an American Jewish community where denominational lines are increasingly fluid, where independent, lay-led minyans are popping up from coast to coast, and where Hillel and birthright israel programs provide hundreds of thousands of Jewish college and post-college students a taste for pluralistic Jewish life.
Like their colleagues from the movement seminaries, many of these new rabbis are finding jobs outside the pulpit, often as chaplains, Hillel directors and Jewish educators. It's when they aim for pulpit positions in affiliated congregations that the walls go up, as they compete for jobs with movement rabbis on a playing field that is controlled by the denominations.
Despite the challenges, the number of students entering non-affiliated seminaries continues to grow, says Rabbi David Greenstein, the rosh yeshiva at the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York. The unaffiliated seminary he heads has ordained 114 rabbis since 1956, 39 of them --more than one-third -- since 2000. The school currently has 60 rabbinical students. “We’ve been growing exponentially,” Greenstein says. “People are beginning to understand the denominations were not given at Sinai.”
In fact, the denominations are barely more than a century old, the lines drawn according to levels of ritual observance that are no longer set in stone, says Rabbi Arthur Green, the rector of Hebrew College’s rabbinical school. Green says the program was created five years ago not just to serve a communal need but to provide a home for future rabbis who don’t fit movement categories. “We have people who are Reform theologically and Conservative in practice, or who consider themselves Conservadox,” he says.
The seminary’s curriculum reflects that pluralism, combining traditional text study with wide-ranging commentaries, including thinkers from Reform to Orthodox. The faculty also spans the denominational spectrum. Additionally, the curriculum includes required training in community organizing and pastoral counseling. “We think the wave of the future is the transdenominational congregation, or a multiplex congregation that welcomes many kinds of Jews and holds different styles of services,” Green says. “We are preparing people to serve in those flexible, varied kinds of settings.”
At 34, Koritzinsky is the youngest in his class. Most are in their 40s and 50s, and are entering the rabbinate as a second career. But he shares with his colleagues a similar eclectic background. Koritzinsky was raised Reform in a family that was “more culturally Jewish than religious.” His interest in Judaism bloomed during college. A Russian studies major, he worked with Hillel in the former Soviet Union, and helped run Jewish family camps with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the late 1990s. He also studied at Pardes, an unaffiliated, coeducational yeshiva in Jerusalem.
“Those were pivotal years, when I committed myself to international Jewish communal work,” he says. When Koritzinsky decided to pursue a rabbinical career, he chose Hebrew College because it offered the same pluralist vision. “It’s about serving the entire community, not one denomination,” he says.
Rabbi Sharon Cohen-Anisfeld, the dean of the rabbinical school, says the 2008 graduating class has been flooded with job inquiries. “We’re at the beginning of the process,” she says, “but it’s wonderful to see the interest and need and range of possibilities out there.” Many of those offers are for non-pulpit positions with Hillel or religious schools, or as chaplains.
Judy Ehrlich, 52, plans to take a job as chaplain at Hebrew Senior Life, an assisted and independent Jewish living facility in Boston. Ehrlich grew up Orthodox in South Africa, but she and her husband have been members of a Conservative minyan in Newton for the past 17 years. The minyan’s combination of traditional worship style with a diverse membership feels “comfortable,” she says, adding that she “identifies with Conservative ideology” but maintains an observance level she describes as Modern Orthodox. That eclecticism led her to Hebrew College. “No Orthodox community would accept me as a rabbi,” she says.
Some Hebrew College students transferred from other seminaries, preferring a transdenominational approach. Rogerio Cukierman, 36, a second-year student from Brazil, received his master's degree in Judaic studies from the Reform movement's Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, but switched to Hebrew College for his rabbinical training. “Rabbinical school is supposed to be a transformational experience,” Cukierman says. “At a denominational seminary I have to decide the kind of rabbi I’ll be without going through the experience. I might consider myself Reform now, but in five years I could see myself becoming a Conservative or nondenominational rabbi.”
The biggest challenge for these rabbis is finding pulpit positions. It’s no trouble for non-affiliated congregations to hire them. The question isn't relevant among Orthodox congregations because no Orthodox congregation is likely to hire a pulpit rabbi from a non-Orthodox institution. Synagogues affiliated with the Reform and Conservative movements present a challenge. They are bound by the regulations of their rabbinical associations. Congregations affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism are given a list of approved candidates by the movement’s Rabbinical Assembly. Rabbis that serve Reform congregations must be members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
While rabbis from the non-movement seminaries may apply for membership in these associations, their acceptance is decided on a case-by-case basis. The CCAR may soon give accreditation to Hebrew College, so its graduates would immediately become eligible. While they are applying for jobs, the non-movement rabbis must avoid antagonizing the movements or placing a congregation in an untenable position.
Some of the fifth-year rabbinical students at Hebrew College are interviewing at congregations affiliated with the movements, but none of those congregations except the one in Chile would speak to JTA.
Rabbi Mel Gottlieb, dean of the Academy of Jewish Religion California, accepts that rabbis from the movement seminaries “get first dibs” on affiliated pulpits. “We are careful not to invade the boundaries of the denominations or threaten them in any way,” he says. “But some congregations come to us when the lists don’t fit their needs.”
Rabbi Julie Schoenfeld, the director of rabbinic development for the Rabbinical Assembly, doesn’t see that as problematic as long as the congregations go through the approved search process first. Noting there is “plenty of work” to go around, Schoenfeld says she would not view the Academy for Jewish Religion or Hebrew College as "impinging on the opportunities for Conservative rabbis.”
The situation is different in the Reform movement, says Rabbi Arnold Sher of the CCAR’s rabbinic placement office. He says the three North American Reform seminaries have had “unusually large” graduating classes recently, ordaining 61 rabbis in 2007 and 56 more expected this year. “There will be more rabbis ordained than there are openings," Sher says, "and that won’t help Hebrew College.”
By Joan Whitely, January 22, 2008, ReviewJournal.com
 Marelyn Shapiro sits in the backyard of her North Las Vegas home with her seven adopted children and two grandchildren. There's still room in this home and its 10 human hearts for pets and for animals awaiting adoption.
Seeking heroes in our own time, the Review-Journal annually asks the public to nominate people who in the past year took serious risks to life, career, financial well-being or other personal interests for the greater good of humanity. This is the second of six "Nevada Profiles in Courage" about some of those brave hearts who performed such deeds in 2007. Look for others each day through Saturday.
Marelyn Shapiro adopted and is raising seven kids on her own. On the side she also rescues injured songbirds and shelters pet dogs that need a new home.
The Shapiro family is complex. One trio of the children are birth siblings. Another trio of children are also birth siblings. Only the seventh child came to her as an infant, through a solo adoption. Today the children range in age from 3 to 16. The family also is a blend of several races, headed by Marelyn, 53, who has worked at various times as a delivery truck driver, a dance studio owner, a foster parent and a substitute teacher.
Shapiro "has a sense of humor and cracks jokes a lot," her 12-year-old daughter, Shamaria, wrote in a recent essay. "Her favorite saying when something is going wrong or mud is all over her or she is all wet from a broken hose is, 'It don't get any better than this!' Her next favorite saying is, 'Another day in paradise!' "
Shamaria nominated her mom for the newspaper's annual Profiles in Courage program, which honors local individuals who exhibited exceeding bravery in the prior year.
Shapiro did not perform a particular, isolated heroic act in 2007. But the newspaper agreed with Shamaria that it takes a special sort of hero, a person who's in for the long haul, to make a family for, and with, children who have suffered abuse and neglect. "We were all drug exposed at birth, and have many issues. Two of my brothers are special ed," is how Shamaria put it in her essay.
A study in "organized chaos" is how Heather Langle, a family friend, describes the bustling Shapiro household. Shapiro is "very approachable, in a boot-camp sergeant sort of way," Langle adds. The two met as parent volunteers at a middle school function in autumn 2006, shortly after the Shapiros had moved here from Berkeley, Calif.
"I always used to tell her, she's like a lobster," Langle says of Shapiro. "With the shell, it's hard to get in there. But when you get in, it's the sweetest experience. The kids know, she means business. ... She can't be warm and fuzzy all the time, or it's chaos."
Shapiro divides the household labor with all the children except the youngest, 3-year-old Michael. "Gary does the kitchen, that's his job doing dishes," she explains. "Nina's the cook. She makes dinner for us almost every night. Dustin does the pool and the yard. Him and DeMarier take care of cutting the lawn." Shamaria does a lot of the laundry, and her twin brother, Shamar, is the "master finder," by which Shapiro means he's the go-to guy when an object gets lost.
The key to the family's success is setting limits, Shapiro believes. "Firm, clear, strict limits with no sympathy for your feelings, but only sympathy for good behavior," she says.
But then she adds a daunting footnote: The average child learns about limits at an appropriate age, and "buys in" practically effortlessly. When a child has suffered family dysfunction so serious that he or she needs foster care, teaching limits is tougher. Some of her children arrived past toddler age, in what Shapiro calls an "almost feral" state, with no understanding of how to be careful or handle not getting their way.
Married and divorced at a young age, Shapiro says she got into child-rearing mode via foster care at age 40, when she realized she did not want to give birth without a life partner. The first six of her seven children joined her as foster kids, arriving in two batches. But she adopted each sibling group when California authorities determined reunification with birth parents was not a realistic goal. The household now also includes two toddlers who are the offspring of Nina, 16, who is unmarried and still lives at home. Shapiro describes those pregnancies not as a parenting failure, but the result of a difficult period in her daughter's life, which included several episodes of running away. Nina is now homeschooled, so she can help care for her own children.
The Shapiros have several family pets, but Marelyn has branched out into animal rescue, as well.
Under the supervision of Wild Wing Project, she is learning to rehabilitate non-endangered species such as sparrows and starlings for release back into the wild, according to Lisa Ross, project director.
For Adopt A Rescue Pet, Shapiro takes puppies into their home, one or two at a time, until they are adopted. She and a rotating subset of the children also spend most Saturday mornings on the sidewalk at a local pet supply store, where the public can view the program's adoptable animals.
Why take on the extra responsibility of sheltering orphaned or injured animals?
Besides being fun, it is a way to teach her children, Shapiro asserts. "They get an outside view of what it is to foster. To externalize that. To bring an animal in, foster it and set it free."
By Schelly Talalay Dardashti, January 27, 2008, The Jerusalem Post
Jewish genealogy is no longer the sole realm of Eastern European Ashkenazim.
Many begin the quest for information about their Sephardi ancestors each day, assisted by increasing new resources.
Modern Sephardi Jewry includes descendants of Jews expelled from Spain during the Inquisition as well as Oriental or "Mizrahi" Jews who lived in the Middle East, Near East and Central Asia - all non-Yiddish speaking, non-Ashkenazi Jews. Researchers, assisted by DNA projects, are also investigating the Sephardi roots of some Eastern European Jews.
Metro conducted interviews with some leading Sephardi genealogists, who revealed many insights into their research.
Sephardi genealogy research wasn't so important in the early 20th century, relates Dr. Yitzhak Kerem, a specialist in Greek Jewry, who sees genealogical research as "another way to learn history."
When Jews began expressing ancestry interest after the success in the 1970s of Alex Haley's Roots, American Jewish culture was Ashkenazi - Sephardim weren't the Jewish mainstream. Shelomo Alfassa of the International Sephardic Leadership Council says the issue was a numbers game, as the American Sephardi population was exponentially smaller than the Ashkenazi one.
American Sephardim were busy blending in, offers Dr. Jeffrey Malka, a Virginia-based author and researcher. "They didn't want to draw attention to being different; many were ignorant of their own history," while genealogist and businessman Alain Farhi disagrees: "Sephardi genealogy always existed, but wasn't publicized or discovered by the masses or the American genealogist."
While "Ashkenazi research focuses on civil-registry documents - researchers generally know what records are available and where they are kept," says Dr. Daniel Kazez, adding that Sephardi researchers must contend with linguistic and civil restriction barriers, informal archives, decentralized small Jewish communities, unusual handwriting, and archivists who speak Greek, Turkish or Arabic. Kerem adds that the necessary research languages are often daunting to students and researchers.
All these experts agree that the Internet gave Jewish genealogy a jump start - particularly for Sephardim - by increasing the amount of readily accessible information, guidance, and resources.
The Internet made it easier to extend the reach of genealogy and collect data beyond national borders, says Farhi, while Harry Stein of Sephardim.com says that those with similar interests could share generations of family lore.
Perhaps it took longer for Sephardi genealogists to go public, adds Stein, because they tried to keep their identity low-key or secret. The Nazis and the Catholic Church were threats, and they remembered the Inquisition, alive in the New World into the 19th century, he adds. "Hiding identity has been a converso/anousim tradition for more than 500 years."
Stein took up genealogy after he married a Sephardi woman and wanted his children to understand their heritage. His friends kept telling him how lucky he was to have married an Abravanel. "Frankly, I didn't know who or what that was. I had to get the facts." The quest for information is just beginning, he says. Experts say there may be more than 20 million people of Sephardic ancestry in the American Southwest and in South and Central America. "The region is bursting with curiosity," he says. Stein's Web site includes some 2,000 global forum members. The Internet "has opened doors never before available to researchers," he declares.
Farhi adds that now, generations of family lore can be shared with others who may have heard the same stories.
"In 1979, after my father's death, I discovered among his papers a handwritten tree compiled by my grandfather, who died in 1940," he relates. Farhi collected information and distributed copies of the tree. As related families sent data, he created an extensive database. He's solved some unanswered questions and has organized major DNA projects. One endeavor close to his heart is safeguarding the civil records of the Egyptian-Jewish communities in Cairo and Alexandria.
Sephardim are also quite individualistic, notes Jerusalem-based Sephardi genealogy pioneer and researcher Mathilde Tagger. When she asked families to share information, many responded, "My genealogy has no interest for someone outside the family."
Tagger's became interested in researching her family after the funeral of her grandmother at 97, which was attended by relatives from all over the world. Her uncle commented, "If we had a family tree, they'd all be together, at least on paper," and told Tagger: "You'll build this family tree." Many of her important indexes and databases are now posted on Dr. Malka's SephardicGen.com site.
Many of her important indexes and databases are located at SephardicGen.com. Two recent databases, based on various onomastic studies, are "Jewish Surnames in North Africa" (more than 12,000 names) and "Jewish Surnames in the Balkans" ( over 5,300 names), annotated indexes of major publications, indexes of rabbis buried in Salonika and Izmir and more.
In the mid-1990s, relates Malka, there were few internet-based Sephardi genealogy resources.
He caught the genealogy bug as he helped his father edit his memoirs, Jacob's Children in the land of the Mahdi: The Jews of the Sudan. On JewishGen, he found help researching his mother's Ashkenazi family, "but they told me there was no way to do Sephardi genealogy because there were no records." He kept searching for Sephardi resources, and discovered information in obscure academic texts, which led him to more resources.
As he learned more, he created the Resources for Sephardic Genealogy Web site, which includes articles on genealogy, history and links; his mailbox filled with questions and requests, prompting him to write Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World (Avotaynu, 2002) to provide answers and encourage others interested in tracing their roots.
To enhance JewishGen's Sephardi presence, the Sefard Forum discussion group was launched in 1998 and was later supplemented by Malka's Web pages. Malka says that Sephardi genealogy is now deemed a serious topic, as evidenced by his recent appearance before a non-Jewish forum at the Library of Congress. He recently placed extensive resources on www.sephardicgen.com, and hopes to organize a Sephardi genealogy conference in Spain.
Shelomo Alfassa of the International Sephardic Leadership Council in New York says the Internet has enabled researchers to network, strategize and communicate. It is responsible, he says, for exponential sharing of raw data, last names, geographical information, cemetery data, etc., and has provided a hook that led thousands to the satisfying pursuit of gathering leaves on their family trees.
Catalan author/journalist Pere Bonnin's book Sangre Judia, which sold out three editions and whose expanded fourth edition is now available, caused a minor revolution in Spain. Bonnin is a Chueta of Mallorca - Jews forcibly converted 100 years before the Expulsion, never accepted by the Old Christians and discriminated against ever since. The book includes an introduction to Judaism, Spanish-Jewish history, a history of anti-Semitism, and thousands of Jewish family names and places found in pre-Expulsion and Inquisition records.
"The book was painful in that it stirred up the feeling of being discriminated against for something that you did not do, but because of who you are," Bonnin says. But it also brought great satisfaction, he adds, as readers asked how they could discover their Jewish ancestry and return to Judaism. Another reward is observing how today's young Chuetas are not ashamed, as were earlier generations. Readers are "touched" when they find their names, suspect they should be there and want to know more. Others, upset to see their names listed, deny Jewish connections, "are angry, filled with hate, because they feel trapped by an identity they would prefer to erase," he explains.
Dr. Stanley Hordes of the University of New Mexico calls his interest in Sephardi genealogy "purely academic." He has no Sephardi roots - to his knowledge. He became fascinated with the Latin American history of the Inquisition and crypto-Jews, and wrote his doctoral dissertation on 17th-century crypto-Judaism in Mexico.
As New Mexico's state historian, Hordes became interested in crypto-Jews on the far northern frontier of Mexico, today's Southwest. He conducted genealogical research on early 15th-18th century New Mexican settlers, Hispanic New Mexicans who claimed a crypto-Jewish past, and examined genealogical links to Jews and conversos. His findings are documented in his recent book, To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico. His latest project focuses on crypto-Jews in Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.
Hordes is excited about new developments among Sephardim in terms of both openly practicing and crypto-Jews. Malka's work, he says, has provided "unprecedented" resource access, development and expansion of databases enabling researchers to investigate what was impossible a few years ago.
What do these researchers see for the future?
Stein wants to focus on the descendants of Spain's anousim in the US and in South and Central America. He would like Spain to fully disclose its records of the Inquisition, but doubts that it will happen.
Hordes seeks greater collaboration among genealogists, historians, social scientists, geneticists and physicians studying autoimmune diseases. Recently discovered genetic diseases among Hispanics in the US Southwest and Latin America mirror diseases appearing more frequently among Jews than in the general population, a phenomenon that has attracted the attention of Sephardi genealogists. Most Jewish disease literature refers to Ashkenazim; in many cases, testing never included Sephardim, leaving the mistaken impression that the diseases in question were unique to Ashkenazim rather than common to all Jews.
Alfassa, like Malka, would also like to see a conference. His future plans include examining Ladino-language newspapers published between 1890-1945 in Salonika, Izmir, Istanbul, New York and elsewhere. The papers were written in letras kuadradas (Hebrew letters); "They are a language-locked archive ripe for picking," he says. Ottoman Empire records in Istanbul and Ankara archives are accessible to scholars, but few can read Osmanlica (old Ottoman Arabic). "At least they're protected," Alfassa points out.
Kazes wants to recruit more volunteer typists for Turkish-Jewish projects, and also seeks to progress in his research on his great-grandmother's native town of Aleppo, Syria.
Kerem stresses that a cemetery project is needed in Greece, Turkey, former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria; his monthly Sepharad e-letter has over 4,000 subscribers, and he's in the process of organizing the first Sephardi March of the Living to demonstrate how the Holocaust impacted Sephardi communities.
DNA testing for genealogy has resulted in interesting connections. CEO Bennett Greenspan of the Houston, Texas-based Family Tree DNA, the field's pioneer company, says the Ashkenazi gene pool was always easier to access; most initial testing took place there. But it is now clear that all worldwide Jewish populations must be tested. A complete set of databases will be available - possibly in 2008 - to compare Sephardi and Mizrahi populations with existing Ashkenazi databases.
By Tamar Snyder, December 16, 2007, The Jewish Week News
Professor Benjamin Ish-Shalom is head of the Joint Conversion Institute, a network of study centers aimed at helping immigrants, including the estimated 300,000 people from the former Soviet Union, convert to Judaism. The Institute, which represents Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, was established by the Israeli government and the Jewish agency following the Ne’eman Commission’s recommendations in April 1998. As a showdown between Israel’s rabbinate and its ever-growing opponents over thorny conversion issues becomes increasingly likely, The Jewish Week spoke to Ish-Shalom during his recent visit to New York to talk about the conversion issue.
The Jewish Week: You are threatening to create independent conversion courts should Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar refuse to heed two-month-old recommendations set forth by a governmental committee calling for thereplacement of the current crop of haredi conversion rabbis. What are some problems afflicting the rabbis approved by the Chief Rabbinate?
Benjamin Ish-Shalom: Many of the rabbis who serve in the batei din for conversion are not open-minded enough and are not welcoming the potential converts. They don’t understand the social, cultural and mental conditions of the converts. Instead, they adopt a very strict approach. The outcome is that many who want to convert cannot overcome the examinations of the batei din. Others hear about the difficulties and obstacles and hesitate to join the process and don’t attempt to convert at all. It was always this way, but it’s becoming more and more difficult.
JW: What sort of difficulties are you referring to?
BIS: Many of these obstacles are unrelated to underlying halachic demands. It’s a question of approach, of rabbinic policy. They are not willing to convert a woman who wears trousers. They want her to dress like a religious Orthodox woman. I know of a policewoman, who has to wear a uniform. They recommended that she switch jobs. There was another woman who represented the State of Israel at the Olympics. They demanded that she leave the sport and switch to another occupation. She did it because she wanted to be converted. But this is not a halachic demand.
JW: You also complain that the conversion process is often dragged out for far longer than it needs to be. Can you describe other barriers to conversion that concern you?
BIS: The percentage of people who cannot overcome the exams is growing. They expect the convert to know many things that even religious people may not, including knowing the text of lengthy blessings by heart and answering questions regarding intricate details of halacha. Generally speaking, they expect the convert to become observant to the extent that he or she can be fully integrated into the religious community. They won’t convert someone who lives on a [secular] kibbutz.
JW:What about your claims that the beit din prolongs the conversion process in order to deter converts?
BIS: It takes too long. [The rabbis] don’t want to make it too easy. It can take from a month or two to six months, a year. And then it takes another half a year until they receive the conversion certificate. It all depends on the impression that the rabbis get from meeting with the convert. Also, currently the rabbis are paid for every time they meet with the convert. Therefore, they have no reason not to invite them for another meeting. We recommend that they get paid on a monthly basis.
JW: You’ve had considerably more success in converting Russian immigrants who are in the army, through the Institute’s Nativ program. Why is that?
BIS: The Nativ program offers three months of full-time learning about Judaism, halachic observance and Israel, as well as Shabbatonim in which students visit various Jewish communities. The first seven weeks offers a basic background in the Bible, Jewish history and Zionism. Visits to archeological sites enhance the day-to-night Torah learning sessions. They then get a month’s break to determine whether they want to continue with the conversion process. If they decide to go ahead with it, they then spend several weeks studying more intricate areas of halacha. Finally, they appear before a rabbinical military court to be converted to Judaism.
Since the program debuted in 2003, close to 80 percent of the 3,000 soldiers enrolled have been converted. Conversions in civilian conversion courts have around a 50 percent success rate. Part of the success is the fact that soldiers are living on a military base that is halachically observant. They have a kosher kitchen and a synagogue on premises. All the conditions are in place in order to maintain an observant lifestyle. It’s immersion.
JW: Is the number of IDF conversions growing?
BIS: There are more and more rabbis in the civilian track who speak against the “easier” way of converting soldiers. They’re putting pressure on rabbis in the IDF.
JW: Why the move to set up independent conversion courts?
BIS: Since the chief rabbinate does not face the real needs of the people, it ignores its own responsibilities and loses its relevance. If there’s no change, the whole structure of the conversion authority is questioned.
It seems unlikely that Rabbi Amar will heed the recommendations and appoint volunteer religious judges to replace the haredi rabbis currently serving in the conversion courts. What’s the timetable for establishing independent conversion courts?
We would prefer not to have any confrontation with the official rabbinic establishment. But we have no choice. We’re losing time and we’re losing the people.
By Ivan Watson, January 3, 2008, NPR.org
 On a chilly December afternoon, Rabbi Anson Laytner worked diligently at his desk in his cozy downtown Seattle office, but his mind was thousands of miles away. As the city bustled around him, the rabbi’s thoughts were actually in the ancient city of Kaifeng, China — a place where Jews from Persia and India are believed to have immigrated to as early as the 8th century.
Laytner, who serves as executive director of the American Jewish Committee in Seattle, and president of the board at the California-based Sino-Judaic Institute, has spent the past two decades delving deeper into the history of Kaifeng. What’s most astonishing, scholars found, is not only that Jewish communities existed in Kaifeng for centuries, but also that, for the most part, they coexisted with the native people peacefully. Laytner said the Chinese treated the Jewish immigrants with respect and showed tolerance toward their religion. They even — perhaps unknowingly — influenced their belief system.
“Kaifeng Jews came up with a kind of Judaism that was kind of a synthesis of Jewish thought and Chinese thought,” he said. More waves of Jewish people made their way into China during the next several centuries, finding refuge in Harbin, Tianjin, Hong Kong and Shanghai. About 18,000 Jews came to Shanghai during the Holocaust. Today scholars from across the globe travel to Far East to learn more about Sino-Judaic relations. They study steles, stone tablets with religious inscriptions, to unlock important clues into the history.
However, Laytner said, scholars have found difficulty in getting Kaifeng authorities to cooperate with their research. He said authorities often deny visitors access to museums and important artifacts for unknown reasons. He emphasized that the Jewish experience in China is crucial to study because it demonstrates a rare case of peaceful assimilation. “I’m hoping we’ll be able to establish good working relationships in Kaifeng, both with authorities and with Kaifeng Jews. We just want them to cooperate with us in the spirit of friendship,” he said.
According to Laytner, Judaism never left Kaifeng. “There are still Chinese Jewish descendents who identify themselves as Jews,” he said. The number of Jews currently living in China remains unclear, but through research and cross-cultural interaction, scholars hope to piece together Jewish China’s past and present. Laytner invites people from all backgrounds to explore this topic, which astounds him to this day. “Just the idea that there was this group that was able to synthesize Jewish and Chinese culture — sort of like a hybrid flower,” he reflected.
Laytner believes Sino-Judaic education could help ease tension around the world and foster a better understanding of Jewish people, as well as their hospitable hosts. “I think it challenges stereotypes of who Jews are, and who Chinese people are,” he said.
For more information about the Sino-Judaic Institute, visit www.sino-judaic.org.
By Marc Perelman, January 16, 2008, Forward.com
 When two dozen heavily armed policemen came to search the Hebraica community center in the Venezuelan capital one night last month, the Jewish community here finally snapped.
The government officers who entered the sprawling, country club-like complex were ostensibly looking for a stash of weapons and for evidence of “subversive activity.” They found neither. In the subsequent days, the Venezuelan Jewish community’s umbrella organization, the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela, fired off a statement denouncing the raid as an “unjustifiable act” aimed at creating tensions between the community and the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez.
This would not be remarkable in the United States, where Jewish groups routinely state their views with little trepidation. But their counterparts abroad have tended to be less confrontational, especially in countries with small communities and a volatile political environment. In Venezuela this has been the case until recently, despite a long series of problems that includes an earlier raid on the Hebraica center, antisemitism on state-controlled media and anti-Israel pronouncements by Chavez. The calculated quiet ended with last year’s December 1 raid. “We’re facing the first anti-Jewish government in our history,” Simon Sultan, president of Hebraica, told the Forward in an interview in his office, located in a tony Caracas neighborhood.
The December operation took place on the night preceding a crucial referendum on proposed constitutional reform that would have granted Chavez broad powers and the possibility to run indefinitely. The reform was rejected by a thin margin. “It seems that the only interpretation is that this was an intimidation by the government,” Abraham Levy Benshimol, president of CAIV, told the Forward.
Venezuela’s Jewish community numbered about 16,000 until Chavez was elected in 1998, and has since declined to around 12,000. The community comprises émigrés who began arriving in the mid-19th century from both North Africa and Eastern Europe, with the majority arriving during and after World War II. Evenly made up of Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews, the community has thrived in the oil-rich country. Benshimol said that it has maintained “good relations with the Venezuelan government since the end of military dictatorship in 1958.”
CAIV’s president also said that the ties continued when Chavez came to power and initially met with CAIV leaders. What has happened since then is a long and complicated story of domestic and international power politics.
One of the first points of tension was the April 2002 coup attempt against Chavez. Michael Penfold-Becerra, a political scientist at Caracas’s institute of superior administrative studies, said that among some government officials, suspicions against Jews were fueled by the alleged support of prominent rabbi Pinchas Brenner for the authors of the short-lived coup, as well as by the perception that Israelis and Jews were active in the arms business.
The first raid, in 2004, heightened the tensions, especially since it took place early in the day when hundreds of children were on their way to school. The tensions escalated again during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, when Chavez accused Israelis of behaving like Nazis. He recalled the charge d’affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in Tel Aviv, and Israel, in turn, called back its ambassador. Although the Israeli diplomat returned to Caracas a month later, and Venezuela sent a low-level envoy to Tel Aviv, the relationship remains fraught.
The Jewish community turned to Argentina’s government to intercede with Chavez, and last January the self-described “Bolivarian” leader agreed to meet with CAIV following a request by Nestor Kirchner, then president of Argentina. Through it all, Benshimol and others have stressed that there has been no instance of physical violence against Jews in the country. And they have, on occasion, defended Chavez against accusations of antisemitism aired by such American Jewish groups as the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
But the atmosphere has worsened lately, first and foremost because of Chavez’s increasingly inflammatory talk about Israel and its supporters. A television program called “The Razor,” broadcast on a state-owned channel, has featured lengthy rants about the presence of Mossad agents allegedly in the country working to unseat the Chavez regime with the support of the United States and opposition forces in Venezuela. The host of the show has also questioned the loyalty of leading Jewish figures to their home country. Despite repeated complaints by CAIV, the authorities have taken no action.
In March 2007, there were no government officials in attendance at the 40th-anniversary celebration of CAIV. Benshimol said that the government has had no official ties with his organization for the past year. The deteriorating atmosphere has prompted a sizable exodus of Jews from Venezuela. While precise numbers are hard to come by, the number of children attending the school at the Hebraica center has dropped some 37% in the past decade, while membership at the club has slipped 30%.
Most of the departed have moved to South Florida, Spain and Israel — although some of them continue to commute to Venezuela to tend to their business. While Jews are by no means the majority of this mostly middle- and upper-middle-class Venezuelan exodus, the small size of the community makes their departure much more damaging, especially since they include many of the community’s wealthiest contributors. As a result, the community has struggled to meet its budgetary targets. Leaders proudly explain that the institutions have been able to continue functioning while acknowledging that this could change rapidly, especially given the growing inflation and the very limited financial contributions of exiled Venezuelan Jews.
“If the exodus continues, we’ll have problems catering to the community, especially the poor, which make up a quarter of our Jews,” Benshimol said.
In the end, though, it was not the immigration but the raid that convinced the community to speak up. The operation was led by the equivalent of the FBI, whereas the more recent raid was done by officers from a police force under the control of the Interior Ministry and, as such, closely tied to the presidency. While there is no evidence that Chavez himself ordered the latest raid, the all-powerful Interior Ministry is one of his strongest levers.
The run-up to the December referendum was not a good time for the Jewish community’s relationship with Chavez. The community had close ties with former defense minister Raúl Isaías Baduel, and it honored him after he left the government and became a fierce opponent of Chavez. The honor was used by some pro-Chavez circles to claim that an American-Zionist conspiracy was trying to oust the president from power.
Jewish communal leaders also believe that another element might be at work. Sultan noted that Tarek al Assaimi, a former far-left student leader whose father was the representative of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party in Venezuela, is the deputy Interior and Justice minister in charge of internal security and, as such, could have been involved in initiating the raid.
A few days after the raid, Sultan and Benshimol went to the interior and justice ministries to meet with a prosecutor who opened a probe into possible irregularities surrounding the police operation, which was ordered by another prosecutor. A previous probe into the 2004 incident never produced any official outcome — and neither leader expressed much optimism that the outcome would be different this time.
Asked about the possibility that the bulk of the community might choose to go to Miami, Madrid or Tel Aviv for good, Benshimol paused. “We want to live here, but we want to live in dignified conditions,” he said.
Wed. Jan 16, 2008
By Gabriel Lerner, January 11, 2008, JewishJournal.com
 "This," says the guide, a man in his 20s with a round face, a hint of a mustache, beard and very short hair -- "this below us is the city of Quba."
We are standing at the top of a cliff, overlooking an urban development that at first sight looks like any other in this country -- bright tin roofs, low-slung buildings, a few cars covered in dust because of the wind, but no commercial signs or logos -- and, surprisingly, few mosques for a Muslim Shiite country like Azerbaijan.
Then I see the river that runs through Quba, and in the distance I notice a cluster of distinctive houses. They are more attractive, much larger, and decidedly different compared to others in surrounding areas. None of these houses looks like any other.
"This is where the Jewses [sic] of Quba live," says the guide, pointing at the group of houses I was looking at. "They are very successful."
Behind us is a cemetery. While the rest of the group stares at the river and the city, I walk alone toward the cemetery's iron gates, where I immediately recognize a Mogen David. This gate is not unlike one at the cemetery outside Buenos Aires, where my father is buried, or one in Rishon Letzion, Israel, that contains my ex-father-in-law's remains, or even the cemetery where my sister rests in L.A.'s Eden Memorial Park in Mission Hills. I walk slowly, reading the Russian and Hebrew inscriptions and staring at the photographs of the deceased etched in stone.
"They [the Jews] have the best cars," continues the guide. "Ferraris, Mercedes. They have them all. Jewses in Quba live very well." His face portrays satisfaction and pride, and the other members of my group -- journalists from Europe and the United States -- listen and nod. I am with this group to cover for La Opinión an international conference on the role of the media in the development of tolerance, organized by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Not unlike the Jews of Sefarad (Spain) during the First Caliphate, Azerbaijan's Jewry is interwoven into the fabric of this state, which emerged in August 1991 from the Soviet Union. And despite their minuscule numbers -- maybe 12,000 in a population of 8 million -- their presence is known and acknowledged, especially that of the Jews of Quba. These Mountain Jews, as they are called, have been living in this area for a very long time, perhaps 2,500 years; they consider themselves the descendants of those Jews exiled to Babylon after the destruction of the first Temple in 586 B.C.E., remaining in what is modern day Iran. In the eighth century, when the Muslims from the Arab Peninsula conquered the area, they brought the Jewish tribe, an ally, to the area of Baku to serve as a barrier against the Kazakhs to the north. In 1730, they were officially allowed to put down roots and own property in the Quba province.
In Quba
I have read this and other accounts about the Mountain Jews, and now I am ready to meet them. I am the only Jew in the group. The others seem to sense my emotion and begin taking pictures of us as we approach a small group of congregational leaders. As I reach the group of Azeri Jews, I look at them looking at us and realize, all of a sudden, that these people and I have more in common than anybody else here, and so I step up, and the guide introduces me to the head of the community, and then I say "Sholem Aleichem," and I also say in Hebrew, "Ani Yehoudi," and point to myself. We stare at each other, each noting our similarities, and we hug in the middle of a street in Quba, Azerbaijan.
Now I feel part of them. We enter the building, and my "cousin" speaks to me in Azeri, which is translated into English. He is a mathematician, he says. He points to signs on the wall with lists of names, those of Jews who died in the long fight against the Armenians: a few dozen. Like everybody else on our trip, he speaks of the allegiance to President Ilham Aliyev, with special attention to the memory of his father, the late President Heydar Aliyev.
While 93 percent of the population is Muslim, the constitution mandates no state religion, a legacy from the former Soviet Union. The residents wear Western clothes, and in the official meals we were offered throughout the trip, vodka, wine and beer were served. Ethnically, I cannot differentiate between Azeris and Mountain Jews. But Yevda Abramov, the Jewish member of the Parliament representing rural Quba, whom I met in Baku, explains these differences.
"The Jewish community," Abramov says, "differs from the rest of the population in education and lifestyle. We are very educated and operate businesses. We kept the Persian language," referring to the Jewish version of the dialect Tat, "but 25 percent of the words we use are in Hebrew."
The MP
Like almost everything else in Baku, the Parliament building is undergoing massive additions and renovations but will no doubt maintain its unmistakable Soviet-era character -- solemn, impersonal, with massive amounts of concrete, small doors and an oversized walkway. Abramov's office is a small room, devoid of decorations, on the building's fifth floor.
"I ran against 17 other candidates of my own party" (the ruling New Azeri Party), Abramov states. "I won over all of them, and an international agency was watching the election. This is a democracy."
In Quba, Abramov was a teacher, a principal and a rural organizer. "Today Quba is not unlike any other Jewish community," he tells my translator, who then speaks to me in Spanish. "Our rabbi, butcher, mohel, chazzan -- all were educated in Israel."
Since the Helsinki Accords of 1972, the Jews of Azerbaijan have been exiting the country in large numbers, mainly going to Israel, where they number more than 50,000. Since most of the emigrants were Ashkenazis from Baku, the Mountain Jews remained here, as the majority of the community in the country.
Abramov, a bulky man with a prominent mustache, discusses the successes of Jews in Azerbaijan, mostly in holding government positions. There are some well-known Azeri artists who are Jewish. According to him, his country is a model for religious liberty in the world, "especially compared to Armenia," he emphasizes, where "there are not even 10 Jewish families today."
While the country keeps a remarkable pace of development and focuses on very rapid urban construction, exploitation of its huge oil reserves and the expansion of the apparatus of the state, its main concern is the conflict with Armenia. My hosts took me to a "recently discovered mass grave" -- a horrific pile of bones at the end of a soccer field in a small town. These are, they claimed, the remains of hundreds of Azeris slaughtered by Armenians in 1918. At the same time Armenians were slaughtered by the Ottoman Empire.
Abramov supports the official line. "If there is a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan," Abramov says, "many Jews will die. Please, clarify that to the world. In the war for Karabakh, the first fallen hero was Jewish. Send the message."
Between 1992 and 1994, the war between the two new countries left 30,000 dead and 800,000 refugees, almost all of them Azeris. Armenia, a country of less than 2 million, compared to 8 million of Azerbaijan, conquered the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, about 16 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan. One of the refugees was Emin Alesgerov, my translator. "I lived there with my grandparents; I was 7 years old, and they told us to leave. My grandparents still want to go back," he told me.
The conflict is central to the government's policies. Idahav Orijov, minister of religious affairs, becomes emotional describing the war. He stands by a map on the wall in his office and shows me a spot that represents his hometown in the area controlled by Armenia. Then he describes a series of settlements destroyed by the conquerors. Nazim Ibrahimov, minister of the diaspora -- a population he put at 50 million (35 in Lower Azerbaijan, in Iran) in 36 countries -- tells me about the need to organize that diaspora "like the Jews, the Italians, the Irish of the United States did," to counter the influence of the Armenian diaspora.
Recovering the lost territory is considered the supreme goal of the state. To gain support for their cause, they resort to every imaginable resource, including an alleged strategic alliance with Turkey, a main ally, and Israel, with which they established diplomatic relations in April 1992. When I went to meet the head of the embassy in Baku I found an old friend.
The Ambassador
Arthur Lenk, a native of New Jersey, served as Israeli consul for communications and public affairs in Los Angeles between 1998 and 2000. We had met on several occasions back then, as the consulate implemented a distinctive process of recognizing the increasing importance of the Latino community in the United States. Then he returned to other assignments in Israel, and in September 2005 he submitted his credentials in Azerbaijan.
Now we are looking at each other, smiling and speaking Hebrew, surrounded by other Israelis and Azeris -- and a sizable contingent of security agents. He invited me to the celebration of Yom HaAtzmaut, the 59th anniversary of Israel's independence. Lenk says that "the most interesting thing I found here is the human link, the fact that there is a sizable Jewish community that lives as brothers and partners, as part of a Muslim country. This is not always understood in the world and is vital for Israel.
"While there are those who speak in terms of a clash of civilizations, in Azerbaijan they talk about the other Islam, the moderate. Their relationship with Israel, in business, energy and regional interests, is a compelling example of tolerance and coexistence," Lenk says. "They are an important partner of Israel; here, we buy one-sixth of our oil."
All together, that's more than a billion dollars every year. According to Jane's Defence Weekly, Israel sells to Azerbaijan "battlefield aviation, artillery, antitank, and anti-infantry weapons." The Washington Institute for Middle East Policy includes in Israel's involvement "training for Azerbaijani security and intelligence services, as well as security for the Azerbaijani president during his foreign visits."
While as a diplomat he emphasizes bilateral collaboration, Lenk cannot ignore the fact that there is still no Azeri embassy in Israel.
"It is true, but this is not our decision, and they must consider it in the perspective of their own interest. I try to convince my Azeri friends that the presence of Israel serves their own goals."
In the hall of the Hyatt-Regency, Jewish youth sing the national anthem of Azerbaijan and "Hatikvah." I stand close to Lenk -- we sing too. I returned home to Los Angeles at the end of April. Since then, Azerbaijan never disappeared entirely from the news; first were stories about imprisoned journalists that sent an image of an authoritarian regime. Then, on Nov. 6, Azerbaijan announced that it foiled an attack by Wahabi extremists aided by Al Qaeda on the U.S. Embassy. Baku tries to dispel an insistent rumor about military cooperation with the United States and Israel that would allegedly include providing an air base for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites. In August, President Aliyev made an urgent trip to Tehran to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, six days after the visit to Baku by Israel's transportation minister Avidgor Lieberman.
This area is in turmoil and under tremendous pressure for change and development. In this process, the Jews of Azerbaijan, Quba dwellers, the Mountain Jews who claim to have arrived 2,500 years ago to the area, are patient witnesses as well as participants.
By John Lewis, February 6, 2008, The Sydney Morning Herald
 Yasmin Levy is explaining how she nearly became the new Shakira. At her home on the outskirts of Jerusalem, she plays an unreleased demo she recorded two years ago, very expensively, with Sting's producer, Kipper. It's a bombastic power ballad a million miles away from the low-key Sephardic folk music she usually makes. She and her husband, Ishay, are laughing as they sing along to it, playing air drums and swaying their hands in the air.
"Ha, ha, I think it's great!" she giggles. "But it's not very me, is it?"
Two years ago, Levy was approached by the president of Decca. He had delved into world music and seen this Mediterranean singer with raven hair, pillow lips, enormous brown eyes and a remarkable voice that can switch from deep and husky to high and operatic. He made a plan to take the ancient Sephardic Jewish ballads she sang and polish them for a pop audience, with Levy singing in modern Spanish, rather than the medieval Jewish variant of Spanish called Ladino. But a corporate reshuffle at Universal - Decca's parent company - caused the cancellation of several projects, including Levy's.
"They had big plans," she says. "They wanted to market it in Spain and Latin America as a big pop record. But I have to say that I was more relieved than disappointed that it didn't happen. I don't think I'd have made a very convincing pop star. It's not really what I do."
Levy still does what she did before her flirtation with pop: she revives music and lyrics written in Ladino, an ancient form of Spanish leavened with Arabic, Turkish, Balkan and Greek. It's the language spoken by Sephardic Jews, who were banished from Spain in 1492 to other parts of the Mediterranean. It is also one of the world's most endangered tongues - today, there are fewer than 200,000 Ladino speakers.
A few hours earlier, Levy was showing me around Ohel Moshe, a quiet neighbourhood near the bustling Judah market in Jerusalem's new city. It's a few streets of modest, picturesque bungalows, many built more than a century ago. "This is where my father's family came in the 1920s," she says proudly.
Several plaques on the walls commemorate Sephardic families who arrived in the first decades of the 20th century. Levy's father, Yitzhak, takes pride of place, being displayed even more prominently than the fifth prime minister of Israel, Yitzhak Navon, who lived a few doors down.
To understand Levy's music, you have to look to her father. She barely knew Yitzhak Levy - he was 27 years older than her mother and died, aged 57, when Yasmin was a year old - but he cast a long shadow over her life. Born in Turkey in 1919, Yitzhak moved to Jerusalem when he was three. He worked as a broadcaster, cantor, academic and folk singer, but his main occupation was tirelessly collecting the folk songs of the Sephardic Jewish community, in particular those sung in Ladino.
"He'd ask old women to sing songs they learned when they were children. He would see how these same ancient lullabies and ballads had been developed differently by Jews in Bulgaria or Turkey." Near Yasmin's childhood home is a warehouse containing thousands of books, notes and song transcriptions that Yitzhak accumulated over the years. "What I have tried to do is bring his research to life. There are other people who sing Ladino music, but they sing it from the head, academically. I like to sing it from the heart, with the passion of a flamenco singer."
On her 2005 album, La Juderia, she made this flamenco connection explicit, arranging Ladino songs with a flamenco backing. She speaks fluent Spanish, has spent time in Andalusia, and teamed up with Gypsy musicians for the project - but many flamenco purists thought it an unconvincing fusion.
"There's this idea that you have to be a Gypsy to play flamenco," she says.
"That's nonsense, of course - the greatest flamenco guitarist of all, Paco de Lucia, is not a Gypsy, and all the Gypsies love him. But I can understand that kind of purism. It's not about blood or race, it's about culture. I feel it with Ladino music. Anyone can sing these Ladino songs, but it is not just the words on the page. It's the food you eat, it's the furniture in your family home, it's your mother shouting at you. It's something that becomes close to your heart."
To this end, her latest album, Mano Suave, marks a return to her Ladino roots, but the dalliance with a big label has changed her attitude towards recording. Levy self-produced her first two albums; this time she enlisted two producers, the BBC radio broadcaster and musicologist Lucy Duran and the veteran engineer and producer Jerry Boys, who has worked with everyone from the Beatles to Buena Vista Social Club.
"You need strong producers you can trust," she says, "people who aren't afraid to criticise you.
"A lot of the time it's about not over-singing. Sometimes I'm inclined to sing flashy and high-pitched just because I can. Having a producer convinces you that that's not always necessary. Sometimes, when you're a singer, technique can be a mask, and you have to remove all masks when you're singing."
She likes "big voices" - people such as Maria Callas, the Portuguese fado singer Mariza, Kurdish folk hero Ibrahim Tatlises ("he sounds like he's crying"), flamenco vocalist Miguel Poveda ("he sings with the sensibility of a woman") and, most remarkably, the high-pitched Spanish warbler Antonio Molina ("he sings like he has a bird in his throat").
Levy's own music incorporates touches of all these influences and has always involved a multicultural cast: the Egyptian star Natacha Atlas features on Mano Suave, while her bands have featured Spaniards, Iranians, Turks, Greeks, Armenians and even a Paraguayan harp player. The themes of displacement and longing seem universal: on Mano Suave's opening track, Irme Kero, she sings, "Mother I long for Jerusalem/ to taste its fruit and drink its water/ The master of the world shelters and comforts me".
She plans an ambitious project in which she will be accompanied by a big Turkish classical orchestra and a Christian choir. "Ideally, I want to unite Judaism, Christianity and Islam through Ladino music. This is an art form that has travelled around through vast stretches of Europe, North Africa and Arabia and still survives. It is true world music."
By Staff, February 7, 2008, Stereohyped.com
 Sirak Sabahat lives in New York City, but the road that led him here was full of hardships few Americans could ever imagine. Sabahat is the star of Live and Become a film about an Ethiopian boy named Schlomo who settles in Israel after U.S. and Israeli forces air-lifted thousands of persecuted Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) to the country in the mid-80s as part of a mission called Operation Moses. Orphaned upon arrival in the new country, Schlomo faces intense racism as he tries to fit in, find love, and keep a dangerous secret.
Of the film, the New York Times says “Live and Become exerts a tidal pull. It makes you feel the weight of history, of populations on the move in a restless multicultural world. It makes you reconsider cultural assimilation, a process that may seem to be complete but whose underlying conflicts may never be fully resolved.”
This is a concept Sabahat knows very well. Despite some key dramatic differences, the 26-year-old actor’s story is shockingly similar to that of the character he plays. Seven years after Operation Moses, Sabahat, a Falasha himself, his family, and thousands of others embarked on a treacherous, year-long march from their village to Addis Ababa, losing many on the way. They marched to fulfill a religious prophecy that the Falasha would return to Jerusalem. Once they reached Addis Ababa, they were airlifted to Israel as part of Operation Solomon. When he settled in Israel at the age of 12, he experienced much of what his fictional character did in Live and Become.
Stereohyped spoke to Sabahat recently about his movie, his past, and what the future holds.
Stereohyped: The story of the Ethiopian Jews and Operation Moses and Operation Solomon are not familiar to a lot of Americans. What has the reaction been like?
Sirak Sabahat: People identify with the humanity part. They see the struggle of the individual and they see themselves, because this is a county built on immigration. Many people left their own homes in this time or in different times — whether it was 50 years or 10 years or five years ago. They have some kind of mark in their hearts for a cause that is so devastating. So people are responding to the story of a person who is going out from hell to have a chance and a privilege, in a way, to be alive. American people are very attached to this story, because it’s a very good education about people coming from different places in Africa. People are more lovely about this film in the United States. It’s the humanity of it.
SH: I would think that this film would resonate most deeply with the Jewish and African American communities. Do you find that to be true?
SS: The African American community, they think this is their story. The Jewish community also, they see this as their story. But not just those two groups. Every person who sees this film, whether they’re from Latin America or Asia or whatever, every person is expressing the same thing — that they feel that this is their story. Remember that you have more than 11 mllion people in the United States — immigrants, legally or illegally. When they see this film they’re so into it. This is a very universal story.
SH: There are some obvious differences, but the character you played is like you in many ways. How did bring your experiences to your performance?
SS: It wasn’t easy. It was just restoring memories of my childhood. To bring things that I didn’t want to reveal and to confront them again. At the end of the day I understood that I have a responsibility, not just as an actor, to do it the best way I can, because I’m speaking on behalf of a thousand voices. I had a little bit of difficulty dealing with my past, but it was also rewarding to be able to bring out everything that I have inside of me.
SH: Did you experience the same racism that your character did when you moved to Israel?
SS:I’ll be honest with you. Yes, indeed. I felt the same discrimination from other people. But I see that this is a disease that we have everywhere in this world. We have it here in the United States and in Europe. The form and the shape of it is changing from the 19th century to now, but it still keeps coming in different ways, and I have experienced that in Israel. But the best way I have found to deal with it, at the end of the day, is to acquire yourself and education. Because an education will be a true liberation of your mind and your heart and through education you can absolutely overcome the ignorance. In the meantime, there are great forces in this world doing so many good things. This is my true understanding and my true vision – for people to see the beautiful colors and for people to put the spotlight on those who are creating a better humanity. Not to put a spotlight on those creating barriers be |
