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  Be’chol Lashon Newsletter: March 2010
In a tradition in which food choices can be as divisive as they are unifying, matzo stands as Judaism’s strongest culinary bond. Kosher keepers and hardcore vegans alike eat matzo; so do Jews from Spain, South Africa and Miami Beach.
The historic saga of Ethiopian Jewry, with its unique traditions and customs, will be incorporated into the mainstream Pessah story for the first time in a new Haggada written by Ethiopian-Jewish history expert Rabbi Menachem Waldman.
You can heat up that matzah-ball soup and whip up grandpa’s famous firehouse horseradish, but make room for new Passover tastes from India, Estonia, and Israel.
As rabbi of the first active synagogue in the deep south of Italy – since Inquisition times, my mission as an Italian American and a Jew has been to extend the hand of Jewish welcome to the most common of all interfaith combinations – the Italian Jewish family.
For the first time since they came to Israel, all 10 Jewish communities displaced from Arab countries have agreed on a course of action to address their grievances—and triumphed in the political arena. Supporters of the new law say that its passage shows that Israel today is more accepting of Sephardic discourse than it has been in the past.
The 150 first-graders and kindergartners at the Hebrew Language Academy seem unfazed by the attention, and the school itself appears to be overcoming what has been its most significant hurdle: the skeptics who worried that Hebrew cannot be taught without stepping over the strict religion-state divide that all publicly funded institutions must legally respect.
After a year-and-a-half of careful restoration work by the Egyptian authorities, the Maimonides Synagogue in Cairo is set to be rededicated on Sunday.
The remaining Jews of Baghdad could not be said to constitute a community. They were merely a tiny remnant of a once-great people, and they now find themselves marooned in a sea of anti-Jewish hostility—isolated, frightened, and largely forgotten.
Jamaican Jews are a subspecies of their own. A significant minority are black, the descendants of intermarriages or relationships between Jewish plantation owners and their slaves. They speak in the same unmistakable accent for which the island is famous. And like most Jamaicans—but perhaps unlike most Jews—they are laid back.
A report by the human rights watchdog of the Organization of American States warns of a possible “threat to the life and physical integrity of the Jewish community in Venezuela” due to the Chavez regime’s violations of the political and human rights of its citizens.
From her home in Tel Aviv, Rita explained her own eclectic and personal and musical influences: “I can’t say that my music is one thing or the other. I was born in Iran, so I grew up with Middle Eastern music. Then at 8, I moved to Israel, which is really a cultural and musical melting pot." A Moveable Feast Since there is no museum of Ethiopian Jewry in Israel, artist Almo Ishta has built a portable museum in a trunk, continuing the trunk show tradition started by Marcel Duchamp.
March is a good month for basketball fans, as college teams clash in the NCAA Tournament, aptly known as March Madness, and NBA teams make a final push for the playoffs. But long before champions like Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan dominated men's professional basketball, Jewish basketball teams were all the rage in the early 20th century.
Be'chol Lashon is proud to partner with Dor Chadash and over 100 other community organizations for the annual New York community-wide Yom Ha'Atzmaut event, taking place on April 19th, 2010 at Terminal 5! The evening begins with a ceremony to honor Israel's fallen soldiers and victims of terror, then continues in an all-out celebration of Israel, with live entertainment, DJ, and a taste of the Israeli "shuk." Proceeds from this year's event will benefit the Michael Levin Memorial Center for Lone Soldiers in Israel. Click here
Mark you calendars for the next meeting for Jews from Diverse Ethnic and Racial Backgrounds.
An Indian, a Jew and an Indian Jew walk onto a stage. Sounds like a set-up for a joke, doesn’t it? Well, it’s no joke, but it does set up a very funny evening of cross-cultural comedy in the multi-ethnic San Francisco Bay Area. Dhaya Lakshminarayanan (an Indian Hindu), Joe Nguyen (a Vietnamese Jew) and Samson Koletkar (an Indian Jew) bring their hilarity and their disparity to the stage.
A month-long festival taking place throughout the Bay Area during April 2010, Out In Israel showcases some of the best of Israeli LGBT cultural creation. Out in Israel features LGBT art, literature, film, drama, food, dance, progressive thought and intellectual debate.
During his tenure as New Mexico State Historian in the 1980s, Stanley Hordes began to hear stories of Hispanos who lit candles on Friday night and abstained from eating pork. Puzzling over this phenomenon, Hordes realized that these practices might well have been passed down through the centuries from early crypto-Jewish settlers in New Spain. Co-sponsored by Be'chol Lashon.
A unique community-wide celebration and night of Torah study, a spiritual journey bringing together Jews with varied perspectives and affiliations. Stay for an hour or until dawn. Leaders will be teaching from our diverse Jewish community. Co-sponsored by Be'chol Lashon.
Trace the fascinating history of Jewish traders who journeyed along the Silk Road, settled in Kaifeng in the twelfth century, and survived as a community for 800 years.
Camp Be'chol Lashon's mission is to offer a safe, nurturing, challenging residential Jewish camp experience for children of racially and ethnically diverse Jewish families and those who want to be part of a global Jewish community. Register | Apply for staff This month, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu discusses the significance of Passover for the Abayudaya. Plus, Rabbi Sizomu's wife, Tziporah, shares her family's charoset recipe. For the complete update and to read updates from 2007 and 2008, click here. Be'chol Lashon is now on Twitter! Follow us at www.twitter.com/bechollashon. And, if you haven't already, become a fan of Be'chol Lashon on facebook: www.facebook.com/bechollashon. We welcome your participation in the Be’chol Lashon Newsletter! Please send us information about events in your community or articles of interest that relate to Jewish diversity. E-mail Esther Fishman. Submissions are subject to editing for content, clarity and style. Special thanks to all the contributors who make the newsletter interesting and informative. |
