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  Be’chol Lashon Newsletter: August 2008
 We are delighted to update you on the progress of the Abayudaya Community Health and Development Plan that provides essential life-saving services to adults and children throughout the region. This project promotes peace and cooperation among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Uganda. Click here for the newest update To donate, click here.
What do you do, if you're young, gifted and African, when the Economist describes your home as "The Hopeless Continent"? A group of young, black comedians who have taken South Africa by storm. Their attitude, says 30-year-old comic Kagiso Lediga, is, "Get lost if you can't take a joke. Our job is to talk about things that are wrong, and we'll keep doing it unless you kill us." Read on...
A member of Costa Rica's small Reform Jewish community was named to the president's Cabinet. Clara Zomer, 68, was appointed housing minister this month by President Oscar Arias. She becomes the first Reform Jew to join the Cabinet since Arias' term began in 2006. As minister, Zomer will be charged with government efforts to reduce slums and is expected to coordinate designs of a zoning plan for the area surrounding the capital, San Jose. Read on...
It’s a fact that circumcision reduces the chance of female-to-male HIV infection by up to 75 percent. So with AIDS still devastating Africa, help has arrived from the world’s top circumcision expert: Israel. During the past year, the nonprofit Jerusalem AIDS Project (JAIP) partnered with Hadassah Medical Organization and the Family Life Association of Swaziland to establish Operation Abraham, a pilot program to promote and perform adult male circumcisions. Read on...
As international adoptions have increased, Jews reflect that social trend, said Gary Tobin of the Institute for Jewish Community Research in San Francisco. Rabbi Daniel Isaak, Neveh Shalom's senior rabbi, who presided over Susannah and Susie's b'not mitzvah, says increasing numbers of international adoptees are being raised as Jews.Read on...
My childhood was surrounded by all things Texas, the land of cowboys and football. Neither of my parents was originally from Texas. My mom was raised Lutheran in Oklahoma and my father, Jewish in Ohio. They met in Austin at the University of Texas and later settled down in Dallas, where they raised my brother and me. Read on...
Why does everyone stare at me in shul? My hair is furrier, fuzzier and a foot taller than everyone else's. Even among "my people" in the Dominican Republic, I am considered rather pale; but in a crowd of Ashkenazi Jews, people tend to see my measly tan as exotic. My skin color, my hair texture and my facial features all betray my desire to blend in. I only wish I could tell all the gawkers outright that, just two years ago, I was a non-practicing Catholic running around in cleavage-enhancing tank tops and short shorts. Read on...
Yaheh Hallegua is the last Jewish woman of child-bearing age in Mattancheri. Her cousins Keith and Len are the last eligible bachelors. But she is not keen on either of them. So within a few decades the extinction of the 400-year-old Jewish community in the port-village in India’s southern state of Kerala is assured. Read on...
Book Information: The Last Jews of Kerala: The 2,000 Year History of India's Forgotten Jewish Community
Follow the smells of jerk chicken, down the dirt road past Boston Beach, where the shifting azure waters hold surfers poised on the edge of a wave. Open the heavy bamboo gate at Jamaica’s Great Huts resort, and behold the colorful mural above the deck, a reproduction from the fifth-century Ma’on synagogue in Israel. Read on...
Communitat Jueva ATID de Catalunya, the Progressive congregation in Barcelona, recently marked 15 years since its establishment, as well as the establishment of Progressive Judaism in Spain. Read on...
Yale Naim, along with her trusted collaborator David Donatien, has achieved a surreal kind of success, considering that nearly two-thirds of her album is in Hebrew. It’s also worth recognizing that an American major label (Atlantic) saw the self-titled debut as a sensible signing when, certainly, there is a handful of English-only coffee house sirens available locally. Read on...
Growing up in Newton, a suburb west of Boston, filmmaker Sadia Shepard was an anomaly, with a Protestant father from Colorado and a Muslim mother from Karachi, Pakistan. The picture became even more complicated when she discovered, at age thirteen, that her grandmother, Rahat, who lived with Shepard's family and was called Nana by her grandchildren, was actually born Rachel Jacobs, and was a member of the Bene Israel—a Jewish community centered in what was then known as Bombay. Read on...
Chaabi is clearly indebted to the classical music of 15th-century Andalusia. But North Africans also bent those traditions to their own ends, in the process communicating everyday songs of love and money, either won or lost. The sounds of Moorish Spain came to North Africa in force when Spain expelled Muslims and Sephardic Jews in 1492. In Algeria, the music continued to evolve, with Muslim and Jewish musicians playing side by side and absorbing various influences. Read on... Save 10% - Sign up Today! Bay Area Be'chol Lashon Retreat 2008
You are invited to the 5th Annual Bay Area Be’chol Lashon Retreat for ethnically and racially diverse Jews, family and friends, at Walker Creek Ranch. The weekend is an opportunity to learn together, celebrate our Judaism and continue to strengthen our growing community. Sign up online! Questions? Email Esther@JewishResearch.org Sephardi Torah Dedications September 12-14, 2008 Events will celebrate the arrival of two Sephardic Sifrei Torah. Rabbi Tessone, director of the Sephardi Studies Program at Yeshiva University will be the scholar in residence. The Sifrei Torah will be publicly marched to Ahabat Torah and a dedication auction will be held. Mazel Tov!
THANK YOU
We welcome your participation in the Be’chol Lashon Newsletter! Please send us information about events in your community or articles of interest that relate to Jewish diversity. E-mail newsletter submissions to Esther Fishman, Esther@JewishResearch.org. Submissions are subject to editing for content, clarity and style. Special thanks to all the contributors who make the newsletter interesting and informative. |
Did You Hear the One About Apartheid
Zomer, of Costa Rica's Jewish Community, Named Minister of Housing
Israeli AIDS organization Launches Circumcision Effort in Africa
Yeehaa! Oh...and Shalom
Funny, You Don't Look Jewish
Living Far Apart, Kerala's Jews
Discovering Jewish Jamaica: A Historical Tour
Barcelona Congregation Celebrates 15 Years
Hebrew Goes Platinum
The Third Way: Sadia Shepard
Chaabi: The 'People's Music' of North Africa
To Helen Kim & Noah Leavitt on the birth of their son, Aryeh Zakkai Kim-Leavitt
To Nzinga Koné and Michael Miller on the birth of their daughter, Noa Adeline Koné-Miller