Ethiopian Anusim

Jews come in all colors.

And so do shuls. Please note the Amharic script in which the Ten Commandments are written on the Ark of the Law. Do not let anybody persuade you that Jews are only white.

Pictures taken from Failed Messiah.

Some humor for my slow return

Those of you who have lived in Israel will find this hilarious.

Yom Hazzikarón and Yom Haatzma'ut

Tonight and for two days Israel celebrates its two most important secular holidays: the first of them is Yom Hazzikaron (The day of rememberance) in which the country remembers all the fallen soldiers and the victims of terror. The TV stations that broadcast "entertaining" things shut down or dedicate their waves to memorial programs of specific families: following their grief, sharing with the entire country the memory of your boy or girl who fell in this war or the other. The same thing with radio. The whole country is one huge bleeding wound, one single remembering soul. Tomorrow, when the sun sets, the gloom of Yom Hazzikaron will be raised by the cheer and the fireworks of Independence Day (Yom Haatzma'ut). The stages that have held, some twenty four hours previous, grieving families will be filled with dancers and children, baloons, and flags (ubiquitous blue Stars of David on a sea of white). Sackcloth will be turned into dancing, grief into joy. In any other country such mingling of the most contradictory feelings in the human heart would seem schizophrenic and grotesque. However, in Israel it seems natural and logical. The continuing existence of the State (59 years tomorrow) is guaranteed, sadly, only by the efforts and sacrifices of these brave men and women. May it be His will that in the very close future this will not seem so blatantly obvious!

חג שמח

Sea su memoria una bendición para todos nosotros

Armando Restrepo Estrada
(Enero 8, 1922-Abril 13, 2007)

Hiking through the bottom of the world

I am really sorry I have not been paying attention to this, my little corner of the virtual world. As most bloggers I do suffer from bouts of enthusiasm and exhaustion. So I hope this time I will clean away the cobwebs and settle for good.
A lot of things have been happening since my last post. A new semester, Pesach, Alejandro´s wedding, the preparations to go back to the City Without Mountains. I may or may not get to write about these events. In any case, what I will write about (or more precisely show you) is the three day camping trip we made to Ein Gedi and the Dead Sea. Ein Gedi has been a site for Jewish settlement since the time of King David all the way into the seventh century of this era. Today there is a kibbutz there and several natural reserves which you will see in the pictures.
We spent the last three days camping and hiking, praying in the fields and in the ruins, praising Hashem in the darkness of the desert, making fire without matches, spending the night under the stars and learning from the eagles and the hyraxes how to be better bipedal rational animals who can laugh. (Spanish speakers please follow the link on the hyrax to discover a wonderful piece of trivia about the origins of the name of your language) [Before going on I would like to give kudos to Aaron and Ute for organizing the trip and to Tamir, our wonderful Israeli guide who taught us so much and who I hope gets to visit Colombia one of these days.] Without further ado, the pictures.

First we started at the Kibbutz with a great basket weaving workshop with basket weaver extraordinaire Mychal. The house in the picture is her house. She wove it out of the palm trees in the grove in the picture. She weaves and weaves and weaves and smiles and makes a living by teaching people all there is to know about the date palm (Tamar in Hebrew) and by weaving incredible complex things from the palm leaf. This was followed by a sumptuous lunch provided by ceramist Riki who also lives in the hut and builds mud kitchens.


Mychal and Riki live off the land and have creative professions. As for myself, as it is obvious in the picture, I could never make a living out of basket weaving. (However, I am very attached to my basket no matter how misshaped and uncomely.)

After the basket weaving we decided to make our way up the hill all the way to the oasis of Ein Gedi ("The spring of the Goat" in Hebrew) which involved huffing and puffing up an incredible incline full of rocks overlooking the Dead Sea. After braving the rockslides and the throngs of Ultraorthodox Jews who, for no apparent reason, were all hiking this path in the middle of a hot spring afternoon in their complete Polish garb (black hat and all), we reached the top of the hill and were rewarded by the crystal pool of Ein Gedi whose waters are cool and delicious (and a great place to put your tired, dusty feet after a long hike). Soon after it started to rain (with lightning and thunder and we had to hurry down the path, risking life and limb. I am sorry there are no pictures of that, we are not the National Geographic Society.)

Ein Gedi from below (yes, yes we climbed all the way up that hill and at 30 C no less).

The kibbutz's palm groves as seen from halfway up the trail. Ein Gedi is an oasis of lush vegetation in the middle of one of the harshest deserts in the world. The pool of blue in the background is Yam Hamelach (the Dead Sea): the lowest point in the world (400 m below sea level) and the saltiest body of water on the planet (nothing can live in its waters). Such fun factoids only make the miracle of Ein Gedi more amazing. Indeed, as King Solomon said, "My beloved is unto me as a cluster of henna-flowers In the vineyards of En-gedi." (Song of Songs 1.14)

At last, the waters of Ein Gedi. (This pool of three meters of diameter feeds all the green in the valley below. Thus is the power of water in the desert.) Later that afternoon we met with our guide, Tamir, and set up camp amidst the ruins of the old kibbutz. The day ended with us trying to learn to light fire without matches and with long meditative walks around the nearby forest practicing the chasidic art of hitbodedut (isolation) espontaneous conversations with God in solitude.

[To be continued]

Spring is here!

I am sorry for being so out of touch and out of the blogosphere. I have simply been resting and working on other projects that needed my complete attention. But, since I returned to school yesterday, I think I should also reinitiate my blogging routine. So, first, some updates.

Thank you to all that participated in the poll. After a lot of thought, I opted to use the "sh" despite the arguments for the phonetic symbol. After all, this siddur is intended for learners and I do not want to confuse them. As for the iterations, I decided to keep the sh and place a period between the iterated shins, like so: ish.she.

The second update. About three weeks ago we went hiking in the lower Galilee, close to the coast, in the Carmel Mountain ridge. Here are some pictures of how spring is lived in this beautiful part of the world.

Poppies of the Galil

Carmel ridge with the Mediterranean in the background ("Será porque mi niñez sigue jugando en tu playa, escondido tras las cañas duerme mi primer amor, llevo tu luz y tu olor por dónde quiera que vaya....)

De profundis clamavi ad Te Domine (Ps 130)
ממעמקים קראתיך ד

Encuesta (para legos y para expertos)

Hola a todos y a todas.

Algunos de ustedes saben que estoy escribiendo un siddur (un libro de oraciones judío) con traducción y trasliteración al español. Ahora la mayoría de las letras hebreas tienen un equivalente en español que puede ser expresado por una sola letra. Hay, no obstante, dos excepciones. Una de ellas es la que me está quitando el sueño. Esta es la letra shin

ש

Esta letra pronunciada como la sh inglesa (show, shop, shampoo) puede ser transliterada como una sh (lo cual tiene la ventaja de ser más reconocible aunque tiene un toque anglicista que no me gusta para nada) o a través del signo fonético š (el cual es menos conocido pero tiene la ventaja de ser una sola letra la cual puede ser explicada en una tabla de pronunciación que el siddur va a tener en su introducción).
Ahora, para ustedes, lectores de habla hispana (judíos y no judíos), ¿qué es más fácil leer (no necesariamente más familiar)?:

(opción uno) shabbat o (opción dos) šabbat

Consideren que en muchos casos la shin (o šin) viene duplicada:

(opción uno) ishshé o (opción dos) iššé

Su voto me interesa. Por favor tómese un minuto para votar en la sección de comentarios (así sea anónimamente).

Cuba, qué linda es Cuba....

This wonderful picture (which I had to remove because of fear of being sued, but which can still be seen if you follow the link) appeared in the New York Times today together with an article about the Jews of Cuba and their struggle for cultural survival. My wife´s grandfather was one of the last rabbis to serve in Cuba and her family remembers the island fondly. If we could secure a living there, I would love to help this community. Walking down the Malecón with a white fedora, smoking a cigar, debating a particularly relaxed suggya in the Talmud...ah, tropical fantasies.

Y luego no se pregunten por qué

Aquellos que dudan de la utilidad del estudio de las religiones y de la necesidad, incluso en un país predominantemente monoreligioso como es Colombia, de establecer departamentos de religiones comparadas necesitan leer la siguiente pieza del Pasquín y pensar por cinco segundos si en cinco años vamos a poder entender (sin totearnos la cabeza) el sancocho religioso que se está volviendo nuestro país. (O la muy interesante relgión que se cuece en nuestra hermana república que mezcla un evangelismo bolivariano con pelígrosísimos tintes fascistas).

Sin academia no hay paraíso, sin académicos no hay policy. Déjenos trabajar.

One of the Most Enlightening Pieces I have Read on the Subject

When I was born, almost thirty years ago, my country was almost 99.9% Catholic. Since then there has been an explosive development of Evangelical Christianity among both the popular classes and some of the comercial elite and the emerging upper middle class. I think that around 80% of the urban population of Colombia is now Catholic, whilst the rest is some shade of Protestant. My friends in the intelligentsia, all of them raised as upper middle class Catholics, have gone in more exotic directions: everything ranging from Mahayana Buddhism to "bright" agnosticism to American Indian naturalist-paganism, and, of course, Judaism. This just shows the incredible disatisfaction with traditional religion in even a relatively conservative country like Colombia and the great mobility of ideas that bring people to new ideological and spiritual landscapes. Very much like our physical realities are becoming increasingly mobile and more and more people are moving away from the places of their birth, more and more people are moving away from the religion of their parents. We are at the dawn of a new age of conversions. Quite like the Roman Empire in its transit from a Republic to the Caesarate, people are greatly disappointed with their lives and are looking for meaning in a society were many cultures and religions come together in the great Market of Ideas. It was in the early Roman empire where centurions born in Italy worshipped the Aryan deity Mithras, where Turkish matrons converted to Judaism, and the philosophers of the age were fascinated with the arcane knowledge of the Egyptian sages. Against the backdrop of this world could a Jewish cult like Christianity prosper and conquer Europe. Today, in the new Rome, there are Chinese Jews, Anglosaxon Muslims, Black Buddhists, Latino Mormons, etc., etc., etc. Here is a wonderful article to understand this Brave New world which such people in it.

"Religion in a Globalizing World" by Peter Berger

[M]y major thesis this morning is that what is happening with the globalization of religion is a globalization of pluralism. Pluralism, which was a much more geographically, much more limited phenomenon 150 or 200 years ago, has become a global phenomenon, and that has enormous implications.

Bloom's Dream or His Task of Sysiphus (The Movie)

Some of you know me personally. Some of you are close friends. Some of you are kind strangers I have met in the web. Some of you are old old friends who probably recognize in me less and less of he who they used to know. In any case, if you really want to understand who I am, what I want to do and what do I hope to do with my life, I recomend you go (especially easy for those of you who are in NYC) this next 26 or 27 of January to the Premier of the movie "The Longing" (in the Lilcoln Center Theaters at Broadway and 67th). This movie, produced and directed by Gabriela Bohm, narrates the difficulties of those Latinos who want to reconnect to their Jewish ancestry. I have not seen the movie yet, and will probably not see it until I return to NYC by the end of the summer, but if it describes the pain and the unnecessary suffering those returning experience dayeinu (It would be enough!). I cannot guarantee that it is a cinematographic masterpiece or that it is a balanced documentary, but it is certainly a pioneer work in a field that could benefit from more media attention and from more public interest.



For those of you who do not live in NY, the webpage of the producer has plenty of information about the movie and about the project. I recommend you watch the trailer (just go to the tab "films" and then choose "The Longing") and look at the stills (two examples of which I bring in this page).

In the meantime

Thanks Chiquilin for the Tribute. I will write a short story of how the anusim were instrumental in the return of the Jews to England after fourhundred years of exile.

Happy 5000 visit!

Tale of Two Cities

If you did not know that they are separated by only a handful of kilometers and by a fourty minute bus ride, you could probably end up believing that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are in different countries. In some cases, you could even end up believing that they are different planets. Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world. Burdened and marked by the endless battles that have refreshed its walls with a new color of red every time: Jebusite and Hebrew, Assyrian and Jewish, Greek and Roman, Byzantine and Arab, Crusader and Turk, European and Levantine, Israeli and Palestinian. Its stones are worth more in words and prayers of millions of souls who every day carry it in their lips and in their hearts and by reinventing it in their minds, betray it. Its alleyways are crooked and made of white slippery stone, like lipidous veins of an enormous lythic animal. No other city is Jewish as Jerusalem is Jewish. Tel Aviv is the among the newest cities in the world. Barely one hundred years old, it grows like a cancer on the side of the oldest port in the world: Jaffa, the city of Casiopea and Andromeda, the Kraken's playhouse. The only purpose of this city was to create the new Jew, unencumbered by the dust and the stones of old Jerusalem. Moreover, the only purpose of Tel Aviv was to be Jerusalem's antithesis, its brilliant new replacement. It's streets are wide and full of trees. The only old thing in Tel Aviv is the lottery signs that get washed with the new rains. Tel Aviv's shore is forever young and changing, ebbing with the tides, while Jerusalem holds with its stone talons the sides of the unalterable mountains of Judea. Jerusalem has monasterys and synagogues. Tel Aviv has massage-parlors and discotheques. Jerusalem has the Wall. Tel Aviv has the beach. Jerusalem has the stubborness of the faithful. Tel Aviv has the carelessness of the cosmopolitan. Jerusalem is an old woman, beautiful and wise but set in her ways. Tel Aviv is a friendly coquette, voluptous and inviting. Jerusalem looks perpetually to the past. Tel Aviv is the future, running away from yesterday.

And yet, there are also synagogues in Tel Aviv- hidden in the small plazas and the streets with the name of honored heretics. And to them a handful of faithful flock on Shabbat, quietly almost surreptitiously as if not to make any noise and disturb the noise of the city with their prayers. They know their place, they are humble penitents in the city of sin. And, yes, Jerusalem has its discos too- hidden among the dusty roads of the abandoned industrial park of Talpiyot. The carrousers arrive also silently, in cabs and mopeds, covered by the evening fog. Trying to savour the contained rebelliousness of their dancing. Pouring their pagan joy in the dusty walls of the compound that muffle the beat of the music and protects the city outside. These are wary bacchanals, self-conscious menads. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes there is life to be had. There is a road and fourty minutes and a country. Sometimes, when the rain stops, there are also cows.

Vorspeis for next post, travelling through the Judean desert

Fire and Hail, Snow and Vapor, Stormy Wind fullfilling His Word. (Psalm 148)

Shaikai,
I would have done even if you hadn't asked. For everyone: Snow in Jerusalem!

The Israel Museum with five centimeters of snow.

The Knesset (Israeli Parliament) with snow.

The walls of the Old City with some of the snow still on the ground. (15th century walls with snow from yesterday and a tree from thirty years ago.)

Last night in the middle of the storm: a palm tree heavy with ice.

And just as a vorshpeis for my next post:

Keep your eyes peeled

This should be fun. Heaps and heaps of fun!

(It is Tuesday. 3.00 p.m. And the rain is already hitting Jerusalem.)

Sane Muslim response to the Holocaust Denial Conference in Teheran

I am glad that there are sane voices in the Muslim world condemming the hate-mongering activities of the Iranian government (which are not, as some people think, a tool to further the Palestinian cause, but rather a distraction from the country's oppressive regime). The original piece appeared two days ago in the LA Times.

Why they deny the Holocaust

On top of nearly constant anti-Semitic propaganda, much of the Muslim world hasn't even heard of it.

By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
AYAAN HIRSI ALI, a Somali immigrant who served in the parliament of the Netherlands until earlier this year, is the author of "Infidel," an autobiography to be published in February.
LA Times, December 16, 2006

ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I
got a visit from my half-sister. She and I were both immigrants from
Somalia and had both applied for asylum in Holland. I was granted it;
she was denied. The fact that I got asylum gave me the opportunity to
study. My half-sister couldn't.

In order for me to be admitted to the university I wanted to attend, I
needed to pass three courses: a language course, a civics course and a
history course. It was in the preparatory history course that I, for
the first time, heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that
time, and my half-sister was 21.

In those days, the daily news was filled with the Rwandan genocide and
ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. On the day that my
half-sister visited me, my head was reeling from what happened to 6
million Jews in Germany, Holland, France and Eastern Europe.

I learned that innocent men, women and children were separated from
each other. Stars pinned to their shoulders, transported by train to
camps, they were gassed for no other reason than for being Jewish.

I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard
horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror
of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed
her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the
information in my book.

With great conviction, my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a
way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But
I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be
destroyed."

She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi
Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us
practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of
Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never
informed about the Holocaust.

Later, as a teenager in Kenya, when Saudi and other Persian Gulf
philanthropy reached us, I remember that the building of mosques and
donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing
of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies and
for epidemics such as AIDS, and they were believed to be the cause of
wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us
Muslims. If we ever wanted to know peace and stability, and if we
didn't want to be wiped out, we would have to destroy the Jews. For
those of us who were not in a position to take up arms against them,
it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and
pray to Allah to destroy them.

Western leaders today who say they are shocked by Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference this week denying the Holocaust need
to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world,
the Holocaust is not a major historical event that they deny. We
simply do not know it ever happened because we were never informed of
it.

The total number of Jews in the world today is estimated to be about
15 million, certainly no more than 20 million. On the other hand, the
world's Muslim population is estimated to be between 1.2 billion and
1.5 billion. And not only is this population rapidly growing, it is
also very young.

What's striking about Ahmadinejad's conference is the (silent)
acquiescence of mainstream Muslims. I cannot help but wonder: Why is
there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or
Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why are the 57 members of the
Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations,
the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been
spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar
to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed
— that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such? In Europe,
the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way,
he shall not want for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.

The world needs to be informed again and again about the Holocaust —
not only in the interest of the Jews who survived and their offspring
but in the interest of humanity.

And this, this is just wrong. In soooo many ways!

A happy people

Recently, my friend Michelle got married. Michelle´s flower girl at the wedding is one of her little cousins and not Jewish. After the wedding she said to Michelle: "Now I know why you are Jewish." Michelle paled as anyone who has to live with the tensions of a household with two religions knows how to pale when such a thing is said by your very very young cousing. "It is because your parties are so much better." (Michelle, I am sorry I do not remember the story verbatim but the punchline is something like that).

The point of the story is that Jews are, all in all, a happy people. This may seem strange for someone for whom the quintessential Jew is Woody Allen panicking over some silly detail in the New York Times. Yet, regardless of our very difficult history and the challenges of the present (with a nuclear Iran breathing down our necks) or maybe just precisely because of this, we seem to take every opportunity for a little, material, down to earth joy very seriously. Every "simcha" (joy) that we are privy to experience in this life must be experienced with the utmost dedication and abandon. This even finds expression in certain religious manifestations of Judaism that claim that "It is a great commandment to always be happy."

The reason that I am bringing this (aside from the fact that this blog has been somewhat somber during the past few weeks) is because this morning my very good friends Tim and Ashira announced their engagement. Mind you, this is eight thirty in the morning. Mind you, this is a synagogue we are talking about. Mind you, the people there were not all friends but also some classmates. Nevertheless, this was the result (one point of note, this is not hugging, this is very very fast circle dancing):

Od Yishamma Be'arei Yehudah Uvechutzot Yerushalayim, Kol Sasson Vekol Simcha, Kol Chatan veKol Kallah. (Again shall it be heard in the cities of Judah and in the outskirts of Jerusalem, the sound of joy and the sound of happiness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride.) Jeremiah 33:10-11

This strapping young man in blue is the groom. The beautiful girl whose face you cannot see because of her hand and a shoulder is the bride. (May they be very happy)

The reason there are no more pictures is that yours truly was busy pouring lechayims (shots of whiskey) for everyone and then joined the dancing and the singing. It's 8.30 a.m. but there is simcha to be had! Even at our holiest site (the Western Wall, mistakenly called by non-Jews the "Wailing wall") there is often spirited dancing and singing.

God gave you life and the whole universe for your delight! Enjoy it! Be happy!

Jerusalem by Night (not your average WoD setting)

O'er your ramparts I have set watchmen, all day and all night. Oh Jerusalem!

Bloom in the News

A new article on the situation of the Benei Anusim (descendants of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain) has appeared in one of the most widely read Jewish magazine of America Haddasah Magazine in their December 2006 number. Haddasah is one of the largest Zionist organizations in America and one of the whealthiest. The article brings very relevant, true points concerning the issue and even mentions me in passing. Enjoy!

E-mail from the Past: Return Receipt Requested By Andrée Aelion Brooks

Thousands of men and women who claim descent from forced converts have set out on an emotional odyssey to regain their families’ original faith—Judaism. Growing up in a Catholic family in the 1950’s in the old whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Linda daCosta’s early life resembled that of her neighbors. When they socialized they would recall their Portuguese seafaring ancestors with pride. Her own had come from the Azores, an archipelago of mid-Atlantic islands. But there were differences. “At home we were taught to check a raw egg for blood and soak meat in brine,” recalls daCosta. “In the spring my mother would insist upon getting ‘every crumb out of the house.’” Housecleaning was done on Fridays and there was little enthusiasm for attending church. Only after she visited Israel in 1995—one of several visits to Israel she had felt compelled to make without knowing why—did she better understand that her family had been perpetuating certain Jewish rites. Before then, “I had not one single clue that my ancestors might have been Jewish,” she says. Linda—now known as Yaffah Batya—formally returned to Judaism through intensive study and ritual purification. She lives in a suburb of Jerusalem and leads an active peer group for those, like herself, exploring a return to their ancestors’ faith. Preferring the hebrew term bnei anousim (children of forced converts) rather than crypto-Jews or the neutral conversos, many of these men and women trace descent from the mass of forcible conversions that took place on the Iberian Peninsula during the 15th century. Their ancestors later fanned out over northern Europe, the New World, Asia and Africa to escape the Inquisition. Not all returnees are of Spanish and Portuguese origin. Take Italy, a country that historically had both Sefardim and Ashkenazim as well as Jews who had been there since Roman times. Over the centuries, generations of Italian Jews were also coerced into Catholicism, each town having its House of Catachumens, a sanctuary for Jews who agreed to accept Christ. These practices spawned hundreds of Italians, especially in southern Italy, Sicily and Sardinia, who today share the same dim awareness of a Jewish past. “We have a new congregation in Trani made up entirely of returning anousim,” reports Massimo Mandolini, a professor of Italian language and civilization at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, California. Mandolini was born in the Adriatic port city of Ancona. After researching his Jewish roots in an emotional odyssey that thrust him back into the arcane folkways and dialect of Italian Jews, he is undergoing a formal return to Judaism. “Even in Warsaw people are now coming to the rabbi saying they think they are Jewish; can he help,” says Rabbi Jules Harlow of New York, an editor and translator of prayerbooks for the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis. Why now? Scholars say the Internet has given thousands the genealogical tools to help affirm a suspected Jewish past previously discussed only in whispers. Even more compelling, “the stigma of being Jewish is no longer what it was,” notes Harry Ezratty, a historian of Caribbean Jewish life. Experts use words like “millions” regarding potential returnees, even if only a fraction make the leap. Consider Brazil: Among almost 200 million citizens of Brazil today, at least 40 percent, or 80 million, are deemed of Portuguese origin. Of these, at least one quarter, or 20 million, have Jewish blood, says Jacques Cukierkorn, the Brazilian-born rabbi at the New Reform Temple of Kansas City. He first ran the numbers in 1994 while completing a master’s thesis on the hidden Jews of Brazil. If 10 percent or fewer seek return, it still works out to almost two million. Cities with already active communities of bnei anousim include Ruidoso, Carlsbad and Socorro in New Mexico; Denver and Pueblo in Colorado; Mexicali, Tijuana, Veracruz and Mexico City in Mexico; Guatemala City in Guatemala; Las Tunas in Cuba; and Bogata and Cartegena in Colombia. Although no firm statistics exist, seth ward, former director of the Institute for Islamic-Judaic Studies at the University of Denver and a scholar of crypto-Jewish life, estimates that some 10,000 have already returned to some form of open Jewish observance in the past decade or so. It is a highly charged journey. “[Judaism] filled a void I always felt in my soul,” explains Sonya Loya of Ruidoso. A glass artist, Loya was raised as a Catholic, formally reclaiming her Judaism only last year. In the United States, “it could change the tenor of Jewish life from a heavily Ashkenazi base to a more Hispanic one,” predicts Stanley Hordes, adjunct research professor at the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico and a founder of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies. But “there is a very big if,” he adds. That “if” centers on the response of the mainstream Jewish world on one side and the feelings of the bnei anousim on the other. As yet, there is not a lot of warmth between the two camps. Leaders of the various movements have undertaken no formal initiative, leaving it up to local rabbis to decide how to handle each situation. Without an overall game plan, argues Ron Cohen, director of Communidad Israelita de Mexicali, a year-old congregation in Mexicali made up almost entirely of bnei anousim, these men and women are left in a state of confusion, receiving “different information at every turn.” Much depends on whether a particular rabbi will offer a program of return or conversion, either of which may be sanctioned by the local beit din. Though the differences between them may appear slim, they are meaningful for the returnee. For instance, daCosta has found that Orthodox rabbis may tell someone going through conversion that he or she can violate the law of Shabbat (cook a meal, drive a car) until going to the mikve because such an act is not yet a sin, since that person is not yet Jewish. Not so for a returnee. Conservative Rabbi David Kunin of Edmonton, Alberta, similarly marks the differences in the material he teaches. His approach to a returnee “differs because I will focus more on the crypto-Jewish experience as a way to help them value their ancestors,” he explains. When it comes to the wording on the certificate, Kunin leaves out any mention that the returnee is entering Judaism from the outside, which is common in conversion. Yet even a hint of conversion discourages more from coming forward. It’s a pity because “it gives us a unique window of opportunity,” insists Cohen. Born a Jew in Chicago, he has been leading an informal network that provides emerging communities in Mexico, Cuba, Guatemala, Brazil and Columbia with books, kippot and other needs. Added to this is the cultural chasm. Mandolini, who is being taught by Chabad rabbis, typically finds it difficult to feel “at one with the community,” he says, explaining, “it’s all so East European.” Others do not get a sense of being wanted. DaCosta thinks this comes too often from being Hispanic, that it conjures up the image of someone poor and uneducated. “But we have software engineers,” she says, “doctors and business professionals like me.” Even rituals defy easy integration, says Caitlin O’Sullivan Bromberg, cantor at B’nai Israel, a Conservative congregation in Albuquerque. “American Judaism can either be too Yiddish or too casual for someone with a formal Spanish Catholic upbringing,” she says. “Judaism Lite, as they see it, does not offer the mystery and spirituality they are seeking.” The organized Sefardic world offers little solace, too. “We try to help,” says Esmé Berg, former director of the American Sephardi Federation, “but it’s on an ad hoc basis,” like the fund-raiser they hosted for daCosta a year ago. What is happening is largely a reprise of former centuries. During other periods of mass return—such as the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese anousim to Amsterdam or the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries—the Jewish response was similarly mixed. For many, the strict requirements of Jewish law for conversion become a hurdle—the detailed instruction, ritual purification and mandated circumcision. The complexity was highlighted at a conference called “Conversion and Reversion to Judaism” held at the Center for Jewish History in New York last March, where panelists discussed how difficult it has been for rabbis through the centuries to respond to the sensitivities of returnees while realizing their obligation to fully uphold Jewish law. When all this is coupled with a sense of not being wanted, it’s little wonder that many bnei anousim linger on the sidelines or organize on their own. Consider the Bat-Tziyon Hebrew Learning Center, started by Loya in Ruidoso in 2004 as an educational and outreach initiative. Or Ezra L’Anousim, which organized a group of a dozen from the United States, Spain, Brazil, Colombia and Portugal to visit Israel for Passover this year. Some, like daCosta and Professor Avi Gross of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, are pressuring for a wider use of a program of return as opposed to conversion. It is now under consideration by the Chief Rabbinate in Israel, says Shulamit Halevy, a doctoral student at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a longtime advocate for bnei anousim. Added to this are an expanding number of resources online (see box, page 17). A few bnei anousim are taking a leadership role by entering the rabbinate. Among them are Spanish-born Jordi Gendra, who graduated in June from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia; Juan Mejia from Bogota, a student at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in New York; and Rigoberto Emmanual Viñas from Cuba, a rabbi since 1998 now at an Orthodox congregation in Yonkers, New York. (While these theological students and rabbis all underwent conversion, the other bnei anousim mentioned have or are studying with a rabbi as returnees.) And the Jewish world is slowly awakening. Israel now offers two religious ulpanim in Spanish—intensive Hebrew-language courses aimed at newcomers. Additionally, last summer, for the first time three bnei anousim from Recife, Brazil, were invited by a group of Brazilian Jews on a 10-day visit to Israel courtesy of Shavei Israel, a group assisting returnees, and Taglit-Birthright, a philanthropic partnership working to strengthen Jewish identity. The World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues recently sent Harlow and his wife, Navah, to Lisbon to help 18 Portuguese complete their conversion requirements. The group had already established its own congregation, Kehillat Beit Yisrael. Cantor Bromberg in Albuquerque sets aside one Friday night service each month for prayers chanted partially in Spanish. She also includes more Ladino melodies. Four years ago, Cukierkorn published a Spanish-language introduction to Judaism. Titled HaMadrij: Guide to the Values and Practices of Modern Judaism (European Association of Jewish Studies), his guide is being mentioned to rabbis who call the central office of the Union for Reform Judaism for help, says Kathy Kahn, its director of outreach and synagogue community. But Kahn acknowledges that “we need to learn” how to better handle the phenomenon. Full integration may take several generations. “The ones coming in now may never be totally comfortable,” says Bromberg, but ideally, “their children will be.” Andrée Aelion Brooks can be reached at andreebrooks@hotmail.com

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I am sorry I have not been posting. The whole hulabaloo of this issue has kept me (and all of my school) busy for the past few weeks. I don't know if I will write any more about this subject. Suffice it to say that I have a lot of thinking to do. What do you think?