Today, 90 percent of one of the world’s wealthiest Jewish communities lives in a mountainous area: the Beverly Hills of Mexico City. Ironically referred to by many young Jews as “the ghetto” or “the shtetl,” this luxurious neighborhood meets every need. If you’re Jewish, you go to the Jewish school next to your house in the morning, the JCC in the afternoon, and then the nearby synagogue in the evening. You see the same people, move in the same circles, and talk about the same things. While the community’s isolation reinforces a strong sense of identity, it also perpetuates a fear of the outside world.
At the eve of the revolution, 15,000 Jews lived in Cuba—including Eastern European Jews, commonly nicknamed Polacos (Poles), and Sephardi Jews who had fled the Ottoman Empire after World War I. Thousands of Eastern European Jews had settled in Cuba for a short period en route to the United States, to circumvent the American immigration authorities’ anti-Semitic Eastern European quota, beginning in 1924.
Interview with Andrew Carmona, AJWS Volunteer
>>Leora Addison
Sun Nov 22, 2009
Interview with Andrew Carmona, AJWS Volunteer
As part of PresenTense’s theme of philanthropy and global service, I interviewed my friend Andrew Carmona, who will be leaving in October as part of a 10-month World Partners Fellowship in India with the American Jewish World Service (AJWS). Currently, Andrew works for a small international development firm in Washington, D.C.
In a world of Jdate, Frumster, and SawYouAtSinai, American Jews don't seem to want for opportunities to meet other American Jews—preferably cute, single ones with stable jobs.
Until two years ago, a new arrival to the Central Ohio Jewish young adult community could expect to be greeted by a Jewish communal professional with Shabbat-in-a-box in hand. The two candles, matches, Manischewitz wine with plastic Kiddush cup, challah coupon and cover made by children at an area day school were well-intended, but, perhaps, not the right welcome, at least not for everyone, given the eclectic religious and social backgrounds and beliefs of young Jews today. Today, when a Jew decides to call Columbus home, the community offers them something more akin to a buffet than a single serving of Jewishness.
More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is a community in the process of re-imagining itself. The natural disaster left in its wake terrible destruction—and, with it, the rare and tremendous opportunity for rebuilding and reshaping a community, literally from the ground up. Responding to this challenge, there has been an influx into New Orleans of talented young professionals, aka YURPs (young urban rebuilding professionals). A majority moved to the city out of a desire to lend a hand to fellow Americans in rebuilding their city in a socially just way. Others grew up in New Orleans and returned to help the city and their parents rebuild.
Maybe the Sassoons had it right all along. A Jewish family of Iraqi descent, they prospered for four generations in China, variously dominating shipping, opium trading and real estate development from their base in Shanghai. Even today, beyond Israel and the coastal United States, Zhong-guo might be the next best place to be a Jew.
It was a breezy June evening in Madrid's Plaza de Oriente, the public garden area in front of the SpanishRoyalPalace. The crowd, a densely-packed group of three-hundred people, clapped their hands to the sinuous rhythm of the Ladino melody. Cheering began and a group of women formed a dancing circle, a whirlpool of bodies pulling the crowd inside to spin and twirl in Jewish folk dancing—a spectacle loaded with sadness, defiance, and forgiveness, epitomizing so much change.
Berlin was once host to Nazi rallies; now it is home to what has been termed the “German Jewish renaissance” by everyone from the Boston Globe to the German embassy in Washington. Indeed, for each Jewish cultural event that occurs in Germany—the ordination of rabbis, the renovation of synagogues or a new Jewish museum—there is nothing short of a media frenzy. Many have a stake in this “renaissance”: Germans want to show their country has normalized, Jews want to celebrate growing Jewish communities, and the community itself is eager to prove it has recreated life in this formerly thriving center of Jewish activity. But for all the exciting news my Google results offered me, I found an all-too typical Jewish community: racked by in-fighting and pettiness and a mere shadow of its former glory.
With pink streaks in her spiky black hair, flip-flops, and spaghetti strap tank top, Sonja Vilicic, 25, looks more like a rock star than a Jewish educator. But when she takes the microphone and leads the campers in morning prayers at the Lauder/JDC International ewish Summer Camp in Szarvas, Hungary, nobody disputes her authority. Vilicic, along with Sasha Friedman, 26, and Zsusza Fritz, 42, make up a team of directors that run their camp with the love and diligence of a mother running her household.
