Jewish American Heritage Month

Jews start annual pilgrimage to Tunisia's Ghriba synagogue – Video

Posted By richards on May 18, 2014

Jews start annual pilgrimage to Tunisia #39;s Ghriba synagogue
Jewish pilgrims gathered Friday for the annual pilgrimage to Ghriba synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Africa, on the Tunisian island of Djerba.Duration: 01:03.

By: AFP news agency

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Jews start annual pilgrimage to Tunisia's Ghriba synagogue - Video

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A Toronto rabbi builds a big tent

Posted By richards on May 18, 2014

Yael Splansky, the new senior rabbi at Holy Blossom Temple, had a joyous encounter this week. A former member of the congregation who had fallen away from the fold approached her to say that he and his family had decided to rejoin the prestigious Toronto synagogue.

They feel we are on the right track, said Splansky, who was designated as senior rabbi last month after acting in the role for two years.

After a difficult transition from the rabbinate of her predecessor, John Moscowitz, Splanskys job is to convince a diverse and sometimes fractious membership of 6,500 that Holy Blossom is indeed back on track. She has to reengage the members alienated by her cerebral predecessor and calm the ones angry at the way he was pushed aside, but more importantly still, she has to reach new congregants, especially from interfaith families.

Holy Blossom is Canadas most influential synagogue, with a powerful membership that includes top Bay Street lawyers and investment bankers as well as a senator or two. But, like many mainstream Jewish institutions, it is facing an existential crisis: Its membership is declining and yet split on religious and cultural questions. Splansky, who was selected after an exhaustive search, has to oversee a contentious $30-million renovation to the 76-year-old temple, tiptoe around varying views on Israel, ensure the competing needs of different generations are met and preach inspirational sermons to boot. The least of her worries is that she is the first woman ever to hold the job.

There are women and men those who approach me [and] say I think its terrific; that Holy Blossom Temple is bold enough to make to make a woman a senior rabbi. In the minds of some of our congregation its significant in terms of egalitarianism and liberal thinking, she said. Others barely notice. The Reform branch of Judaism to which Holy Blossom adheres has been faster to promote female clergy than many Christian churches. There have been women in assistant rabbi roles at Holy Blossom since 1980.

By the time I got there, nobody blinked, said Splansky, who started work at Holy Blossom as an assistant rabbi in 1998 and was promoted to associate rabbi in 2000.

Still, Splansky, a 43-year-old mother of three school-age boys and a fourth-generation Reform rabbi who hails from the Boston area, represents a big change in style at Holy Blossom. She is the author of a Jewish prayer book and cites Torah study as the highlight of her week, but what her congregants value is her empathy, humility and tact. In keeping with a traditional model of the rabbi as a teacher and scholar, her predecessors formed a long line of patrician and sometimes intimidating men Moscowitz, in particular, was noted for his cool intellect who were better at delivering important sermons than offering the Kleenex box.

She is just so opposite to every other rabbi weve had, said lifelong member Phyllis Pepper who was in kindergarten when Holy Blossom moved into its current building the 1930s. They have all had great stature and that is what she lacks [But] what is really important and we havent had for a long time is someone who really cares about the congregation.

Moscowitz is an intellectual as a rabbi, he was interested in ideas and matters of the mind; he had a formidable intellect, said congregant Allan Gotlieb, the former Canadian ambassador to the United States. She is a very different personality Shes an extremely nice person, very warm.

That warmth is already starting to heal the wounds that were opened in 2012 when the synagogues board announced Moscowitz would be taking a three-year sabbatical and then retiring. (The sabbatical ends in June, 2015, at which point Splansky officially becomes senior rabbi.)

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A Toronto rabbi builds a big tent

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“Morenica a m me llaman” (“Little dark girl”). Sephardic song – Video

Posted By richards on May 18, 2014

"Morenica a m me llaman" ("Little dark girl"). Sephardic song
Composer: Unknown Performer: Ana Snchez, singer and double bassist Event: Hispasong Concert (September 29th 2012, Madrid, Spain)

By: HISPASONG

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"Morenica a m me llaman" ("Little dark girl"). Sephardic song - Video

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Pittsburgh photographer offers rare view of Eastern European synagogues

Posted By richards on May 18, 2014

Published: Saturday, May 17, 2014, 8:36p.m. Updated 7 hours ago

Each year, legions of tourists flock to the churches and synagogues of Prague to take in the beauty and history of each. But few get the chance to investigate them more closely than Pittsburgh photographer David Aschkenas, who first traveled to the Eastern European city in November 2011 to photograph synagogues, and later to Budapest, Hungary.

Aschkenas comes from the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, and he created these photographs in an effort to capture the rich complexity and power of our shared Ashkenazi heritage.

But first, he had to solve a little problem.

After I bought my tickets, I bought some travel books, and I noticed (in them) the symbol of the camera with a line through it and I thought, how am I going to make photographs there? he says. At his wife's suggestion, he wrote to the Jewish Museum in Prague, and sent them some images he had created a few years earlier of Rodef Shalom, a synagogue in Oakland.

I said this wasn't for commercial purposes, that I just wanted to do it, he says. They granted me permission for two hours, and I thought how can I photograph six synagogues in two hours. After begging, they gave me a day.

Now, 23 remarkably detailed images from that trip, as well as a trip to Budapest in May 2013, make up the exhibit Synagogues of Prague and Budapest: David Aschkenas, at the American Jewish Museum at the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill.

Large, lush images, they capture even the tiniest of details, from the well-used desks and threadbare chairs inside each to the curves and swirls of the Moorish architectural details that are pervasive inside and out.

One of the simplest structures though is also the most grand. It is an image of the Old New Synagogue.

It's the oldest synagogue in the world, it dates to 1270, Aschkenas says. It was one of the first buildings built in Prague.

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Pittsburgh photographer offers rare view of Eastern European synagogues

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