Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Haazinu (Deuteronomy 32:152)By Jessica Spencer | Sepember 15, 2021

Haazinu is a swansong, a poem declaimed by Moses before he dies and leaves the Israelites to face their future. At this time of year, a time of both reflection and new beginnings, it calls us to remember our past and to take these words to heart for the new year.

Maimonides draws attention in particular to the last line of the first aliyah:

Remember the days of old; understand the years of generations; Ask your father and he will tell you; your elders, they will speak to you [Devarim 32:6]

For Maimonides, the aliyah finishes here for a reason: to induce the community to do teshuvah, return or repentance. He reads the verse as a rebuke against Israels past sins. But this isnt just a reproachits a command. What does it mean to be exhorted to remember? And how can remembrance be part of teshuvah?

On a recent visit home, I was practising Kol Nidrei in my parents living room. This year is my first time leading Yom Kippur services, and although Im a regular shlichat tzibbur, I have never before taken on tefillah that asks so much of me: not only musical range and knowledge of chazzanut, but even focus and endurance. My (secular) mother was sitting nearby. When I paused, she asked:

Do they know that your great-great-grandfather was a famous chazzan?

My great-great-grandfather, Markus Moses, was the chazzan of the Great Synagogue of Brussels. He would have been a master of these services that I am learning, and have had his own particular tradition of how to sing the prayers. But this is not a comforting thought as I learn to lead. I have no way to reach that tradition. Ask your fatherbut my father will not tell me, and my elders cannot speak.

Its not only that he died long before I was born. The family has moved countries three times since then, in the face of persecution and for opportunity. His granddaughter, my grandmother, chose to break with her religious background soon after arriving in England. Even if I could recreate the cadences of my ancestors davening, to do so would erase the generations past since then. It would not ring true.

Rashi and the Sefer Chasidim (a medieval German work) both reframe this verse in a way that answers some of my troubles. Rashi interprets father to mean the prophets, and elders as the rabbinic sages. Rather than asking ones family, one should ask the leaders of the community. Rashi places the verse in Devarims wider context of building the society we want to see. Meanwhile, the Sefer Chasidim expands:

( ). :

Ask your father and he will tell you: and if you know that he will not know how to answer, your elders, and they will speak to you. The verse tells us that if a student asks his rabbi and he does not know how to answer, he shall not ask another sage in front of him, lest he embarrasses his teacher.

This is a different approach from Rashis. The Sefer Chasidim is concerned about your relationship with your teacher, and what to do when your teacher cannot help. But for both Rashi and Sefer Chasidim, remembrance is not a family responsibility, but a communal one. Whether through teacher-student connection, sage-disciple, or prophet-public, the memories are borne on the scale of the Jewish people. And the Sefer Chasidim answers my question of what to do when parents have no answers. Rather than seeking a surrogate and casting off my own family history, we must create spaces where elders speak freely and all can listen.

We famously live in a time of rupture and reconstruction. Many Jews today have lost our family traditions. But there are still oral traditions open to us, as well as classical texts. My Yom Kippur davening is enriched by being part of a 100-person whatsapp group, in which participants of all backgrounds share all sorts of clips: Western Sephardic piyutim, Chabad niggunim, and their own compositions. Although some members are professional cantors, most are not, and everyone is able to speak. Remembrance binds us together and writes new narratives.

So, how is remembrance part of teshuvah? Return cannot be done in a way that forgets what has passed. While we may want to return to an earlier age, it is only through understanding previous generations that we learn how we want to change. By following Rashi and the Sefer Chasidims approach, and reading this verse on a communal level, we can build a community of elders where everyones memories are shared and all speak. Only then can we turn to holy work.

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Remembrance and Teshuvah | Hebrew College Wendy Linden - Patheos

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Now, however, thanks to a long-forgotten letter, Jurzyk, 35, has uncovered the truth about how her family rescued and hid two Jewish sisters from the Nazis.

Having moved to Stockholm as a baby, Jurzyk grew up hearing from her grandparents about her great-grandfather's bravery -- though details were scant.

"I was very close to my grandparents," she told CNN. "I spent every school holiday with them in Poland and World War II was very present because they both survived it."

Her grandfather, Stanislaw Jurzyk, told her that in 1942, aged 12, while playing on the family farm in Gostchorz -- a village about 68 miles east of Warsaw -- he stumbled across two women, both in their 20s.

Shocked, he told his parents, who revealed that they had been hiding the sisters since finding them in their fields.

"They were badly beaten and very weak," Karolina Jurzyk, who works as a pattern maker for H&M in Stockholm, told CNN. According to her grandfather, the sisters were orphaned -- but they spoke little of their past.

Stanislaw was sworn to secrecy by his father -- also called Stanislaw. That same year, his mother, Helena, died in childbirth -- leaving Stanislaw Senior to raise the children alone, while still protecting the women.

Jurzyk didn't know her great-grandfather, who died in 1989, and her surviving relatives knew nothing about the sisters' fate after they left the farm two years later.

But when her father, Wojciech, 60, recently discovered a letter, her interest was sparked. Tattered and scrawled in old Polish, it was almost impossible to decipher the correspondence that her grandfather had sometimes talked about.

One thing was clear, however: The correspondents' names -- Fela and Jadzia Kejzman. Jurzyk, who until then had only known the women's first names, ventured online for clues.

A simple online search returned both sisters' names

Karen Norman, 42, a New York-based real estate agent, replied. She is the granddaughter of Jadzia, whose full given name was Jadwiga.

Norman knew of the rescue but in even less detail than Jurzyk, as, like many Holocaust survivors, her grandmother and great-aunt rarely spoke of their experiences or their early lives growing up in Poland. What she could share, however, was that both sisters raised families in North America; her grandmother in Toronto, while Fela -- short for Felicia -- settled in Chicago.

"I had tears in my eyes, I was so glad to hear they survived," said Jurzyk.

The process is complex but if successful, the official honor would see him rank among other gentiles who risked much to save Jews during the war -- among them Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and Miep Gies, who helped hide Anne Frank.

Poignant timing

The timing of the discovery is all the more poignant as both families were bereaved over the past year.

While Norman's grandmother died several years ago,her great-aunt, Fela, only passed away in December, aged 103.

And Jurzyk's grandfather, Stanislaw, died in March after suffering from dementia. He lived long enough to hear the news, however.

"My grandfather apparently became very emotional," Jurzyk told CNN, as he learned from his son, Jurzyk's father, that the connection with the sisters' family had been made. "Somewhere deep inside he knew they were safe."

Although she regrets not acting sooner, Jurzyk says connecting with Norman has eased the loss of her grandfather's death.

"I feel our ancestors had such a huge connection and it's almost as if I have been a part of it as well.

"I'm not a very spiritual person but somehow I feel their energy with me and it's comforting -- it's like he's saying ... 'you're doing a good job.'"

When MyHeritage heard the story they had the letter professionally translated.

Addressed to Stanislaw Senior, it was dated February 10, 1948 and sent from a displaced persons camp in Bamberg, within the US-controlled part of Germany.

They wrote: "A lot of time has passed since the day we said goodbye to you. However, we did not express our cordial thanks to you for all the good that you did for us. We will never forget this noble act of saving our life."

The women described Jurzyk's great-grandfather as "a person who has done the best and grandest act of saving human life" and expressed their "most profound gratitude."

They talked of "a new stage in life" on "blood-soaked German soil," but outlined plans to emigrate "beyond Europe's borders."

Fela appears to have physically written the letter, saying her sister married and had a baby, while she has "a much-loved husband."

She adds: "My husband already knows you from my accounts and he has asked me to send you his regards and a handshake."

Signing off, she expresses her intention to stay in touch, saying "the bond of our friendship should be unbreakable."

Second letter emerges

More recently, Jurzyk's father uncovered another letter in his own father's belongings. In this one, dated November 22, 1949, Fela says she and her husband arrived in the United States after a treacherous sea crossing. She explains that her sister and family remain in Germany but hope to leave soon.

An emotional Norman told CNN that hearing from Jurzyk "felt like a sign."

"When I got the message it was the most incredible thing and the saddest at the same time. I really believe it was my great-aunt sending us a sign."

Norman said she first joined MyHeritage to try to find answers about the sisters' past.

"Everything was a mystery. We don't know how they ended up being there or where they were going to. There were bits and pieces we knew but they told us very little."

Norman has not come across any letters in reply, but she hasn't yet gone through all of her great-aunt's belongings.

"Even though there isn't a lot of information in the letters, it still makes me cry reading them. Just knowing how much Mr. Jurzyk meant to her," Norman said.

'They lived because of him'

So far, the two women have only communicated through online messages, but they hope to speak on the phone soon.

"I would not be here if it wasn't for her great-grandfather," said Norman.

"They lived because of him. Someone who just saw them as people and worthy of saving. How do you thank someone's family for something like that generations later?"

Many people researching their family history see the Holocaust as a "black hole," but evolving technology provides "the opportunity to overcome what was once a critical lack of information", according to MyHeritage researcher Nitay Elboym.

"We believe stories of rescue are particularly important, because they inspire us to do what's right on a human level, even when it means taking extraordinary risks," he said.

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Long-lost letter reunites families of two Jewish sisters and the Polish farmer who saved them from the Nazis - CNN

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Cincinnatis Jewish community launches its bicentennial celebration this weekend with the rededication of Chestnut Street Cemetery, the first Jewish cemetery west of the Allegheny Mountains.

The fenced-in grave sitelocated at Chestnut Street and Central Avenue in West End wasestablished in 1821 to bury the first Jewish settlers in Cincinnati even before the citys first synagogue, what is now Rockdale Temple, was started.

So, the cemetery anniversary is also the anniversary of the Jewish community.

During the past 200 years, Cincinnati became the birthplace of American Reform Judaism and ordained the first female rabbi in the United States.

The Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial has partnered with the Cincinnati Museum Center, Cincinnati Art Museum, ArtsWave and the Cincinnati Reds Community Fund for programs throughout the year-long celebration.

The rededication of Chestnut Street Cemetery will be at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

Also part of the celebration this weekend,the Ish Festival, a Jewish and Israeli arts and culture festival, will be held at Washington Park in Over-the-Rhine.Tickets are required for the night market and concert by musician Matisyahu on Saturday, 6 to 11 p.m. The Ish Festival is free on Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

For more information on the bicentennial, visit http://www.jewishcincy200.org.

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Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial festivities kick off this weekend - The Cincinnati Enquirer

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

A groundbreaking medical procedure was celebrated Tuesday in Louisville.A Kentucky woman received the first of its kind artificial heart implant at Jewish Hospital.According to national data, about 6 million people in the U.S. experience heart failure. Now there's a new option for the sickest of those an artificial heart implant.Dr. Mark Slaughter, cardiothoracic surgeon, said the Aeson heart can be a replacement for both ventricles, the main pumping chambers of the heart.On Sept. 14, the cardiothoracic surgical team at UofL Health-Jewish Hospital made history by performing the world's first Aeson bioprosthetic artificial heart implantation on the Kentucky woman.Like many suffering from heart failure, Slaughter said the 57-year-old was very sick before the surgery."Heart attacks in the past blocked coronary arteries. Because of it, the heart had become weak," Slaughter said. "She had developed a leaky valve."The device closely mimics the human heart and is intended to be a bridge to a heart transplant, giving the patient time to receive a permanent heart.It was created by a French company.UofL Health-Jewish Hospital is just one of four programs in the nation approved to perform the clinical trial procedure."The amazing part of this device, it is about the same size as a human heart," Slaughter said. "It is pulsatile, it provides the same type of blood pressure, pulse and flow as a normal heart would."Slaughter said the device is giving new hope for a longer life. And it's starting with the first female patient who is already showing promise. She's expected to leave the hospital in the next few weeks.Slaughter said a day after the operation, the woman was off the breathing machine. Now, she is sitting up in bed is recently began eating again.The same team that performed the first heart implant in a woman completed the nation's second implant on a man at Jewish Hospital last month.

A groundbreaking medical procedure was celebrated Tuesday in Louisville.

A Kentucky woman received the first of its kind artificial heart implant at Jewish Hospital.

According to national data, about 6 million people in the U.S. experience heart failure. Now there's a new option for the sickest of those an artificial heart implant.

Dr. Mark Slaughter, cardiothoracic surgeon, said the Aeson heart can be a replacement for both ventricles, the main pumping chambers of the heart.

On Sept. 14, the cardiothoracic surgical team at UofL Health-Jewish Hospital made history by performing the world's first Aeson bioprosthetic artificial heart implantation on the Kentucky woman.

Like many suffering from heart failure, Slaughter said the 57-year-old was very sick before the surgery.

"Heart attacks in the past blocked coronary arteries. Because of it, the heart had become weak," Slaughter said. "She had developed a leaky valve."

The device closely mimics the human heart and is intended to be a bridge to a heart transplant, giving the patient time to receive a permanent heart.

It was created by a French company.

UofL Health-Jewish Hospital is just one of four programs in the nation approved to perform the clinical trial procedure.

"The amazing part of this device, it is about the same size as a human heart," Slaughter said. "It is pulsatile, it provides the same type of blood pressure, pulse and flow as a normal heart would."

Slaughter said the device is giving new hope for a longer life. And it's starting with the first female patient who is already showing promise. She's expected to leave the hospital in the next few weeks.

Slaughter said a day after the operation, the woman was off the breathing machine. Now, she is sitting up in bed is recently began eating again.

The same team that performed the first heart implant in a woman completed the nation's second implant on a man at Jewish Hospital last month.

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UofL Jewish Hospital performs world's first-of-its-kind artificial heart implant - WLKY Louisville

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Editors Note: Sukkot is the annual Jewish harvest festival that commemorates the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert in the book of Exodus. As part of the holiday, branches from the palm (lulav), myrtle and willow trees and a citrus fruit called etrog are held together and shaken.

Etrog etrogim is the plural in Hebrew; esrog and esrogim are how it was pronounced among Eastern European Jews grow mainly in warm Mediterranean climates. This made the citrus fruit extremely difficult to come by for diaspora Jews until international trade grew more robust in the 20th century. In addition, elaborate rabbinical rules govern how the etrog must be grown and handled.This article describes the fraught and controversial history of the etrog in America. It first appeared in a more extended version in Segula, a Jewish history magazine, and has been reprinted with permission.

By Jonathan D. Sarna '75, MA'75, and Zev Eleff, PhD'15

In 1882, etrogim in Los Angeles were a bargain: just 25 cents each.

"They are beautiful to behold and will compare favorably [] with any that have ever been imported to this country," reported "Maftir" (Isidore Choynski), West Coast correspondent for the American Israelite. These locally produced etrogim, grown in America's new citrus capital, appeared to solve what had previously been a significant religious problem. As Rabbi Moses Weinberger of New York explained in 1887:

Only a few years ago, a poor man in New York could not buy a lulav and esrog of his own [as part of the four species taken on the festival of Sukkot]; even the most highly Orthodox had to observe the commandments with esrogim circulated around every morning by poor peddlers. Now it is hard to find any kosher traditional home without an esrog of its own. In many synagogues, especially the small ones, there are as many esrogim as worshippers.

Within a few years, however, U.S. etrog production had almost completely ceased. Contrary to conventional economic wisdom, expensive, imported etrogim triumphed over the cheaper, domestic variety. To understand why, we'll have to journey back into the early-19th-century history of the etrog in the New World.

During the first decades of the 1800s, American Jews had three sources of etrogim: Corsica, the U.S. itselfand the Caribbean. The finest and most expensive came from Corsica, under French rule. Two factors diminished the popularity of these etrogim, however.

The most unusual response came in 1836 from one of central Europe's leading rabbis, Yaakov Ettlinger. In Europe, reasoned Ettlinger, the standard practice of holding an etrog with its protrusion or "pitom" upmost would mean that a Southern Hemisphere citron was in fact upside-down, violating the rule that all four species must be held and shaken in the manner in which they grow.

While dubious science, Ettlinger's responsum [a written decision from a rabbinic authority] fortuitously permitted those in the New World to continue using New World etrogim, while protecting European etrog producers from cheap New World competition.

The ensuing decades saw etrogim from various places sold in the United States. Business boomed, largely because sugar prices dropped and candied citrons became a highly popular American treat.

Which of these imports were actually kosher for use on Sukkot continued to be debated, but at the end of the day, much as local Jews could choose among different rites and movements and synagogues, they could now choose among etrogim from different locales: very expensive ones from Corsica or Corfu; cheaper varieties from the Caribbean; and, with the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, growing numbers of citrons from sunny California, where citrus of all kinds thrived.

Interestingly, these three etrog sources reflected three different conceptions of America's place in the global Jewish economy.

In September 1877, a scant decade after regular steamship service from New York to Palestine was inaugurated, newspapers in the Big Apple announced that J. H. Kantrowitz of 31 East Broadway had "imported from the Holy Land a choice lot of Esrogim." Etrogim from the Land of Israel were small and scrawny, lacking the visual appeal of those produced elsewhere. But whatever they lacked in appearance, they made up for in sanctity, justifying their hefty price tag.

As the etrog growers of the Holy Land were known to be pious Jews, no one could question their product's halakhic fitness. In addition, money expended on these etrogim helped support Palestine's struggling Jewish community (the Yishuv) as well as the nascent Zionist movement, making their purchase doubly commendable.

Then, in April 1891, the death of a young Jewish girl in Corfu prompted a well-publicized blood libel, resulting in massive anti-Jewish violence and the emigration of the majority of the island's Jews. In response, many Jews boycotted Corfu products, etrogim included.

Corfu's etrog growers never fully recovered. Instead, in the 20th century, orchards in Jaffa and Petah Tikva [in Israel] took the lead as part of a larger, Zion-centered restructuring of the global Jewish economy, which affected ritual objects of all sorts. For the better part of the last hundred years, a substantial majority of the etrogim sold in the United States have been imported from the Land of Israel though they cost a lot more than 25 cents each.

Jonathan D. Sarna is Distinguished University Professor and the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University. He is also a member of Segula's advisory board.Zev Eleff is president of Gratz College in Pennsylvania, where he also serves as professor of American Jewish history.

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The history of the etrog in America | September | 2021 | The Jewish Experience - Brandeis University

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett will speak at the Jewish Federations of North Americas annual conference next month, as his government seeks to expand its engagement with Diaspora Jewry.

Bennett will address the virtual General Assembly on October 3rd and is expected to speak about the the major challenges facing Israel, the rising tide of antisemitism and the relationship between the Jewish state and North American Jewry, in a conversation with Jewish Federations Chair Mark Wilf, JFNA said in a press release on Monday.

Prominent US politicians from both parties will also attend the GA, which will include a performance by Israels Eurovision star Eden Alene, said the JFNA, which is an umbrella group representing 146 Jewish Federations and over 300 Network communities in North America.

The 2021 GA will focus on the theme, Whats Next? after a year marred by the pandemic and war in Israel.

Since taking office in June, Bennett has held several meetings with another umbrella organization representing American Jewry, The Conference of President of Major Jewish Organizations.

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Earlier this month, Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai penned an op-ed in which he reached out to American Jewry asking for its forgiveness over the manner in which recent Israeli governments had neglected the relationship, namely through the freezing of a deal to expand the pluralistic prayer pavilion at the Western Wall.

Shai and others in the government have pledged to move forward with the matter, which was halted by former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, causing a rupture in ties between Israel and American Jewry, where a majority are not Orthodox.

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Bennett to speak at US Jewish Federation meet as govt ups outreach to Diaspora - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

The Herald

Michael Tome Business Reporter

THE Zimbabwe Investment Business Community (ZIBC), comprising prospective Zimbabwean investors based outside the country, will tomorrow host its pre-launch meeting to raise awareness to Zimbabweans in the Diaspora to consider investing back home.

The meeting, to be held virtually, comes on the back of President Mnangagwas call for Zimbabweans living abroad to take up investment opportunities in several economic programmes taking place in the economy.

ZIBC, a brainchild of Dr Ian Henney and other Zimbabweans in the Diaspora was set up in 2021 to encourage investment from Zimbabweans living outside the country.

The business grouping has indicated that it intends to constantly engage with the Diaspora community to construct and maintain a healthy economic relationship back home.

Dr Henney said the group was formed for all Zimbabweans in the Diaspora who were considering investing back home or looking forward to starting businesses in Zimbabwe.

As Zimbabweans based abroad, we have acquired many skills and knowledge and for those who just want to return home but do not know where to start, ZIBC has been formed with that in mind, said Dr Henney.

This group is an apolitical group and purely for those wishing to pursue their business goals. Zimbabwe is endowed with resources, minerals, land, human resources.

However, most of us cannot access these, hence the need to be a part of something and have a greater voice that unlocks doors and creates opportunities for us all.

This group is for Zimbabweans from all walks of life. Feel free to interact, discuss business to your hearts content, seal deals, and discuss ideas of how best we can help the motherland return to its old glory. It is strictly business, Dr Henney added.

Besides benefiting from remittances, countries globally have used Diaspora investments to develop their nations in areas such as infrastructure.

There have been strategic efforts to get the Zimbabwean Diaspora community across the globe to return home and help chart the countrys economic future through promotion of various socio- economic and business initiatives. Lately, Zimbabwe has been crafting homegrown solutions to revitalise its economic recovery and there is strong belief that this may not be achieved without the support of the Zimbabwe Diaspora community.

Value addition and beneficiation in the mining sector, new industries in special economic zones, agro-processing and manufacturing are some of the business opportunities available in Zimbabwe for investors in the Diaspora. Locals living outside the country contribute immensely to poverty reduction, development, reconstruction, and economic growth of countries of origin.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development have provided new opportunities for (African) Diaspora involvement, following the partly missed targets of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that preceded them.

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ZIBC targets investment opportunities for the Diaspora - The Herald

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

Santo Domingo. The Ministry of Economy, Planning and Development highlights in a report the contribution of the Dominican community in the United States and the measures proposed by the Government of Change to support the Dominican community abroad.

Dominicans (2.1 million) are the fifth largest group of Hispanics in the United States and represent 2.1% of the Hispanic population in that country. 46% were born in the United States, 52% of them are men and 48% are women.

This data is contained in the report Development and Remittances: The Dominican Community in the United States and Government Proposals for Change, prepared by the Minister of Economy, Planning and Development, Miguel Cear Hutton, and presented during the first Cabinet. Ministers convened to plan actions for the Dominican community abroad.

The report was also prepared on the occasion of President Luis Abenaders trip to the United States to participate in the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly, where the agenda for meetings with the Dominican diaspora was exhausted.

Minister Shara Hatton specifies that the average annual income per immigrant (2.1 million) is $21,757 (including seniors and newborns) while in the Dominican Republic, GDP per capita is $8.583, 39% of what it is in Dominican. Received in the United States.

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The Department of Economy highlights the contribution of the Dominican diaspora in the United States to the report - thedailyguardian.net

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

One of the more welcome developments of recent times is the gradual fading away of what has been dubbed diaspora nationalism. This is the unpleasant phenomenon in which people living in foreign countries advocate, finance, and often arm nationalist movements in the countries they have left, often out of a nostalgic longing for an idealized homeland they have been forced to abandon.

We in India are all too familiar with this: the fringe movement for a Sikh state (Khalistan) in India was sustained almost entirely by financing from North American Sikhs. Next door, the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora in Europe (and particularly the UK) kept Tamil nationalism alive in the island-state for decades. But the phenomenon has been a global one. Jewish nationalism was for millennia a dream sustained in exile, until the creation of Israel in 1948. The Irish in America were extensively involved in supporting Irish nationalism, and the movement for an Oromo nation to be carved out of Ethiopia was so completely sustained by the diaspora that it is even suggested that the very notion of Oromo nationalism was, for all practical purposes, invented by its expatriates.

Very often, diasporas preserve ideas, practices, beliefs, and rituals long after they have faded away or been transformed in their original homelandsthus New York is famously home to languages that have become virtually extinct in their original countries. Financial transfers can sometimes be benign, in the form of remittances to families at home, as a token of care and responsibility for relatives, not necessarily nativist meddling in the politics of abandoned homelands. Still, when diasporas act out of nationalist motivations, their impulsions are usually political, and often radical. And they can be more: what the scholar Benedict Anderson has called long- distance nationalism can kill people in faraway homelands.

Most of the contemporary worlds emigrants are people who left their countries in quest of material improvement, looking for financial security and professional opportunities that, for one reason or another, they could not attain in their own lands. Many of them left intending to return: a few years abroad, a few more dollars in the bank, they told themselves, and they would come back to their own hearths, triumphant over the adversity that had led them to leave. But the years kept stretching on, and the dollars were never quite enough, or their needs mounted with their acquisitions, or they developed new ties (career, spouse, children, schooling) to their new land, and then gradually the realization seeped in that they would never go back. And, with this realization, often only half-acknowledged, came a welter of emotions: guilt, at the abandonment of the motherland, mixed with rage, that the motherland had somehowthrough its own failings, political, economic, socialforced them into this abandonment. The attitude of this kind of expatriate to his homeland is that of the faithless lover who blames the woman he has spurned for not having sufficiently merited his fidelity.

That is why the support of extremism at home is doubly gratifying: it appeases the expatriates sense of nationalist guilt at not being involved in his homeland, and it vindicates his decision to abandon it. (If the homeland he has left did not have the faults he detests, he tells himself, he would not have had to leave it.)

But that is not all. The expatriate also desperately needs to define himself in his new society. He is reminded by his mirror, if not by the nationals of his new land, that he is not entirely like them. In the midst of racism and alienation, second-class citizenship, and self-hatred, he needs an identity to asserta label of which he can be proud, yet which does not undermine his choice of exile. He has rejected the reality of his country but not, he declares fervently, the essential nationalist values he has derived from his roots.

As his children grow up American or British, as they slough off the assumptions, prejudices, and fears of his own childhood, he becomes even more assertive about them. But his nationalist nostalgia is based on the selectiveness of memory; it is a simplified, idealized recollection of his roots, often reduced to their most elementalfamily, caste, region, religion. In exile amongst foreigners, he clings to a vision of what he really is that admits no foreignness.

But the tragedy is that the culture he remembers, with both nostalgia and rejection, has itself evolvedin interaction with otherson its national soil. His perspective distorted by exile, the expatriate extremist knows nothing of this. His view of what used to be home is divorced from the experience of home. The expatriate is no longer an organic part of the culture, but a severed digit that, in its yearning for the hand, can only twist itself into a disfigured approximation of a clenched fist.

Fortunately, as expatriation matures, the intensity of such remembered allegiance fades. Today our diaspora means mainly the hard- working, mostly blue-collar Indians in the Gulf, who work abroad because of the financial vistas it opens to them but whose allegiance remains firmly tied to their homeland, and to the families there whom they support with their remittances. Their nationalism is far from radical; it is anchored in the familiar comforts of the homes they sustain through their labours.

The 21st century has encouraged the evolution of other forms of diaspora. There are the flexibles who travel cheerfully back and forth between home and abroad, managing to lead dual lives as Indians and expatriates at the same time. There are the transnational professionals whose jobs place them in Singapore one year, in Sydney the next, and San Francisco three years later, but who have no sense whatsoever of having abandoned Sangrur or Simla in the process.

Theirs is not diaspora nationalism, but a sort of trans-nationalism. The allure of Khalistan collapses in the face of the real existence of Punjab, where you can visit, holiday, invest and even marry. Why finance rebellion when you can enjoy your homeland with a PIO card?

About the Author

Dr Shashi Tharoor, a third-term Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, chairs Parliaments Standing Committee on Information Technology

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Diaspora Nationalism: The Myth and the Reality - Mathrubhumi English

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Posted By admin on September 22, 2021

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Sept. 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Embarking on the first step to enter the Colombian region for enabling cross-border digital payments, TerraPay,a global payments infrastructure company today announced a strategic partnership with MOVii, a leading mobile wallet service that allow both banked and unbanked Colombians to do financial transactions from their mobile phone, with ease, convenience and security.

MOVii_Logo

This collaboration is envisioned in phases with an aligned objective to transform the way Colombian residents and diaspora across the world send and receive money digitally.

The first array of the partnership would enable Colombian diaspora residing in countries such as North America, Europe, including a whole suite of TerraPay's 153 send partner countries, to transfer instant payments to their family and friends in Colombia through MOVii mobile wallet payouts. This opens up an incremental opportunity to connect TerraPay's 500Mn+ mobile wallet partner customers globally, with MOVii's mobile wallets in the region.

Following up with the next milestone in the coming months, TerraPay would be bringing together a similar interoperability platform to enable Colombian residents to receive instant money transfers from their family and friends residing globally, into bank account payouts. The strategic partnership plans are in the process. To further empower Colombian residents to feel independent and resilient, the third phase builds the outbound money transfer channels to TerraPay's well entrenched 79 receive partner countries.

Committed to achieving key SDG goals in alignment to both the company's investor - IFC's vision to 'End extreme poverty by 2030', and 'Boosting shared prosperity', this partnership drives financial inclusion, independence and resilience for MOVii's 1.7 million Colombian users - both residents and diaspora globally.

Speaking on the launch of the partnership, Ricardo Madronero, Regional Manager LATAM region, TerraPay stated, "Our partnership with MOVii is the starting means to accelerate the growing opportunity for inbound remittances from Colombian diaspora globally. TerraPay's industry benchmarked interoperability engine will seamlessly connect an impressive count of over 1.7 million MOVii mobile wallet users to receive instant funds, with credibility. An exciting path ahead with many more such collaborations to enhance and deepen multi payment channel connections and usage, globally."

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"We are proud to partner with TerraPay, in further empowering our existing mobile wallet users to do more than just transact digitally. Now, they can also receive instant cross-border money transfers from their family residing at any of TerraPay's extensive global partner network send countries. For diaspora, the partnership facilitates them to be connected to their family back home, with a simple and cost effective means of sending money home, " said Hernando Rubio, CEO and Co-founder, MOVii.

TerraPay has established itself as a global Partner to leading banks, money Transfer operators, mobile Wallet Operators and financial Institutions to facilitate digital transactions without borders. As a B2B company, TerraPay partners with other businesses and helps them leverage its agile, secure, and scalable technology platform to enhance their customer proposition for remittances, payments, and cross border spends. TerraPay is regulated in over 15 countries around the world. Some of the company's key markets include; GCC; North, South and Central Africa; Europe and SE Asia; Central, North and South Americas.

About TerraPay

TerraPay is a licensed digital payments infrastructure and solutions provider, paving the global payments highway. The company's robust foundation and innovative platform technology serve as the digital interoperability engine enabling customers and businesses globally to send and receive payments on a secure, transparent, efficient, and real-time basis. The agile network supports diverse payment instruments and types of payments while adhering to complex regulations and compliance standards in different markets.

For more information, please visit terrapay.com

Press Contact: Anwesha Mukherjee, +91-971-724-1606

About MOVii

MOVii is the most amazing challenger bank in Colombia, focused on changing the banking category, by improving the financial inclusion of those who have never been on the system and giving them the opportunity to manage their money as they wish to through an app and card.

MOVii is moving forward with a disruptive, hassle-free value proposal that connects with people, with their financial needs and responds to their lack of access to banking. With this model, MOVii is projected to grow up to 3MM users during 2021 leading digital banking in Colombia.

For more information, please visit http://www.movii.com.co

Press Contact:Natalia Garcia Camponatalia.garcia@moviired.co

TerraPay_Logo

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1629781/MOVii_Logo.jpg Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1222771/TerraPay_Logo.jpg

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SOURCE TerraPay

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TerraPay partners with MOVii to pave the way for seamless cross-border payments for Colombian residents and diaspora across the world - Yahoo Finance

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