Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 19, 2021

Jews may be the chosen people, but when it comes to Jewish education, adults with disabilities have often been left out.

Coinciding with Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month, the Marcus JCC of Atlantas Lisa F. Brill Institute for Jewish Learning offers inclusive education classes through the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning virtually via Zoom.

The second series of Members of the Tribe classes is now underway, with more than double the number of students participating. Rabbi Steven Rau of Atlantas The Temple taught the first class, and instructor Devorah Lowenstein of Atlanta Education Associates leads the second.

There isnt anything like it out there right now for this community of adults. They need to be served and connected Jewishly and we cant forget about them, said Talya Gorsetman, director of the Lisa F. Brill Institute. This is the first series of Melton classes that is inclusive of people of all abilities and types of learners. We have a couple of people who were diagnosed with Down syndrome, others with congenital disabilities and intellectual disabilities, she said.

Courtesy of Beth Intro Photography

Talya Gorsetman is the director of the Lisa F. Brill Institute in Atlanta.

The curriculum and pace of the class has been modified to allow additional time for questions, clarification and repetition and to accommodate the needs of the class, such as if someone is vision or hearing impaired. We had a great discussion and mix of ideas, with everyone learning from each other.

Encompassing Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, rabbinical writings and contemporary material, the classes cover two or three texts each week. We did a lot of discussion, engaging and making the texts relevant. We just needed to slow it down and chop it up a bit, Gorsetman said. Its also a class on Jewish values, reestablishing those values and sharing experiences and thoughts, she added. The Melton curriculum is all about listening to each other.

Although Melton adult education classes usually cost several hundred dollars, this series is underwritten and offered at steeply reduced rates. The first semester had nine students enrolled, many participating with a parent or caregiver, and 17 signed up for the current classes, which are offered in the evening to accommodate students who work during the day.

Kyle Simon, 24, who has a job at a honey-producing bee farm, has an invisible intellectual learning disability and attended special schools growing up. He attended the fall semester and re-enrolled for the spring class. It just takes me more time. I need more patience. Some things are a little harder for me than for other people, he said. When youre studying with a disability its always hard to focus. I tried hard to pay attention and it got easier the second time around. Ive enjoyed this semester even more.

Courtesy of Simon Family

Michelle and Kyle Simon participate in a JCC class over Zoom.

This has been an amazing thing to do, to get together as a community and talk about Judaism, keeping kosher and what it means to be Jewish, continued Simon, who was raised Reform. We study the Torah. We talk about the holidays and what they mean, like lighting the candles on Hanukkah. I love how it brings the community together, even though its on Zoom.

Born in New York, Gorsetman attended Jewish day and high schools, majored in Jewish studies at Yeshiva Universitys Stern College, and studied in Israel before and after she married her husband, Rabbi Adam Starr. She is now in her sixth year at Melton, and is looking forward to expanding the adult disability education program.

Were at the beginning stages. Were in talks with the Florence Melton School to develop a curriculum for this community of adults and a faculty guide to train Melton teachers to teach these classes, and get other Melton directors to offer this to their communities all around the world, she said. We have not even begun.

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At one JCC, new classes make it easy for adults with disabilities to tune in - Forward

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Posted By admin on February 19, 2021

William Gralnick. Photo courtesy of William Gralnick

Naming a baby can be as easy or difficult as you make it. Name the child after a beloved relative gone to a greater reward or buy and book, yes a book, that has hundreds more suggestions than all the children even born into your family. My parents chose the first route. My paternal grandfather was named William. Already there was a problem. Two boy, my fathers and my uncles, were born very close together. I was one of the two. Both men loved their father and wanted to honor him by naming their son William. My uncle, who was the youngest of the five children got the first shot. My dad was not to be died so we now had two Williams. A peace conference was held. My cousin, six months older than I would be called William. I would be formally named William but called Bill. It became so ingrained that if you called me William or he Bill we often reacted as if youd called us Fred and Harry. Here is a peek in the backstage of the naming.

With apologies to Johnny Cash and his ode to A Boy Named Sue that song could have been me. One day, in one of her many crossa popular term in the 50s for pissed offdays my mother was pining away at the awfulness of her not having had a daughter. That, of course, triggered a whats so bad about a second son? feeling that overcame me. In fact, she went on, the only reason you were born was because your brother was a boy. I believed it. My dad had told me once that my mother was a high-strung, nervous mother. My brother had colic and one day it was so severe that he didnt stop wailing. It had gone on for hours. When my father came home from work he found her in a state of hysterianot the laughing kind. He pulled all of the tricks out of his dental psychology bag. None worked so he smacked her across the face (a popular remedy in the 50s). That worked.

Back to the story.

If you had been a girl you would have been named Wilhelmina, she said, as if she had said, If you had been a girl you would have been named Ellen or Sue. But she didnt. She said, Wilhelmina.

WILHELMINA?!?! Egad! I had never heard that name, ever. It was weird and ugly. A life as a Wilhelmina would have been hell, even if I had been a girl. I did know a Willianna, but she was black and from South Carolina and already at least as old as my mother. I could sort of see her going through life unharmed as Willianna. Me as Wilhelmina? Uh-uh.

It was a mere accident of genetics that saved me, and the power of Jewish tradition that almost ruined me.

It is tradition in Ashkenazic Judaism to name a child after a deceased family member one wants to memorialize. Some say you start at the beginning of the line, someone who died the longest ago whose name hadnt been used or was of such family import that it would be re-used. Some say you begin at the end of the line with the name of the most recently deceased. Some say you dont have to use the actual name, just the first initial and still others say you can do it with the Hebrew name rather than the English one. What everyone says is there are no Jrs or 3rdsexcept, of course, the Sephardi Jews, and also that small number of Jews who so admire gentile social culture that they think having a Jr. or a 3rd in the ranks would be cool and also helpful to the child as he/she navigates the business world.

Of course, just to show you the pitfalls of generalizing about Jews, I did know a Schwartz who was a Jr. and conceived a 3rd. Schwartz is AshkenaziJews whose roots trace from Germany and Eastern Europe. Sephardim are those whose roots stem from the great expulsion from Spain in 1492 (and you thought that was a year only Italians and American Indians) took note of that date. Many went to the Middle East so Spain, Africa (yes Virginia, there were Jews in Africastill are, and not all of them are white either), and the Middle East are the petri dishes for Sephardic Judaism.

-->

But I stray. So, from whence almost came Wilhelmina? My dad was one of five: three boys, two girls. His dad, whom he called Pop, was named William or Velvel (its Yiddish equivalent). At least two of the brothers, my father being one, idealized Pop. As I said, they both wanted to name their kids after him, but Mamma died first and my dad was the oldest boy. He had a boy as his first child so he honored his mother, Jenny, by naming my brother Jeffrey, a name my brother detested and I loved. The next male to come along was my uncles son, so he got the William. Then it was my turn. I guess my father figured, Im the oldest, I put my brothers through school and set them up in their practices, screw it, I want to name my kid after Pop. So he did. Hence, along came the second William, me whose William morphed into Billy.

It took me until my late teens to announce that Billy had left the building. I would now be Bill. Send out the memo, I informed my mom. Some got it, some didnt, but by the time I started work, I had pretty much shed it. As fate would have it, my first job was in Atlanta, Ga. the south, where every William is not only Billy but Billy-Something like Billy-Bob or Billy-Joe or Billy-Ray. I thought life brutally unfair and considered shooting myselfor those who again raised the specter of Billy-dom.

I got over it, helped by a transfer to Miami in the state of Florida where it is said the more south you go the more north it comes. Once I passed Orlando, I once again escaped Billy-dom and by the time I hit Miami I was Guillermo (William in Spanish).

Now, to be fair, there have been many Wilhelminas, some even queens, the kind with crowns, like the Queen of the Netherlands. The name itself means the great protector, fitting for a queen, and another reason the name didnt fit me.

In fact, in the 1880s it ranked among the 215 most popular names. On the other hand, it hasnt cracked the list since 1950s.

There was one Olympic athlete named Wilhelmina, the late great Wilma Rudolph.

And no one else since that Ive ever heard ofto this day.

Sorry Mom, but hooray for genetics.

February 19 |Brooklyn Eagle History

February 19 |Brooklyn Eagle History

February 18 |Brooklyn Eagle History

February 18 |Brooklyn Eagle History

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A Boy Named Wilhelmina: 'It was once the name of a Queen' - Brooklyn Daily Eagle

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Posted By admin on February 19, 2021

THE FIRST four times I called, I got a busy signal. Then, finally, an answer: Best I can do is two people, three months from now, Vale? I was trying to clinch one of the toughest reservations in Madrid, and it wasnt at some celebrity-chef spot but, rather, at Malacatn, a neighborhood tavern famous for one thing: cocido. Book it, I said, without a moments hesitation.

Cocido, Spains quintessential boiled dinner, includes buttery chickpeas, fall-apart beef and chicken, vegetables smoky with pimentn (Spanish paprika), and a broth so rich it gives cassoulet a run for its money. For centuries, the dish has been the backbone of Spanish cold-weather cooking, but because of its medieval optics and laundry list of ingredients, it never quite caught on abroad like tapas or paella. Most people outside Spain have never heard of it much less made it at home, even if products like Serrano ham and morcilla (blood sausage) are increasingly easy to track down.

Cocidos range from Catalonias meatball-laden escudella to Canarian puchero bobbing with corn on the cob, but the most famous version hails from Madrid. Spaniards love cocido madrileo for its ritualistic three vuelcos, or coursesfirst the broth, then the chickpeas and vegetables, then the meats. These can include beef shank, chicken, jamn, chorizo, ham hocks, bacon, trotters, pig ears, lardo, pancetta, blood sausage and marrow bones. The magic lies in mixing and matching proteins to hit the sweet spot between fatty and lean, smoky and sweet.

Cocido is liturgy in Madrid. It connects us to our childhood and to our grandmothers, said Jos Alberto Rodrguez, the fourth-generation owner of Malacatn, as he led me to an elbow-worn table set with a bowl, a soup spoon and a cloth bib. For those of us who grew up here, the smell of cocido is the smell of home. (That smell carried on through the week back at my house, as leftovers found their way into soups, bechamel croquettes and ropa vieja, a saucy chickpea stew enlivened with spoonfuls of pimentn.)

In Madrid: A Culinary History, Mara Paz Moreno writes that cocidos origins can be traced to Sephardic adafina, a filling stew of chickpeas, root vegetables, and lamb meat traditionally cooked in a large clay pot overnight on Friday and eaten on the Sabbath. But if cocido has Jewish roots, whats with all the piggy bits found in it today? Ms. Moreno explains that during the Spanish Inquisition, Catholic authorities kept a watchful eye on Conversos (converted Jews) to make sure they were acting like proper Christians. Fearing persecution, these converts are thought to have overcompensated with their use of non-kosher meats. Adafina was also a likely ancestor of French pot-au-feu and Italian bollito misto.

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This Meaty Stew Recipe Is a Uniquely Satisfying Winter-Weekend Project - The Wall Street Journal

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Posted By admin on February 19, 2021

PHOTOS BY MICHAEL PERSICO

Like most of us, Michael Solomonov, the Philadelphia-based chef with Pittsburgh roots, misses traveling. Hes longing to return to Israel, where he came of age and later found his culinary voice. He typically visits the country several times every year.

Rather than dwell on what he couldnt be doing, Solomonov created a talk show, Bringing Israel Home. The series live-streams on Vimeo on Wednesday nights. The second half of each episode features Solmonov cooking a couple of recipes, in real time, that fit the weeks theme. Viewers are invited to cook along.

I miss the people there. I miss my friends. I miss the food writers. I miss the music. I miss the energy. So I wanted to try to capture just a little bit of that, he says. Were all doing so much home cooking, too, so combining the two made sense.

Heres a bonus for Pittsburghers: The final episode of the first half of the season brings him back (virtually) to Pittsburgh.

The episode, which live streams on March 3, will be his most personal. Its centered around his brother, David, who served in the Israeli Defense Force and was killed in 2003 by a sniper on Yom Kippur. He was 21. I miss him. I love him. Talking about him keeps him alive, Solomovov says.

Solomonov credits his younger brother for inspiring his love of Israeli cuisine. The two became more deeply connected when Solomonov visited Israel as a young adult (hed moved back to the United States to attend college, while the rest of his family remained in Israel). I admired him so much. He was a sympathetic and gentle kid. Hed gone through a lot. He affected so many people in a positive way, Solomonov says.

YEMENITE CHICKEN SOUP

Exploring Israel with David helped plant the seed for Mikes culinary journey into Israel and its food. The brothers bonded while traveling through the country, eating where they went. David Solomonov even convinced Mike, who was already building a successful career as a chef but not cooking Israeli cuisine, to cook a few meals while he was visiting. We spent a lot of quality time together. And thats something Ill never forget, Solomonov says, noting the Jewish community in Squirrel Hill knew about Davids death almost immediately.

Its food that, in part, has kept Davids memory alive. Its also part of how Solomonov tells his story. How do we connect with our heritage and our identity? So often, its done through food. These food memories are things that establish time and place. Its as important as any other part of our culture, he says.

Solomonov will cook two dishes pastel and lamb sofrito as a tribute to his family in the final episode of Bringing Israel Home.

Im inviting people to understand a bit of the process of why I cook Israeli food, he says. Davids death, and then the feeling like I was not at home anywhere else but in Israel. Helping to establish identity through tragedy, to find a sense of place and purpose.

Pastel, a savory meat pie of seasoned ground beef in a boureka dough crust, was Davids favorite dish. He loved it so much that his grandmother Mati refused to prepare it after Davids death; the sense-memory connected with the dish was too overwhelming for her. She made one exception when Mike brought the crew of Zahav to Israel prior to the restaurants 2008 opening.

For Solomonov, the recipe amplifies the notion that healing and long-lasting grief at the loss of loved ones are intertwined; pastel keeps him connected to his brother and grandmother. Eating, tasting take us to a time and place. I dont know what other medium has that visceral connection to sense memory than food does, he says, noting that pastel is the only non-Kosher recipe that appeared in his first cookbook.

SABICH

Solomonovs second recipe, lamb sofrito, traces his familys roots even deeper into the Jewish culinary diaspora. The Sephardic dish is laced with warm spices, such as allspice and turmeric, rich with onion and garlic. Its like the Jewish meat and potatoes. Its as rudimentary and as soulful as it gets. It tells the story of medieval Spanish Jewry into the Balkans and then into Israel, Solomonov says.

Each episode is centered around themes such as Israeli Breakfast, The Israeli Bakery and Port City of Akko. He explores the extraordinary culinary depth of Akko (also known as Acre) with Osama Dalal, a chef whose familys lineage traces back centuries in the ancient city. In another episode, he talks to the musician Ravid Kahalani about the culture and music of Yemeni Jews; Kahalani then plays some hauntingly beautiful music and, after that, Solomonov prepares Yemenite soup and schug. (Episodes are archived, so if youve missed a live edition you can go back and watch them all.)

Sharing family memories, even the hard ones, through food is something Solomonov hopes will resonate with everyone, no matter what their background. As for the Pittsburgh connection, Shira Rudavsky, who in previous episodes has served as co-host while Solomonov is cooking, will introduce Davids story the two were friends from childhood and talk about Pittsburgh with Solomonov, who lived here from ages 2 to 15. His familys roots in the city run deep.

SOLOMONOV COOKING WITH SHIRA RUDAVSKY

Solomonovs great-grandfather Max Unger owned a jewelry store Downtown. Unger was 95 when he died in 1985, and his Post-Gazette obituary said people who know him all use the same word generous in describing Mr. Unger. The same sentiment is often said of Solomonov.

Solomonovs late mother, Evelyn Solomonov, was a teacher at Community Day School until 1993 when she and the Solomonov family moved to Israel. She still exists in the hallways of that school, Solomonov says.

Rudavsky was one of her fifth-grade students. Decades later, a chance encounter at a Philadelphia Whole Foods that began as a reminiscence about Pittsburgh later prompted Rudavsky to introduce Solomonov to her husband, Steve Cook. That introduction sparked a partnership that would help Solomonov and Cook build a culinary empire. The duos CookNSolo Restaurant Group operates eight establishments, including Zahav, Abe Fisher, Federal Donuts and Laser Wolf in Philadelphia.

Cooking food is this act of giving. Its a language we share with our grandparents, with our children. Im just a small part of something thats so tremendously big. Im honored to be a part of it, Solomonov says.

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Michael Solomonov is Sharing Stories and Recipes - Pittsburgh Magazine

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2021

WASHINGTON White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Tuesday that a conversation between US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is imminent.[President Bidens] first call with a leader in the region will be with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Psaki said at a press briefing. It will be soon; I dont have an exact day, but it is soon.She went on to say that Israel is, of course, an ally; Israel is a country where we have an important strategic security relationship, and our team is fully engaged not at the head of state level quite yet but our teams are fully engaged, having constant conversations at many levels with the Israelis.Since his inauguration on January 20, the president has not called the Israeli prime minister. However, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has spoken twice with his Israeli counterpart, Meir Ben Shabbat, as the US is consulting with allies and members of congress about the next steps the administration should take regarding Irans nuclear program.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also spoke twice with his Israel counterpart Gabi Ashkenazi. In their recent call last week, Ashkenazi thanked Blinken for the administrations position against the ICC decision to investigate Israel.

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Bidens first call in region will be Netanyahu, White House says - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2021

Senior Israeli diplomat Gideon Meir died on Monday at the age of 74 after a bout with cancer.

Meir, born in Jerusalem in 1947, served as Israels envoy to Italy from 2006 to 2011, and most recently as head of the Foreign Ministrys Public Diplomacy Division. He also took part in peace negotiations with Egypt.

Meir is survived by his wife Amira, three children, and grandchildren.

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Gideon was responsible for training dozens of diplomats as head of the training bureau and as head of the Public Diplomacy Division in the ministry, said Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi. My deepest sympathies to his wife Amira and his children. May his soul be bound in the bonds of life.

Ambassador Gideon Meir (second left) looks on as Prime Minister Menachem Begin greets Walter Mondale (photo credit: Foreign Ministry)

We are devastated and heartbroken by the terrible loss of our husband, father, father-in-law, grandfather, brother, brother-in-law and uncle, Gideon Meir, may his memory be a blessing, after bravely battling cancer for two years, said his daughter Noa in a statement.

He passed away at home, in his bed, surrounded by his loved ones, and thankfully did not suffer or endure any pain. He leaves behind an incredible legacy, and will forever be a part of us.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project, remembered Meirs efforts during the 2005 Disengagement from the Gaza Strip. I have great memories of being on the edge of Gaza in the press area each night when the reporters at a make-shift bar would gather around Gideon Meir and ask him questions for their stories. He would sit with the reporters while they asked question after question. We called it Has-BEER-a instead of hasbara.

He was a brilliant diplomat and professional who loved people and saved many lives through his work, Laszlo Mizrahi added. He also loved his family very much.

Jeremy Issacharoff, Israels ambassador to Germany, called Meir an inspiring example of what a successful and effective ambassador should aspire to be.

The funeral will be broadcast Tuesday afternoon, at 1:30 p.m. Israel time (6:30 am EST) at this link.

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Veteran diplomat Gideon Meir dies at 74 - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2021

I spent a decade composing the music for the Warner Brothers TV Network. Here in Los Angeles, that means every time you watched a Channel 5 sports broadcast, a TV show promo or the Rose Parade, you heard my music in the background. But as great an experience as this was for a composer just out of college, I realized my heart was elsewhere.

Since the age of seven, I have heard music in my head new music, fully formed songs and lyrics. My passion is getting those songs developed, arranged, recorded and marketed. But in my mid-twenties, I started flirting with a new passion: Shabbat.

Many of my Westside friends had moved to Pico-Robertson, and I started getting Friday night invites. I was tapping into the deepest well of inspiration: God, Torah and community. Like many of my peers, my Jewish education ended shortly after reaching bar mitzvah age. But now I recognized I had a lot of catching up to do in my spirituality. My music, always the spokesperson for my subconscious mind, reflected this inner turmoil and bore fruit in the form of my first Jewish albums: Hineni, A Day in the Life and Across the River. I started touring synagogues instead of rock clubs, brushed up on my Hebrew and tried on those tefillin I hadnt worn since I was thirteen.

Soon, I was performing in over fifty cities a year. I became poignantly aware of the power of music in connecting audiences of various denominations and ages. And I learned that, for the Jewish People, religious life without music is unthinkable.

Jews see music as the catalyst of Creation. The Big Bang is summed up in the first line of Genesis, beginning with the word Breishit. According to the Dzikover Rebbe (Rabbi Yidele Horowitz, 1905-1989), Breishit can be rearranged to spell Shirat Aleph Beit, the song of the alphabet. In other words, every aspect of the universe is continuously sung into being.

Our Tanach (Bible) is replete with epic songs punctuating the narrative. Jubal, the inventor of the first instruments, is one of the key characters mentioned in the first ten generations of humankind. The patriarchs composed while in the fields with their livestock; Jewish tradition maintains King David was hearing songs as he composed his Psalms; our prophets required music to enter a transcendent realm and hear Gods voice; vast orchestras accompanied the service in the Temple.

When we sing our prayers, we transform our worship from lethargy to ecstasy, from stasis to action and commitment. The nusach (traditional melody) of prayer is so beautifully detailed that one could conceivably travel by time machine to any service in history and know if its a weekday, Shabbat or a holiday, if its morning, afternoon or evening and whether the congregation is Sephardic or Ashkenaz. Specific tropes even accompany the public reading of our Torah and prophetic writings, adding color and even commentary to the black and white text.

As I explored the origins of music in Judaism, I wondered about the origin of the music in me. How does my subconscious create a soundtrack for my dreams? Is it an amalgam of all the melodies I processed that day? Am I hearing remnants of biblical melodies in the ether? Maybe it is a combination of all of those things. For me, the new Jewish music I create from my head offers clarity of Gods loving presence: after all, King David is the source for engaging in shir chadash lAdonai (singing a new song for God). New music communicates vitality and excitement and keeps ritual from becoming stagnant.

the new Jewish music I create from my head offers clarity of Gods loving presence.

The Midrash describes ten primary songs featured in Tanach. Nine have already been sung such as Az Yashir, the spontaneous outpouring of prophetic music sung by the masses at the splitting of the Red Sea. We also have Moshe Rabbeinus final song, Haazinu, as well as songs by Devorah, Hannah and Kings David and Shlomo. One song has yet to be written, awaiting a future date when the redeemed ones leave exile. This is the Tenth Song for which we are yearning. I have a feeling its ready for download can you hear it yet?

It is a tremendous privilege to channel Gods music and share it. May God bless all of us with a holy life filled with sweetness and harmony. And may we soon merit singing the Tenth Song of Creation together in Jerusalem.

Sam Glaser is a performer, composer, producer and author in Los Angeles. He has released 25 albums of his music, heproduces music for various media in his Glaser Musicworks recording studio and his book The Joy of Judaism is an Amazonbestseller. Visit him online at http://www.samglaser.com. Join Sam for a weekly uplifting hour of study every Wednesday night(7:30 pm PST, Zoom Meeting ID: 71646005392) for learners of all ages and levels of knowledge.

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Comments on: Music in Judaism: In Search of the Tenth Song - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2021

This story originally appeared on Alma.

When you think of Jewish music, what comes to mind? Maybe its an epic Hebrew prayer chanted by a group of congregants in a synagogue, or the sound of a somber, minor-key klezmer band. Or perhaps you think of a poetic (if not slightly racy) Leonard Cohen lyric.

You probably wouldnt consider jazzy, soulful R&B to fall under the umbrella of Jewish music, but Jewish-Canadian singer-songwriter Erez Zobary is here to shatter that assumption.

Born and raised in the Greater Toronto area, Erez has been singing since she was a toddler. After a bout of vocal nodules in her teens (ouch!), she has since embraced a low, vocal register reminiscent of the late Amy Winehouse. Yet the half-Yemenite musicians style tends to veer more on the side of uplifting and joyous than sultry and secretive.

July Clouds is an acoustic love song reminiscent of a lazy midsummer day back before life became inundated with Zoom meetings and endless commitments. In Before I Knew You, Erez sings about a transformative relationship in her life with contagious enthusiasm.

Oh, and this rising R&B musician wears her Judaism as a badge of pride. In fact, the music video to Love Me includes several snippets of a Shabbat dinner, as well as some gorgeous, scenic shots of the Canadian outdoors. Amid soulful riffs and impressive key changes, Erezs music overflows with a sense of warmth that transports you back to those large, communal fires at Jewish overnight camp.

When not producing earwormy hits, Erez juggles multiple jobs as a high school teacher and social justice educator. Her work often addresses racism within the Jewish community, and she has also been involved in some inspiring volunteering initiatives. I recently had the chance to talk with the rising singer-songwriter to discuss music, Judaism and social justice.

First off, I just want to say that I love your music. I listen to it as I study, as I drive, as I work out. Im totally obsessed. You merge R&B and pop together in a way that is smooth, fun and totally danceable. Who are your musical inspirations?

Its interesting because theres always been a lot of music in my house all the time; my parents are very fun, but different, people. I was born in New York. When I was there, we were going to shows all the time, listening to live music. When we went to Toronto, it didnt have the same live music scene, but there were always records playing at home. With my dad, it was always Earth, Wind & Fire, Stevie Wonder, and he also fell in love with disco in Israel when he was living there as a teenager. With my mom, it was a lot of Joni Mitchell, a lot of Amy Winehouse.

I can hear the Joni Mitchell in your album July Clouds. Your music has that same buoyant energy thats also not afraid to get raw and emotional. Plus, youre both Canadian.

Thank you! My mom loves Joni Mitchell.

We both grew up in a vibrant, developed Jewish community in Canada. How do you feel that the Jewish institutions of your upbringing shaped your love for music?

The camp I went to, Gesher, is the most colorful group of human beings I have ever met. I never felt like I quite fit in during private Jewish day school. I never really felt like I could be me. But camp was that place where I could be me a lot more. There was always music going on, whether it was staff playing guitar or us singing Jewish melodies around a fire.

We mentioned your family earlier. I know you told me that youre half-Yemenite. Whats that culture like compared to Ashkenazi culture?

I love being Yemenite. I am Ashkenazi and I am Yemenite, but I feel so connected to my Yemenite culture. I love the energy, the dancing, the food. Yemenite Jews are known for their singing. I dont know if every Yemenite-Ashkenazi Jew feels that [sense of connection to their Yemenite heritage], but I do.

How has that sense of connection to your heritage informed your career as a musician?

Growing up, I always felt different. I wished I looked like everyone else. I had curly hair and darker skin tones than a lot of my classmates in Jewish day school. I even think that insecurity can sometimes show in my music. I wrote a song called Gold, Blonde, which is all about a sense of not fitting into the narrow mold of Eurocentric beauty standards.

Sometimes I feel like Im in between not fully Ashkenazi, not fully Mizrahi. But at the same time, my heritage is also a unique gift because it doesnt make me uncomfortable to have those difficult conversations about whiteness in Judaism. I actually think it allows me to come to conversations in a different and interesting way.

In day school, I remember my education on Jewish history was strong, but it was Ashkenormative. We touched upon Sephardic history a little bit, but I dont think I ever learned anything about the Mizrahim until my history degree at McGill.

I dont even think I realized how Ashkenazi my Jewish education was until I went to university. In second year, I had this existential crisis learning about a lot of genocides I had never studied in the Jewish day school system. I didnt even learn about the Residential school system in Canada until university. I think [overall] Jewish day schools are getting so much better when it comes to teaching both secular North American history and non-Ashkenazi Jewish history, but that omission really disappointed me.

[In second year], I started speaking with my dad and he told me all about the racism and discrimination my grandparents faced in Israel, and I learned some crazy histories.There was the Yemenite Jewish Childrens Affair, where Yemenite children in Israel were kidnapped and sent around the world for illegal adoption. Some of the children were even adopted by childless Holocaust survivors living in Israel. Its a difficult, messy history, not something to be proud of.

My hope is that Jewish day schools can bring that history in, and in a safe and brave way learn to interrogate how our communities work. I hope we can acknowledge how racism exists within Judaism. In order to do the work [of combating anti-Semitism] outside our community, we need to do the work inside as well.

Right. And thats so tricky because we live in a world where anti-Semitism is still a legitimate danger for all Jews, especially after the pro-Trump raid on the U.S. Capitol. Yet there can also be these ugly inequities within our communities. Both these forces exist at the same time, which can be difficult to address without coming across as antagonistic. What do you think that delicate, sensitive work of tackling intracommunity racism looks like?

Just as a teacher, education is everything to me. The Jewish community has taken so many steps to improve equitable education and address issues such as racism, classism and homophobia head on. Theres a group within the Canadian Jewish community that is working on an initiative called No Silence on Race that aims to address how racism still plagues Jewish spaces in Canada. The team Sara Yacobi-Harris, Akilah Allen-Silverstein and Yoni Belete is working with Jewish institutions to create spaces for dialogue and necessary change. I think its about listening, sitting down together, making space for Jews of color, and then absorbing all that knowledge to take concrete steps to change our communities for the better.

I also think my Yemenite Jewish upbringing informs a lot of the work I do within the Jewish community because I am committed to shedding light on my grandparents experience with racism after immigrating to Israel in 1948. I challenge attendants in my workshops to consider the continuing, contemporary impacts of racism within our Jewish communities, such as the treatment of Ethiopian Jews both in Israel and in North America. I love being Jewish and I am proud to be part of this community, but theres a lot of work that still needs to be done so we can envision and pave a more inclusive path forward.

Erez Zobary is streaming on Spotify, YouTubeand wherever else you get your feminist, Jewish R&B-indie-pop music.

The post Meet the Yemeni-Jewish musician singing soulful Jewish R&B appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Meet the Yemeni-Jewish musician singing soulful Jewish R&B - Cleveland Jewish News

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2021

Wine is a complicated thing.

It can be sweet, sticky, and reminiscent of seders long past; it can be complex, sophisticated, demanding both sensual and intellectual attention. It can make drinkers happy, it can help them let go of the top layer of self-consciousness that ties their tongues and depresses their wit. It also can make them drunk.

Wine brings out all kinds of silly rhapsodizing. By the time people get through describing it as tasting not only like chocolate and berries and the Caribbean at midday but also like charcoal and tar and dust and spitballs (I made that last one up) sometimes its hard to want to drink something described with those words, at least without laughing.

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And that would be a mistake.

Like any precious substance, wine is to be handled with care. When it is used properly, when it is drunk with care and reverence and attention and pleasure, it can give great joy.

Gabriel Geller, who lives in Teaneck, knows a great deal about wine. Hes now the director of communications and media management for Royal Wine, the huge Bayonne-based wine manufacturer, importer, and distributor that has changed the worlds impressions of kosher wine.

Mr. Gellers background this is the third continent hes lived in, and his familys history is as unusual as his job is fascinating.

He was born in 1985, in Switzerland. As much as we know about Jews in Europe and given that most of the local Jewish community can trace its roots back there we dont often think about Swiss Jews.

Thats because there havent been that many of them. The communitys hardy, but its not large. Whats very interesting about it is that consistently over the past 50 or so years, there have been about 18,000 Jews in Switzerland, Mr. Geller said. Despite the fact that things have changed over the last few decades, that number has remained stable. But its not always been the same people. As of a few years ago, Switzerland had the highest proportion of olim to Israel per capita in the world, he said. I would say that the reason is Zionism. I dont think that anti-Semitism is really a factor in it. There is some anti-Semitism there, of course, but not nearly as much as you see in other countries. Instead, Swiss Jews make aliyah not to flee Switzerland not to leave for any negative reasons but instead for the positive good of living in Israel.

Gabriel Geller stands in Royal Wines conference room in Bayonne. Hes holding a three-liter bottle of Barons Edmond & Benjamin de Rothschild Haut-Mdoc 2000. Its kosher, of course. (Shira Hershowitz)

Before anyone could leave the country, however, they had to get there first.

Mr. Gellers history there goes way back. My paternal great-grandparents came to Switzerland from Galicia at the end of the 19th century, he said. His mother, Annie-Marie Dreyfuss, was French; she was born and raised in Paris, and moved to Geneva with her parents, Leon and Ella Dreyfuss, in the 1970s.

So how did Leon and Ella get to Paris?

Leons family was from Strasbourg, in Alsace, which has moved between French and German control over history. Ella was from Poland. The Jewish community in Strasbourg was very racist, Mr. Geller said. It was anti-Sephardic and anti-Polish Jews. (There were far more Polish Jews than Sephardim in western Europe at the time.) It was worse for someone from that community to marry a Sephardic Jew or a Polish Jew than a goy. So my grandparents Leon and Ella got married by themselves, with just the rabbi. No family would come, because she was Polish. My grandfather was put in cherem. He was an outcast. A pariah. They didnt talk to him for years.

Mr. Geller doesnt know why his grandmother moved to France, but he does know that it was a wise move. All of her family in Poland died in Auschwitz, he said.

World War II started, and my grandfather, Leon, was in the French army, Mr. Geller said. He was taken to a labor camp in Germany for French soldiers in 1942, Mr. Geller said. His captors didnt know he was Jewish. My grandmother, and my uncle and my aunt, who were much older than my mother, hid in a house in the mountains in the south of France. When the war was over, Leon Dreyfuss made his way back to France, and somehow he and Ella and the children found each other.

Despite the drama, trauma, and tragedy of their lives, the family flourished. My grandfather was an accountant, a CPA, but he worked mainly managing a foundation called Pica. The foundations full name was the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association, and it was the foundation of the Baron Rothschild, in France, that managed all the philanthropy that the Rothschilds did in Israel since the 19th century.

They did a lot of work on the infrastructure in Israel, in agriculture, in academia, in so many areas. Famously, and perhaps not coincidentally, the Rothschilds planted vineyards and established the winery called Carmel. Both Pica and Carmel still flourish today.

Given his job, it perhaps is not surprising that Leon Dreyfuss went to Israel often, even before the war. Hed travel there by boat, his grandson said.

He ran Pica until the late 1970s or the early 1980s, Mr. Geller said.

Mr. Gellers paternal grandparents, Hermann and Arlette Geller are in Lausanne, circa 1975.

Mr. Gellers fathers family had been in Strasbourg for generations. His great-grandfather invested money, particularly but not only in real estate. He did well. During the war, my great-grandfather sold many of his assets for jewelry, Mr. Geller said. Jewelry is portable in a way that buildings and land are not. That allowed him to preserve most of his wealth.

My mother owns a diamond bracelet that is one of the items that my great-grandfather bought, he added. Has he ever seen that bracelet? Yes. Once. At my sisters wedding. The rest of the time, it stays in a vault.

Mr. Gellers parents, Anne-Marie and Bernard, met in college, at a Jewish students event in 1974. She lived in Geneva, and he lived in Lausanne, 50 miles away. Both are fluent in German Hebrew, but their native tongue, like their childrens, is French.

Bernard Geller was a lawyer. He had a successful career from the 1970s until he retired on January 1, 2012, Mr. Geller said. My mother was a part-time teacher, who spent her entire career working at the Jewish school in Lausanne. She also translates books, mainly but not entirely from Hebrew to French. Her most successful project a highly successful project was the first translation into French of Maimonides Guide of the Perplexed, her proud son said.

January 1, 2012, was a day of transition for the whole Geller family. On that day, the day Bernard Geller retired, he and Anne-Marie made aliyah. Theyve lived in Jerusalem for the last nine years, and my father decided to become a lawyer also in Israel, Mr. Geller said. Its a very different legal system, so he had to start from scratch. He did. He passed the bar. Hes a licensed lawyer in Israel. Now he works pro bono, providing legal advice to new immigrants.

The whole family eventually made aliyah, but not all at once. Hermann and Arlette, Bernards parents, went first.

Then Gabriels oldest sibling, his sister Esther, was sent to Israel when she was 15. She didnt want to be there, but she was a troublemaker as a teenager, and they sent her away.

It wasnt a good idea, and it didnt work out. She came back when she was 16. But then, at 24, she made aliyah on her own terms, and she lives in Israel today.

My brother, David, is six years older than I am, and when he was 15, he moved to Israel by himself, although our grandparents did live there too. He went to boarding school, so during the week he lived at school and on weekends he was with our grandparents.

I wanted to do the same thing, and my brother encouraged me to do it when I was 14, instead of waiting until I was 15, the way he did. Thats so he could start high school with everyone else, instead of trying to break into established cliques a year later.

Mr. Gellers paternal grandparents, Hermann and Arlette Geller around 1960 in the Swiss Alps.

And my parents agreed. So when I was 14, I moved to Israel.

Mr. Geller and his wife, Yael, have a 3 1/2-year-old, a son named Shmaya. How would he feel if his son moved across the world in about 10 years, following his Zionist passion? Mr. Geller hesitated. I dont know, he said. I dont know how I would feel if it came from a good place. But I dont think that my wife would like it

After he graduated from high school, Mr. Geller went straight to college. Because he was not yet an Israeli citizen that didnt happen until 12 years later he did not go into the IDF. I studied business administration and marketing, and then I changed schools and studied and graduated in political science and international relations from the Open University of Israel, he said. Its a public university that works with students who want to work instead of being full-time students; even before covid many of its classes were online rather than in-person.

Because of the way the school operated, I had a lot of free time, Mr. Geller said. Hes entrepreneurial; when he was in high school, back home in Switzerland on summer break, hed worked for a Swiss wine importer. That importer gave him a job when he was in college.

The importer was Jewish, but most of the wines he sold were not kosher. But he sold a few kosher Israeli wines, originally as a service to the local Jewish community, and then he realized that the vast majority of sales were not to Jews. People were interested in it because the wines were of good quality, reasonably priced, and interesting.

Thats when I became interested in wine, Mr. Geller said. I went from just liking wine to growing my nose his ability to taste and assess and my understanding of wine.

So they hired me to find Israeli wineries that would like to export wine to Switzerland. I went to all the wineries in Israel, all the professional tastings and trade conferences.

Thats how I grew a lot of network connections in the Israeli and kosher wine industry. I was paid very well to do that work, and I really enjoyed it, and I learned.

After he finished college, Mr. Geller spent a year in the United States, working in the Peninsula Hotel, a high-end hotel in Beverly Hills, learning about the hospitality industry. It was very fancy, and had nothing to do with wine, he said. I did press relations there. But I wanted to go back to Israel.

Soon, he did go back; he and a friend opened a wine store in Jerusalem. It was called the Wine Mill, because of the windmill in Rehavia, the stores neighborhood, he said. The store lasted for only a few years his business partner got married and lost focus but through his range of experiences, topped off by his time retailing wine, a bottle at a time, Mr. Geller realized that hed found his professional home. It was in the wine world.

Hlne & Lon Dreyfuss, Mr. Gellers maternal grandparents, are in Lausanne around 1990.

He returned to consulting. He also joined an online English-language forum about kosher and Israeli wine run by Daniel Rogov, who was basically the Robert Parker of the Israeli and kosher wine world, Mr. Geller said. Mr. Rogov, who had written for Haaretz, died in 2011, and the forum he had slowly died too. But that started him thinking about the power of online groups. (And speaking of Robert Parker, the famous wine critic and reviewer began to include Israeli wine and rate it highly in his Wine Advocate in the mid 2000s. Since then, other popular wine reviewers also include Israeli wines in their lists.)

The turning point was about seven years ago, when I opened a Facebook group about kosher wines called Kosher Wine Sharing and Experiences, Mr. Geller continued. The goal was to discuss kosher wines, provide opinions, and share information with a like-minded group. It was for centralized crowd-sharing information.

The group grew very quickly. In a year, we were up to a couple of thousand members. I had two groups one in English, and one in French and together we had 11,000 members. It became the largest online forum about kosher wine.

In 2015, I noticed a girl on the Facebook group, Mr. Geller continued. We started communicating via private messages. We went through many conversations, and then I told her, If youre really serious, lets meet up.

She was based in New York, and I lived in Israel, and I wanted to do this seriously and with a long-term vision. So I managed to get myself a wine consulting gig for an Israeli winery in New York for a few months.

I moved here in 2015.

Wed never met in person, so I asked her out on a date and we met for real. Yes, readers, of course the girl in New York was Yael. We went to a restaurant in Queens, and it clicked. Maybe six, seven weeks later we got engaged, and three months later we got married.

So we met through wine.

Yael has a masters degree in public health and has worked for medical practices at Mount Sinai and for the American Association for Tourettes Syndrome. Since she had Shmaya and of course since the pandemic shes worked from home, as a freelance wine writer and social media manager.

Gabriel had come to the United States working for a winery, but Royal Wine, which was the importer for the winery, said, Why are you working just for that winery, when you could work for all of them? So they made me an offer. That was more than five years ago. Since then, Ive worked for Royal Wine, and we live in Teaneck.

Arlette and Hermann Geller are in Netanya in 2000.

Hes enthusiastic about Royal Wine and hes always promoted Israeli wine, first to the Jewish world, and now to the world at large, he said. Israel is an emerging wine country, with interesting wines.

Israel also is a small country that nonetheless seems to include an almost ludicrous number of microclimates, kinds of soil and amounts of sunlight, and wind and rain and snow and blistering sun. That means that all kinds of grapes can be grown and wines can be created there. At least until recently and perhaps still today, Israeli wine-drinkers have to grapple with the incorrect assumption that its countrys wine is the sickly sweet rot-gut that might be found on Skid Row. It also has to deal with all kinds of notions of how wine is made kosher no, its not boiled until its flavor vanishes and it becomes hot grape juice.

So theres a lot going on there, both good and bad.

Mr. Geller knows all about that.

My goal is to promote wine as a culture, as it is understood in France, Spain, Italy, and many other countries around the world. Its not just something that you drink at a party, but something that is part of culture and history.

The goal is to democratize wine, as a cultural beverage. Not to drink it to get drunk although you can get drunk but because it is a complex beverage the represents the culture and history of wherever it comes from.

Israeli wine has a rich, multicultural history. The ancient roots of Israeli wine go back thousands of years, and I think that every wine shares a little bit of that culture and history.

Daniel Rogov used to say that when you open a bottle of wine, you open 5,000 years of culture and history.

Wine should not be just a luxury. It is something that you can integrate as part of your daily diet. If you believe that drinking wine in moderation is good for you some studies say that it is, others do not then you can do that. There are a lot of good wines, including Israeli and kosher wines, that you can drink every day, and other wines that are more expensive, for special occasions.

It really is a drink like no other.

Arlette and Hermann Geller are in Jerusalem in 1995.

That true thing said, it also is true that its unlikely that the wine that biblical characters drank would be either recognizable or palatable to us, he said. It probably had little in common with the wine we have today. The way they it was made then doesnt sound particularly appealing.

Mr. Geller explained how kosher wine is made. From the moment the grape is crushed until it is wine, it can be touched only by Sabbath-observing Jews, he said. If it then is made mevushal if it is flash heated and pasteurized anyone can touch it. Mevushal wines used to taste terrible, but with modern techniques that has completed changed, Mr. Geller said. The vast majority of those wines are very good. And no one could tell that they are flash pasteurized just by tasting it.

Mr. Geller gave a quick history of Israeli wine. It started taking off in the early 1980s, he said. There were a few wineries, like Carmel, established in the 19th century, but for the most part until the late 70s they made sacramental kiddush wine. It was sweet and syrupy, like Manischewitz and Kedem. At the end of the 70s, Carmel made the first dry cabernet sauvignon, aged in barrels, following modern wine-making protocol, and it was very successful.

At the same time, they were not very successful in following through and keeping the momentum going. Just a few years later, in 1983, the Golan Heights winery was founded, with equipment and knowledge and winemakers from the University of California at Davis. They started winning awards right away.

This is how modern Israeli winemaking started. There were many wineries started in the following years. There was a big boom in the early 2000s, and now there are more than 300 wineries in Israel.

About 100 of those wineries are kosher, and those 100 wineries make about 95 percent of all Israeli wine.

He talked about the countrys many microclimates. Theyre within a short drive of each other, he said, and offer winemakers the opportunities to experiment with exactly what grape grows best exactly where, and which style to produce. They have had a lot of success already, and theyve made a huge amount of progress in a short time. Its still a very young industry, and there still is a lot of room for improvement, but there is a lot of good stuff already.

Israel is known for its science and technology, and the wine industry uses it. Thats a big part of Israeli winemaking, Mr. Geller said. Some of it is in the service of religious observance. There are interventions that have to be made to the wine during the wine-making process, and sometimes it would have to be done on Shabbat, but thats not possible. So now winemakers have been able to use technology to make it automatic, and to schedule operations that can be done by robots, so there is no need for human intervention on Shabbat and holidays.

Kosher winemaking has taken off around the world, at least to some extent the result of the growing sophistication of kosher-keeping wine drinkers. There are now almost 4,000 different kosher wines made every year.

Kosher wine consumers have become used to the fact that kosher wine can be very high quality, and there is demand for it from every well-known region not only Israel, of course, but also from France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Germany; from California; from New Zealand and Australia; from Argentina, Portugal, and Chile; from South Africa.

Gabriel Geller perches on a carton of wine at Royal Wines warehouse in Bayonne. (Shira Hershowitz)

Why is Bartenura kosher, and why is there so very much of it? Because Bartenura, which is made in Italy, started as an inexpensive kosher wine, Mr. Geller said. It became extremely popular; of the approximately 700,000 cases it sells each year, most go to people who do not keep kosher but like the wine for its taste, its price, and its availability.

One the other hand, some of the greatest wineries, in France, Italy, California, and Argentina, among other places, produce kosher versions of their wine, he added; those wines include Chteaux Giscours, Pontet-Canet, Malartic-Lagravire, Padis, Marciano Estate, Riglos, Tassi, and Flechas de Los Andes.

How does that work? The idea for it usually comes from Jewish wine makers, who say Lets make kosher wine together. We will bring the logistics, and we will make it happen.

Those logistics include people they must be shomer-Shabbat Jews, remember and the supplies they need. It is very labor intensive, and very expensive, Mr. Geller said. Its very complicated but they have been doing it for 30 years now, and theyre doing great.

Overwhelmingly, the kosher wines taste like their non-kosher counterparts. In the vast majority of the time, it is very similar, Mr. Geller said. Someone who is not trained could not tell the difference.

I can tell differences, but they are very subtle. Sometimes it seems like the kosher wine is better; more often it seems like the non-kosher wine might be a little bit superior, but in a very subtle way, that no one without training could notice at all.

One of the many changes this pandemic year has forced is the migration online of what until now have been densely packed in-person meetings, conferences, and celebrations. That includes Royal Wines Kosher Food and Wine Experience, which has offered food, wine, and community for 15 years. We decided to do a virtual event instead, Mr. Geller said. People had the opportunity to order tastings of 25 different wines small samples, 100 milliliters each, which is two or three small pours of the greatest kosher wines from all over the world. Most of the stuff is high end. The package which is sold out was sent to buyers homes.

And there will be a live show broadcast, with a lot of surprises, as well as videos about the wines and cooking demos with famous chefs. Tickets are free. Information and free tickets are online at thekfwe.com.

The show is on Sunday, February 21, and begins at 5:30 p.m.

I hope we wont have to do it like this again next year, Mr. Geller said. But were trying to make up for the lack of an in-person show this year.

And of course, whether or not youve bought the official testing set, viewers are invited to open a bottle of wine, relax, and watch the show.

What: Royal Wines Kosher Food and Wine Virtual Experience

When: Sunday, February 21 at 5:30 pm

Information and free tickets: Online atthekfwe.com

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A wine-lovers life - The Jewish Standard

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2021

The late Rabbi Abel Respes, the subject of a Black History Month webinar this week, always knew his family was different.

Born in 1919 to a poor Black family in North Philadelphia, he grew up with a vague understanding of his religious background. His mother told him that their Bible was written in a different language, and his grandmother observed Jewish customs and told him that their people worshipped in secret in the past.

I remembered my father, who read the Bible but never went to church, telling me when I was 13 and should have been bar mitzvahed Were different from other Negroes. We are Jews, he told The New York Times in 1978.

He dropped out of high school at 16 and worked odd jobs to help support his family. At 28, a series of mystical experiences, including dreams, motivated him to research his Jewish roots. His son, Rabbi Gamliel Respes, said he fasted for seven days and seven nights and began teaching himself Hebrew, reading texts like the chumash and the tanakh.

Researching his Spanish last name led him to the stories of the Marranos, or Jews who practiced in secret during the Spanish Inquisition. His studies indicated he was descended from Marranos, also known as crypto-Jews, who fled persecution and may have resettled in North and West Africa.

Respes dedicated himself to intensive study, became a rabbi and founded Adat Beyt Moshe, a largely African American congregation that began in North Philadelphia and later moved to Elwood, New Jersey.

He felt that if this was a possibility for his family as a person of color in the United States, then maybe there were other families who sort of lost their way and were crypto-Jews because of circumstances such as the slave trade, Rabbi Gamliel Respes said.

Adat Beyt Moshe congregants included a combination of crypto-Jewish families, converts to Judaism and other Jewish people of color. It operated communally, with families pooling resources to buy land and build homes and a synagogue.

Despite the fact that a panel of rabbis found Respes knowledge of Judaism to be superior to that of graduates of Yeshiva University, he and his community often faced scrutiny from white Ashkenazi rabbinic authorities who required them to prove their Jewishness, Rabbi Gamliel Respes said. During an attempt to immigrate to Israel, Abel Respes, who died in 1986, underwent a formal conversion because he could not produce proof of his heritage.

He also worked to educate the broader Jewish community about Jews of color and their history, advocating for Jews to focus on their identity as an indigenous people from the Middle East as the Torah described them, not divided along contemporary American racial categories.

My dad was on the radio explaining this, which resonated with some people of color and they came to learn more. So the fact that my father was educating them and letting them know that there were Jews who were exiled not just in Europe but in Africa led them to come and learn from him, Rabbi Gamliel Respes said.

He thinks the most significant part of his fathers legacy was the reach of his community and education work. His cousins have traveled across the country and encountered people along the way who recognize Rabbi Abel Respes name because he touched their lives in some way.

His granddaughter, Yasminah Respes, said her grandfathers dedication to finding acceptance in the Jewish community helped inspire her to become a Jewish educator and make an Orthodox conversion in Israel.

I wish more people knew just how wise he was, she said. I mean, the fact that he could teach himself Hebrew is an amazing accomplishment, especially before the internet. And the fact that he was able to influence so many members of his own family and extended community members, thats a big deal.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphias Jewish Community Relations Council will hold a webinar discussion with Yasminah Respes, Rabbi Gamliel Respes and historian Craig Stutman about Rabbi Abel Respes life in partnership with the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, ADLs Black-Jewish Alliance and the Jewish Community Relations Council of Southern New Jersey on Feb. 23 in honor of Black History Month.

Viewers can register for the 7 p.m. Zoom event atbit.ly/2LoI2Jp.

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Rabbi Abel Respes Spent Lifetime Urging Jews of Color to Discover Their Roots - Jewish Exponent

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