Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on December 13, 2014

Argentina Immigrants Also Fuel Rising Numbers

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Tourists walk through the old Jewish quarter in the Spanish city of Toledo.

Published December 12, 2014.

Madrid (JTA) While setting up a synagogue at the American naval base where she volunteers, Ahuvah (Amanda) Gipson made something of a bitter-sweet discovery.

Rifling through a storage area at the sprawling American-Spanish military complex Naval Station Rota in 2012, Gipson, a former naval outreach professional who now teaches off base, found three dusty Torah scrolls and a dismantled 4-foot Hanukkah menorah.

The objects were all that remained from a community that American Jews serving at Rota established many years ago, but which fell apart after they shipped out.

Setting up a durable congregation on a military base is difficult because of frequent turnover, but nearly three years later, Gipsons 15-member Bet Januka community a name referencing the found menorah is still going strong, largely because many congregants now are local Jews.

Were small, but were here to stay, Gipson said. Its kind of like the bigger story, but on slightly smaller scale.

The bigger story is the rapid growth of Jewish life in Spain, once home to one of the worlds largest and most accomplished Jewish communities but which has had only a modest Jewish presence since the expulsion in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Link:

'Sephardic Vogue' Drives Revival of Spanish Jewry

Category: Sephardic
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