Be'chol Lashon Update March 2007
UPCOMING EVENTS
COMMUNITY EVENTS
CURRENT NEWS
IDENTITY
COMMUNITIES AROUND THE WORLD
ARTS + CULTURE
UPCOMING EVENTS
San Francisco Bay Area
11th Annual Freedom Seder
March 27, 6:30pm
JCC in San Francisco, CA
11th Annual Freedom Seder
March 27, 6:30pm
JCC in San Francisco, CA
Celebrate at the Be'chol Lashon table! Come represent Be'chol Lashon and educate the Jewish community about about the ethnic and racial diversity of the Jewish people. Participants are encouraged to contribute reflections about their personal experiences.
Led by Rabbi Yoel Kahn, Director, Taube Center for Jewish Life, JCCSF with particpation from Bay are faith and ethnic communities.
$20 in advance for full kosher meal. Half price for children under 12. RSVP to Esther Fishman, Esther@JewishResearch.org
JIMENA's Mimouna Celebration
April 11, 7-9pm
Kehilla Jewish High School: 3900 Fabian Way in Palo Alto, CA
Be'chol Lashon, JIMENA and other Bay Area partners co-present, Mimouna.
The word Mimouna in Hebrew is linked to "emuna", faith. In Arabic, it means good fortune. This joyuous holiday celebration, is rich in Jewish Moroccan symbolism and customs.
Dessert, live music and dancing, featuring the Yuval Ron Ensemble.
$15 Adults, $10 Young Adults, $5 Children. For Tickets call JIMENA at (415) 977-7407
Migvanim: Celebrating the Spectrum of the Jewish People
A Training Series on Diversity in Jewish Education
April 18, 6pm
Temple Sinai: 2808 Summit Street in Oakland, CA
Exploring Gender: Roles, Idenity and Gender Expression What does gender mean? How is gender idenitity formed? How does the Jewish community with its traditional gender roles create space for children to be who they are. All Jewish teachers and professionals are invited.
Dinner and workshop are free.
Please RSVP to Brunetta@oaklandsinai.org
Mazel Tov to Rabbi Baruch Yehudah and Nesicha, who were blessed last month with a healthy baby boy named Achil-Kichaiyah Yehudah. Achil was 7 pounds 6 ounces and 21 inches of joy.
How to Build a Tabernacle
Dvar Torah by Rabbi Capers Shmuel Funnye
This week's parshah, Terumah, which means; uplifting or that which is lifted up, gives a description of the building of the Mishkan (dwelling) or Mikdash (sanctuary) or simply Tabernacle, in the wilderness of the children of Israel. Was Hashem homeless or did the Israelites need a physical place to assist in their idea of a place to meet Hashem? What do the people with willing hearts lift up? I understand that the text is not only speaking about the fifteen different articles that the children of Israel offered for the building of the Mishkan, the Ark and all the Vessels pertaining to it. I believe that through our prayers that we lift up our articles of faith, when we turn to Hashem with our whole being.
I believe that uplifting must come primarily from our hearts. The Torah portion goes to great length to describe what the Israelites were to bring for the construction of the Mikdash, the tabernacle. The gifts that the people brought for the construction were to be the best that the children of Israel had to offer, because only the best could go into this edifice dedicated to Hashem. Today, although we do have the Mikdash or the great Knesset Ha-gadol, we do have our modern day Knesset- katan, in the presence of our synagogues, temples and shuls. What is it that we are to bring to our buildings today as Israelites/Jews? How can we bring pure gold, silver and copper? Is it possible for us today to bring pure olive oil, and if we could bring the pure olive oil, would the vessels that we burn the oil in be worthy of Hashem? What about the aromatic incense that the priest burned in the Tabernacle, can we reproduce those beautiful scents of days gone by. I think not. What then you might posit, is the meaning of this portion to us today, living in the twenty-first century?
One rabbi has said that the Gold is the Soul, the Silver the Body and the Copper the Voice. I believe that what we read about the Mishkan and what went into the construction of the same can be applied to our lives today. In other words, are we bringing Hashem our best as individual Jews? Do we bring to our Shabbat services the gold of our souls, the silver of our bodies and the copper of our voices? Do we worship Hashem truly with all of heart, soul and our strength? Do we make certain that the copper that we bring is of the purest form, of our minds, which we express through the words of our lips? Moreover, what are we burning, or better yet, do we burn, with the fire of love of Torah, devotion to Hashem and true sincerity in the worship of the Mighty One of Israel? Might I suggest that we must also bring a true love for our fellow Jew, as well as an open heart and open arms to those who are seeking a greater understanding of Judaism. Is the Shabbat real to us or is it merely something that we participate in because, that is what Jews are supposed to do?
Hashem gave every Jew all of the material that we could ever need for the construction of that great inner Sanctuary that dwells in the Heart, Soul, Body and Mind of every Jew. All that left for us to do then, is to put these articles of faith together and make Terumah that is an Uplifting of our Beings to Hashem. Then and only then will the vessels of our bodies be fit for Hashem to dwell in us.
Indian Jewish Congregation of USA Launches It's First Newsletter
For updates from Romiel Daniel, President of the Indian Jewish Congregation of USA, upcoming events in New York, news, and recipes, sign up for the newsletter.
Read it here [PDF]
President's Message
The Indian Jewish Congregation of USA is embarking on something new, the starting of a newsletter in the month of Shevat, the eleventh month of the civil year on the Hebrew calendar and the fifth month of the ecclesiastical year. It is a winter month of 30 days. It was on the first of Shevat of the year 2488 from creation, Moses convened the Jewish people and began the 37 day "review of the Torah" contained in the Book of Deuteronomy (Devarim), which he concluded on the day of his passing on Adar 7 of that year.
The later sages have, therefore, said that the first of Shevat is comparable to the day of the giving of the Torah. On that day they began to receive the Book of Deuteronomy from G-d, through Moses. These 37 days are especially suited for renewed inspiration in the study of Torah and the doing of Mitzvot. Tu B'Shevat, the 15th day of the Jewish month of Shevat, is a holiday also known as the New Year for Trees. This year it will be on February 3rd. Judaism has several different "new years." Tu B'Shevat is the New Year for the purpose of calculating the age of trees for tithing. Lev19:23-25 states that fruit from trees may not be eaten during the first three years. The fourth years' fruit is for G-d, and after that, you can eat the fruit. Tu B'Shevat is not mentioned in the Torah. Only in the Mishnah is it mentioned as a dispute between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai where Rabbi Hillel said the proper date for the holiday was the 15th of Shevat whereas Rabbi Shammai said it should be the First of Shevat. We follow Rabbi Hillel.
There are a few customs or observances related to this day. One custom is to eat a new fruit on this day. Some people plant trees on this day.
In India, the tradition was for every Bene Israel household to perform the Eliyahoo Hannabi ceremony. For those who wanted to have a community Eliyahoo Hannabi, a special trip was made to Khandala, near Alibag in the Konkan district to perform the Eliyahoo Hannabi ceremony at the rock where supposedly the track marks of Eliyahoo Hannabi's chariot can be seen. This was the time when he ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire. This day was thus called the Eliyahoo Hannabi cha Oorus. Some synagogues had a communal Eliyahoo Hannabi.
There is a story in the Talmud of and old person, Honi, who was observed planting a carob tree. When asked if he really expected to live long enough to consume the fruits of his labor, he replied: "I was born into a world flourishing with ready pleasures. My ancestors planted for me, and now I plant for my children..."
CURRENT NEWS
Yemen Government Relocates 45 Jews due to Religious Persecution
By Yoav Stern, February 27, 2007, Haaretz.com
 Forty-five Jews in Yemen were transported on Sunday to the state capital of Sanaa after they were harassed by neighbors in their native town of Saada. The families traveled on a special flight arranged by the President of Yemen, Ali Abudullah Saleh.
The families were resettled in government apartments within walking distance from one other. The security situation in Sanaa is calmer than in Saada, where the Jews were under constant threat from radical elements.
In a telephone conversation with friends in Israel, some of the Yemenite Jews said that they receive a stipend from the government. They also said they have no interest in immigrating to Israel at the present time, and that they hope their situation will improve now that they have been settled in Sanaa.
There are several hundred Jews left in Yemen. Many of those living in Saada have received death threats in recent months from neighboring supporters of the deceased Shi'ite-Zeidi opposition leader, cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Houti. However, some of the Jews say that their persecutors were affiliated with al-Qaida, a Sunni organization.
Clashes between government forces and al-Houti's supporters have escalated over the last few days.
Iranian Jew Elected Beverly Hills Mayor
By Tom Tugend, March 13, 2007, Jerusalem Post
 After a cliffhanger vote count, Jimmy Jamshid Delshad will claim two titles at his March 27 inauguration - mayor of Beverly Hills and top Iranian-born public official in the United States.
The milestone is being celebrated not only by Delshad's compatriots in the golden ghetto of Beverly Hills, but also by the extended Iranian-Jewish community of 30,000 in the Los Angeles area.
On March 10, the day after the results became clear, Delshad marked his victory by attending services at three synagogues to thank congregants for their support.The first stop was Sinai Temple, where he cut his political teeth as president of the prestigious Conservative and traditionally Ashkenazi congregation from 1999 to 2001.
Although the election in the independent municipality was held March 6, the results weren't clear until three days later following a partial count of absentee and provisional ballots. Final figures are not expected to be certified until March 16.
Beverly Hills is governed by a five-person City Council that annually rotates the job of mayor among its members in order of seniority. Delshad, 66, was initially elected as a city councilman in 2003. This year he served as vice mayor. In this election, voters had to choose from among six candidates - half of them Iranian Jews - to fill two council seats. Delshad was assured of the mayor's post if he placed first or second.
When polls closed March 6 he was in second place, ahead of incumbent Mayor Steve Webb by a mere seven votes out of some 10,000 cast. With 892 absentee and provisional ballots still uncounted, the outcome remained uncertain. But by Friday evening, with two-thirds of the absentee votes counted, Delshad had widened his margin over Webb to 86 votes. At that point Webb conceded.
"I feel blessed to have been chosen by the people of Beverly Hills," Delshad told JTA in a phone interview. "As a Jewish youngster in Iran, I was a second-class citizen and kept running into closed doors. Through my example, I hope to open doors in America for other people like me."
The English-language Tehran Times, published in the Iranian capital, reported the election as a straight news story. Delshad said he had received congratulatory e-mails from some Muslims in Iran, especially from former neighbors in his native city of Shiraz.
Beverly Hills, known for its luxurious homes and celebrity residents, was an early destination for wealthy Iranian emigres after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Some 8,000 residents of Iranian birth or descent, primarily Jewish, now live there among a population of 35,000, according to Delshad.
However, global and Middle Eastern issues played no part in the election campaign, with Delshad and other candidates running on such local preoccupations as traffic tie-ups, water conservation and bringing advanced computer technology to city government. Like previous immigrant groups, the Iranian newcomers were met with some suspicion and incomprehension after their arrival, and not all frictions have been resolved.
Veteran residents frequently complain about Iranians who buy large, handsome homes only to tear them down and replace them with huge "Persian palaces" to accommodate their extended families. Another flash point came during the election when ballot forms for the first time were printed in Farsi, in addition to English and Spanish. The city clerk's office was deluged with complaints, with one resident sneering that the new ballot "looks like a menu from a Persian restaurant with an English translation."
In both the housing and ballot controversies, Delshad played his characteristic role as mediator, trying to explain the viewpoints of the Anglo and Iranian communities to each other. Delshad has come by his American success story the old-fashioned way - by initiative, enterprise and hard work.
One of three brothers, Delshad left Iran as a 16-year-old in 1956, more than two decades before the shah's downfall. He lived in Israel for 18 months, returned to Iran, then departed his native land for good in 1959 to settle in the United States. After working for some time in a small Minnesota town "where there were hardly any Jewish girls to date," he and his brothers bought a car and drove west, with no final destination in mind.
The trip ended with Delshad's enrollment at a Los Angeles-area college, where he earned an electrical engineering degree. To put themselves through college, the brothers formed The Delshad Trio, with Jimmy playing the santur, a dulcimer-like Persian stringed instrument.
The trio played at bar mitzvahs and weddings, performing "Israeli music with a Persian touch," said Delshad, who still plays for recreation. After graduating, Delshad joined a fledgling computer firm. Then he formed his own company specializing in computer hardware for backup systems. He sold the company when he was elected president of Sinai Temple in 1999.
When his civic duties allow, Delshad does consulting work for high-tech firms and has established an import company for food packaging materials. Delshad and his wife, who was born in Kfar Vitkin while her American parents were staying in Israel, have a son and daughter, both graduates of Jewish day schools and now in college. "Being Jewish is part and parcel of my life," he said.
Ladino Class at Penn Tries to Resuscitate Dormant Language
By Rachel Silverman, February 1, 2007, Jewish Exponent
It sounds like Spanish at first, but listen harder. The six students in Daisy Braverman's class are speaking a mostly dormant language — Ladino.
Invented by Jews in Spain, the idiom — also known as Judeo-Spanish — infused Hebrew elements into Castilian Spanish. Like Yiddish, Ladino provided Jews a vocabulary for daily usage outside of Hebrew, which was reserved for the synagogue. And, also like Yiddish, Ladino was originally written in the Hebrew alphabet.
After Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, Ladino continued to evolve, soaking up linguistic influences from the countries — Greece, Turkey and other Mediterranean nations — where Sephardim settled.
At its height, Ladino could be heard throughout the Sephardic world. Today, however, the chatter is much quieter. In fact, Braverman's class — held on Wednesday afternoons at the University of Pennsylvania — offers a rare opportunity to hear Ladino in the flesh.
For Braverman, who grew up speaking Ladino in Turkey, and who also knows English, Turkish, Spanish, French, Italian and some German — the class is part of a lifelong quest to preserve the tongue. Among other things, Braverman, a New York City resident, has helped translate plays into Ladino, sung with a Judeo-Spanish music troupe and taught the language at Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese synagogue in New York.
Now a visiting professor at Penn, Braverman says her main goal is to enable students to converse in Judeo-Spanish. But she's not deluding herself; she readily admits that Ladino's prognosis is poor. "I think that the only way the language can live as, you know, a true language, is if one teaches it to one's children — and that's really not happening," said Braverman, who has not taught her own son the language. "I regretfully have to concede that if it's not being used as a maternal language, then it has no chance of surviving."
She said that its demise, in part, remains a casualty of the Holocaust, as the Nazis decimated large communities of Sephardim in Greece and Rhodes. But it's also a product of assimilation, she said. When Spanish Jews first settled in the Ottoman Empire, they tended to settle in enclaves, according to Braverman. In this way, they maintained separate institutions and preserved traditions. "And that was the way the language survived," she said.
With the dissolution of the empire and birth of individual nation states like Bulgaria and Romania, however, Jews began to assimilate; they moved into new neighborhoods, and started learning the language of their host countries, explained the professor. Now, Braverman said that Ladino lives only among a minority of elderly Sephardic Jews, and in small pockets in Israel and Turkey.
College senior Eitan Danon's family is one of those vestiges. His grandmother and father are native Ladino speakers. In fact, Danon said that he's spent three years petitioning Penn to host a Ladino scholar. "I'm very glad my hard work has paid off," said the student. "It's fun to be taking a class for credit about my ancestors."
Kirchner Promotes Chavez Meeting
By Staff Writer, February 22, 2007, JTA
Argentina's president said he wants to mend relations between Venezuela's president and its Jewish community. During a visit to Venezuela, Nestor Kirchner met Tuesday with Confederation of Israeli Venezuelan Association and World Jewish Congress leaders at the Puerto Ordaz presidential residency.
Kirchner's desire "to facilitate a future meeting with Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan Jews was very much appreciated by the community," WJC representative Claudio Epelman told JTA. Kirchner recently told the DAIA Argentine Jewish umbrella group that he had appointed personnel to encourage Chavez to foster a more positive relationship with the 15,000-strong local Jewish community.
The community sees Chavez as promoting anti-Semitic attitudes, a view enforced by the president's close relationship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who openly denies the Holocaust and has called for Israel's destructions. Iranian officials are also wanted in the 1994 terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.
French Jews Flock to Area
By Alfonso Chardy, March 11, 2007, MiamiHerald.com
 Rod Kukurudz decided to uproot his family from a comfortable life in France to Surfside when his then 16-year-old daughter, Audrey, came home one night in 2005 — upset and fearful. "Dad," she told him, "now even if it's hot I have to wear a scarf to hide my Star of David," while riding the Paris Metro.
French Jews living in South Florida told The Miami Herald that hostility from Islamic militants in France after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States spurred them to leave. Departures surged after last year's abduction and death of Ilan Halimi in France. The 23-year-old Halimi, a French Jew of Moroccan parents, was kidnapped Jan. 21, 2006, by a gang of youths calling themselves the ``Barbarians.''
"The atmosphere created by that episode, plus other incidents and the general hostility of Muslims in France toward Jews, is what's behind my decision to leave," said Kukurudz, who now lives with his wife and their three daughters, including Audrey, in Surfside.
Vanessa Elmaleh is among a growing number of South Florida immigration attorneys helping French Jews secure U.S. visas — but not necessarily asylum. "Asking for asylum can be risky," said Elmaleh, a French Jew herself. "If they deny your petition, they can deport you."
Immigration court figures show a slight uptick in the number of asylum applications from French nationals starting in 2003 — but those figures do not specify whether applicants were French Jews. South Florida immigration attorneys say the majority of French Jews are arriving on immigrant, investor and business visas.
Kukurudz, for example, obtained an investor visa with Elmaleh's help and now runs Citizen Events, organizing events for companies and organizations. Pascal Cohen left his family behind in France and arrived in Aventura a few weeks ago on a business visa to open a South Florida subsidiary of a high-end chocolate brand called Cote de France. His wife and two young daughters plan to leave France and join him later this year.
There are no official U.S. government figures on the number of French Jews here, but officials in U.S. Jewish organizations said it could be anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 in South Florida — mostly Miami-Dade. "I would say they're in the thousands now," said Mendy Levy, a rabbi at The Shul synagogue in Surfside.
"There is no question of an increase in the number of French Jews in South Florida, and there's an expectation that that rate of increase will accelerate," said Jacob Solomon, executive vice president of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation. 'French Jews see the handwriting on the wall and say, 'We're not going to wait until it's too late.' "None of the French Jews interviewed was attacked in France, but all expressed fears the Halimi incident was a preview of more militant violence to come.
The latest State Department human rights report, issued last week, cited more anti-Semitic incidents in France during the first nine months of 2006 than during the same period in 2005 — but fewer than in the first nine months of 2004. French officials have condemned attacks on members of the Jewish community. "France is not an anti-Semitic country," Philippe Vinogradoff, France's consul general in Miami, told The Miami Herald on Thursday. "France is doing a lot of efforts in its jurisdiction, in its education system, to eradicate definitively any trace of anti-Semitism."
France's Jewish population has been variously estimated at between 500,000 and 700,000 and its Muslim population at five million to six million. But French Jews here say the community has been depleted by frequent departures, the majority to Israel. Jewish Agency figures show that almost 14,000 French Jews have resettled in Israel since 2001.
Vinogradoff said 12,000 French nationals are registered with his consulate, which covers Florida, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and some Caribbean countries. Vinogradoff said it's impossible to tell how many are French Jews because the consulate is prohibited by French law from asking about religion or national origin. He noted that while the French expatriate community here has been growing steadily, there has been no sharp hike in numbers in the past five years. But Elmaleh, who specializes in French Jewish immigration, said figures are much higher than those officially acknowledged — with perhaps more than 50,000 French Jews moving or actively planning to move to Israel and more than 10,000 in South Florida.
Portions of some neighborhoods in north Miami-Dade have turned into pockets of French Jewish culture — particularly in Surfside, Bal Harbour and Aventura where synagogues have seen significant additions of French Jews to congregations and new businesses cater to an expanding French-speaking clientele. "I have seen an increase in my practice relating to wealthy French nationals who are also Jewish, exploring options to use the United States as a safe haven, anticipating problems relating to their Jewish heritage," Linda Osberg-Braun said. Other immigration attorneys like Roger Bernstein and David Berger also said they see more French Jewish clients.
In their hearts, many of the French Jews arriving in South Florida feel they are refugees, and there's a movement to press the U.S. government for such status. A group has posted a petition on the Internet — www.petitiononline.com/ID22206/petition.html — urging the U.S. Congress to approve a refugee program for French Jews.
Both Cohen and Kukurudz miss life in France, but they have no regrets about leaving. They did it for their children. "So they can have a future," Cohen said.
IDENTITY
Gali Girls Line of Dolls Celebrates Jewish History, Values
By Sally Kalson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
 Taking its cue from the wildly successful American Girl dolls and novels, a small company in New Jersey has been carving out its own niche — character dolls representing Jewish girls from different countries and centuries.
Gali Girls began in 2004 as one woman's quest to supplant the provocative messages of Barbies and Bratz with contemporary dolls that elevate traditional Jewish values such as modesty, kindness, charity and respect. "I'd noticed the growing popularity of dolls that equated femininity with girls taking their clothes off," said Gali Girls founder Aliza Stein of Teaneck, N.J. "I thought, 'How much better if we had a doll that represented something positive.' I have a Jewish background, so I relied on that to develop the idea."
One year after launching the product, she decided to add a line of historical dolls. "Jewish history is very rich," she said. "There's so much that can create a connection between contemporary girls and their heritage, so many stories and eras from which to choose. So this was the next logical step.
"Certainly we noted that it was a successful concept for American Girl, and we figured the formula could succeed for us." There are three historical dolls so far. Each comes with period clothing and a novella about the character's life and adventures. The books are well written by Robin K. Levinson, an author and journalist who did all the research and used the stories to reveal little-known chapters of the Jewish Diaspora. The books are nicely illustrated by Drusilla Kehl.
The characters are Reyna Li, who lives in the Chinese Israelite community of Kaifeng in 1175; Shoshana Levy, whose family is forced to leave Brazil and winds up in 1662 Nieuw Amsterdam, where she becomes part of the first Jewish community in North America and makes friends with a Lenape Indian girl; and Miriam Bloom, who flees the Russian pogroms in 1914 and lands at Ellis Island.
Now, in addition to the historical and modern dolls offered with brown, blond or red hair, Gali Girls has added a dark-skinned model to represent girls of Sephardic descent. These are the Jews whose Spanish and Portuguese ancestors were expelled from Spain in the late 1400s. They subsequently settled throughout the Turkish empire, Balkans, North Africa, Italy, Middle East and beyond.
Each doll comes with matching Star of David bracelets for girl and doll and a wooden toy Sabbath kit with candlesticks, bread and wine. The price tag for the historical package is $90; contemporary dolls are $65. Ms. Stein said the company has sold about 2,000 dolls, mostly through its Web site, www.galigirls.com. The dolls also are used as fund-raisers for Jewish organizations.
Other characters are in the works. Ms. Stein said she hopes to add girls from Spain during the Inquisition, Israel during the War of Independence, and Ethiopia during the Israeli airlift. The dolls are similar to the American Girl line — 18 inches high with a soft body — and each one comes with an English and a Hebrew name. The customer base, Ms. Stein said, includes a mix of orthodox, conservative and reform families. "The dolls are Jewish but nondenominational," she said. "They represent girls across the Jewish spectrum."
As for the company's name, Ms. Stein said she wanted something in Hebrew. "Gali means wavy, which is not related per se, but we thought it was catchy."
Journey From a Chinese Orphanage to a Jewish Rite of Passage
By Andy Newman, March 8, 2007, NYTimes.com
 Of the 613 laws in the Torah, the one that appears most often is the directive to welcome strangers. The girl once known as Fu Qian has been thinking about that a lot lately. Three weeks ago, she stood at the altar of her synagogue on the Upper West Side and gave a speech about it.
Fu Qian, renamed Cecelia Nealon-Shapiro at 3 months, was one of the first Chinese children — most of them girls — taken in by American families after China opened its doors to international adoption in the early 1990s. Now, at 13, she is one of the first to complete the rite of passage into Jewish womanhood known as bat mitzvah.
She will not be the last. Across the country, many Jewish girls like her will be studying their Torah portions, struggling to master the plaintive singsong of Hebrew liturgy and trying to decide whether to wear Ann Taylor or a traditional Chinese outfit to the after-party.
There are plenty of American Jews, of course, who do not "look Jewish." And grappling with identity is something all adopted children do, not just Chinese Jews. But seldom is the juxtaposition of homeland and new home, of faith and background, so stark. And nothing brings out the contrasts like a bat mitzvah, as formal a declaration of identity as any 13-year-old can be called upon to make. The contradictions show up in ways both playful — yin-and-yang yarmulkes, kiddush cups disguised as papier-mâché dragons, kosher lo mein and veal ribs at the buffet — and profound.
Yet for Cece, as everyone calls Cecelia, and for many of the girls like her, the odd thing about the whole experience is that it's not much odder than it is for any 13-year-old. "I knew that when I came to this age I was going to have to do it, so it was sort of natural," she said a few days before the ceremony at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, a Reform synagogue on West 83rd Street where she has been a familiar face since her days in the Little Twos program. Besides, she said with a shrug, "Most of my Chinese friends are Jewish."
As Zoe Kress, an adoptee in Mt. Laurel, N.J., said about her approaching bat mitzvah: "Being Chinese and Jewish is normal for me. Thinking about being Chinese and Jewish is a little strange."
Olivia Rauss, a girl in Massachusetts who celebrated her bat mitzvah last fall on a day when the Jewish harvest festival of Sukkot coincided with the Chinese autumn moon festival, said she saw no tension between the two facets of her identity either."Judaism is a religion, Chinese is my heritage and somewhat my culture, and I'm looking at them in a different way," she said. "I don't feel like they conflict with each other at all."
While no statistics are kept on the number of Chinese children adopted by Jewish families, over all, there were about 1,300 Chinese children adopted into American families from 1991 to 1994, another 17,000 in the second half of the '90s, and 44,000 since then, according to the State Department.
Cece was born on Jan. 29, 1994, in Jiangxi Province in southeastern China. She was abandoned to an orphanage because of China's one-child rule, and adopted by a lesbian couple, Mary Nealon and Vivian Shapiro. (The couple later adopted another Chinese girl, Gabie, now 5.) Cece has been drawing double-takes for a while, like when she used to ride on Ms. Shapiro's lap on a packed crosstown bus and would burst into the Passover standard "Dayenu."
Ms. Shapiro, an advertising buyer, was brought up by atheistic Jews; Ms. Nealon, a school nurse, was raised a Roman Catholic. But after they met, they were drawn to Judaism and decided to give Cece a relatively traditional upbringing. "That was my hope when I started her in day school," Ms. Nealon said, "that when she got up on the bimah" — the lectern where the bat mitzvah girl reads from the Torah — "she would feel like she had the right to be there."
The countdown to the big day was the typical blur of lessons and studying, sit-downs with cantors and tutors, caterers and party planners. There was a thick dossier of Jewish history to master — history that Cece confessed did not feel like hers. "I just really try to learn it," she said. "I don't try to think of whose history it is."
And, of course, there was shopping to be done. "In my fantasy," Ms. Nealon said, "we'd take her to Chinatown and have this incredibly beautiful Westernized Chinese dress made." But Ms. Shapiro said: "She wanted no part of it. For her, this has nothing to do with being Chinese."
Cece set her cantor's reading of her Torah portion to "repeat" on her iPod. She met with the head rabbi at Rodeph Sholom, Robert N. Levine, an affable, animated man with an office full of books and baseball memorabilia. "So, Cece," Rabbi Levine said, "what do you connect to most about your Judaism?" Cece had transformed into the archetypal opaque teenager. "I think I like the holidays, and, um, yeah," she said, looking down.
The rabbi asked her to recite for him. She did. "I love it," Rabbi Levine said. "You have a beautiful voice. Your Hebrew is perfect. The only thing I need you to do, Cece, is project. Just give me a ‘Baruch' like you're singing in the shower."
"Baruch," Cece said, a bit louder.
On Feb. 17, nearly 200 of Cece's friends and relatives filed into the vast Romanesque sanctuary of Rodeph Sholom. A box of commemorative yarmulkes with the yin-and-yang pattern sat by the door. Six alumnae of Cece's orphanage — they call themselves the Fu sisters — had flown in from all over the country.
To the side of the altar, on a red throne, sat Cece, resplendent in a long black patterned dress with a scoop neck. Ms. Shapiro laid a prayer shawl over Cece's shoulders, a symbolic transfer of power. Cece and the other bat mitzvah girl that day, Sadie Friedman, lifted their voices and let loose a Hebrew welcome song that Cece had sung with the synagogue choir from the time she was 7.
Rabbi Levine preached from the day's reading: " ‘Let the stranger in your midst be to you as the native, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.' " Cece and Sadie approached the ark, the enclosure, flanked with marble columns and topped by carved lions, where the Torah scrolls are kept. The cantor, Rebecca Garfein, handed them the oversize scrolls, dressed in maroon and gold fabric. The girls held them like bagpipes.
Cece laid her scroll on the bimah and read in Hebrew, in a loud, clear voice, from Chapter 21 of Exodus, a compendium of commandments on the treatment of servants and slaves. Then she moved to her English speech. "This long journey to becoming a bat mitzvah today has provided me with so many ways of learning," she said. "The part that will always stay closest to me is the importance of caring for strangers. Just like Jews were once strangers in the land of Egypt, we have all been, or will be strangers at some point in our lives." Cece finished, touched the fringe of her shawl to the Torah and kissed it. She returned to her throne and sat down, cheeks red, looking exhausted and relieved.
That night — the eve of the Chinese year of the pig, as fate would have it — Cece and her guests reconvened at the Faculty House at Columbia University. The outer room was set up like a casino, with Cece-backed playing cards and Cece-faced play money. Inside, the music throbbed, the D.J. yelled, the fog machine billowed. Cece and her friends traded their shoes for white socks and pogoed across the floor.
After dinner — kosher Chinese for the kids, steak for the adults — the D.J. cranked up "Hava Nagila." Cece, in a chair in the middle of the dance floor, was lifted up, up, up until she bumped her head on the Chinese umbrellas hanging off the chandelier. Then she was back on the floor, dancing with her mothers and little sister and singing along with the recording: "Hava neranena, venis'mecha," or: Let us sing and be glad.
For Kids of Intermarriage, Choices Are Complex
By Sue Fishkoff, March 8, 2007, JTA
 Robin Margolis was in her 30s when she found out her late mother was Jewish. It was 1984 and she was cleaning out her mother's closet when she found a bag of old documents. The woman she knew as Marie Margolis was born Marie Levine.
The revelation, though sudden, was somehow comforting. "I'd been drifting toward Judaism for years," Margolis says. "I had Jewish friends, dated Jewish men, even thought about conversion. When I found out I already belonged, it felt natural."
Today Margolis belongs to a Jewish Renewal congregation in the Washington area and advises synagogues on how to reach out to the adult children of intermarried parents. But she also runs The Half-Jewish Network, [www.half-jewish.net] an online support group for anyone with a Jewish parent, whether they identify as Jewish, Christian or something else. "I don't push anything," she says. "All I can do is offer them warmth and welcome."
Margolis' story, though extreme, illustrates the emotional complexity of growing up with parents from different religious backgrounds. Even those raised unequivocally as Jews have an entire side of their family that is not Jewish.
And while in past generations they may have been cut off from that other half, in today's more tolerant world it's likely they share holiday traditions, family lore and ethnic cuisine with their non-Jewish relatives.
Margolis, 56, is from a generation in which interfaith marriage was rare and the Jewish side often got lost. She says today's young adults from intermarried homes, who have grown up in an era of outreach and welcome, don't understand what she and her peers went through. "These Gen-Xers were raised as Jews in the '80s," she says. "They look down at us older ones who weren't raised Jewish, who identify as ‘half.' But as they get older they'll learn there's another side of themselves that needs to be cherished and respected. And it won't make them any less Jewish."
Joelle Berman, a 23-year-old Bostonian with a Sicilian Catholic mother and Jewish father, says she grew up with Jewish religion and Italian culture. Berman says she has "a strong sense" of her Italian background, but considers herself Jewish and even works as a Jewish professional.
Even conversion doesn't erase family ties. "Of course I'm Jewish, I made a legal conversion, but that doesn't undo that other part of my life," says Laurel Snyder, 33, of Atlanta, editor of "Half Life," a collection of essays by writers from intermarried homes. "There's a big difference between walking away from Jesus and walking away from your grandmother."
Snyder says the "half-Jewish" moniker used by Margolis and some other activists "is a tricky word," but it expresses the duality many people feel. "Of course halachically there's no such thing," Snyder says, "but that doesn't matter."
Jewish outreach to intermarried families, no matter the denomination, is predicated on the hope that the children will be raised as Jews. Experts stress the importance of giving such children a good Jewish education, as research shows that this makes them much likelier to become committed Jewish adults. But it's no guarantee. Children ultimately choose their own path, despite their parents' carefully laid plans. Siblings from one family, raised the same way by intermarried parents, sometimes make different religious choices.
Margolis' three younger brothers are all "sincere, committed Christians" following the Protestant faith in which they were raised. One is even a minister. None chose her Jewish path. Margolis suggests a "family Jew" resides in every intermarried family, one child who is innately drawn to the Jewish side.
Researcher Pearl Beck, who conducted a 2005 study for the Jewish Outreach Institute [www.joi.org/flame] of young adults from intermarried homes, says she came across anecdotal evidence of siblings making different religious choices but doesn't know how widespread it is. Siblings that Beck interviewed for her study attributed their different choices to "different personality characteristics," she adds.
Jill and Tom Docking of Wichita, Kan., raised their children, Brian and Margery, as Jews, sending them to Hebrew school and Jewish summer camp. "I had a much more dominant relationship with my religion," says Jill, noting she was the only one of her 24 Jewish cousins to "marry out."
Tom, the son of the former Gov. Robert Docking, was less tied to his Christianity, though the family always puts up a Christmas tree. When Brian became a bar mitzvah, the Dockings pulled 8-year-old Margery out of Hebrew school after what Jill calls an unfortunate encounter with a visiting rabbi who spoke sharply about the dangers of intermarriage. "Tom said, ‘If this is what they're getting at temple, I don't want them there,' " Jill recalls.
Brian had never cared for religious school, but when Margery was 13, she asked to go back. Tom agreed willingly, and Margery had to work on her Hebrew with a private tutor. A year and a half later, she celebrated her bat mitzvah at Masada in Israel.
Today Margery identifies as Jewish. Brian, 27, is more equivocal. "If people ask, I say I was raised Jewish and I leave it at that," he says. But Brian says he has a "Jewish sense of humor" and is culturally Jewish. "I love matzah ball soup," he says.
For many children of intermarried parents, choosing a religion can smack of favoring one parent over the other, with attendant feelings of guilt, anger and abandonment. That's particularly true, and hurtful, when parents divorce. "Religion becomes a battleground at a time when everything else is a battleground, and the kid has to pay," says Snyder, who says she has met hundreds of adult children of intermarriage in her professional career. "The Jewish parent going through a breakup becomes much more emphatic that their child should be raised Jewish," she says. If the kids are lucky, circumstances help make that choice for them.
Marty Wasserman converted to Judaism after her divorce two decades ago in Santa Fe, N.M., and began raising her two children, Max and Meredith Murray, as Jews. Max, now 26, dropped out of Hebrew school after a year, saying he didn't bond with the other kids. He ended up spending most of his teenage years with his Catholic father. He attended a Catholic high school, chose Catholic University and today considers himself Catholic. Meredith, now 24, stayed with her mother and flourished in Hebrew school, where she made her closest friends. She celebrated her bat mitzvah in Israel.
Like her brother, Meredith went to Catholic high school, but unlike Max she always felt Jewish. She stood back when the other students took Communion or intoned Christian prayers, even when it embarrassed her to be singled out.
Meredith, like her mother, identifies today as Jewish. "Honestly, it's a Mom-Dad thing," Max says. "I had more allegiance to Dad's side of the family. And I think it was also a young adolescent boy not wanting to do what his mother wanted."
But there was also something inside each sibling that resonated to a different spiritual message. "I'd go to synagogue with Mom and try to be respectful, but I didn't feel this is who I am," Max explains. "In Catholic Mass, I felt I can associate with this better."
Some intermarried couples are unable to choose between their religions, particularly when both spouses observe their own traditions. In many homes the mother's religion wins, as more often the woman sets a family's religious tone. Some couples choose a third option, raising the children Unitarian or Quaker. Some split the difference.
Samantha Facciolo, 23, was raised Jewish by her Jewish mother, while her younger brother was raised Catholic by their father. The parents made that decision as each child was born. All four lived together, celebrating each other's holidays at family get-togethers, but splitting up for religious practice. "It was pretty clear-cut," Facciolo says. "I went to synagogue with Mom, he went to church with Dad. He was baptized and had First Communion. I had a baby naming and bat mitzvah." The siblings retained the identities their parents gave them: Facciolo was active in her college Hillel and is now a Legacy Heritage Fellow with the Israel on Campus Coalition in Washington. "I don't question the choices they made," she says.
COMMUNITES AROUND THE WORLD
Mazel Tov: Mass Jewish Wedding in Havana
By Anthony Boadle, January 22, 2007, Reuters
 Salomon Mitrani sat through his wedding ceremony. After all, at 84 years old he finds it hard to stand. By Cuban law, he has been married to his wife, Pilar, for 55 years, and they have eight grandchildren. But, in a ceremony last week, he was finally getting married under a Chuppah canopy according to Jewish custom.
It was no ordinary ceremony. Twenty other couples of all ages took their marriage vows in a ritual officiated by three visiting Argentine rabbis. The grooms smashed their wine glasses underfoot as a cantor sang age-old blessings in Hebrew.
It was the largest wedding members of Cuba's depleted Jewish community can remember and a sign of a revival of Judaism in a country where there has been no resident rabbi since an exodus of Jews fleeing President Fidel Castro's communist government in the early 1960s. "I've always felt Jewish. I went to fight for Israel's independence in 1948," said Mitrani, a painter and sculptor whose parents, Sephardic Jews, immigrated to Cuba in 1913 from Turkey.
The mass nuptials at the restored conservative Beth Shalom synagogue, the largest of three in Havana, were preceded by 70 conversions, including whole families, dozens of young Cubans, and Mitrani's wife Pilar, 75. "I wanted to have a Jewish family like my forefathers. The family is vital to maintain our customs and perpetuate the values of the Torah," said Alberto Behar, a computer analyst like his wife Caridad Morales, who converted for the wedding.
Cuba has a mix of Sephardic Jews, who came mainly from Turkey and the Balkans before World War One, and Ashkenazic Jews who escaped turmoil in Eastern Europe, mostly Poland and Russia. As many as 25,000 refugees from Nazi persecution arrived from Austria, Germany, France and Belgium in the 1930s en route to the United States. Refused entry due to US immigration quotas, they landed in what became known as "Hotel Cuba."
EXODUS
When Castro took power in 1959, there was a flourishing and prosperous Jewish community of 15,000 in Cuba. Within a few years, as the new government nationalized businesses and steered Cuba toward communism, 90 percent of them left for southern Florida, Mexico, Venezuela and Israel.
Cuba became an
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