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ISO local New York PBS documentary on Latinos who converted to Judaism after they found out that they were descended from conversos.

xetere — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:16:10 -0800

ISO local New York PBS documentary on Latinos who converted to Judaism after they found out that they were descended from conversos. We have a diversity celebration in our office and it is time for the Jews!

I remember watching a documentary on PBS in the 90s. It was about Hispanics in New York who researched their roots, found out that they were descended from Marranos.

I distinctly remember this Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx (who looked and sounded like the "stereotypical Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx") who couldn't figure out why his mother lit a candle and put a towel over her head every Friday. He decided to researched his roots and found out that his parents on both sides were descended from Marranos who had emigrated to Ponce, PR. He converted - right down to beard, payot, and kippah.

I would love to show this during our corporate celebration.

I know it was 1 1/2 hours and I think it was a local WNET production.
Google brings up a documentary by WGBH in Boston about Jews in Latin America, which is interesting but not what I saw. Other than that, nothing.

Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Where is God?

andoatnp — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:55:52 -0800

Other than Rambam's "Mishnah Torah: Sefer Madah," what other famous book or work begins with the Tetragrammaton? In "hilchot yesode hatorah," the first four words of the chapter begin with the letters yud hay vav hay. Our teacher said there is some other famous book/chapter/text that uses words with the same four letters? Anyone know what it is? Thanks!

What is the best, most flexible way to organize recordings of Jewish liturgy?

likedoomsday — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 13:06:41 -0800

How can my synagogue organize a large and developing library of liturgical recordings? I'm interested in (inexpensive or free) specialized software or in suggestions on how to use more commonplace software for this purpose. SynagogueFilter: My shul is working on digitizing thousands of audio tapes' worth of cantorial recordings of the Torah, Haftarah, prayers, and other readings. We are also re-recording many of these. How can we best organize them?
My initial thought was to use a folder structure like this (we use the triennial system): Category > Book > Parsha > Triennial part > Aliyah (where, for example, we might have Torah > Devarim > V'zot Habracha > Triennial year 3 > Third aliyah). However, it occurs to me that it might be useful to navigate in other ways, such as by filtering down to a particular year of the triennial cycle earlier in the process, or by viewing all of the Devarim recordings at once.

Is there any good way to do this? Is there software that's intended for something like this? Is there a creative way to use iTunes or some similar software for this? Or should we pick a folder structure and live with its limitations?

Thanks!

Converting to Judaism, but secular / atheist?

Meatbomb — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:39:10 -0800

Converting to Judaism, but secular / atheist? This idea has been growing in my brain for quite some years now, but in recent months it has started to push itself forward quite insistently. I feel absolutely ripped off that I was not born a Jew, and I want to be one.

The catch is I am strongly atheist, and have no plans to change that. But there are a lot of Jews who don't believe, right?

Would it be possible to find a Rabbi that would let me into the tribe? I've read most of the top Internet resources on the subject, but it seems like even for Reform Judaism I'd have to believe in God to get started, and Humanistic Judaism seems pretty fringe, and I don't think it would qualify me for the right to aliya if I wanted to do that at some point in the future.

I am sorry because I know this sounds like I am just riffing and goofing off here but I am serious. Any ideas or advice?

Movies with Mysterious Jews?

Plutor — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:25:39 -0800

My wife (raised Catholic) and I (raised Jewish) were watching The Exorcist the other day, and she turned to me and asked me if there was any movie where Jews were depicted as secretive, mysterious, and spooky. The best I could do was Lenny Meyer and his fellow Hasids in Pi. I'm sure there are some low-budget anti-Semitic movies based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but that's not really what I'm looking for here.

Where to spend Rosh Hashanah in London?

Patrick Graham — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 13:58:39 -0800

A young professional Jewish woman of my acquaintance is moving to London for about a year and would love to find some community that might be welcoming to a stranger for the holidays. Suggestions as to places to meet (reform preferred) Jews, websites, etc. would be welcome.

What are some examples of Jewish tough guys?

lunchbox — Fri, 04 May 2007 17:32:53 -0800

What are some examples of famous Jewish tough guys who have addressed their Jewish identity in an interesting way? I'm deciding on a topic for a research project in a class on Jewish culture, and one topic I'm considering is the Jewish "alpha male" -- for example, Howard Stern, Andrew Dice Clay, Lenny Bruce, Bill Goldberg, Adam Sandler, Lewis Black, David Lee Roth, Gene Simmons, or Jon Stewart. Historically, being Jewish has not been stereotypically associated with being macho or cool, so it would be interesting to examine how these guys publicly addressed their Jewishness. For example, Goldberg and Adam Sandler made it a proud part of their identities, Howard Stern uses it in a more self-deprecating way, and Andrew Dice Clay changed his old Jewish name and, to my knowledge, doesn't really talk much about being Jewish.

Who are some other Jewish celebrities similar to those I mentioned, who are/were popular in youth culture? Any links or references to where specifically they addressed being Jewish, either explicitly or implicitly, would be much appreciated. Portrayals of "tough guy" Jewish characters in movies/TV, such as John Goodman's character in The Big Lebowski, would also be interesting.

How can my Jewish girlfriend and I find a family to have a Passover Seder with in Bordeaux, France?

jordanian2 — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 11:09:58 -0800

How can my Jewish girlfriend and I find a family to have a Passover Seder with in Bordeaux, France? My girlfriend and I are studying in France for a semester, and we will be in Bordeaux on April 2nd, the first day of Passover. She wants to see if we can join a Jewish family for Seder that evening. It's really important to her. The problem is, we don't know a single soul in Bordeaux, and the temples in Bordeaux are charging more than our backpackers' wallets can afford for a Seder ceremony.

How can we find a Jewish family for this year's Passover in Bordeaux? Bonus points if you can tell us how to find a Jewish reform family!

French movie about WWII

Johnny Assay — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 07:00:35 -0800

When I was in college, I watched a French movie for one of my classes. The premise, as I remember it, was that a French Jew is separated from his wife and child during World War II. He starts paying a old farming couple to hide him, giving them some of the gold and valuables he is carrying. Eventually, the old couple decide that hiding him is rather lucrative, and manage to fool him into remaining in hiding after the war is over so that they can squeeze him dry. I don't remember too much else about the movie, and for all I know I'm misremembering the details of the plot I mentioned above. I also don't have much of an idea of the date of the movie, other than the fact that it was in colour, and the fact that I saw it in 2000. Does this ring any bells out there in MeFiLand?

Looking for Jewish villages in Eurasia

Dee Xtrovert — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 03:33:01 -0800

Is there anything remotely like a shtetl still in existence in Eastern Europe? Or perhaps I should say "a predominately Jewish village," since shtetl evokes a time passed as much as it evokes anything. I know that (at least in popular imagination) shtetls were located mostly in what would now be Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine and that even by the horrific standards of the Holocaust, the Jewish population was really eliminated in these places. But it occurred to me that beyond the far eastern reaches of Germany's WW2 expansion there may still be some small villages where the bulk of the people are Jewish folks who managed to survive genocide at the hand of the Nazis, Communist "pogroms," the deliberate starvation of Ukraine, mass emigrations to Israel and so on. I'd imagine that if there were such a place it would be fairly deep in the former USSR; no such places seem to exist in other countries with pre-war Jewish populations such as Romania and Hungary.

Another way of asking this question: is there a spot in Europe, no matter how small, where Yiddish is still the primary language of daily life?

What Jewish group am I thinking of?

tabulem — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 09:24:28 -0800

What is the name of the Jewish group with origins somewhere in Persia or the vicinity who were forced to convert to Islam but continued practicing Judaism in secret? To avoid intermarrying with actual Muslims, they insisted on marrying only within their own community. So they could maintain the appearance of being Muslims, whilst preserving their Jewish lineage. With the formation of Israel, many emigrated to Israel and the United States. Remarkably, many still refuse to intermarry even with other Jews, the habit of marrying only within their own community having become so ingrained. As a result, they typically suffer from genetic disorders at a higher rate than Jews in general.

These are the facts as far as I remember them... I'd like to find the name of this group and any more information about them.

What do Jews think of converts?

Anonymous — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 07:35:10 -0800

What do Jews think of converts? I'm not asking about the conversion process; that has already been discussed on ask mefi. Rather I am curious about the attitudes Jews have towards converts.

I became interested in Judaism via my Jewish girlfriend and I have been quite engrossed in it for a couple of years now. I have not converted though and I have serious qualms about it.

I think my biggest problem is that it feels kind of phony. I certainly wish I was a Jew, I feel like I share core Jewish values, I enjoy doing mitzvot, I go to shul and keep kosher/shabbat (to a reasonable extent) and I even took college-level Hebrew for a year. Yet I still feel like I'm not a Jew, and I think even if I did convert I would still feel uncomfortable saying "I'm Jewish" or "I'm a Jew". I can't help feeling that I'm just putting on a really good act of being a Jew.

I get a variety of different reactions from my Jewish and non-Jewish friends. But I'm wondering what people really think, not what they're willing to say to my face. I suspect most secular Jews think I'm kind of ridiculous for living a Jewish life when I'm not even Jewish. The reason it matters is that one of the biggest parts of being Jewish is the sense of peoplehood, of being a member of "the tribe". But being in a tribe kind of requires the other tribe members to perceive you as belonging to the tribe. So this is a question for all the Jews out there: what do Jews *really* think of converts?

What is this Swastika Pendant?

Smarson — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 15:25:10 -0800

I swear my friend isn't a Nazi, but what the heezy is this thing I found in his stuff? I recently got a bunch of stuff from a friend who is moving across the country. In a pocket of one of the shoulder bags he gave me was a pouch with an assortment of foreign coins. Mixed in with them was this coin/ pendant.

I have no idea what it is and my google-fu not only failed, but landed me in some pretty crazy nazi/ white supremacist web sites. I know my friend isn't Jewish and also 99.9% sure he's not down with the aryan nation. He did travel to Germany a year or so ago, so I'm guessing that's where he picked it up. I'd ask him, but he's out of touch until he gets settled in his new place and that's at least a week away. Plus, I don't really want to start off the conversation with "Hows the new apartment? By the way, are you a Nazi?"

So, any ideas about what this thing is???? Ever seen a Star of Daivd and a Swastika on the same symbol before?

Can anyone help me find a book including a letter to God written by a Holocaust victim?

piers — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 12:53:45 -0800

My apologies for this vague description--I used to work in a bookstore where I'd pick up and browse through a number of books. One book included a letter written to God by a Jewish man (maybe a rabbi?) imprisoned during the Holocaust. Part of the letter involved him saying, essentially, "no matter what you do to me, God, or what suffering you send, you can't make me stop loving you. That is the form my free will takes." Does anyone know the author or title?