Although we ran an item about crypto-Jews (also known as conversos) in New Mexico several months ago, we recently came across a fascinating one-hour documentary on the subject: A Long Journey: The Hidden Jews of the Southwest. Crypto-Jews are descendants of Jews living in Spain and Portugal from the 15th to 17th centuries, who…
Although today there reportedly are fewer than 50 Jews in Myanmar (formerly Burma), this tiny number was not always the case. Most of the Jewish community fled (many to India) in 1942 because of the Japanese invasion and oppression by the local Burmese government. Nevertheless, the history of the Jews of Myanmar is fascinating and…
Christmas 2020 has come and gone, but it once again raises a culinary conundrun. Yes, many American Jews really do eat Chinese food on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day — it’s not just some wacky urban myth. What explains the allure of egg drop soup and sesame chicken for people more used to fressing on…
The mass aliya of Ethiopian Jews to Israel is the stuff of legend — but it was fraught with vexing issues. Perhaps most notable: the question of whether the new immigrants truly were Jews. Since then, that question has largely been answered in the affirmative. (The Ethiopian Jews had to undergo pro forma “conversions” to…
Although Jews have lived on the island nation of Cuba for hundreds of years, their numbers today are greatly diminished largely due to emigration. In 2007, it was estimated there were approximately 1,500 Cuban Jews, the vast majority in Havana. Since then, hundreds of those have reportedly left for Israel. To learn more about this…
The terms Conversos, Crypto-Jews, and Marranos are names applied to Jews in the Iberian Peninsula who were caught up in the nightmare of the Spanish Inquisition of the 15th — 17th centuries. Many converted to Catholicism under the most severe duress. Because of ongoing persecution, some of those migrated first to Mexico and later to…
Yiddish was long thought to be a moribund language, expect among very old Jews and in ultra-Orthodox and Hassidic communities. Happily, the lingua franca spoken by 11 million Jews before World War II has been making a comeback — including in some unexpected quarters (see the links below). Quote: “When I teach Yiddish, the…
Before the Second World War, Yiddish was spoken by some 11 million Ashkenazi Jews, a majority of the world’s Jewish population. The Holocaust decimated Yiddish language, literature, and culture in Europe. After the war, assimilation in the West also took a toll, as did the establishment of Hebrew as the official language of the State…
The Israeli dramatic television series Shtisel focuses on the Shtisels, a family of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. The show — whose dialog is in a mixture of Hebrew and Yiddish — is distributed in the U.S. by Netflix (with English subtitles). During its two-season run so far, the series has won legions of ardent fans,…
Last month we featured an item about the restoration of a historic synagogue in Egypt, a project financed by that country’s government. This month, along the same lines, we bring the extraordinary story of two Egyptian women -– Magda Haroun, a Jew (pictured left) and Marwa Abu Dagga, a Muslin of Palestinian background -– who…
To learn about these and many more AmazingJews, watch a compilation put together by JewOfTheWeek.net in 2015 and posted on YouTube.