[caption id="attachment_8381" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Jose Manuel Camarero"][/caption] Jose Manuel Camarero has been fascinated by Judaism since he was a teenager. Ten years ago, he began to actively explore his Jewish roots. Today, the 65-year-old retired high school teacher from Granada, Spain, is creating beautiful Jewish art....
[caption id="attachment_7884" align="alignleft" width="257"] Jin Jin / Yecholiya[/caption] She started life with the name “Jin Jin.” Today she goes by “Yecholiya” – Hebrew for “G-d is able.” And that has certainly been the case for this brave young woman, one of just a few Chinese Jews...
Globetrotters– listen up. Shavei Israel founder Michael Freund will be in Hong Kong at the end of the month and will be speaking at the Hong Kong JCC about Shavei Israel’s activities around the world. If you’re a Hong Kong resident or will be traveling to...
[caption id="attachment_7715" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Isabel Fuentes"][/caption] Isabel Fuentes feels she is living between two worlds. On the one hand, she knows intuitively that her family has Jewish roots. But she has been unable to uncover concrete proof. Nevertheless, the 35-year-old journalist and resident of Granada, Spain,...
Avner Diniz se sienta en su living-comedor, en su casa en la ciudad costera de Netanya. Meditando sobre el inusual paso que lo llevó de tan sólo algunas señales de fe en un pasado judío, en su niñez dentro de una familia portuguesa de Mozambique, hacia una nueva vida como judío comprometido estudiando hebreo y judaísmo en Israel.
Su travesía comenzó cuando era un niño y jugaba a las canicas con los niños locales. “Recuerdo que le gané a un niño, y él se puso furioso. Me llamó “marrano”, recuerda Diniz. “No sabía qué era. Pero mi bisabuela vio todo desde la ventana. Me dijo, “la próxima vez que alguien te llame así, le das un puñetazo en la nariz. Es un gran insulto para nuestra gente”. 
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Haim Fernandes, 68, lives in the southern Spanish city of Dos Harmanas. Now retired, he is married and has three grown children who all live near him in Seville.
Fernandes is part of the Bnei Anousim (descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who were compelled to convert to Catholicism at the time of the Inquisition in the 14th and 15th centuries. Historians refer to them by the derogatory term Marranos).
He tells his story here. [caption id="attachment_7360" align="alignleft" width="116" caption="Rabbi Ellis"][/caption] The following article appeared on the Haaretz website. Articles were also published in Ynet and the European Jewish Press. See also our press release on Rabbi Ellis. There was a time when Eastern Europe's Jewish communities sent emissaries to serve...
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Antonio Piña, 59, lives in the town of Sóller on the island of Mallorca in Spain. Piña teaches cooking in a local technical school and is known throughout Mallorca as the leading expert on the island’s unique cuisine. He has written books on the subject and lectured widely about it as well.
Piña is married with three boys – Jordi, who works as an auditor; Samuel, who works in the Spanish environmental ministry; and Salvador, who builds dental prosthetics. His journey towards his Jewish roots began when he was just eight years old…
[caption id="attachment_7050" align="alignright" width="195" caption="Two Italian Marranos examine the ancient underground mikva"][/caption] Tucked away in the southeastern Sicilian city of Syracuse (or Siracusa in Italian), lies one of Europe’s least-known Jewish treasures. Down a charming, narrow street just a block or two away from the...
Fundamentally Freund: That dream of some 7,000 Bnei Menashe to come to Israel is now poised to become a reality.
Thousands of kilometers to the east, in the furthest reaches of northeastern India, a long-lost community continues to nourish its age-old dream of returning to its ancient homeland, the land of Israel.
The Bnei Menashe, or “sons of Manasseh,” are descendants of one of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, which were exiled by the Assyrian empire more than 27 centuries ago. The community, which numbers 7,232 people, resides primarily in the Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur, along the border with Burma and Bangladesh.
