I want to share with you a story related to the festival of Hanukkah. As a child, my mother didn't teach me anything about the holiiday, its history or the custom of lighting candles each night as part of the celebration. You see, originally, Donato Manduzio,...
Since I was a young girl my mother and grandfather constantly reminded me of my Jewish identity. They told me that one day we would be able to return to the Land of Israel, the land G-d gave to us. However, I had little knowledge...
From Jin Jin to Yecholiya, has been a long and arduous process. It is something that I, as well as all Kaifeng Jews, have been dreaming of. When I was a little girl my father told me that I am a Jew, and that one...
When I came to Israel in 2006, with the help of Shavei Israel, and went through the conversion program at Bat Ayin, it was the first time I was touched by Judaism. When I was a kid, growing up in Kaifeng, my father and grandmother...
I cannot say how old I was when I noticed that I was different from all the other children about me. In my home, as in all the Xueta homes, it was forbidden to speak about it, hushed not to mention it. Anyway, I recall a quaver of mystery, something shameful and hidden that popped up here and there during conversations: Silences, movements, cut-off words, a tension unknown in our otherwise apparently happy lives.
My father, a merchant, curious and optimistic, dragged along his entire life some indefinite fear. Of course, I could not discern it until in his old age he uncovered weaknesses that I hadn’t known of before. Today I am sure that his identity as a Xueta and his mother’s absence (she died when he was a child), were the two singular causes that cast a pall upon his life.
Nissan Ben Avraham is the name of a Rabbi who was born in Palma, where he was baptized as is the custom in every good “Apostolic and Roman Catholic” home, and given the name Nicolas Aguilo. He came on Aliya 26 years ago because “if after 600 years I could not overcome the stigma of my being a Jew, why shouldn’t I be a Jew?”
Yesterday, after an absence of 12 years , Nissan Ben Avraham came face to face with his city of birth to relate his personal story: From Palma to Israel, at a one-day seminar organized by Shavei Israel on the components of the Chueta’s identity and their historical link with the Jewish people.
“I was about ten years old when the children at school cursed me for being a Xueta. I then discovered that to be a Xueta was something awful even though I did not succeed in understanding why. I did not know if the meaning of that word was being a Jew or not. I did not understand the meaning of the Anous nor did I absorb the reaction of others to this phenomenon,” he explained.
[caption id="attachment_759" align="alignright" width="205"] Avner Diniz at the Western Wall[/caption] Avner Diniz is sitting in his living room in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya, reflecting on the unusual path that took him from just a few faint hints of a Jewish past growing up in...
No longer hidden – Polish-born Daniela Malec reclaims her Jewish roots in Israel
Daniela Malec didn’t find out she was a Jew until she was a teenager. Her experience is not atypical for the “Hidden” Jews of Poland, whose parents or grandparents survived the Holocaust – and then sought to pass themselves off as Catholics to escape further persecution.
“I thought everyone in Poland was Catholic,” the now 32-year-old Daniela says. “When I first found out I was Jewish, it was a shock. But I also found the news very exciting. I felt like I had a very rich sea to swim in and I wanted to find out more.”
That “more” has led to a remarkable journey for Daniela – from a pre-teen in Poland with no Jewish knowledge and little way to research it (“we didn’t have Google back then”), to a leadership role in the Jewish community of Krakow, to her eventual immigration to Israel, where she now lives in Tel Aviv working as a consultant for an international organization, as a Polish translator, and as a Jewish genealogical consultant.
Daniela’s family grew up in Belarus and were fortunate to escape the war in the far eastern part of Russia, safe from the Nazis. When they returned, they chose to settle in Warsaw. Daniela’s mother married a Catholic man and set up a home that was essentially “not religious,” Daniela explains. “I knew we were different but I didn’t know how.”
When Yaakov Wang joined friends for dinner growing up in Kaifeng, China, he was the only one who did not order pork - a big deal in a country where that particular non-kosher dish is a cultural and culinary norm. But for Wang, a member of Kaifeng's small Jewish community, it was one of the only ways he knew to express his Jewish heritage.
Jews have lived in Kaifeng, once one of the capitals of Imperial China, for over a thousand years, arriving originally as merchants from Persia or Iraq plying their trade along the fabled Silk Route. The community numbered as many as 5,000 at its peak in the Middle Ages, but has since dwindled to just several hundred descendants. The last synagogue closed 150 years ago.
Today, the Jews of Kaifeng know relatively little about their heritage – but they continue to nourish the dream of returning to the land of their ancestors and immigrating to Israel. Wang was one of the lucky ones. With the help of Shavei Israel, he has been studying in Hebrew, along with six other young men from Kaifeng, at Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu in Israel's Jordan Valley.
