They have been Italian for generations but alongside Catholic roots, Jewish roots are being revealed, as well as a 500-year-old Torah scroll and a Shema Yisrael prayer found by chance in a basement. What makes hundreds of people dig into their lives? --------- The phenomenon of Anousim, Jews forced to...
[caption id="attachment_12255" align="alignleft" width="300"] Synagogue in Surabaya, Indonesia before it was destroyed[/caption] The surprising history of Jews in Indonesia returned to the news recently with the disclosure that the last remaining synagogue in the world’s largest Muslim country was destroyed in early 2013. According to a...
At the conclusion of the holiday of Sukkot, we have a fabulous tour of some of the most creative temporary "booths" built for the festival - direct from India. Check out these beautiful sukkot built by the Bnei Menashe in the villages of Matiyang, Tuibong,...
The rabbi didn’t know what to make of Genie Milgrom. She had placed on the table before him reams of documentation going back hundreds of years, all demonstrating what she hoped would be incontrovertible proof that her family’s ancestors in Spain were Bnei Anousim. There...
It is a heavenly irony that, no matter what the temperature on the days before Yom Kippur, when the actual Day of Atonement arrives, it will be unseasonably hot. It was that way this year in Israel and it was even more so in India,...
Jews have lived in the Silesia region of Poland for hundreds of years. In the mid 1700’s, a Jewish entrepreneur, Salomon Isaac, became one of the founders of the Upper Silesian mining and metallurgical industries. A synagogue in Tarnowskie Góry was established in 1864; it was burned to...
The Jewish community of Belmonte, Portugal, is ready for Sukkot as well. In the capable hands of Shavei Israel's emissary to the region, Rabbi Elisha Salas, a beautiful new sukka has been built, ready to hear the festival evening Kiddush on Wednesday night. Here are...
The Jewish holiday of Sukkot begins this Wednesday night and we have a few pictures to mark the festivities. For the past four years, the Jewish community of Katowice, Poland, has built a sukka (a temporary "hut" used during the week-long holiday) in the courtyard...
In an open air plaza, on the very spot where a synagogue once stood in the Polish town of Tarnowskie Góry, two proud Jewish women conducted a workshop on kosher food and Jewish cooking. The women are two of the three residents of Shavei Israel’s...
