Colombia’s Jewish community is hundreds of years old; mix of Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Ashkenazi communities.

Marrano Jews, secret Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism or be murdered by the Inquisition, were the first Jews to settle in Colombia. The Marranos fled Spain and Portugal in the 16th and 17th centuries. It is believed that some of them settled in Northern areas of Colombia, which at the time was known as New Granada.  Most of these earliest Jewish settlers assimilated into Colombian society.

Observant Jews from Jamaica and Curacao settled in Colombia in the 18th century.  These Jews were not interested in assimilation, and openly practiced their faith even though it was illegal.  Eventually Judaism was legalized and the Jews were allowed to openly practice Judaism and their life cycle events. The government even gave the Jewish community a plot of land to use as a cemetery.   Many of the Jews who arrived during the 18th and 19th centuries were very successful in business and achieved prominent positions in Colombian society, but they were forced to abandon or hide their Jewish identity.

In the early 20th century a large immigration of Sephardic Jews from Greece, Turkey, North Africa, and Syria settled in Colombia. After the Sephardic Jews, large numbers of Jews from Eastern Europe arrived and after the rise of Hitler in 1933, more than 7,000 Jews arrived from Germany.  The Jewish population of Colombia grew again in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Today, most of Colombia’s 3,000 Jews are concentrated in the big cities, with the largest population centered in Bogotá.  The size of the Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities is about equal and there are nine official synagogues throughout the country.

The unstable economy and rise of violence and kidnappings during the final decade of the 20th century compelled many Colombian Jews to immigrate to Miami and other locations in the United States.  Today, however, with a decline in violence, many of Colombia’s Jews are returning and other Jews from Venezuela are finding refuge in Colombia.

The cuisine of the Colombian Jews is a blend of traditional Jewish recipes and local Colombian ingredients.  Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and German identities are very strong in Colombia, and the Jewish culinary tradition is diverse.  Colombian cuisine is full flavored but mild, and not as spicy or complex as other Latin American Cuisines.  It is delicious, hearty cooking, strongly influenced by peasant traditions.

The following recipe is for Sancocho de Gallina, traditional Colombian Chicken Soup.  Colombia’s Jews make this soup often as it is easy to prepare, nutritious, and delicious.

Sancocho de Gallina (Colombian Chicken Soup)
Serves 6 – 8

1 whole chicken, about 3 pounds
3 ears fresh corn, shucked and cut into thirds
2 green plantains, peeled and cut in half and then into 2 inch pieces
½ cup diced red pepper
½ cup diced green pepper
1 large onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 quarts water
6 medium potatoes, halved
1 pound yucca, cut into big pieces (optional)
½ cup chopped cilantro
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1.Place the chicken, corn, plantains, peppers, onion, and garlic into a large soup pot.  Add the water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover, and allow to simmer for 45 minutes, skimming the surface from time to time to remove scum.
2.Add the potatoes and yucca and continue cooking for an additional 20 minutes or until the potatoes and yucca are tender.
3.Stir in the cilantro and season to taste with salt and pepper.
4.Serve the chicken and vegetables in large soup bowls and ladle the broth over.

RELATED:
The Jewish Palate: The Jews of Brazil
From Israel to Colombia with love

The Broome & Allen Scholarship is awarded to students of Sephardic origin or those working in Sephardic studies. Both graduate and undergraduate degree candidates as well as those doing research projects will be considered.

Application deadline is May 15, 2011.

Click here to download an application.

For more information email info@americansephardifederation.org or call Ellen Cohen at 212-294-8350 x4.

Families work with Nancy Hoffman (via e-mail), based in Guatemala, to custom design their visit to Guatemala. Families work with Rabbi Julie Greenberg to create a learning plan to prepare for the Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony. Your Birthland Bar Mitzvah experience is built around five days in Guatemala that include a mitzvah/service project, rehearsal, relaxation and exploration of beautiful Guatemala and a personally meaningful Bar/Bat Mitzvah weekend.

The “Los Angeles Sephardic Jewish Film Festival” was established in 1997 by the Sephardic Educational Center (SEC) to heighten the awareness and understanding of the rich historical and cultural diversity of the Sephardic Jewish People. The Cinema Sepharad Award is presented at the Festival to individuals for outstanding achievement in the entertainment industry and an affinity to the Sephardic community. Other awards are presented to individuals who have made significant contributions to preserving Sephardic Heritage.

The Sephardic Educational Center

The international Sephardic Educational and Cultural Center (SEC) was established to meet the educational, cultural and religious needs of sephardim throughout the diaspora. Embracing all Jews, the SEC’s goal is the return of our young people, through educational, cultural and social programs, to their spiritual roots, strengthening their Jewish identity and developing their leadership skills to support their local communities. With headquarters in the heart of Jerusalem, and chapters around the world, the sec spreads a message of unity, tolerance and tradition to the Jewish people.

Movie Schedule is as follows:

Sunday, Nov 14th – Opening Gala
“Coco”

Tuesday, Nov 16th
“The Fire Within”
“About Sugarcane and Homecoming”

Wednesday, Nov 17th
“Among the Righteous”
“The Pioneers”

Thursday, Nov 18th
“The Name my Mother Gave Me”
“I Want to Remember; He wants to Forget”

Sunday, Nov 21st
“My Sephardic Experience”
“Father’s Footsteps”

More information here.

Jewish Latin Center: http://www.jewishlatincenternyc.org/

NEW YORK (AP) Deborah Apeloig arrived at the Chelsea Synagogue in Manhattan for a recent Shabbat service, greeting other women with a kiss and taking a seat with them away from the men.

The rabbi welcomed them to the service in English and Spanish, before beginning prayers in Hebrew.

A year ago, Apeloig, the Venezuelan granddaughter of Polish Holocaust survivors, was searching for a place where she could connect more deeply with her religion and meet other Latin American Jews living in New York City.

“I missed having a synagogue where I could I feel at home,” said Apeloig, 26.

She had gone to several synagogues since coming to New York about two years ago, but none seemed as welcoming as those she had attended back in Venezuela.

Then she learned about the Jewish Latin Center, which had its first anniversary in August with a celebration for Shabbat, which marks the beginning of the day of rest for Jews before sunset on Friday and ends by sundown Saturday.

In September 2009, Rabbi Mendy Weitman, who was born in Brazil, decided to create the center as a space for the Latin Jewish community of New York to gather. It is temporarily being housed at the Chelsea Synagogue while Weitman seeks a permanent home for it.

Other Latin American social Jewish networks already existed, but the rabbi’s initiative added a spiritual touch. The center, which performs both religious and social activities, has about 700 members who said they have found a home there.

“I always felt we had a common problem, that people were looking for a synagogue, a community with Latin warmth and that they couldn’t find it,” said Weitman, who has been based in the U.S. for the last six years. “Latin American Jews come from countries with strong communities and want to be members of a community.”

There are no official figures on the number of Latin American Jews in the United States. There are some 495,000 Jews living in Latin America, according to the Argentina-based Latin American Jewish Congress, with the largest Jewish communities in Argentina and Brazil.

Jews from Latin America first began arriving in what is today’s New York City in 1654, when a group of 23 Sephardic Jews escaped from Portuguese rule in the Dutch colony of Recife in Brazil and came to New Amsterdam.

On a Friday in late August, the center organized a celebration with about 200 Latin American Jews.

The night began with the traditional prayer that begins the Sabbath.

Rebeca Rubinstein, a Venezuelan Jew, lit a couple of candles in a ritual carried out by women only, marking the formal start of the Sabbath. Attendees followed the rabbi’s prayers in the Siddur, the prayer book. For about an hour, men and women sat separated by bamboo screens, the men wearing yarmulkes and most women in elegant skirt suits.

After finishing the recitation, the screens were removed and men and women greeted each other warmly with hugs. Later they went into a room where a kosher meal was offered. It began with the ritual washing of hands and the blessing of the wine, Kiddush, and the passing around of braided bread known as challah.

Among the dishes offered were hummus, Israeli-style cucumber and tomato salad, matzo ball soup, fish, chicken and chocolate mousse for dessert. Between dishes, the attendees danced and sang songs in Hebrew like the popular “Hava Nagila.” The celebration lasted until about midnight.

“The anchor is religion, but over time, we feel like we are part of a community,” said Ariel Fischman, 31, Apeloig’s husband and a Mexican of Russian and Polish Jewish ancestry. “You can come to a party or to watch a soccer game and all these people that you didn’t know before become your friends. … We don’t have to gather for religious purposes.”

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Online:

Jewish Latin Center: http://www.jewishlatincenternyc.org/

http://www.forward.com/articles/130011/

By Rachel Rubin

Published August 11, 2010, issue of August 20, 2010.

Like many 21-year-old travelers, I had no plan. No money. And no real assurance that I was even going to be picked up from the airport on a late rainy evening in Central America’s most notoriously dangerous city. Because I also knew no one.

All the same, I hopped on a plane to Guatemala City last May, convinced that my brothers and sisters in the faith of Abraham would receive me with open arms. After all, I had been welcomed earlier into the Panamanian-Jewish community for Passover and by the Jewish community in Costa Rica for Purim. I had discovered the widespread theme of marvelous Jewish hospitality, and it had fueled my adventurous side.

But this particular Guatemalan Jewish community was different from any Jewish experience I had ever had. Casa Hillel-Beit Hamadrij is a humble group of roughly 50 Christian-born converts who, unlike members of the country’s longer-established and more prosperous Jewish communities, come from Guatemala City’s struggling working class.

Alvaro Orantes, president of Casa Hillel, says that members of his community like to be referred to as “re-converts.” Some community members like to think they could be descended from Spanish crypto-Jews who fled the Inquisition, or from one of the Lost Tribes of Israel. But there is no evidence to corroborate any of this.

“My soul is Jewish,” said Efrain Hernandez, a member of Casa Hillel. “When I began to study Torah, I just knew that this was part of who I am.”

The community members’ lifestyles seem roughly comparable with that of many observant Conservative Jews. They keep the Sabbath, lighting candles on Friday night and marking its close with the Havdalah ceremony. On Sabbath and on major Jewish holidays, they refrain from using electricity — though they do drive to services and to each other’s homes because of the high level of violence in their neighborhoods. Once they arrive at their meeting place on a typical Sabbath, they stay there all day, having meals and studying Torah. Family homes serve as Hebrew and religious schools during the week.

Orantes, who works as a salesman at a local tea and coffee plant, said he began his personal path to conversion at age 16, when he would visit a Jewish cemetery in Guatemala City. There, he said, he felt a sense of peace that he never experienced when he went to Catholic Church.

Ten years ago, Orantes, now 50, and his wife, Jeannette, 53, made a decision to embark on a self-directed study of Judaism. By 2003, he said, his feelings about Judaism inspired him to go to a doctor and have himself circumcised. But the couple, who had begun to gather a like-minded community around them, still lacked a real teacher to lead them. Orantes said he was curtly rebuffed when he approached local Jewish leaders for assistance.

Beside Casa Hillel, there are four Jewish communities in Guatemala, all located in Guatemala City. Centro Hebreo (an Ashkenazi Orthodox community) and Maguen David (Sephardic) are both long-standing and wealthy. There is also the Chabad-Lubavitch community and a group of more or less secular Israelis that gathers for holidays and the Sabbath. Only the secular Israelis would even talk with them.

Then by fate, said Orantes, he discovered Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn’s website in 2005.

Cukierkorn, a Brazilian-born rabbi at the New Reform Temple in Kansas City, Mo., operates an organization called Kulanu that focuses on discovering and converting lost Jewish communities of the world.

“We’d been looking for Judaism since 2000,” related Jeanette Orantes. The newcomers the couple had attracted were “interested, but confused,” Jeanette said, in uncertain English. “This is a kind of phenomenon in Latin America. Many people have been looking for being taught by the Jewish communities, but they are so closed, so we look for foreign orientation, and lucky us, we found Rabbi Jacques in 2005.”

Prior to meeting him, “There wasn’t anyone who could help us, giving trustable information,” she said.

Cukierkorn initially communicated with the nascent community over the Internet. Via video, he conducted classes in Judaism and discussed with them books he had assigned.

Eventually, he decided to convert Orantes and his wife and friends to Judaism, and to take on a role as the honorary rabbi of their community. Among other things, he also helped Orantes legally incorporate Casa Hillel as a religious organization.

Out of gratitude, the new converts named their group “Casa Hillel” after Jacques’s father, Hillel Cukierkorn.

A couple of times a year, Cukierkorn visits Guatemala and performs such rabbinical duties as conversion ceremonies. He also performs Jewish remarriages for couples who were married as Catholics before their conversion.

Cukierkorn’s synagogue has adopted Casa Hillel and is paying half its rent, providing its members with Jewish books in Spanish, Torah Scrolls, and other Jewish paraphernalia for their homes.

On one of his early visits, Cukierkorn, who felt the group should have local teachers to guide them, went with Orantes to meet Rabbi Shimon Lubelski, of Centro Hebreo, the Ashkenazi congregation.

According to Orantes and Cukierkorn, Lubelski initially agreed to meet further with Orantes to discuss teaching Judaism to his group. But he “called ten minutes later after he said he would do it” to cancel, said Orantes.

It is easy to imagine the fears that might make established Jewish leaders reluctant to convert the Catholic born aspirants in a heavily Catholic and very violent country. But there are also class issues. Most of the other Jews live in gated communities far removed from the everyday dangers faced by ordinary Guatemalans, as well as the country’s deep and widespread poverty.

During his visit to Centro Hebreo, Cukierkorn recalled, a synagogue administrator “was totally dismissive” of Orantes. “Had he been a dog, she would have noticed him more. She paid more attention to the chairs than to him… It was horrible!”

“These are some of the most committed, interested and eager people I ever encountered,” said the Reform rabbi. “After my own congregation, I can’t think of anywhere else in the world I wish to spend time.”

Calls and emails to Lubelski and leaders of the other Jewish communities were not returned. But asked in a 2008 interview with Hadassah Magazine about the Casa Hillel’s community’s outreach to him, Lubelski said his community does not perform conversions. “If people want to convert, they have to go to New York, Miami or Tel Aviv,” he said.

The Orthodox rabbi also acknowledged that mainstream Guatemalan Jews, most of whom are Orthodox, do not welcome Casa Hillel members and do not accept Cukierkorn’s Reform conversions.

“We respect [them], but we are not interested in any encounters between the two communities,” he said.

The rejection clearly stings. “I am not allowed to go to their minyan,” Casa Hillel member Santiago Castaneda told me with shame in his eyes.

The Castaneda family, who hosted me during my visit, gave me an inside look at the challenges they face as practicing Jews in their city.

On a Friday, I accompanied Raudith Castaneda, the mother, with the Castanedas’ two daughters as we spent a day preparing for the Sabbath. We cooked for the more than 30 people expected that night, carefully sifting through hundreds of spinach leaves as we made a casserole. There were charts of Hebrew letters on the wall, newspaper clippings of Israeli news, and a small table that stood in the center of their home, displaying a modest collection of their Jewish memorabilia.

Their 13-year-old son, Jose, a recent bar mitzvah, told me he will only marry a Jewish girl.

When Havdalah came the next day, the Castanedas and I stood around the table with our arms around one another’s shoulders and recited the prayers. It was a powerfully spiritual moment, although fleeting, as it was interrupted by a string of gunshots across the street.

“Now is the time we need to be united together,” Jeannette Orantes told me on the same visit. “And I am telling you ‘we’ because we are also Jews, as you are. The difference is that we chose to become Jews and you were born a Jew. We will run the same destiny with all of you, and we know this. The providence will provide us with what we deserve, on His perfect time.”

Jeannette said that her favorite holiday was Shavuot, when the Book of Ruth is read.

“How easy it was for her to become a Jew,” she said. “And what a lovely way of Boaz to accept her. Just let me share with you Ruth’s words: ‘Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.’”
http://www.forward.com/articles/130011/

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Advance tickets recommended

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