“Connecting these youngsters with Judaism is only the beginning,” said the rabbi.
Forced exile, forced conversion, assimilation and Jewish resurgence all had a big impact on Sephardic Jewish surnames.
The study indicates that converso genes have spread far and wide in Latin America.
It is a familiar story of Sephardic Jews in the Americas, one that continues to challenge the central narratives of the American Jewish experience.
Rabbi Rigoberto Emmanuel Viñas welcomed black and Latin Jews into his Yonkers synagogue — but some of the old guard didn’t approve.
Susan J. Gordon’s father-in-law converted to Judaism at the age of 60, saying he had a ‘Jewish soul.’ Strangely enough, the gut feeling may have come from his upbringing in Sicily.
Before Golda, and even before Herzl, there was Dona Gracia Nasi, the 16th-century Zionist, feminist, and the Harriet Tubman of the Jewish people. She is one of the most remarkable women in Jewish history — and in history, period. It’s a tragedy that so few people know her name.