Category: Jewish Communities

CJM 5779 Januca Awards

Jewish Communities

“Yes, there were synagogues in Toledo, but why they were called as Santa Maria la Blanca or El Tránsito?”

In the evening of Dec 1st (one day before the Hanukah celebration) took place in Madrid the ceremony of 5779 Hanuka Award. This year the Jewish Community of Madrid (CJM) decided to homage to Mr.Juan Ignacio Mesa Ruiz, nowadays the President of REAL FUNDACION DE TOLEDO (Toledo Royal Foundation) whose Honor President is the King of Spain, D.Felipe de Borbón.

The ceremony was very emotive and charming, but I have to highlight one moment, I would say, by far, tha the speech of thanks of Mr.Mesa, where the brilliant awarded also showed himself as great speaker with fresh, warm and extremely sincere words that touch the heart of every attendant.

I would also want to highlight the play of CJM Chorus, an amateur chorus made up of several members of the Jewish Community and very sharply directed by Mercedes Benzaquén. Specially the Hatikva at the Ceremony closing was a ideal touch together with the Spain National Anthem. Congratulations guys!!!

At the end of the speech of Mr. León Benelbas, President of Jewish Community of Madrid, was a reference to the Old Mayor Synagogue of Toledo (Nowadays Santa Maria La Blanca Church/Synagogue) that I really hope that Mr. Mesa has been able to note.

 

Jewish Community of Ceuta presents Hanukka 5779 (2018)

Jewish Communities

Cartel Januka Ceuta 2018Once more, the Jewish Community of Ceuta (Spanish City in North Africa), presented the Hanukka Banner in the City Hall, with the Mayor of the City and some other Authorities and members of the local Governement.

It is really special to see how this city has Jewish Community with an exceptional integration degree with the Governement.

Congratulations for your great job!!!

 

cropped-13_02_12-juderia_segovia.jpg

450 attacks against Israel in 24 hours

Jewish Communities

https://www.larazon.es/blogs/internacional/la-opinion-de-un-amigo-de-israel/450-ataques-contra-israel-en-24h-CO20590156

 

I wonder, how many times will the “red code” alarms have sounded? Maybe 500 times, maybe 1000? That is, if you lived in Israel, at any time of the day you would have 15 seconds (the time it takes the rocket launched from Gaza to explode in Israel), to take your family, your children, your elders and take them to all speed up to the shelter of the house (in Israel all buildings have shelters). If the alarm sounds when you are on the street, you will have 15 seconds to reach the nearest shelter you find, or you should lie on the ground next to a wall and protect your head with your hands.

During those 24 hours, 450 rockets of various types fell on southern Israel. On one side were the Qassams, with a range of 17 km and an explosive charge of 10 kg that acts as a fragmentation explosive in which not only is its shock wave dangerous but also the shrapnel that it launches at high speed. The usual projectile used by Hamas terrorists and also their favorite is the Grad on which the Qasam is based, it is of Soviet origin although those arriving in Hamas are of Iranian origin. It is considered an anti-tank and anti-personnel weapon. It has an explosive head of 20 kg and a high level of destruction.

I imagine that many of you have read almost nothing about this, of course if you have reported through El País or the SER, all you know is that Israel attacked Hamas objectives after the launch of “rockets”. Do not wait much longer, in much of the media, political correctness orders that you only talk about Israel when there is a dead Palestinian, if an Israeli dies you have to look the other way and ignore the news.

Although this time there have been many politicians around the world who have shown their rejection against Hamas by the missile rain launched against civilians in Israel, in Spain we only had mentions to the subject made by Juan Carlos Girauta. Nor is it surprising, in general, Spanish politicians are not interested in international politics, beyond taking a picture in an international forum or with a European leader.

From the Spanish left and how could it be otherwise, ignoring the attack on civilians by Hamas terrorists, but we have experienced what we like so much to our left that is to pay homage to dead Jews. On the left he loves to tell us how they admire the Jews who lived in Spain 500 years ago or those who were victims of anti-Semitism, but they do not care that an Israeli family can be vaporized by the impact of a missile by Hamas terrorists. We will have to remind them that Israelis are Jews, although I think they already know this.

One example is Barcelona, ​​where the same people who subsidize the talks of a Palestinian terrorist, put the name of a dead Jew, one street away from Barcelona. They also sponsored an event in memory of La Noche de los Crystals Rotos, a facelift of anti-Semitism (which they call anti-Zionism) exercised by the municipal leaders of Barcelona.

In the maximum exercise of “postureo”, the right hand of Colau, a certain Pisarello, was allowed to write an article against anti-Semitism. That is to say, in a display of unparalleled hypocrisy, the same person who signed the grant of a glorification event for the Palestinian terrorist Laila Khaled in Barcelona, ​​also signed an article saying how bad the people who killed the Jews were. I recommend printing that article and use it to pick up the “dog cakes” or “the cat sandbox”, it is the destination it deserves.

After the 450 attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians, Israel did not enter Gaza. On the contrary, it ended up accepting a fragile “ceasefire” that (and this has not been told) keeps alive a peace process that It is progressing and involving all the most relevant Arab countries in the region. A peace project that, for the first time, would be supported by the Arab World.

Israel, even in the worst conditions, continues to seek peace, even though terrorists continue to kill.

Segovia: Learning about Jewish Culture

Jewish Communities, Segovia

JEWISH CEMETERY SEGOVIAOne more year, ‘Tiempo de Ánimas’, the activity organized by the tourism area of ​​the City of Segovia, organized on Sunday 11 November, a free visit to the Jewish cemetery of Segovia that is preserved in the area known as the Pinarillo.

About thirty people knew, from the hand of the guide, the peculiarities and customs of the Jews in regard to funeral acts with which to dismiss their deceased relatives. The visit, in addition to the explanations of the guide, was attended by a singer and an actress who intervened with Sephardic songs or through the narration of a story that told the perspective of a Jewish girl who used to visit the necropolis with her grandfather .

The guide said that death for Jewish society was something that deserved “utmost respect.” “They spent a year of mourning in which they did not attend any type of social events. The most peculiar thing is the imprisonment of the closest relatives in the house of the deceased the first seven days after death, “the guide reported.

The visit lasted about an hour and a half and included the walk to the area where the tombs carved into the rock are kept, typical of the Serfardí society that inhabited the city until its expulsion in 1492 by order of the Catholic Kings

Why does hatred persist for Jews?

Jewish Communities

by Elias Cohen

Last Saturday, Robert Bowers Orange County Synagogue Vandalized With Anti-Semitic Graffitientered the synagogue of the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh and, before indiscriminately shooting the people who gathered there for the Sabbath services, shouted “All Jews must die!” Their bullets killed the lives of eleven people and wounded six others. We can go to topical reasons that explain this massacre – the worst anti-Semitic massacre in US history – among them, the growing tension in Western societies, radicalization through of theories of conspiracy and false news or the progressive distrust and zeal towards the different in this financial post-crisis. But they are insufficient to answer underlying questions in the collective consciousness: Why does hatred persist for Jews? Why do they keep killing them?

Perhaps a clear didactic is missing when explaining why there is so much hatred towards Jews in the world. Some argue that stones are always thrown to the tree that bears fruit. This metaphor can explain part of the problem, but we are not all, by any chance, founders of Google, great philosophers or legendary film directors. We would like it Others, with malice, will say that Israel’s role in the Middle East has generated these new and bloody waves of anti-Semitism, justifying on this occasion that American Jews have to suffer, and be killed, for what Israel does. Many will affirm that anti-Semitism is a thing of the past and that this one is an isolated case, a vile act carried out by an alienated man. Beyond all this, the truth is that anti-Semitism has remained constant in the Western psyche since time immemorial, according to the American historian David Nirenberg. An anecdote, perhaps a legend, accounts for the longevity of anti-Semitism: in the France of 1934, a boy George Steiner observed from his window, next to his father, a violent crowd shouting “Death to the Jews!”. His father told him: “Do not be afraid, my son, what you see is called History.” Certainly, the rejection of the Jews exists before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but it is from that time on that makes it more palpable. The Jews traveled the world as a landless nation, clung to their traditions and their customs and made them the center of their existence. Therefore, in full force homogenization throughout the West, they became the first different. When not assimilated, they were perceived as hostile, denied rights and, in most cases, their way of life was restricted to the loan. They were, then, conceived as a foreign body in the nations and empires where they settled. That foreign body became the scapegoat for despotic rulers and revolutionary movements. The Jews were the perfect culprit of all evils: collective, anonymous, strange. They had killed Christ, they controlled the world despite being locked in ghettos, they conspired to weaken the nations, they were communists and also capitalists and they were behind the wars and revolutions. The libels and the false myths about evil or machinations The conspiracies of the Jews originated – or justified later – persecutions, discrimination, pogroms, and mass exterminations. The words, rarely innocent, dehumanized the Jews and made them fumigable; the prejudices against them settled down over the centuries and became tolerable. Needless to say, the extent of German National Socialism pointing to the Jews as the main enemies of the Reich.Bowers, as revealed by the ongoing investigation, was a faithful follower of these anti-Semitic theories. If it were not tragic, it is even comical the power and omnipresence that these stories give to the Jews. But laugh, little. In the end, as the Pittsburgh massacre attests, the Jews continue, continue, be attacked, and killed, just because they are. And the reason for this is precisely that anti-Semitic myths are still current and do not belong to libraries.

In addition, these myths have evolved. If once the Jews killed Christian children to drink their blood, today Israelis kill Palestinian children for sheer pleasure. If a century ago the Jews planned to dominate the world from a cemetery in Prague, today they have succeeded and it is the Jewish lobby that controls Washington with its great Hollywood propaganda apparatus. Israel is now the perfect excuse and serves many, who would never declare themselves anti-Semitic, to purge guilt for the Holocaust. Revealing were, in this regard, the words of the Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, in 2003: “the Jewish people no longer deserve sympathy for the suffering that happened.” The normality with which society coexists with the constant threat to Jews It was perfectly described by David Gistau about the bombing in the Bataclan Hall in 2015: the Jews are “people in whom it is possible to detect a guilt of being that keeps death contained within tolerable limits. schools and continue with our lives. ” For that, the water wets, the sky is blue and the Jews are hated. It is normal.

Elías Cohen is General Secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE)

Visiting a 100 years old carpentry in Toledo

Jewish Communities

A nice Whatsapp: Why are there always Jews everywhere?

Jewish Communities

Jews suppor each otherDear Friends,

I dont use to do this, but I received today this anonymous whatsapp and want to share with you all!!!!!

 

Why are there always Jews everywhere?

Why does it always seem that Jews are so present on the world stage?
The numbers do not close. It is a population that constitutes less than 0.2% of the world’s population, and so and all monopolizes so much attention that one would think that we are a million. It’s like there’s a room with two thousand people and a weak man in a corner that everyone wants to talk to (or disturb) him!

Answer

Jews sometimes do weird things. One example is the widespread practice of “credit review”.

Many Jews have the habit of checking the credits at the end of the movies in search of Jewish names. With each discovery they radiate pride: Look! Lighting assistant … Mo Goldstein! Catering manager … Beth Cohen!

This strange practice comes from a very deep place in the Jewish psyche. Jews share a spiritual bond with one another. When we find Jews anywhere in the world there is an immediate connection, an affinity, a sense of unity. We are like a big family.

When Jews appear on the news, we take it personally. When Israel is attacked, we feel pain wherever we are. When a Jew wins a bronze medal in croquet, we all share the victory. And when we see a Jewish name in the credits of a movie, we get excited.

Maybe other peoples do this too. But I do not think so. This deep sense of connection makes the Jewish people unique among all the peoples of the world.

This is the reason why statistics do not apply in the Jewish people. No Jew is a mere individual. We are a collective soul, part of something bigger than ourselves. We may be a small dot in the census, but we do not operate according to normal demographic principles. Our strength is not measured in our numbers, but in our unity.

The destiny of the Jewish people is to be a strong voice of kindness and morality in the family of the people. When we join our community and commit to the shared vision of our people, we are a formidable presence.

Not because we are millions, but because we are one.

 

My youngest visitor

Jewish Communities

only 93 years old

A young day in Toledo

Jewish Communities

2018-10-31 14.41.12-1

Tribute to El Greco in Toledo by Sofia Gandarias

Jewish Communities
2018-10-31 12.51.45
Albert Einstein
2018-10-31 12.48.35
Placido Domingo
2018-10-31 12.48.57
Maria Callas
2018-10-31 12.49.12
Cate Blanchett

 

2018-10-31 12.49.21
The Kkight Al Pacino