Tag: Sephardic

Would you sit with a Jew in class?

Jewish Communities

http://www.lne.es/gijon/2017/02/02/sentarias-judio-clase/2051235.html

High school students from Mata Jove and Father Feijoo Schools(Spain) face a debate on cultural diversity in classrooms during a conference against racism

“Does cultural diversity enrich the Spanish educational system?” Forty-three young first-year high school students from the IES Mata Jove and Padre Feijoo face each other in order to answer this unknown question that the “I League of School Debate” proposes to them, which is part of the XII Conference against Racism and xenophobia driven from the City Hall.

The event, which has the support of the “Habla Gijón Association”, was held in the premises of the IES Padre Feijoo with an atmosphere of the most professional. A jury composed of teachers from both centers, a chronometer projected on the waxed so that none of the speakers overstepped their time and an audience that commented with the next to the answers and proposals of his colleagues on the stand to make them more nervous . It all started with the draw of the positions they should play. The “H2O Venado” group – which played at home – was called to advocate yes, that is, in favor of the hypothesis that cultural diversity enriches the Spanish educational system.

By discarding, the representation of IES Mata Jove, the group “Natural thought”, was seen and wanted to argue against. Natalia Chacón López, Sergio Fernández Blanco and Noel Martín Pita had to throw the rest to defend something in what they did not believe. When they knew the position they had to take during the debate they fell silent and their countenance became serious. How to defend that in the classrooms would be separated by race and religion to the students? More even with colleagues present from other races. The reasoning put on the table by Noel Martín was based on that if the coexistence generates problems, the best thing to avoid them would be to prevent in a same classroom the presence of immigrants with autochthonous.

In front were the prompt response of Aroa Resch Cárcaba, “Regardless of religion or race, we are all different,” he warned, warning that individual classes would be unfeasible. “We have asked our fellow foreigners if they feel uncomfortable and everyone agrees that they feel integrated,” Resch said. Nevertheless he put on the table other data, newspaper articles, which allowed him to defend that 46% of young Spaniards are not willing to share desk or duties with Latinos or Jews. “How is it possible that the two data that it contributes are true,” replied Noel Martín. Both groups entered fully, with energy and passion, in the dynamics of the debate.

This initiative, which seeks to have students from the 1st year of Bachillerato (between 16 and 17 years) learn to argue and debate in a fluid and agile way on a specific subject, began last quarter with a training given to students on speech and communication. Now, already instructed, there is another practical phase composed of twelve debates that will determine, as a “league”, which are the two teams better prepared and trained for the debate of the eight participating in both centers. After an “all against all”, this first edition will culminate with a final between the two teams that score the highest and that will be held on March 31 in the auditorium of the Integrated Municipal Center Ateneo de La Calzada.

Zamora(Spain) already sounds in Israel

Zamora

http://www.laopiniondezamora.es/zamora/2017/01/24/zamora-suena-israel/979798.html#

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The Sephardic Community of Jerusalem grants the medal of the Four Synagogues to the province for the recovery of the Hebrew legacy in the last five years

Zamora already sounds in Israel. The effort made in the last five years by the new Campantón Center, the involvement of the citizens and their interest in the Sephardic question, the participation of the institutions, the collaboration of several companies and the “loudspeaker” served by the media Have earned the province the award of the medal of the Four Synagogues of Israel, the recognition that the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem has decided to grant the province as a whole. The award will be presented on July 3 in the context of the fifth congress on Jewish heritage by the organization’s president, Abraham Haim.

Medal Award Keys
The province has to feel doubly honored by this tribute, for the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem – the oldest Jewish institution in the city – has been 750 years since its birth. Hence, the recognition goes back and forth: Zamorans know better today what the repercussion of Hebrew society was in the Middle Ages and, at the same time, in Israel we are already talking about the congresses, the research work being done And the participation of renowned historians from both Israel and the United States.

The council of the Jewish organization has taken note of the creation of the Campantón Center – which is currently pursuing the creation of a Jewish museum in the city – as well as the role of the Diputación and the City Council, who have supported these meetings of a scientific and informative nature . Likewise, Abraham Haim also wanted to highlight the role of the media in the province “led by THE OPINION-THE CAMPAIGN OF ZAMORA for its dissemination through news, reports and interviews before, during and after the congresses.”

The recognition also includes the participation of agri-food companies, hotels, restaurants and organizations that have been involved in holding the congresses, whose fifth edition, according to those announced by those responsible, will have a special program.

In the absence of archaeological remains – some of them are outside the province and others, such as the mikvé of the former Royal Hostería are investigated today – Zamora has taken a step forward in the last five years, with the placement of several milestones that Establish the so-called Sephardic Route between the Lowlands and Valorio, as well as a plaque in memory of the Jews who died in the Nazi concentration camps, which appears in the School of Education, with the poem “Auschwitz” of the tabarés León Felipe. Nor should we forget the celebration of an exhibition at the University College in honor of the Spanish diplomats who saved thousands of lives, such as Ángel Sanz Briz, the so-called “Angel of Budapest”.

And although the congresses were held in the capital, activities were extended to the province and especially to the area of Fermoselle and La Raya, where the presence of Jews is documented, also in a suitable escape route to Portugal due to The expulsion, which was later tracked by the neighboring country. Zamora now has a name in the investigation of his Sephardic past, such as that which accompanies Toledo, Segovia or Girona.

The traces of Jewish Madrid: a hidden legacy

Jewish Communities

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Just after the week in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the Jewish Madrid – almost disappeared by the relentless weight of History – is located between generalized ignorance as a sort of hidden patrimony, relative to two concrete epochs. One, primitive and medieval, scene of persecutions and sustenance of legends around its configuration. Another, contemporary, concerning the refoundation of the Hebrew community in Madrid.

The absence of architectural evidence, in other faithful chroniclers in stone, makes any justification to the documentary archive. Although there are no buildings or remains of the first Jewish quarter of the capital, there are writings that locate it in what is currently the cathedral of La Almudena. Behind them, inside the walls of the Arab wall, the Jews remained even after the Christian conquest of Madrid, then Mayrit, in the year 1083 by King Alfonso VI.

The edicts of execution, multiplied after the conception of the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition in 1478, and popular transmission play a key role in the flimsy certainties about the past of the Jewish community. According to documentary sources, the work of Alejandra Abulafia, director of Destino Sefarad, as early as 1053 a Jewish neighbor sent a letter to his sister counting his sentence for the death of two coreligionists. Just a few meters away from that old Jewish quarter, climbing up what is now the Calle Mayor, in the plaza of the same name, many merchants settled, especially in the space that today welcomes the Mercado de San Miguel and in the neighborhood of Plaza de la Villa.

Precisely in the Plaza Mayor, in the lanterns located in the center, there is an engraving that passes almost unnoticed. The relief shows a judgment with a sambenito to a Jew, who was nothing more than to put a sackcloth to the inmate, often without previous judgment, to humiliate and stigmatize him. This small trace, although anecdotal, partially synthesizes how medieval times were. In fact, another of the points collected in the map attached, the Valnadú gate, is remembered for being the access point in one of the major attacks suffered in the Jewish quarter.

Persecutions and Expulsion
The main test of its location, in any case, refers to the most tragic episodes of its history in the area. Sometimes narrated in literary code, a document of 1391, when many Jews were killed in the street of the Damas, in the Jewish quarter, according to Jacobo Israel Garzón in its prologue to the work Avapés: Theater in two acts (Solly Wolodarsky. 2009). This and other passages are included in the letter, such as the request of the Villa de Madrid to the queen to execute the penalties provided for Jews who did not wear distinctive signs in the dress, in 1478, or a wall that would isolate the Jewry, two years later.

Everything ends, as a part and result, in a key date for the Jewish community throughout Spain. On July 31, 1492, the Catholic Kings signed their expulsion, condemned ever since, and well into the nineteenth century, to a cryptic presence. Persecuted and in the strictest secrecy, the author goes on that, after a century, Madrid hosted numerous Portuguese crypto-Jews, descendants of those who had left the same year of the discovery of America. At this time and in the following years, different documents prove this situation; As a car of faith – one among thousands – in 1632, where “up to forty-four prisoners, of whom four were burned in a statue and seven in person” were allegedly assembled to whip and insult a Christ and a Virgin .

Another of the pillars on this legacy has much to do with speculation, justified in the popular transmission. It may be worth noting that the Lavapiés neighborhood, supposedly known as Avapiés on the date, does not appear on the route illustrated, but the truth is that, contradiction among historians, there is no documentary basis for this. It is, therefore, a myth; Similar to the one that assures that the present church of San Lorenzo was once a synagogue. Equally, Manolo’s name is said to have its origin in the Jewish community, for it derives from Immanuel, which in Hebrew means “God be with us.”

Refoundation
There is no effective refoundation until well into the twentieth century, although in the early years the end of this parenthesis is glimpsed. In 1917 the first synagogue of Madrid, Midras Ababarnel was founded, antecedent of the constitution of the Jewish Community in the region, in 1920. It also obtains an own enclosure in the civil cemetery of La Almudena, although this growth is not definitive .

The synagogue is closed in 1938 and, after the end of the Civil War, all public activity is interrupted. Thus, the Jewish Community was not restored until 1947, and two years later a new synagogue, the Lawenda Oratory, was inaugurated. Years later, it moved to Pizarro Street to house a larger one, Betzión. The definitive takeoff and settlement, peaceful except for the attack on Christmas Eve of 1976, when a bomb exploded next to the synagogue of Balmes Street, was in the 60’s; Developed with the construction of the Jewish cemetery of Hoyo de Manzanares, in the early 90’s. Madrid also has a Jewish school, Ibn Gabirol, built in 1965.

The Jewish community, in the present
It is estimated that the Community of Madrid currently lives around 10,000 Jews, with the seat of the Jewish Community (left, its opening) as the main meeting point; Both religious and social. Its growth in the last years mainly refers to Argentina, since many Jews emigrated to Spain after the military coup of Videla in 1976, and after the recent economic crises. The Second World War also provoked the arrival of numerous Jewish refugees. In those years, Madrid was configured as an alternative scenario of spies and covert diplomacy. As you can see, the Embassy confectionery, which served as a cover to save 30,000 Jews from the Nazi deployment in the capital, to Portugal.

Segovia and the Holcaust Day

Uncategorized

A1-49632563.jpgCandles, white roses, poems and songs have reminded one of the most frightening times in European history in Segovia today and have served as a tribute to the more than 15 million victims of Nazism in an event celebrated on the occasion of the European Day of The Holocaust Memorial.

The event was attended by the deputy secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, Elias Cohen; The press chief of the Israeli Embassy in Spain, Uriel Macías; The General Director of Centro Sefarad-Israel, Miguel de Lucas, and survivor of the Holocaust Rhoda Henelde, in addition, the Mayor of Segovia, Clara Luquero, and several councilors.

Macias explained in a statement to the media minutes before the homage that these kinds of acts have a double importance, since they serve as “lesson and warning” to the new generations, but also to honor the memory of those who were persecuted until death.

In this sense, he has insisted that not only “evil” is remembered in this act, but also the survivors and the people who helped save lives, who in their view, “are an example of good is possible.”

Although there are more and more Spanish cities joining this initiative, Segovia is one of the veterans, partly because of its close ties to its Jewish past.

Survivor Rhoda Henelde, who was born in Warsaw during the invasion of Poland by the Nazi army, has recognized that it is very hard for her to relive her childhood over and over but, in her opinion, acts like this “are an obligation for the People do not forget it “.

Henelde has assured that it has taken “all these years” to overcome these events that marked his life and although he has said that she was not in concentration camps or extermination, his family did not suffer the same fate.

“The important thing is to assume it to transmit it and move forward now that the situation has changed,” he has condemned.

The deputy secretary of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain, Elías Cohen, has transmitted during his speech the need to “remember to avoid mistakes in the future and to educate from childhood.”

He also emphasized that these events that occurred in the heart of Europe only 70 years ago represent “a crime unique in history by its methods, its figures, the machinery of death they used and above all for the purpose of eliminating A collective for the mere fact of being “.