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November 18, 2020 | 2 Kislev 5781
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Exploring History Through Genealogy
Children of the Inquisition Film Screening & Panel Discussion
Shirley Saunders became interested in the “conversos” community more than 30 years ago. She had begun exploring her own Ashkenazi genealogy and was fascinated to learn about the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had converted to Catholicism during the 14th and 15th centuries.
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Over the years, Saunders learned more and more about “conversos” through a film at the Boston Jewish Film Festival, while listening to NPR, and during a lecture that she read about in The Jewish Advocate. Through her research, she met conversos in New England, and attended the dedication of The Institute for Sefardi and Anousim Studies (ISAS) at Netanya Academic College in Israel and the rededication of a synagogue in the Azores, off the coast of Portugal. And then, at an Independence Day party, she met someone whose brother-in-law—Joe Lovett—was producing a film about this topic.
“I became very sensitive to these connections and found it fascinating,” said Saunders, an alumnus of the Hebrew College Me’ah Classic two-year adult learning program who has also taken numerous Hebrew College classes over the past two decades. “We should know the history of the Jewish people. This is a whole area of Jewish history that people don’t understand or know about, what happened to these people and why they’re a fragment of the numbers they were, and how there are still people after hundreds of years who have a yearning to connect to Judaism. I find that most people when they learn about this, they’re fascinated by it.”
Now Saunders, former program chair of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (JGSGB), is helping to bring awareness of this intriguing Jewish community through an upcoming screening of this film, Children of the Inquisition (photo and painting from the film above), followed on November 22 by a live Zoom panel discussion with the executive producer, director and guests. . .
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Hanukkah Event Kicks off MetroWest CultureFest
Hebrew College is excited to join with Temple Beth Sholom and Temple Beth Am in Framingham, Congregation Or Atid of Wayland, and 2Life Communities Shillman House in Framingham to offer a new three-part virtual series, “Jewish CultureFest: Food, Music, and YOU,” supported through a grant from CJP.
The virtual series, which kicks off next month, will celebrate the culinary and music traditions of Jewish communities throughout the world, while simultaneously encouraging participants to cook, listen, and connect with Jewish food, music, and culture.
The first workshop on December 6 from 2-3:30 p.m will be: “Tasting Hope - Embodying the Messages of Hanukkah & Christmas,” an interreligious and cross-cultural exploration with music, text learning, and a culinary experience taught jointly by Rabbi Or Rose, director of the Miller Center of Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College, and Samir Selmanovic, founder of THE KITCHENHOOD, a cross-generational community dedicated to cooking mastery.
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Generations and Their WellsParashat Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9)
By Rabbi Arthur Green, Hebrew College Rector & Irving Brudnick Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Religion
The narratives of Genesis, especially in readings for Va-Yera and Toledot, are an interweaving of two sets of tales. The better-known ones are the stories of our patriarchal family: the birth of sons and the conflicts between them, first Isaac and Ishmael, then Jacob and Esau.
Alternating with these chapters are accounts of our ancestors’ attempts to live among their neighbors, including repeated conflicts over wives, land, flocks, and wells. Given the terrain of the Land of Canaan, it is no surprise that water rights were an important issue. “Who dug this well?” was a question raised more than once, and the names attached to those diggings recall hostility and conflict. Finally, we are told in both chapters 21 and 26, they came to peace at Beersheva, maybe named as a place where an oath was sworn, or maybe a well that overflowed with a sevenfold amount of water—or perhaps both.
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UPCOMING ONLINE EVENTS | All times are EST (U.S.)
Film Screening of "Children of the Inquisition"
Discussion with Director and Guests
November 22 | 2-3:30 p.m.
Registration closes Nov. 19 at 4 p.m.
Project-Based Learning Bootcamp
Hosted by Hebrew College's Congregational Education Initiative (CEI)
November 30 & December 14 | 10:30 a.m.-Noon
Learn more & register
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