ira

Chinese Food on Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1uZ_W7atDE

[MakkabI]

New phenomenon sweeps Portugal: Descendants of Marranos rediscover their Jewish roots and the Jewish faith. One Porto community undergoes mass conversion


Yosef Pero Philip is professor psychiatry at the University of Porto. Arieh Ben Avraham is a renowned film director. Yosef Eduardo Albas is a soccer player in Portugal’s Second Division. All three men have recently converted to Judaism, observe the mitzvoth, and are distinctly proud of their Jewish heritage.



These three men are also representative of a noticeable recent trend among descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Marranos, that is Sephardic Jews forced to adopt the identity of Christians, who are now rediscovering their Jewish faith and reclaiming their ancient heritage en masse.



Rabbi Eliyahu Birnbaum of the “Shavei Israel” Foundation, which oversees the conversion process among these Marrano descendants, said that over the years individual Marranos have converted to Judaism , but now, thanks to the foundation’s efforts, entire communities of Marrano offspring are converting to Judaism and reclaiming their ancient heritage.



“If you asked people in Israel, they would probably tell you that Marranos are merely a blurb on the annals of history, but here we see definitive proof that people still view themselves as Marranos and children of Marranos, and that this is a very real, spiritual phenomenon,” said Rabbi Birnbaum.



Indeed, many Portuguese are now becoming reacquainted with their Jewish lineage. Aaron Ram, Israel’s Ambassador to Portugal, told Ynet that “when people find out that I’m the Israeli ambassador, many end up telling me that they are Jewish, or rather that they are of Jewish descent. Many of these Marranos are not Jewish anymore, nor do they intend to convert, but they nevertheless mention their heritage with great pride. I would say that 10% of all Portuguese are offspring of Marranos of Jewish descent.”




What led to this spiritual reawakening among these former Jews? The waning power of the church in both Spain and Portugal is a definite factor leading to this trend, as is the quest for belonging and identity so prevalent around the world today.



The Marano descendants in question tend to come from a high socio-economic background, and are typically well integrated into the Christian society that they live in. They claim that their return to their Jewish heritage does not invoke scorn or hatred in their peers, and that they are typically applauded for their resolve and bravery.

Livni

I saw a ynet article on this, amazing stories. theres millions who dont know that they are also.. very sad. While some friends were in brazil and lighting friday candles, a very simple woman came up to them and told him her family also had a practice to light candles on fridays and her grandmother had asked her to continue it on. she was shocked to hear its jewish..

__________________
הצלחנו בגדול!

[MakkabI]

Before learning about his Jewish roots, Pinchads Zlotosvsky from Poland was a skinhead with uncompromising contempt for Jews, the 32-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew told Haaretz last weekend during Shavei Israel's annual conference for hidden Jews in Lodz.

The transition in Zlotosvsky's life occurred after his mother told him she comes from a Jewish family. Her parents, she said, sent her to a monastery when she was a small child so that she would survive the Holocaust.

All her relatives were murdered, as far as Pinchas Zlotosvsky knows.


"I realized I was Jewish according to Judaism. I couldn't look myself in the mirror for a whole week after I found out," he recalls. After he recovered from the shock, he spent the past few years rediscovering his Jewish roots. He has also become very active with the Jewish community.

Zlotosvsky's return to Judaism is something he has in common with many of the participants in the conference, which saw the restoration of the Rabbinic Association of Poland for the first time since the 1930s. Attending the ceremony was Israel's chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, and, of course, Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich.

Official data mentions some 3 million Jews living in Poland prior to World War II. Today, official figures list only 4,000 Jews as residing in Poland, but the actual figures at least in terms of Halakha, or Jewish law are probably higher. The discrepancy stems from the fact that thousands of Jews who survived the war preferred not to reveal their Jewish identity for fear of anti-Semitic persecution by the local population.

Indeed, there were pogroms against Jews after the war, with the authorities turning a blind eye to lynching and murders, and even, at times, taking part in the killing of people who had managed to survive the Nazi purge.

Another significant portion of the hidden Jewish population consists of people like Pinchas Zlotosvsky's mother, whose parents sent them to monasteries to be raised as Christians. Despite efforts by international Jewish organizations to locate these people, not all have been found, and many are assumed to have remained Christian.

One reason for this is that many adoptive families were believed to have been reluctant to tell the children the truth about their origins.

Anti-Semitism is still prevalent in Poland, according to the rabbis who came to the conference from Lodz, Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw and other parts of the country. But in parallel, they spoke of a newfound acceptance of Jews especially in major cities. This atmosphere of openness, the rabbis said, encourages some hidden Jews to retrace their roots.

Freund's organization is better known for its controversial efforts to locate the people who might have come from the 10 tribes of Israel in remote corners of the world. The conference, which was also attended by 150 Polish men and women aged 18-40, is part of the organization's efforts to locate hidden Jews in Poland.

Michael Freund, Chairman of Shavei Israel, said, "Jewish life in Poland has been growing stronger in recent years, as many young Poles have begun to discover their family's Jewish ancestry, which was often hidden out of fear of persecution by the Nazis and the Communists."




Neo-Nazi turns ultra-Orthodox after discovering Jewish roots - Haaretz - Israel News

ira

Jul 29, 2008 21:16 | Updated Jul 30, 2008 9:47
Jewish Internet Defense Force 'seizes control' of anti-Israel Facebook group
By STEPHANIE RUBENSTEIN


The Jewish Internet Defense Force, a group that claims to have 5,000 members worldwide, says it is steadily removing members from a viciously anti-Israel and anti-Semitic group on Facebook, having taken control of the group on Sunday.

"Facebook wouldn't do anything about [the group], so we did what had to be done," the group posted on its Web site. "We're not sure how long this can or will last, so we're moving fast to do what needs to be done."

The Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) describes itself as a group of Jewish activists who fight anti-Semitism and terrorism trends throughout the Internet. It says it formed as a grassroots effort in 2000, mainly to mount mass e-mail campaigns, in response to the second intifada. It then began operating on various Web sites, including Facebook, to spread news about Israel and Jewish issues.

"As we used Facebook, we noticed many of the issues began literally to stare us in the face, as many various anti-Semitic and pro-Jihadist groups were springing up everywhere," said David, the spokesperson for the JIDF, who asked that his last name not be published. He said he had received four death threats since beginning his activities.

In the JIDF's latest efforts, the group has been working around the clock to dismantle the group on Facebook titled, "Israel is not a country! Delist it from Facebook as a country." That group had tens of thousands of members.

"This was one of the most vile, most anti-Semitic, most pro-Jihad and most disgusting, and most importantly, most active hate groups on the Internet," the JIDF posted on the anti-Israel page on Facebook. "It actively promoted hatred, violence, murder and genocide. Despite tens of thousands of complaints, Facebook wouldn't remove it."

"Facebook's negligence and abdication of responsibility gave us no option but to take matters in our own hands," the JIDF added.

The JIDF would not specify what technological methods it used to gain access to the group, but said it succeeded in doing so after the old administrators left.

"Ultimately, it was a result of our enemies' stupidity and our timing, persistence and determination more than anything else," David said.

The JIDF received a response from Facebook, he said, which called the anti-Israel group "legitimate political discourse." Facebook was not available for comment.

At the height of the two-year-old anti-Israel group's popularity, the "Israel is not a country" page had 48,000 members. Currently, there are 24,039 members, with the numbers decreasing by the minute due to the JIDF's actions. It has also changed the group's administrator titles to read "Mossad Zionist."

There are dozens of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic groups on Facebook, the popular social-networking site that has surpassed all other similar sites on-line in popularity, according to tech surveys.

According to Andre Oboler, a post-doctoral fellow in Bar-Ilan University's political science department and a Legacy Heritage Fellow at the NGO Monitor watchdog group, Facebook has known about the anti-Israel group for more than a year, and made no effort to remove it.

"[The JIDF] gained control of the group without compromising Facebook's security," Oboler said. "What they have done... is taken away the hate that was spreading through [the group's] membership. It's a shame that Facebook themselves did not remove it. It has taken a lot of effort from [the JIDF], while it would have taken Facebook one click."

The JIDF said its efforts are not limited to Facebook, but extend to anti-Semitism and anti-Israel posts found throughout the Internet, including on sites such as Google, Google Earth, YouTube and Wikipedia.

"Hateful propaganda and ideology like this has always prefaced great tragedy for our people," David said. "Ultimately, we see this as a great danger."