The Forward • 23rd December 2021

Meet Angelina Muñiz Huberman, a Mexican writer whose novels explore Sephardic history and crypto-Judaism

MEXICO CITY (JTA) — When Angelina Muñiz Huberman was six years old, her mother shut the main door of their apartment in Mexico City and, whispering as if under persecution, told her that she descended from Jews.

“She told me that if I ever needed to get recognized by other fellow Jews,” Huberman said, “I should make the sign of the Kohanim” — a hand gesture representing an ancient priestly blessing, made famous in a different context by a certain “Star Trek” character.

That moment sparked a ke

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 23rd November 2021

Chile’s Jews feel under ‘siege’ from anti-Israel sentiment, so they’re backing a far-right presidential candidate

(JTA) — Sunday’s presidential primaries in Chile narrowed the race down to two polar opposite candidates: a Catholic far-right leader with nine children who has defended the iron-fisted rule of Augusto Pinochet, and a 35-year-old leftist leader who represents a years-long protest movement calling for a new Chilean constitution.

For many Chilean Jews, the choice is clear, if wildly divergent from the way Jews vote in the United States: Most are backing the right-wing candidate, José Antonio Kast

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 2nd July 2021

These Jewish activists work as translators for migrants to fight 'language violence'

(JTA) — In 2018, a caravan of Central American migrants approached the United States through Mexico, stoking both fears and compassion.

Ariel Koren, an interpreter who was translating for separated families near the U.S.-Mexico border at the time, saw a bureaucracy intent on discouraging immigration by making the process nearly impossible for non-English speakers. She called it “language violence.”

The 25-year-old, who was living in Mexico City, had taken time away from her job working for Goo

Tablet Magazine • 22nd June 2021

Nomads United

Craving unbridled freedom after finishing their military service, some Israelis are joining horse caravans through the wilderness of South America

Tablet Magazine • 5th May 2021

The Polish Museum of Puerto Vallarta

The Mexican beach town is the unexpected home to one of the world’s finest post-WWII Polish poster collections, curated by a Jewish expat from Brooklyn

Jewish Review of Books • 5th May 2021

Forging an Identity

In a 1949 letter to an old family acquaintance in Istanbul, a man called Mauricio Fresco described his latest book project, a work titled Forge Your Own Passport, in which he sought to “prove the stupidity of passports, visas, nationalities, races, etc.” It was an odd project, particularly for a man who had spent eighteen years in the Mexican diplomatic corps, stationed in places as far afield as Shanghai, Bordeaux, Lisbon, and Nazi-occupied Paris. But it was precisely these experiences advocati

The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com • 13th October 2020

United by the Deportivo, Mexico's Jews were separated by coronavirus

It houses, among other things, a full-size Olympic swimming pool, another 25-meter covered pool, dozens of tennis courts, multiple basketball courts, fronton courts (for playing Basque pelota sports), other paddle courts, a 200-person theater, two full-sized soccer fields, a baseball field, men and women’s saunas, a Yiddish and Hebrew library, a hair salon and a restaurant.

On a recent visit, the normally filled premises were eerily quiet. The restaurant — in pre-COVID times packed with childre

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 18th March 2020

He wanted to encapsulate Beijing's Jewish community in a Passover Haggadah. The coronavirus complicated that.

(JTA) — Unlike Shanghai or Hong Kong, which received Jews fleeing from World War II, Beijing does not have a robust Jewish history.

In the words of Joshua Kurtzig, former president of the Reform congregation there, the massive Chinese capital is a “very transient city,” especially for Jews — meaning that many pass through without putting down generations of roots.

Some 1,000 Jews now live in Beijing among its 20 million residents, and the congregation, Kehillat Beijing, has no permanent clergy

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 17th December 2019

Colombia's Day of the Little Candles looks an awful lot like Hanukkah

(JTA) — Jews in Colombia preparing for Hanukkah saw something earlier this month that no doubt looked very familiar.

On the night of Dec. 7, streets, plazas, windows and porches across the country were lit by thousands of candles in honor of Dia de las Velitas (Day of the Little Candles), a cherished holiday in the Latin American country that officially marks the beginning of the Christmas season.

The holiday dates back to 1854, when Pope Pius defined the immaculate conception to be Catholic d

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 4th November 2019

Mexican-Jewish artist Aliza Nisenbaum on her colorful portraits of 'the other' in society

(JTA) — Mexican-Jewish artist Aliza Nisenbaum sees a failure to communicate in the modern world — and her work as a way to counteract the dilemma.

“The problem today is that we are not sitting with real people, face to face, we are shouting to each other on social media,” Nisenbaum says.

She looks to fight this cultural tendency through her paintings, whose intense, sensuous color forces the viewer to inhale the humanity of her subjects.

Influenced by the work of Jewish philosopher Emmanuel L

America's Quarterly • 31st October 2019

From Cuba to Chile, a Journey through Jewish Latin America

This article is adapted from AQ's latest issue on the politics of water in Latin America

Taken together, Latin America is home to the third largest Jewish diaspora group in the world, behind the United States and France. But as Mexican-born essayist and linguist Ilan Stavans notes in The Seventh Heaven: Travels Through Jewish Latin America, the story of Jews in the region can’t be told in one fell swoop. Every country has something different to say.

Stavans’ book is the result of five years of

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 24th October 2019

A new book takes readers on a journey through Jewish Latin America

MEXICO CITY (JTA) —More than 10 years ago, Ilan Stavans scandalized language purists of the Spanish-speaking world by translating a chapter of “Don Quixote” — into Spanglish.

Since then, the so-called czar of Latino culture has become one of the most important interlocutors for Hispanics in the United States.

In his latest book, “The Seventh Heaven,” published earlier this month, the Mexico-born Stavans shares a travelogue of a trip through Jewish Latin America, a topic on which he has emerged

The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com • 20th October 2019

Argentinian Jews are split over de Kirchner's political comeback

Argentines head to the polls for the final round of presidential elections later this month. The two candidates are the incumbent, Mauricio Macri — the first conservative elected in the South American nation in several decades — and Alberto Fernandez, a left-wing populist.

Things are not looking good for Macri — in the first round of voting, Fernandez won 47 percent to Macri’s 32 percent.

The challenger brings a recognizable name to his ticket: Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina’s presi

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 16th July 2019

Rescued twice: The archive that survived the Holocaust and the AMIA attack

(JTA) — Abraham Lichtenbaum was getting ready to leave his house on July 18, 1994 when, at 9:53 a.m., he heard an explosion: The headquarters of Argentina’s 200,000-strong Jewish community, the AMIA, located less than four miles from his home, had been bombed.

Eighty-five people died and 300 were injured in what has become Argentina’s biggest terror attack. Lichtenbaum worked in the building and typically arrived there at 9 a.m. But he had been up the night before recording a weekly radio show

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 26th June 2019

Barcelona's oldest house is now a Jewish cultural center

BARCELONA, Spain (JTA) — Tucked away in one of the narrow streets of this city’s El Call neighborhood, a former Jewish ghetto that these days house upscale shops and restaurants, sits the oldest residential house in Barcelona — a nondescript white stone building full of history.

The house was owned originally by Astruch Adret, a Jewish businessman who was forced to sell the property and convert to Catholicism in 1391, when Jews were savagely murdered after being accused of causing the Black Pla

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 29th January 2019

Roma, the Mexico City setting of Alfonso Cuaron's Oscar frontrunner, used to be a Jewish neighborhood

MEXICO CITY (JTA) — Alfonso Cuaron’s film “Roma” has already won two Golden Globes, and many think it will be the first Netflix film to win the Oscar for best picture. The film is set in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City — where Cuaron grew up — and follows a well-off family and its beloved housekeeper, as they navigate life there in the 1970s, a politically fraught time for the country and the city.

Not mentioned in Cuaron’s autobiographical film is that in past decades Roma used to be an i

The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com • 18th December 2018

Mexico City's Jewish mayor prefers to stick to policy, not religion

Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analyses from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 6th December 2018

Mexico City’s Jewish mayor wants to be identified by her policies, not her ethnicity

MEXICO CITY (JTA) — It was during her ultimately successful campaign for Mexico City mayor that Claudia Sheinbaum made a reference to her Jewish heritage. Speaking before a group of Jewish women, she said she was proud of those origins.

“We celebrated all the holidays at my grandparents’ house,” she recalled.

For Sheinbaum, the capital city’s first elected Jewish and female mayor, the reference to her Jewishness was rare. Like many other liberal, secular Jewish politicians around the world, Sh

Jewish Renaissance • 1st November 2018

Secret villages, scuba diving and religious spats: life outside the capital

Of the 50,000 Jews in Mexico, most are based in Mexico City. But there are groups– some in remote or desert locations – scattered elsewhere. Alan Grabinksy meets the inhabitants of these small communities.

Tablet Magazine • 4th May 2018

A Family History of Mer-Kup, a Modernist Hub in Mexico City

In 1961, a Polish-Jewish woman opened a small gallery in Polanco, a middle-class neighborhood in Mexico City. Over the following decade, the space became a cultural force, hosting solo and collective exhibitions by artists like Mathias Goeritz, Sebastián, and José Luis Cuevas.

That woman, Merl Kuper, immigrated to Mexico from Poland in the 1930s. She was my great-grandmother. Her daughter, my grandmother Alinka, worked in the gallery as well. After they died, our home, my mother’s studio, and m

Tablet Magazine • 9th November 2017

The Ghost Architect of Vienna

Vienna is a city of ghost-buildings: 180,000 Jews lived in the Austrian capital before World War II; the infrastructure that served them is long gone. The Hakoah Sports Center, with its famous soccer fields, was seized in 1938. The iconic Leopoldstadt Synagogue, which seated 3,000 members, was destroyed by the Nazis during the November pogrom.

Of the 80 synagogues and temples in use before the Nazi’s rule over Vienna, the Stadttempel is the only one that survived. Now the central religious inst

Tablet Magazine • 1st November 2017

Tour Guide Monica Unikel Preserves Mexico City’s Jewish History

To mark Day of the Dead on Nov. 1, thousands of Mexican families will flock to the Pantheon of Dolores, one of Mexico City’s biggest cemeteries, to light candles, play mariachi songs, and eat food on the graves of their dead relatives. Right across the street, in the smaller Ashkenazi cemetery, Monica Unikel will be leading an exclusive tour to make up for the lack of Jewish-Mexican rituals to mark the day. Unlike most Mexicans, Jews in Mexico don’t set up altars to their deceased ancestors or v

Roads & Kingdoms • 4th October 2017

Where to Eat Kosher in Mexico City

La Muertita—the Little Dead Woman—sets up her quesadilla stall every evening on a busy commercial thoroughfare called Prolongación in the hilly neighborhood of Bosques de Reforma on the western outskirts of Mexico City. She and her staff of eight drive 90 minutes across the largest metropolis in the western hemisphere to get here by 5:30 p.m. and set up her tent, tables, chairs and cooking station with military efficiency.

La Muertita repeats this ritual every evening of the week. Every evening

Jewish Telegraphic Agency • 28th September 2017

In Mexico City, this Jewish NGO is the go-to agency for earthquake relief

MEXICO CITY (JTA) — I was on the 11th floor of an office building here when the ground started moving. There had been a mock evacuation that same day in remembrance of the 1985 earthquake that killed more than 10,000 people, but this was no drill.

According to protocol, everyone ran toward the building’s columns — structurally the safest place to be in an earthquake. I closed my eyes as the rumbling worsened, focusing on my breath and hugging the concrete structure as ceiling lamps came down, b