Jewish Mestizo (original) (raw)

Will Non-White Jews Find Spouses	Apr. 23rd, 2009 @ 08:59 am

missniceness

This article took my breath away -- it was so dead on. It mainly focuses on the Orthodox Jewish community; but definitely something that all Jews should be aware of.( Read the full article here Collapse )Written by Shoshana Kordova. Available online hereCurrent Location: Belle Vernon, PACurrent Mood:

frustrated Tags: black jews, japan, orthodox judaism, shidduchim, wedding (4 comments | Leave a comment)

an amazing book i need to recommend - Ace of Spades by David Matthews	Apr. 12th, 2009 @ 06:26 pm

movehalfaninch

this is my first posting. hello! my name is sarah, and i'm half black half jewish. my mother is jewish.A friend of mine recommended a book called 'Ace of Spades' by David Matthews (you can find it here: http://tr.im/iGsu), and I love it so much. I'm half way through it and I can't believe how great this book is. It's so funny and personable. There are moments where I have to put the book down and just burst out laughing. But wow, is it well written! David Matthews is poetic with his words. Truly astounding. Here's a brief description from The New Yorker:The son of a Zionist white mother and a Malcolm X-admiring black father, Matthews, in this memoir, is a boy without a race in a city, Baltimore, that requires him to choose one. The story of racial pinball is not entirely unfamiliar: the black kids reject him as too light-skinned, the whites as too broad-nosed. But Matthews displays improvisational verve—blacks are "burnished" and "browned butter," and whites are anything from "alabaster" to "a puffy marshmallow in Baltimore’s steaming cup of cocoa"—and narrates with the vigor of a movie script. Indeed, it is on television that, as a child, he finds the clarity he yearns for. "I was a living contradiction of elements that shouldn’t have been," he writes at one point, whereas on TV "everything was black, or white, and a lot like life."Really, i can't recommend this book more! I love it! Have you read it?(Leave a comment)

A Kaifeng Jewish woman gets married in Jerusalem	Oct. 6th, 2008 @ 11:00 pm

missniceness	A nice short from YouTube; it is in Hebrew, but worth watching, even if you do not know Hebrew.Current Location: Clairton, PACurrent Mood: restless Tags: jerusalem, jews of kaifeng (Leave a comment)

Should Israel Absorb the Remaining Falash Mura?	Aug. 31st, 2008 @ 09:02 pm

missniceness

The 125,000 Ethiopians who live in Israel immigrated here in dribs and drabs.When Ethiopians first started coming to Israel in the 1970s, some members of Israel's political elite referred to us as "temporary migrant workers."Things began to change only during the waves of aliyah in the 1980s, under Menachem Begin's Likud government. The biggest of all was Operation Moses, a dramatic operation that cost many lives.Thousands wandered in the dark of night in deserts and forests to fulfill the dream their forefathers harbored for 2,000 years in the Horn of Africa. One-third of those who embarked on the journey never reached the land of promise.By 1991, when Operation Solomon brought the "remnant of Ethiopian Jewry" to Israel in an astounding 36-hour airlift that saw thousands of new immigrants, our cause had elicited unprecedented support in Israel and around the world. With that, our Diaspora ended. There were no more Jews in Ethiopia. All who kept their faith in the Land of Israel and in the Jewish faith were able to come to Israel.Those in Ethiopia today who claim to be part of the community are a collection of people looking for handouts trying to pass themselves off as Jews forced to forsake their Jewish faith.There is no greater lie than theirs.Advocates claim that they are the descendants of Jews who forcibly converted to Christianity. This is nonsense.It's true that in the early years of the Falash Mura aliyah, in the 1990s, there were families petitioning to come to Israel whose ancestors had converted to Christianity generations ago and whom we knew well. Though many of us felt ambivalent about these distant cousins whose grandparents had abandoned Judaism, we knew who they were and, in many cases, welcomed them to Israel.But those who are petitioning to come today are different. They have no ties to Judaism or to the Jewish community. They are Christians who want to better their economic situations, and are therefore embracing the trappings of Judaism.What do they have in common with us?The answer lies not with them, but with hypocritical American Jews who see the Judaism for which many of my fellow countrymen gave their lives as little more than a way to score more fundraising successes. This is why some American Jewish organizations are coercing Israel to bring out-and-out Christians masquerading as Jews.Above all, this is a tragedy for the Ethiopian Jewish community.The entire essence of our existence, and our dignity as black Jews in Israel, is encapsulated in one thing: our Jewishness. We have no common denominator with Israeli society; we have no logical connection to native Israelis other than this. This connection is our umbilical cord from earlier times. It is our pride at preserving the fragments of our Jewish faith in the African Diaspora.Bringing masses of Christian Ethiopians to Israel impugns our Jewishness.Israelis now confuse us with those who pray at the Ethiopian Orthodox church in Jerusalem's Old City. If Christians pretending to be Jews continue to come to Israel, the real Ethiopian Jews will find themselves the subject of Israeli derision.Calling these Falash Mura Jews insults the real Jews who marched through the deserts of Sudan out of blind faith and were willing to sacrifice their lives for their religious beliefs.Furthermore, comparing this Christian aliyah with the many non-Jewish Russian immigrants who have come to Israel is misplaced and disingenuous. Soviet Jews did not choose to assimilate; the reality of their circumstances made that choice for them.As Ethiopian Jews, the right thing to do given the circumstances is to accept as part of our community the thousands of Falash Mura who have already come to Israel. At the very least, they chose to come here and be a part of our people.But we must not continue to bring them. We must stop this immigration before it is too late.If meddling American Jews want them so badly, vast America is big enough for them. Take them yourselves, take them. It will be good for us -- and it will be good for you!Danny Adeno Abebe, a journalist for Yediot Achronot, made aliyah to Israel in Operation Moses in 1984. Originally published hereCurrent Location: Clairton, PACurrent Mood: good

goodCurrent Music: Going In Circles ~ Isaac Hayes Tags: ethiopian jews, falash mura, israel (1 comment | Leave a comment)

More blacks explore Judaism	Jul. 17th, 2008 @ 08:54 pm

missniceness

Conversions to Judaism among African-Americans are growing in a way that could affect the presidential election.Atlanta - Like many of the growing numbers of Protestant blacks in America and Africa converting to Judaism, Elisheva Chaim grew up believing she had a "Jewish soul." As a black woman and a Baptist in the South, that was a peculiar, somewhat troubling realization. But when she turned her doubts about Christianity into a search for answers, the truth became evident: She had to go deeper than the Old Testament. She had to convert. "It's odd to see black people convert to Judaism, and even Jewish people look at me strangely, I'm not going to lie," says Ms. Chaim "But once everybody sees that I can recite the prayers in Hebrew, their attitudes change." Though primarily an intensely personal journey, the black conversion movement comes at an important time for Afro-Judaic relations in the US. Sen. Barack Obama is lighting up connections to the black-Jewish alliance of the 1960s while at the same time trying to calm Jewish fears over his Muslim middle name and ties to pro-Palestinian activists. This could have critical implications in key states with large Jewish populations such as Florida and Pennsylvania. ( Read more...Collapse )Originally posted in The Christian Science MonitorCurrent Location: Clairton, PACurrent Mood: full

fullCurrent Music: Kanye West ~ The Glory Tags: african american, barack obama, converts (7 comments | Leave a comment)

Other entries

» First OSU Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies a Trailblazer in Field
Jennifer Hambrick :: The New Standard ::Colleen McCallum-Bonar may be the first African-American ever to receive a Ph.D. in Yiddish literature when she marches in Ohio State University’s spring commencement this month. She believes she is the only African-American scholar currently active in Yiddish literature studies. “I can count on one hand the other African-Americans doing Yiddish: none,” McCallum-Bonar said. “Maybe there are some others out there and maybe we just haven't crossed paths, but I don’t know any.”McCallum-Bonar, 41, is the first student to complete a Ph.D. in Yiddish and Ashkenazic studies in OSU’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Her doctoral dissertation, “Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance,” compares the Yiddish-language poetry of Jewish immigrants to America and the poetry of African-American writers between 1915 and 1935.“I looked at the different kinds of representations of African-Americans in Yiddish poetry, but also at what Harlem Renaissance authors were writing about Jews during the same time period,” McCallum-Bonar said.Emily Budick, professor of American literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and author of “Blacks and Jews in Literary Conversation,” says McCallum-Bonar’s field of specialization is unique. “I don’t know of anybody who’s talked about the connection of Yiddish literature and African-American literature,” Budick said. “American Jewish literature and African-American literature have been talked about together, but in the tradition of American Jewish writing, it’s been only recently that people have included Yiddish literature in the category of American Jewish writing.”Many of the Yiddish language writings McCallum-Bonar researched expressed how European immigrants processed new experiences in a new land. “They’re writing about their experiences in America, and that American experience includes African-Americans,” McCallum-Bonar said. “It makes sense that they would write about African-Americans because that would be part of their new experience in the New World.”Yiddish-language and black writings McCullum is comparing emerged against the backdrop of early 20th-century Harlem, a place far more racially-diverse than many imagine Harlem to be today. According to the Jewish Communal Register, a census of the time, Harlem was home to 178,000 Jews in the 1920s. The Register calculated that the community to contained the third largest Jewish population in the world.Some of the themes that recur in the Yiddish-language writings of authors of the period, such as Jacob Glatstein and Leivick Halpern, include the idea that African-Americans and Jews in America have a mutual understanding of their histories of oppression at the hands of a white majority.“Authors say that blacks are our brothers in arms essentially, that we have this kind of shared experience in terms of being in the U.S., being poor in the U.S., being minorities in the U.S. and being mistreated in the U.S.,” McCallum-Bonar said.Side-by-side black and Jewish writers in Harlem also grappled with how to live in a predominantly white society that viewed their minority group with suspicion. African-Americans, including Marcus Garvey, looked to Jews in America for a model to establish a self-sufficient black community, she said. At the same time, Jews saw how American-born blacks were treated by their white countrymen, and struggled to come to terms with the role of race in American life.Race issues have, of course, by no means been eliminated from American culture. Although studying certain ethnic groups in America may shed light on their histories, Budick also warns that it runs the risk of further fragmenting American society.“America consists of communities,” Budick said. “What the communities share and what they have to take on as an obligation is that they’re American communities. In the end, the bid for power that goes along with ethnic identification destroys the possibility of American identity, at a cost to the United States. I think the dominance of something called American culture on all of these communities is something that shouldn’t be dismissed as insignificant.”McCallum-Bonar has felt all too plainly the racial divide that exists even today between the black and Jewish worlds. “You know the saying ‘Siz schwer tzu zein ein Yid?’—It’s difficult to be a Jew? It’s difficult to be a black woman studying Yiddish. There are people I’ve come across who look at me with suspicion, or will have absolutely nothing to do with me,” McCallum-Bonar said.Though she says OSU’s Germanic Languages and Literatures department and Melton Center for Jewish Studies have given her “nothing but support,” McCallum-Bonar says she is often excluded from informal gatherings of Yiddishists at academic conferences and programs beyond Ohio State’s campus. She says she first realized her “outsider” status while attending the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies in Oxford, England, one summer while completing her graduate work at Ohio State. A large group had been invited to have dinner, but she and other non-Jewish students had been excluded.Usually, she says, her colleagues include her at events. But when they don’t, McCallum-Bonar suspects difficulties in negotiating cultural differences are to blame.“Not being Jewish, and then being black on top of that, maybe it is too much of an oddity,” McCallum-Bonar said.As an undergraduate at the University of California-Riverside, she studied German and Russian and became interested in Yiddish and Austrian dialect. McCallum-Bonar met Neil Jacobs, a Yiddish linguist at Ohio State, at a conference and came to Ohio State initially to work on Yiddish linguistics. She learned to read Yiddish at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies the summer before starting her graduate work at OSU, where she fell in love with Yiddish language and literature poetry courses. “I enjoy what I do, and I think that Yiddish literature is interesting,” McCallum-Bonar said.”If I didn’t enjoy it, I’d be gone because it hasn’t been the friendliest place.”Jul. 14th, 2008 @ 08:11 am(2 comments \| Leave a comment)

» First OSU Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies a Trailblazer in Field

Jennifer Hambrick :: The New Standard ::Colleen McCallum-Bonar may be the first African-American ever to receive a Ph.D. in Yiddish literature when she marches in Ohio State University’s spring commencement this month. She believes she is the only African-American scholar currently active in Yiddish literature studies. “I can count on one hand the other African-Americans doing Yiddish: none,” McCallum-Bonar said. “Maybe there are some others out there and maybe we just haven't crossed paths, but I don’t know any.”McCallum-Bonar, 41, is the first student to complete a Ph.D. in Yiddish and Ashkenazic studies in OSU’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. Her doctoral dissertation, “Black Ashkenaz and the Almost Promised Land: Yiddish Literature and the Harlem Renaissance,” compares the Yiddish-language poetry of Jewish immigrants to America and the poetry of African-American writers between 1915 and 1935.“I looked at the different kinds of representations of African-Americans in Yiddish poetry, but also at what Harlem Renaissance authors were writing about Jews during the same time period,” McCallum-Bonar said.Emily Budick, professor of American literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and author of “Blacks and Jews in Literary Conversation,” says McCallum-Bonar’s field of specialization is unique. “I don’t know of anybody who’s talked about the connection of Yiddish literature and African-American literature,” Budick said. “American Jewish literature and African-American literature have been talked about together, but in the tradition of American Jewish writing, it’s been only recently that people have included Yiddish literature in the category of American Jewish writing.”Many of the Yiddish language writings McCallum-Bonar researched expressed how European immigrants processed new experiences in a new land. “They’re writing about their experiences in America, and that American experience includes African-Americans,” McCallum-Bonar said. “It makes sense that they would write about African-Americans because that would be part of their new experience in the New World.”Yiddish-language and black writings McCullum is comparing emerged against the backdrop of early 20th-century Harlem, a place far more racially-diverse than many imagine Harlem to be today. According to the Jewish Communal Register, a census of the time, Harlem was home to 178,000 Jews in the 1920s. The Register calculated that the community to contained the third largest Jewish population in the world.Some of the themes that recur in the Yiddish-language writings of authors of the period, such as Jacob Glatstein and Leivick Halpern, include the idea that African-Americans and Jews in America have a mutual understanding of their histories of oppression at the hands of a white majority.“Authors say that blacks are our brothers in arms essentially, that we have this kind of shared experience in terms of being in the U.S., being poor in the U.S., being minorities in the U.S. and being mistreated in the U.S.,” McCallum-Bonar said.Side-by-side black and Jewish writers in Harlem also grappled with how to live in a predominantly white society that viewed their minority group with suspicion. African-Americans, including Marcus Garvey, looked to Jews in America for a model to establish a self-sufficient black community, she said. At the same time, Jews saw how American-born blacks were treated by their white countrymen, and struggled to come to terms with the role of race in American life.Race issues have, of course, by no means been eliminated from American culture. Although studying certain ethnic groups in America may shed light on their histories, Budick also warns that it runs the risk of further fragmenting American society.“America consists of communities,” Budick said. “What the communities share and what they have to take on as an obligation is that they’re American communities. In the end, the bid for power that goes along with ethnic identification destroys the possibility of American identity, at a cost to the United States. I think the dominance of something called American culture on all of these communities is something that shouldn’t be dismissed as insignificant.”McCallum-Bonar has felt all too plainly the racial divide that exists even today between the black and Jewish worlds. “You know the saying ‘Siz schwer tzu zein ein Yid?’—It’s difficult to be a Jew? It’s difficult to be a black woman studying Yiddish. There are people I’ve come across who look at me with suspicion, or will have absolutely nothing to do with me,” McCallum-Bonar said.Though she says OSU’s Germanic Languages and Literatures department and Melton Center for Jewish Studies have given her “nothing but support,” McCallum-Bonar says she is often excluded from informal gatherings of Yiddishists at academic conferences and programs beyond Ohio State’s campus. She says she first realized her “outsider” status while attending the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies in Oxford, England, one summer while completing her graduate work at Ohio State. A large group had been invited to have dinner, but she and other non-Jewish students had been excluded.Usually, she says, her colleagues include her at events. But when they don’t, McCallum-Bonar suspects difficulties in negotiating cultural differences are to blame.“Not being Jewish, and then being black on top of that, maybe it is too much of an oddity,” McCallum-Bonar said.As an undergraduate at the University of California-Riverside, she studied German and Russian and became interested in Yiddish and Austrian dialect. McCallum-Bonar met Neil Jacobs, a Yiddish linguist at Ohio State, at a conference and came to Ohio State initially to work on Yiddish linguistics. She learned to read Yiddish at the Oxford Institute for Yiddish Studies the summer before starting her graduate work at OSU, where she fell in love with Yiddish language and literature poetry courses. “I enjoy what I do, and I think that Yiddish literature is interesting,” McCallum-Bonar said.”If I didn’t enjoy it, I’d be gone because it hasn’t been the friendliest place.”Jul. 14th, 2008 @ 08:11 am(2 comments | Leave a comment)

» seek couples willing to be interviewed and photographed for a book
( Read more...Collapse )May. 8th, 2007 @ 07:03 pm(Leave a comment)

» (No Subject)
Hey everyone. I hope you dont mind if I do a little community promotion. I made a new community called jewish_music for appreciators of all types of jewish music. take a look :)May. 3rd, 2007 @ 10:03 pm(Leave a comment)

» (No Subject)
Esti Mamo is exquisitely beautiful, with cocoa-colored skin, enormous almond-shaped eyes and full, shapely lips. She has poise and presence, and as she strides into the Tel Aviv Hilton wearing the de rigueur belted trench coat, it's inevitable that faces turn.Mamo, 23, is Israel's first Ethiopian-Israeli model. And after several years on the Israeli modeling circuit, she has high hopes for strutting on the global catwalk.Discovered by a modeling agent when she was 16 while shopping with a girlfriend in Tel Aviv, Mamo insisted on waiting until she was 18 to take her first job - an advertising campaign for Pepsi Cola in Israel. She then moved on to the prestigious Image Model Management agency, and began modeling regularly for Israeli clothing chains Castro, Renaur, Kenvelo and Diesel.It all felt very natural to Mamo, who despite her simple beginnings in an Ethiopian village, was always the type of kid to prance around on imaginary high heels. As a teenager, she spent many hours preening and primping with her friends, and during high school, created a dance group that performed in local clubs."It's in the genes," says Mamo, explaining her looks and her self-awareness. "I always paid attention to what I looked like, but I always critiqued myself as well, I was deeply involved in the whole process."Yet it's taken a while for her to get to where she is now. Mamo came to Israel with her family on Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift of Ethiopian Jews. Originally from Chila, a small farming village in Ethiopia, her family spent two years in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa before leaving when Mamo was nine years old.When the Mamo family first came to Israel, they were placed in the seaside town of Michmoret, and then moved to Kiryat Malachi, where Mamo's grandmother was already living. Like many traditionally observant Ethiopian Jews, the Mamos had always thought of Israel as the 'Holy Land', says Mamo, a place full of God-fearing, religiously aware Jews.Modern Israel, says Mamo, with a lift of her perfectly shaped eyebrows, is a very different bargain.Like many other Ethiopian families in Israel, the Mamo family's aliyah and absorption has not been easy. For Mamo, the difficulties faced by her family came to a head in 2004 when her younger brother committed suicide."I don't like to talk about it, because it's very painful," she told ISRAEL21c. "No aliyah is easy, and none of the aliyot to Israel by any of the other groups - Yemenite, Moroccan, Polish - have been easy. People don't know how to accept the differences of others. They need to feel love for other kinds of people."Mamo, however, does feel that her story of achievement holds out hope for other Ethiopians that they too will find satisfaction and success in their personal and professional lives."I don't forget what happened to me," she insists. "I'm part of the Ethiopian tribe, and they are part of me. That's why I feel that given my work, I can present myself as an example, as an Ethiopian and an Israeli and a Jew, and offer pride and satisfaction in who I am."Mamo has often given talks at schools and local community organizations, what she calls "small things" that she's happy to do in order to show others that they also can make something out of their lives.But while Mamo is happy to have 'made it' in Israel, she is working hard to expand her work beyond advertisements and catalogs to the fashion spreads and pages of major magazines such as Vogue, Elle and W. In fact, her goal is to land a campaign with one of the cosmetics empires, such as Estee Lauder or Chanel."I don't have a problem doing fashion, but I think I fit better with cosmetics and beauty products," she said. "Because I'm a woman of color, I speak for everyone, I'm global."Mamo often finds that Europeans can recognize her as an Ethiopian, and New Yorkers are sometimes familiar with her delicate, Ethiopian features. But more often than not, people are not aware of what is it to be an Ethiopian Jew, or the story of Ethiopian Israelis and the long, arduous journey they have taken.During her increasingly frequent travels around the world, Mamo tries to keep herself grounded by being in regular contact with Ethiopian and Israeli friends living outside of Israel, not, she says, living the typical model lifestyle.According to photographers and stylists who have worked with her, Mamo appears to have both the looks and the drive necessary to make it in the world of modeling."In the last few years since Esti opened the doors, the general taste of the fashion world has expanded to embrace models of all colors," supermodel photographer Avi Harel said in a recent interview with JTA. "Today, it's a normal part of Israeli culture.""It's a process, you have to build up your exposure," says Mamo of her modeling career. "I love the work and I'm always looking to improve what I do, always curious to see the photos during a shoot, to see and be responsible for what we're creating."Mamo is clearly a woman who knows what she wants, and what she likes. While she's not a "fashion victim," she says, and tends to shun brand names, she still confesses a love of Chanel and buys much of her clothing from Spanish fashion chain Zara.She can eat what she wants, and loves lamb in particular, but doesn't crave junk food. When she wants to be domestic, she'll clean her entire Tel Aviv apartment, but prefers to stay away from the kitchen. She is fiercely protective of her independence and her ability to make her own decisions, but is inordinately close to and proud of her family."People call me a lucky girl," she said with a laugh. "And I do feel that things that I've wanted to happen, have happened. But once I've accomplished what I want to do, I'll come back to Israel and have a family of my own. My feet are always on the ground."_By Jessica Steinberg, November 29, 2006_May. 4th, 2007 @ 09:53 pm(Leave a comment)

» (No Subject)

Esti Mamo is exquisitely beautiful, with cocoa-colored skin, enormous almond-shaped eyes and full, shapely lips. She has poise and presence, and as she strides into the Tel Aviv Hilton wearing the de rigueur belted trench coat, it's inevitable that faces turn.Mamo, 23, is Israel's first Ethiopian-Israeli model. And after several years on the Israeli modeling circuit, she has high hopes for strutting on the global catwalk.Discovered by a modeling agent when she was 16 while shopping with a girlfriend in Tel Aviv, Mamo insisted on waiting until she was 18 to take her first job - an advertising campaign for Pepsi Cola in Israel. She then moved on to the prestigious Image Model Management agency, and began modeling regularly for Israeli clothing chains Castro, Renaur, Kenvelo and Diesel.It all felt very natural to Mamo, who despite her simple beginnings in an Ethiopian village, was always the type of kid to prance around on imaginary high heels. As a teenager, she spent many hours preening and primping with her friends, and during high school, created a dance group that performed in local clubs."It's in the genes," says Mamo, explaining her looks and her self-awareness. "I always paid attention to what I looked like, but I always critiqued myself as well, I was deeply involved in the whole process."Yet it's taken a while for her to get to where she is now. Mamo came to Israel with her family on Operation Solomon, the 1991 airlift of Ethiopian Jews. Originally from Chila, a small farming village in Ethiopia, her family spent two years in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Ababa before leaving when Mamo was nine years old.When the Mamo family first came to Israel, they were placed in the seaside town of Michmoret, and then moved to Kiryat Malachi, where Mamo's grandmother was already living. Like many traditionally observant Ethiopian Jews, the Mamos had always thought of Israel as the 'Holy Land', says Mamo, a place full of God-fearing, religiously aware Jews.Modern Israel, says Mamo, with a lift of her perfectly shaped eyebrows, is a very different bargain.Like many other Ethiopian families in Israel, the Mamo family's aliyah and absorption has not been easy. For Mamo, the difficulties faced by her family came to a head in 2004 when her younger brother committed suicide."I don't like to talk about it, because it's very painful," she told ISRAEL21c. "No aliyah is easy, and none of the aliyot to Israel by any of the other groups - Yemenite, Moroccan, Polish - have been easy. People don't know how to accept the differences of others. They need to feel love for other kinds of people."Mamo, however, does feel that her story of achievement holds out hope for other Ethiopians that they too will find satisfaction and success in their personal and professional lives."I don't forget what happened to me," she insists. "I'm part of the Ethiopian tribe, and they are part of me. That's why I feel that given my work, I can present myself as an example, as an Ethiopian and an Israeli and a Jew, and offer pride and satisfaction in who I am."Mamo has often given talks at schools and local community organizations, what she calls "small things" that she's happy to do in order to show others that they also can make something out of their lives.But while Mamo is happy to have 'made it' in Israel, she is working hard to expand her work beyond advertisements and catalogs to the fashion spreads and pages of major magazines such as Vogue, Elle and W. In fact, her goal is to land a campaign with one of the cosmetics empires, such as Estee Lauder or Chanel."I don't have a problem doing fashion, but I think I fit better with cosmetics and beauty products," she said. "Because I'm a woman of color, I speak for everyone, I'm global."Mamo often finds that Europeans can recognize her as an Ethiopian, and New Yorkers are sometimes familiar with her delicate, Ethiopian features. But more often than not, people are not aware of what is it to be an Ethiopian Jew, or the story of Ethiopian Israelis and the long, arduous journey they have taken.During her increasingly frequent travels around the world, Mamo tries to keep herself grounded by being in regular contact with Ethiopian and Israeli friends living outside of Israel, not, she says, living the typical model lifestyle.According to photographers and stylists who have worked with her, Mamo appears to have both the looks and the drive necessary to make it in the world of modeling."In the last few years since Esti opened the doors, the general taste of the fashion world has expanded to embrace models of all colors," supermodel photographer Avi Harel said in a recent interview with JTA. "Today, it's a normal part of Israeli culture.""It's a process, you have to build up your exposure," says Mamo of her modeling career. "I love the work and I'm always looking to improve what I do, always curious to see the photos during a shoot, to see and be responsible for what we're creating."Mamo is clearly a woman who knows what she wants, and what she likes. While she's not a "fashion victim," she says, and tends to shun brand names, she still confesses a love of Chanel and buys much of her clothing from Spanish fashion chain Zara.She can eat what she wants, and loves lamb in particular, but doesn't crave junk food. When she wants to be domestic, she'll clean her entire Tel Aviv apartment, but prefers to stay away from the kitchen. She is fiercely protective of her independence and her ability to make her own decisions, but is inordinately close to and proud of her family."People call me a lucky girl," she said with a laugh. "And I do feel that things that I've wanted to happen, have happened. But once I've accomplished what I want to do, I'll come back to Israel and have a family of my own. My feet are always on the ground."_By Jessica Steinberg, November 29, 2006_May. 4th, 2007 @ 09:53 pm(Leave a comment)

» Hitler's Forgotten Holocaust Victims
Like many West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in the late 1800s in what later became Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and Tanzania.German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German colonisation. After the crushing defeat Germany received in World War I, it was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the Rhineland - a bitter fought piece of land that has gone back and forth between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their own colonised African soldiers as the occupying force.Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards". When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children.Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it.Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory sterilisation program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo sterilisation as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic.Once he received his sterilisation certificate, he was "free to go", so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones.Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Lutwaffe pilots)!Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying.Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced into dangerous labour (violating the Geneva Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable-man the crematoriums and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted.As a final sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final Solution".In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved, shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill-conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was "No, you can't have my life; I will fight for it."According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine-Simms, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann - an organisation of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his home town of Dusseldorf - and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi sterilisation project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they were German-born). The only pension they get is from those of us who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for recognition and compensation.After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas ovens in Germany. We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.[Book available in our bookshop in Blacks & Nazi Germany]Originally posted on The Black Presence In Britain_x-posted on blackfolk*_Apr. 15th, 2007 @ 02:32 pm(2 comments \| Leave a comment)

» Hitler's Forgotten Holocaust Victims

Like many West European nations, Germany established colonies in Africa in the late 1800s in what later became Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, and Tanzania.German genetic experiments began there, most notably involving prisoners taken from the 1904 Heroro Massacre that left 60,000 Africans dead, following a 4-year revolt against German colonisation. After the crushing defeat Germany received in World War I, it was stripped of its African colonies in 1918.As a spoil of war, the French were allowed to occupy Germany in the Rhineland - a bitter fought piece of land that has gone back and forth between the two nations for centuries. The French willfully deployed their own colonised African soldiers as the occupying force.Germans viewed this as the final insult of World War I, and, soon thereafter, 92% of them voted in the Nazi party.Hundreds of the African Rhineland-based soldiers intermarried with German women and raised their children as Black Germans. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote about his plans for these "Rhineland Bastards". When he came to power, one of his first directives was aimed at these mixed-race children.Underscoring Hitler's obsession with racial purity, by 1937, every identified mixed-race child in the Rhineland had been forcibly sterilized, in order to prevent further "race polluting", as Hitler termed it.Hans Hauck, a Black Holocaust survivor and a victim of Hitler's mandatory sterilisation program, explained in the film "Hitler's Forgotten Victims" that, when he was forced to undergo sterilisation as a teenager, he was given no anaesthetic.Once he received his sterilisation certificate, he was "free to go", so long as he agreed to have no sexual relations whatsoever with Germans.Although most Black Germans attempted to escape their fatherland, heading for France where people like Josephine Baker were steadily aiding and supporting the French Underground, many still encountered problems elsewhere. Nations shut their doors to Germans, including the Black ones.Some Black Germans were able to eke out a living during Hitler's reign of terror by performing in Vaudeville shows, but many Blacks, steadfast in their belief that they were German first, Black second, opted to remain in Germany. Some fought with the Nazis (a few even became Lutwaffe pilots)!Unfortunately, many Black Germans were arrested, charged with treason, and shipped in cattle cars to concentration camps. Often these trains were so packed with people and (equipped with no bathroom facilities or food), that, after the four-day journey, box car doors were opened to piles of the dead and dying.Once inside the concentration camps, Blacks were given the worst jobs conceivable. Some Black American soldiers, who were captured and held as prisoners of war, recounted that, while they were being starved and forced into dangerous labour (violating the Geneva Convention), they were still better off than Black German concentration camp detainees, who were forced to do the unthinkable-man the crematoriums and work in labs where genetic experiments were being conducted.As a final sacrifice, these Blacks were killed every three months so that they would never be able to reveal the inner workings of the "Final Solution".In every story of Black oppression, no matter how we were enslaved, shackled, or beaten, we always found a way to survive and to rescue others. As a case in point, consider Johnny Voste, a Belgian resistance fighter who was arrested in 1942 for alleged sabotage and then shipped to Dachau. One of his jobs was stacking vitamin crates. Risking his own life, he distributed hundreds of vitamins to camp detainees, which saved the lives of many who were starving, weak, and ill-conditions exacerbated by extreme vitamin deficiencies. His motto was "No, you can't have my life; I will fight for it."According to Essex University's Delroy Constantine-Simms*, there were Black Germans who resisted Nazi Germany, such as Lari Gilges, who founded the Northwest Rann - an organisation of entertainers that fought the Nazis in his home town of Dusseldorf - and who was murdered by the SS in 1933, the year that Hitler came into power.Little information remains about the numbers of Black Germans held in the camps or killed under the Nazi regime. Some victims of the Nazi sterilisation project and Black survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and telling their story in films such as "Black Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust", but they must also speak out for justice, not just history.Unlike Jews (in Israel and in Germany), Black Germans receive no war reparations because their German citizenship was revoked (even though they were German-born). The only pension they get is from those of us who are willing to tell the world their stories and continue their battle for recognition and compensation.After the war, scores of Blacks who had somehow managed to survive the Nazi regime, were rounded up and tried as war criminals. Talk about the final insult! There are thousands of Black Holocaust stories, from the triangle trade, to slavery in America, to the gas ovens in Germany. We often shy away from hearing about our historical past because so much of it is painful; however, we are in this struggle together for rights, dignity, and, yes, reparations for wrongs done to us through the centuries. We need to always remember so that we can take steps to ensure that these atrocities never happen again.For further information, read: Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, by Hans J. Massaquoi.[Book available in our bookshop in Blacks & Nazi Germany]Originally posted on The Black Presence In Britain_x-posted on

blackfolk_Apr. 15th, 2007 @ 02:32 pm(2 comments | Leave a comment)