Kesher Talk

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

Around the Jewish World: Reports from The Jewish Week, JTA, and the Christian Science Monitor...

Gabbing in Golders Green: "There are now 210,00 Jews in London — 300,000 in all of Great Britain — widely spread throughout the metropolis."

Take My Yiddish, Please: Yiddish "is spoken by fewer than 1 million people in the world. It is not an official state language in any nation. And it carries a reputation as the vernacular of poor illiterate villagers." And yet, scholars won't let it die. Lithuania is home to the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, which runs summer programs in the language.

Synagogue building delayed in Azerbaijan: "The Ashkenazi Jewish community of Baku [capital of Azerbaijan] originally hoped that its new synagogue would be ready in time for Rosh Hashanah. Now they hope it will be ready in time for Chanukah." It seems money woes are scuttling this project which would serve the city's 10,000 Jews.

Fasting amidst starvation: While Jews around the world were observing Yom Kippur, Jews in Zimbabwe were already starving thanks to their lunatic dictator Mugabe.

Jewish communities dwindle in North Africa: Growing anti-Semitism and poor economic prospects are threatening to extinguish two Jewish communities on the North African coast. After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, a small number of Jews escaped across the Strait of Gibraltar to two fortress cities that Spanish kings were establishing as beachheads in North Africa. Despite the Inquisition on the Iberian mainland, the Jewish inhabitants of Ceuta and Melilla largely were left alone for the next five centuries. They were joined by other Sephardic Jews over the centuries. Their descendants now are leaving the enclaves, which are surrounded by Moroccan territory, and returning to Spain.

Croatian Jews either not practicing or don't want to admit it: Croatia’s recently issued census for 2001 appeared to indicate that some of the nation’s Jews are unwilling to admit their background. "The census indicated that 576 people described themselves as Jews “by ethnicity,” but only 475 described their religion as Judaism. Given that there are 2,000 registered members of Croatia’s nine organized Jewish communities, the results showed there were many people who sought another self-description."