Fellow Latina Jewish artist Maya Escobar, who has been featured on this blog before, recognized her own when she decided to feature Vanessa Hidary, the Hebrew Mamita, on her own blog. The YouTube video below is the Jewess’s riff on “Ga Bless You Ma.” For those of you innocents, this is a common enough phrase slung… Continue reading Bless you!
I discovered a new blog, “Mixed Race America” and because of it three spoken word poets to rival Vanessa Hidary, the Hebrew Mamita (previously featured on this blog). First, check out Alix Olsen doing “America’s On Sale” below. If you’re curious for more, log onto to this recent post from the Mixed Race America blog,… Continue reading Attention Kmart Shoppers!
There is a short period during the year where my choice of dress code does not distinguish me from others. It’s usually that intersection between seasons, for instance, where many women are wearing skirts, long-sleeved shirts and maybe some (combat) boots. But as a friend recently noted on Facebook, it is not this season. My… Continue reading This is not a fashion show (except when it is)
I’m not very good at guarding my tongue which is probably why that part of the Shemoneh Esrei, the prayer Jews say three times a day, that focuses on this common human defect is my favorite. But I’m working on it. I’m particularly watching the vocabulary I use and how that might be offensive to… Continue reading Going, Going…er, Ghetto…Gone?
So I just subscribed to The New Yorker and finally received my first copy in the mail. This is part of my program to take writing more seriously and such but of course, the first thing I did was skim all the pages to look at the great cartoons. I felt highly educated for being… Continue reading Drug Addicts or Lifestyle Enchancement Coordinators
Just what was I expecting “From Ghetto to Ghetto”? As a writer and fellow convert myself to Judaism, I have read many, many books about the journeys others have traveled to conversion. I have loved none so much as Julius Lester’s “Lovesong: Becoming a Jew.” I devoured, gobbled it down, page by page. And yet,… Continue reading How do you get from ghetto to ghetto?
Maybe it was easier when we gave the kids good Spanish Catholic names? Shakespeare said a rose by another other name would smell as sweet. He hadn’t met any Dominicans. Dominicans are notorious for making up names that are fabulously unpronounceable to the American monolingual crowd. Before I was Aliza, I had a beautiful name… Continue reading A Rose by any other name…
“Johancy Torres had never heard of the Holocaust before last fall, but she will soon be tracing the footsteps of Jews at the Dachau concentration camp during a trip for fifth- and sixth-grade students at Public School 86 in the Bronx. “I think I may cry when I see the ovens,” said Johancy, 11, adding… Continue reading The Holocaust Hits Home
Isn’t it confusing? Won’t it be confusing for your children? People constantly ask me these questions. They think being Dominican, American and Jewish sounds really complicated. Mostly, they’re trying to put a damper on my multicultural mojo. So here I am in Los Angeles for Pesach (Passover) stocking up on yucca and plantains so I… Continue reading Cultural Confusion
Hallelujah, shalom: Rabbi Funnye singing at Shabbat services. (Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York Times) Conservative rabbi (and convert) Rabbi Capers Funnye is putting the black back in Judaism. (Okay, so it was already there.) And the New York Times noticed. They profiled him in a piece called “Barack Obama’s Rabbi”. The piece also gives… Continue reading Barack Obama’s Rabbi
Memoirs of a Jewminicana 