Dreaming of a better life in Argentina, the “Goldene Medinah”, a loving wife in Poland writes to her husband, asking that he hurry up and mail the necessary travel documents for her and their young children.
Letter and translation: Nora Glickman
Voice over: Annette Liberman Miller
Sound recording: Phil Skokos
With: Getz Media Lab, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and Brandeis-Women’s Studies Research Center/SSP program
Excellent program and engaging speakers and panelists at the UJA Federation of NY’s “We Were Slaves: the Jewish Community Unites Against Sex Trafficking” conference. A packed two-day event exploring the Jewish history and Jewish obligation to combat sex trafficking, the program provided essential information about modern day slavery and what can be done to stop it. A presentation and clips from the documentary-in-progress Laid to Rest: Buried Stories of the Jewish Sex Trade offered gripping historical perspectives on a shameful “buried” chapter of Jewish history and its unique characteristics, bringing to focus community action and cultural fight from within against the sex traders.
Presented by UJA-Federation of New York’s Task Force on Family Violence
Organized with: AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps Equality Now FEGS Health and Human Services Footsteps Jewish Child Care Association of New York (JCCA) The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan; Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty Mount Sinai Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Program (SAVI) National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) New York Board of Rabbis New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) New York State Anti-Trafficking Coalition Project Kesher Sanctuary for Families T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights Uri L’Tzedek
The tragic story of the Jewish white trade have lured the imagination of numerous novelists over the years. One of the most recent attempts to highlight the subject is the stage adaptation of A Tale of a Ring by Israeli novelist Ilan Sheinfeld who, these days, in collaboration with stage director Dalia Shimko, is once again bringing his fictional characters to life by placing them on the theatrical stage:
The play, scheduled to premiere in Tel Aviv in July, includes Esti Zakhem, Roberto Polak, Shira Eden, Orly Tobaly, Maya Gesner, Libee Tenenboim, Eyal Raz and Michal Politzer, and original music by Issar Shulman.
Following the unwinding trail of scarce archival documentation, the documentary Laid to Rest, Buried Stories of Jewish Sex Trade unravels the questions, secrets, myths and mysteries surrounding the topic from the late 19th century until the 1930s. Here is a rough cut of assembled footage filmed and edited between June 2009 – November 2010:
Shifra Lerer started her life long acting career in the Yiddish theater in Argentina at the age of five. She was only nine years old when she played in Leib Malach’s controversial play Ibergus about the Jewish sex trade in Latin America. Years later, she recall the play, her role and the controversial circumstances surrounding the month long stage production in Buenos Aires’ Teatro Ideal. She can no longer remember her lines, but still remembers the controversy:
Ibergus? … It was a play that made you nervous, made you think about things, made you be concerned abut things…
It was a shameful episode in the life of Yiddish life in Argentina. I can’t tell you much about it because being at this age, I was too young to understand…
It was Las Polacas (2008, working title) meeting A Tale of a Ring (2007, Hebrew) at a Tel Aviv café on a warm spring day in April 2008. Creative writing and documentary filmmaking, Buenos Aires and Tel Aviv, Polacas, Shtetls, Jewish folklore and the Holocaust were among the many topics discussed with Israeli novelist Ilan Sheinfeld.
(to be continued…)