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Raquel’s letter

29/10/2014

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

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Laid to Rest in NYC

22/04/2013

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.

#wewereslaves

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

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Tango, Brothels & Jewish History…

5/11/2012

The tango was born in the brothels at the port cities along the rio de la plata and therefore is synonymous with prostitution:

(From an interview with José Judkowski, author of El tango, una historia con judíos. Dance footage courtesy of El Viejo Almacen, Buenos Aires, 2010)

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From book to stage

1/06/2011

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.

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Production Assembly: Who, What, When and Where

1/02/2011

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:

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Shifra’le: Forgotten Memories of Ibergus

14/05/2010

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…

From an interview with Shifra Lerer, NYC, 2010

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…

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Coffee with Sheinfeld

21/06/2009

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…)

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