Archive

How not to bore readers…

I am rewrit­ing the mid­dle of my nov­el where each of eight Sephardic char­ac­ters takes turns telling the sto­ries of his/her ances­tors. I am look­ing into how fic­tion writ­ers use time so maybe I can tell the sto­ries in anoth­er way than chrono­log­i­cal, where one char­ac­ter fol­lows the next. Some writ­ers have used par­al­lel universes […]

Upcoming Events on Crypto Jews

We call your atten­tion to three con­fer­ences or gath­er­ings on the sub­ject of Cryp­to Judaism: 1. Dis­cov­er­ing the Lega­cy of a Hid­den Past, at Con­gre­ga­tion Shaar Hashalom, Hous­ton, May 23. Con­tact 281–557‑5588 or 281–488‑5861. 2. Cryp­to Judaism in the Amer­i­can South­west, South­ern Methodist Uni­ver­si­ty, Dal­las, April 25, http://www.smu.edu/News/EventListing/20100425-Crypto-Judaism.aspx 3. Soci­ety for Cryp­­to-Juda­ic Stud­ies, Annu­al Conference, […]

Writing about crypto Jews: questions to ponder

I am becom­ing more aware of fic­tion­al works, already pub­lished or in progress, that are based on sto­ries, past or present, his­tor­i­cal or imag­i­na­tive, that have to do with cryp­to Jews. These fall into three cat­e­gories: (1) those based on his­tor­i­cal fig­ures who once moved among us; (2) works with total­ly fic­tion­al char­ac­ters, cre­at­ed by […]

Is Foursquare “Past Twitter”–and Facebook and email and…?

Two weeks ago or so, I clipped an arti­cle from the NY Times that I saved for reflec­tion because it records a phe­nom­e­non of tech­no­log­i­cal and pop cul­ture his­to­ry in the mak­ing. A good sum­ma­ry of Brad Stone’s arti­cle “Old Fogies by Their 20’s” is the sto­ry’s sub­head: “Gen­er­a­tion gaps span just a few years, E‑mailers […]

When a talk became a roundtable…

Last Sat­ur­day, I shared an event with my good her­mani­ka (sis­ter, in Ladi­no), Kath­leen Alcalá, at Book Woman Book­store in Austin. Before we began, there was time to browse the shelves and exhibits. The com­fort­able atmos­phere and good vibes led me, as first speak­er, to turn the chairs, set up in rows, into a circle […]

A Wonderful Audience in Laguna Woods

I have always found the expe­ri­ence of speak­ing about the sub­ject of the book, Sephardic Jews and relat­ed top­ics (i.e. Cryp­to Jews, Jews and the Age of Dis­cov­ery, Notable Sephardic Women, etc.), always reaf­firm­ing. This past Fri­day, 1/29, was par­tic­u­lar­ly ener­giz­ing as I shared the evening with over 100 per­sons, all but a few chronologically […]

Another play, this time in Albuquerque

Back in 1007, I arranged for Robert Ben­jam­in’s PARTED WATERS to have a staged read­ing by the Ari­zona Jew­ish The­ater Com­pa­ny at the annu­al con­fer­ence of The Soci­ety for Cryp­­to-Juda­ic Stud­ies in Phoenix. To my knowl­edge, that was the first pre­sen­ta­tion of the play in any form. Last March, the Ari­zona Jew­ish The­ater Com­pa­ny offered the […]

“Palestine, New Mexico”: Crypto Judaism and More

Cryp­to Judaism, one’s own or oth­ers’, has inspired works in lit­er­a­ture, film, music and lit­er­a­ture. I saw and was delight­ed by a work of the­ater this week that grew out of Play­wright Richard Mon­toy­a’s explo­ration of his fam­i­ly’s poten­tial Sephardic Jew­ish roots, “Pales­tine, New Mex­i­co,” at Los Ange­les’ Mark Taper Forum.  My delight came from the […]

Looking back and leaping forward

This is the tra­di­tion­al time of the year when folks look back before they leap for­ward. An “old” year is draw­ing to a close as I write this, the time left mea­sured in a few days. The media is recount­ing mem­o­ries of the past—The Year in Pic­tures: 2009, Ten Unsolved Mys­ter­ies in the War on […]