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Unearthing China’s hidden Jewish past

When Shi Lei finished a presentation about China’s hidden Jewish past recently, his California State University, Northridge (CSUN), audience was full of questions. They wanted to know more about the former synagogue in Shi’s hometown of Kaifeng and about his Jewish ancestors who settled there 1,000 years ago. One yenta, however, had more contemporary concerns on her mind:

John Kerry’s Jewish Brother

When Cameron Kerry fell in love with Oak Park, Mich., native Kathy Weinman, he chose to convert from Catholicism to Judaism.

Little did he know that he already had a strong Jewish connection. His father\’s parents were Jewish — a fact uncovered last year when the Boston Globe hired a genealogist to check into the family roots of his brother, John Kerry, the Democratic presidential frontrunner thought by many to be of Irish background.

The Kerry family was traced back to a small town in the Austrian empire, now part of the Czech Republic. There, the paper discovered that before immigrating to America, the Kerrys changed their name from Kohn and converted from Judaism to Catholicism.

Viva la Cinema!

In Veracruz, Mexico, there lived a group of people who for generations had avoided eating pork and lit candles on Friday night without knowing why. In the early 1980s, some members of the group discovered their Jewish roots and converted to Judaism, and now, 20 years later, are still struggling for acceptance from the Jewish community in Mexico.

Their story is being told in \”Eight Candles,\” a 2002 Mexican documentary, one of nine Jewish films being shown in Mexico\’s first Jewish film festival.

Seder Helps Poland Jews Reclaim Roots

Three years ago, Los Angeles entrepreneur Severyn Ashkenazy gathered in Warsaw, Poland, a small group of American and Polish Jews, all of whom had fled their native land during the Holocaust, and hosted the first Passover seder in that city since 1945.

Community Briefs

If there was any doubt that the Polish government is taking seriously plans to build a Museum of Polish Jewish History in Warsaw, they were\nput to rest Feb. 5 in Beverly Hills.

Kerry’s Jewish Roots

First it was then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Next it was Gen. Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander of NATO during the war in Kosovo. Now it\’s Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry whose Jewish roots are being reported.

Kerry? The Massachusetts senator, the quintessential WASP-y looking politician with an Irish-sounding name?

Yup.

Two of Kerry\’s grandparents were Jewish, it turns out.

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