Women and Aging Today -- Elegance and Resilience

Pat Shapiro

The Privilege of Aging

Award-winning author Pat Shapiro has written a new book entitled The Privilege of Aging, portraits of 12 women from 75 to 102 years old. After looking at the lives of these women who are living active, dynamic lives in their 80's and 90's, she asks what is common to their lives to allow living to advanced ages. She has identified 10 factors that contribute to aging successfully and happily, and that resilience is one of the most important of these factors. These interviews and life stories are varied and fascinating, and they keep the reader's attention in page after page of new insights. This is a generation of Jewish grandmothers like none before them.

Women and aging is a subject of national importance, as can be seen in CNN's articles on Style and Elegant Senior Women. CNN looks at the evolving elegance of older women, emphasizing what Shapiro argues that this generation of seniors is living well, better than seniors did in the past. The CNN stories on women and aging in style can be seen at:

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/29/living/advanced-style-coloring-book/index.html?hpt=li_bn3 and
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/27/living/aging-fashion-style






Pat Shapiro, M.S.W., has written extensively on women and aging and gives talks on the subject across the United States. The Privilege of Aging was recently selected by the Jewish Book Council for its Author's Network, and Shapiro has been invited to JBC sponsored Jewish Book Festivals from the Southwest to the East Coast. For more information on the author's work, visit her website at: www.wisewomenalive.com

For more information about The Privilege of Aging, go to: www.gaonbooks.com.

You are invited to launching of The Privilege of Aging at

Collected Works Bookstore

Galisteo and Water Streets in downtown Santa Fe

Wednesday, August 7, at 6:00 pm

The author will be present. 
She will talk about women and aging and sign books.

Jews, the Muslim World and Ramadan

As Ramadan is starting across the Muslim world, 

we are in Morocco to celebrate the birth and brit of a son to our daughter, Vanessa Paloma, and her husband, Maurice Elbaz.

In this unusual land, which has the only Jewish Museum in an Arab land and where Jewish studies organizations are formed in otherwise Muslim universities, I encountered an interesting recent publication in the magazine, Zamane, on Jews in Morocco. The issue (May, 2013) is entitled, "Morocco, Jewish Land". In this land Jews are considered one of the founding peoples of the country along with Berbers and Arabs.

This issue of Zamane looks at the unique role of Jews in this Muslim country.

For more on Jews and Muslims look at these Gaon Books publications:


Ruth Sohn, Crossing Cairo, A Jewish Woman's Encounter with Egypt

Raphael Elmaleh and George Ricketts, Jews under Moroccan Skies

Vanessa Paloma, The Mountain, the Desert and the Pomegranate: Stories from Morocco and Beyond

Susana Weich-Shahak, Moroccan Sephardic Romancero

William Samelson, Sephardic Legacy

Mati Milstein, My New Middle East

Egypt, Turmoil, and the Jewish Experience -- Ruth Sohn

Understand Egypt Today from a Jewish Perspective.

Ruth Sohn's new book, Crossing Cairo, is the best contemporary description of life in Cairo and the concerns of the people there. As a Jewish woman living in Cairo with her husband (Reuven Firestone) and two sons, she describes life in a personal way rarely seen. You walk with her in the streets and share the foods, including her favorite spice shop.

Sohn gives an insight to the Middle East today that will help you to understand the region better.

Dr. Suleiman Mourad, Professor of Religion, Smith College says of this book:

"Ruth Sohn’s Crossing Cairo is simply FASCINATING. A treasure-trove of candid reflections on society, religion, politics, history and national memory in today’s Egypt. I especially admire her honesty in voicing her religious anxiety as an American Jew while living for half-a-year with her family in Cairo; the little vignettes about the Jewish community there (made up of a few locals, Israelis and others) are priceless. I strongly recommend the book for anyone interested in Egypt or planning to visit it."

Rabbi Ruth Sohn

Director of the Leona Aronoff Rabbinic Mentoring Program

Rabbi of the Lainer Beit Midrash

Hebrew Union College

Los Angeles, CA 

Gaon Books Authors Isabelle Medina Sandoval and Sandra K. Toro talk about their latest books

Gaon Books Authors at Collected Works Bookstore

 Last night, June 18, at Collected Works Bookstore Isabelle Medina Sandoval (shown here) and Sandra Toro (below) talked about their more recent books, both on crypto-Jewish life in New Mexico. Several dozen people attended the event and were active discussants wanting to know more about the crypto-Jewish experience.

Dr. Medina Sandoval's most recent book is: Hidden Shabbat: The Secret Lives of Crypto-Jews. She is from a family in Mora, New Mexico, which was an area of crypto-Jewish life during the Spanish colonial period. Her family maintained their identity as Jewish up to the contemporary period, and the author tells the stories of her grandmothers back several generations. Based on historical research and information from her own family, Medina Sandoval weaves a story of how people lived their lives. Keeping identity with her tradition, she wore a New Mexican colcha (traditionally woven shawl) for her talk. See the previous blog for more information.

Sandra K. Toro's most recent book is Secrets Behind Adobe Walls, and it is about crypto-Jewish life during the eighteenth century in New Mexico. The central figure is a medical doctor,  Benjamin Mendez who is newly arrived to the Santa Fe territory, and he brought the knowledge of Europe with him. Her story covers the infamous "Witch Trials" of Abiquiu, and the experience of the epidemics of European diseases that attacked so many Indians, far more than the U.S. Cavalry ever did. Then, there is a love story with twists and turns in the plot that will keep you intrigued. See the previous blog for more information.

After the talks and the question and answer period, the authors signed books and talked with the audience and book buyers until the store closed.

Collected Works is an independent bookstore that has an active program of talks by local and national authors. It had a major role in the cultural life of Santa Fe.

See Gaon Books on Facebook

For more information go to www.gaonbooks.com

 Gaon Books authors (Isabelle Medina Sandoval and Sandra K. Toro) will read and discuss their recent books on crypto-Jewish life in New Mexico at Collected Works in Santa Fe on June 18 at 6 pm.

Both of these books are sequels to previous titles written by these authors on Spanish Jews who had to flee the Inquisition and hide their Judaism at times to stay alive.

Isabelle Medina Sandoval is from a family in Mora in the mountains of northern New Mexico where crypto-Jewish families lived in isolation and distance from the long arm of the Inquisition. Medina Sandoval writes about her family and has done extensive historical research and bases her writing on that research. She is a widely published poet.

Hidden Shabbat is an beautiful piece of literature and important in preserving our New Mexico history and culture.  I recommend it for both youth and adults who want to understand New Mexico.

Dr. John B. Mondragón, Professor Emeritus Univ. of New Mexico

This book is a masterpiece of scholarship and literature.  Isabelle Medina Sandoval skillfully threads the untold cabalistic histories of several generations with the artistry of storytelling to reveal the secret Jewish-Hispanic tapestry that is rightfully part of New Mexico history.  Her passionate writing captures the past and present-day Crypto-Jewish struggle with anguish, pride, and secrecy.  In the end, Sandoval shares the vulnerability as well as courage of the present, and the optimism that the cabalistic light will shine brighter in the future.

Daniel Díaz-Huerta, Executive Director

New Mexico Center for Crypto Judaic Studies & Culture

Sandra K. Toro is an award-winning, best-selling author who teaches creative writing at the University of New Mexico, and previously she worked in Washington D.C. as a reporter and producer of public affairs programs for ABC and PBS. Toro is an active speaker on writing and the representation of writers.

Through her exquisite prose, Sandra K. Toro recreates the lives of New Mexico’s crypto-Jews. She pays homage to the centrality of family and faith in the lives of early modern crypto-Jews, projected onto a backdrop of Spanish interaction with Native American beliefs and peoples. Secrets behind Adobe Walls rekindles our memory of that dramatic era.

-- Prof. Roger L. Martinez, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Sandra Toro brings to life the turbulent history and clash of cultures, religion and politics of colonial New Mexico.  Set against the story of New Mexico’s hidden Jews, those who outwardly practiced Catholicism and secretly practiced Judaism, Toro’s meticulously researched novel is a fast paced and fascinating look into the fears and fires that ignited prejudice in the 18th century.

-- Susan Seligman, New Mexico Regional Director, Anti-Defamation League

Sandra Toro has crafted a spell binding story that is part medical mystery, part high adventure and part love story that revolves around crypto-Jews  in colonial New  Mexico.  Once you start it, you won’t want to put it down.

-- Paula Paul, author of Sins of the Empress

See also Collected Works

June 6 -- Anniversary of the Riots of Seville and the Turning Point in the History of Sephardic Jews

On June 6, 1391 Ferrand Martinez led an attack on the Jewish quarter of Seville, destroying most of the twenty-three synagogues, burning Jewish houses and killing many people. The Jewish community had been protected by the King and the Archbishop of Seville, but both had died shortly before. Ferrand Martinez had been advocating attacks on the Jews for some time, and he took advantage of the power vacuum to lead the mobs against the Jews.
In the face of so much death and destruction, many Jews chose to convert to Christianity rather than be killed.
Vicente Ferrer led the attacks on Jews to the north, and in July and August of that year the riots spread to Valencia, Toledo and eventually to Barcelona. The image to the left shows Jews forced to listen to a sermon denouncing them, which went on for the next decades.
The Jewish community in Barcelona had been one of the largest on the Iberian Peninsula, and it was completely destroyed. Those who were not killed, fled, and that was the end of the Jewish community in that city.
Of the estimated 200,000 Jews in Spain in 1391, it is thought that one-third of them converted to Christianity over the next 25 years under the unrelenting pressures on them. This created the large population of Conversos, or New Christians, still discriminated against. They lived under the suspicion of practicing Judaism secretly, and in 1480 the Spanish Inquisition began to examine New Christians for Judaizing and many thousands were arrested, tortured, and burned at the stake.
In 1492, a century after the events of 1391, the remaining Jews were expelled from Spain, and Sephardic Jews spread around the Mediterranean basin from Morocco to Italy, Greece and Turkey. Judaism was eliminated in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition continued until it finally was abolished by royal decree in 1834.
In November, 2012, 520 years after 1492, with Spain tottering economically, the Spanish government officially invited Sephardic Jews to return to Spain with an offer of a fast track to Spanish citizenship.

Dr. Tamar Frankiel on The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet by Gloria Abella Ballen

The new book by Gloria Abella Ballen on The Power of the Hebrew Alphabet will be out later this year, and Dr. Tamar Frankiel,  has written the following about it.

The Hebrew letters, understood as building blocks of the universe, have inspired commentators and artists since ancient times.  But rarely do the letters find a lover so tender and passionate as Gloria Abella Ballen. With this book, you hold in your hands over 200 pages of artistic genius, exalted by the mystical quest and tamed by a deep caring for meaning and tradition.

What is perhaps most surprising is that I do not tire of looking at these pages. Just when I think to move along and flip through the pages, a new piece will catch my eye and I slow down again.  Almost certainly, you will want to see these larger, closer; you will want to step back and look from a distance. You will wish you could feel the textures.

But especially, you will smile. This book awakens a subtle yet profound joy..." 

Dr. Tamar Frankiel

President of the Academy for Jewish Religion

Los Angeles, California

This is a landmark artistic  interpretation of the mystical qualities of the aleph-bet, and it is a book that will inspire you and leave you filled with joy.

Coming Soon.

Watch for the Announcement of the Publication.