Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
Sunday, April 19   1:30 PM
Admission: $9 general, $7.50 member/senior/student, $7 senior member/youth

Narrated by Joan Allen, “Blessed” is the first documentary feature about the World War II-era poet and diarist who became a paratrooper, resistance fighter, and modern-day Joan of Arc. Although herself safe in Palestine in 1944, she joined a military mission to save the Jerws of her native Hungary, parachuting behind enemy lines, where she was captured by the Nazis and ultimately executed. The film will be preceded by a Yom Hashoah remembrance.

Following the screening, refreshments will be served and there will be opportunity for discussion.

Return to Sobibor, Poland:
Archaeology and the Promise of New Evidence of the Holocaust
Sunday, April 19   11:00 AM
$36 includes brunch

Dr. Richard Freund will speak on archaeological excavations at the Sobibor extermination camp, the site of a famous rebellion on October 14, 1943. The camp was immediately dismantled and buried by the Nazis after the Rebellion in a forest in eastern Poland. The excavations use high tech geophysics to reveal what actually transpired, refuting the claims of those who use Sobibor to deny the Holocaust. Dr. Freund is the Maurice Greenberg Professor of Jewish History and Director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford. There will be a $36 charge for this brunch event.

JEWISH INDIA: Two films on Jewish diaspora communites in India
Friday, April 17    1:00 PM
Admission: $9 general, $7.50 member/senior/student, $7 senior member/youth

In Search of the Bene Israel
Introduced by the producer, Sadia Shepherd

It is the story of the filmmaker’s journey to reconnect with her maternal grandmother’s Bene Israel community of Western India, tracking the lives of 3500 Jews in and around Mumbai. Their community believes it was shipwrecked in India 2000 years ago and is in the process of a community-wide migration to Israel. Sadia Shepherd’s documentaries have been screened at film festivals all around the country, including Sundance, and she is the recipient of numerous grants and awards.

This Song is Old
Introduced by Sabra Mincus, President of the Chazak Foundation which assists destitute Jewish communities in remote corners of the world and in Israel.

The Chazak Foundation brought a Torah to this group claiming to be descendants of the tribe of Manasseh, one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Their oral traditions relate their transition from the Persian Empire to Afghanistan and subsequently to China and then to India. An estimated 4000-5000 descendants live in the northeastern states on India in Manipur, Mizoram, and Nagaland and parts of Myanmar. Eight hundred have become citizens of Israel over the last ten years with the major concentration in Kiryat Arba near Hebron. Sabra Mincus co-produced the film and is a part of the story.

Refreshments and discussion will follow the screenings.

The Santa Fe Jewish community observes Yom HaShoah with speakers and films that reflect on the Holocaust and remote Jewish diaspora communities of India.

Coordinated by the Jewish Arts and Culture Group of Santa Fe and hosted by the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA), the observance includes organizational participation by the Santa Fe Chapter of Hadassah, the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque, the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, and the Chazak Foundation of Wilmette, Ill.