Wednesday November 20, 7 pm, Ringsmuth Auditorium
Adio Kerida
Filmmaker Ruth Behar returns to Cuba to visit the land of her family.
For more information about the film, click here.
To listen to the beautiful version of Adio Kerida sung by Yasmin Levy, click here.
Milos Silber: Film and Discussion: “Jubanos: The Jews of Cuba“
Wednesday November 13, 7 pm, MC Ringsmuth Auditorium
Milos Silber was born in Brazil. He is a graduate of the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, a program that gave him the opportunity to do a semester abroad in Cuba to make the film “Jubanos: The Jews of Cuba.” In 2010, “Jubanos” won the Be’chol Lashon film award for best documentary. An initiative of the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish & Community Research, Be’chol Lashon (In Every Tongue) advocates for a global understanding of the Jewish people that reflects contemporary identity.
Today Milos Silber is one of the founders of Hayden 5 Media, a multifaceted media company that produces commercials, web content, and high-end photography. He lives in New York.
Wednesday October 30, 7 pm, Ringsmuth Auditorium
Elizabeth Valencia-Borgert, adjunct professor of Languages & Cultures at SCSU, will present her personal story of how she discovered her Sephardic roots.
Elizabeth Valencia-Borgert is originally from Valencia, Venezuela. Her family story is originally based on what she heard from the abuelos while growing up in Venezuela. One of her brothers did more recent research, engaged in a search for the story of their family’s Sephardic ancestry. It is the family’s wish to record oral histories as well as examine the historical roots of their Jewish ancestors.
Elizabeth is Spanish faculty in the Languages and Cultures Department at St. Cloud State University, and has been a St. Cloud resident for over 20 years. She is an active member of the local Latino community, and part of one of the taskforces for the St. Cloud Community Priorities Initiatives.
Dr. Roger Martinez, history professor and Director of the Sephardic and Crypto-Jewish Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, will present “Bad Blood: Old Christians, Jews, and Conversos in the Spanish Extremadura” on Thursday October 24th at 7 pm in Ringsmuth Auditorium.
Since Fall 2010, Dr. Martínez has served as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. From fall 2008 – spring 2010, he served as the Burton Postdoctoral Fellow at St. Joseph’s University (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) and earned his Ph.D. in May 2008 from the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Martínez specializes in the study of medieval and early modern Spain, religious minorities and religious converts in Spain (in particular, Jews and conversos), and Spanish trans-Atlantic migration to Mexico and Bolivia.
Currently, Dr. Martínez serves as the First Vice President of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, an organization that fosters the research of the historical and contemporary development of crypto–Jews of Iberian origin. His forthcoming text, Blood, Faith, and Fate: Jews, Conversos, and Old Christian in Early Modern Spain and Colonial Spanish America, is under contract with a university press. He has published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto-Jews and reviewed books for The Sixteenth Century Journal and The Americas.
Dr. Martínez is a native of San Antonio, Texas. He has resided in South America, Spain, and both the west and east coasts of the United States. During his formative years he lived in Caracas, Venezuela, and La Paz, Bolivia.