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Jewish immigrants and their children are divided by a common religion
This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with teens across the world to report on issues that impact their lives.
MIAMI (JTA) — When Ricardo Tanur arrived in Miami in the 1990s he had a hard time finding a religious school for his children and finding a synagogue where he felt comfortable. The biggest challenge, however, was leaving his Orthodox community in Mexico and raising his six children in an unfamiliar Jewish community whose religious values often did not align with his own.
“When I first arrived in Miami, I felt that I was leaving a part of me in Mexico, and did not feel that I truly belonged to the Jewish-American communities,” said Tanur. “I was unsure how I would raise my children in the faith when I didn’t have a temple or community which I felt a part of.”
Eventually Tanur joined the Bal Harbor Shul and the Skylake Synagogue in Miami Beach because he felt that community could make “a positive impact on his children’s personal and religious values.” This was important to him when raising children in an area whose approach to tradition was more “modern” than what he was used to in Mexico City.
The challenge of raising children in an unknown Jewish community is common for immigrants, especially for those in Miami. More than a third of the Jewish population in Miami are foreign-born adults, higher than in any other American Jewish community. With the continued population growth of foreign-born adults, the immigrant experience affects how young people approach religion by combining traditional and modern practices.
“My approach to religion differs from that of my parents mainly in the external aspect,” said Deborah Tanur, Ricardo’s eldest daughter. The 20-year-old, raised in Miami, said her father expected his daughters to wear the modest clothing typical of his Orthodox community back in Mexico. And yet her peers weren’t wearing skirts that fall below the knee, high-cut necklines or long sleeves.
Her 18-year-old sister, Raquel, recognizes the strain caused by these different ways of thinking. “The Mexican community is more closed-off and small, whereas in Miami the community is very modern and open,” she said. “This was not always easy for my mother and father to understand, as traditional appearance and practices were something which they believed to be a large part of conserving our faith.”
When Deborah was younger she was drawn to her Jewish friends’ liberal, Ashkenazi services, which were different from those in her parent’s Ashkenazi, Orthodox synagogue. “When I was little, I would sometimes ask to attend a Reform service with my friends’ families,” she said. “My parents did not allow me to do so at first, but eventually my parents and I navigated through our different perspectives in order to find common ground.”
Differences between children and immigrant parents’ are not only restricted to the level of observance, but also to their approaches to traditions and prayer. This is true for Luiz Gandleman — the son of two immigrants from Brazil and the president of the Jewish Student Union at Gulliver Preparatory in Coral Gables.
“My parents grew up in a very strict Ashkenazi community, so a lot of the prayers and service is heavily Ashkenazi which isn’t necessarily the case with me,” Gandelman said. “There are Jews from all over here [in Miami], so I observe a lot more broadly. I have attended both Ashkenazi services as well as Sephardic services, so I have adapted aspects from both.” Gandelman added that some holidays are observed differently in America than they are in Brazil.
“Hanukkah is observed on a smaller scale in Brazil, at least in my community. My parents didn’t really do anything for Hanukkah besides the traditional practices” of candle-lighting and a few special prayers, he said. “I convinced them to start celebrating on a greater scale with Hanukkah dinners and gift giving. My parents thought it to be an American thing at first, but after much convincing we were able to take the best of both worlds and mix our two beliefs.”
This different approach to faith is common for many children of immigrant parents, which Senior Rabbi Jeremy Barras of Temple Beth Am, a Reform synagogue in Pinecrest, recognizes in his congregation.
“More so in Miami Beach and Aventura, than Coral Gables and Pinecrest, the parents tend to be more traditional and the kids less so,” Barras said, referring to Miami-area suburbs. “The older generations are more interested in customs and rituals. The younger generations are more interested in culture and spirituality. It means that more creative means are required to engage younger families and the next generation. No longer can we rely on traditional models of observance to drive participation.”
The distinct way of thinking between immigrant parents and their children is not limited to their approaches to religion, but also to their feelings of belonging.
“Most of the people that are here [in Miami] came from Latin America which wasn’t always as safe and as great of a situation for Jews. In any minute if things got bad you would want to move. because of fear of anti-semitism. Americans don’t really worry about that, Americans never think that they are going to have to leave,” Barras said.
This lack of belonging also affects identity. Such is true for the Guimaraes family, Reform Jews who immigrated from Brazil.
“I would define myself first as Brazilian, and then as Jewish. Personally, I see myself as being merely a Brazilian Jew on American soil,” said Cassio Guimaraes.
Her youngest child, Ana Catherine, has the opposite view. “My identity is best described as an American Jew,” the 16-year-old said. “I always felt that I had a place here despite my Latina makeup. My traditions and values are well rooted in the community within Miami.
Despite differences between immigrant parents’ and their children, their religion provides common ground.
“Although me and my parents pray differently, it widens perspective. For example, I pray using a wider range of prayers than do my parents. For example, I recite the amidah while my parents do not. Nevertheless, I love learning how my mom was raised praying and how my dad learned to pray, and they love learning what I know,” Gandelman said. “We end up teaching each other. It is a nice way for us to connect and build on each other’s religious beliefs together.”
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The post Jewish immigrants and their children are divided by a common religion appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The Jewish secret to affordable eyewear that isn’t so secret anymore
The business cards on the counter at Minzer’s Optical proclaim “45 years of 15-minute service.” If your wait drags on for longer than 15 minutes, you can pick up one of the prayer books that line a shelf beneath the counter. But there’s no need to pray that your eyeglasses won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Minzer’s is known for its low prices, so customers who are feeling charitable might slip a few shekels into one of the pushkes, the tin tzedakah boxes, on the counter.
Once known solely within Brooklyn’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, today a majority of Minzer’s customers are not Haredi Jews, let alone members of the tribe. According to Mordechai Minzer, who started the business when he was just 19, this is entirely the result of word of mouth. And Minzer’s has held on in an age where Internet competitors such as Zenni have come close to matching its prices but can’t offer its speedy, in-person customer service.
“There’s an old saying that if you want something fast, good, and cheap, pick any two out of the three. Minzer’s amazingly manages to do all three,” Cheryl Krauss, a Brooklyn jewelry maker who has been a customer for close to 20 years, told me.
Up a flight of stairs in a two-story building on a block of attached homes, customers peruse shelves and carousels displaying frames that run the length of the store, amid the drone of computerized edging machines that grind lenses. Customers stand across the counter from employees who peer through a pupilometer, a device which measures the distance from the center of one pupil to the center of the other, a critical measurement needed to make accurate lenses.
Mordechai Minzer, 64, was trained as an optician in Manhattan at the Bramson ORT Institute of Technology, which began in 1942 as a series of workshops for World War II refugees and is part of a global educational network driven by Jewish values. Early in his career, he worked at a Cohen’s Fashion Optical store in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Minzner said he stopped working for them because they wanted him to work on Shabbos. In 1981, a few years after the country western hit “Take This Job and Shove It” hit the airwaves, Minzer quit his job. It’s unlikely Minzer, the son of a Bobover Hasid, heard the song on the radio, but he sure did know the words to the chorus.
“I worked very hard there at Cohen’s and they schmatte-ed me,” he said, using the Yiddish word for “rag” as a verb.
So, Minzer started his own business by setting up a lab in the basement of his family home in Borough Park, making eyeglasses for wholesale customers. He also made glasses on the side for friends and students at his yeshiva.
“My customers told other people about it and before I knew it, it exploded. I charged a quarter of the price that Cohen’s charged for the same stuff and I did the glasses on the spot,” he said.
Shulem Deen, author of the memoir All Who Go Do Not Return, remembers going to Minzer’s when he was growing up in Borough Park where his family was part of the Krasna Hasidic community. Deen said he was about 11 when word of the new optician spread.
“Suddenly there’s this new place everybody was talking about and the prices for glasses were ridiculous,” he recalled. “I remember that every time I went there to the basement, the place was packed.”
Deen, a keen observer of the Haredi Jewish world he left behind, said that because Jewish boys focus on the tiny text during Talmud study, it’s no wonder that so many of them need spectacles.
Back then, Minzer’s served frum Jews exclusively. But, over the years, Mordechai Minzer said, many of his observant Jewish customers went elsewhere because they had gotten “spoiled.”
“They want certain very expensive frame styles like Lindberg and I don’t want to carry $500 frames here,” he said. “I don’t want to get involved with that. They still come here, but they’re only 30% of my clientele.”
Nevertheless, Minzer’s ties to Haredi Brooklyn remain strong. He owns two sefer torahs, one of which was written to honor his parents. The scrolls are lent to yeshivas in New Jersey that don’t own sefer torahs. Every year he goes to the yeshivas to inspect them.
“Whenever I go to check up on my sefer torahs, polish the silver a bit, this and that, they always ask me to make them glasses,” Minzer said.
This has been a routine for more than 20 years. He goes a few weeks before Purim, and brings a box of inexpensive frames and optical instruments. He then proceeds to make more than a hundred pairs of free glasses for the boys.
“I like to see the kids smiling,” he told me.
Zenni and other online eyewear retailers have taken a toll on his business in recent years, Minzer said, adding that one of the big advantages he has is that customers who come to the store can try on the frames and see how they look before deciding whether to buy them. And in an era when fewer and fewer opticians still have a lab on the premises, Minzer’s can often make customers new glasses while they wait, and even dip them into sunglass tints on the spot.
One Jewish customer told me she felt uncomfortable as a non-Orthodox single woman walking into Minzer’s wearing pants but added, “that may be me projecting.” Another Jewish woman, whose husband advised her to dress modestly before her first visit, scoffed at the advice after seeing other customers wearing tank tops and shorts.
A Manhattan painter who had never been to Minzer’s recently paid less than $300 to have lenses made for her complex progressives prescription. The previous pair she had purchased at another store cost between $700 and $800. Pamela Hecht was reluctant to make the 40-minute subway ride from her loft in Manhattan to Borough Park but decided to make the schlep after learning what her new lenses would cost.
“It’s a long trip out there on the train but I will do it again because my lenses cost so much less than what I have been paying,” she told me. “I was very dubious that the quality was going to be sufficient. How could the price be so low without cutting corners? But the quality is very good. I’m very satisfied.”
The post The Jewish secret to affordable eyewear that isn’t so secret anymore appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s First Ambassador to Somaliland Acclaims Deepening Partnership, Broader Strategic Outreach in Africa
Israeli diplomat Michael Lotem in Kenya, July 2025. Photo: Screenshot
The relationship between Israel and Somaliland has rapidly evolved into a strategic partnership spanning security, energy, infrastructure, and economic cooperation, according to the Jewish state’s first ambassador to the self-declared republic, who noted the strengthening of ties was part of a broader outreach effort by Jerusalem across Africa.
“They are looking to deepen cooperation in nearly every field — from energy and infrastructure to technology, education, and communications — and their desire to work with Israel is stronger than ever,” Michael Lotem said of Somaliland in an interview with Israeli news outlet N12 published on Friday.
“Security discussions are naturally part of the relationship, but our political dialogue extends far beyond that into many different areas,” he added.
In December, Israel became the first country to officially recognize the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state.
Somaliland, which has claimed independence for decades in East Africa but remains largely unrecognized, is situated on the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the south and east. It has sought to break off from Somalia since 1991 and utilized its own passports, currency, military, and law enforcement.
Unlike most states in its region, Somaliland has relative security, regular elections, and a degree of political stability.
Last month, Israel appointed Lotem as its first ambassador to Somaliland, after the two governments formally established full diplomatic relations.
Lotem, who was serving as a non-resident economic ambassador to Africa at the time of his appointment, will now shift to work as a non-resident ambassador to Somaliland. He previously served as Israel’s ambassador to Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi, and Seychelles, a position he concluded in August.
In his interview, Lotem described the growing bilateral relationship as part of Israel’s broader diplomatic and strategic push across Africa, saying the partnership also sends a wider message of legitimacy and engagement to Muslim-majority countries throughout the region.
“Over the past several years, Israel has invested significant diplomatic effort in strengthening its presence across Africa, an initiative that Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has strongly prioritized, and the results are already becoming visible very quickly,” the diplomat said.
He also pointed to what he described as major untapped potential for economic cooperation, particularly regarding Somaliland’s vast natural resources and minerals sector — including oil, gas, coal, iron, and gold.
“They are extremely interested in partnering with Israel across the entire minerals industry supply chain,” Lotem said, adding that there are also strong prospects for cooperation in energy, medicine, agriculture, education, water management, and communications.
“We hope more countries will come to recognize the strategic value and importance of this relationship,” he continued.
Although no other UN-recognized country has formally recognized Somaliland (Taiwan did so in 2020), several — including the United Kingdom, Ethiopia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Denmark, and Kenya — have maintained liaison offices, allowing them to engage diplomatically and conduct trade and consular activities without full formal recognition.
According to experts, the growing Israel-Somaliland partnership could be a “game changer” for the Jewish state, boosting the country’s ability to counter the Iran-backed, Yemen-based Houthi terrorist group while offering strategic and geographic advantages amid shifting regional power dynamics.
“Somaliland’s significance lies in its geostrategic location and in its willingness — as a stable, moderate, and reliable state in a volatile region — to work closely with Western countries,” argued a report by the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), a prominent Israeli think tank.
“Somaliland’s territory could serve as a forward base for multiple missions: intelligence monitoring of the Houthis and their armament efforts; logistical support for Yemen’s legitimate government in its war against them; and a platform for direct operations against the Houthis,” it continued.
Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi has previously said that the republic would join the Abraham Accords, calling it a step toward regional and global peace and affirming his government’s commitment to building partnerships, boosting mutual prosperity, and promoting stability across the Middle East and Africa.
The strategic partnership comes at a time when Israeli and US officials have warned of rising Islamist terrorist threats across Sub-Saharan Africa, placing the region at the forefront of global concern over jihadist activity.
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‘We Are One Community’: New York University Condemns Swastika Flag Raised Near Campus
Swastika flag raised over New York University this week. Photo: Screenshot
New York University (NYU) on Thursday condemned the raising of a flag containing the swastika near its campus in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, an incident which comes amid a spate of antisemitic hate crimes across the municipality.
“Campus safety responded immediately to remove it, and we are working closely with the NYPD to identify whoever is responsible,” NYU said in a statement after news of the act went viral on social media. “We are one community. We protect each other. And we will not let hate and division find a foothold on our campus.”
Designed to counterfeit NYU’s official purple and white standard, the offensive display featured two swastikas flanking the Star of David in a blue and white color palette representing the state of Israel. Historically, similar illustrations and symbols signal belief in antisemitic conspiracies of Jewish power and control, and in recent years anti-Zionists at NYU have castigated the university’s academic partnerships with Israel, as well as its efforts to combat antisemitism.
Anti-Zionists active in the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization have alluded to antisemitic conspiracies to criticize Israel’s alliances before. Just last month, SJP’s Duke University chapter posted on social media a political cartoon in which “Zionism” is personified as pig hoisting a Star of David while its arm interlocks with another pig, labeled “US Imperialism,” hoisting the Torch of Liberty.
Historically, depicting Jews as pigs has been done to reduce them to the status of animals and mock the fact that dietary restrictions forbid Jews to eat pork.
The perpetrators of the NYU incident remain at large. The incident comes amid a surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City.
Jews have been targeted in the majority of all hate crimes committed in New York City this year, continuing a troubling trend of rising antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Over the past couple weeks, there have been multiple incidents of rampant swastika graffiti across the borough of Queens, highlighting the extent of the antisemitism crisis in the city home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel.
Meanwhile, mobs of anti-Zionist activists have descended on multiple synagogues over the same period to protest Israeli real estate events.
In addressing the swastika flag incident on Thursday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has been accused of doing too little to combat the rise in antisemitism, appeared to acknowledge the Jewish community’s concerns about the intentions of his administration.
“This hateful antisemitic act was meant to spread fear among and intimidate Jewish New Yorkers. It has no place in our city,” he said. “Our administration is committed to fighting antisemitism in all its forms and protecting the safety of Jewish New Yorkers. The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating this despicable act, and I am confident those responsible will be held accountable.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.