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How an encounter with Guillermo del Toro led to NYC’s first Mexican Jewish Film Festival
(JTA) — When Deborah Koenigsberger Gutierrez attended a small cocktail reception with the celebrated Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro last December, she didn’t expect to leave with an idea for a synagogue fundraiser.
But in a conversation with del Toro and a few other guests at the event, which was in honor of the premiere of his latest feature, “Pinocchio,” the famed filmmaker made a remark that stuck with her.
“He said something that really hit my heart,” recalled Koenigsberger Gutierrez, the president of Tribeca Synagogue. “He said, ‘Every Mexican outside of Mexico is an ambassador of the culture of Mexico.’”
Koenigsberger Gutierrez, who was born in Mexico City, had been on the lookout for creative ways to engage young families at her congregation, something beyond a traditional silent auction and gala dinner. She landed on a program that would draw an audience and pay tribute to del Toro’s craft, and began organizing the synagogue’s first-ever Mexican Jewish Film Festival, which will begin on Sunday, April 2.
“I basically said to myself, ‘How can I make a big event that brings in people and also celebrates Mexican Jews?’” Koenigsberger Gutierrez said. “And everybody loves going to the movies.”
The festival will feature 10 films with English subtitles over the course of three days, all of which were directed, made, written or acted in by Mexican Jews. The Jews highlighted in the festival come from a variety of Jewish backgrounds, including Ashkenazi, Sephardic and Syrian, and the films span a variety of genres, including horror, comedy and drama.
In addition to movie screenings, the festival will feature Q&As with two of the directors: Guita Schyfter, who directed “Like a Bride,” a coming-of-age story about two young women in 1960s Mexico City; and Isaac Ezban, who directed two horror movies, “Evil Eye” and “The Similars.” It will also feature a performance from the Nashir! chorus, pop-up artisan shops in the social hall, coffee from Mexico’s Chiapas region and cocktails and kosher Mexican food from the restaurant Carlos & Gabby’s.
The film screenings will conclude on April 4, and the festival will host a final day of events on April 5, the eve of Passover, including a “bread party” where attendees can munch on leavened products traditionally prohibited on the holiday. Vendors will sell Mexican folk art and kosher Mexican cookies.
The Tribeca Synagogue, which until a decade ago was called the Synagogue for the Arts, often rents out its sanctuary space, and hosted the 2022 NYC Bicycle Film Festival in November. It can place a giant screen at the front of the sanctuary, turning it into a makeshift theater. All it took to organize the Mexican Jewish Film Festival, Koenigsberger Gutierrez said, was selecting the films and getting the rights to screen them (and in one case, subtitling one of the films, the 2008 drama “3:19,” in English for the first time ever.)
Other films screening at the festival include the 1955 comedy “The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz,” about a wannabe serial killer who keeps plotting murders but can’t quite execute any of them; “One for the Road,” a 2014 film about three octogenarian friends who take a trip together; and the 2007 comedy “My Mexican Shivah,” about a family dealing with their secrets being revealed as they mourn their patriarch.
Beyond her own synagogue community, which has fewer than 100 active memberships, Koenigsberger Gutierrez is expecting a diverse turnout for the festival. Jorge Islas Lopez, the Mexican consul general in New York, will give an address and is inviting Mexicans in New York to attend. The American Sephardi Federation and the Syrian Jewish group Kanisse have also partnered with the festival.
Koenigsberger Gutierrez hopes the films enable viewers to see beyond popular U.S. conceptions of Mexico on screen, which she says focus too much on violence fueled by drug cartels.
“We are not one genre,” Koenigsberger Gutierrez said. “We’re not only El Chapo and all these you know, drug dealers, and the things you see [in] Hollywood a lot. We are much more than that. The film festival is to celebrate Mexican Jews and their work.”
She added, “People tend to think that Jews look a certain way. And I can say that people think that, also, Mexicans look a certain way.”
When Koenigsberger Gutierrez came to the United States for her master’s degree eight years ago, she was surprised to see that people doubted her nationality.
“In Mexico, nobody ever questioned that I was Mexican,” she said. “There was no question. But when I got to America, people would be like, ‘You’re not really Mexican because you’re Jewish.’ And that was kind of like, really something I’ve never, never dealt with. I was like, ‘What do you mean? I’m 100% Mexican, I’m 100% Jewish.’ I’m Mexican and I’m Jewish.”
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The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI
As friends, relatives and even colleagues dive headlong into our AI future, I’ve been stuck nervously on the platform’s edge. I’m not a skeptic of technology by nature, but by experience. I’ve watched too many shiny new toys come along, promising to make society smarter or better connected, only to become superspreaders of confusion, alienation and disenfranchisement.
So when you tell me a machine can summarize any book, draw any picture or write any email, my first thought is going to be, What could possibly go wrong?
This, too, was the reaction of the Haredi rabbis who declared a communal fast over AI last month.
“If at the push of a button, I can get a hold of a d’var torah for my Shabbos meal from AI, to us, that’s a problem,” a Haredi leader told me at the time. “No, no — I want you to open the book and read it and come up with a question and come up with an answer. That’s part of what’s holy about learning Torah. It’s not just end result. It’s the process.”
Curious about their logic, I spent some time tracking down Lakewood’s gedolim to learn more. This was no straightforward task — I found it easier to get a hold of their wives than the great rabbis themselves. Even at dinner hour, these titans of Torah study were still in the beit midrash. But eventually I got through to three — thanks to my cousin Jeffrey, who knew a rav who knew a rav — and that was fortunate, because I came away with the Jewish skeleton key to our brave new world.
That key is the Jewish value of עֲמֵילוּת (ameilut), or toil. As far as Jewish values go, ameilut is an obscure one. It lacks the celebrity swagger of its better-known peers like chesed and tzedakah or the political power of tikkun olam. It was never associated with a biblical matriarch or carved into a golem’s forehead. Yet I believe it is just as crucial. Yes, toiling is a mitzvah. And in the age of AI, ameilut can be a human road map.
The word’s root appears a couple dozen times in the Hebrew Bible — unsurprisingly, it’s a recurring theme in Job — but its salience comes not from the Torah but from commentary on Leviticus 26:3, which establishes ameilut as a sacred endeavor. When God implores Israel to “walk with” the commandments, Rashi, an 11th century rabbi whose commentaries are considered authoritative, reinterpreted this to mean that God wants Jews to be ameilim b’torah — toiling in Torah study. He is reinterpreting God’s command that we walk and move forward to also mean that we should take time to stand still, turn over (and over) the same words to find new meaning and view getting stuck as a sign of progress.
For Haredim — who pronounce it ameilus — the notion that struggle can be its own reward underpins a life spent poring over sefarim in the beit midrash (and missing phone calls from the Jewish press). It follows that ChatGPT, which transforms knowledge from something developed to something consumed, is anathema to their approach. They’ve realized that making learning easy has actually made learning hard.
To be sure, the goals of the Haredi world are not exactly the same as mine. Those communities are famously insular, wary of the internet and especially cognizant of secular society’s pernicious influence. I’m basically the opposite: I love to mix it up (including with Haredi Jews) and am extremely online. A little narishkeit is good for the soul, as far as I can tell.
But I’ve found that ameilut-maxxing translates pretty well to non-religious life, too. It’s an imperative to embrace the challenge. As a notoriously limited chef, I’m now toiling in cookbooks; as a writer, I can cherish the blank page. Reframing the hard part as the good part, then, is a reminder that the toil is actually our divine right. Because ameilut is something AI can’t experience, replicate or understand. It is the very essence of what it means to be alive.
The post The one Jewish value everyone should hold dear in the age of AI appeared first on The Forward.
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Mistrial Declared in Case of Students Charged After Stanford Anti-Israel Protests
FILE PHOTO: A student attends an event at a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at Stanford University during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Stanford, California U.S., April 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
A judge declared a mistrial on Friday in a case of five current and former Stanford University students related to the 2024 pro-Palestinian protests when demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the school president’s office.
Twelve protesters were initially charged last year with felony vandalism, according to prosecutors who said at least one suspect entered the building by breaking a window. Police arrested 13 people on June 5, 2024, in relation to the incident and the university said the building underwent “extensive” damage.
The case was tried in Santa Clara County Superior Court against five defendants charged with felony vandalism and felony conspiracy to trespass. The rest previously accepted plea deals or diversion programs.
The jury was deadlocked. It voted nine to three to convict on the felony charge of vandalism and eight to four to convict on the felony charge to trespass. Jurors failed to reach a verdict after deliberations.
The charges were among the most serious against participants in the 2024 pro-Palestinian protest movement on US colleges in which demonstrators demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza and Washington’s support for its ally along with a divestment of funds by their universities from companies supporting Israel.
Prosecutors in the case said the defendants engaged in unlawful property destruction.
“This case is about a group of people who destroyed someone else’s property and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. That is against the law,” Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement, adding he sought a new trial.
Anthony Brass, a lawyer for one of the protesters, told the New York Times his side was not defending lawlessness but “the concept of transparency and ethical investment.”
“This is a win for these young people of conscience and a win for free speech,” Brass said, adding “humanitarian activism has no place in a criminal courtroom.”
Protesters had renamed the building “Dr. Adnan’s Office” after Adnan Al-Bursh, a Palestinian doctor who died in an Israeli prison after months of detention.
Over 3,000 were arrested during the 2024 US pro-Palestinian protest movement, according to media tallies. Some students faced suspension, expulsion and degree revocation.
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Exclusive: FM Gideon Sa’ar to Represent Israel at 1st Board of Peace Meeting in Washington on Thursday
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar speaks next to High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Kaja Kallas, and EU commissioner for the Mediterranean Dubravka Suica as they hold a press conference on the day of an EU-Israel Association Council with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
i24 News – Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar will represent the country at the inaugural meeting of the Gaza Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday, i24NEWS learned on Saturday.
The arrangement was agreed upon following a request from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will not be able to attend.
Netanyahu pushed his Washington visit forward by a week, meeting with US President Donald Trump this week to discuss the Iran situation.
A U.N. Security Council resolution, adopted in mid-November, authorized the Board of Peace and countries working with it to establish an international stabilization force in Gaza and build on the ceasefire agreed in October under a Trump plan.
Under Trump’s Gaza plan, the board was meant to supervise Gaza’s temporary governance. Trump thereafter said the board, with him as chair, would be expanded to tackle global conflicts.