San Antonio College Library

Many Latinos in the American Southwest wear amulets and perform certain practices different from their fellow Latino Catholics-and are discovering only now, to their great amazement, that they are descended from Jews who chose conversion rather than death at the time of the great expulsion from Spain in 1492. This program looks at remnants of what was once the great Jewish civilization in Spain: the artifacts, which were Christianized or destroyed,...

A rabbi's duties encompass far more than Torah study and synagogue services. In this program, viewers accompany a group of rabbis as they inspect and reinforce adherence to kosher laws. Businesses subject to inspection include a bakery, a fish processing facility, and a slaughterhouse-all of which undergo intense scrutiny regarding their equipment, supplies, food additives, and employee hygiene. The video explains the reasoning behind specific commandments...

While Judaic orthodoxy may sometimes appear rigid and conservative, the traditional Jewish home is a warm, dynamic place full of nurturing and hospitality. This program visits several such households that closely observe Jewish law, demonstrating the profound connection between the mitzvot and Jewish family life. Viewers are treated to engaging visual demonstrations of what makes a kitchen kosher-including the presence of two ovens, two sinks, and...

Antisemitism in the US and Europe is worsening in ways not seen since the 1930s, mutating across cultures, borders and ideologies. Explore its infectious behavior through interviews with victims, witnesses, antisemites, and others.

This program focuses on the Dutch Liberal Jewish Community, led by Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp, whose father helped to rebuild Judaism in Holland after the Holocaust. Through interviews with Jewish families, the program records the dilemmas faced by young and old as they try to come to terms with the Holocaust today. How could God allow such a thing to happen, and can Jews trust their Gentile neighbors?

Three secular women, Myriam Klotz, Rus Burdman, and Marcia Jarmel, journey into the Orthodox Jewish world. As they grapple or embrace, their experiences throw pat answers about tradition, community, and meaning into relief.

Naomi, the brilliant and pious daughter of an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, finds herself at a crossroads of life choices when her mother dies and she is expected to immediately marry her father's prodigy. Distressed yet determined, she begs that her father allow her one year to study at a women's religious seminary in Safed, the birthplace of the Kabala, in order to prepare herself for the sacrifices she will make as a wife. Her father relents, and Naomi's...

In this program, Dennis Wholey has a conversation about Reform Judaism with Senior Rabbi Lance J. Sussman of Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Topics of discussion include core beliefs of Judaism and distinctions between different Jewish denominations, the Torah, Moses, the complex ethnicity of Judaism, Zionism and Israel, the birth of Reform Judaism, and arguably the most significant challenge to practicing Judaism in the...

What does it mean to be Jewish? Too few people outside of the religion know Judaism as a living community shaped by thousands of years of a people's relationship with God and the world. This program introduces a Jewish congregation and presents the ways in which Judaism is passed on from generation to generation in a predominantly Christian society.

Israel and Palestine is an arena for one of the most notorious conflicts in the world. The routine of living in a Jerusalem is a city that contains one God interpreted by the three monotheistic faiths--situated at the crossroad between heaven and earth, the center of global history and home to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This documentary journeys through the eye of the storm to the Haram al Sharif / Temple Mount, examining the ways in which...