Crypto-Jews and the Search for Identity

11 AM LOS ANGELES • 2 PM NEW YORK

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A new documentary film Between the Stone and the Flower: The Duality of the Conversos profiles the life and work of the renowned genealogist Genie Milgrom. After successfully tracing her Jewish roots to pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal, she founded the Converso Genealogy Project. In this capacity she helps other “crypto-Jews” or “conversos” to reclaim their Jewish roots and is now overseeing the vast international effort to digitize the Vatican’s Jewish records.

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WATCH THE TRAILER

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THE SCHEDULE

⇒ May 3-6, watch the film Between the Stone and the Flower on your home device. A link will be provided to all who register.

⇒ Sunday, May 5 at 2:00 p.m. US Eastern Time, tune into the program with our distinguished panel of speakers. A link will be provided to all who register.

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MEET THE SPEAKERS

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Genie Milgrom was born in Havana, Cuba, into a Roman Catholic family of Spanish ancestry. In an unparalleled work of genealogy, she was able to fully document her unbroken maternal lineage 22 generations going back as far as 1405 to her Jewish ancestors in pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal. She is the past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami and past president of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies. She is the author of My 15 Grandmothers, as well as How I found My 15 Grandmothers: A Step by Step Guide, and Pyre to Fire. She brings awareness to the topic of people tracing their Jewish roots to the time of the Inquisition who are returning to Judaism. Genie is director of the Converso Genealogy Project, digitizing Inquisition files around the world.

Drora Arussy is the Executive Director of the Jewish Unity Through Diversity Institute, unitytdiversity.com where she coordinates the Certificate of Sephardic Ancestry together with Genie Milgrom and Reconectar. She has produced eight online courses and organized international academic conferences in New York, across Israel, in Cambridge (UK) and in Rabat (Morocco) during her time as Senior Director of the American Sephardi Federation’s Institute of Jewish Experience. Drora is the co-editor of Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds (Lexington Press, 2021) and author of Leah Nassi of Lisbon, an historical novel (Amazon, 2022). Her passion for pride in one’s identity is at the core of her endeavors.

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Tickets are by donation of any amount ($18 suggested, tax-deductible).

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This program is co-presented with the Jewish Unity Through Diversity Institute and the Certificate of Sephardic Ancestry.