16 | JUNE 18 • 2020
where those stories came from,
”
she said.
One of the year’s most mean-
ingful moments for Katz came
during a Passover seder in
Ukraine. There was a group of
elderly women at her table and,
when Katz looked into their
faces, she saw her own grand-
mothers, who’
d passed away
when she was a teenager.
Katz said she looked at the
women and told them, “‘
You look
like what I remember my grand-
mother to look like,
’ Because we
come from here — this is where I
come from.
”
After her time in Eastern
Europe, Katz went to Majorca,
Spain, for a young adult shab-
baton and a conference run by
international Jewish-learning
charity Limmud. The pictur-
esque island of Majorca, nestled
in the Mediterranean Sea and
known for its coves and resorts,
has a long Jewish history, dating
back to the before the Spanish
Inquisition. Many Jews on the
island publicly converted to
Catholicism in the 1400s while
continuing to operate as a tight-
knit Jewish community. Today,
there are several dozen people on
the island who have reclaimed
their Jewish faith.
Next, Katz returned to New
York to present her findings on
leadership programs in Europe
to JDC’s board, and went back to
Europe for some time in Portugal
with her family. Her travels then
took her to Florence, Italy, where
she attended a conference for
small Jewish communities.
“What are these communities,
in Venice, Italy, or in Amsterdam
or Helsinki — what are the chal-
lenges that they go through?”
Katz said. “
As much as we're all
very different, some of their chal-
lenges are no different than larger
communities or things we think
about all the time in Detroit. And
then they have unique challenges
as well.
”
The following weeks found
Katz in India, where she staffed a
JDC program that brought young
adults to volunteer and teach
children in the slums of Kalwa
and the village of Ashte. Katz had
wanted to visit India since learn-
ing about the country’s Jewish
history years ago — it has a small
but historic Jewish population,
divided between three historic
communities, the oldest of which
has been in India for over 2,000
years.
Following India, Katz got
to participate in a JDC trip to
Azerbaijan and Georgia. In the
latter country, she and a friend
stayed in an old winery in a tiny
town where they came across an
abandoned synagogue. Katz and
her friend stood out in the rain,
trying to communicate with their
Georgian taxi driver that they
wanted to find whoever had the
key to the place.
Today she cites Georgia as one
of her favorite travel stops.
After another trip back to
Israel, Katz settled in Dubai, the
largest city in the United Arab
Emirates, from September to
November. The UAE doesn’t
officially recognize Israel as a
state, although relations between
the two countries seem to have
been warming in recent years;
the first publicly acknowledged
direct commercial flight between
the two countries (a cargo flight
carrying COVID-19 supplies for
Palestinians) took place in May.
Still, Katz said some of the Jews
she met in Dubai didn’t tell their
coworkers about their Jewish
faith.
This was the first time JDC
had worked with Dubai’s Jewish
community, which is small, pri-
vate and comprised of expats,
business travelers, families and
some long-term residents. There
is no official synagogue, but the
community worships and holds
programs in a space called “The
Villa,
” which is where Katz lived
in Dubai as she helped the com-
munity create more program-
ming.
“I think [Dubai is] a place
where a lot of the people are able
to find camaraderie through their
Judaism. They come together
because that's the thing that
holds them together,
” Katz said.
In September, the country
unveiled plans to build the
Abrahamic Family House, which
will house a mosque, a church
and a synagogue on one campus.
The designers of the campus held
a joint meeting to make sure they
designed each house of worship
correctly; Katz sat in as one of the
Jewish representatives.
In a large, disc-like building in
the
“Coming back, I really felt that
community uplift
… It really made
me even more excited about staying
in Detroit and continuing to build
what exists here.”
— JESSICA KATZ
continued from page 15
(L-R) Interior of Keneseth Eliyahoo
Synagogue in Mumbai, India; baking challah
in Dubai; meeting with Jewish teenagers in Riga, Latvia.
16 |
JUNE 18 • 2020
(L-R) Interior of Keneseth Eliyahoo
Synagogue in Mumbai, India; baking challah
in Dubai; meeting with Jewish teenagers in Riga, Latvia.
ing about the countrys Jewish
officially recognize Israel as a
state, although relations between
correctly; Katz sat in as one of the
Jewish representatives.
In a large, disc-like building in
the
RANGAN DATTA WIKI VIA CREATIVE COMMONS
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JESSICA KATZ
Dubai
Latvia
Mumbai
Jews in the D