Rabbi: Offers Lesson On Mideast Crises
Assemblyman Rory Lancman joined the National Council of Young Israel, the Queens Jewish Community Council, the Young Israel of Hillcrest and the David Project in hosting a screening of the film The Forgotten Refugees at Young Israel of Hillcrest on Mar. 10.
The film is a documentary about the 20th century mass exodus of close to one million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, and chronicles their journey from their ancestral homelands to nations like Israel and the United States.
The screening was introduced by Assemblyman Lancman’s wife, Modjgan Cohanim Lancman, who emigrated to the United States from Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
The film blends firsthand testimony from surviving refugees with scholarly analysis and archival footage of persecutions and rescue missions across the Middle East and North Africa. The Forgotten Refugees won the “Best Featured Documentary” at the 2006 Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, and “Best Documentary Film” at the 2007 Marbella Film Festival.
“This film chronicles an often- overlooked aspect of Middle East history, and one that serves as further evidence that a Jewish homeland in Israel is absolutely essential to the safety of Jews around the world,” Lancman said.
Following the screening, Rabbi Bini Maryles, associate executive director of the National Council of Young Israel, moderated a discussion about applying the lessons of the film to the current Arab-Israeli conflict.
“The film is a testament to the immeasurable value of having a homeland for the Jewish people in Israel,” said Maryles. “In addition, as it relates to the current conflict between Arabs and Israel, it is important to understand the full story on Middle East refugees, because it is our story too. The Middle East narrative cannot and should not exclude the more than two thousand year history of our people in these countries.”
“The stories told in Forgotten Refugees are paramount in understanding past and present conflicts in the Middle East,” said Sarah Levin, director of JIMENA, who recently purchased the rights to the film. “The film is an incredibly important educational tool that has successfully helped shed light on Mizrahi and Sephardi history.”
