everyone. Thank you for joining us for today's event. My name is Ilana Tahan and I'm the Lycuretor of Hebrew and Christian Orient at the British Library. In association with our partners, Jewish Book Week, we are presenting today a panel conversation exploring the Jewish presence around the world. This is one from a program of events supporting our exhibition, Hebrew manuscripts journeys of the written word. The exhibition provides a snapshot of the range and richness of Hebrew manuscripts in the British Library's collection and reveals the power of the written word to bring people together. Just a little housekeeping before we get started. If you have any questions during the event, you can submit them using the question box below. A selection of questions will be presented to the panel towards the end of the event. Use the menu above to provide us with feedback about the event and also to donate to the British Library. The British Library is a charity. Your support helps us open a world of knowledge and inspiration for everyone. You'll find social media links below this video. In case you want to continue the conversation on other platforms, you can also find out more about this event and read short biographies of our speakers. Today's panel features Dr. Sara Menasse, Dr. Joanna Newman, and Dr. Drew Schoen, and it is shared by Rachel Shaby. Rachel is an award-winning journalist, author, and broadcaster. Now, without further ado, we'll turn the time over to Rachel. Hello. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this event. It's my absolute pleasure to be chairing this and to be with you this evening. This is one of a series of events online with the British Library and also a Jewish Book Week designed to get us through lockdown. And I have to say, while I, like everyone else, am much looking forward to doing all this in real life, there is something to be said for being able to chair this incredible panel with such wonderful panellists without even leaving my house. So without further ado, let me please tell you a little bit about our panellists this evening. First of all, we have Dr. Sara Menasse. She is an ethnomusicologist and performer of music in the Iraqi Jewish tradition. She founded the music group Rivers of Babylon, and her publications include Shbehov, Songs of Praise in the Babylonian Jewish tradition. Next, we have Joanna Newman, who is the chief executive and secretary general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities. Her new book, Nearly the New World, tells the story of Jewish refugees who overcame persecution and sought safety in the West Indies from the 1930s through to the end of the war. That book, by the way, has a special 25% discount on it if you click on the tab above the video on your screen. And finally, we also have Dr. Jo Shun, is a reader in history at the University of Essex, and she has in the past 20 years been living across London, Jerusalem, Beijing, and Hong Kong. She's among Europe's leading historians specializing on modern China, and she is also the author of a number of books, including Chinese Perceptions of the Jew and Judaism. Now, these are all but tiny snapshots of the biographies of these three incredible panellists. Please do check out more information online, because I really haven't done credit to their vast and extensive portfolios. But without further ado, I do want to hand over to our panellists, beginning with Dr. Sara Manasse and a short presentation from her. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you to Jonah Albert and the British Library for inviting me to participate in this event, which is linked, as Ilana Tahan said, to the Hebrew manuscripts exhibition. I dedicate my presentation from Baghdad to Bombay Beautiful to my parents, the late Albert Manasse and Rachel Manasse, and to the memory of my brother, the late Rabbi Jacob Manasse of the Midrash-Benish High in New York. He passed away earlier this year, following complications of COVID-19. Okay, so my mother's book, Backdating Jews of Bombay, Their Life and Achievements, a Personal and Historical Account, is published by Midrash and forms the basis of this presentation. India has indeed provided a safe home for Jewish people fleeing persecution. I grew up in the Iraqi-Jewish community of Bombay, the focus of this short presentation. Arabic-speaking Jews from cities in Mesopotamia, such as Baghdad and Basra, and from Syria and Aden, had settled earlier in Surat, which is north of Bombay, that's today's Mumbai. From about the end of the 18th century, they began to move to other cities in India, to Bombay on the west, Calcutta on the east, and later to Pune, which is south of Bombay. They're variously known as Baghdadian, or Bardadi, or Babylonian, or Iraqi Jews, and were later joined by Persian-speaking Jews fleeing from Mashhad, and by Central Asian Jews from Russia, Bukhara, and Afghanistan. They all followed the Baghdadian-Jewish religious right, the Minhar Babli, the Babylonian custom, and were part of the Iraqi-Jewish community in Bombay, which included a small number of Jews from Cochin. Bombay, originally a group of islands, is surrounded by the sea, which provides a constant backdrop to the city. It was by sea that settlers came to India on a journey, often perilous, particularly during the monsoon season. My mother's family arrived in the early 20th century. Her father, Ruben Eliyahu Arni, arrived in 1911, and his wife, to be Gurdjiji Jutta, arrived along with both families in 1919, traveling from Baghdad to Basra, where they boarded an English ship, and the whole happy company sailed down the Persian Gulf to Bombay to a wedding there in 1919. Life then moved at a gentler pace, and as my mother writes, for years my father owned a carriage and horse, and the coachman would drive us children, three sisters, and two younger brothers, with our two ires to the bandstand in the evening when we were small. It was not until World War II that my father bought a car and be motored into the 20th century. Now my own father's family in Bombay goes back still further to 1832, when David Sassoon arrived in Bombay. He had escaped from Baghdad via Basra to Bushir, fleeing persecution from the Turkish Wali Daud Pasha in 1830. David Sassoon settled in Bombay with his wife and young family, joining the cosmopolitan mix of people there. He was soon the acknowledged head of the Arabic speaking Jewish community in Bombay, winning the respect of all communities. The influence of the Sassoon family was far-reaching. They had been called the Rothschilds of the East. They provided work for their co-religionists in their firms and mills. They built schools, and at the David Sassoon Benevolent Institution, children were taught to sing God Save the Queen in three languages, English, Hebrew, and Arabic. They also built beautiful synagogues, the Marin David Synagogue in Bicolor, the Ohel David Synagogue in Puna, known locally as Lal Devo, which means Red Temple, and his grandson, Sir Jacob Sassoon, built the Knesset Eliyahu Synagogue. Last year, the beautifully renovated synagogue received a UNESCO award. The Sassoon family also made generous endowments to public institutions in Bombay and Puna, including the David Sassoon Library and Reading Room in Bombay in the 1860s. David Sassoon was further honored in 1994, when Hope Street, adjoining the library, was renamed David Sassoon Library Mark. Mark means Hindi in Hindi or Marathi way. My mother was invited as a chief guest. In Puna, David Sassoon also contributed to the infirm asylum and the Sassoon General Hospital. What we see here is another landmark, the full-length marble statue of Vince Albert at the Victorian Albert Museum, now known as the Dr. Paul Darjilad Museum. On the plinth, there are inscriptions in Hebrew and English. David Sassoon's son Albert Sassoon constructed the Sassoon Docks, the first dock in Bombay, and his grandson, Sir Jacob Sassoon, contributed liberally towards the Gateway of India at Bombay Harbour. Now moving from Sassoon monuments to the Sassoon family, Aziza Sassoon, the granddaughter of David Sassoon and my great-grandmother, married Ezekiel Abraham Gabai in 1853. They had a number of children. One of their younger daughters was my grandmother, Sarah. This is the invitation to her marriage to Mnesi Yalpo Mnesi, who had come from Baghdad, and is written in Hebrew and also handwritten Rashi characters in the Eastern script, and it's mainly in Julio Arabic, which continued to be spoken in India among Iraqi Jews. Their son, Albert Mnesi, married Rachel Arnie. So this is the ceremony of my parents at the Knessif Eliyahu synagogue. The synagogue choir in Baikala was founded in 1934, and the British influence is very evident in their dress, mortar boards, and gowns. They performed every Shabbath and for life cycle events. Their repertoire maintained the Iraqi Jewish tradition, as did customs, such as placing amulets on a baby's cradle or clothes when they were born. In 1935, my father, Albert Mnesi, together with his friend Solomon Ezra, introduced the youth organization Habonim, which is Hebrew for the builders in Bombay, later expanding it. For example, in 1938 to Calcutta, and followed by centres in Cochin and Puna. They had a lively cultural programme, which included folk dancing and songs in Hebrew. Annual camps at hill stations, such as Matheran, were a highlight. And in this song session, on the steps of the large bungalow, I'm one of the leaders standing on the right, and my brother is the little boy sitting quite near me in the third row on the extreme right. My family left in the mid-1960s, but my father, as life president, life president of the Sassoon Charity Trusts, visited regularly, attending to needs of the synagogue and community. At the entrance to the Knesseteliah, the synagogue are three plaques, and the one on the right pays tribute to my father, Albert Mnesi, Albert Abdulla Mnesi, who served as head and spiritual leader of the community for over 50 years. The synagogues continue to function, and for the past 10 years, my late brother, Rabbi Mnesi, visited regularly in his capacity as spiritual leader. The re-enoperation ceremony at the Knesseteliah synagogue was attended by dignitaries, members of Mumbai's Jewish and Indian communities, and visitors from abroad. The opening address was given by Solomon F. Sofer, chairman and managing trustee of the Sir Jacob Sassoon and Allied Trusts. Sitting on the left are my brother, Rabbi Yako Menashe with black hat. The Israeli consul general, Yako Finkelstein in the center, and Judge Abraham Sofer from the United States, revisiting his boy, the synagogue. In this slide, the congregation stands while Rabbi Menashe recites a blessing. To conclude, and to return to the theme of this evening, the Jewish diaspora in search of safety. India has always offered a safe haven to its people. The word anti-Semitism was one that I had never encountered while growing up in Bombay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sarah Menashe. That was absolutely fascinating. I loved the family story and also some of the imagery there from Bombay. That was brilliant. Can I now move to our next panelist, Joanna Newman. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rachel, and it was fascinating and a treat to see that history. It reminded me of the original invitation to do a British Library event pre-COVID in the British Library itself. The discussion I had with the British Library about how I would present my talk, because in some ways they wanted me to show how interwoven the history of Jewish immigration to the Caribbean is. In fact, I found out about Jewish immigration in the 1930s refugee immigration, because I had been researching the Jewish community of Barbados in the 17th and 18th centuries. I had found the minute books of the Jewish community of Barbados, which was a fascinating study, really, of a community that came to Barbados because they had been expelled from Spain and Portugal as a result of the Catholic Inquisition and became very skilled in sugar production in Bahia in Brazil. Eventually, some of them went to plantations and slave economies in the Caribbean, as the Caribbean changed from small plantations to slave economies. While researching this history, I was in the Tate and Lyle archive in Sugar Wharf in London looking at papers of the history of sugar industry there, which is a fascinating and toxic history, and came across lots of papers that were being thrown away because they were partly in German and they were related to the 1930s about the internment of a Jewish chemist called Edward Schoenbeck. Edward Schoenbeck turned out to be the first refugee I met in New York and interviewed for my book, who had gone to Jamaica as a chemist, worked for the West India sugar company, but during the war he came interned and so I became really intrigued by this story of really unlikely refuge. Why was the West Indies not the place one would think of as a traditional refugee involved in this refugee story in the tragedy of the 1930s and then the 1940s in the Holocaust? And what I found out is, of course, it's a story of exclusion. I mean, it's a very sad story, about 5,000 refugees in total we think reached different West Indian colonies owned by, at the time, and colonised by the Dutch and British governments because they were not overtaken by the Nazis, but they were very much the last resort and they were the last resort because most countries wouldn't allow them in and so and most countries wouldn't allow them in because there are two currents going through this story. The first is that actually the numbers of refugees leaving Nazi Germany was in the whole not massive and could have been assimilated probably by the United States and Britain and other allied countries before occupation. But there was this phantom of mass emigration from Eastern Europe where the majority of the Jewish population indeed lived and most of the research I've done which uncovered British attitudes to immigration and to refugee policy uncovers the fact that even when it was possible to allow refugees from Nazi Germany into colonial dependencies, the argument mainly went from the colonial authorities that they were not going to do so because if they did the hordes of Eastern Europe might come and I document this in my book. And what's ironic about that is that the first person I met in Barbados who had come to the West Indies, he came from Lublin in Poland, he was a young electrician who in the late 1920s got on a boat to Venezuela, there was anti-Semitism, there was rising unemployment and poverty and decided to make a new life for himself in South America which many people did from Eastern Europe at the time. The boat stopped in Barbados, he liked it and he stayed there and when I met him in the early 90s he had been influential in fact seminal in restoring the ancient Sephardic synagogue that existed in Barbados and so you know when Henry Altman and others arrived in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Curacao and Jamaica still had Jewish communities from that period but Barbados didn't any longer and so it was this Eastern European community that renewed the Jewish tradition there and restored the synagogue. And what's interesting about Henry Altman and many like him is that hundreds of Eastern Europeans actually emigrated to the West Indies during this period completely under the British radar so while all the legislation and discussion about refugees is being governed by a fear of Eastern European immigration, actually Eastern European immigrants fit in really well, they are small scale traders, they trade in dry goods, they extend credit, they go across the islands providing a new type of credit to poor families. Arthur Intz who was a Guardian correspondent for the Trinidad Guardian told me that he remembers very well a Jewish peddler who extended credit to his mother and enabled him to have new clothes and go to school. Remember at the time the West Indies was suffering huge poverty and inequality, they were large-scale labour rights and massive desire for change following the participation particularly in the First World War. So there are journeys by Eastern Europeans to the Caribbean which are kind of unnoticed and go under the radar and then what happens is in the 1930s a refugee crisis is launched as Nazi Germany increases its antisemitic laws and its persecution and its legal persecution as well and the sort of the famous point really of no return is always pointed to the Evian Conference in 1938 when under the invitation of President Roosevelt countries get together to discuss the refugee crisis and what they might do and Nazi Germany exploits the fact that no country wants to take in refugees as a result of the Evian Conference and in fact only a few years ago the High Commissioner for Refugees referred back to the language used at the Evian Conference as a chilling reminder of the language being used today when discussing both people and the plight that refugees have currently in trying to leave where they are and reach safety. So my grandmother who was born in Berlin gave me a book called the Philolexicon and the Philolexicon was a book published in 1934 and 35 by Jewish organisations and it printed places in the world that didn't require visas. Now in 1934 and 35 most Jews in Nazi Germany or that's your compared Europe but later on probably weren't that conscious about Trinidad being a destination they were thinking much more about bordering European countries perhaps the United States but as persecution increased and as the avenues for escape narrowed and the windows closed on any kind of escape places like Trinidad became incredibly important so Trinidad Shanghai anywhere that didn't require a visa and refugee agencies found out at the same time and started chartering ships putting refugees on the ships and paying the entry deposits to allow refugees in by 1939 mid 1939 Trinidad has about 600 Jews crowded in Port of Spain with local Jewish organisations helping them to settle and helping them to find places to live. I feature in my book and I think I'll close in a moment here I feature in my book the stories of many of these refugees and they're just to give you a few Hans Stetscher came from Vienna as a 14 year old boy for him it was a massive adventure and he talks about the colours and the the exoticism of landing in a tropical island like Trinidad and it reminded him of the Ernst May adventure stories he'd read as a boy but he also remembers when he was interned a few years later how an old man hung himself and the despair that older refugees found so that's another theme that I explore in the book is about the difference uh in tenacity and resilience if you're a young person who manages to flee or you're caught up in it as an older person and of course many refugees from Nazi Germany were not young fit people who could go and work in colonies which was of course some of the ideas muted for refugee settlements at the time they were doctors and dentists and bakers and diamond cutters and they didn't they weren't in the point where they could easily adapt to a new life. I also wanted to talk about Melka and Manfred Goldfish you feature a lot in my book because I've met their daughter Manfred's daughter Sue Goldfish she's actually written a film about her search for her father and they left Hamburg in 1939 and went to Trinidad and when they left Hamburg and waved goodbye to their parents it was the last time they saw them because in 1942 Manfred's parents were deported to Theresienstadt where they died and in fact most refugees who did manage to escape left families behind in Europe and would not see them again um and and that's sort of that that's the the next point I suppose in along the story is that as the refugee crisis gets worse refugee agencies are the unsung heroes of my book and they are the unsung heroes of the 1930s and the 1940s and there should be more attention on the Cecilia Rizovsky's and the other tireless workers who were posted in in in European cities and throughout the Americas helping refugees and just wanted to draw your attention to something which has so much resonance for today's refugee crisis when in most people might have heard of the St Louis which is a famous ship which was bound for Cuba with refugees on board it was refused entrance and it went from pillar to post across the Americas and eventually ended up back in the UK in my book I have many voyages like this there are many other St Louis and at the time the joint which was one of the leading agencies had a telegram to other agencies saying we're in a quandary because there is a continual similar dumping of shiploads of refugees and we have no alternative but to refuse financial help important question in principle to be canvas with other organisations to determine decision to these passengers in the future now the British and others said maybe it's kinder to return them to Germany but of course these refugee agencies wouldn't do that and just as the refugee agencies today are faced with illegal trafficking of refugees and people being dumped in boats the joint's report was the journeys to nowhere and talks explicitly about boatloads of dumped refugees and so the dilemmas I think that refugee agencies face today have very stark parallels with my story then of course the refugees settle in the Caribbean they many of them are interned and I talk about the internment experience in Jamaica a very different story very few before the war during the war special camp is built in 1940 to house 9000 Gibraltarians who are evacuated from Gibraltar most don't come by 1940 to Hertha Emerson the High Commissioner for Refugees says can we put some refugees in this camp by that time the British authorities resisted as much as they could nevertheless January 1942 numbers of refugees do end up in Gibraltar camp and actually go there all the way throughout the war and and despite the U-boat war and despite the lack of shipping they are actually taken from Spain and Portugal from Portugal from Lisbon and bought across across the water and stay there to lesser degrees of satisfaction as these are younger refugees who want to fight at the end of the war the majority of the refugees leave for many of them it was a spell before they could get to the new world that's why my books called nearly the new world it wasn't a place they wanted to settle in but for some it became a permanent refuge and actually if you look in the phone book in Trinidad you'll see Fagan Bams and you'll see Averbux and you'll see the presence in a way of this Jewish presence in the 1930s and I just wanted to finish with a quote from Henry Altman who told me what it felt like to settle in Barbados and he said when we first came to Barbados it happened that most of us had blue eyes and the original Jews had black eyes the ones who came from the Mediterranean Spanish and Portuguese and they were suspicious the Barbadians they they thought that we were Germans it is a fact and people called us Germans until war broke out then slowly they realized that we were not we are Polish Jews most of us are Polish Jews we always thought that we would leave the island and go somewhere else like to New York America Canada but somehow we loved it here and we are Barbadians wow thank you so much for that Joanne that is such I could listen to that for a lot longer there's so many strands woven into that presentation and you're right the the echoes with today are just so striking this evocation of you know the phantom of mass immigration and sort of scaremongering and fear about hordes is so so relevant to the kind of conversation we're having around immigration today thank you so much for that and now last but not least can I please introduce Dr Shunju thank you good evening okay I'm going to deal on this trip this journey and I'm going to take you a little bit further further from where Sarah went Sarah went as far as some Baghdad and then from Baghdad we're going to move to China um okay this gentleman his name is Marti Richie he was some Portuguese Jesuits missionary and he went to China and become he become quite signified and was quite controversial you know he tried to convert to Chinese but instead he become you know kind of Chinese was dressed in Chinese rope you can see okay so um in 1605 July 26th he wrote a letter to his superior and regarding and so in the letter he was very excited and he told that he had met a Jew from Kaifeng in central China and this letter become you know kind of available to the general reading public 10 years later and and so there's lots of people were excited and you know to hear about the Jews living in China and then there were other missionaries um Franciscans and Dominicans who also went to China they were not particularly they they all went to Kaifeng and they were not particularly interested in finding Jews they were more interested in the Jewish Bible and but they didn't come back with any Hebrew manuscripts until um 100 and you kind of 200 or 300 years later and you know kind of the um the story of the this Chinese Jews began to catch Western imagination again and um in 1840 and yeah 40 45 um there was some James Fang you probably the name rings and to some of you he and he was um and the British consul to Jerusalem and um he was some question missionary he was questioned he was so he was interested in Jews because you know he was trying to look he was looking for the lost tribe um you know and um so he it was um actually in the British Library he had read the um the Jesuits writings about some the Jews of Kaifeng and so um he wrote so he published this um quite comprehensive book the book is still available I think certainly in the British Library called the Jews of China um it was some much more detailed accounts or for this um a Jewish community um you know in China in Kaifeng um although interesting and then he subsequently published another one called the orphan colonies of Jews in China and um although the interesting thing is he's never been in China he just you know kind of um used um the material which is available to him and um you know kind of basically wrote this story and um and then but that was um so that revoke the interest in the Chinese the the Jews of China and after him after the publication of his works a number of Protestants missionaries went to Kaifeng and to look for the Chinese Jews and um they apparently found the the Kaifeng Jews so they they took some pictures and um these are you know kind of then the the two brothers in the image they they were brought to Hong Kong because some when they the the Protestant missionaries were quite disappointed when they went to on you know kind of Kaifeng and Metz this community none of them speak Hebrew yeah the um they only kind of their story goes back to Moses but you know kind of other than that and they're and so they don't really know any of their Jewish heritage so um those Protestants missionaries decides to educate them so they brought these two brothers to Hong Kong to teach them uh you know kind of Hebrew and so unfortunately one of them died in Hong Kong the other one insured the hardship what he could have and so he escaped um okay so that was some under you know kind of that was a picture taken in the republican China's early 20th century of that community um now the community actually identify themselves um as Jewish interestingly in 1949 after the people's communists took over China and funded people's republic of China they started dividing the Chinese population into um you know different ethnic groups and they invited the leader of this um you know Jewish community I couldn't even come and steal the I think the identity is still in question and somehow and and so the community they they the the Chinese government actually you know kind of invites the leader of this community and wanted to you know kind of make them Jewish a Jewish ethnic group but they refused very interesting but now they have become Jewish again and so this community has you know kind of they still there are streets of this community you know kind of lived and and they become major Jewish tourism for the city and actually one member of that community also immigrated to Israel about 10 years ago um so that was the Kaifeng Jewish story then in the 19th century and we've seen this picture already from Sarah okay and so that's um you know kind of the main and I would say the main Jewish immigration into China the first group of Jews um you know arrived actually arrived in Hong Kong um in 1842 after the first Anglo-China war and better known as the European War to the western world now and most of them came via the them British Bombay and Kolkata and and most you know all these people are safaris um before you know the European War a number of them had already been trading in Canton and David Sassoon they were a safari textile merchant they came from Baghdad as we know and they had they have also been selling opium to the Chinese for a number of years prior to the opium war and during the war David Sassoon sent his oldest son Elias David Sassoon to Hong Kong to cash in on the opium trade the in the aftermath of the opium war the Treaty of Lanking in 1842 forced China to open five ports to foreign trade and three years later in 1845 the Sassoons opened a branch of their commercial operation in Shanghai which was one of the treaty um the port which was opened for trade um and by 1870s the David Sassoon song and company was um became indisputably the largest opium importer in China in the meantime the Sassoons also overtook the Parsees to dominate the British textile trade the younger generation of the Sassoons um as well as some other Jewish merchants um such as um yeah I don't have a image of Kaduri but this is the other person Celius Aaron Harding he was one of the Sassoons in the firm's employee and David widened their business interest into shipping and banking and non-speculation that non-speculation become a much more they they soon discovered non-speculation become much more profitable they actually trade so they stopped you know kind of selling opiums and switched on and that's what um Sassoon um well well Harding normally that's what he made his money from he um he's one of my favorite character Harding he's very interesting very very colorful he joined the Sassoon firm as a clerk and then he rose to quite high position and become you know kind of very powerful and quite wealthy and he is um while he remained Jewish you know kind of all his life he um he married a buddhist and and Eurasian buddhist I don't have here his wife is um I don't know that that's his wife um Luo Jialin she's very beautiful she was also the you know kind of a god daughter of Doris Doris Doris's empress and um he um so he was very Celius Harding while he remained Jewish he also become very sort of um you know integrated you could say the word into the local sort of thing and this um he's um he built this um um um what's he called an Eileen garden yeah known as Harding garden is one of the you know kind of famous site in Shanghai and um his Eileen garden had become you know kind of um home for a number of Chinese revolutionaries include Dr. Sen Yatien this is Dr. Sen Yatien he was the founder of the Chinese revolution the founder of you know kind of republic in China and um so he um he's um you know the Eileen garden become a place where the Chinese revolutionaries met um you know kind of because they were escaping sort of um um being um arrested so they they would use the Eileen garden as a shelter which is very interesting then when Harding died by you know kind of when Harding died he he become the richest man in the far east yeah and he's funeral and it was um and this this was um he you know the the site for his funeral and he his funeral was um um conducted by a rabbi Daoist and you know a scriptwriter and a buddhist priest and so you know kind of it was um um so it just shows that Harding he was one of those typical what you call Eurasian they were so cosmopolitan you know kind of why he remained Jewish but he's not you know kind of um he also embraced other identities as well you know he you could you know he was um that's why you know his funeral I mean his funeral tells you know kind of the story of his life yeah he's Jewish but he's more than just Jewish um okay and so um yeah ah okay sorry I have um lots of pictures so this um you know as um um we just go back to Hong Kong again you know from Shanghai um in and so as some in the early days as most of the member of the Hong Kong Jewish community were suffered the merchants and they mostly you know kind of the employees of um the Sarsun company so as the number of the Jews increased over the years a formal Jewish life began to establish itself and the Sarsuns they purchased um these some piece of land so they uh you know um they yeah then they they felt that there was it was necessary to have a regular place of worship for this ever expanding Jewish community so in 1867 they missed a premises on Hollywood road in central Hong Kong and this um was the earliest cynical in Hong Kong and um and the other thing is um in they also um the the Jewish community also leased a land you know kind of um in a Chinese village called Wennai Chang it's today's Happy Valley and um they built a Jewish cemetery um you know in this place and they they got to the crown knees um you know from the British and built the Jewish cemetery here and the cemetery is still here it's still in the in Happy Valley this place as the employer of um you know 40 and Safadis the youngest Sarsuns become the lateral leader of the Hong Kong Jewish community um in the 1881 and the um they purchased well this actually it's um you know they um the grandson of David Sarsun Jacob and Edward at Major Sarah probably knows all those names um they donated section of the Sarsuni state um in central Hong Kong it's um in today's Cane Road and Robinson Road above the city center to the Jewish community and in addition to you know um giving this piece of land they also give money um to the community to build a new synagogue and in return they requested the synagogue be named in memory of their mother Leah so the synagogue is called O'Hare Leah synagogue it's still there it's very beautiful um in a place it's also become a major heritage site for Hong Kong so alongside of Sarsuns um Eli Kaduri and his sons um yeah they Eli Kaduri was a former employee of the David Sarsun company and his son brother Eli Kaduri also took up active role in needing the Hong Kong Jewish life um the Hong Kong Jewish recreational club it's um um the today's the home of the Jewish community center in Hong Kong it was first started in 1605 as it was a quite modest association but um Eli Kaduri he had married he married a safadi from England he was very attracted to Victorian English life and he wanted to introduce the English club to Hong Kong Jewish life so he would train and this um and the the Jewish recreational club into a Victorian club and according to him fit for the Hong Kong colonial life so the new club building you know opened in 1609 and it become the focus of Jewish social life in Hong Kong for the great part of the 20th century today is still in the center of the Jewish life there's also a big vine there and it's as well as a Jewish preschool by the 10th of the 20th century the Kaduri Sarsuns were among some of the most prominent families in Hong Kong's economic and civic culture even till today their names are enshrined in streets buildings and instituting institutions across the territory um I don't know whether any of you have been to Hong Kong but when you walk around Hong Kong you see all this you know kind of Jewish names all over the place and why so as I said the O'Hare Leah Senegal which is just you know kind of adjusted to the Jewish center you can see actually here this is um you know come to the top of the Senegal has become a part of Hong Kong's historical and cultural heritage the Kaduri's are the name behind one of Hong Kong's most famous landmarks the Panuslah Hotel the Kaduri's are also the founder of the China and night the you know kind of responsible for illuminating the streets of Hong Kong and supplying electricity of 80% of the territory's population and the company's castle peak power station first building in 1980s was still was at the time and still is one of the largest and most modern co-fired power station in the world and being key players of the city the Kaduri's are also famous for their philanthropy work amongst the non-Jewish population in Hong Kong this is in 18 uh in sorry in 1910s the Kaduri's opened a school for the Chinese and another for the Hindus as well as Helena May a home for English working girls in Hong Kong another member of the Hong Kong jury um it's Emmanuel Raffael Elieo Los sorry about my pronunciation he was also famous for his the philanthropy work to promote the welfare and education of Chinese girls who were driven by crime and prostitution um because of the poverty he gave money to the Hong Kong colonial government to build the central school for girls and the school was later re-leamed you know kind of after him and Belius public school and you all know him and the school is still there today and Belius was the oldest member of the Safadi synagogue um he um but he is quite interesting because as I said earlier most of the Safadi communities they are from Baghdad yeah while the British from Bay and Belius he was different he was a Venetian by origin so he did not see eye to eye with the other Safadis who had you know came from Arab lands also they didn't speak the same language because an Arabic and Serab would know was the Limba Franca amongst the Jews of Baghdad whereas in Belius he spoke a different language so he was some much more interested in to become identified with the British elites and so to begin with he's another very colorful character to begin with he played the Jewish card by making attempts to establish ties with the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and so this resulted in building the Beaconsfield Arcade in central Hong Kong and named in Disraeli's honor and in 1879 he also gave one thousand pound it was lots of money at the time to the British governor of Hong Kong um you know trying to erect a statue of Disraeli in Hong Kong but his offer was rejected by Disraeli himself so instead he used the money to to set up a medical scholarship fund named after him and also helped to establish the Allison Memorial Hospital and the hospital later served as one of the major teaching hospital for students of Hong Kong College of Medicine really was a fascinating presentation and so many interesting details there and I really like the way it sort of interweaves with the Sasun story um from Sarah as well thank you very much for that please feel free to submit questions if you're watching as well um very interested in putting those to the panel too but just to start those off Sarah um I was really interested in your in your story about Iraqi Jewry in Bombay my family of Iraqi Jews were you know I grew up listening to music from the Middle East including you know Iraqi Jewish music traditions musicians such as the Al Kuwaiti brothers or uh you know Nadine El Razali I'm sure you know but I'm really interested in what you think about the degree to which Iraqi Jewish musicians music traditions in Bombay continued I know your group Rivers of Babylon um are featured as part of the British Library exhibition Hebrew manuscripts but to what extent what was that continuation like how did it change and develop in Bombay yes um well even today if you go to Bombay and visit the synagogues some of the melodies are still um in the Iraqi Jewish tradition how long that will last I don't know um so as I would say um from the religious point of view that has been that has carried on all the time um of course there were changes as well but also let's say in the 1930s 1940s still there were people who were there were musicians who were singing in Arabic whether it was Julia Arabic or the songs of Nadine El Razali or bringing in bringing in music from Iraq still the Al Kuwaiti brothers um so there was still very much aware of what was happening in Baghdad and carrying on with those traditions but of course things did change gradually and um in Bombay certainly when I was growing up we had visiting musicians like Arthur Rubenstein so we had classical western classical music we had Aka Bilk and David Dave Brubeck so we had jazz um so so really there was a lot of western popular influence as well as classical music um also it's very interesting that Jewish musicians in Bombay um were very important in Indian film so we had for example Faisal Atagioff who was from Central Asia a brilliant mandolin player and he was very well known for his playing in Indian film um as was David Saab who was called David Saab but he was Jewish and he played mandolin as well Isaac Dunn Decker um so we you know there were both things were going on we were still continuing with the old traditions and being introduced to western traditions and entering uh Indian traditions as well if I have just another second um one of the songs that we sang in Habonim um was list heard by one of the music producers for Indian film and he put that melody there's more than one Jewish melody actually sung in Indian film to Hindi words so um yeah so there's a lot of mixing going on which was great yeah that sounds so interesting thank you for that um Joanne there's so many things that I want ask you about but what one thing that really sort of got my curiosity was about the um your your the story that about your grandmother who gave you the Philo Atlas the book that was published at that time to give information about where in the world refugees could come in how did that book come about and how did it get into circulation so the the uh the Jewish organizations in Germany uh had started were voluntary organizations they became representative organizations and they became um in the end part of the state operators but they made it their business to to find ways in which they could help Jews who wanted to emigrate I think it's true to say that up until um up until 35 most German Jews thought that they would be spaced for them in Germany and that once the initial anti-Semitism of the regime had sort of died down things would be okay but um with the changes in Nazi policy and and persecution intensifying particularly after Kristallnacht which was the burning of synagogues in November 1938 there was an official Jewish community acknowledgement that there was no future for the German Jews and then with the occupation of Austria and the creation of the office for the Reich um which which was vicious and tragic and basically turned Jews from citizens into penniless refugees through the process of chucking them out so there were mass arrests uh Saxon housing concentration camp and others were used and the only exit from these concentration camps was either death through brutality or having a ticket to go somewhere and what's interesting about the Philo lexicon is that I think I don't know the complete history of it but I think it was published in 34 and 35 and it did provide information about places around the world that had Jewish communities and places around the world that didn't require visas and of course the two organizations in Germany or the communities that were most interested in it was the office for Reich emigration uh and the Jewish communities and so you had the Nazi authorities and the Jewish communities knowing the most about where they could find loopholes and and places and so my grandmother who came to the UK as a refugee in 1937 um was um a very assimilated German Jew whose bookcases in London were full of of sort of German philosophy and German classics but also uh a whole history of what happened to the Jewish community in Germany which is actually where I've got my interest in initially in learning more about the history of of what happened during the Holocaust so interesting thanks so much for that um finally I just wanted to ask Shunjo um such an incredible chronology and chronicle of life Jewish life in China one of the things that I wondered if you could expand on was you mentioned that you know in 1949 China started to document ethnic groups so categorize ethnic groups but the Chinese Chinese community then in Kefeng didn't want to be categorized in that way do you know what that was about can you expand on that a little bit um part of the reason is um you know they probably didn't feel that um they want to become a minority because once you become one of the ethnic group then you become a minority and they wanted to become uh they wanted to be caught of the you know kind of majority the the Chinese population so on their identity card they actually had a hand yeah which is um you know kind of the the Chinese ethnic sort of category so they had a hands fact in their um you know kind of identity card but um interestingly and sort of after the 90s because um the western fascination mostly American Jews who went to you know kind of Kaifeng to look for this um Jewish community yeah and so and so there was prospect of you know kind of them if they become Jewish um then they could move to immigrate to Israel so some of them start in a kind of um wanting to have that Jewish identity but um then the Chinese government refused and to acknowledge that so identity politics yeah and it's um everywhere and it's here and could I just add some because the refugee stories very interesting um the um because this also well in the um there are two stories um amongst you know kind of the Safadi community and the Jewish refugees the first wave of Jewish refugees came um you know as a result of the programs and so they they came the Jewish refugee came from you know kind of Russia and Balkans and these were Ashkenade Jews and so they they are different from the Safadis who had established themselves so there's lots of conflict and the Safadi somehow failed that um you know kind of they didn't really want to be associated with the Ashkenades because many of these Ashkenades they were quite poor yeah and they were involved in street bullying or sorts and you know kind of etc so it became they saw them as an embarrassment and in the end and the two two community well they had to split so the Ashkenades actually hired another place themselves and where they would meet you know kind of rather than join the Safadi synagogue but um by the during the Second World War when there's some large influx of Jewish refugees came from you know kind of in Europe and they passed through Hong Kong and um by then the Jewish community under the Kaduri's leadership they had to show um you know kind of a lot of hospitality towards they they call them Jewish brothers and so this is one of the things Kaduri appealed to the Hong Kong Jewish the Safadi community to unite together and help the the refugees from Europe and this is what he said today more than ever is the duty of every Jew to realize his responsibility so he in 47 you know kind of when when the war ended a lot of refugees they first went to Shanghai and then they they after the war they were leaving China they were going to like Palestine North America and Australia on routes and they they all had to pass through Hong Kong so when they you know kind of all arrived in Hong Kong and because in the past the Kaduri says in fear of anti-Semitism he had you know kind of got involved you know and so he trained the Peninsula hotel you know kind of as a refugee camp quite luxury refugee camp some of my friends actually stayed in there you know kind of they they went later on they went to Israel and so I well I I have I had an image but I won't show you now and so then the the the the Peninsula hotel the board room in the Peninsula hotel was made into makeshift synagogue for the Jewish refugees and he actually he also you know kind of appeal he wrote thousands of letters to governments NGO and individuals to guarantee in the successful repatriation of the Jewish refugees thank you that was the last one you know kind of my story for the add to the refugee story thank you so much that's an incredible story I know I'm now going to open out to questions from people watching and thank you so much for those the first one is for Joanna this is from Emil Cohen Cohen who says Joanna's presentation is absolutely fascinating as I've not even heard of Jewish refugees in Trinidad there was a reference to refugee agencies would that be the Jewish agencies and were there any attempts to migrate these people to Israel so the Jewish agencies I'm talking about are a network of agencies that are actually set up in the late 19th century to help a big migration from Eastern Europe to the to America you know and thousands of of Jews emigrate at that time as did Irish and Germans and others for a new world and at the time agencies were set up from the east through to the west to help the migrants pass through and also to to an extent to also send migrants back this was the period of the Golden Medina where the pavements were meant to be golden in New York and so they were really well set up so the irony again is that on the one hand when you really need them in the beginning of the 1930s and there's a crisis you have the most well established network of Jewish agencies international agencies that are national based but work together actually most powerless in their whole history because the the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee which had the most funding took over really from the UK funded agencies in terms of funding rescue and relief but they had no power and there was huge fights it's fascinating to to look at the histories of these Jewish organizations and between the political ones who wanted for example like the World Jewish Congress to fight for the creation of Israel and to be explicit about what was happening to Jews in Europe and the other agencies who preferred particularly in the 1930s backdoor diplomacy that didn't push the Jewish that didn't push the point about the the persecution of the Jews in particular because of this terrible dilemma where Western democracies felt that by acknowledging that it was only Jews being persecuted they were actually doing what the Nazis were doing and robbing these citizens of Germany or Austria of their citizenship and their status as as nationals which is what the Nazi state was doing so these Jewish agencies worked together most were national agencies and some were were international and they after the war did fund refugee passage for example the joint had an office in Rome and helped refugees escape there was a lot of illegal immigration to Palestine shortly after the war and they also helped refugees move to other countries in fact countries like South Africa other countries across the colonial empire at that point did start to it's worth noting that very few refugees after the war were allowed into Britain Britain maintained its policy all the way through from the 1930s to post-war that they had an immigration policy it's only really with the United Nations declaration of human rights and the refugee legislation which came as a result of the Holocaust that refugees today have rights at that time there were no rights so refugee agencies were working in a kind of unregulated way in a way working across and between existing immigration requirements that's great thank you so much for that answer Joanna next we have one for Sara which is from Monica Goodwin who asks thank you for all these questions by the way Monica asks even though you did not hear the word anti-semitism the fact is your family left bug guard did they ever talk to you about why they left and the events that led up to their exodus to India and why India Sara thank you um yes there was no I say no anti-semitism in India is how I certainly remember things and certainly Davis to soon left because of persecution in Baghdad that is well known and many many Jews did leave because of persecution in Baghdad even in 1941 there'd been the pogrom the Farhud in Baghdad and a number of Jews then came to India and even before that I know some musicians who in the 1910-1915 were in the Turkish army in the Ottoman army and having to fight wars there and their sister bought them out and then brought them to India so certainly people did leave Iraq to come to India because of persecution um I mean my parents my mother's family didn't leave because of persecution so some people came because of persecution and others came for business there were business opportunities in India so those were the two reasons but having grown up there with friends you know from all different spheres like Zoroastrians and Christians and Mohammedos and Hindus and Buddhists everyone was different so in that sense everyone was the same and then there was certainly no anti-semitism then I hope that answers it thank you so much for that Sara I that's that's a great answer and I just wanted to move on to our final question for today um and thank you all for sending these through this one is um from Dori Shmetaling and it's for Shunjo uh when do you think real Jews disappeared from in Kefeng those that knew about the practices and went to the synagogue at least occasionally um and she adds I thought I read a while ago that a group of Chinese people of claimed Jewish descent immigrated to Israel not just once though they had to go through a formal conversion process well in I mean when certainly in the 19th century by the end you know kind of a 10th of the 20th century when the Protestant missionary went to Kefeng none of the community members speaks any Hebrew they didn't really keep any traditions um so the other thing which recently about 20 years ago when I went to Kefeng I actually asked them you know kind of um you know how do you keep your Jewishness how you know kind of where do you get your Jewish education from because um all the um you know kind of they they go by the um father's blood line yeah so and the father's family line and so um I said you know kind of um because uh and you normally that you go by mother's line yeah and um they said um it's very interesting um so they said oh this is China we go by the father you know that um so yeah it's um um it's interesting they said it's more complex question you know kind of how when did they cease to become Jewish um or were were they there were there are also different Jewish communities I would just say and you know kind of maybe maybe China is too far and after the I would imagine these people had to come from you know kind of join the Mongol period and um they probably come from Central Asia somewhere and then they were unable you know um to travel back to get instruction you know kind of for everything and gradually over time so they had you know kind of lost that connection with um and the what you probably call the the center yeah then they become more and more peripheral and so then they become a center fight like many of the Muslim and you know kind of Muslim community they become center fight and they become an ethnic group rather than a religious group um that's great thank you so much for that um I also want to thank everyone for the questions the apologies if we didn't have time to get through to all of them but we must now close this session um I found it absolutely fascinating I learned so much from these three panelists and I'm left curious about much more that that they each raised in their discussions which I think is a great way to leave it um I hope that all of you watching felt the same and that you all enjoyed this session too I want to thank you all so much for joining us this evening um and thank you all for putting through the questions and I'm going to leave the final farewell to the curator Liana Tahan so on that note I will leave you all with thanks ladies and gentlemen we hope you have enjoyed today's event a big thank you to the panel and a very special thank you to our partners Jewish Book Week for working with us on this event please fill up the feedback form we'd like to know what you think of our online events and do please keep an eye on what's on pages on our website for more exciting events thank you again for joining us today


Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I'd like to start by saying how great it is as always to have Ralph Goodale with us. Now, the rest of Canada might know him as our Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, but all of you around here just know him as Ralph. I know him as the hardest working man in politics, someone I can count on to keep Canadians safe, someone who makes sure that Saskatchewan's needs are always front and centre, and someone who makes sure that our government stays focused on the things that matter most to Canadians. Thank you, my friend, for everything you do. I also want to thank Mayor Michael Foujaya for being here. It's great to see you again, Michael, and I want to recognize MLA Mohammed Fayaz here as well. And mostly, I want to thank all the parents and kids who let me be a part of your day here at George Botwell Library. As I'm here today for a parental leave announcement, we're talking about families, we're talking about kids. I think now is a great opportunity for me to officially congratulate Karina Gould, who is the first sitting federal cabinet minister to have a baby while being a cabinet minister. I've heard from her she's doing very well and, of course, is taking some important time with her family right now. As you know, our government is working very hard to bring positive changes for Canadian families. In 2016, we introduced the Canadian Children's Allocation, which gives more money to parents to help them to take up the costs associated with having children. The ACA is now about 228,000 children all over Saskatchewan. In average, we're talking more than $7,700 that would have been put into the bank accounts of the working families of Saskatchewan during the year 2017-2018. Now, as important as this benefit is in helping pay for things like music lessons, new skates, or summer camps, the one thing I know all parents wish they had is more time. More time to just slow down, to watch their kids learn and grow. To help build play forts and go for walks and visit the library. This is most especially true when our kids are very young and need us the most. For many Canadian families, that's where the maternity and parental benefits available through employment insurance come into play, providing greater financial security to parents who take time off work. At the same time, we know that this time is seldom shared equally. For a variety of reasons, it's often mothers who elect to stay home. Well, our government believes that Canadian families should have more flexibility when it comes to raising their kids during those important early moments in life. And that's why, in our most recent budget, we announced our plan to introduce a new use it or lose it employment insurance parental sharing benefit. With this new benefit, two parent families who agree to share parental leave could receive an additional five weeks of leave. For families who choose to take a parental leave of 18 months rather than 12 months, this could represent up to eight weeks of additional leave. For families from Regina and all over Canada, six weeks of additional leave will allow parents to spend more time at home with their kids as much as they can to share their parental leave. This change will make it easier for women to return to work sooner if they so choose, knowing that their young child will be cared for by the other parent. It will help to address some of the patterns of discrimination that many women experience during the hiring process. And it'll give both parents, including adoptive parents and same-sex parents, an opportunity to bond with their children to feel more confident in their ability to care for their kids and to set up patterns of equal parenting that can last a lifetime. This isn't just a good idea. In theory, it works. We know from experience in other jurisdictions that incentives like the EI parental sharing benefit can make a big difference in promoting equal parenting and helping women get ahead. That's good news for parents. It's good news for children. And it's especially good news for Canadian women who work hard every day to support their families at work and at home. Because making sure that there are opportunities for women to succeed in the workforce is not just the nice thing to do or the right thing to do. It's a smart thing to do. It grows our economy. It creates better opportunity when everyone has a real and fair chance to succeed. Everyone succeeds more. Thank you very much for being here today and I'm looking forward to saying hi to a whole bunch of families right now.


All right, so I love to get extra volume via circuits at the end of my main workout So for example if I'm on a four-day split I'm gonna do squat and deadlift and I'm old so I don't want to do a lot of volume on squat and deadlift I just want to do a little bit of volume and then I'll come out here And I'll do the accessory work to build up my volume and get my hypertrophy as well as conditioning After the main lifts I do this on the upper body as well So I'm gonna do lower body today, but on upper body. It might be something like chin-ups or pull-ups dips Barbell curls. I might do that one day I might do lat pull downs or or barbell rows or penlay rows and another tricep exercise Maybe it's it's it's rolling dumbbell extensions and dumbbell curls. I might do that and I just do them circuit style So I just go from one to the next to the next no rest Get my heart rate up I'll track my heart rate on my Apple watch a lot of times my heart rate to get up in like the mid 150s By the time I'm done with this. So I might go like three rounds three exercises. So nine total sets Thing only takes about eight or nine minutes, and then you're done You've got a great accessory workout. You got lots of hypertrophy stuff You got extra volume and you got the conditioning. So you really kill four birds with one stone So I'm gonna show you what that looks like today. I'm gonna do Leg extensions and I'm gonna go right from that to the reverse hyper I'm gonna go from that directly into the glute ham raise I'll probably do it for a couple rounds so you can see what it looks like. Here we go. Ready? That's how we get extra accessory volume hypertrophy conditioning at the end of the workout


anything else on this before we move to S 140. Senator Bruce do you want to kind of kick it off as the lead sponsor of the bill. Sure actually the only sponsor you're all by yourself on this one. Yeah proudly proudly. So this was a bill that started with discussions with migrant justice who will testify in a minute. They're a group that has been doing great work in terms of trying to improve conditions for our migrant workers. Just wanted to say going back to my first term in the Senate I was on agriculture and it seemed to me that there were two things as as we got into it. Two things that were saving Vermont farms and I would say they were organic farming which was paying a higher price for the goods that the farmers had and migrant workers who were all over the state and they were performing jobs that were very very difficult to fill but were dangerous in some cases and they were isolated on farms and so that was when we passed drivers privilege cards and to allow them to move around and get health care and groceries but this is a different problem for these workers in that sometimes as the chair said their documentation issues put them at risk of arrest or detention or deportation and what this bill says is I hesitate to call it simple because there are complicated interrelations between federal and state law but what it attempts to do is prevent someone from being arrested when they go to a courthouse in good faith as a party to a proceeding or witness or someone who is there to support our judicial system but that opportunity is used instead to arrest them and perhaps jail them or send them out of the state. So what this does is it provides a series of tools to allow them to be free of that fear of arrest but if someone violates and does arrest or detain them it gives them options and it gives the attorney general of Vermont options for how to deal with that. So with that I'll turn it over to Eric who drafted and thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you. Eric if you want to walk us through the short bill. Yeah I actually had walked the committee through it already last week. Oh that's right. Yeah you did I'm sorry. It's okay. Happy to refresh your recollection. I don't have anything to add to what Senator Farooz said or what my walkthrough was last week. You may recall we had an interesting discussion last week about how this bill is based on common law privilege against civil arrest that's been around since the 16th century. It grew out of English common law. It was incorporated into the common law of the United States at Independence. There's an interesting opinion from the Southern District of New York that I had Peggy helpfully posted on the website that the committee wants to learn any more about that interesting history but it's based on that as well as a New York statute that passed already doing something very similar. I rework the language obviously but the concept is exactly the same. That says Senator Baruch described which is that it creates or you know in some ways one might say puts in statute this common law privilege this privilege against civil arrest and it's important to remember that it's civil arrest. It's only an arrest for purposes of someone's appearance at a civil proceeding. There's nothing to do with a criminal proceeding. It's not to do and none of that would be affected by this bill. The ability of the state or law enforcement agency to arrest somebody because of a criminal matter is not something that's addressed in this bill. It's only to do with an arrest for purposes of civil proceedings and one of the main civil proceedings in which that could occur these days used to be different long ago but these days is an immigration proceeding. Immigration proceedings are civil in nature and I think the committee also got some materials I sent around that indicated that these arrests had happened over the last couple of years sometimes that for my courthouses and I think that idea of the bill is to create a prohibition on that practice provided that so if someone or a person's either themselves or their family or household member is attending a court proceeding as a juror witness, etc. Then they cannot be arrested there at the courthouse while they're coming and going essentially from that court proceeding and the the enforcement mechanism so to speak is that if someone does violate that and arrest them in that situation they could be held in civil contempt as well as be the subject of a lawsuit for damages. So a person who was arrested in violation of the statutory prohibition if it passed would be able to sue that the person who arrested them for monetary damages in the civil division. So that's essentially in a nutshell and happy to answer any questions or whatever else the committee might find helpful at this point. No, thank you, Senator Benning. Eric, I'm reading thirty seven and one a prohibition and I understand the intent of the person who is a party, a juror, attorney or witness. Am I reading this wrong, though, that if their brother or their household member of whatever relation is attending and is not a party, juror, attorney or witness is also extended this umbrella, if you will. I read it as that that person would also have to be I see what you mean, a person or a family member of the person. My first reading of it was that the household member or family member would also be a party juror or attorney, but you may be right. It might be the language needs to be tightened up there, depending on what the intent is. My assumption is that the intent is to try to protect an individual who is participating in a court proceeding, not simply observing one. And as I read that, I thought, you know, that doesn't quite fit at least the way I'm reading it. I if I can just jump in, I read it as once it gets to who is attending a court proceeding in good faith as a party juror, attorney or witness. So everything that comes before who, it seems to me, is controlled by the fact that they have to be a party, a witness, et cetera. So I take Joe's point that there might be confusion in reading it, but it seems to me as though I read it the way Eric reads it, which is that the only people who are going to be roped in are people who ultimately are in that category of party juror, attorney or witness. Phillip, I'm not the English major here, but when you say or family or household member of the person, you are muddying the water. If your intent is that any person who is a party juror, attorney or witness, you should just say that and not have the phrase family or household member of the person because that's very easily as a defense attorney. As a defense attorney, I would use that language to say, hey, you can't bust this person. Yeah, and even though they're not a party in the proceeding. Yeah, never, but never hurts to clarify. Well, let me ask is since this was taken from a New York law, Eric, is this the way New York has done it? I'm not sure of the top of my head. Senator, let me just look that up and I'll mind when we look that up and hear from the witnesses because I can think of some good reasons why you may want to include that. Supposing that it's a child, the minor and the parent brings them. They're not a subject. Obviously, the child wouldn't be a juror, but could be a witness or whatever that we've just heard about and has been harmed by someone. And they're a witness to that and they were at court. Should you be able to arrest the mother who brought them? So that's how I was it's a policy decision, but I want to make sure I understand. Yeah, no, I'm just I appreciate you raising it. But I I think I could read it differently, too, though, in that way. I just explain if I might. So I actually will look into that. But I think it'd be good to to move on to some witnesses. Our first one, I think Will Limbeck, who's been here before and welcome back. Well, nice to see you. I think you have a couple of witnesses you want to introduce. Yeah, if you have say you're not on the agenda, but I know you're here in your role with migrant justice. So if you want to introduce yourself and any of the other witnesses, feel free to do so. Yeah, thank you very much, Senator Sears. My name is Will Limbeck with the Organization Migrant Justice. And I'm going to be introducing Olga, who is a member and leader in the organization, she'll provide some testimony and then I'll be interpreting that testimony from Spanish to English, and then I'll follow up with some comments of my own if it pleases the committee. So Olga, is that safe? Yeah, I guess I OK. When the patient is there. Hola, todos. Mi nombre es Olga Cruz. Soy una trabajadora en una granja de barca. Si también soy una leader de la la inclusión Justicia Migrante. Hi, everyone. My name is Olga Cruz. I'm a dairy worker and also a leader in the organization like a justice. Creo que todos sabemos el motivo por el que estamos aquí ahora. Y pues uno de los que me motiva a estar aquí a mí es la lucha todavía por nuestros derechos que nuestros derechos sean respetados de una otra manera. So I think you all know why we're here today. The bill that we're here to discuss and I was motivated to come here because I see this as part of a fight for my rights to be respected in one way or another. Primero que nada este pues a nosotros bueno a nuestra comunidad Migrante nos preocupa pues la situación de un poco de ir a las cortes este por el mismo temor de ser arrestado. Ni siquiera uno piensa quizás a lo que vaya a decir el juez allá adentro es más el temor que haya de que pues la migra esté afuera esperando. So I want to say that our immigrant community is afraid of going to courts in this state because of the fear of being arrested. In fact, when you have to go to court, you aren't even thinking about what the judge might say to you or what might happen inside the courthouse. All you're thinking about is if an immigration agent is going to arrest you when you leave. Lo que estamos pidiendo como comunidades que se prohiban estos arrestos porque eso si eso sigue pasando hace que la comunidad es más probable que no vaya a las cortes así sea acusados por algún caso criminal o casos familiares de mandas legales o por alguna detención que haya pasado antes. And so what we're asking as a community is for these detentions to be prohibited because the more that this happens, the more probable it is that members of our community won't attend court proceedings, whether that's a criminal case, a family case, civil litigation, or if somebody is in detention. Esta ley para nosotros es muy necesario y es un poco distinta a las políticas de no polimigra no se trata de la colaboración de la policía con la migración que claro es importante también si no delimitar las acciones de la migración. And so this law for us is very necessary and it's also different from previous actions and policies in place like the fair and impartial policing policy. This law isn't about the collaboration between local police with immigration per se, but although that's also a very important issue that needs to be addressed, but this bill focuses on limiting the instances in which federal immigration can arrest people in Vermont. Estoy aquí también porque también tengo familiares conocidos o amigos y para mí es muy importante que tomen en cuenta lo que se está pidiendo porque de por sí a veces que se quiere cumplir y ir a las cortes por algo que haya pasado en la vida de cada persona aquí, pero es difícil ir o no ir y en alguna parte estaríamos fallando otra vez, pero pues no nos da esa seguridad que uno va a regresar y algunos tienen familias y si uno les detienen en la corte, qué pasa con la familia aquí, qué pasa con los hijos aquí? And so I'm here testifying today not only for myself, but because I have family members and acquaintances and friends who this affects as well because many things can happen in life that can bring you to a courthouse and then you're faced with a difficult decision of do I go to court and fulfill my responsibility or do I not go and not comply with that responsibility? And many people will choose not to go out of fear of detention and deportation because that means being separated from your family, being separated from your children and your community. Es importante pensar que este pues en qué hacer bien el trabajo que ellos están haciendo, pero este también importante pensar en nuestra vida de que no es fácil pues cuando llega pues una detenciones o conlleva muchas cosas y es difícil para nosotros es difícil este como como tratar de hacer pues lo correcto por lo mismo de que pues uno nunca sabe lo que vaya a pasar y pues esperemos que tomen en cuenta lo que se está pidiendo porque es muy importante para nuestra comunidad. So this is an important issue. We hope that you think carefully about this because it affects our lives. It's not easy when somebody is detained by immigration and it's difficult to want to do what's right by going to a court hearing but without knowing the consequences of that action. And so I hope you take this into account because I think this is a very important issue for myself and my community. Muchas gracias por darnos este tiempo de participar aquí porque nuestras voces sigan siendo escuchadas. Mi nombre es Olga y muchas gracias. Thank you again for giving us the time to participate here with you today and to hear our voices again. My name is Olga and thank you very much. Muchas gracias Olga excelente y ahora voy a decir algunas palabras tan bien. So yeah, thank you very much to Olga. I have some some testimony to add, but I can take a break if anybody has questions for Olga at first. Has this happened to any of her family or? Olga, you know, this has happened to people who know family or family members? I know a friend. In fact, he was going to be present today, but for some family emergency. He was not there, but he will have to talk to him, give his testimony. If we meet people, this is what is happening. Amigos conocidos, eso pasa siempre. So Olga says, I do know people, a friend of mine, who this happened to. In fact, he was going to be here this morning to testify, but he had a family emergency and hopefully he can testify in the future because this has been happening, it's happened to friends and acquaintances and it's something frequent. Well, and maybe Olga wouldn't know, but in 2017, I think you were involved in this. We passed what I think was Act five and it was designed to prevent cooperation between ICE and law enforcement. You know, if that has been followed up on, have there been violations of that? Statute. But I remember correctly, Governor Scott followed Trump's initial efforts and Governor Scott, Attorney General Donovan, pushed this strongly as I think it was the first bill this committee did that year. Yeah, thank you, Senator Sears for the question. Olga, I have a question that I'm going to answer to you. So yeah, you're correct. Act five or a 79 and I believe you are the principal sponsor on it in the Senate. This was this was a law that was passed in 2017, which did two things principally. One, it attempted to preempt threats that were happening at the time around the creation of a Muslim registry and prevented Vermont from creating registries or sharing information based on people's religion or ideology, things like that. And then more germane to this question. It also limited the ability for Vermont law enforcement agencies to sign formal collaboration agreements with federal immigration authorities. And the real target of that was an immigration agreement called 287 G, which refers to the federal statute, which allows ICE and Border Patrol to basically deputize local law enforcement agencies to perform immigration detentions and it will require that the governor would have to sign off on those agreements before they could take effect. So that that law was passed and put into place and has has been followed to my knowledge. There are no 287 G agreements in Vermont. And this is a distinct issue in the realm of sort of how Vermont relates to immigration enforcement. There's also the related question of Vermont's fair and impartial policing policies. Your committee has looked at this issue of FIPs over the years. And there are significant problems and loopholes with the enactment and implementation of those policies in law enforcement agencies around the state. But this is a distinct issue. As Olga said, it's not necessarily about the actions of Vermont law enforcement, but provides protection around courts from federal immigration enforcement. Thank you. Go ahead. Any comments you want to make about the bill? Well, I kind of. Yeah, thank you very much. Olga, now I'm going to give you some testimony. So, yeah, thank you to the committee. Thank you, Senator Baruch, for introducing this bill. My good justice is a Vermont based human rights organization founded and led by immigrant farm workers like Olga. And so I do want to start off by saying that these isorests in Vermont courthouses are really important to the community. So I do want to start off by saying that these isorests in Vermont courthouses are a reality in Vermont. This is something that does happen in the state. My good justice staff members have directly witnessed immigrant farm workers detained by ICE at Vermont courthouses. I personally have received multiple calls from people as they're being detained during and after court appearances. And this happens in multiple courthouses around the state. It's not limited to one specific courthouse. And in each of these cases and as the bill addresses, these are civil detentions being carried out by ICE. They're not criminal cases. They aren't being there. There's no execution of a warrant in these cases. They're all civil detention solely for the purpose of deportation. This is something that affects a criminal defendants, also litigants and family and civil cases and all court users. And one instance in Addison County Courthouse, and this I think goes a bit to Senator Benning's question from before, but there had been a case where an immigrant farm worker was detained under criminal charge and he was being brought in front of a judge for a bond hearing. The the attorney asked the defendant's brother to be present as a show that the defendant had community ties that the judge could release him on bond and he had a family member there who would vouch for him. I accompanied the brother of the defendant to the Addison County Courthouse at the request of the attorney. And when I entered in the courtroom, I saw the director of Vermont's ice office sitting in the courthouse. I advised the brother of the defendant who promptly left the courthouse due to the presence of ice and the court hearing went forward without a family member of the defendant present. So here's a clear instance of a community member in Vermont being denied due process essentially in the Vermont court system because of the intimidation of a federal agency acting on civil matters. So this bill by prohibiting those detentions would strengthen due process and in turn strengthen the integrity of the Vermont judicial system. And so this is a needed protection for a documented problem in the state. It also has wide support from a variety of stakeholders. They aren't on the agenda to speak today, but you will be hearing in the future from the Attorney General's office, from the Office of the Defender General, both of whom I've been informed, do support this bill. I believe the Attorney General's office will be recommending a slight amendment to clarify their enforcement powers in the bill. We support that amendment and believe it. It just clarifies and strengthens the intent of the bill. And so with the support, we hope for speedy passage. You'll be hearing from more voices in support directly following this testimony. And then if you do reconvene, Olga had mentioned a gentleman who was detained by ICE at his court appearance. He was scheduled to testify today, wasn't able to join us. But I hope that he may be able to if there are future hearings so you can hear directly from him. So thank you very much. And I'll end my testimony there. I do plan to hold a future hearing next week, but day and time to be announced. So yeah, we'd be happy to hear from other folks. I appreciate your testimony, Will. Are there any questions for Will? I think it's fairly clear. Peggy will be in touch with the future date. Hopefully, we can hear from some of those other folks that you just mentioned. Senator White. So I fully support this, but I'm just curious. Do and in the other states where this is done, do we have the ability to control ISIS? I guess is it enforceable? I'm fully in support, but I just want to make sure that we make sure that it is enforceable. Yeah, thank you for the question. And there I'll leave that the specifics, the question to the lawyers who are going to be speaking next. But as you heard from Eric, this is based on the Protect Our Courts Act from New York, which was carefully studied and debated, has been in practice or implemented for over a year now. And it's certainly our belief that this is fully enforceable. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. Other questions for Will? Will, thank you. We'll see you next week. Our next witness, excuse me. Next witness is Amanda Garcia from the Human Rights Commission. Amanda, welcome. Oh, thank you so much for having me here. Chair Sears, the members of the committee for the record, my name is Amanda Garces. I am the Director of Policy Education and Outreach for the Vermont Human Rights Commission. I want to thank Senator Bruce for bringing this forward. The mission of the Vermont Human Rights Commission is to promote full civil and human rights in Vermont. The commission enforces the laws over which it has jurisdiction through investigation, conciliations, and litigation, as well as prohibiting as well as providing education and training. It develops and advances policies and legislations related to the protection of the most vulnerable for mantras. By enabling statute, the Human Rights Commission enforces anti-discrimination and civil rights laws. These statutes prohibit individuals or entities from taking adverse action or discriminating against individuals in protected categories. In this case, a national origin discrimination case may be brought to us when access to courts is prevented. But this bill does strengthen people's access to justice. It creates a clear path for relief. We believe the Human Rights Commission should not be the only process for people that would like to have some sort of relief. So again, it just creates a very clear path. Vermont has seen a fair share of injustices towards our immigrant community from the settlement of a discrimination lawsuit against the Vermont DMV to the stories that migrant justice brought here today and the stories we might never hear. With this bill in place, our immigrant community will be able to seek justice without fear or present themselves to take responsibility. Whether a person is a party on a case or a witness, many organizations who work with immigrant communities work hard to educate them about their responsibilities to present themselves in judicial proceedings. But that fear has always been an obstacle. And this fear was exacerbated by the past administration nationwide. These types of arrests are work against due process. And this bill affirms the need to access to the due process without obstacles. In Vermont, we must offer our immigrant community access to court to a court system, access without fear, regardless of people and people's immigration status. And the HRC fully supports this bill as is. Thank you so much. Thank you. Very clear. Amanda, just so you're aware, Senator Benning used to be the use was the chair of the Human Rights Commission back a few years ago. So we get every now and then updates the Human Rights Commission. So Senator Benning, don't know if you've met him. No, I have not. Nice to meet you, Senator. Good morning, you as well. Morning. Thanks. Thank you. Other questions for Amanda? Thanks so much, Amanda. We appreciate the support. Thank you. Falco Schilling is here from the ACLU. I'm assuming in support of the bill. That's correct. Good morning. My name is Falco Schilling. I'm the advocacy director for the ACLU of Vermont. And I think this is actually the the first time I've had the privilege of coming in front of the committee this session, though I've had the privilege to be in front of you many times before I'm actually just coming off of leave. My wife and I just had a new baby. So if I am a bit scatterbrained, it might be due to the lack of sleep, but doing my best to come in in support of this bill today. And thank you for the opportunity to testify before you start your testimony. Congratulations. Thank you so much. So the ACLU of Vermont supports S 140 because it creates a more accessible legal system for all the residents of Vermont as an organization that works to protect people's civil liberties. We recognize a key component of that is access to the courts. One thing that we have heard already in the testimony today and that I'm going to highlight in some of my testimony is the chilling effect that having civil arrests at courthouses can have on access to justice and also cooperation with law enforcement and just the operation of courts in general. The ACLU in collaboration with prosecutors, law enforcement officers and legal advocates across the country in 2017 conducted a national nationwide survey to see what the impacts of increased enforcement from the Trump administration had on access to justice and the operations of the courts. So looking at the change between 2016 and 2017, where we saw a 30 percent increase in overall arrests of enforcement actions and also courthouse arrests, in particular, anecdotally over in New York State from 2016 to 2017, we saw a 1200 percent increase in those arrests in courthouses. So as you've heard from folks earlier, this does have a chilling effect on people's ability and willingness to both work with law enforcement and to engage in court proceedings. This report, which I'm happy to share with the committee, I'm sorry, I didn't share it ahead of time, is called Freezing Out Justice. So it does look at the period between 2016 and 2017. We saw this increase in enforcement and what chilling effect that did have on access to justice and willingness of immigrant communities to work with courts. So some of the key findings from that report were that approximately 20 percent of law enforcement officers surveyed that found from 2016 to 2017 immigrant crime survivors were less likely to help investigators when police arrived at the scene of a crime to help post crime scene investigations or to work with prosecutors compared to the previous year. 82 percent of prosecutors said that compared to the previous year, domestic violence cases were underrepresented or harder to prosecute. Seventy percent reported the same for sexual assault. Fifty five found the same for difficulties, same difficulties for human trafficking cases and 48 percent said they had similar underrepresentation for child abuse cases. Advocates for immigrant communities said that they are the legal service reported a 40 percent decrease in the number of cases filed on behalf of immigrant crime survivors, and this creates an overall decrease in public safety when we have people who are either unwilling to cooperate with authorities both to report or be witnesses when a crime has occurred or to try and report crimes to protect themselves or family members. I also appreciate the testimony and the discussion earlier on the clarification about who this bill would encompass. And I think you heard many some good arguments for why this is important to both encompass the people who are directly in the proceedings, as well as those family members who might be accompanying them. As discussed earlier, there's both transportation issues and as many other legitimate reasons why a family member might be necessary to accompany someone in the court proceeding and that by denying them or, you know, by making them have a reasonable fear of detention that might not participate and that could help that might reduce some of the due process guarantees that folks could hope to enjoy. So keeping it pretty short because I know that you've been going through a lot and you've heard some really good testimony and probably hear more on this, but the ACLU of Vermont supports this bill and appreciate the committee bringing this forward and having this discussion. Thank you. Thank questions for Falco. Falco, thank you very much. Appreciate your testimony. It's pretty clear. Our next witness is. Oh, God, grab the wrong agenda. Susanna Davis. Is she not here yet? I guess not. Peggy, do you know she's supposed to be here? I can reach out to her again. Would you please? Sure. We're actually going a little quicker than I expected. Senator Sears, can I just ask a question of you? If we're lining up witnesses next time around, this bill is actually going to create liability for ICE members. I'm wondering if we're going to hear any witnesses from that camp. Excuse me, I appears you have frozen. There's a pond in there somewhere between ice and being frozen. There you are. I'm just curious, since this bill would exact a penalty on ICE members who attempt to affect and arrest, I'm just wondering if we're going to hear any witnesses from that side of the equation. We certainly could, if they're interested. Can you check on that, Peggy or Eric? I don't even know where to begin. Be the federal prosecutors office, I suppose. I would think. Thank you. Yeah, I would. I would think that you would, if you were looking to hear some perspective from from that side, I would think your first stop would be the U.S. Attorney's Office. Yeah, usually they refuse to testify by the law. I just heard from Susanna. She said she's still in house commerce, hoping to join soon. Um. Well. We have a break scheduled at 10 15. Can we take it early and see if we can, if she can get back to us by, if not, we can schedule her next week and we'll take our break at 10 15, so 10 15. And yeah, why don't we take our break and then pick up at 10 30 with no knock warrants? Unless there's somebody else on the screen, they would like to comment further about. Thank you. Why don't we ask her to come back at 10 30, Nick? No, 10 15 and 15. Yeah, if we come back at 10 15, hopefully she'll be able to testify. If not, hopefully some of the folks. Well, we know Eric is already here anyway, could walk us through as to two ways. And then we can hear from other witnesses. Yep, I'll let them know we're starting a few minutes early on to do. Well, we don't know yet. Yeah, if she was honest here, we're going to hear from her at 10 15.


So, it's another video on graphs. Can you match these four graphs to their equations? Pause the video, have a think, and click play when you're ready to check. Did you get it right? You should already know that this is a straight line because the highest power of X is one. And this positive quadratic, X squared, is a U-shaped curve. And the X cubed is a cubic. And so it looks like this. So then, by default, this equation must go with this graph. These are known as reciprocal functions, a number divided by X. And these are the reciprocal graphs. You may be thinking, why do we care about reciprocal functions that actually they're really important? Starting with Isaac Newton, he deduced that the forces needed to hold planets in orbits is a reciprocal relationship with the squares of their distances. So, as the distance between two planets increases, the gravitational force decreases. Other examples are radioactive isotopes decay reciprocally and trees losing their leaves. So, going back to the graphs, why do they split into two separate parts? Let's have a look at Y equals one over X in more detail. So we have our table of values, and if we substitute in these X values into Y equals one over X, we get these values. See how as X gets smaller, so closer to zero, the Y values get bigger. This means that when X gets really close to zero, Y would be very large, impossible to write a number so large. So then for when X is actually zero, you can't divide by zero, there is no value. The graph gets closer and closer to the Y axis, but it never touches it. The graph also gets closer and closer to the X axis and also never touches it. This is the same reasoning. If we rearrange the equation, it would be X equals one divided by Y. And again, you cannot divide by zero. Just on a side note, notice how the graph has two lines of symmetry. So from this video, you should know that reciprocal graphs look like this. They bend towards a horizontal and vertical line, but they never quite touch it. So the shape always stays the same, but it could be shifted and a negative reciprocal looks like this. So you should now confidently be able to recognize a straight line, a quadratic, a cubic, and a reciprocal function. Bye.