Our Tour Guides for each week for this program:

Mois Gabay - November 23
Mois Gabay was born in Istanbul, Turkey. He's an active professional tour guide and one of the board members of the The Quincentennial Foundation Museum of Turkish Jews. The first Jewish Museum was founded in 1992, in order to commemorate the 500 years of existence of the Sephardim Jews from the Ottoman Period till the Modern Republic of Turkey. The Jewish Community in Turkey has a long and rich history that stretches back some 2000 years to Roman times when Jews left Jerusalem and dispersed throughout the world. One of the most unique things that we will learn about is the history of the Camondo Family, who were called the "Rothschilds of The East" and their journey from İstanbul to Paris. Looking forward to connecting over Hanukkah with all of you!

Borbala Lakos - November 30
Borcsa/Borbala Lakos was born and raised in Budapest, Hungary. She runs a project of her own: Talmud not Only for Women – Talmud NOW which became an important platform for dialogues in the Jewish community of Budapest in the past years. In addition Borcsa/Borbala volunteers at the Haver Foundation which holds interactive workshops for high school students to introduce the complexity of the Jewish identity. Jews are documented first coming to the land of Hungary in the third Century CE. One of the most unique things we will be talking about is that one of the most famous Hungarian pastries, called “flódni”, has Jewish roots!

Mónica Unikel-Fasja - December 7
Explore the Historic Synagogue of Mexico City LIVE with our guide Mónica Unikel-Fasja. Jewish immigrants arrived and lived in Mexico City around a century ago, and Mónica has dedicated nearly half of her life to walking around the historic streets of the city she loves, narrating the testimonies and the stories of Jewish immigrants in the form of guided tours. She also has studied and published about the synagogues in Mexico, and participated in the revitalization of an abandoned synagogue, which today she runs as a cultural center named Nidje Israel. Now known as Historic Synagogue, it opened in 2010, and since then has served as an open space for all kinds of Jewish cultural activities and all kinds of people.