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http://content.usatoday.com/topics/article/Places,+Geography/Countries/Israel/0ajt0y32q69wP/1

The Sotomayor Effect

     

Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s up-by-your-bootstraps story speaks to both the Hispanic and Jewish communities, observers say.

by Sharon Udasin
Staff Writer

Ever since President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor for a seat on the Supreme Court, Jewish leaders have been speculating about how the appointment of this Bronx-raised Hispanic woman will affect the relationship between the Jewish and Hispanic communities.

In recent years, Latino and Jewish communities around the county have made strides to connect with and learn from each other, in part due to their shared immigrant histories. Sotomayor herself has been on two trips to Israel — in 1986 and 1996 — through the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange. That program has brought over 4,500 American leaders and politicians to Israel since 1982, to partake in seminars involving politics, security and health care, according to Ann Schaffer, director of AJC’s Belfer Center for American Pluralism.

By her second trip, Sotomayor was already a federal judge and she was eager to return to the country she found so beautiful.

“This is a woman who was raised by a widowed mother in a Bronx housing project — that is a quintessential immigration success story,” said Josh Norek, cofounder of the Latino-Jewish band called Hip Hop Hoodios and founder of Vota Latino, an organization that encourages young Latino Americans to become politically active. 

“[Sotomayor’s story] is very remindful of the people from a few generations before when the Jewish people rose in the Lower East Side,” agreed Gabriel Cwilich, professor of physics and director of Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College, who is Jewish and Hispanic himself.

To both Cwilich and Norek, Sotomayor’s story speaks to the two communities’ shared immigrant pasts, and they say that the two groups have much to learn from each other. Continue reading…

**ALSO see this story featured on the front page of news site, “New American Media: Expanding the News Lens through Ethnic Media.” Much appreciation and many thanks to them for posting!!**