JEWISH STUDIES MAJOR REFLECTS ON INTERNSHIP IN JERUSALEM

Elijah Demetrios Kahlenberg, a sophomore triple majoring in Jewish Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Government, recounts his experience last summer in Jerusalem as an intern with Diarna.

During two months over the summer, I had the pleasure to undertake an internship with an organization called Diarna. Diarna is dedicated to capturing the histories of Mizrahi/Sephardi Jews, specifically the sites, cities, and regions in which Jews resided in across the Middle East, North Africa, and Mediterranean. I devoted my efforts with Diarna to both research pursuits: covering and documenting a variety of global Sephardi/Mizrahi communities and also on-theground fieldwork to showcase Mizrahi/Sephardi communities of the Old Yishuv. One should note, Diarna’s slogan is “a race against time” as they work to document and uncover Mizrahi histories that are in danger of being lost, typically due to local extremist groups targeting Jewish cultural/heritage monuments.

This notion of “a race against time” defined my basis in choosing which histories to capture and record.

My yearning to undertake this venture, which was recommended to me by Professor Amy Weinreb, comes from