This article appeared in the March 11, 2004 Jewish Advocate.

Festive fair helps to create multicultural families

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

Demonstrations of customs and traditions from Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America, food from Tango Restaurant in Arlington, Full Moon Restaurant in Cambridge and Arlington and Tokyo City Restaurant in Allston, and merchandise from Crossroads Imports in Arlington, Red River Trading Co. in Boston, Children of the World in Westboro, Global Goods in Maynard, CPS Crafts in Arlington and Emily's Books in Ipswich will be some of the unique and fun offerings this Saturday at the Alliance For Children’s Multicultural Fair, to be held at the Wellesley Community Center from 12:30-3:30 p.m.

Performances by the Children's Russian Dance Troupe, Chinese Ribbon Dancing and Jamaican Storytelling, demonstrations of Ukrainian Egg Painting, Chinese Yo-Yos, Music Together, Hippo Language Program, and Chinese Rice Dough Figures will also be on the bill, as well as crafts, a bake sale, and a raffle. All proceeds will be donated to the AFC Foundation, which provides humanitarian aid to needy children throughout the world.

AFC, a non-profit, international adoption agency which has been helping children find their way home for over 29 years, seeks to provide high quality social work services for children around the world, who they believe have a right to permanent, loving families of their own.

This year’s fair, with the theme "Common Threads," is the group’s third annual event. “The multicultural fair is one way that we are working to maintain connections with all the countries and cultures that our children bring to their families in America,” said Renee Lubo, an adoptive parent who has worked in the field for 15 years and has helped produce approximately 700-1000 adoptions. “It raises essential funds for the Alliance to continue to bring families of different cultures together,” she added. But she noted that the planning itself is also a way to help bring together the non-adoptive and adoptive communities, so that others can learn more about adoption.

Lubo serves as the chair of the fair’s organizing committee, which ultimately serves two purposes. “It plans the activities, lines up performers, demonstrations and other aspects of the fair, but it also acts as a support network for adoptive and pre-adoptive families,” she explained. “We often start our meetings by asking if anyone has any news about their own adoptions, and usually there is at least one person who has been matched with a child or been given permission to travel since the last time we met.”

Born in Chicago, she grew up in Skokie. “98% of my elementary school classmates were Jewish,” she recalled. She was bat mitzcahed at 13 and confirmed at 16 at Congregation B’nai Emunah. Her maternal grandfather was from Berlad, Romania, paternal grandmother from Minsk, and paternal grandfather from Poland. “The ship got stuck on a sandbar, which meant that the voyage was much longer than expected and they ran out of food,” she said. “All they had on board to eat was herring and black bread. Once he arrived in America, he vowed he would never eat herring again. He lived well into his 90s and he kept his word on that!”

Two years ago, Lubo organized a family cookbook project of recipes and family history called “A Bis of This, A Pinch of That.” The family has built a sukkah for the past five years and incorporates special projects for each Jewish holiday, from traditional menorahs, candles, and dreidels to non-traditional gingerbread Russian shtetl houses, molded objects of pretzel dough, and this year’s Hanukah shapes cut from slabs of home made marshmallows. “We’re known for our hands-on, interactive Seders,” she said. “Our Haggadah is my own compilation from varied sources, and our Seder includes Persian customs as well as the ones I experienced growing up. I make four different types of charoseth - Yemenite, Sephardic, Danish, and Ashkenazi. We end our Seders with a Yiddish song, ‘Lomir Alenaynim,’ that I remember from my childhood.” The family joined Kahal B’raira last fall.

Last year, Lubo’s Chinese daughter wrote a school paper comparing Jewish and Chinese New Year. She discovered many similarities - they both celebrate a new beginning, both involve sharing a big meal (and special foods) with friends and loved ones, and both involve eating sweet things. The family is friendly with a Chinese Judaic Scholar who founded a Jewish museum in Shanghai, which includes among its artifacts a tallis that Lubo wove for her grandfather many years ago.

“The way I live, and the work I do, is reflective of how I feel about the world, about being Jewish, and about wanting to give something back,” she said.

The Alliance For Children’s Multicultural Fair will be held this Sat., March 13, at the Wellesley Community Center, 219 Washington St., Wellesley Hills, from 12:30-3:30 p.m. Admission is $10 per family. For more information, please call 781-431-7148 or visit www.allforchildren.org.