“One of the things that we discovered about ourselves is that a very, very long time ago, generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews,” Ocasio-Cortez said. At Hanukkah event with @JFREJNYC in an moving speech, @Ocasio2018 shares that her family were Sephardic Jews who fled to Puerto Rico. “Some of those people landed in Puerto Rico,” where her mother was born. During the Hanukkah celebration on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez didn’t dwell on her sense of Jewish identity but rather used her family’s history to make a case for cultural diversity. Today, Puerto Rico has a Jewish population of about 1,500, according to Tablet Magazine.

Source: Washington Post December 10, 2018 11:33 UTC