My family was ardently Catholic. I didn't know Jews existed. Caracas. That's kind of where you grew up. At the time, Venezuela had upper middle class. My father's side of the family always did things a little bit differently. My grandmother used to like candles on Fridays. We would go to the cemetery, and then suddenly my family would be looking for rocks to put on the grapes instead of flowers. When people passed away, they would cover the mirrors with blankets. Oh, really? It's just not a regular thing to do the things that we were doing might end. She's like, you know, it's fun time for you to know that our family comes from Jews. And I was like, what? Our family is Jewish. We come from Jewish ancestry. A lot of the things that we do probably have something to do with that.

Meet Reina Simnagar.

She grew up Catholic in Caracas, Venezuela,

never knowing that Judaism was part of her story at all.

But throughout her childhood, there were traditions in her home that didn't quite make sense.

Lighting candles on Fridays, covering her her mirrors during times of morning, placing

rocks on graves.

At the time, it felt random and unexplained.

Years later, though, those same traditions would become clues, pointing to a hidden Jewish

identity her family was once forced to suppress.

What began as confusion turned into questions.

Those questions ignited a journey.

Years of learning, searching, and rebuilding an identity

that had been taken from her family generations earlier. That ignited something inside of me. And I started doing research.

That took me into an incredible journey of finding all my ancestry. They were forced to convert. If you didn't want to convert, you would die. Not only that, like, there was a lot of intermarriage. Something happened when I was 16 years old. And that was going to the movie theater and watching the movie Schindler's List. At the end of the movie, they have a parade of the people he saved, putting rocks on his grave. Wow, we put rocks. This is what we do. I was like, oh my gosh, this is what my family does. And that's when I realized I can't step out of this theater with these tears in my eyes. For nothing, I am becoming judge. That's it. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Meaningful People podcast. I sat down with Raina Simnagar, originally from

Caracas, Venezuela. Now, I don't know how to pronounce it the way it should be pronounced. I'm

sorry about that, but you're going to hear an incredible story, as you saw a little bit of this

trailer in this episode. It's so timely, with all that's going on in the world. Her husband's

from Iran. She's from Venezuela, both going through revolutions of its own, very timely episode.

This episode is not possible.

This whole podcast is not possible.

That my friend Shimi J.

...