[Fredslist] Daily News "exclusive" about my wife's family

[Corey Bearak]

Some in Gotham know the story; many do not.

The Confino Apartment discussed in the story linked and pasted below (my email signature) is the family of my wife Rachelle; her dad Louis Confino is a cousin of Victoria Confino.  There’s a pic on Shelly’s Facebook page of Shelly, her dad, her sister and niece outside the Lower East Side Tenement Museum almost three years ago.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/1916-sephardic-jewish-teen-les-teach-history-article-1.2789404?utm_source=Newsletter+subscribers&utm_campaign=116ff0d944-Daily_Briefing_9_15_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dce5bc6f8-116ff0d944-28197957

Thank you for your interest.

Corey B. Bearak, Esq.
Government & Public Affairs Counsel
Networker of the Year-2012| co-chair, GOtham GREEN® | Gotham Towers | LI Legal | co-chair, Brooklyn Power Breakfast | co-chair, Staten Island Gotham  | Gotham Sponsorships Chair
P.O. Box 135, Glen Oaks, NY 11004
(718) 343-6779 ♦ facsimile (888) 379-3492
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[sent from my MacBook Pro]



EXCLUSIVE: Becoming a Sephardic Jewish teen on 1916’s Lower East Side to teach living history

This is the link <http://video.nydailynews.com/?ndn.trackingGroup=90051&ndn.siteSection=nydailynews-new-york&ndn.videoId=31381713&freewheel=90051&sitesection=nydailynews-new-york&vid=31381713> to the video that accompanies the article: 

BY 
MEGAN CERULLO
 <http://www.nydailynews.com/authors?author=Megan-Cerullo>GINGER ADAMS OTIS
 <http://www.nydailynews.com/authors?author=Ginger-Adams-Otis> <https://www.twitter.com/gingerotis>
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 4:00 AM
In 1916, Victoria Confino was a 14-year-old girl from a prosperous Sephardic Jewish family that landed in the Lower East Side after the Balkan Wars forced them to abandon Greece.

Today, she’s a 24-year-old teacher named Nicole Daniels — an actress of African-American and Irish heritage who underwent a month of intense preparation to bring Victoria Confino to vibrant life as a costumed interpreter at the Lower East Tenement Museum.

“It’s weeks of training,” the actress told the Daily News over the summer, while she was studying for her role.

The News got a rare glimpse at the rigorous process of becoming Victoria — a transition that requires a razor-sharp historian’s memory coupled with an ability to make every interaction feel fresh and unscripted.

Daniels was aiming to be ready by the time students went back to school, as children are among the museum’s most frequent visitors — and sometimes the toughest crowd to impress.

In fact, Daniels remembers visiting the museum herself as a young student on a school trip.


Victoria Confino, back center, is the original woman who lived in 97 Orchard St., on the Lower East Side in 1916. Today she is played by Nicole Daniels, 24, a costumed interpreter.
(Courtesy LES Tenement Museum)
“Of course I want everything to sound very natural, but there’s a lot to learn,” Daniels told The News in July, when her training started.

“The Tenement gives you a 700 page source book and this covers everything from facts about the actual family ... to everything you could want to know about their life here,” she said.

Daniels is one of 10 actors who “play” Victoria in the Lower East Side Tenements popular living history tours.

At 97 Orchard St., part of the museum, the Confinos entire family squeezed into a minuscule tenement apartment when they arrived in 1913 — a far cry from their big, breezy house in the Ottoman city of Kastoria, in what is today part of Greece.

As Sephardic Jews, the Confinos were descendants of Spanish Jews who emigrated to other countries after being expelled from Spain in 1492.



Nicole Daniels to bring Victoria Confino to vibrant life as a costumed interpreter at the Lower East Tenement Museum.

(New York Daily News)
With war brewing and enforced military service likely for her brothers, Victoria and her family decided life might be better on the other side of the ocean — but little in America was as they had dreamed.

They landed in the teeming Lower East Side — full crowded streets, shouting pushcart vendors and rats everywhere.

As Sephardim, the Confinos were a minority in a predominately Ashkenazi Jewish community — and they faced discrimination for their darker skin and Ladino language, a mixture of Hebrew and Spanish.

Nailing Victoria’s Ladino-accented English was one of Daniels’ biggest challenges.

She drew on interviews with Victoria’s living relatives to try to capture her voice and personality.



24-year-old teacher Daniels — an actress of African-American and Irish heritage — underwent a month of intense preparation to play Victoria Confino.

(New York Daily News)
Through a granddaughter, Daniels got to hear songs that Victoria would sing to the small children in the family. She also got tutoring in how Victoria moved and spoke.

The oral histories of relatives is one of the most important tools the Tenement Museum has to create historically accurate characters of the people who once lived at 97 Orchard St.

In rehearsals, Daniels was comfortable enough to dish — in a Ladino accent — on her life, or Victoria’s life, before and after the family moves.

To get it right, Daniels, who is from Baltimore, Md., originally, practiced at home.

“I’ve done a lot of hanging out as Victoria ... role-playing with myself basically,” said the 24-year-old, whose petite frame makes her seem much younger when she dons Victoria’s wig and old-fashioned clothes.


(Richard Drew/AP)
She relied on the tools provided by the Tenement Museum to build the factual foundation of her Victoria, she said.

“The narratives and oral histories .. coupled with the factual things like how much butter cost and what was the zoo like and how did you get to Coney Island then and ... included in that is the accent guide,” she said.

But when it came to shading in the character of Victoria — and the challenges she faced as a young woman in new culture confronted with a new language— Daniels relied on some of her own history too.

“The experience of outsiderness has been something I have tried to pull in from my own life and my family's history of migration and immigration,” she said.

With an African-American dad and a mother with Irish ancestors, she could relate to the feeling of sometimes not fitting in, even among family.



Tenement Museum

(Courtesy of LES Tenement Museum)
“I viewed myself as different at parties where all my cousins were white. Physically I presented differently which is very much the experience of Victoria,” she said.

It also doesn’t hurt that she resembles the original Victoria — or least has a similar set of beautiful, wide dark eyes.

“My friends who have come sometimes get stuck on the picture we have of Victoria, from 1917,” said Daniels. “They’re like, ‘Wow, you really could be her!”

The Tenement Museum has been offering first-person Confino tours since 1996.

“Meet Victoria” is the museum's longest running tour and also one of its most popular.

The Confino family's immigrant narrative still resonates with New Yorkers and visitors from all over.

The family faced its up and downs — with discrimination and limited job opportunities for women and immigrants playing a major role.

“One of the most common narratives around immigration is life is better here than it was back home,” said Jessica Varma, head of interpretation programs at the museum.

“So I think this story is a really interesting way to complicate that narrative and invite our visitors to think really deeply about it,” she said.



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