In the space of 51 minutes, Nikila Cole and her daughter, Sarah, girdle the
globe, visiting in Asia -- the Philippines and India; in the Western
Hemisphere -- Bahamas, Jamaica and Curacao; and in Europe -- Iceland, Holland
and Spain.

These may not be the first countries you would recommend to people who want
to trace their Jewish roots, but for the adventurous mother-daughter team
from Vancouver, Canada, the unusual itinerary more than worked: it was
transformative.

Sarah, a teen living an all-but-assimilated, uninformed Jewish life in
British Columbia, and her filmmaker mother, through the wonder of travel
(and apparently a well-endowed budget), become both knowledgeable and
committed Jews. The beauty of this documentary is that it shows us the
transformation as it occurs.

If there is a subtext in this documentary, it is the universality of
Judaism. We Jews come in many races; we have many shadings of belief and
non-belief; we owe allegiance to many different countries, but
notwithstanding these differences we are a single people.

The Spanish expulsion of 1492 is a common denominator in the history of all
the countries visited by the Coles, themselves descendants of a Russian
Jewish family. Once the order for them to leave Spain was issued, Spanish
Jews scattered in every direction. Some sailed with Columbus, such as Luis
de Torres, his translator, who, upon their arrival in the Bahamas, may have
been the first European to set foot in the New World since the Vikings.
Others, like two Jewish families said to have been shipwrecked in India,
subsequently embarked on less well-publicized expeditions to new homes and
ways of life.

Others traveled overland to Holland, a Protestant country that welcomed 15th
Century Jews from Spain, but which four and a half centuries later was
overrun by the German nazis. A visit to the home of Anne Frank was intensely
emotional for Sarah, who could empathize with Anne, a perennial teenager.
But her filmmaker mom also was affected, allowing the camera to be trained
upon her own tears.

From Holland, some Jews voyaged to Denmark and to Iceland, where the Coles
found a tiny but committed Jewish community.

The wandering Jews of this film¹s title refer not only to Sarah and her
mother but to their predecessors in far-flung lands. After leaving Spain,
Jews positively affected nearly every land they came to, including the
former Spanish colony of the Philippines, the former English colony of
Jamaica and the former Dutch colony of Curacao.

Like any fast-paced tour, the one designed as a learning project by the
Coles leaves us with overall impressions rather than in-depth information
about any one of the locales. Like a global jigsaw puzzle, the pieces fit
together.
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Filmmaker Nikila Cole and Sarah Cole will attend the screening of Wanderings
at the Jewish Film Festival at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 17, at the AMC La
Jolla Theatre. The movie will be screened again at 1 and 4 p.m. on Sunday,
Feb. 24, at Ultrastar¹s La Costa 6.