Berber new year in a ukrainian church, by Bill Weinberg
NEW YORK (SIWEL) —All Saints Ukrainian Church on East 11th Street, with its colorful mosaic facade, was the unlikely venue on Saturday Jan. 16 for the metro area Berber community’s celebration of their traditional new year holiday, Yennayer. On the wall of the church’s downstairs meeting space, paintings of orthodox saints formed a backdrop to the flag of Kabylia—the increasingly restive Berber region of Algeria’s northern mountains. By an interesting chance, it has the same blue and yellow colors as the Ukrainian flag. It was still a little odd to hear strains of North African music and eat delicious couscous in a Ukrainian church.