In Honor of Mrs. Chella Safra, the Safra Family, and Moise Safra Center Team for their exceptional hospitality and partnership in making the 24th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival our most memorable and successful to-date!
The Sephardi World Weekly is made possible by Professor Rifka Cook, Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina, Rachel Amar, Deborah Arellano, and Distinguished ASF Vice President Gwen Zuares!
Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one
💙“Israeli Fashion Designer Elie Tahari Loves New York, But ‘My Heart Belongs to Israel’”
By Shiryn Ghermezian, The Algemeiner
David Serero (Producer of the 24th NYSJFF), Jason Guberman (Executive Director of the ASF), Elie Tahari (ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Awardee), & Oded Halahmy (ASF Board Member, Iraqi-Jewish artist, & sculptor of the Pomegranate Awards), NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival Opening Night, Moise Safra Center, 4 April 2022
(Photo courtesy of Zakaria Siraj)
Following the New York première screening of the documentary The United States of Fashion Designer Elie Tahari at the American Sephardi Federation’s New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Tahari, the Persian-Israeli fashion designer who raves about New York, made sure to note how Sephardic families “‘stick together’” and “‘hold their traditions stronger.’” Bottom-line, he said, “‘My heart belongs to Israel.’” Film Director and Festival Producer, David Serero, emphasized the American angle: “‘This is a story of a man who started from nothing, who is the definition of courage, who is reminding us what America is, where anyone can knock on the door and the door will be open.’”
Feature: Andreé Aciman Honored with the ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature📚🏆
Sara Nodjoumi (24th NYSJFF Artistic Director), Jason Guberman (ASF’s Executive Director), David Dangoor (ASF’s Presdient), André Aciman (ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Awardee), Amir Arison (ASF Pomegranate Awardee), Caroline Aaron (ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Awardee), David Serero (24th NYSJFF Producer), Oded Halahmy (ASF Board Member, Iraqi-Jewish artist, & sculptor of the Pomegranate Awards), 24th NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Opening Night Moise Safra Center, 3 April 2022
(Photo courtesy of Zakaria Siraj)
Watch as celebrated writer Andreé Aciman is honored with the ASF Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement award for Literature at the Opening Night of the 24th New York Sephardi Jewish Film Festival. Said Aciman, “...Jews from the Middle East built & ran hospitals, law firms, newspapers, department stores, cinemas, studios,& also ran, as did my father, the Egyptian shmata business.”
🎞️“The New York Sephardic Film Festival returns this year”
By Julia Gergerly, JTA/The Times of Israel
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’s Carolyn Aaron and Tony Shalhoub, Moise Safra Center's David Miller and Robyn Silverman, Holocaust survivor Sami Steigman, André Aciman, Professor Ephraim Isaac (ASF Board Member), David Serero, and others, 24th NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Opening Night, Moise Safra Center, 3 April 2022
(Photo courtesy of Zakaria Siraj)
David Serero, Director of the award-winning The United States of Fashion Designer Elie Tahari and Producer of the ASF’s 24th NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, explains how the American Sephardi Federation put the “festive” back into the NYSJFF: “‘It’s not just the audience coming in, watching a movie, and then leaving. It’s creating the whole experience for people to celebrate and enjoy.’” From Serero’s perspective, the festive experience also facilitates the visceral transmission of historical memory in a new context, “‘[I]t is so rewarding to see this younger generation eating what the parents also used to eat, listening to the music and the songs that their parents used to sing and dance to, and also watching movies that tell their story.’”
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The American Sephardi Federation invites all individuals, communities, and organizations who share our vision & principles to join us in signing the American Sephardi Leadership Statement!
Please also support the ASF with a generous, tax-deductible contribution so we can continue to cultivate and advocate, preserve and promote, as well as educate and empower!
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Concealed: Memoir of a Jewish Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America
By Esther Amini
Esther Amini grew up in Queens, New York, during the freewheeling 1960s. She also grew up in a Persian-Jewish household, the American-born daughter of parents who had fled Mashhad, Iran. In Concealed, she tells the story of being caught between these two worlds: the dutiful daughter of tradition-bound parents who hungers for more self-determination than tradition allows.
Exploring the roots of her father’s deep silences and explosive temper, her mother’s flamboyance and flights from home, and her own sense of indebtedness to her Iranian-born brothers, Amini uncovers the story of her parents’ early years in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest Muslim city; the little-known history of Mashhad’s underground Jews; the incident that steeled her mother’s resolve to leave; and her parents’ arduous journey to the U.S., where they faced a new threat to their traditions: the threat of freedom. Determined to protect his daughter from corruption, Amini’s father prohibits talk, books, education, and pushes an early Persian marriage instead. Can she resist? Should she? Focused intently on what she stands to gain, Amini comes to see what she also stands to lose: a family and community bound by food, celebrations, sibling escapades, and unexpected acts of devotion by parents to whom she feels invisible.
In this poignant, funny, entertaining, and uplifting memoir, Amini documents with keen eye, quick wit, and warm heart how family members build, buoy, wound, and save one another across generations; how lives are shaped by the demands and burdens of loyalty and legacy; and how she rose to the challenge of deciding what to keep and what to discard.
Jewish Women from Muslim Societies Speak
Published by the American Sephardi Federation and Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Woman at Brandeis University
Jewish women from Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran were invited to share their personal stories. It could be said that these women's voices are from the last generation of Jews to have an intimate personal knowledge of the Muslim world, the enormous diversity within and among Middle Eastern Jewish communities.
We hope that these essays, told through the medium of vivid personal stories, will stimulate discussion about contemporary dynamics in the Muslim world and raise awareness of Jewish women’s history in North Africa and the Middle-East.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
“Why is the Sephardi Haggadah different from all other Haggadot?”
Let us explore the fine details of different geographic Minhagim in the Sephardi world with Rabbi Albert Gabbai.
This event will be a hybrid event.
For those interested in joining in-person at Congregation Mikveh Israel in Philadelphia, please contact us at drora@americansephardi.org
Sunday, 10 April at 12:00PM EST
(Ticket: $10)
Sign-up Now!
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The Department of Anthropology & Archeology at the University of Calgary, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University and Belzberg Program in Israel Studies, University of Calgary, & the American Sephardi Federation present:
Sephardi Thought and Modernity 2022 Webinar Series
Continuity and Rupture in Sephardi Modernities
(Second Edition)
On Wednesdays at 1:00PM EST
(10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 6pm UK / 8pm Israel / 9:30pm Iran)
(Complimentary RSVP)
13 April
(10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 5pm UK / 7pm Israel / 8:30pm Iran - note time - US Daylight Savings)
Julia Philips Cohen (Vanderbilt University) and Devi Mays (University of Michigan) Middle Eastern and North African Jews in Paris: A Forgotten Chapter
11 May
(10am Pacific / 1pm Eastern / 5pm UK / 7pm Israel / 8:30pm Iran - note time - US Daylight Savings)
Vanessa Paloma Elbaz (University of Cambridge) Rhizomic networks of unruptured continuity from 16th c. Italy to 21st c. Casablanca: Music, Power, Mysticism and Neo-Platonism
In this second edition of the Sephardi Thought and Modernity Series we will focus on the question of continuity and rupture as a way to deepen our dialogue about the different forms that modernity has adopted throughout Sephardi history. We will discuss questions such as the meaning of the concept of “modernity” in non-European contexts such as the Levant and/or the Arab world. We will explore how non-European Jewish societies developed ways of life and practices that synthesized tradition, change and cultural diversity throughout time. We will delve into Sephardi intellectual life, cosmopolitanism, cultural belongings, language, translation and mobility.
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Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County presents:
New Manhattan Sinfonietta
Hymns from Auschwitz: A Tribute to Viktor Ullman and Michel Assael
In honor of Yom HaShoah, join us for a never-before-seen musical performance in memory of two Holocaust victims; one who survived; and one who was murdered.
This event will honor ASF’s distinguished Board Member Martin Elias with music inspired by a Holocaust survivor’s story to be performed on this night for the first time ever.
Renan Koen, piano and Celesta Gürer Aykal, conductor.
Featuring Hazan Rabbi Nesim Elnecavé and Ilker Nahmias
Wednesday, 20 April at 8:00PM EST
See sponsorship opportunities here!
New Manhattan Sinfonietta brings together soulful premieres. This meaningful concert includes “Hymns from Auschwitz” featuring hazans and a piano orchestral piece by Elcil Gürel Göçtü, a young student composer who worked with Renan Koen on her March of the Music initiative. The concert also includes Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491 by W.A. Mozart, which Renan Koen will perform in memoriam of Viktor Ullmann. The performance will conclude with the debut of the Auschwitz Symphonic Poem written by Holocaust survivor Michel Assael. This poem was locked away and ultimately found by Dr. Joe Halio through his passionate research, and Renan Koen assisted in bringing this masterpiece to life.
This moving musical score was written by Michel Assael, a Jewish musician and composer from Salonika, Greece. After surviving Auschwitz, Assael wrote this piece in memory of all that was lost. The piece was written in 1947, but has never been performed. It has recently been rediscovered and will be given its debut performance at this not-to-be missed concert.
This event is also in memory of Viktor Ullman, a Silesian-born Austrian and renowned composer, and conductor who was sent to Terezin where he organized concerts and performed during the war. Ullman was ultimately deported to Auschwitz and was killed in the gas chambers.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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My Jewish Learning and the American Sephardi Federation present:
Seharaneh Storytime: Tales from Jewish Kurdistan
Monday, 25 April at 2:00PM EST
(Complimentary RSVP)
Sign-up Now!
Seharaneh is the post-Passover festival celebrated by Kurdish Jews for thousands of years. Traditionally, participants sing, dance, take long walks in beautiful springtime nature, feast, and tell stories. With My Jewish Learning, enjoy a springtime afternoon complete with four Jewish folktales from Kurdistan. Make sure to bring a cup of tea! Brought to you in partnership with the American Sephardi Federation.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
The Five Pillars of Islam - A Jewish Perspective
Rick Sopher will explain the so-called “Five Pillars of Islam” (declaration of faith, prayer, giving, fasting and pilgrimage) and look at connections, similarities and differences with Jewish Practise. He will explore the basis of these practises and how one might have influenced the other.
Bonus: Rick will also look at the basis of the very close practises of Jewish and Muslim dietary laws and explain the history of this connection, which was first stated explicitly in the Qur’an.
Monday, 9 May at 12:00PM EST
(Ticket: $10)
Sign-up Now!
About the author:
Rick has a financial background and is the CEO of Edmond de Rothschild Capital Holdings, which he joined in 1993. He is the Chairman of the world’s longest established investment fund of its type. Prior to that he worked at BDO Stoy Hayward, where he was appointed the youngest ever partner. He has received various industry awards including the Outstanding Contribution Award from Hedge Fund Review and the Decade of Excellence Award by Financial News.
Rick graduated from Cambridge University and has more recently worked in the area of interfaith relations with the Woolf Institute, Cambridge as a member of their Council.
During the lockdown period, Rick convened an online dialogue between Professors of Religion at the world’s leading universities to discuss the relationship between the Qur’an and the Bible and has himself dialogued with Muslim leaders on the subject.
Rick was awarded the Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2007 from President Chirac for his contribution to religious education in France and is Chairman or Director of several educational charities in the UK.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum presents:
The Seventh Annual Greek Jewish Festival
Sunday, 15 May 12:00-6:00PM EST
Join us as we celebrate the unique Romaniote and Sephardic heritage of the Jews of Greece!
Experience a feast for the senses including authentic kosher Greek foods and homemade Greek pastries, traditional Greek dancing and live Greek and Sephardic music, an outdoor marketplace full of vendors, arts and educational activities for kids, and much more!
Learn more at www.GreekJewishFestival.com
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The Greek Jewish & Sephardic Young Professionals Network in partnership with the Association of Friends of Greek Jewry present:
Special Young Professionals Tour of Jewish Greece
(Summer 2022)
Join to trace the roots of our families, visit the beautiful cities of Thessaloniki (Salonika), Veroia, Kastoria, Ioannina, Athens, and Rhodes, and connect with other young Jews in Greece.
Check out the full itinerary here!
For more information email GreekJewishYPN@gmail.com