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The Sephardi World Weekly is made possible by Daniel Yifrach, Rachel Sally, Professor Rifka Cook, Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina, Rachel Amar, Deborah Arellano, & ASF VP Gwen Zuares!
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Read the latest Sephardi Ideas Monthly exclusive: “American Excellence: Jews and the Jazz Tradition”
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🙌“Ishay Ribo: the first Israeli to perform at iconic Madison Square Garden”
By Michelle Rosenberg, Jewish News
Ishay Ribo was joined at Madison Square Garden by Akiva Turgemon, Avraham Fried, and others.
(Photo courtesy of Dovber Hechtman/crownheights.info)
One of Israel’s most popular artists, Ishay Ribo, recently sang and played guitar in front of 15,000 people in Madison Square Garden. What makes him so popular?
Ribo is a new extension of the traditional North African Jewish religiosity that was transplanted to the Land and State of Israel. Married to Yael and the father of five children, the 34-year-old singer was born in Marseille, France, to parents from Morocco and Algeria. Ribo’s family made Aliyah to Kfar Adumim when he was eight. After six years, Ribo’s parents moved the family to a more Haredi community, Tel Tsiyon, where Ultra-Orthodox practices and perspectives were dominant. Ishay absorbed it all, and after serving in the IDF for 18 months as part of his service in a bridge-building Yeshivat Hesder, followed by additional layers and years of Torah study in Jerusalem, today Ishay brings a warm, vulnerable, grounded and open spirit to his original songs and covers of traditional classics. His sound is characterized by soothing groves, melodic hooks, vocals with light North African seasoning, rich harmonies, and life-affirming lyrics that appeal to audiences from across the religious and political spectrum.
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Feature: Ishay Ribo sings HaLev Sheli (“My heart”) 🎶🎤🎸
Ishay Ribo played to a packed Madison Square Garden, 3 September 2023
(Photo courtesy of Ynet)
Ishay Ribo sings his 2019 hit single HaLev Sheli (“My Heart”) from his fourth album, Elul 5779, released for the 2019 High Holidays. Recognized for various industry awards from Mainstream to Hassidic networks, in the song Ribo wonders at the way in which God heals us precisely when our sometimes-broken hearts articulate their anguish and pain.
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✡️“Sephardic Torah | Women’s Prayer Groups: Rabbi Yosef Messas”
By Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, The Jewish Journal
Rabbi Yosef Messas
(Photo courtesy of Jewish Journal)
Are halakhically-based women’s prayer groups a progressive modern orthodox invention? R’ Daniel Bouskila challenges the conventional perspective from a traditional angle, citing a passage from the legendary Moroccan Jewish scholar, judge, author, and payytan, Rabbi Yosef Messas (1892-1974). In Nahalot Avot, “an eight volume collection of Rabbi Messas’ sermons from his years in Meknes, Morocco, starting in 1943,” R’Messas recounts a Spanish story he found “written in a book”:
…in certain communities in Spain, the learned and pure women would wake up very early in the morning and go to their own designated synagogues, where they would conduct a prayer service. One of the women would lead as shliha d’tsibbur (designated prayer leader), and on the days of Torah reading, they would read from a Torah scroll. Some of the women wore Tefillin, and all of them were wrapped in a Tallit. They conducted such services on weekdays, Shabbat and holidays. Women are exempt from time-bound commandments, so these women voluntarily took upon these obligations. After services they went home to wake up their husbands and sons to go and pray. This is ‘the lioness waking up before the lion.’
Offers R’ Bouskila, closing Nahalat Avot, “The women in Spain – and Rabbi Yosef Messas – were years ahead of their time. Something for both Ashkenazim and Sephardim to think about.”
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Please 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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A Pizmonim: Sephardic-Hebrew Songs of the Middle East, Volume 1
By David Elihu Cohen
Pizmonim, a unity of poetry and song, have been an integral part of the Jewish People and may be traced in the Bible to the very beginning of our history.
The twelve selected Pizmonim contained in this booklet serve to perpetuate the Greater Sephardic culture and tradition of singing praise to the Lord on all joyous occasions.
By Dr. Hélène Jawhara Piñer, a 2018 ASF Broome & Allen Fellow
In this extraordinary, award-winning and best-selling cookbook now in its 4th imprint, chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer combines rich culinary history and Jewish heritage to serve up over fifty culturally significant recipes. Steeped in the history of the Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spain) and their diaspora, these recipes are expertly collected from such diverse sources as medieval cookbooks, Inquisition trials, medical treatises, poems, and literature. Original sources ranging from the thirteenth century onwards and written in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Italian, and Hebrew, are here presented in English translation, bearing witness to the culinary diversity of the Sephardim, who brought their cuisine with them and kept it alive wherever they went. Jawhara-Piñer provides enlightening commentary for each recipe, revealing underlying societal issues from anti-Semitism to social order. In addition, the author provides several of her own recipes inspired by her research and academic studies.
Each creation and bite of the dishes herein are guaranteed to transport the reader to the most deeply moving and intriguing aspects of Jewish history. Jawhara-Piñer reminds us that eating is a way to commemorate the past.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
Galeet Dardashti in collaboration with the Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life presents:
MONAJAT
Album release with Galeet Dardashti
“Galeet Dardashti’s multi-sensory project and album, Monajat, is inspired by old and haunting recordings of Jewish prayers chanted by her late grandfather, Younes Dardashti, a famous master singer of Persian classical music in 1950s/60s Iran.
Galeet reinvents the ancient ritual of Selihot— poetry sung nightly preceding the Jewish New Year as spiritual preparation—by singing with remixed samples of her grandfather's legacy recordings. Riffing off these old tapes, Galeet composes a soundscape of original music performed by an acclaimed ensemble of Middle Eastern and jazz musicians. As she dialogues with her grandfather in song, the live performance immerses audiences in Persian melodies, heavy grooves, sacred Hebrew and Persian poetry, and dynamic video art.
Saturday, 9 September at 8:00PM EST
@Littlefield
635 Sackett Street Brooklyn, NY 11217
(Tickets: $22.53 – $31)
Sign-up Now!
Featured Musicians:
- Galeet Dardashti
- Shanir Blumenkranz
- Philip Mayer
- Max Zbiral-Teller
- Dafer Tawil
About the artist:
As vocalist, composer and anthropologist Galeet Dardashti has earned a reputation as a trail-blazing performer, educator, and advocate for Middle Eastern and North African Jewish culture. Dardashti is the first woman to continue her family’s tradition of distinguished Persian and Jewish musicianship. Galeet’s grandfather, Younes Dardashti, was one of the most highly acclaimed singers of Persian classical music in Iran and her father, Farid Dardashti, is an accomplished cantor in the US. Galeet Dardashti is widely known as leader/founder of the renowned all-woman powerhouse Sephardi/Mizrahi Jewish ensemble Divahn, which released its newest album, Shalhevet, in 2020. Time Out New York described Dardashti’s first solo album—her multi-disciplinary commission, The Naming— as ‘urgent, heartfelt and hypnotic;’ The Huffington Post called it heart-stopping.’ Dardashti recently completed an Artist-in-Virtual-Residence at Indiana University, and recorded Monajat supported by IU and the MFJC. Dardashti also has years of experience as cantor; this year she’ll be leading High Holidays with Kanisse in Manhattan—one of the first egalitarian Sephardi/Mizrahi communities in the country. As a scholar, Dardashti examines Mizrahi music/media/cultural politics; she is currently Visiting Professor at NYU and will be a Fellow at University of Pennsylvania this coming year. As artist, scholar, and cantor deeply steeped in this music, Dardashti is uniquely poised to share her boundary-breaking piece, Monajat.”
The ASF proudly serves as a co-sponsor of Dardashti’s performance.
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Instituto de Música Judaica -Brasil, YIVO, the ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience, & Brazilian Consulate in NYC present:
Kleztival NYC
Brazilian Jewish Music and Culture, a two-day program with Brazilian and North American artists.
Celebrating the 23 Brazilian Jews who, in 1654, arrived in North America and helped to build a city then called New Amsterdam, which later became New York. Celebrating Brazil, its Jewish roots and community today.
Monday, 11 September at 6:00PM EST
Brazilian Jewish Music concert
@at the Brazilian Consulate in NYC
225 East 41st, New York, NY
(no registration required)
Tuesday, 12 September:
3:00PM EST
Screening of documentary “A Estrela Oculta do Sertão” (The Star
Hidden in the Backlands) followed by Q&A with the producers
7:30 PM EST
Brazilian Jewish Music concert
@ the Center for Jewish History
Sign-up Now!
Executive Producers: Nicole & Edy Borger
Musical Director: Frank London
Singers: Carla Berg, Nicole Borger, Ahuva Flit and Rafael Zolko
Musicians: Pablo Aslan (bass), Vicente Falek (accordion),
Frank London (trumpet), Oren Neiman (guitar), Alex Parke (clarinet),
Satoshi Takashi (drums)
Documentary Producers: Elaine Eiger and Luize Valente.
Special thanks to:
Drora Arussy, Julia Rothkof, Miriam Mora, Suzanne Schwimmer, Alex Minkin, Thiago Antonio de Melo Oliveira, Tiago Domingues Carvalho, Aaron Alexander, Peter Rushevsky, Hanna Griff-Sleven, Felipe Pait, Eliezer Kahn, Bruno & Joyce Szlak, Angela Waitzberg, Bruce Phillips, Daniel Borger.
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Manhattan Jewish Historical Initiative The Battery Conservancy, & The New York Board of Rabbis present:
Landing Day Celebration
To mark the 369 years since the arrival of the first Jewish community in America
Wednesday, 13 September at 5:30PM EST
@Tercentenary Flagstaff at Peter Minuit Plaza
(North of the Staten Island Ferry entrance, by State & Whitehall St.)
Questions and RSVP to
manhattanjewishhof@gmail.com
“LANDING DAY marks the arrival of 23 Sephardi Jews in September, 1654 in New Amsterdam (now Lower Manhattan). They were the first group of refugees fleeing persecution from the Portuguese after the conquest of Brazil. Those 23 were the start of the Jewish story in North America. The Jewish-American Tercentenary Flagstaff was dedicated to honor their memory.”
The American Sephardi Federation is proud to be a presenting partner along with: Hadassah New York, Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, The Actors’ Temple, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, Council Member Gale A. Brewer, Assembly Member Rebecca Seawright, Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy, Kehila Kedosha Janina (The Greek Synagogue), The Museum of Jewish Heritage, The United Jewish Council (UJC) of the East Side, Magen David Congregation, Consulate General of Panama in New York, Manhattan Youth, Henry Street Settlement, Tribeca Synagogue, Community Scholars Program (CSP), YIVO Institute for Jewish Studies (YIVO), American Society for Jewish Music and Assembly Member Alex Bores.
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The American Sephardi Federation presents:
Convergence: Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian Calligraphy in Conversation
Featuring the multilingual art of Ruben Shimonov Convergence creates a visual world where Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian languages interact with, and speak to, one another; a world where stylized letters and words dance together on the page; a world where cultures, religions, communities, and philosophies intersect.
Juxtaposing cognates from these ancient West Asian languages, artist Ruben Shimonov encourages the viewer to explore the deep-rooted connections between these tongues, as well as the multilayered and transnational identity of the artist himself.
On View in the Leon Levy Gallery
through 31 December 2023
@ the Center for Jewish History
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The American Sephardi Federation and Mimouna Association’s Rebuilding Our Homes Project present:
Re-Creation: Judaica by Moroccan Muslim Artisans
Explore the exhibition of Judeo-Moroccan art, Moroccan Judaica, cultural and religious objects, including Menorot, Mezuzot, Yads, Shabbat Candleholders, Seder Plates, Hallah Covers, and much more.
On View through 31 December 2023
@ the Center for Jewish History
As Moroccan Jewish populations largely left the mellahs (Jewish quarters) in the latter half of the 20th century, there was a danger that not only designs but even the traditional artisanal techniques needed to create them would be lost. Passed down from one artisan to another and perfected over time, these designs and techniques. ranging from vibrant patterns to intricate metalwork and soulful wood carvings, are expressions of Moroccanity and reflect the individual character of each city. The materials and craftsmanship of Rabat are different than Fez, and Essaouira is distinct from both.
Mimouna Association and the American Sephardi Federation’s Rebuilding Our Homes Project, a multi-year USAID-supported New Partnerships Initiative, brought three notable experts-Ms. Zhor Rehihil, Ms. Deborah Koenigsberger Gutierrez, and Ms. Meryem Ghandi to train Moroccan Muslim artisans in the history of Judeo-Moroccan art and guided them in re-creating Moroccan Judaica, which encompasses a diverse array of cultural and religious objects, including Menorot, Mezuzot, Yads, Shabbat Candleholders, Seder Plates, Hallah Covers, and much more.