Hazaq u’Barukh to Isaac de Castro, an ASF Broome & Allen Scholar and ASF Young Leader, who has been named Editor of the resurrected Jewcy.com!
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🍋“My Moroccan Sukkot”
By Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, Jewish Journal
“Rabbi Bouskila’s personal collection of Lulavs adorned in various gold threads, from past years.” (Photo courtesy of Rabbi Bouskila/Jewish Journal)
Sukkot is a little less than a week behind us, but we can still celebrate the festival’s rich Sephardi Jewish practices. In this context, Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, the International Director of the Sephardic Educational Center, graciously shares his family’s Moroccan Sukkot tradition: “My father, of blessed memory, was born and raised in the Mellah of Marrakesh. All of the Moroccan traditions I practice on Sukkot are customs I learned and inherited from him.” What did R’ Bouskila learn from his father? That Sukkot in particular, and Judaism in general, can be incredibly colorful, “[M]odeled after the Mishkan (Tabernacle)… Judaism’s original portable sanctuary… the décor of our Moroccan Sukkah – a colorful assortment of fabrics and materials – was inspired by the Torah’s commandment to hang in the Mishkan “a curtain made of blue, purple and crimson cloths” (Exodus 26:31).”
🤝“How Our Muslim/Jewish Partnership Can Help America Overcome Divisiveness”
By Zainab Zeb Kahn and Jason Guberman, Newsweek
Zainab Zeb Kahn (Chair & Executive Eirector of MALA: the Muslim American Leadership Alliance) and Jason Guberman (Executive Eirector of the ASF) share a “blueprint for how to recommit to pluralism without sacrificing difference, identity or history.” What’s the key? “[E]mphasizing the very values we cherish as Americans: pluralism, tolerance, and freedom of choice and creed.” We also “we celebrate common culture—from calligraphy to cuisine to spiritual monotheism—and look to the emerging new reality in the Middle East as a source of inspiration rather than division. Finally, we dare to dream of an even better shared future for our children, one not based on victimhood or polarization but on collaboration and creativity.” For example, “In Morocco there is a tradition known as ‘Matrouz” in which ideas, languages, and genres are combined and remixed. Bayt Dakira, the multifaceted ‘House of Memory” in Essaouira, is adorned with banners reading ‘Salam Lekoulam” and ‘Shalom Aleykoum,” combining the Arabic and Hebrew traditional greetings of peace.”
Feature: The Marquis de Lafayette’s Role in Sephardic Enfranchisement & the Birth of Religious Liberty 
Professor Frances Malino, Touro Synagogue, Newport, Rhode Island, 15 August 2021 (Screenshot courtesy of Touro Synagogue/Facebook).
Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, hosted its 74th Annual George Washington Letter Reading, celebrating the birth and preservation of religious liberty in the United States in America’s oldest synagogue. Washington’s famous latter, affirming that “... the Government of the United States ... gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” was originally addressed to the city’s Sephardic Congregation Yeshuat Israel in Aug., 1790, a response to a letter by Moses Seixas. This year’s keynote address was offered by Dr. Frances Malino, Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies & History at Wellesley College and President of the Diarna: Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life’s parent non-profit organization. Prof. Malino’s fascinating lecture (the intro starts at 46:53) explores the father-son relationship between George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, Lafayette’s warm relationship with Sephardic Jews in France (many of whom came from converso backgrounds), and the possible influence of Lafayette on Washington’s perspective on Jews in America. In the lecture (as well as in a letter appearing in The New Yorker), Professor Malino notes how “a little more than a month” after Lafayette warmly received a delegation of Sephardic Jews, France, “by a parliamentary vote of 374–224... welcomed its Sephardic Jews (though not yet the Ashkenazim) as full citizens—the first time in history that Jews were granted such rights.”
🎺“Leo Strauss, Bigotry and the Blues”
By Aryeh Tepper, Moment Magazine
Albert Murray and Leo Strauss (Montage courtesy of Moment Magazine)
The ASF’s Director of Publications, Dr. Aryeh Tepper, argues that a society without bigotry is a utopian dream. In order to understand the problem and to think through the consequences, Tepper turns to Leo Strauss, the illustrious scholar of Jewish, Islamic, and Greek political philosophy, and Albert Murray, the celebrated writer, poet, and philosopher of the blues and jazz: “Murray’s hopes for the political sphere weren’t unrealistic. They were moderate. He understood that no political order, no matter how enlightened, can uproot bigotry, or stated differently, can exterminate the blues. He was no utopian. In fact, Murray’s sober approach can be considered an illustration of Leo Strauss’s observation that ‘Moderation will protect us against the twin dangers of visionary expectation from politics and unmanly contempt for politics.’”
Join Dr. Tepper along with Greg Thomas (Jazz Leadership Project), Combat Antisemitism Movement, artists, thinkers, and musicians on 24-25 October for “Combating Racism and Antisemitism Together: Shaping an Omni-American Future.” This digital event will extend and elaborate on Albert Murray’s and Ralph Ellison’s writings that strike at the root of ideologies that foster division, manipulation, and hatred, and ultimately develop into Antisemitism and Racism.
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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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From Generation to Generation: a Legacy of Faith and Tolerance
By David S. Malka
From Generation to Generation: a Legacy of Faith and Tolerance is dedicated to the memory of Rabbi Shlomo Malka. It honors his memory as a Jewish scholar, a spiritual leader, and a great humanitarian.
David S. Malka is publishing this text as his personal contribution to legacy of Malka family, in the hope that this generation will re-discover their patriarch's teaching and advance his message of faith and compassion on to the next generation.
From Generation to Generation: a Legacy of Faith and Tolerance is a message of love, tolerance, and pride in one's heritage.
Loving Truth and Peace: The Grand Religious Worldview of Rabbi Benzion Uziel
By Rabbi Dr. Marc D. Angel
Rabbi Benzion Uziel (1880-1953) was one of the leading rabbinic figures of his generation. He served as Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Salonika before becoming the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the land of Israel (1938), a post he held until his death.
A scion of great Sephardic rabbinical families, he was also well-steeped in the teachings of the Ashkenazic tradition. A staunch traditionalist, he was innovative and sensitive to the challenges to modernity. He was a religious Zionist who taught respect for all Jews?even those who were not religiously observant. He was deeply devoted to the particular teachings and norms of halakhic Judaism, while also maintaining a universalistic outlook and a genuine concern for the well-being of the non-Jewish population within Israel.
Rabbi Uziel was a prolific author. His volumes of responsa, Mishpetei Uziel, are models of halakhic erudition, clarity and sensitivity. Various of his speeches, sermons, and addresses were included in a volume, Mikhmanei Uziel, reflecting not only Rabbi Uziel's worldview, but also the pressing issues within the Jewish community of his time. Shaarei Uziel is a two-volume work dealing with the laws of guardianship of orphans and with the laws of charity in general. Hegyonei Uziel is a two-volume work in which Rabbi Uziel presents a general philosophy of Judaism.
This book draws on the various published writings of Rabbi Uziel to present his grand religious worldview. He dealt with issues that are of continuing concern to the Jewish people, such as conversion, halakhah in a modern Jewish state, the role of women in Jewish law, Jewish nationalism, and tolerance.
When Rabbi Uziel died in 1953, his funeral was attended by many thousands of people, Jews and non-Jews, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, religious and non-religious. He was a unique personality who won the respect and admiration of the diverse segments of society.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
The Sephardi House Fellowship (now in its second year) is a year-long learning, leadership development, and enrichment experience that is designed to immerse Jewish college students in the multifaceted history, traditions, and intellectual legacy of the Greater Sephardic world, as well as advance Jewish unity on campus. Apply Now! Deadline: 17 October at 4PM!
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
New Works Wednesday with
Michal Ben Ya’akov and Noam Sienna
Join Professor Michal Ben Ya’akov and Dr. Noam Sienna as they discuss their research from the new book Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds.
Wednesday, 6 October
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
Sign-up Now!
(Free Admission, registration required)
About Jews and Muslims in Morocco:
Multiple traditions of Jewish origins in Morocco emphasize the distinctiveness of Moroccan Jewry as indigenous to the area, rooted in its earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. The creative interaction of Moroccan Jewry with the Arab and Berber cultures was noted in the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry, and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular texts and proverbs. In Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists analyze this culture, in all its complexity and hybridity. The volume’s collection of essays span political and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities, traditions, and halakhic developments. As Jewish life in Morocco has dwindled, much of what is left are traditions maintained in Moroccan ex-pat communities, and memories of those who stayed and those who left. The volume concludes with shared memories from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual from Morocco, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, an analysis of a visual memoir painted by the nineteenth-century artist, Eugène Delacroix, and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.
Purchase the book here!
About the Speakers:
Michal Ben Ya’akov is an associate professor of history at Efrata College of Education.
Dr. Noam Sienna is a scholar of Jewish culture and history, a Jewish educator, and a Hebrew calligrapher and book artist.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Mizrahi Dance Series with Jackie Barzvi
Join the ASF Institute of Jewish Experience and Jackie Barzvi, creator of the Mizrachi Dance Archive, for a three-part series highlighting the history and movements of Mizrahi dance! Jackie will focus on three different Greater Sephardi styles: Moroccan, Bukharian, and Yemenite dances.
Each session will be both a lecture and dance class, and participants will learn about the history of each community, gain insight into how dance was included in their traditions, listen to Jewish music from each region, practice traditional movements, and so much more!
The workshops will be held via Zoom and all are welcomed.
No previous dance experience required.
On Sundays
10 October
17 October
24 October
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
Sign-up Now!
About Jackie Barzvi:
Jackie Barzvi is a professional raqs sharqi (belly dance) performer and instructor. She recently created the first ever Mizrachi Dance Archive to highlight specific Jewish dances from the Middle East and North African regions. Jackie was also the IACT Israel Programs Coordinator at Northeastern University Hillel in Boston, and has led over a dozen organized trips to Israel. Jackie is passionate about helping others find their unique Jewish identity and creating environments where people can dance, connect, and build community. To learn more about her work visit the archive at mizrachidancearchive.com
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
New Works Wednesday with
Bart Wallet and David Wertheim
Join us for a New Works Wednesday with Bart Wallet and David Wertheim, two editors of the new book “Reappraising the History of the Jews in the Netherlands.”
Wednesday, 13 October
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
Sign-up Now!
(Free Admission, registration required)
About the book:
The two decades since the last authoritative general history of Dutch Jews was published have seen such substantial developments in historical understanding that a new assessment has become an imperative. This volume offers an indispensable survey from a contemporary viewpoint that reflects the new preoccupations of European historiography and allows the history of Dutch Jewry to be more integrated with that of other European Jewish histories. Historians from both older and newer generations shed significant light on all eras, providing fresh detail that reflects changed emphases and perspectives.
In addition to such traditional subjects as the Jewish community’s relationship with the wider society and its internal structure, its leaders, and its international affiliations, new topics explored include the socio-economic aspects of Dutch Jewish life seen in the context of the integration of minorities more widely; a reassessment of the Holocaust years and consideration of the place of Holocaust memorialization in community life; and the impact of multiculturalist currents on Jews and Jewish politics. Memory studies, diaspora studies, and postcolonial studies all play their part in providing the fullest possible picture.
Available at liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk
About the Editors:
Bart T. Wallet is Professor of Jewish History at the University of Amsterdam.
David J. Wertheim is the director of the Menasseh ben Israel Institute for Jewish Social and Cultural Studies, Amsterdam.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Museum Mondays:
The Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem
Tour the Museums from the comfort of your own home with Nachliel Selavan, the Museum Guy.
On Mondays
18 October
The Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem
Sign-up Now!
8 November
A Hanukah Tour Through Ancient Greece - Greek Exhibits in Museums Around the World
Sign-up Now!
10 January
Tour the Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center in Or Yehuda
Sign-up Now!
(Registration required for each session)
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
About Your Tour Guide:
Nachliel Selavan created and delivered an integrated learning and museum tour program for both school and adult educational settings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has hosted similar pilot visits to a dozen museums in North America, and a few museums in Europe and in Jerusalem. He also teaches and engages audiences through virtual tours and social media. He has recently completed a year long Tanach Study podcast called Parasha Study Plus, delivering a weekly episode of Archaeology on the Parasha, and is now on his second podcast and a new video series reviewing every book in Tanach, called Archaeology Snapshot.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
The World Should Know:
First Steps in Writing Your Memoir
Each of us has a story to tell, we just need the impetus to get started!
Join award-winning author Gila Green in a hands on workshop to begin writing yours or your family’s story.
Writing a memoir is both for you and for future generations.
Begin today!
Thursday, 21 October
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
Sign-up Now!
About Gila Green:
Canadian author Gila Green is an Israel-based writer, editor, and EFL teacher.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The American Sephardi Federation, the Jazz Leadership Project, and the Combat Antisemitism Movement present:
Combating Racism and Antisemitism Together:
Shaping an Omni-American Future
Join artists, thinkers, and musicians who will offer perspectives on how to build a shared “Omni-American” future free of racism and antisemitism.
24-25 October 2021
(Digital Event)
The term “Omni-American” is borrowed from the writings of Albert Murray, the great 20th century Black American thinker and writer who, together with his good friend and celebrated novelist, Ralph Ellison, extolled America’s pluralistic and “incontestably mulatto” culture. By robustly critiquing racial essentialism and strongly emphasizing the power of culture instead of race, Murray and Ellison's writings strike at the root of ideologies that foster division, manipulation, and hatred, and ultimately develop into Antisemitism and Racism.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
New Works Wednesday with
Andre Elbaz and Edwin Seroussi
Join us for a discussion with three researchers featured in the book Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds.
Wednesday, 27 October
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
Sign-up Now!
(Free Admission, registration required)
About the book:
Multiple traditions of Jewish origins in Morocco emphasize the distinctiveness of Moroccan Jewry as indigenous to the area, rooted in its earliest settlements and possessing deep connections and associations with the historic peoples of the region. The creative interaction of Moroccan Jewry with the Arab and Berber cultures was noted in the Jews’ use of Morocco’s multiple languages and dialects, characteristic poetry, and musical works as well as their shared magical rites and popular texts and proverbs. In Jews and Muslims in Morocco: Their Intersecting Worlds historians, anthropologists, musicologists, Rabbinic scholars, Arabists, and linguists analyze this culture, in all its complexity and hybridity. The volume’s collection of essays span political and social interactions throughout history, cultural commonalities, traditions, and halakhic developments. As Jewish life in Morocco has dwindled, much of what is left are traditions maintained in Moroccan ex-pat communities, and memories of those who stayed and those who left. The volume concludes with shared memories from the perspective of a Jewish intellectual from Morocco, a Moroccan Muslim scholar, an analysis of a visual memoir painted by the nineteenth-century artist, Eugène Delacroix, and a photo essay of the vanished world of Jewish life in Morocco.
Purchase the book here!
About the Speakers:
André Elbaz is a professor emeritus of French at Carleton University.
Edwin Seroussi is a professor of musicology and director of the Jewish Music Research Centre at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
At the Crossroads:
Provençal Jewish Culture in the Middle Ages
Monday, 1 November
@ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
Sign-up Now!
The medieval Jewish community of Provence sat at the crossroads of Ashkenaz and Sefarad, a meeting place of diverse ideas and a center of innovative thought. Provençal Jews were renowned for their masterpieces of Talmudic learning as well as groundbreaking works of philosophy and science. It was in Provence that the treasures of Judeo-Arabic learning were translated into Hebrew, from which they were handed down to us today. This distinct blend of traditional and worldly knowledge characterized Provence. Its denizens saw themselves as belonging to a unique regional culture and proudly recorded its customs in books of minhagim and its version of the liturgy. With the French expulsions of the fourteenth century, Provençal Jewish culture was dispersed, but it did not come to a halt. Everywhere that members of this community went, they carried with them their distinctive approach to Jewish life, and their influence is felt into modernity.
About the speaker:
Dr. Tamar Marvin is a scholar of medieval Jewish intellectual history and a semikha student at Yeshivat Mahrat. She holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a B.A. in Literature and Journalism from New York University. Dr. Marvin has taught and developed curricula in a variety of academic and Jewish settings, including American Jewish University and Hebrew Union College-JIR, Los Angeles. She has published her work in academic journals as well as writing for broader media. Dr. Marvin’s research centers on questions of how medieval Jews reacted to and creatively adapted new forms of meaning-making in the world they encountered around them, including both philosophical reflection and Kabbalistic speculation.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org
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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
No hay boda sin tanyedera:
Ladino Music Salon
Thursday, 4 November at 10:30AM EST
Sign-up Now!
Are there “right” instruments to accompany Sephardic songs? People often remark on the instruments in the background of Judith’s online lectures and concerts. Here, Judith will use the online format to invite you to this background, her living-room, and all the stringed, wind and hand percussion instruments in it. Rather than background, the instruments, most of them hand-crafted, will be protagonists. Each one has songs and stories associated with it, and your questions and comments will help shape the order in which they’re presented.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Judith Cohen is a Canadian ethnomusicologist, medievalist, singer and storyteller specialized in Sephardic music, music among the Portuguese Crypto-Jews, and related traditions. Her presentations are based on both academic research and many years of fieldwork in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, the Balkans, Turkey, French Canada and wherever else her work and curiosity take her. She teaches part-time at York University in Toronto and is the consultant for the Alan Lomax Spain 1952 recordings.
Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org