In Memory of Arvin Ghahramani (Arvin Netanel ben Sonia), HY”D, a young Jew from Kermanshah executed by the Iranian regime for allegedly defending himself from a murderous attacker with a knife.
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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!
Don’t miss the latest Sephardi Ideas Monthly: “Trotsky, Shanghai, and Today’s Jewish Identity Crisis”
“‘Most exciting find in a millennium’: Oldest Hebrew book goes on display in DC”
By Menachem Wecker, JNS - Columbus Jewish News
R to L: Professor Mark Vlasic (Georgetown), Afghanistan’s Former Ambassador to the US Adela Raz, US Ambassador to Monitor & Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt, CEO Dr. Carlos Campo (Museum of the Bible), Herschel Helper (Museum of the Bible), Board Member Osnat Gad (ASF), and Executive Director Jason Guberman (ASF), Inauguration of Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book, Museum of the Bible, Washington, D.C.,
29 September 2024.
The Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. is home to the oldest known Hebrew book in the world: the Afghan Liturgical Quire. The ALQ includes morning prayers, a long poem for Sukkot, and the Passover Haggadah written upside down. Recently dated by scholars to between 660-780 CE, the book’s survival is a distant echo from Jewish life that once thrived along the silk roads connecting China’s cosmopolitan Tang dynasty to Central Asia, India, and Persia. The book will be on display in D.C. through mid-January 2025 as part of the Bible Museum’s exhibit, “Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book,” before being passed on to The Jewish Theological Seminary on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
At the exhibit’s opening reception at the end of September, ASF Executive Director Jason Guberman emphasized how the ALQ represented “the best of Afghanistan, the once and future free Afghanistan” as “a civilizational crossroads and center of coexistence,” and how
Jewish history is so much about travels, but particularly for the Sephardic world. Sepharadim were the ones who were breaking the borders and the barriers. They were the philosophers, the poets, the scholars, the scientists, the singers… They were the ones who really invigorated the Silk Road and helped give us the cosmopolitan world.
The Long History of the Romaniotes, the Greek Jews of Ioannina
Winner of the 2019 New York Greek Film Festival Best Documentary Award, “Romaniotes, the Greek Jews of Ioannina” explores the distinct Greek-Jewish community of the city of Ioannina, whose customs and traditions are neither Sephardic nor Ashkenazic.
“From Ioannina to Lower Manhattan: Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue”
By Daniel Cody, Greek Reporter
Andrew Marcus, Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue (KKJ)
(Photo courtesy of Daniel Cody / Greek Reporter)
The Romaniote Jews (Romaniotes) are a Greek-speaking, unique branch of Jewry from the Eastern Mediterranean that was more than decimated by the Holocaust. The Kehila Kedosha Janina (KKJ) Synagogue on 280 Broome Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side is the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.
In order to illustrate the unique character of Romaniote Jews, Andrew Marcus, a Romaniote-American who sits on KKJ’s Board of Trustees, is an ASF Broome & Allen Fellow, and founder of the Greek Jewish Festival, points to their language:
This community spoke Greek at home, unlike the Ashkenazi Jews who spoke Yiddish, or the Sephardic Jews who speak Ladino in Thessaloniki. This community was in Ioannina for centuries before the Sephardic-Spanish Jews arrived [in Greece].
The KKJ synagogue began as a tenement building, was turned into a Greek coffee shop, and then converted into a synagogue in 1927. The building’s façade has been restored and embellished with Stars of David adorning the windows, and the Ten Commandments above the entrance. Marcus adds that “Beyond a synagogue, we’re also a cultural center” that offers concerts, cooking classes, book presentations, lectures and a museum of the Romaniote experience.
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The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace
By Elias V. Messinas
Published by the American Sephardi Federation, this is an English edition of Elias V. Messinas’ study The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace based on his 1999 doctoral dissertation and subsequent work on documentation and protection of Jewish heritage sites in Greece.
The book provides two main themes. First, it is a detailed history of the the synagogues of northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace), mostly a legacy of the Ottoman period. Messinas has dug deep to collect information on all identifiable synagogues, some known only by name. He traces the history of these institutions and structures and places them in their urban context from the 15th through the 20th centuries - so there is much of value here for student’s of Jewish settlements and Jewish quarters. Almost all of these buildings are gone. Many were destroyed in the great fire that swept Salonika in 1917. Those that were rebuilt were destroyed in the Holocaust or in the years following, when the once large Jewish communities of Northern Greece were reduced to tiny numbers. In the 1990s, Messinas was able to document several extant synagogues—albeit surviving in ruined condition—and document them with measured drawings and photos before they were demolished.
*Exclusively available at the ASF’s Sephardi Shop
Birkenau (Auschwitz II) How 72,000 Greek Jews Perished
By Albert Menache, M.D.
Memoirs of An Eyewitness; NUMBER 124454
This is the story of the destruction of the Balkan Sephardic Jewish Community by the Nazis in WWII. Written by the President of the Jewish Community of Salonica, Greece, it is the earliest published account by a survivor. Written while still in the concentration camp on smuggled paper, it has been out of print since the first edition appeared in 1947.
This new edition has been updated with historical documents, photographs, and notes on the restoration of Jewish life in Greece after the war.
Watch Dr. Joe Halio speak about “Dr. Albert Menache & The Holocaust in Salonika”
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
American Sephardi Federation, Centro Primo Levi, and Dan Wyman Books present:
“A Post-Election Request for Jewish Equality to our First President: The Origin of George Washington’s Pledge ‘to Give to Bigotry No Sanction’”
Join us at 6:30PM, for a timely presentation by Dan Wyman on “A Post-Election Request for Jewish Equality to our First President: The Origin of George Washington’s Pledge ‘to Give to Bigotry No Sanction.’”
We’ll have on hand an original period publication of the Newport Congregation’s famous 1790 request for equal treatment in the new United States for visitors to examine, available for purchase.
Come meet the partners, browse the books, and join the conversation.
Monday, 11 November, 6:30PM
Open House 5:00-8:30PM
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: Free (RSVP Required)
ASF-Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street, NYC
The Bookhouse, a project of The American Sephardi Federation (ASF), Centro Primo Levi (CPL) and Dan Wyman Books, is a small space for study, discussion, and creativity connected to Jewish book culture: from manuscripts to pulps, from Talmud to Yiddish Socialism, from Printers to Bookshops to Readers.
Dan Wyman Books will be exhibiting a rotating collection of approximately 300 rare and important books related to these topics, all of which will be available for browsing and purchase.
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The Combat Antisemitism Movement, Jazz Leadership Project, and American Sephardi Federation present:
American Excellence
The Omni-American Future Gala
Join us for a night of inspiration, music, and excellence honoring
Roy Niederhoffer
and
Emmet Cohen.
Experience an evening of world-class jazz music by Coleman Hughes and Itamar Borochov performing with The Emmet Cohen Trio.
Tuesday, 12 November
Cocktail Reception
6:00-7:00PM ET
Dinner & Program
7:00-9:00PM ET
@Ginny’s Supper Club in Harlem
310 Lenox Ave. NYC
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $45-$500
The Omni-American Future Project, rooted in the intellectual legacies of Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison, fights bigotry, advances cultural excellence via the example of jazz music, and strives to strengthen the American civic center. We counter extremism and division by fostering unity, inclusion, and shared values. A revitalized Black American and Jewish American alliance is at the core of our initiative. Past Albert Murray and Young Leader Award honorees include Professor Danielle Allen (Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard), writer and musician Coleman Hughes, Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Wynton Marsalis, and US Representative Ritchie Torres. Click here to learn about past Omni-American Project events.
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The Grad Network of Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Moishe House Harlem, and the American Sephardi Federation’s Sephardi House Initiative for Young Professionals present:
Ritual Lab Workshop
Hebrew & Arabic Calligraphy
Learn about Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian language and participate in a
hands-on calligraphy workshop!
Are you a young professionals in your 20s?
Join us as we dive into the rich visual worlds of Arabic, Hebrew and Persian calligraphy. Through historical, spiritual, linguistic and artistic lenses, we will discover the parallels between these languages. Educator, community builder, and artist Ruben Shimonov will also take us on an exploratory journey of his own multilingual calligraphy—sharing the ways he has used his art to celebrate the cultural diversity of the Greater Sephardi world.
Thursday, 14 November at 7:00PM
Space is limited. Register to reserve your materials.
@at Harlem Moishe House
(The address will be shared will all registrants closer to the date of the program).
Sign-up Now!
(Registration Required)
*If cost is a barrier to participation, please email Melissa, Director of The Grad Network.
About the Speaker:
Ruben Shimonov is an educator, community builder, and social entrepreneur with a passion for Jewish diversity. He previously served as Director of Community Engagement and Education at Queens College Hillel. Currently, Ruben is the American Sephardi Federation’s National Director of Sephardi House and Young Leadership. He is also the Founding Executive Director of the Sephardic Mizrahi Q Network and Director of Educational Experiences & Programming for the Muslim-Jewish Solidarity Committee. He is an alumnus of the COJECO Blueprint, Nahum Goldmann and ASF Broome & Allen Fellowships for his work in Jewish social innovation and Sephardic scholarship. He has been listed among The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” Jewish community leaders and changemakers. Currently, he is a Jewish Pedagogies Research Fellow at M² | The Institute of Experiential Jewish Education. Ruben has lectured extensively on the histories and cultures of various Sephardic and Mizrahi communities. He is also a visual artist specializing in multilingual calligraphy that interweaves Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian.
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Hannah Senesh School presents:
Multicultural Fall Family Fest
Join us for a morning full of fun, family-friendly activities that celebrate stories, customs, and traditions of our global Jewish community!
Enjoy music, read-alouds of Jewish stories from around the world, a fun variety of arts & crafts tables, a service project, games, yummy snacks, and so much more!
This event is open to the greater Brooklyn Jewish community—invite your friends and family!
Sunday, 17 November 10:00AM - 12:00PM
@Hannah Senesh School
Tickets:
$10 per child 2 and older at the door; FREE for grownups and children under 2
(RSVP Required)
This event is held in partnership with (list in formation): American Sephardi Federation, Fig Tree, Flatbush Jewish Center, JCC Brooklyn Summer Camp, Jewtina y Co, JIMENA, The Neighborhood, PJ Library, Repair the World, Sephardic Mizrahi Q Network, Sprout Brooklyn.
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The Museum of the Bible presents:
The Afghan Liturgical Quire Speaker Series
Join us for a special speaker series to explore the oldest Hebrew codex in the world and discuss three major topics related to the Afghan Liturgical Quire (ALQ) with museum curators, leading scholars, and influential leaders in the Afghan Jewish community.
Speakers include but are not limited to Jason Guberman (ED of American Sephardi Federation), Dr. Ruth Langer (Boston College), and Sara Aharon (author)
Sunday, 17 November at 3:30PM
Sign-up in-person!
Tickets: $24.99-$29.99
Sign-up on Zoom!
Tickets: $4.99-$9.99
These lectures will be held at the museum and on Zoom. Tickets for the event include general admission to the museum for those who want to see the Afghan Liturgical Quire on exhibit.
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The ASF proudly promotes this event by the New York Andalus Ensemble, in conjunction with the Foundation of Iberian Music and La Nacional:
Ya Qalbi (Oh Heart!)
An evening of music and song from al-Andalus and North Africa
For five hundred years, Christians, Jews, and Muslims lived side by side in Medieval Iberia, sharing their arts and sciences to create a scintillating, multicultural tradition of music and poetry. Singing in Arabic, Hebrew, and Ladino to reflect this cultural pluralism, ASF Broome & Allen Fellow Dr. Sam Torjman Thomas’ New York Andalus Ensemble presents spiritual texts and songs of love and everyday life in Al-Andalus, emphasizing the expressive quality of the region’s shared tradition even as it respects the individual cultures that comprise it. Meticulous attention is paid to authenticity of style and pronunciation as ensemble members, hailing from Algeria, Syria, Israel, Morocco, and the United States, pool their linguistic and musical expertise.
“You won’t want to miss the chance to see such a diverse and versatile group.” —Spain Culture, New York
Wednesday, 20 November at 7:30PM
@La Nacional, Spanish Benevolent Society
239 W 14th St, New York City
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $18-$24
ASF Members are eligible to 10% Off with the promo code (ASF)
Doors Open at 6:45pm; Concert starts at 7:30pm. If you’re interested in the restaurant downstairs, it is highly recommended you make a reservation.
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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!