Mazal Tov to the Comunidade Israelita de Lisboa (Lisbon Jewish Community), especially President David Joffe Botelho and Treasurer José Ruah, on organizing a special event featuring LEHAKAT TZAHAL celebrating the “75th anniversary of the State of Israel and the European Day of Jewish Culture… Authorities were present, including members of [Portugal’s] Government, deputies, representatives of the [Israel] Embassy and also Ambassadors and diplomats from other countries.”
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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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✡️“Colombian Descendants of Crypto-Jews Rediscover Their Roots”
By Debbie Mohnblatt, The Media Line
A bar mitzvah boy reads from the Torah at Bello Synagogue, April 24, 2023
(Photo courtesy of Shai Levene/The Media Line)
Rabbi Elad Villegas served as pastor of an evangelical church in Colombia with 3,000 members before converting to Judaism. Today, R’Villegas leads the Jewish community in Bello, a small Jewish city in the country’s northwest. What moved Villegas to convert? A trip to Israel reminded him of life back home in Colombia. According to Prof. Alberto Antonio Berón Ospina, a specialist in Latin American history at the Technological University of Pereira in Colombia, the culture in northwestern Colombia is highly influenced by Sephardic Jewish traditions that seem to have been passed down by Crypto-Jewish communities. Consider how Rabbi Ezra Rodriguez, 43, remembers his grandfather’s springtime routine, “‘[M]y grandfather built a stone oven which was out of service for the whole year, but for Easter, which is commonly at the same time as Passover, he used to clean the house, tell us that this week must be welcomed with cleanliness, and enable the oven only for food that does not contain wheat.’”
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Feature: “Françoise Atlan’s Avinu Malkeinu” 🎶🎤🎵
Françoise Atlan received a standing ovation at Opening Night of ASF's American Sephardi Music Festival
(Photo courtesy of Chrystie Sherman)
The French-Sephardi singer Françoise Atlan, a master of Andalusian music, performed at Opening Night of ASF’s inaugural American Sephardi Music Festival on 24 August. Here is her soulful, a cappella rendition of Avinu Malkeinu, which is recited daily between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. Atlan also performed as part of an impromptu trio, accompanied by Gerard Edery and David Serero.
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📚“Aden’s Jews and a museum coming to life - book review”
By Alan Rosenbaum, The Jerusalem Post
Sarah Ansbacher
(Photo courtesy of Amazon)
In Passage from Aden – Stories from a Little Museum in Tel Aviv, Sarah Ansbacher “relates the remarkable history of the little-known [Yemenite] Jewish community of Aden and shares the fascinating stories from the visitors she has met during her tenure as a guide at the museum.” Most of Ansbacher’s eighty-two vignettes treat the Jews of Aden, but sometimes they also extend to other times and places. Like a story she heard from a visitor who was involved in the 1984 operation that flew thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Mossad agents famously built a “Red Sea Diving Resort” as part of the operation. Ansbacher’s addition? “‘[T]he visitor… mentioned that the agents nearly revealed their identity because the guests noticed that the hotel ‘staff’ chopped their salads into small, neat cubes, Israeli-style.’”
Sarah Ansbacher and Dani Goldsmith presented at the ASF Institute of Jewish Experience's Aden Conference last week at London and Cambridge!
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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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The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa: The Impact of World War II
By Professor Reva Spector Simon
Incorporating published and archival material, this volume fills an important gap in the history of the Jewish experience during World War II, describing how the war affected Jews living along the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the Levant, from Morocco to Iran.
Surviving the Nazi slaughter did not mean that Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa were unaffected by the war: there was constant anti-Semitic propaganda and general economic deprivation; communities were bombed; and Jews suffered because of the anti-Semitic Vichy regulations that left them unemployed, homeless, and subject to forced labor and deportation to labor camps.
Covering the entire Middle East and North Africa region, this book on World War II is a key resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Jewish history, World War II, and Middle East history.
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
The ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Sefarad: The Movie
Watch Sefarad, a film about the revival and rebirth of a Jewish community, on your own* and register for a Zoom webinar discussion with community leaders and those behind the film!
7 September at 12:00PM EST
Q&A with Dara Jeffries (Vice President of the Jewish Community of Oporto) and Michael Rothwell (Member of the Board of the Jewish Community of Oporto and Director of the Oporto Jewish and Holocaust Museums)
Sign-up Now!
(Tickets: $10)
*After registering, you’ll receive a code and link to watch the movie on your own.
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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.
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)
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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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.