In Honor of Dr. Yvette Bailey, the newest member of the ASF’s Board of Directors and Mother of two distinguished ASF Sephardi House Alumni: Mckynzie (’21-’22) and Gaden (’22-’23) Romer.
Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one
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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: “When Excellence is a Necessity: Bilahari Kausikan on the Singapore-Israel Connection”
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🕍“Jews have their own creole language — in the middle of the Caribbean”
By Dor Shabashewitz, The Forward
Mikvé Israel-Emmanuel Synagogue, Willemstad, Curaçao
(Photo courtesy of
I
)
Ever heard of Judaeo-Papiamento? It’s “one of the most unique, albeit little-known, Jewish diaspora languages” and it’s still spoken “in Curaçao, an island in the Caribbean by the coast of Venezuela and a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands” where approximately 350 Jews reside.
Papiamento was first spoken by West African slaves on the island. A Portuguese-based creole with elements and traces of Spanish and occasionally Dutch, Judaeo-Papiamento grew up among the Sephardi Jews who came from colonies in the region and who moved to Curaçao in order to make a living. According to scholars, the Jews were the first non-Africans to pick up the creole, and they played a role in stabilizing the language.
Unsurprisingly, just like most Jewish languages besides Hebrew, Judaeo-Papiamento is under threat of extinction. The processes of assimilation, secularization and globalization have caused the younger generations of the Curaçao Jews to switch to the general variety of the language.
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Feature: Houses of Life: Synagogues and Cemeteries of Italy ✡️
The American Sephardi Federation’s Institute of Jewish Experience hosts a global Jewish audience for a virtual tour of “The Synagogues and Cemeteries of Italy,” an exhibit curated by Andrea Morpurgo and Amedeo Spagnoletto and currently on display at MEIS - the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah.
Andrea Morpurgo is an architect, architectural historian and the author of The Jewish Cemetery in Italy: History and Architecture of an Identity Space (Quodlibet), while Amedeo Spagnoletto is the Director of the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah and a sofer, a Jewish ritual scribe. From 2017 until 2019, he was Chief Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Florence.
Together, they lead a virtual tour through the architecture and social-cultural roles played by both synagogues and cemeteries in the Italian Jewish community. The tour highlights the specifically Italian dimension of these two Jewish spaces, while two thousand years of history are traversed. The history of cities and human beings intertwine in the exhibit through artifacts that are passed down in and between families, and are on display. Included among these prestigious loans are the Aron ha-Qodesh, the holy Ark, of the Vercelli Jewish Community, and many precious documents from both State Archives and Italian Jewish Communities.
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📚“The 1948 Arab war against Israel: An aftershock of World War II?”
By Matthias Kuntzel, Fathom Journal
“The former Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, meets Hitler for the first time,” Berlin, Germany, 28 November 1941
(Photo courtesy of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Islamists have been leading the resistance against the Jewish state dating back to the days of Haj Amin el-Husseini (1897-1974), the Islamist leader who was Hitler’s man in the region. Matthias Kuntzel’s new book, Nazism, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East (Routledge, August 2023) sets the threat of Political Islam in its larger historical context while pointing to the influence of Nazi-inspired antisemitism at the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Kuntzel begins by posing a difficult question that is rarely asked, “Is there any connection between the Nazi war of extermination against the Jews that ended in May 1945 and the war of the Arab armies against Israel which started in May 1948?” His answer is a document-driven, thoroughly researched “yes” that goes back to Nazi sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood:
I present new archival discoveries relating to the collaboration between German Nazi agents and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Documents from the British National Archive reveal that this collaboration was known about at the highest levels in Germany and that, according to one note, ‘GOEB. [Goebbels] has spoken about it with much praise.’ Nazi agents not only transferred money to the Muslim Brotherhood, but also attended conferences of this organisation, held common ‘Palestine meetings’ with it and gave lectures to its members on ‘the Jewish question’.
Kuntzel displays evidence for various channels of Nazi influence, including influential books and popular radio broadcasts, but he especially notes how the Nazis identified the Islamists as their natural collaborators in the war against the Jews. He further claims that war in 1948 between Israel and its neighbors was not inevitable, as the desire to attack Israel was not initially shared across the board in the Arab-Islamic world. But the Muslim Brotherhood led the calls for confrontation, and those voices carried the day. As such:
There are… good grounds for interpreting the Arab war against Israel as a kind of aftershock of the previous Nazi war against the Jews. Amin el-Husseini embodied the continuity of the two events. His religiously packaged antisemitism, which had cost thousands of Jews their lives in 1944, was four years later directed against Israel.
Kuntzel’s book touches upon topics that scholars hopefully will research, discuss, and debate. Most fundamentally, he makes a very strong case that Nazi-inspired Islamists played a significant role in directly causing the Arab-Israeli conflict. The fact that Islamist forces are also directly responsible for sustaining the conflict today sets in relief the relevance of Kuntzel’s book and its claims.
Related Reading from the Sephardi Ideas Monthly:
- The Farhud: A Passionate & Piercingly Sharp Poetic Tribute
- The Message from Makkah: True Islam is Anti-Extremism
- Salman Rushdie Lives: Islamism in Iran Revisited
- Birthplace of the Brotherhood: Understanding & Overcoming Islamism in Egypt
- Islamist Intolerance: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Scribbler
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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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Rebelot: Authentic Sephardic and Ashkenazi Italian Jewish Recipes
by Lorenza R. Pintar and Yael Stucchi
This cookbook is a 2-year project inspired by family and friends. The collection the author and her mom organized features “Nona” Emma’s authentic Jewish recipes that were passed down from mother to daughter. They come from an Italian family in Milan with both Sephardic and Ashkenazi ancestry. Her great grandparents were the last generation practicing Judaism.
“With the rise of Fascism during the Mussolini regime Judaism was kept private and preserved mostly through food ritual practices. This book is as precious as the wedding gift Shabbat candlesticks Emma and Angelo received and were hidden underground in a time of darkness. I happen to have inherited one that now stands proud in my house in Brooklyn. We are not professional chefs so we hope this book will be taken for what it is: an expression of love, diversity, and freedom.”
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:
The Aden Conference
Building on the success of the ASF and E’eleh B’Tamar’s “The Yemenite Conference: Jews and Muslims in Yemen” held in 2017 at New York’s Center for Jewish History, the Aden Conference will bring together the world’s leading scholars from Aden, Israel, US, UK, and Europe to explore the historical, cultural, and communal dynamics that intersected in Aden and its environs, particularly under British rule.
28-30 August 2023
Opening Night | JW3, London
Conference | Woolf Institute, Cambridge
Cambridge, Madingley Rd, Cambridge CB3 0UB, UK
Sign-up Now!
Co-Presenters:
Woolf Institute, ASMEA (Association for the Study of the Middle East & Africa), Aden Jewish Heritage Museum, Zalman Shazar Center, and Harif: Association of Jews from the MENA
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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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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.