Mazal tov to Malcolm Hoenlein, who was honored by President Herzog last week with Israel’s Presidential Medal of Honor for over six decades of distinguished service to the Jewish people. Hoenlein was previously knighted by the King of Morocco and recognized by the Mimouna Association and ASF with the “Moses, the African Jewish Leadership Award,” at the 2nd Jewish Africa Conference
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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: “L’Moledet Shuvi Roni: Asher Mizrahi’s Biblical-Zionist Romance”
“Activist who saved Syrian Jews glad few Jews remain in Arab republic”
By Judy Lash Balint, JNS
“Judy Feld Carr and the Damascus Keter she helped rescue from Syria,” Toronto, 1993
(Photo courtesy of Orah Buck/National Library of Israel)
Judy Feld Carr is a Toronto-based musicologist who helped more than 3,000 Jews flee Syria between 1977 and 2001. With the country in tatters after the fall of the Assad regime, Carr says that “‘I wouldn’t want to be a Jew or have a Jewish community in Syria right now.’”
What does Carr think of a recent BBC report trumpeting a Jewish presence in Damascus’ Old City as evidence of Syria’s diversity under the new regime?
I’ve never heard anything so dumb in my life… That Jews and Muslims and Christians are going to live together happily right now. What Jews was she referring to? The Jewish quarter is empty in Damascus. There are no Jews left.
Originally a “communication link” between the Syrian Jewish community and Toronto, Carr was moved by the suffering of Syrian Jews, including cases of brutal torture, to help the community. Bribes were crucial to the plan. Carr and a committee in Toronto raised funds, cultivated a secret network in Syria, and ransomed 3,200 people:
I didn’t initiate anything with those who wanted to leave. That would have endangered the whole operation… The Jews had to find me. I didn’t offer, ‘Hey I hear somebody wants to leave, do you want me to help you?’ I didn’t do that.
I was the last way out of the country, and it ended up in some cases that I could only get the parents and one child, because the child was sick, and the other kids were left behind… It was like ‘Sophie’s Choice,’ but eventually, I got the other children, but it took time. It took years.
Carr is especially proud that “‘I never lost a Jew… Meaning, I was so careful that not one person was arrested because of me.’” In 2012 she received one of Israel’s first Presidential Medals of Honor, “‘The nice thing was that my Israeli grandchildren saw it.’”
Meet Judy Feld Carr, the Savior of Syrian Jewry
The CJN (Canadian Jewish News) Daily with Ellin Bessner
With the fall of the brutal Assad regime, The Canadian Jewish News interviews Judy Feld Carr about her role in rescuing more than 3,000 Syrian Jews between 1977 -2001. Carr recalls the steps taken to protect her, how she would use phrases from Psalms to communicate with a Syrian rabbi in code, and the time a senior Israeli intelligence official yelled at her for worrying about saving an ancient Torah scroll, from which she concluded that the scroll was, indeed, there to be found.
“Rare document shows Jewish financier’s role in American Revolution up for sale”
By Jackie Hajdenberg, JTA
Hayim Salomon appears on the only known surviving page of James Madison’s ledger
(Photo courtesy of The Raab Collectoin/JTA)
The Raab Collection is an international firm “with a passion for history [and] an eye for the exceptional” that buys and sells historical documents. In the possession of the Raab Collection but now for sale is “a document penned by James Madison linking Jewish financier Haym Salomon to the American Revolution.”
A single sheet from the ledger of Madison, the fourth U.S. president, the document shows “the Virginia delegation’s expenses and receipts during the 1780 Continental Congress.” Listed among the contributors is Salomon, “a Sephardic Jewish immigrant from Poland who came to America in 1775 and is considered one of the leading funders of the Revolutionary War effort.”
Says Nathan Raab, the President of The Raab Collection:
Jews in early America were strong patriots and fought for freedom alongside their Christian friends and neighbors… This meant that our Founding Fathers had Jewish friends, supporters, and allies at the dawn of our nation. This document shows that vividly.
As Madison wrote in a 1782-3 letter to Edmund Randolph, later the secretary of state:
I have for some time been a pensioner on the favor of Haym Salomon… The kindness of our friend near the coffeehouse is a fund that will preserve me from extremities, but I never resort to it without great mortification, as he obstinately rejects all recompense.
But Salomon’s obstinate generosity exacted a price on him. When he “died at 44 in 1785, less than two years after the treaty ending the war was signed,” Salomon was destitute because loans had not been repaid.
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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.
The Aristocrat: The Life and Legacy of Hillel Menashe Sutton
By Abraham Sutton
With this memoir, a tribute to the memory of his father, Abraham (Al) Sutton presents a brief synopsis of the history of the Jewish community of Aleppo, Syria, up to and through its diasporas to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, New York, New Orleans, and Deal, New Jersey. All this in a thin volume generously laced with photographs. Al Sutton lost his father when he was only eleven years old. He thought he knew him; but one day he discovered that there had been a eulogy by a renowned kabbalist. He eventually found the text; what he discovered in the process provides the foundation of The Aristocrat. The book is interesting, fast moving, and sparkles with little glimpses of everyday life in a land (Aleppo) that was continuously inhabited by Jewish people from Biblical times until the late 20th century. There are also scenes of Israel during the War of Independence, and Syrian Jewish life in the United States. Author’s notes, bibliography.
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Sacred Words: Revealing the Earliest Hebrew Book
Extended through 21st January 2025!
Museum of the Bible
400 4th St SW, Washington, DC 20024
After 1,300 years of untold travels along the Silk Roads, the earliest intact Hebrew book, the Afghan Liturgical Quire, is revealed to the world for the first time, only at Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
The Afghan Jewish Foundation, Congregation Anshei Shalom, and the American Sephardi Federation are proud partners of the MoB on the ALQ initiative.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
The American Sephardi Federation with the Sephardic Foundation on Aging proudly present:
Mazal Bueno: The 8th Annual New York Ladino Day!
Curated by Jane Mushabac and Bryan Kirschen
Featuring:
Rachel Amado Bortnick, “Tales from Ladinokomunita,” the groundbreaking worldwide online correspondence circle which she founded and directs.
Julie Benko, Broadway star of Harmony and Funny Girl fame, narrates
Mazal Bueno: A Portrait in Song of the Spanish Jews,
featuring all Ladino songs sung by the 6 singers of the GRAMMY-nominated Western Wind Vocal Ensemble
with 3 guest instrumentalists.
The author of Mazal Bueno, Jane Mushabac, wrote it on commission for the original 1992 NPR broadcast on the quincentennial of the Alhambra Decree/Edict of Expulsion.
Sunday, 2 February 2:00-4:00PM EST
In-Person @ a Venue in Manhattan
Location to be shared shortly with ticket holders
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $36
Sephardic Hors D’oeuvres to follow the program
Since 2013, Ladino Day programs have been held around the world to honor Ladino, also known as Judeo-Spanish. February 2nd marks New York’s 8th Annual Ladino Day hosted by the American Sephardi Federation.
Ladino is a bridge to many cultures. A variety of Spanish, it has absorbed words from Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, French, Greek, and Portuguese. The mother tongue of Jews in the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, Ladino became the home language of Sephardim worldwide. While the number of Ladino speakers has sharply declined, distinguished Ladino Day programs like ours celebrate and preserve a vibrant language and heritage. These programs are, as Aviya Kushner has written in the Forward, “Why Ladino Will Rise Again.”
Postcard: Jewish musicians in Salonika, Turkey, c. early 20th Century
Co-sponsors: Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture, Cliff Russo, The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America, the American Ladino League, and Shearith Israel League Foundation
Please support New York Ladino Day with a generous, tax-deductible contribution to ASF so we can continue to cultivate and advocate, preserve and promote, as well as educate and empower!
Sponsorship opportunities available: