Hazaq u’Barukh to Professor Jonathan Sarna, the doyen of American Jewish history scholars, on receiving the American Jewish History Society’s Emma Lazarus Statue of Liberty Award at the AJHS Gala last night, which also featured a conversation with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. Congratulations to our AJHS friends and partners, especially Chairman Charles Knapp, President Felicia Herman, PhD, and Executive Director Gemma Birnbaum!
Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one
Subscribe ◊ Upcoming Events ◊ ASF Sephardi Shop ◊ Donate ◊ Sephardi Ideas Monthly ◊ ASF IJE ◊ ASF Sephardi House ◊ Archive
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: “Emet ve Emunah: The Secret of the Sassoons’ Success”
~~~~~~~
“New Exhibit Opens in Walsh Library”
By Nora Malone, The Fordham Ram
Siona Benjamin presented her textile designs at the ASF’s Silk Road Experience, Paul S. And Sylvia Steinberg Great Hall, ASF - Center for Jewish History, 14 December 2015
(Photo courtesy of Chrystie Sherman)
Siona Benjamin’s art is populated by people with sky-blue skin. This heavenly vision of humanity is rooted in Benjamin’s childhood experience living “in a Hindu and Muslim society, educated in Catholic and Zoroastrian schools, raised Jewish in India, and now calling America home.” No matter where this member of the Bene Israel, Indian Jewish community finds herself, “I have always had to reflect on cultural boundary zones.”
“‘Yearning to Breathe: The Art of Siona Benjamin’” is on display through 23 December at Fordham University’s Walsh library. The exhibit takes its name from Emma Lazarus’ “A New Colossus” at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...”
While the Sephardi-American poet originally intended to bless the democratic potential of “huddled masses” superficially seen as “wretched refuse,” Fordham Professor Magda Teter, the Shvidler Chair in Judaic Studies, believes the yearning to breathe, simply, articulates Benjamin’s primal need to communicate the many worlds that she experiences and then stylizes into one world, populated by sky-blue people, “She herself is ‘yearning to breathe’ because she has so many identities that for her feel [like] one, but society cannot understand that.”
Blue Like Me: The Art of Siona Benjamin
Blue Like Me Event at Fordham University in 2020
(Screenshot courtesy of Fordham/Youtube)
In 2020, Fordham University’s Judaic Studies Department and Be’chol Lashon hosted artist Siona Benjamin and Ori Soltes, Goldman Professorial Lecturer in Theology and Fine Arts at Georgetown University, for a webinar dedicated to Benjamin’s life and art. The following year saw the publication of a collection of essays, Growing up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs, and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of Siona Benjamin, edited by Soltes. Benjamin explains how she learns with rabbis, scholars and teachers, like Soltes, about Biblical and Talmudic figures of monumental status like Avraham, Yitzhak, Yishmael, Yosef and Rabbi Akiva, and in the end creates her own “visual midrash.”
“Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism: Born in 1492, Still Going Strong”
By Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, Distinctions
Nessim Bouskila (on the right), a Moroccan Jew who served in the Palmach, pictured with fellow Moroccans during Israel’s War of Independence. His son Rabbi Daniel and grandson Ilan followed in his footsteps, serving in the IDF’s Givati Brigade
(Photo courtesy of Tabby Refael/Jewish Journal)
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila, the International Director of the Sephardic Educational Center in the Old City of Jerusalem, , identifies a “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” paradigm that grew out of the 1492 expulsion from Spain that “has become part of Sephardic Jewry’s DNA.”
A student of story-telling from Shai Agnon to Haim Sabato and Albert Murray, in R’ Bouskila’s learned reconstruction, Rabbi Yosef Karo is the hero of the tale:
It is the life journey of Yosef Karo, together with many other Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain on Tisha B’Av, that jumpstarted the “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” paradigm that has become part of Sephardic Jewry’s DNA. Refusing to die out or disappear on Tisha B’Av in 1492, Sephardim would now search for a new home, the destiny of which would be a return to the Land of Israel.
Like so many tales of Spain, R’ Karo’s life becomes an adventure story full of “dramatic twists and turns”
No matter where he and his family settled — Portugal for a short time and then the Ottoman Empire — tragedies... seemed to follow them... Rav Karo’s resilience through many tragedies led him to a mystical revelation, one that would take him and m121any Sephardic Jews back home to Israel.
R’ Bouskila highlights new legal texts and liturgy, from R’ Karo’s codification of the law to his friend R Shlomo Alkabetz’s songs to the Queen, Shabbat, inspired by the mystical, Sephardic vision of the Jewish people alive again in the Land of Israel. He then explores the pathways of the paradigm’s transmission in Ottoman Jerusalem to the present-day Sephardic Educational Center, with its physical headquarters “in the heart of the Jewish world: the Old City of Jerusalem.”
Weaving in his family’s personal story in bringing his mini-history home, from three generations of IDF service to Aliya to the Land of Israel, R’Bouskila concludes, “In the shadow of October 7, the historic legacy of “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” proudly lives on — in Israel, at the Sephardic Educational Center in Jerusalem and in my family.”
Since launching in 2014, the ASF’s Sephardi Ideas Monthly has published many articles exploring and promoting Sephardi resilience, Jewish unity, and the Jewish people's rootedness in the land of Israel. Herewith is a selection:
- Enlightening & Empowering Jewish Students on Campus
- The Omni-American Future’s Sephardi Dimension
- The Sephardi Shibat Zion in Israel Education
- “To Unite, Not to Divide: Rav Ouziel’s Big Sephardic Ideas”
- Albert Memmi’s Multitudes
- Hakham Henry Pereira Mendes’ Perspicacity & Progress
- Yehuda Halevi: My Heart is in the East
~~~~~~~
Upcoming Events or Opportunities
Our friends at Qesher present:
The Jews of Indonesia: A Diverse Community Across Many Islands
“Consisting of over 17,000 islands, Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state, the world's fourth-most-populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. But unknown to many, it is also home to a small but committed number of Jews.
Rabbi Kunin will examine the diverse “kehilot” that comprise one of the most isolated re-emerging Jewish communities in the world. Descended from many different Jewish diasporas, Indonesia’s Jews span the archipelago from Sumatra to Papua Indonesia. Each of their communities is unique, with its own history and culture, yet together they form a vibrant whole, creating a Judaism which is absolutely authentic, and at the same time uniquely Indonesian.”
Sunday, 29 September at 3:00PM EDT
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $9-$18
About the speaker:
“Rabbi David Kunin graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Medieval History and then attended the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where he was ordained as a Rabbi and received an MA in Judaic Studies.
David is a strong believer in the importance of good and harmonious relations between people from diverse religious communities. Interfaith relations have therefore been a continuous mark of his rabbinate. He served as the Chair of the Southern Tier Interfaith Coalition (Elmira, NY), where he created the Walking Together program, and was a long time board member and president of the Edmonton Interfaith Centre for Education and Action. He received the Alberta Centennial Medal in recognition of his community work.
David has also been working with the emerging Jewish Community of Indonesia for ten years. David is also the rabbi of Congregation Beth David in Saratoga, CA.”
~~~~~~~
Our friends at Kanisse: A Modern Sephardic + Mizrahi Community present:
Multicultural High Holiday Services
Dates and Locations
Rosh Hashanah Tashlikh Service
Thursday, 3 October at 3:30PM
@ Pier 57
57 Hudson River Greenway (at 15th Street), New York, NY
We will be meeting on the upper rooftop under the shade canopy.
Yom Kippur Eve
Friday, 11 October
6:03PM Candle Lighting / Fast Begins
6:30PM Evening Prayers - Qabbalat Shabbat and ‘Arvit
873 Broadway @ 18 Street, Suite #410, New York, NY 10003
Yom Kippur Day
Saturday, 12 October
9:30AM Morning Prayers - Shaḥarit and Musaf
4:45PM Evening prayers - Minḥah and Ne’ilah
873 Broadway @ 18 Street, Suite #301, New York, NY 10003
Sign-up Now!
(Tickets: $0-$1,001)
“Kanisse will be hosting a special Rosh Hashanah Tashlikh Service (“casting-off” of sins) on the Hudson. A short program that will begin with quintessential holiday piyyutim followed by traditional and alternative Tashlikh readings along the river’s edge..
This year’s Yom Kippur Services will be led by our stellar returning cantorial team: Galeet Dardashti, who will be leading us in the Persian tradition, and Abe Safdie, who will be leading us in the Syrian tradition. Services will also be livestreamed for those joining us at a distance. At the conclusion of Yom Kippur, a break-fast of Middle Eastern delicacies will be served.”
*Please note: We are sharing this announcement as a public service. This is not an ASF program.