In Memory of Türkiye’s Hakham Bashi (Chief Rabbi) İsak Haleva, A”H, who was born in Istanbul and faithfully served the Turkish Jewish Community for six decades as a teacher, leader, rabbi, and representative of Classic Sephardic Judaism's mix of wisdom and warmth. May his memory be for a blessing always. The ASF was represented by a wreath at his funeral last week (special thanks to Distinguished ASF Board Member Marc Gueron):
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Don’t miss the latest Sephardi Ideas Monthly: “L’Moledet Shuvi Roni: Asher Mizrahi’s Biblical-Zionist Romance”
“A New King? Thoughts for Parashat Shemot”
By Rabbi Marc D. Angel, The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals
Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Ph.D
(Photo courtesy of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals)
The Book of Genesis ends with Joseph firmly ensconced among Egypt’s ruling elites. He saved the country from famine while consolidating the position of Pharaoh's royal house.
In this context, a strange sentence appears towards the beginning of the Book of Exodus, read this past Shabbat by Jewish congregations around the world: “A new king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph.” (1:8) Rabbi Marc Angel raises the traditional question, “Why did the new Pharaoh ignore the earlier achievements of Joseph? How could the new Pharaoh “not know”—not appreciate and respect—Joseph’s accomplishments?”
He then offers a tough-minded answer, “People remember what they want to remember and ‘forget’ what they want to suppress.” As for the great service that Joseph previously provided the people and Kingdom of Egypt:
That ‘new Pharaoh’ was like many people. They enjoy the benefits of others but are quick to turn on them; they ‘don’t know’—don’t want to be reminded—about the gratitude they owe. They are interested in promoting themselves and enhancing their own power.
Gratitude inherently confers obligations that people often prefer to forget. Lest we restrict the import of this teaching to the political realm, R’Angel reminds us, “Ingratitude and betrayal manifest themselves in many situations. Self-serving people in all walks of life use others but ‘don’t know them’ once they are no longer needed.”
In last week’s Torah portion, the Torah makes us more aware of a difficulty that we are liable to face in navigating through the world: gratitude is a weak foundation for establishing and maintaining relationships. R’Angel accordingly concludes on a sober, introspective note:
‘A new king arose in Egypt who did not know Joseph.’ Do we know people like that? Are we ourselves like that, even sometimes?
Rabbi Isak Haleva on Preserving Ladino in Contemporary Turkey
Late Chief Rabbi Isak Haleva
(Screenshot courtesy of Vanishing Languages and Cultural Heritage/Youtube)
In a 2020 interview, Rabbi Isak Haleva relates the challenges of preserving Ladino among Turkish Jews. Along the way he tells the story of how Prime Minister Erdogan sat him next to Spanish PM Zapatero during a state dinner. R’ Haleva spoke at the event, first in Turkish but, when he heard the Spanish translation, he realized that he could say it himself. After requesting permission from PM Erdogan, R’ Haleva continued the speech in Ladino:
I have a picture of Zapatero’s expression. He was extremely surprised because I was speaking Spanish the way I am used to. The Spanish I was talking is, for him, like literature.
R’ Haleva recalls the pressures of the “Only Turkish” campaign and compares the manner in which the Greek and Armenian communities resisted, continuing to teach their language in schools, while the Jews adapted to the policy. Ultimately, offers R’ Haleva, religion is fundamental for Jews, not language:
As long as our Divine Law remains untouched - because the Jew’s power… has always been religion - if they do not meddle in my religion and let me be in peace, I can continue. If they want me to speak Turkish in Turkey, what can be done?
“What a remarkable Torah rescued from Iran — then LA’s fire — can teach about community amid devastation”
By Rob Eshman, Forward
“The remains of Wohlmann Hall, built in the early 1940s, which was the oldest building in the Pasadena Jewish Temple complex. Its destruction revealed a mural — covered by renovations and completely forgotten— that seems to illustrate Jews wandering the desert with their Torah.”
(Photo courtesy of Patrick Wright/The Forward)
The Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, a center of Jewish communal life for 100 years, was utterly destroyed by the fires devastating the LA area. However, a special Torah scroll that symbolizes Jewish resilience from Iran to LA, the Nehdar Torah, was saved from the inferno.
What is the Nehdar Torah?
In 1934, Samuel Nehdar, a leading importer in the Iranian port city of Khorramshahr, commissioned the Torah to mark the death of his first wife…
In the early 1980s, fierce battles during the Iran-Iraq War destroyed Khorramshahr (and) the synagogue housing the Torah was ruined.
Iran recaptured Khorramshahr in 1982, and someone — it’s unclear who — took the Torah to Tehran for safekeeping. By then, Nehdar was living in Pasadena.
Nehdar’s next step was surprising and audacious in equal parts:
A devout Jew, (Nehdar) sent a 10-page letter directly to Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, to request “from one holy person to another” the Torah that had been part of the family for so many years…
About six months later, the FBI notified Nehdar that a crate had arrived at the port of San Pedro from the Islamic Republic of Iran, addressed to him. Who mailed the crate remains another mystery.
The Nehdar family donated the Torah to the Pasadena temple, where it has been kept in safekeeping except for its use on the High Holy Days of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur.
Then, the January inferno was unleashed On January 7th, as the fire spread and flames closed in on the Jewish center, “four temple members and staff ran into the synagogue… Choking on smoke, they were able to grab the Persian Torah just before the fire consumed the building.”
The Nehdar Torah will remain in storage for the time being, but the symbolism of its survival remains poignant, “When the Nehdars first unwrapped the Torah after its long journey from Iran, they found the silver case covered in black soot and ash — a sure sign it had once survived a devastating fire.”
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The Historic Synagogues Of Turkey / Turkiye'nin Tarihi Sinagoglari
(In Turkish and English)
By Joel A. Zack
Photographs by Devon Jarvis
Drawings by Ceren Kahraman
Published by the American Sephardi Federation
This project testifies to a historic Jewish community of vibrancy and dynamism that once dotted Turkey. Dating back to Roman and Byzantine times, Jews thrived on Turkish soil, finding refuge in the tens of thousands after their expulsions from Spain, Portugal, and Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Joel Zack and his team have performed an important cultural service, retrieving for posterity rich testimony of the Jewish architectural heritage in Ottoman and modern Turkish History.
By Shalach Manot
Translated by Jane Mushabac
His Hundred Years, A Tale by Shalach Manot is a novel about a Turkish Jew, a peddler, an everyman, in the fast-deteriorating Ottoman Empire and in New York.
“This fascinating book by gifted writer and storyteller Shalach Manot reflects on the life of an unusual Sephardic man, his childhood in Turkey, and later, his adaptation to life in America. We follow his adventures and come away with a deeper appreciation and understanding of the Sephardic immigrant experience during the 20th century.” — Rabbi Marc D. Angel, author of The Crown of Solomon and Other Stories.
“Sensitive and gripping portraits of diverse Turkish Jewish women caught in a patriarchal system.”—Gloria J. Ascher, Professor and Co-Director of Judaic Studies, Tufts University.
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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.
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
Our friends at Qesher present:
The Jews of Egypt: From the Bible to the Golden Age and the Abraham Accords
Sunday, 19 January at 3:00PM EST
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $9-$18
About the talk:
“The Jewish Community in Egypt is as old as the Jewish tradition itself. We will follow the Jewish presence from the time of the Bible through its Golden Age, from around 1870 until the Suez Crisis in 1956. We will relive the belle epoque - with Alexandrian born Alec Nacamuli - a time when Egyptian Jews enjoyed prosperity and relative calm, and we will discover their influence in commerce, culture and government circles. We will learn about their communal and religious life, and their relationship with their Muslim neighbors.
We will then see how the tides change for the community, with the growth of Egyptian nationalism and the establishment of modern Israel. We will end by taking a look at the reality today, at the Jews, the synagogues and cemeteries that remain, and what efforts are being made to preserve this important part of Jewish and Egyptian history.”
About the speakers:
Louise Arwas is originally from London. Her father, grandparents and great-grandparents were all born in Egypt. She is involved in several related education projects, including organizing heritage tours to Cairo and Alexandria with former community members.
Alec Nacamuli was born in 1943 in Alexandria, Egypt. In 1956 his family left Egypt and settled in Switzerland. In 1966 Alec moved to London to pursue a Master's Degree. He is an active member of the Association of Egyptian Jews and returned to Egypt on multiple occasions. Alec is the Chairman of Sephardi Voices UK.
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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 @ the TriBeCa Synagogue
49 White St, New York City
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:
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Our friends at Qesher present:
Qesher Book Club: “The Anatomy of Exile”
Tuesday, 4 February at 3:00PM EST
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $9-$18
About the talk:
“The Abadi Family saga begins when a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story between a Palestinian and a Jew ends in predictable tragedy. The family flees to America to mend, but encounters only more turmoil that threatens to tear the family apart.
In the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, Tamar Abadi's world collapses when her sister-in-law is killed in what appears to be a terror attack but what is really the result of a secret relationship with a Palestinian poet. Tamar’s husband, Salim, is an Arab and a Jew. Torn between the two identities, and mourning his sister's death, he uproots the family and moves them to the US. As Tamar struggles to maintain the integrity of the family’s Jewish Israeli identity against the backdrop of the American ‘melting pot’ culture, a Palestinian family moves into the apartment upstairs and she is forced to reckon with her narrow thinking as her daughter falls in love with the Palestinian son. Fearing history will repeat itself, Tamar's determination to separate the two sets into motion a series of events that have the power to destroy her relationship with her daughter, her marriage, and the family she has worked so hard to protect. This powerful debut novel explores Tamar's struggle to keep her family intact, to accept love that is taboo, and grapples with how exile forces us to reshape our identity in ways we could not imagine. You can read more and order the book here.”
About the speakers:
Zeeva Bukai is a fiction writer, born in Israel and raised in New York City. Her stories have appeared in OfTheBook Press, Carve Magazine, Pithead Chapel, The Master's Review, jewishfiction.net, Mcsweeney's Quarterly Concern, Image Journal, December Magazine, The Jewish Quarterly and elsewhere. Her honors include a fellowship at the New York Center for Fiction, residencies at Hedgebrook Writer's Colony, and Byrdcliff AIR program in Woodstock NY. She received The Master's Review fiction prize, the Curt Johnson Prose Award, and the Lilith Fiction Award.
Her work has been anthologized in Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine, and Out of Many: Multiplicity and Divisions in America Today. She holds an MFA from Brooklyn College and is the Assistant Director of Academic Support at SUNY Empire State University. Her debut novel, The Anatomy of Exile, will be published by Delphinium Books in January 2025. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
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Our friends at Qesher present:
The Jews of Afghanistan: A glimpse into a vanished community
Sunday, 9 February at 3:00PM EST
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $9-$18
About the talk:
“The Jewish community of Afghanistan developed along the Silk Road. By the year 700 CE, it flourished amidst the great cultural and religious diversity found when this nation was truly the crossroads of the world. By the 19th century, families survived through commerce, with men frequently traveling long distances to sell their wares. As a result, unusual domestic arrangements developed. Learn more about the daily life of this community, and how they survived the threat of forcible conversion and discriminatory economic policies while maintaining ancient, unique customs.
We will also discuss the community's fate and decline in the 20th century, and what remains of it today. Osnat Gad, born in Pakistan to Afghani Jewish parents, will also share about her efforts to restore Jewish sites in Kabul and Herat.”
About the speakers:
Sara Koplik, PhD, attended Bryn Mawr College, where she majored in history, and later the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. There, she received a master's degree in Central Asian studies and a doctorate in Middle Eastern history. She is the author of A Political and Economic History of the Jews of Afghanistan (Brill, 2013) as well as journal articles and chapters on the Mizrahi Jewish experience. From 2016 to 2021, Dr. Koplik founded and directed the Sephardic Heritage Program at the Jewish Federation of New Mexico. Under her leadership, the program helped thousands of individuals across the globe. She also edited the New Mexico Jewish Link for over a decade. Currently, she is the executive director of the Aaron David Bram Hillel House at the University of New Mexico.
Osnat Gad was born in Peshawar, Pakistan, to parents from Afghanistan. In 1947, her extended family all moved to Bombay, India, to avoid mobs wanting to kill the Jews after the partition of India and Pakistan. In the early 1950s, her family moved to Israel, and by 1961, they settled in the US. In the early 1980s, Gad established a firm specializing in importing precious gems. Her jewelry line is now carried in more than 200 stores throughout the USA. Today, Gad runs four e-commerce businesses. She has led the effort to restore Jewish sites in Kabul and Herat.