In Honor of the 55 ASF Sephardi House Fellows – students coast-to-coast who exemplify Jewish values, vision, and vitality!
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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”
“Biography of a Lost World: Sephardi Turkish Patriot and the history of the post-Ottoman Mediterranean”
By Dario Miccoli, Printed_Matter
Gad Franco, Istanbul (still then officially Constantinople), 1922
(Photo courtesy of Anthony Gad Bigio/A Sephardi Turkish Patriot)
Anthony Gad Bigio’s new book, A Sephardi Turkish Patriot, “tells the story of the Jews of the late Ottoman Empire and of early Republican Turkey” by tracing the life of Bigio’s maternal grandfather, Gad Franco, “the prominent journalist and jurist” who lived from 1881-1954. The book
combines academic references, family papers, photographs and personal recollections. The narrative follows Franco during his youth in fin-de-siècle Izmir, and then in his career as a jurist, lawyer and journalist in early Republican Istanbul, up to his downfall during the Second World War and the Turkification measures taken by the government against all minorities.
For the longest time an opponent of Zionism, Franco by 1950 had the intellectual integrity to admit “‘find[ing] myself in the position of someone who can only accept the defeat of his ideas.’” Indeed, in telling his story, the reader gets a hard look at the
changes and upheavals that the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa encountered in the first half of the twentieth century. Its historical reconstruction is a testament to his legacy and to a vanished epoch: ‘before the horrors and broken hearts, there had been a time of hope, of emancipation’.... This is a feeling that persists until today, leaving one to ask if there might have been a different future and another Middle East. And even though this is a possibility historians cannot discuss or write about since it never happened – it is enough to trigger a certain curiosity for this past and for ancestors we never met.
The AJC’s Forgotten Exodus: The Jews of Morocco
The American Jewish Committee’s series, “The Forgotten Exodus,” investigates how 800,000 Jews left or were driven from their homes in Arab and Islamic lands in the mid-20th century.
Opening the podcast’s second season, Manya Brachear Pashman interviews ASF Board Member Eli Gabay, a Philadelphia-based, Israeli-born Jew born to Moroccan parents on both sides, who today is an attorney and serves as the President of Philadelphia’s historic Spanish & Portuguese Synagogue, Congregation Mikveh Israel. In a discussion featuring enlightening comparisons between Moroccan and Iraqi Jewry, and extensive knowledge of Moroccan Jewish customs and history, Gabay explores the implications of the fact that Moroccan Jews only left Morocco, a land they identified with in many ways, gradually and never completely, maintaining multi-generational attachments to the Kingdom.
“National Library announces digitization project of Beta Israel sacred manuscripts”
By Gavriel Fiske, The Times of Israel
Liqa Kahenat Chief Kes Berko Tegegne reading from The Orit, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel, 8 October 2024
(Photo courtesy of Michael Zekri/NLI/Times of Israel)
The National Library of Israel and leaders of the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jewish) Community recently agreed to digitize the Community’s sacred texts. According to an official announcement following a meeting between the Library and Beta Israel leaders, “High-resolution digital scans of these items will be generated, and made available to the public via the NLI website, while the original items remain with the communities.”
Seventeen manuscripts written in Ge’ez, the ancient Semitic liturgical language of Ethiopian Jewry, have already been digitally scanned, including the “Orit” or Octateuch, the Beta Israel Bible (the Five Books of Moses plus the books of Joshua, Judges and Ruth), as well as Mesihafe Kufale (Book of Jubilees), Mazmura Dawit (the Psalms of David), the Arde’et (Book of Disciples), the Mashafa Mala’ekt (Book of Enoch) and several prayer books.
Naftali Avraham, Director General of the Ethiopian Jewry Heritage Center, attributes the project’s success to the respectful dialogue conducted with the Kesim, traditional spiritual leaders of Ethiopian Jewry whose status has suffered in the mass Aliyah to the State of Israel:
In recent years, we have been able to document many of the [esoteric] mysteries of the tradition and rich heritage of Ethiopian Jews thanks to cooperation with the Kesim… I am glad that in this project as well, the Center brought the importance of scanning books before the Kesim, and they joined the project out of recognition of the importance of conservation.
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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.
Jewish Women from Muslim Societies Speak
Published by the American Sephardi Federation and Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Woman at Brandeis University
Jewish women from Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran were invited to share their personal stories. It could be said that these women's voices are from the last generation of Jews to have an intimate personal knowledge of the Muslim world, the enormous diversity within and among Middle Eastern Jewish communities.
We hope that these essays, told through the medium of vivid personal stories, will stimulate discussion about contemporary dynamics in the Muslim world and raise awareness of Jewish women’s history in North Africa and the Middle-East.
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American Sephardi Federation, Centro Primo Levi, and Dan Wyman Books present:
Bookhouse Thursdays
Bookhouse is a small place about books on the sixth floor of a Chelsea library building.
Take the elevator and discover cozy rooms softly illuminated and infused with music, filled with books and carpets, a samovar from Izmir, porcelain tea cups made in the DDR, and all sorts of lovely obsolete items abandoned and found in the streets of New York.
Come and browse, study, have a conversation, sip a sweet chai, and watch a film. You can purchase books from Dan Wyman’s inventory, check out his rotating showcase, learn about CPL Editions (books we make here at
Bookhouse), and explore the Sephardic House bookstore.
Bookhouse brings together book lovers, makers, sellers, readers, writers, and different ways to think and understand books.
If you have a book story to tell, you are welcome to share it at Bookhouse.
Ask for Bookhouse at the door, we’ll meet you there and bring you up.
Reservations: rsvp@primolevicenter.org
or Call us at 917-606-8202
ASF-Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street, NYC
The Bookhouse, a project of The American Sephardi Federation (ASF), Centro Primo Levi (CPL) and Dan Wyman Books, is a small space for study, discussion, and creativity connected to Jewish book culture: from manuscripts to pulps, from Talmud to Yiddish Socialism, from Printers to Bookshops to Readers.
Dan Wyman Books will be exhibiting a rotating collection of approximately 300 rare and important books related to these topics, all of which will be available for browsing and purchase.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
Our friends at Qesher present:
Kavkazi “Mountain Jews”: Ancient Hebrew and Persian roots at the border of Azerbaijan and Russia
This talk will feature an overview of Kavkazi Jewish origins, history, and the efforts of the diaspora to preserve their heritage today.
Sunday, 12 January at 3:00PM EDT
Sign-up Now!
Tickets: $9-$18
About the talk:
“The Jewish community of the Caucasus, the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian Seas, is known by many names. The term ‘Kavkazi,’ derived from the Russian word for Caucasus, and ‘Mountain Jews’ have been used interchangeably. Traditionally, however, this community has called themselves ‘Juhuro,’ meaning ‘Jews’ in their ancestral language Juhuri, a Judeo-Persian dialect.
Kavkazi Jews primarily lived in Azerbaijan and the Russian Republics of the North Caucasus—Dagestan, Chechnya, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachay-Cherkessia. Their history dates back to the Babylonian Exile of the Jews in 586 BCE and their subsequent integration into the Persian Empire after its conquest of Babylonia. Over time, some Jewish communities migrated north into the Caucasus mountains, where they established settlements.
These communities remained under Persian cultural and political influence until the early 19th century, when the Treaty of Gulistan (1813) and Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) transferred control of the Caucasus to Tsarist Russia. Later, the region was fully incorporated into the Soviet Union following the Bolshevik Revolution and the Russian Civil War.”
About the speaker:
“Valeriya Nakshun is a Kavkazi Jewish culture writer, community organizer, and marketer based between Baltimore and Washington, DC. Born in the Republic of Dagestan, a constituent republic of Russia, she immigrated with her family to the United States as a refugee in the late 1990s. She serves as a Community Outreach Fellow at Sephardic Heritage International DC (SHIN-DC), an organization dedicated to preserving and promoting Sephardic and broader Jewish heritage.
She previously performed as a company dancer with the Silk Road Dance Company (SRDC), where she specialized in traditional dances from Silk Road cultures. As part of her work with SRDC, she has performed at the Embassies of Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Tajikistan, as well as at the Japanese Ambassador's Residence.
Valeriya also founded the ‘Kavkazi Jewish History and Culture’ Facebook group, which aims to explore and share resources about Kavkazi-Mountain Jewish heritage while fostering connections across the diaspora. She graduated from the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) with a Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communication Studies and Art History.”
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The Museum of the Bible presents:
The Afghan Liturgical Quire Speaker Series - Jewish History in Afghanistan
Join us to learn more about Afghanistan's ancient Jewish community and its heritage and customs. Nestled on the Silk Roads, the Jews of Afghanistan lived in this mountainous land for as many as 2,700 years. Throughout its history, this small community's livelihood was based on long-distance trade. Unusual domestic patterns developed to allow for long periods of time when men were away and women maintained households on their own. Influenced by the many peoples who surrounded them, Afghan Jews preserved their own distinct traditions and way of life.
This discussion will be led by ASF Board Member Osnat Gad, an Afghan Jewish community leader who has worked to preserve Jewish holy sites in Kabul and Herat, Dr. Sara Koplik, author of A Political and Economic History of the Jews of Afghanistan, and Jason Guberman, Executive Director of the American Sephardi Federation.
Sunday, 12 January at 3:30PM
Sign-up in-person!
Tickets: $24.99-$29.99
Sign-up on Zoom!
Tickets: $4.99-$9.99
These lectures will be held at the museum and on Zoom. Tickets for the event include general admission to the museum for those who want to see the Afghan Liturgical Quire on exhibit.