This issue of the Sephardi World Weekly is dedicated in commemoration of the 106th Anniversary of the Great Fire at Salonica (Thessaloniki), Greece, 18-20 August 1917. ~ Dr. Joe Halio, President, Sephardic Foundation on Aging and the Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies & Culture; Distinguished Member of the American Sephardi Federation’s, the Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America’s, and the American Friends of the Jewish Museum of Greece’s Boards of Directors.
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: “American Excellence: Jews and the Jazz Tradition”
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✡️“The New Sepharad: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Salonica”
By Gilad Halpern, TLV1
Professor Aron Rodrigue
(Photo courtesy of The Stanford News)
In this podcast, Stanford University’s Aron Rodrigue, Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History, a member of ASF’s Advisory Board, and the dean of Sephardic Studies in the United States, discusses the rise and fall of Jewish Salonica. How did Jews arrive in Salonica? How did they organize communal life in the city? And how did it all end?
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Feature: “SALONICA on FIRE” 🔥🕊️
By Dr. Joe Halio
The frontpage of La Bos del Pueblo, 23 August 1917
The headline of La Bos del Pueblo (“The Voice of the People”), a New York Ladino newspaper, reads “SALONICA on FIRE.” The entire page describes how the fire burned for three days, from August 18-20, 1917, destroying three-fourths of the city, and leaving some 100,000 people, including 60,000 Jews, homeless. Almost all of the Jewish Community’s 400-year-old institutions (synagogues, libraries, and schools) were destroyed. Desperate and urgent calls for help were met with appeals and an immediate response from New York’s Sephardic organizations, the American Jewish Congress, and the American Joint Distribution Committee.
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📚“Jews in Salonica, Jews in Shanghai: Book Reviews”
By Bill Gladstone, The Canadian Jewish News
Devin E. Naar stands amidst Aristotle University’s Holocaust Memorial
(Photo courtesy of Iosif Vaena)
Two books, Professor Devin Naar’s Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, and Dr. Maisie J. Meyer’s Shanghai’s Baghdadi Jews: A Collection of Biographical Reflections, explore unique Sephardi communities─one, the “Jerusalem of the Balkans,” the other a dynamic 19th-20th century corner of Jewish creativity in a cosmopolitan hub─ that, by the end of WWII, were gone.
Additional Reading:
Sephardi Ideas Monthly:
Jazz-Age Shanghai’s Surprising Sephardi Significance
Sephardi World Weekly:
Special Yom HaShoah Edition: The Holocaust in Sephardic Lands
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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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Birkenau (Auschwitz II) How 72,000 Greek Jews Perished
By Albert Menache, M.D.
Memoirs of An Eyewitness; NUMBER 124454
This is the story of the destruction of the Balkan Sephardic Jewish Community by the Nazis in WWII. Written by the President of the Jewish Community of Salonica, Greece, it is the earliest published account by a survivor. Written while still in the concentration camp on smuggled paper, it has been out of print since the first edition appeared in 1947.
This new edition has been updated with historical documents, photographs, and notes on the restoration of Jewish life in Greece after the war.
Watch Dr. Joe Halio speak about “Dr. Albert Menache & The Holocaust in Salonika”
The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa: The Impact of World War II
By Professor Reva Spector Simon
Incorporating published and archival material, this volume fills an important gap in the history of the Jewish experience during World War II, describing how the war affected Jews living along the southern rim of the Mediterranean and the Levant, from Morocco to Iran.
Surviving the Nazi slaughter did not mean that Jews living in the Middle East and North Africa were unaffected by the war: there was constant anti-Semitic propaganda and general economic deprivation; communities were bombed; and Jews suffered because of the anti-Semitic Vichy regulations that left them unemployed, homeless, and subject to forced labor and deportation to labor camps.
Covering the entire Middle East and North Africa region, this book on World War II is a key resource for students, scholars, and general readers interested in Jewish history, World War II, and Middle East history.
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities
Attention college students!
ASF is excited to launch the application for Cohort 4 of our Sephardi House Fellowship — a unique learning, community-building, and leadership development opportunity that infuses the wisdom, diversity, and joy of the Sephardic spirit into Jewish student life.
Bringing together a select group of students from colleges across the U.S., our program is the only national, yearlong fellowship dedicated to deepening a sense of Jewish belonging through an immersion in the multifaceted history, cultures, and intellectual legacy of the Greater Sephardic and Mizrahi world.
Apply Now to be a ’23-’24 ASF Sephardi House Fellow!
Application Deadline: 27 August 2023
This Sephardi House experience includes:
1) 10 cohort-based learning sessions with influential Jewish educators, community and industry leaders, scholars, and artists, 2) one-on-one mentorship and tailored campus support, 3) free access to ASF’s robust educational resources and events, 4) two in-person Shabbaton leadership summits, 5) a capstone community-building project that empowers fellows to imbue Sephardic energy and their unique voices into Jewish student life, and 6) a $1,000 stipend upon full completion of the program.
Deadline: 27 August 2023
Joshua Benaim, a Harvard University and Harvard Business School alum and Founder & CEO of Aria Development Group, is the visionary leader behind the creation of Sephardi House. He was inspired to create Sephardi House to honor his father Carlos, who instilled in him a love for the Sephardic tradition and community.
Please write to info@americansephardi.org for more information on how you can get involved today!
Please support our work and help light a candle of wisdom and spirit on campus by donating now!
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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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Galeet Dardashti in collaboration with the Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life presents:
MONAJAT
Album release with Galeet Dardashti
“Galeet Dardashti’s multi-sensory project and album, Monajat, is inspired by old and haunting recordings of Jewish prayers chanted by her late grandfather, Younes Dardashti, a famous master singer of Persian classical music in 1950s/60s Iran.
Galeet reinvents the ancient ritual of Selihot— poetry sung nightly preceding the Jewish New Year as spiritual preparation—by singing with remixed samples of her grandfather's legacy recordings. Riffing off these old tapes, Galeet composes a soundscape of original music performed by an acclaimed ensemble of Middle Eastern and jazz musicians. As she dialogues with her grandfather in song, the live performance immerses audiences in Persian melodies, heavy grooves, sacred Hebrew and Persian poetry, and dynamic video art.
Saturday, 9 September at 8:00PM EST
@Littlefield
635 Sackett Street Brooklyn, NY 11217
(Tickets: $22.53 – $31)
Sign-up Now!
Featured Musicians:
- Galeet Dardashti
- Shanir Blumenkranz
- Philip Mayer
- Max Zbiral-Teller
- Dafer Tawil
About the artist:
As vocalist, composer and anthropologist Galeet Dardashti has earned a reputation as a trail-blazing performer, educator, and advocate for Middle Eastern and North African Jewish culture. Dardashti is the first woman to continue her family’s tradition of distinguished Persian and Jewish musicianship. Galeet’s grandfather, Younes Dardashti, was one of the most highly acclaimed singers of Persian classical music in Iran and her father, Farid Dardashti, is an accomplished cantor in the US. Galeet Dardashti is widely known as leader/founder of the renowned all-woman powerhouse Sephardi/Mizrahi Jewish ensemble Divahn, which released its newest album, Shalhevet, in 2020. Time Out New York described Dardashti’s first solo album—her multi-disciplinary commission, The Naming— as ‘urgent, heartfelt and hypnotic;’ The Huffington Post called it heart-stopping.’ Dardashti recently completed an Artist-in-Virtual-Residence at Indiana University, and recorded Monajat supported by IU and the MFJC. Dardashti also has years of experience as cantor; this year she’ll be leading High Holidays with Kanisse in Manhattan—one of the first egalitarian Sephardi/Mizrahi communities in the country. As a scholar, Dardashti examines Mizrahi music/media/cultural politics; she is currently Visiting Professor at NYU and will be a Fellow at University of Pennsylvania this coming year. As artist, scholar, and cantor deeply steeped in this music, Dardashti is uniquely poised to share her boundary-breaking piece, Monajat.”
The ASF proudly serves as a co-sponsor of Dardashti’s performance.
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Instituto de Música Judaica -Brasil, YIVO, the ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience, & Brazilian Consulate in NYC present:
Kleztival NYC
Brazilian Jewish Music and Culture, a two-day program with Brazilian and North American artists.
Celebrating the 23 Brazilian Jews who, in 1654, arrived in North America and helped to build a city then called New Amsterdam, which later became New York. Celebrating Brazil, its Jewish roots and community today.
11 September at 6:00PM EST
Brazilian Jewish Music concert
@at the Brazilian Consulate in NYC
225 East 41st, New York, NY
(no registration required)
12 September:
3:00PM EST
Screening of documentary “A Estrela Oculta do Sertão” (The Star
Hidden in the Backlands) followed by Q&A with the producers
7:30 PM EST
Brazilian Jewish Music concert
@ the Center for Jewish History
Sign-up Now!
Executive Producers: Nicole & Edy Borger
Musical Director: Frank London
Singers: Carla Berg, Nicole Borger, Ahuva Flit and Rafael Zolko
Musicians: Pablo Aslan (bass), Vicente Falek (accordion),
Frank London (trumpet), Oren Neiman (guitar), Alex Parke (clarinet),
Satoshi Takashi (drums)
Documentary Producers: Elaine Eiger and Luize Valente.
Special thanks to:
Drora Arussy, Julia Rothkof, Miriam Mora, Suzanne Schwimmer, Alex Minkin, Thiago Antonio de Melo Oliveira, Tiago Domingues Carvalho, Aaron Alexander, Peter Rushevsky, Hanna Griff-Sleven, Felipe Pait, Eliezer Kahn, Bruno & Joyce Szlak, Angela Waitzberg, Bruce Phillips, Daniel Borger.
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The 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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The 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.