As Yemen is savaged by Islamist revolutionaries, Arwa Othman, a newly minted cabinet minister and a vocal advocate for individual and civil rights,recently accepted Human Rights Watch’s Alison Des Forges Award on behalf of her “brothers and friends from the Jewish community.” In October, threats on Othman’s life were sent to her and her daughters.
A Hebrew University professor of philosophy and the son of the great Moroccan Jewish payytan, Rabbi David Buzaglo, has penned an open letter to Morocco’s Muslims, asking “[h]aven’t we, as children of the Maghreb and Andalusia (who once raised the world to the lofty heights of philosophy, literature, science and art, to a shared life of tolerance and shared faith) a human mission of the first order?”
Guide in the Mellah (Jewish Quarter) of Amzrou, Morocco (Photo courtesy of Diarna Geo-Museum)
Manhattan’s new Indian restaurant, Haldi, combines old Iraqi-Jewish recipes with Hindu culinary traditions. This non-kosher restaurant curiously features several dishes that are usually only found at the Shabbat tables of Calcutta families.
A Muslim from the war-torn Jobar suburb of Damascus tried reaching out to Israeli and American Jews in order to save a centuries-old, local synagogue and to protect its contents.
Inside the Eliyahu HaNabi Synagogue in 2011 (Photo courtesy of Diarna: Geo-Museum. Click here to read a history of the synagogue and for more exclusive, pre-destruction photographs)
ASF’s “Festival of Lights” will be held on December 18th at 7PM in the Great Hall at the Center for Jewish History. We will be inaugurating “Echoes of Jewish Morocco,” a new photographic exhibit in the Leon Levy Gallery, celebrating Chanukkah with the lighting of channukiot by acclaimed Iraqi artist Oded Halamy, and enjoying song selections by renowned French-Moroccan baritone opera singer David Serero. Traditional Syrian and Moroccan delicacies will be served. Click here for additional information and to RSVP.
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The American Sephardi Federation's Sephardi House is located at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th St., New York, NY., 10011).