1 July 2016 Mazel Tov/Mabrouk David Serero on the finale of his Moroccan adaptation of Othello, the last of three popular productions in ASF’s theatrical season
Approximately 1,000 “Mountain Jews” live in Krasnaya Sloboda, meaning “Red Town,” in Northern Azerbaijan. When Jewish outreach organizations arrived in the area in the 1990’s, after the fall of the USSR: “Judaism… was in a sad state… many in the younger generation simply were not interested in the religion.” What’s more, many of the youth were becoming involved in drugs and dying young. Today, however, wealthy tycoons and organizations like Chabad are influencing the younger generation to return to a more traditional lifestyle: “In the vibrant local synagogue… youth enthusiastically pray three times a day, and in the beit midrash… [approximately] 30 are enrolled studying Torah.”
There are signs that the Jewish community of Djerba, Tunisia, is getting ready to leave for Israel. Jews from Djerba are burying (and sometimes reburying) their dead in the Holy Land. Local Jewish schools teach an Israeli curriculum, and chicken schnitzel has been replacing couscous at Shabbat dinner tables. Tunisian Jews aren’t setting their sights on Israel because of terrorism or anti-Semitism. Instead, “Many young Jewish women… pine for Israel’s openness… [and] young men… dream of moving… with an eye on economic security.”
Mark Eliyahu playing the Kamancheh (Photo courtesy of Halutz 33)
The “Mountain Jews” come from countries such as Dagestan and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus region. Mark Eliyahu is a Dagestan-born, Israel-based Kamancheh player who has made a career performing the music of the Mountain Jews, adding modern elements to traditional forms. In this video Eliyahu performs his original composition, “Journey.”
Evelyn Tauben is an accomplished writer and curator based in Toronto. Raised in an Ashkenazi Jewish family, she recently turned her attention to photography in order to learn about Moroccan Jewish life: “Despite growing up in Montreal alongside a substantial Moroccan Jewish community, I remain largely uninformed about Moroccan Jewish culture. The little that I do know comes from art.” Fascinated by what she discovered, Tauben was moved to reconsider the meaning of Jewish unity, “I was raised on the notion of ‘Am echad, lev echad’ – that the Jewish People are one nation with one heart. It is a vacant motto unless it is animated with real relationships and more than a cursory understanding of each other.”
Painting of an Amazigh Jewish woman by Moroccan artist Chama Mechtaly (Photo courtesy of Chama Mechtaly)
April 7th through September 9th Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street
New York City
The American Sephardi Federation, Portuguese Consulate of New York, the Sousa Mendes Foundation, and the Municipality of Almeida, Portugal proudly present a new exhibition in the Leon Levy Gallery honoring Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the courageous and creative Portuguese diplomat who saved Salvador Dali, the authors of Curious George, and thousands of other Holocaust refugees.
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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, New York, 10011).