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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
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A glimpse into Azerbaijan’s hidden all-Jewish town” 
By Lee Gancman, The Times of Israel
 
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.”
View of the bimah, “Mountain Jews” Synagogue, Krasnaya Sloboda, Azerbaijan, 2015 (Photo courtesy of: Eldar Farzaliyev/Vision of Azerbaijan)

Interior, Ben Eliezar Synagogue, Djerba, Tunisia (Photo courtesy of Heidi Levine/Radio Free Europe – Radio Liberty)
The Last Jews of Tunisia
By Daniella Cheslow, Radio Free Europe – Radio Liberty

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.”
Video of the Week: “Journey


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.”
Viewing Jewish Morocco through Art
By Evelyn Tauben, The Canadian Jewish News
 
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)
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Portugal, The Last Hope: Sousa Mendes’ Visas for Freedom

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.
 

Please click here for additional information and viewing hours

The American Sephardi Federation invites you to experience 

THE POMEGRANATE CARD

Your Cardholder Benefits Include: 

  • Subscription to the print edition of The Sephardi Report, a magazine that shines a light on contemporary Sephardi creativity and excellence in the arts, scholarship, entrepreneurship, rabbinic thought, and philanthropy
     
  • Subscription to Sephardi Ideas Monthly and Sephardi World Weekly
     
  • Invitations to special events across the country  
     
  • Discounts at Sephardi businesses around the world, including restaurants, salons, and boutiques 
     
  • Reduced ticket prices and back-stage access at the annual NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival
Reserve your card now:

$72

($54 tax-deductible)



Contact us by email or phone (917.606.8266) to sponsor future issues of the Sephardi World Weekly in honor or memory of loved ones. 
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