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In Honor of Professor Nasser David Khalili, Chairman of the Maimonides Interfaith Foundation 
 
 12 October 2015
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Sephardi Ideas Monthly is a continuing series of essays from the rich, multi-dimensional world of Sephardi thought that is delivered to your inbox on the second Monday of every month.

In September, Peter Cole was our guide to the precocious poetic talent and keen, speculative intellect of Solomon Ibn Gabirol (see “An Andalusian Alphabet”). This month, Sephardi Ideas Monthly continues to explore “The Lost Andalusian Jewish Culture” with a look at the Andalusian,
proto-Zionist poetry of Yehuda Halevi by featuring a chapter from Hillel Halkin's award-winning eponymous biography, as well as a brief video interview with the author.

Hillel Halkin (Photo courtesy of Libros del Asteroide).  
Click here to watch Tablet Magazine’s video interview with Halkin on Yehuda Halevi
Yehuda Halevi

The most romantic figure from the world of classic Andalusian piyyut, Yehuda Halevi (ca. 1070-75 – ca. 1141) was a celebrated poet, thinker, and communal leader who scandalized his Spanish Jewish contemporaries but inspired future generations by turning his back on the Golden Age of Spain” and moving to the Land of Israel, then a dangerous war zone bitterly and bloodily contested by Crusaders and Muslims, that was a world away from the creative cultural energy of Andalusia.

Halkin, for his part, is a gifted and prolific American-born writer and translator who, in the 1970’s, left the comfort, glitter, and rhythm of Manhattan for what was then the relatively provincial outpost of Israel. 
Halkin delineated his views regarding the centrality of Israel in his first book, To An American Jewish Friend: A Zionist’s Polemic (1977), so the decision to charge Halkin with writing Halevi’s biography was natural enough. The result, Yehuda Halevi, was praised as “a tour de force… a complex, daring, and consistently fascinating biography of a complex and daring man,” that earned Halkin a 2010 National Jewish Book Award.
“Medieval Jerusalem” by Sarel Theron. Click here to hear Micha Shitrit’s My Heart is in the East, featuring Daniel Zamir on saxophone
In the chapter featured in this month’s issue of Sephardi Ideas Monthly, Halkin sets the stage for Halevi's Shirey Tsiyon, “Songs of Zion,” by shining a light on the brutal Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 and “the mass slaughter of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants, many of the latter herded into a synagogue in the Jewish quarter and burned alive.” 

Despite the very real danger associated with life in the Land of Israel, it was around the time of the massacre in Jerusalem that Halevi dreamt, literally, that he was in the Land, and as Halkin notes, “Like most people of his age, he took his dreams seriously.”  Halevi recast the dream in the form of a poem, “Your dwellings, Lord,” which Halkin speculates was the first of HaLevi's Shirey Tsiyon
, “because, unlike the others, it does not express the thought or hope of an actual journey to Zion.
Read the chapter
Soon enough, however, the dream of actually journeying to Zion became a main theme in Halevis writing, animating the Songs of Zion while driving the plot of Halevis theological-polemical masterpiece, The Kuzari, a work that reinterprets all of Judaism in light of the centrality of the Land and that concludes with the rabbi moving to Israel, as Halevi would do in real-time.

Among Halevi's
Songs of Zion, perhaps the most famous poem, and deservedly so, is, My Heart is in the East. Here is Halkin's relatively free translation of the poem:

 
     My heart in the East
     But the rest of me far in the West ──
     How can I savor this life, even taste what I eat?
     How, in the chains of the Moor,
     Zion bound to the Cross,
     Can I do what I
ve vowed to and must?
     Gladly I
d leave
     All the best of grand Spain
     For one glimpse of Jerusalem
s dust.

Writes Halkin: ‘My Heart in the East’ is a living poem – and a perfect one. It is… the last moment of equipoise in a man tensing his muscles to jump and to take Jewish history with him.

Halevi's Songs of Zion move us because, aside from their aesthetic perfection, we read them in light of Halevis later, courageous decision to realize his heart's desire. What's more, both the poems themselves and Halevis personal example speak to the great intellectual and political debates regarding Zionism and the state of Israel that animate so much of Jewish life today.

A national poet who composed his
Songs of Zion approximately 800 years before the Zionist spirit awakened, Sephardi Ideas Monthly is delighted to introduce our readers to Yehuda HaleviShirey Tsiyon through the work and words of Halevis kindred spirit, the great Zionist littérateur, Hillel Halkin.
American Sephardi Federation
American Sephardi Federation
Sephardi Ideas Monthly
Sephardi Ideas Monthly
2nd Annual Concert for Daniel Pearl: “Building Bridges: From Bene Beraq to Baghdad” (Jews of Iraq Series)

12 October at 7PM
at the Center for Jewish History 
15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 
 
Daniel Pearl, armed with a pen and a fiddle, loved to connect with people the world over, forming friendships and building a coalition of the decent. The American Sephardi Federation is proud to honor his legacy with a special concert bringing together diverse peoples and music. This concert is part of the “Daniel Pearl World Music Days” occurring in more than 60 countries throughout the month of October. A feature of this concert is a recording of Daniel’s mother, Ruth, talking about her experiences as a survivor of the Farhud, the 1941 anti-Jewish pogrom at Baghdad, Iraq. 
 
Three Sephardic singers are headlining this year’s concert: 

Yohai Cohen - Tunisian-Israeli 
Steven Chera - Syrian-American 
David Serero - Moroccan-French
 
Please click here to RSVP
Seth M. Siegel’s Let There Be Water

14 October at 7PM
at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, NY

 
The American Sephardi Federation invites you to a conversation with Seth M. Siegel, author of Let There Be Water: Israel’s Solution For A Water-Starved World. Mr. Siegel’s book treats the remarkable story and global implications of how Israel developed the world’s most sophisticated water management system. The evening will also include a special presentation on the unknown story of how Israel came to develop Iran’s water system prior to the Revolution.
 
Please click here to RSVP
Opening of Jewish Rhodes Exhibition and Ladino Concert

18 October at 1PM “It was Paradise: Jewish Rhodes”
at the University of Hartford
200 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford, CT

 and
at 7PM Ladinofest
Emanuel Synagogue
160 Mohegan Drive, West Hartford, CT 

 
Rhodes was home to one of most ancient Jewish communities of Europe, dating back 2,300 years. An intellectual and commercial center for Sephardim, there were as many as 6 synagogues, a rabbinical college, schools, scholars and a unique culture, before the community was deported, on July 23, 1944, en masse by the Nazis to Auschwitz.

The American Sephardi Federation is proud to partner with The Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies and Museum of Jewish Civilization at the University of Hartford in presenting their new exhibition “It was Paradise: Jewish Rhodes.”  The exhibition, which is being made possible in part by the generosity of the Avzaradel-Capuano Rhodes Fund and the Korowitz Family Fund, features artifacts on loan from the Rhodes Jewish Museum, historical photographs, maps, and photos of ongoing excavations.

Renowned archaeologist Richard Freund, who directs the Greenberg Center and the university’s archaeological project on Rhodes, will inaugurate the exhibition with a discussion of exciting discoveries made during recent excavations.

The day will conclude with Ladinofest, a concert featuring Susan Feltman Gaeta and Cantor Sanford Cohn preforming Sephardic songs. 
 
To RSVP: Call (860-768-5018) or email (mgcjs@hartford.edu)
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