Vanessa Paloma El Baz, an American who became part of the Moroccan Jewish community, recently launched an ambitious project that aims to, “collect and archive audio recordings of music and stories of Moroccan Jews.” “I dream of a national sound library,” she says, “that would preserve the Moroccan oral tradition as a whole, not only the Jewish heritage. Otherwise, the entire legacy could disappear.”
Mixing hip-hop and reggae grooves with traditional tunes and singing in Yemenite Arabic, a trio of Yemeni-Israeli sisters is stepping out onto the World Music scene as “A-Wa,” the latest addition to a roster of young Yemeni-Israeli artists who are blending East and West and, in the process, forging a uniquely Israeli sound.
“Habib Galbi” (“Love of my heart, my eyes”) is the first music video of A-WA, a new Yemeni-Israeli trio. This Yemenite Arabic song—about a lost love (“It is a wonder who has set you against me/ He dared to eat but not be satisfied”)—transcends borders and barriers.
The expulsion order against Spanish Jews was only formally revoked in 1968, and the history of Spanish Jewry was a taboo subject until very recently. Thanks, however, to a Catalan movement to investigate Spanish history, “a renaissance of interest in Catalonia’s illustrious Jewish past” is now on display in an exhibit of illuminated Haggadot at the Barcelona Museum of History.
The first officially sanctioned Jewish service in Spain since the Inquisition was preformed by Rabbi David Jessurun Cardoxo, in 1953. A commemorative silver tray presented to Rabbi Carodozo was recently donated to the American Sephardi Federation by his Amsterdam-based nephew. It is currently on view in the David Berg Foundation’s Great Treasures Case at the Center for Jewish History.
The Grand Synagogue of Paris recently hosted a rabbi and an imam urging French Jews “to stay and fight for their place in society” (Photo courtesy of La Victoire Synagogue)
The attitude of French Jews towards recent events is split along communal lines: integration-minded progressives tend to be Ashkenazi, while the Sephardic majority favors making Aliyah to Israel. According to Hebrew University sociologist Sergio Della Pergola, “Sephardic Jews… have a higher propensity to make Aliyah… out of religious sentiment… they come from more traditionalist societies.”
If you missed its NYC premiere at the 18th NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, the Manhattan JCC is offering another opportunity (Tuesday, 31 March, at 7:30PM) to see this French movie based on the book by Ilan Halimi’s mother.
Please click here for more details, the trailer, and to purchase tickets.
The American Sephardi Federation is co-sponsoring Andrée Aelion Brooks’ “Spain, Maimonides, and His Turbulent Times,” a midday, mini-course from April 14th-May 5th at the Jewish Community Center (West 76th Street – Amsterdam Avenue). The course will provide background on Jewish life in Spain during the Middle Ages, the itinerant years of Maimonides’ early life, his works in Jewish thought and medicine, a sampling of his remedies, and the controversies that erupted over his ideas after his death.
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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).