Before King Farouk’s fall in 1952, Egypt “was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-sexual, multi-everything society where Coptic, Jew, Muslim, Catholic, and Greek Orthodox lived tolerably well together and where multilingualism was the order of the day.” Egypt’s Jews expected that the co-existence would last forever. Yitzhak Gormezano Goren’s recently translated novel, Alexandrian Summer, explores how it all fell apart.
In New York City to receive the 2015 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, Israeli-born, Yemenite-Jewish and Toronto-based author Ayelet Tsabari is on a mission, “to tell Mizrahi stories.”
Itamar Borochov playing trumpet; Gadi Lehavi playing piano; Avri Borochov on bass; Ofri Nehemya on drums.
Searching for his Sephardi roots led jazz trumpeter Itamar Borochov to “an ever-expanding love for Arab and Pan-African musical sensibilities – a natural palette for a trumpeter-composer raised in Jaffa, an integrated Muslim-Jewish-Christian city.” In this video he interprets a traditional Sephardic melody.
Yisrael Mizrahi, only twenty-eight years-old but already a serious bibliophile, owns a bookstore in Brooklyn containing over 60,000 titles. Mizrahi wears the black and white typical of Haredi Jews, but ask him if he’s ultra-orthodox and he’ll reply, “Sephardic Jews had a bypass on that whole issue. We’re just Jews.”
The Mizrahi Bookstore sells contemporary, as well as to centuries-old, books (Photo courtesy of Marisa Scheinfeld/Forward)
7:00PM on May 20th
at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, NY
Jean Naggar will discuss her acclaimed memoir Sipping from the Nile: My Exodus from Egypt. Born into a prominent, sophisticated Jewish family who spent time in Europe and lived in the Middle East, her coming of age memoir tells the story of her protected youth in Alexandria’s cosmopolitan milieu. To Naggar, her childhood seemed a magical time that would never come to an end. In 1956, however, Gamal Nasser’s nationalizing of the Suez Canal set in motion events that would change her life—and the fate of Egypt’s Jewish community—forever.
7:00PM on May 28th
at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, NY
Rabbi Marc Angel (Founder and Director of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals) and Rabbi Yamin Levy (Senior Rabbi at Great Neck’s Iranian Jewish Center/) will discuss The David Berg Rare Books Room’s latest exhibit, Sephardic Journeys, created by the Center for Jewish History with the American Sephardi Federation. The rare books and artifacts in this exhibit reflect a rich tradition of scholarship and culture shaped by migrations, and they invite, in turn, reflection upon the physical, emotional and spiritual journeys of Jewish history. There will be live Sephardi music, desserts, and refreshments from Nahmias et Fils Distillery. Sephardic Journeys has been supported by a generous grant from The David Berg Foundation.
June 10th, 14th, 22nd, and 24th
at the Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street, New York, NY
The American Sephardi Federation invites you to the world première of David Serero’s Merchant of Venice. The French-Moroccan baritone opera singer directs and stars (as Shylock) in his own Sephardi adaptation of Shakespeare's play about love, commerce, and bigotry. Featuring a diverse cast and Sephardi music, there will be a preview matinee on June 10th, ahead of opening night on June 14th.
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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).
The Mizrahi Bookstore sells contemporary, as well as to centuries-old, books (Photo courtesy of Marisa Scheinfeld/Forward) 
