Sammy Ghozlan, a retired police commissioner and the relentless founder of France’s National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, has decamped to Israel, where he and thousands of other French Jewish expatriates try to understand how they became “foreigners” in the French Republic. For Ghozlan, an Algerian-Jew from Constantine, this is the second move of a lifetime: “In Algeria, the French said they would protect us. Then the mobs came and torched Jewish businesses and we had to flee.”
Enrico Macias, another émigré to France from Constantine, Algeria, has spoken of making Aliyah out of love, not fear. An exclusive interview with Enrico will appear in The Sephardi Report(Photo courtesy of Ilan Costica)
Slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s mother, Ruth (pictured here in the Baghdad suburb of Bataween), attended the Laura Kaddoorie Alliance Israelite Universelle Girls’ School (Photo courtesy of Ruth Pearl/Diarna Geo-Museum)
The Shorja open market, “once… the vibrant heart of Baghdad’s Jewish community,” and the surrounding area are today a “ramshackle and neglected” tangle of “deserted, silent alleyways filled with garbage….” Few physical remnants remain: “The old synagogues are long since demolished or boarded up. The mezuzas long prised from the doorways. The Laura Kaddoorie Alliance Girls’ School, the Jewish Institute for the Blind, the shops of Yehezkel Abu al-Anba and Fattal. All gone.”
Ellie Cohanim, Senior Vice President & Correspondent for Jewish Broadcasting Service, interviews Enrico Macias at the 18th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival (Photo courtesy of Steven Smith/Guest of a Guest)
Watch the Jewish Broadcasting Service’s extended coverage of the 18th New York Sephardi Jewish Film Festival’s Opening Night, featuring Pomegranate Awards Recipients Kamal Hachkar (Film) and Erez Bitton (Lifetime Achievement: Poetry), as well as a performance by 2014 Pomegranate Award Recipient Enrico Macias (Lifetime Achievement: Music) and his grandson.
While scholars often trace the origins of Ethiopian Jewry to transformations within Ethiopian Christianity, Ibrahim Omer marshals genetic, historical, and cultural evidence to argue for the community’s ancient Jewish roots.
The Beta Israel’s Jewish history is being illuminated by genetics (Photo courtesy of Genetic Literacy Project)
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