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7 August 2015 
In Memory of Avraham Zacuto, A”H, the Sephardi astronomer essential to the Age of Exploration  
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Spain Approves Citizenship Path for Sephardic Jews” 
By Rafael Hoffman, Hamodia
 
What is the meaning of Spain’s offer of citizenship to Sephardic Jews? According to the American Sephardi Federation’s Executive Director, Jason Guberman, the law is “‘largely symbolic, but potentially has an important long-term impact, particularly if it is a model for other countries.

 
The ancient synagogue at Barcelona was restored in 2002 after 600 years functioning in various guises. It is now again a synagogue, as well as a museum (Photo courtesy of Associació Call de Barcelona)
Chefchaouen, Morocco (Photo courtesy of Diarna: Geo-Museum - D'fina: Jewish Treasures of Morocco
 
Morocco’s incredible blue city” 
By Ian Lloyd Neubauer, CNN

The Moroccan city of ​Chefchaouen is a popular tourist destination thanks to “a gorgeous blue rinse” that colors the city’s buildings. The custom of painting houses and shops sky-blue was brought to Morocco by Spanish Jewish exiles in the 15th century: the Sephardim would look at the azure color, think of the sky, and call God to their minds.
 
Feature of the Week (VIDEO): Abraham Zacuto’s Sephardic Journeys
 

Christopher Columbus consulting with Abraham Zacuoto, an  astronomer, historian, rabbi, and exile from the Iberian Peninsula  (Photo courtesy of  Ha-Lapid / O Facho, no. 103 (1941): 1)  
 
The research of Abraham Zacuoto (1452–ca. 1515), a professor of astronomy at the University of Salamanca and later, after expulsion from Spain and before expulsion from Portugal, King João II’s Royal Astronomer and Historian, propelled the Age of Exploration. Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama both sought him out for briefings and carried copies of his Almanach perpetuum during their voyages. This invaluable compendium of calculations aided de Gama in achieving “such navigational feats as [his] famous expedition from Portugal around the tip of Africa to India.” 

Listen to Henry Abramson, Dean of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences, briefly discuss this largely forgotten yet fascinating history. 
The Greek City of Ghosts
By David Patrikarakos, Politico

Thessaloniki (Salonika), the city of ghosts. Once Byzantine, later Turkish, then part of modern Greece, the minarets are gone while Aristotle University sits atop Jewish graves. Now that the country’s third-largest political party doesn’t bother to hide its Nazi ideology, other, more sinister ghosts, threaten to haunt the city’s small Jewish community.
Aristotle University was built upon Thessaloniki's Jewish cemetery (Courtesy of Aristotle University).
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