University of Washington Professor and American Sephardi Federation Advisory Board Member Devin Naar learned to read Ladino by deciphering letters “left behind by a Sephardic great-uncle.” Naar’s dedication to reviving Ladino language and culture inspired Seattle’s Sephardi community to found a Sephardi Studies program at the university, which Naar now chairs, and to create, “the world’s first interactive, online Ladino library and museum.”
The collection of Devin Naar features many handwritten exemplars. Cursive Ladino script is “nothing like the way other Jews write Hebrew.” (Photo courtesy of Bettina Hansen/The Seattle Times)
Steve Maman and his wife with the former pastor of Baghdad’s St. George’s Church (Photo courtesy of Steve Maman)
Steve Maman, a Moroccan Jewish businessman living in Canada, is dedicated to saving Christian and Yazidi child sex slaves from ISIS. A member of the Sephardi delegation to the Canadian Parliament, Maman cities his Jewish and Moroccan roots as motivation: “As a Jew, [this is] a way to make this world better through actions of goodness and kindness…. My Moroccan identity is what makes me who I am, someone who cares, who loves and gives to strangers…. This is proven again through the generosity of Moroccan Jews who are clearly standing with me in my fight to save and liberate these innocent girls and women.”
Jerron Paxton combines a hybrid heritage with the blues, a hybrid music (Photo courtesy of Bill Steber/Jewish Week).
You never know where Sephardi identity might show up, especially in the Unites States, a place where playing with identities is fast becoming a national pastime. Take throwback African American bluesman Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton. The tools of his trade, aside from the standard guitar, banjo, harmonica, and fiddle, sometimes include a conspicuously large kippa on his head. He doesn’t look very Jewish (read: Ashkenazi)? Well, that's because he hails “from an old family of Cajun Jews… Francophone and Sephardic.” The blues from its inception was always a hybrid music. Paxton, deeply immersed in the old-school, knows this. His unique brand of Jewishness, Sephardi identity included, is a delicious riff on an old American story.
People are generally familiar with the existence of Judeo-Spanish (Ladino), Judeo-German (Yiddish), and perhaps Judeo-Arabic. Less well-known is Judeo-Persian—Persian written in Hebrew letters—although there are texts from the 8th–20th centuries, including translations of “parts of the Hebrew Bible and other Hebrew or Aramaic texts,” as well as original “inscriptions, commentaries, poems on… historical subjects, and occasional compositions such as letters, colophons, and legal documents.”
An illustration in Ardashir-namah, the 14th century Judeo-Persian poet Mowlana Shahin-i Shirazi’s re-telling of the Book of Esther as an Iranian epic (Photo courtesy of Ben Ben Tetuan/Wikimedia)
September 10th at 7PM at the Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY
Ranging from a 16th-century harem to Nazi-occupied Paris, the Inquisition to Israel’s Independence, and the court of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to modern-day Manhattan, best-selling author Nicole Dweck’s The Debt of Tamar weaves a tapestry of love, resilience, and fate. Join ASF for a discussion with the author.
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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 collection of Devin Naar features many handwritten exemplars. Cursive Ladino script is “nothing like the way other Jews write Hebrew.” (Photo courtesy of 
Steve Maman and his wife with the former pastor of Baghdad’s St. George’s Church (Photo courtesy of 
