23 June 2017 Ramadan Kareem and Mazel tov/Mabrouk to our friends and partners, Association Mimouna, as well as Jacky Kadoch and the Jewish Community of Marrakesh, who worked with Chabad Morocco to distribute 1,000 food packages to needy families during Ramadan
After Israel triumphed against all odds in the Six-Day War, Arab rejectionists responded by taking revenge on the Jews still living in their midst. From Algeria to Egypt and points in between, local Jews were blamed for events which they had nothing to do with, “Even in those countries that were, as some of us like to say, ‘nice to the Jews’… there were terrifying demonstrations and expressions of hatred and venom.”
On June 21, 1967, in the wake of the Six-Day War, the Spanish government secretly worked to secure the release of hundreds of Jews who had been thrown into Egyptian prisons for the crime of being Jewish. The Spanish Ambassador, in his meetings with Egyptian authorities, “emphasized that Spain had an obligation to protect the descendants of the Sephardic Jews that had been expelled.”
Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York, NY 10011
Between 711 and 1492, Islamic governments ruled over varying swaths of the Iberian Peninsula. Muslim Spain, or al-Andalus, still holds a powerful grip on the modern imagination as a time and place of religious tolerance—a “golden age” in which Muslims, Jews, and Christians peacefully coexisted and culturally thrived. In this four-week course taught by Dr. Rachel Stein, students will explore this common perception of al-Andalus by examining primary sources produced by Muslims, Christians and Jews in medieval Iberia that bear witness to inter- and intra-faith relations: poetry, treatises, laws, chronicles, architecture, and manuscripts. What was the relationship between religion, language, and culture in the societies of al-Andalus? And to what extent should we use past societies like those of al-Andalus as mirrors or models to think through the present?
Presented by Brooklyn Institute for Social Research & Center for Jewish History > $315; 10% discount for ASF Members
When Baghdadi Jews Baruch and Ellen Bekhor (née Cohen) succumbed to the camera’s gaze for their denaturalization pictures in 1951, they became stateless. Ellen was in her eighth month of pregnancy. Permitted to bring no more than a few kilos of belongings out of Iraq, Ellen carried their wedding picture and ketubah in her pocketbook. Laissez-Passer, Royaume D’Irak by Leslie Starobin (2016)
Through September 2017
in ASF’s Myron Habib Memorial Display
Center for Jewish History 15 W 16th Street
New York, NY 10011
The American Sephardi Federation proudly presents excerpts from The Last Address, a multi-year, photo-montage series and oral history and book project by award-winning artist Leslie Starobin that explores the enduring texture of memory and culture in the lives of Greater Sephardic families from dispersed Jewish communities in Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Iran, and Lebanon.
Leslie Starobin is a Boston-area photographer and montage artist. Her work is in the permanent collections of many academic (Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University) and public (Jewish Museum, MoMA) museums. Starobin is the recipient of numerous grants, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New England Foundation of the Arts/Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Most recently, she received two Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Grants for this series, The Last Address.
Her exhibition in ASF’s Myron Habib Memorial Display is sponsored in part by CELTSS: The Center for Excellence in Learning, Teaching, Scholarship and Service at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, where Starobin is a Professor of Communication Arts.
Please click here for additional information and viewing hours
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The American Sephardi Federation is located at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th St., New York, New York, 10011).