Sir Sassoon Eskell was born in 1860 to an aristocratic Baghdadi Jewish family. He played an instrumental role in the founding of modern Iraq in 1920 and served as the country’s finance minister five times. In a depressing sign of our intolerant times, the Baghdad municipality announced that it would destroy Eskell’s 100 year-old home and hand it over to a developer.
Update: Diarna Geo-Museum researchers in Baghdad have confirmed that the house was destroyed. ASF is partnered with Diarna on the “race against time” to document endangered Sephardi synagogues, schools, shrines, and other structures, as well as to record the memories of the last primary source generation. Please contact Diarna immediately if you or someone you know can contribute eyewitness testimony, photographs, videos, or other relevant information on this site or others.
Sir Sassoon Eskell, Iraq’s first Minister of Finance and “Father of the Parliament” (Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)
David Serero’s production of Verdi’s Nabucco, sponsored by the American Sephardi Federation and performed at the Center for Jewish History, received high praise from a premier opera critic, Fred Platkin, who writes the Operavore column for WQXR. “Hearing Verdi’s music so intimately had the unexpected effect of taking the listener closer to the melodies than one normally experiences when an opera is presented in full production with large orchestra… It had a particular force because Nabucco (1842) was the passionate expression of a young composer whose wife and two children had just died within 18 months, and he channeled his grief to produce his first masterpiece.”
Francesco Hayez’s “Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem” (1867) depicts the Roman sacking of the city in 77CE and, with it, the end of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel
The payytan Yuval Tayib recites a portion of Lamentations, the Biblical text commemorating the destruction of the first temple that is traditionally read on the tragic night of the 9th of Av.
220 Sephardim were recently granted Spanish citizenship. Included in the group was Shlomo Amar, former chief Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel and presently the Sephardi chief rabbi of Jerusalem. Born in Casablanca, Morocco, Amar’s ancestors fled from Spain to North Africa. R’ Amar’s office claimed, however, that the Spanish government unilaterally conferred citizenship without consulting with the rabbi.
Shlomo Amar, Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Israel (Photo courtesy of Alchetron)
Shaare Shalom Synagogue, Kingston, Jamaica (Photo courtesy of The Times of Israel)
Spain gave Jamaica to Christopher Columbus’ descendants as a gift for his service to the throne, but his grandson resisted the royal initative, the Spanish Inquisition, by allowing Spanish-Jewish conversos to settle on the island. When Spain then threatened to occupy Jamaica in response, Jamaican Jews “pledged to help England conquer the island from Spain.” By 1655, the British ruled Jamaica while Jewish pirates were making life miserable for local Spanish forces. Jamaica’s Jewish community went on to flourish to such a degree that in the 19th century the Jamaican parliament would recess for Yom Kippur.
The American Sephardi Federation invites you to experience
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Subscription to the print edition of The Sephardi Report, a magazine that shines a light on contemporary Sephardi creativity and excellence in the arts, scholarship, entrepreneurship, rabbinic thought, and philanthropy
April 7th through September 9th Center for Jewish History 15 West 16th Street
New York City
The American Sephardi Federation, Portuguese Consulate of New York, the Sousa Mendes Foundation, and the Municipality of Almeida, Portugal proudly present a new exhibition in the Leon Levy Gallery honoring Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the courageous and creative Portuguese diplomat who saved Salvador Dali, the authors of Curious George, and thousands of other Holocaust refugees.
Please click here for additional information and viewing hours
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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, New York, 10011).