Mazal Tov/Mabrouk to Secrétaire Général Abdellah Boussouf and Chargé de Mission Aziz Rifki of The Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), who, in partnership with the Council of the Jewish Communities of Morocco (CCIM), launched the “Judaïsme Marocain: pour une marocanité en partage” Conference at Marrakech. Conference participants included 250 Moroccan Jews from around the world, including Israeli scholars and community leaders from France, Canada, China, and Latin America. The ASF was proud to be one of only two American organizations participating in the proceedings.
Bayt Al Dakyra (“The House of Memory”) is a research center housed in the remains of an old synagogue in Essaouira, Morocco, built at the initiative of André Azoulay, King Mohammed VI’s senior advisor and who happens to be Jewish. Azoulay is proud that Bayt Al Dakyra preserves a pluralistic Moroccan past: “North African, Jewish, the great Arab-Muslim civilization and also Andalusian.” He is also proud of Moroccan Jews in Israel for preserving elements of their Moroccan identity, “I am always very impressed to see how much emotion and conviction these Moroccans -- on the other side of the Mediterranean -- claim, protect, and transmit their 'Moroccanity'… it's a real treat, so I say 'Shalom', congratulations and thank you.”
Yaniv Raba is a musician who grew up in a traditional Libyan-Jewish home in Israel. A chance meeting in the Sinai desert with a Jordanian oud player moved Raba to take up the instrument for himself, and today he leads a band, “The Libyans,” who are taking Libyan-Jewish piyyutimout of the synagogue and playing them—jamming them, really—for the Israeli public: “This is when the true Israeli music is being made.”
Rabbi and Professor Moshe Amar (Photo courtesy of TaliFarkash/YNet)
Moshe Amar is a Mizrahi Jew who wears a black kippa and carries two titles: Rabbi and Professor. His disparate worlds are integrated through a spiritual-academic quest to preserve manuscripts and inscriptions from North Africa, which he looks for in Morocco. The increasing popularity of Mizrahi food and holidays are nice, he says, but, “the spiritual legacy will remain forever.” Amar is also part of a program that aims to teach Ashkenazi rabbis the way of Sephardi-Jewish jurisprudence: “The Sephardic Rabbis knew how to handle problems that today are being dragged for years in the Rabbinate. They knew how to solve problems before they become problems.”
Join The American Sephardi Federation for a special screening of Duki Dror’s “Shadow in Baghdad” in honor of the date chosen by the Knesset to commemorate the Middle Eastern Jewish experience, including the exodus of Iraqi Jews after denationalization in 1950. The documentary tells the story of Linda Abdul Aziz Menuhin, whose father remained in Iraq after her emigration to Israel and was later abducted by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence services into the Qasr al-Nihaya (“Palace of the End”). Mrs. Menuhin is an Arabic-language specialist and retired reporter based in Israel.
Opening remarks by Gallit Peleg – Israel’s Consul for Public Diplomacy at New York
The film will be followed by Q&As with Mrs. Menuhin
Nosotros 2.0, which opened as a one-night pop-up exhibition on 11 October. continues in part as an exhibition in our Leon Levy Gallery.
On view until April
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
The Philos Project and American Sephardi Federation cordially invite you to “Nosotros," an exhibition composed of pieces by Latino artists celebrating the shared history and culture of Jewish and Latino communities, and expressing hope for a more positive future. Latin American artistry is rich with Sephardi and Crypto-Jewish allusions and symbols.
The exhibit is titled “Nosotros,” the Spanish word for “us,” and all of the art represents the growing relationship between the Jewish and Hispanic communities in New York and around the world. The exhibit is one of the many things Jesse Rojo, The Philos Project's Hispanic Affairs Director, is doing to bridge the gap between Hispanics and the Middle East.
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The American Sephardi Federation is located at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, New York, 10011).
