The Great Gatsby compact edition book cover, part of the Matthew J. Bruccoli collection at the University of South Carolina
(Photo courtesy of the The New York Times)
Alexander Aciman reads James Gatz’s transformation into the Great Gatsby as the archetypical American tale of reinvention, and even the story of America itself. So, when Aciman’s Ottoman-Jewish grandfather, who was Henri when in Constantinople and Egypt, became Henry upon arrival in New York, the pattern was already in place: “I have come to the conclusion over the last 10 years that it was not America itself that my grandfather dreamed of from that small stuffy classroom in Turkey, but rather of the opportunity for complete self-reinvention that America offered.”
El Ghriba Synagogue- Hara Seghira, Djerba, Tunisia
(Photo courtesy of Chrystie Sherman for the Diarna Geo-Musuem of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life)
Jews have lived on the island of Djerba in Tunisia for 2,500 years. A strong but small Jewish community of 1,500 remains, and this year, 3000 Jews, including 400 from Israel, made the annual pilgrimage to Djerba to celebrate the springtime Lag Be’Omer festival. This week’s video shines a light on an ancient Jewish community that continues to feel at home in a majority Arab-Islamic country.
The Bamiyan region in Afghanistan is famous for the monumental 1st and 2nd century Buddha statues that the Taliban destroyed in March, 2001. However, Buddhists and Muslims were not the only people to have lived in the area. Manuscripts discovered a few years ago, dating back to the 12th and 13th centuries and written in six languages, “Early Judaeo-Persian, Early New Persian, Judaeo-Arabic, Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic,” also attest to a Jewish community that thrived along the ancient Silk Road. What has been found among the documents? “The most celebrated manuscript so far is a page of 10th century exegete Saadia Gaon’s commentary on Isaiah 34, otherwise absent from the rebbe’s corpus.”
The Axelrod’s highly successful Israel/Jewish Film Festival enters its ninth year in 2018. Under the leadership of film enthusiast Toby Shylit Mack, the festival presents a dozen international films that celebrate the Jewish experience, most of which have received awards at major film festivals around the world.
Each year, audience enrichment activities and special events in conjunction with the films are planned, including talks with filmmakers, book-signings, culinary events and more.
We look forward to seeing you!
Diarna: The Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life Presents:
Thursday, 19 July at 7:00 PM A Pilgrimage to Morocco's Jewish Saints
Wednesday, 25 July at 7:00 PM Expedition to Egypt: Results of a Recent Research Trip
Featuring Diarna's Lead Photographer/Outreach Director Josh Shamsi
Wednesday, 8 August at 7:00 PM Beyond Tunis: A Comprehensive Mission to Tunisia
Featuring Diarna photographer Chrystie Sherman
Diarna “Situation Room” at ASF
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Please click here to make a reservation Passes to all three sessions are available
Space is limited
Join the Diarna Over a million Jews once lived in the Middle East and North Africa, spanning from synagogues on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Morocco to abandoned Jewish fortresses in Saudi Arabia and the traditional shrines of Biblical personalities in the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Iran. The profound Jewish imprint on the region could be experienced in major cities and diffuse villages.
Now, decades since communities have disbanded, synagogues, schools, cemeteries, and other structures left behind are suffering from natural decay or being deliberately targeted for destruction, while political strife has stymied visiting, no less preserving, thousands of sites. In recent years the Iranian regime has threatened to destroy the purported shrine of Esther and Mordechai at Hamadan; the storied Eliyahu HaNabi Synagogue in the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus was reduced to rubble (a consequence of being caught in the crossfire of the Syrian Civil War); and ISIS exploded the traditional tomb of Jonah, which had been located within one of Mosul’s oldest mosques.
Diarna: The Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life--an independent initiative of Digital Heritage Mapping, a spacial humanities non-profit organization--is working to digitally preserve the physical remnants of Jewish history throughout the region. We are in a race against time to capture site data and record place-based oral histories. Diarna pioneers the synthesis of digital mapping technology, traditional scholarship, and field research, as well as a trove of multimedia documentation. All of these combine to lend a virtual presence and guarantee untrammeled access to Jewish historical sites lest they be forgotten or erased.
We look forward to seeing you!
The Center for Jewish History Presents: Family History Today: Genealogy Lecture for Sephardi and Mizrahi Families
Thursday, 12 July, 6:30 PM - 8 PM
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Curious about family history outside of the Pale of Settlement? The Center for Jewish History and American Sephardi Federation welcome you to a lecture on genealogy tools for those interested in researching Jewish community records and Jewish life in the Sephardi or Mizrahi Diaspora.
Open to all. No previous experience or preparation is necessary.
Presented by J.D. Arden, Genealogy and Reference Librarian at The Center for Jewish History and adjunct faculty member at the LIU-Palmer School of Library & Information Science.
An ASL interpreter may be made available if requested in advance.
Generously sponsored by The Center for Jewish History’s Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute
Yemenite Faces and Scenes & Episodes in Yemenite History
The Teimani Experience, which closed on 5 June, continues in part with a photographic exhibit in our Leon Levy Gallery and an art exhibit in the Myron Habib, A"H, Memorial Display.
On view until September
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Yemenite Faces and Scenes: Photographs by Naftali Hilger
Intrepid photographer and photo-journalist Naftali Hilger traveled extensively in Yemen in the late 1980s and early 1990s photographing structures, street scenes, and the last remnants of Jewish life. These images—including of Yemenite children learning to read Torah upside-down in their father’s shop and a family relaxing in their diwan (salon)—depict an existence that has faded into history as the ever-shrinking community has found refuge in a government compound at Sana’a.
Episodes in Yemenite History: Paintings by Tiya Nachum
A series of eight paintings by the artist and sculptor Tiya Nachum of Encino, CA. The paintings reflect the tragedies and triumphs of Yemenite Jewish history, from the Mawza exile to the founding of the Inbal Dance Troupe by Sara Levy. Each painting tells a story and each story is a history onto itself.
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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).
