Sephardi Jewry’s Resurgent Cultural Confidence 🙌, Diarna in Smithsonian Magazine, the Moroccan Mayor of NY, & ASF’s Sephardi Playlist 🎧 No. 4

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5 June 2020

The American Sephardi Federation remembers Iraqi-Jewish Rabbi Aaron Abrahams, A”H, Leader of Bene Naharayim, the Babylonian Jewish Community in Queens.

Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one.

Feature ◊ Upcoming Events ◊ Sephardi Gifts ◊ Donate ◊ Sephardi I deas Monthly ◊ ASF IJE ◊ Archive

Do not miss Imagining the Jew in Early Modern England
A Presentation on Two Sephardim: Rodrigo Lopez & Menasseh Ben Israel on Wednesday, 10 June at 12PM EDT By Leonard Stein an ASF Broome & Allen Fellow and Connaught International Doctoral Scholar at the University of Toronto.
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“Inside the Incredible Effort to Recreate Historic Jewish Sites Destroyed Years Ago”
By Dara Horn, Smithsonian Magazine

Celebrated American-Jewish novelist, Dara Horn, goes down the rabbit hole with ASF’s research partner, Diarna, “a vast online resource,” co-founded by ASF Executive Director, Jason Guberman, “that… allow[s] anyone to ‘visit’ Jewish heritage sites throughout the Middle East, North Africa and other places around the globe.” Horn notes how, “in many cases, Diarna’s virtual records are all that stand between these centuries-old treasures and total oblivion.” Like the 500 year-old Eliyahu Hanavi-Jobar Synagogue in Damascus, which was documented by one of Diarna’s photographers before it was reduced to rubble in Syria’s civil war. Ultimately, Horn is stunned by the mind-bending idea “that, with the latest technology… lost times and places really can be rescued, at least virtually, from oblivion.”

ASF Executive Director and Diarna Co-Founder/Coordinator Jason Guberman
(Photo courtesy of Annie Tritt/Smithsonian Magazine)

Feature of the week: ASF’s Sephardi Playlist No. 4: Six ISOA Songs

ASF’s Sephardi Playlist #2

The Israeli Andalusian Orchestra Ashdod (ISOA) was founded in 1994 and, after almost a quarter-century of making world-class music, was honored with the Israel Prize and recognized by Israel's Culture Ministry as a national ensemble, on par with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Here are six examples of the rich and sophisticated sound that make the ISOA a premier cultural institution.

1.) The ISOA plays three pieces from the Yagel Ya’akov song-cycle composed by members of the Moroccan Abuchatseira rabbinic dynasty. The dynamically smooth Lior Elmalih is the vocalist, accompanied by the incomparable Maurice El Médioni on piano.

2.) The ISOA hosts Yehuda Sa’ado and Lior Elmalih for a stirring version of Shir Le’Ma’a lot.

3.) Performing at the 2018 Andalussyat Festival in Casablanca, Morocco, the ISOA hosts Miriam Toukan for a moving interpretation of the Arabic classic, Lamma Bada Yatathanna.

4.) With the picturesque Jaffa waterfront as backdrop, Ofir Ben Shitrit and the ISOA perform Yehuda HaLevi’s timeless penitential piyyut, Ya Shema Evyoncha.

5.) Ofir Ben Shitrit and the ISAO put their distinctive spin on R’ Shalom Shabazi’s Yemenite masterpiece, Im Nin’alu.

6.) The ISOA hosts the great Maurice El Médioni for a master class in piano improvisation.

The ASF Young Leaders led the only Sephardi Seder on Zoom in accordance with the ruling. Pictured are Seder leader and ASF YL Educational Coordinator Ruben Shimonov, ASF YL Founder & President Lauren Gibli, ASF Broome & Allen Fellow Richard Sassoon, and ASF YL Member Ben Cohen

“Sephardi Jewry’s Resurgent Cultural Confidence”
By Aryeh Tepper, Mosaic Magazine

The ASF’s Director of Publications, Dr. Aryeh Tepper, explains how the “Zoom Ruling” authored by the “Association of Scholars of the Maghreb in the Land of Israel” was grounded, “in the legitimacy of North African tradition” and driven by a conviction that the North African tradition is relevant, “for the nation of Israel as a whole.” What’s more, Israeli society has been enriched in recent years by Moroccan-Jewish cultural productions, including, “literature and music to holidays, museums and yes, even legal rulings… that have rejected the ‘nullification of the exile’ as an ideological paradigm and instead have grounded their activity in a continuity of historical memory.”

“Diaspo #146: Mohamed El Aissaoui, ambassador of Moroccan-Jewish heritage in the United States”
By Dahmani Youseef (Latifa Babas, tr.), Yabiladi

When Mohamed “Simo” El Aissaoui arrived in the United States in 2006, he quickly established an association, “Moroccan Americans in New York,” that includes Jewish and Muslim members. After launching the Jewish Moroccan Monthly Dinner Series, MANY found a natural partner in the ASF, including the 15th dinner honoring Senior Moroccan Royal Advisor André Azoulay, who “was delighted to see Moroccan Muslims and Jews under one roof, as was the case in the past in the Kingdom, where everyone lived in coexistence and harmony for centuries. He spent three hours with us.” Enrico Macias, Ema Shah, as well as Neta Elkayahm and Amit Hai Cohen were in attendance, ahead of their performances at Opening Night of the 20th NY Sephardic Jewsih Film Festival.

“Diaspo #146: Mohamed El Aissaoui, ambassador of Moroccan-Jewish heritage in the United States”
By Dahmani Youseef (Latifa Babas, tr.), Yabiladi

Sephardi Gifts:

Jewish Women from Muslim Societies Speak
Published by the American Sephardi Federation and Hadassah International Research Institute on Jewish Woman at Brandeis University

Jewish women from Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran were invited to share their personal stories. It could be said that these women's voices are from the last generation of Jews to have an intimate personal knowledge of the Muslim world, the enormous diversity within and among Middle Eastern Jewish communities.

We hope that these essays, told through the medium of vivid personal stories, will stimulate discussion about contemporary dynamics in the Muslim world and raise awareness of Jewish women’s history in North Africa and the Middle-East.

Exclusively available at the ASF’s Sephardi Shop

Nourishing Honey & Prickly Pear Seed Oil Face Scrub

“Prickly Pear Seed Oil has become the most sought after natural ingredient in the beauty industry in the last decade. Used mainly in skincare, as a luxurious facial oil, for its high level of vitamin E (antioxidants), vitamin K, essential fatty acids and minerals. And even in hair care for its moisturizing, and nourishing benefits.

Prickly Pear Seed Oil is one of the most expensive beauty oils in the world. Its production requires a labor-intensive and time consuming process.

The Prickly Pear seeds are separated from the pulp and are dried before being cold-pressed. Because each seed contains only 5% of oil, up to 60 lbs. of seeds (and a half a ton of fruits) are required to yield about 34oz. of oil.”

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Upcoming Events or Opportunities:

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

Imagining the Jew in Early Modern England
A Presentation on Two Sephardim:
Rodrigo Lopez & Menasseh Ben Israel

By Broom & Allen Fellow and Connaught International Doctoral Scholar at the University of Toronto, Leonard Stein

Wednesday 10 June at 12PM EDT

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(Pay via PayPal by Credit or Debit Card)

For centuries after their expulsion in 1290, Jews were largely imagined as stereotypes in England. However, two famous Sephardim, one a crypto-Jewish doctor, the other a Portuguese-Dutch rabbi, profoundly influenced the way England thought, wrote, and debated about the readmission of Jews. This presentation will discuss the tragic history of Rodrigo Lopez during the Elizabethan era and the auspicious history of Menasseh Ben Israel during the English Protectorate, in order to understand how crypto-Jews, conversos, and Sephardim inspired a wide range of literary, theological, and political work on the status of the Jew.

The ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience & E’eleh BeTamar present:

Barak Oded on the uniqueness of Yemenite song and prayers

Yemenite Men & Women and their Music

Sunday, 14 June at 12PM EDT
(19:00 Jerusalem)
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The Yemenites were a fixed community in the southern Arabian peninsula for 3,000 years. Barak Oded is a musicologist who specializes in Yemenite songs of all types, as well as the language and tunes involved in the context of other Jewish communities. In these sessions, Barak will show the uniqueness of Yemenite song and prayers as they were distinct from other communities. Prayers were chanted, there wasn't and still isn't music and song in liturgical services. Men would sing songs based on Jewish texts, and in Hebrew, while women would sing in Arabic about daily life.

Samples of each of these categories will be presented throughout these presentations.

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Music of North Africa

Musical Life in Devotional Texts

By Broom & Allen Fellow, ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist Dr. Samuel Thomas Torjman

Wednesday 17 June at 10AM EDT

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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Music of North Africa

Sephardi Judeo-Espagnole:
Threads Across the Strait

By Broom & Allen Fellow, researcher, writer and performer Dr. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz

Wednesday 24 June at 10AM EDT

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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Music of North Africa

Modern and Contemporary Judeo-Arabic Song and Performance

By Broom & Allen Fellows, researcher, writer and performer Dr. Vanessa Paloma Elbaz & ethnomusicologist and multi-instrumentalist Dr. Samuel Thomas Torjman

Wednesday 1 July at 10AM EDT

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(Pay via PayPal by Credit or Debit Card)

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Crypto Experience
The Global History of Secret Jews

An online course presented in 10 minute episodes.
Learn at your own pace.

Please sign-up now!
Total cost of the course is $75.00

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience is proud to present “The Crypto Experience,” an online course on Crypto-Jews. It is part of a series of online courses on a variety of topics that make up the robust Jewish experience.

For hundreds of years there have been descendants of Crpto-Jews, who have covertly kept some of their traditions while maintaining a very different public persona. It is a question of identity, be it Huegenot, Catholic, Sephardi, or Mashadi. Professing one faith on the outside and another on the inside speaks to our quest for defining identity today.

These questions of identity that we think are so new and so relevant are really rather old questions under different circumstances. In this course Dr. Hilda Nissimi (Bar Ilan University) presents an overview of crypto societies historically and in the context of today. She challenges the participants to ask themselves difficult questions like: What defines identity? If I project this outer self, how do I keep my real me? Who is the real me? Am I the me before the expression of an outer facade? Is it a new me?

The course discusses these questions as they pertain to Jews, specifically. What does it mean to be a Jew? What do I have to keep if I want to call myself a Jew? Am I allowed to change? Am I the person to decide? Who will decide? How can anyone decide under such circumstances?

In order to understand this in historic and cultural contexts, world-renowned scholars and experts in the field have joined Dr. Nissimi and will be presenting the challenges facing a range of crypto societies:

Huegenots – Dr. Hilda Nissimi
Spanish-Portuguese Crypto Society – Dr. Ronnie Perelis (Yeshiva University)
Bildi’in of Morocco – Professor Paul Fenton (Sorbonne Université, Paris)
Mashhadi Jews of Iran – Dr. Hilda Nissimi
Tracing Jewish Roots – Genie and Michael Milgrom
Growing Up Mashhadi– Reuben Ebrahimoff

For more information and other ASF IJE online course offerings visit: https://courses.instituteofjewishexperience.org/

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Greek Experience
Explore the world of Greek Jewry from the ancient Romaniote to the Sephardim and others who made it to and through Greece.

An online course presented in 10 minute episodes.
Learn at your own pace.

Please sign-up now!
Total cost of the course is $75.00

Jews have been in Greece since before the Temple was destroyed. They were in Greece upon the founding of the Greek Orthodox Church. Community members, known as Romaniote, made their way through Venice, Byzantium, Spain, across the Ottoman Empire, and beyond.

Dr. Yitzchak Kerem provides an overview of the unique languages, liturgical nuances, and communal life of Jews across Greece. Dr Kerem spent significant time living in Greece and researching Greek and Sephardic history. Photographs, maps, and personal accounts provide course participants with a full picture of the unique nature of the Jews of Greece and its surroundings.

In the course, participants will look at major influential points in Greek Jewish history. They will explore The Golden Age of Salonika, a time when Greece’s northern city was a hub of Jewish scholarship. Kerem introduces the tension arising in the Greek Jewish community because of Shabtai Tzvi and the Sabbateanism movement that brought with it false messianism and conversion to Islam, at least outwardly.

The course looks at when the Alliance Israélite Universelle moved in and the Sephardic culture in Greece developed a rich secular culture with its own novels, theater, and music.

This is part of the greater Jewish heritage and history that is often overlooked. ASF IJE online courses will bring to life all parts of the greater Jewish Experience.

For more information and other ASF IJE online course offerings visit: https://courses.instituteofjewishexperience.org/

Donate now and your generous tax-deductible contribution will empower the ASF to fight for Jewish unity and champion the Sephardi voice in Jewish communal affairs at home and abroad, as well as in our programs, publications, and projects.

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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).

www.AmericanSephardi.org | info@AmericanSephardi.org | (212) 294-8350

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