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18 October 2019

Mazal Tov to the ASF’s friend and partner Robert Nicolson, Founder and Executive Director of the Philos Project, who received a well-deserved spot on the Algemeiner’s J100 (i.e., the Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life, 2019).

Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one. 
The Sephardi World Weekly is made possible by generous readers like you. Now there is a new way to show your support. Become a Patron of the Sephardi World Weekly via Patreon and your name will appear in each edition along with timely, thought-provoking articles on Greater Sephardi history, the arts, and current affairs. Thanking you in advance! And thank you to Sephardi World Weekly Patrons Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina and Gwen Zuares!
“Why do you create (art)? 4th Jerusalem Biennale show answers: For heaven’s sake” 
By Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel
 
This year, the Jerusalem Biennale for Contemporary Jewish Art features 200 Israeli and international artists in 14 spaces and galleries around the city. Occupying one of the central stages is “Ziara زيارة: Moroccan Common Wisdom,” an exhibit in which Moroccan Muslims and Israeli Jews of Moroccan heritage jointly explore the Jewish contribution to Moroccan culture. According to the exhibit’s curator, Amit Hai Cohen, the space was consciously designed to feel jumbled:“‘It’s really a mess in here… We like it like this — this is how Moroccans think, all together in one room, all connected to each other.’”
 
“Moroccan Souvenirs, 2019” by Artsi Mous
(Photo courtesy of Estwanat Hai Projects/Ziara Projects) 
Special Feature: Singing a Song for Simhat Torah

 

Rabbi Haim Louk and Omer Avital
(Photo courtesy of Invitation to Piyyut/Youtube) 

Ashorer Shira Li’chvod HaTorah (“I’ll Sing a Song for the Honor of the Torah”) is an extremely popular piyyut that was composed during the 20th century by the Moroccan-born R’ Baruch Toledano (1890-1971). The piyyut is traditionally sung during those holidays in which the Torah is celebrated, such as Shavuot and, coming up next week, Simhat Torah. In this video, an all-star ensemble including Omer Avital, R’ David Menahem, Yair Harel, and Elad Levy accompany R’ Haim Louk’s rousing performance of the piyyut in a traditional Spanish mode.

Interior, Synagogue, Veria, Greece
(Photo courtesy of Evi Meska/Haaretz)  
“Thread of Memory: Jews of Veria Holocaust remembrance events” 
Neos Kosmos
 
Veria is an ancient city in northern Greece, first mentioned in the writings of Thucydides. During World War II, the Nazis occupied the city for three years and almost completely destroyed the Jewish community. Today, there is a Holocaust Memorial at Veria, and last month 200 people attended “The Thread of Memory,” a three-day program of commemorative events and installations that was attended by dignitaries and diplomats. The central event was the unfurling of a three-kilometer red thread that, according to the Veria-born soprano, Sonia Theodoridou, follows “the footprints of all the people that have been deported from their homes. It lays out the path of blood.”
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 only at the ASF's Sephardi Shop
The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace
by Elias V. Messinas

Published by the American Sephardi Federation, this is an English edition of Elias V. Messinas’ study The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace based on his 1999 doctoral dissertation and subsequent work on documentation and protection of Jewish heritage sites in Greece. 

The book provides two main themes. First, it is a detailed history of the the synagogues of northern Greece (Macedonia and Thrace), mostly a legacy of the Ottoman period. Messinas has dug deep to collect information on all identifiable synagogues, some known only by name. He traces the history of these institutions and structures and places them in their urban context from the 15th through the 20th centuries - so there is much of value here for student’s of Jewish settlements and Jewish quarters. Almost all of these buildings are gone. Many were destroyed in the great fire that swept Salonika in 1917. Those that were rebuilt were destroyed in the Holocaust or in the years following, when the once large Jewish communities of Northern Greece were reduced to tiny numbers. In the 1990s, Messinas was able to document several extant synagogues—albeit surviving in ruined condition—and document them with measured drawings and photos before they were demolished. 

The book has a chapter on Veria/Veroia/Caraferia mentioned in the article above.  

Exclusively available only at the ASF's Sephardi Shop
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities:


The American Sephardi Federation and Chassida Shmella Ethiopian Israeli-Jewish Community present:

The 10th Annual Sigd Celebration*
Join us for the Authentic Ethiopian Jewish Weekend!  

Friday, 1 November at 7:00PM
Traditional Kosher Ethiopian Shabbat Dinner with ASF Young Leaders
Professor Ephraim Isaac and special guests from Israel: Kes Eli Vanda Menntessnout and Revital Iyov (who recently appeared in Netflix’s Red Sea Diving Resort)

Saturday, 2 November at 7:30PM
Congregation Beit Simchat Torah
130 W 30th Street
New York City
Screening followed by a Q&A with Professor Ephraim Isaac and special guests from Israel.
Light refreshments will be served

Sunday, 3 November at 5:00PM
Special guest:
Gili Yalo! Ethiopian-Israeli singer 
Kessouch reading in Ge'ez ምህልላ, Ethiopian Music and Shoulder
Dancing, Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony, traditional Kosher food and entertainment

Please register here
*Early Bird full weekend SIGD celebration passes are available for limited time only!

~Contact Yves Seban to learn more about sponsorship opportunities~

Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City

Chassida Shmella Ethiopian Israeli-Jewish Community hosts an annual SIGD Celebration, marking this celebratory Ethiopian Jewish community event.
For the past eighth years, Chassida Shmella, the Ethiopian Jewish community of North America, has taken on the challenge and exciting experience, of bringing the SIGD ceremony to New York!

The overarching idea is to bring diverse people together to experience the beauty of this festival. Ethiopian Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardi Jews attend and even others in the community who just want to experience- this amazing celebration.

This day commemorates both the giving of the Torah and the communal gatherings held in Jerusalem in the days of the prophets Ezra and Nehemiah.
Thousands of Jews traveled on foot every year in Ethiopia from Gondar Province to the village of Ambober where the joyous celebration included prayer and fasting.
In modern times, the celebration commemorates the return of Ethiopian Jewry to Israel, our ancient homeland.

The day is a national holiday in Israel!

In New York, SIGD occurs approximately a week following the festival in Israel when a weekend is set aside for a SIGD in the Diaspora.

The festival is a full weekend event and includes celebratory meals, traditional Ethiopian music, dancing, and crafts. Here in NYC, the event comes alive through music, dancing, traditional food, dress and chanting, and through photos. Ethiopian Jewish Qesim (priests) and rabbis who live in Israel join us for the SIGD so the spirit of this festival can be authentic. Historical photos bring the viewer to experience the event as if they are there in time and place - in Ethiopia in times past, and in Israel in recent years.


Centro Primo Levi and the Rhodes Jewish Historical Foundation in partnership with Kehila Kedosha Janina and the American Sephardi Federation present:

Los Corassones Avlan*
The Hearts Speak
*from a Sephardi saying

Conversations on Jewish Life on the Island of Rhodes
A multimedia pop-up installation

On view 29 October through 24 November, 2019

Opening hours: 
Sunday through Thursday: 1:00PM to 9:00PM
Friday: 1:00PM to 4:00PM
Saturday: 5:00PM to 10:30PM 
Bourekas, sweets, coffee and tea will be served during opening hours

West Village
148 West 4th Street
New York City

Los Corassones Avlan is dedicated to centuries of Jewish life in Rhodes. It expands the ideas of the Rome Lab, a 2017 installation created by Centro Primo Levi and the Jewish Museum of Rome, which challenged traditional museum narratives by playing on the tension between personal memory, official history and ongoing research debates.

Conceived as an old funhouse, made up of objects, projection and rotating soundscapes, the new installation will juxtapose ambiguities, uncertainties and discontinuities onto linear representations of the past. It will invite the public to imagine a world that was profoundly different from ours and to question stereotypes and prepackaged depictions of other cultures that increasingly restrict the way in which we experience the present.

The project will be installed in a 19th century carriage house on West 4th street that shares the courtyard with the historic night bar named after Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s novel Vol de Nuit. The bar was once a popular eatery and cabaret called The Samovar, which the photographer Jessie Tarbox Beals seized in one of her legendary images of lower Manhattan and where Al Jolson is believed to have performed in his early career.

During the month of November, the carriage house, which is usually closed, will become home to the exhibition and to roundtables, readings, talks, film and music presentations, where the public will experience the little-known story and traditions of the “Rodeslis,” the Jewish community living on the island of Rhodes for an unknown number of centuries until its destruction in 1944.

*Centro Primo Levi’s public program is made possible in part through the generous support of the Viterbi family. The Rhodes installation was made possible through the generous support of Peter and Mary Kalikow and Bruce Slovin.

The American Sephardi Federation Presents:

The New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival’s (NYSJFF)
23rd Anniversary Edition

SAVE THE DATE
18-27 February 2020!
Please click here to reserve your Festival Passes now!


The American Sephardi Federation/ASF Young Leaders are partnering with Germany Close Up for the first-ever trip for Sephardi young professionals to Germany!

Dates:  4-12 May, 2020
Total cost: $900
(includes airfare, hotels, sightseeing, and meals)

Please here to apply

Travel to Germany with the American Sephardi Federation - ASF Young Leaders and Germany Close Up this spring! This will be Germany Close Up’s first-ever partnership with a Sephardic group – join us and make history! This trip has been tailor-made just for us to connect with our past.  We’ll interface with what remains of the Portuguese Jewish community in Hamburg, dive into artifacts of the Turkish Jewish community in Berlin, and explore other Sephardic histories on our journey.  We will find out how Germany is relevant to a more diverse Jewish story – including Sephardic Jews!

About Germany Close Up:
Founded in 2007, Germany Close Up introduces young Jewish professionals to modern Germany.  The Germany Close Up experience is administered by the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, the New Synagogue Berlin Centrum Judaicum Foundation, and the German government’s Transatlantic Plan.



The American Sephardi Federation is proud to partner with Combat Anti-Semitism on its Venture Creative Contest - Round 1. The Contest’s Art Award is named in honor of Emma Lazarus, the Sephardi American patriot, poet, playwright, critic, journalist, campaigner against anti-Semitism, and champion of Zion.

Venture Creative Contest – Round 1

Anti-Semitism is once again on the rise, just 75 years after the Holocaust. This irrational hatred of Jews and the world’s only Jewish State harms both innocent victims and perpetrators infected by bigotry. The resurgence of anti-Semitism poses a challenge to all people of conscience:
How can we work together to stop anti-Semitism?

This contest is crowd-sourcing new solutions to help end “the world’s oldest hatred.” The contest is sponsored by the CombatAntiSemitism.org Coalition.

People of all ages, backgrounds, and nationalities are encouraged to participate by creatively addressing one of the categories. 

Round 1 Deadline: 1 December 2019
Future Rounds Coming Soon

Please click here to submit your contest entry 

Contest Rules – Contest Judges – FAQ – Contact

Specific contest awards co-sponsored by Coalition Members, including:

American Sephardi Association logo
Israel on Campus Coalition logoGaliaArtists


The Philos Project and the American Sephardi Federation present:

Nosotros 3.0: Strengthening Bonds Between Jewish and Latino Communities

On view until May 2020

Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City

The Philos Project and the American Sephardi Federation cordially invite you to the third edition of our Latin American classic art exhibit: Nosotros 2019. 

This years exhibit explores the Judtice of Zionism through the lens of Jewish and Latino national liberation struggles for independence from European colonialism. A new collection of art pieces will be revealed, including pieces from master artists Norma Lithgow and Deyvi Pérez. It will be a night of celebration of the shared history and culture of the Jewish and Latin communities.

 and your tax-deductible contribution will help ASF preserve and promote the Greater Sephardi history, traditions, and culture as an integral part of the Jewish experience! 

Contact us by email to learn about giving opportunities in honor or memory of loved ones
Copyright © 2019 American Sephardi Federation, All rights reserved.

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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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