Sima Goel grew up in Iran, “a strong-willed, intelligent girl in a world where silence and obedience were required of women.” Urged by her mother to flee the country at the age of seventeen, Sima survived a journey that took her from Iran to Pakistan and then to Canada by identifying with another strong-willed, intelligent girl who grew up in Persia, the Biblical Esther.
Take a tour with the ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience through the rich history of the Persian Jewish experience, from the festival of Purim to the purported Tomb of Ester and Mordechai in the center of present-day Hamadan, Iran. The tomb complex includes a star of David, perhaps the only one visible from space.
Contribute now to the ASF IJE’s campaign to create innovative educational programs and events that celebrate the beauty, diversity, and vitality of the Jewish experience!
Rabbi David Menahem playing the oud (Photo courtesy of Youtube)
Rabbi David Menahem sings Rabbi Raphael Entebbe’s 19th century Purim piyyut, Ronu ve’Gilu (“Be happy and joyous”), according to the festive melody of the Aleppo tradition. R’David learned the piyyut growing-up in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Nahla’ot.
Dolores Forteza Rei, a member of Memoria de la Carrer (the organization to preserve Chuetas heritage) and daughter of a Chuetas who fasted on Purim, with her personal archive, Mallorca, 10 February 2019
(Photo courtesy of Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)
During recent years on the Spanish island of Mallorca, dozens of Chuetas, the local name for those forcibly converted to Christianity during the Inquisition, have converted back to Judaism. Their return has been paralleled by the reinstitution of Purim as a festive holiday. Historically, the Chuetas observed Purim as a day of mourning: “Persecuted for centuries during the Spanish Inquisition, the forcibly converted Jews of Mallorca had exploited their persecutors’ relative ignorance of Purim to mourn their situation and sustain their faith and culture.”
26 March - Bukharian Jews
16 April - Georgian Jews Center for Jewish History
15 W 16th Street
New York City
Please register here
or call: 1.800.838.3006 Light dinner reflecting the cuisine of Bukharian, Georgian, and Kavkazi Jews will be served
Back by popular demand, the American Sephardi Federation’s Young Sephardi Scholars Series is excited to once again host a 3-part learning and cultural series about the Russian-speaking Jewish (RSJ) communities of the Greater Sephardic world. The cultures and histories of Bukharian, Georgian, and Kavkazi (Mountain) Jews are situated at the fascinating, yet lesser known, intersection of RSJ, Sephardic and Mizrahi life. Led by Ruben Shimonov, this multimedia learning series will provide a unique opportunity to explore the multilayered and rich stories of the three communities.
Co-sponsored by JDC Entwine. This project was created as part of the COJECO BluePrint Fellowship, supported by COJECO and Genesis Philanthropy Group.
Ruben Shimonov is a Jewish educator, community builder, and social innovator based in New York City. His multilayered identity as an immigrant, Bukharian, Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Russian-speaking Jew continuously informs his commitment to the cultural and global diversity of the Jewish people. Ruben has previously brought this passion to his work at Queens College Hillel as Director of Cross-Community Engagement and Education, where he had the unique role of cultivating Sephardic-Mizrahi Jewish student life on campus. Ruben is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Sephardic-Mizrahi Q Network—a one-of-a-kind, grassroots movement that works to build a vibrant and supportive community for LGBTQ Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. He also serves as Vice-President for Education and Community Engagement on the American Sephardi Federation's Young Leadership Board, as well as the Director of Educational Experiences and Programming for the Muslim-Jewish Solidarity Committee of New York. Ruben was recently named among The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” emerging Jewish communal leaders and changemakers. He is also a 2018 ASF Broome & Allen Fellow, as well as a 2018 COJECO Blueprint Fellow. His speaking engagements include presenting at the Limmud Festival in the United Kingdom, one of the largest annual Jewish learning conferences in the world.
The American Sephardi Federation invites Sephardi World Weekly readers to attend this event by our Partner, the American Jewish Historical Society:
“This talk celebrates the new groundbreaking work of two social historians of Iranian Jewish life and community in the 20th century between immigrations and diasporas in Iran, Israel, and the US, paying tribute to the work of HIAS in helping Jews immigrate and resettle in the US in the years post the 1979 revolution in Iran.
Leah Mirakhor is Lecturer in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration (ER&M) and the Program in American Studies at Yale University. Mirakhors writing has appeared in The Yale Review, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, African American Review, The James Baldwin Review, and Studies in American Jewish Literature. Mirakhor is the author of ‘After the Revolution to the War on Terror: Iranian Jewish American Literature in the United States’, which appeared in Studies in American Jewish Literature 35.1 (2016).
Lior Sternfeld is a social historian of the modern Middle East with particular interests in Jewish (and other minorities) histories of the region. Sternfeld teaches at the Jewish Studies Program at Penn State University. Sternfelds new book, Between Iran and Zion: Jewish Histories of Twentieth Century Iran, examines the integration of the Jewish communities in Iran into the nation-building projects of the twentieth century. This book examines the development of the Iranian Jewish communities vis-à-vis ideologies and institutions such as Iranian nationalism, Zionism, and constitutionalism, among others.
AJHS has just finished [processing] the records of the organization HIAS The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the organization that helped families Iran, both Jewish and non-Jewish, immigrate and resettle in the US since the 1970s.”
Please register here or email: info@sephardicbrotherhood.com
“Join Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America for the Birthright Israel - Sephardic Israel Trip this Summer from June 27 - July 7! For 10 days, you'll be able to travel around the country with amazing people with Sephardic, Greek, and Turkish backgrounds, all while exploring everything Israel has to offer. You'll be able to ride camels in the desert, raft down the Jordan River, explore the Old City in Jerusalem, and a whole lot more. especially for Sephardic Jews from across the United States.”
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).