The Rhodes/Cos Memorial Committee of Seattle Presents:

Holocaust Remembrance
“Before Sleep”
A piano recital by Renan Koen

Sunday, 16 August at 10:30 AM (Pacific Daylight Time)

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(Complimentary RSVP)



Renan Koen, a renowned Turkish-Sephardic Jewish pianist, vocalist, and educator, as well as alumna of the ASF’s American Sephardi Music Festival, will be playing select pieces from her album, “Holocaust Remembrance / ‘Before Sleep’” - works by Jewish composers interned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II.  Renan will also present select Ladino pieces from her album, “Lost Traces Hidden Memories,” in tribute to the Sephardic communities of the Balkans that were destroyed in the Holocaust.
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The program will also include greetings from Sephardic leaders around the word.

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience and Kol Yisrael Haverim (Alliance Israélite Universelle - KIAH) present:

Teaching the Jewish Experience Mosaic - Egypt 

Wednesday, 19 August from 12:00-3:15PM EDT 
Zoom workshops with educators from across the globe

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We are excited to launch a new initiative:
T-JEM: Teaching the Jewish Experience Mosaic

Kol Yisrael Haverim (Alliance Israélite Universelle - KIAH) and ASF Institute of Jewish Experience have joined forces to offer a series of teacher workshops. Each workshop will present the Jewish dialectic as embodied in a different Jewish community's culture, literature, philosophy, history, geography, and Rabbinic sources. 

This first session, on Egyptian Jews, will be held on Wednesday August 19 from 12:00-3:15 pm EDT for a select group of educators. 
 
A tentative schedule for the workshop is as follows:

Virtual Diarna Geo-Museum tour of Egypt and its Jewish sites
IJE teaching resources for Egyptian synagogues
Panel discussion - Multifaceted aspects of Jewish thought - Egypt as a case study, with Prof. Zvi Zohar and others
KIAH Hakham Yomi as the basis for lessons – small group discussion
Applications and next steps

“The Torah scroll has no vowel symbols (nikkud) so that people may interpret as they wish. The letters, not being marked with vowels, tolerate different meanings, and can break up into many sparks. This is why we were instructed not to punctuate Torah scrolls with vowels.” 
- Hakham R’Haim Yosef David Azoulai

If you have any questions or to register please reach out to 
drora@americansephardi.org

Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara-Piñer

Episode One:
Eggplant Almodrote and Moroccan Flatbreads

Sephardi Culinary History is a new show that combines chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer’s fascination with food studies and flair for creating delicious cuisine. Join along as she cooks Sephardic history!

Sunday, 30 August at 10:00AM EDT

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Tickets support Chef Hélène’s forthcoming publications and the ASF’s Institute of Jewish Experience

ASF Broome & Allen Fellow Hélène Jawhara-Piñer earned her Ph.D in History, Medieval History, and the History of Food from the University of Tours, France.

Chef Hélène’s primary research interest is the medieval culinary history of Spain through interculturality with a special focus on the Sephardic culinary heritage written in Arabic. A member of the IEHCA (Institute of European History and Cultures of Food), the CESR (Centre for Advanced Studies in the Renaissance), and the CoReMa Project (Cooking Recipes of the Middle Ages), Chef Hélène has lectured at Bar-Ilan University (in collaboration with the Stali Institute and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC): “El patrimonio culinario judío de la Península Ibérica a través de un manuscrito del siglo XIII. Ejemplos de la pervivencia de recetas en la cocina de los sefardíes de España y de Marruecos,” 2018), as well as at conference of the Association Diwan (“Reflections on the Jewish heritage according to the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ,” 2015), IEHCA of Tours (“Jews and Muslims at the Table: Between coexistence and differentiation: state of affairs and reflections on the culinary practices of Jews and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula and in Sicily from the 12th to the 15th century,” 2017), and Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (“The hidden Jewish culinary heritage of the Iberian Peninsula through a manuscript of the 13th century. Examples of the provenance of some recipes in Venezuelan and Colombian cuisine,” 2017).

In May, Chef Hélène hosted “Shavuot in the Sephardic Kitchen: Bread of the Seven Heavens,” one of the most popular sessions of the Great Big Jewish Food Fest. Her recipes have appeared in the Sephardi World Weekly, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, and S&P Central’s Newsletter. Chef Hélène is currently writing a scholarly book and accompanying cookbook on the Jewish culinary history of Spain.

We are proud Chef Hélène is serving as one of the judges for the ASF's Great Sephardic Chef Competition!


Sponsorship and Naming opportunities avaialble:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF’s Great Sephardic Chef Competition

Enter for a chance to win a spot in the ASF’s Virtual Cookbook and other prizes!

Does your family have the best Sephardic recipe? Like to cook Sephardic? Let the world know by submitting  your recipe to the ASF’s Great Sephardic Chef Competition. Entries will be judged by a panel of scholars, chefs, restaurateurs, and authors in the following categories:

Appetizers
Bread
Communities (Greek, Iraqi, Italian, Moroccan, Persian, Spanish, Syrian, et al...)
Desserts
Entrees
Grandma’s Favorite
Mom’s Best
Salads
Shabbat 
Soups
Special Occasions & Creations
Vegan
Yom Tov

Submission Due Date: 15 October 2020 
$10 per entry; unlimited entries!

Submit Your Video Here!


Finalists will be announced on 17 December 2020 by our international panel of judges!


Sponsorship and Naming opportunities avaialble:
info@americansephardi.org

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/