An earlier edition of this Sephardi World Weeklydid not include the article on Sephardic Sources for Hanukkah Heroes, which is now included below.
The American Sephardi Federation and Association Mimouna commend HM King Mohammed VI for his strong leadership in securing US recognition of the Kingdom of Morocco’s sovereignty over all of its southern Sahrawi provinces (i.e., the Moroccan Sahara) and the renewal and expansion of relations with Israel. Read the full statement here.
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Thank you to Sephardi World Weekly Patrons Professor Rifka Cook, Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina, Rachel Amar, and Distinguished ASF Vice President Gwen Zuares! Become a Patron today!
Is Hanukkah really a celebration of, “tribal Jewish backwardness”? That’s what the passionate anti-theist Christopher Hitchens claimed. A less sophisticated version of his old argument appeared in the NY Times. This brought to mind the response of the late Ami Isseroff, a progressive Zionist, courageous advocate for peace, and editor of the MidEast Web for Coexistence, who struck some traditionally American themes in arguing otherwise: “Hanukkah was a victory for Jewish political as well as religious freedom over the imperialist government of Antiochus IV and his Seleucid [D]ynasty. Perhaps the Jews did not invent the ideas of freedom, self-determination and religious toleration, but the revolt of the Maccabees struck a blow for all of these.”
Ma’oz Tzur Yeshuati (Refuge and Rock of My Salvation) is a classic piyyut dating back to the 13th century. Little is known regarding the piyyut's author, aside from his name being Mordechai, spelled out in acrostic form in the first five stanzas. The piyyut chronicles Israel's deliverance from four evil regimes, including the anti-Semitic rule of Antiochus IV during the time of the Maccabee revolt. Hence the custom of singing the piyyut during Hanukkah. In this video, Meni Maimon Cohen, R Hayim Biton and Shimon Iluz perform a spirited version according to a traditional Moroccan melody.
Morocco’s decision to normalize relations with Israel was enthusiastically received by American Jewish and pro-Israel organizations. While officials stressed the political and economic advantages for both Jerusalem and Rabat, ASF Executive Director Jason Guberman widened the lens, calling the agreement, “‘a recognition of two historical realities: the Kingdom of Morocco’s territorial integrity, which includes sovereignty over the Moroccan Sahara, and the kingdom’s independent leadership in forging a decades-old relationship with Israel.’” He also stressed the deal’s broader historical-cultural context, “‘900,000 Moroccan-Sephardic Jews live in Israel and keep the sacred chords of memory with the kingdom alive through their traditional observances, building bridges with Moroccan Muslims, and travels to Morocco.’”
Hacham Yosef Massas, Chief Rabbi of Morocco and Jerusalem, featured on a 2007 Israeli stamp honoring the Moroccan Royal Family
Judith with the Head of Holofernes by Cristofano Allori, 1613
(Photo courtesy of the Royal Trust Collection)
The Story of Yehudith from Sefer Sha’are Kodesh published at Salonica, 1799
(Photo courtesy of Richard Adatto/UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies)
TheMa’ase de la Yehudit(Story of Judith) and the Megillat Antiochus are Hanukkah tales of ancient Jewish heroism. Left out of the mainstream of traditional literature, these sources were preserved in Sephardi communities until they were revived in Zionist literature. The Sephardi-Zionist connection can be seen in a 1904 prayer book authored by Rabbi Ya’aḳov Moshe Ḥai Alṭarats, in which the Scroll of Antiochus is followed by R’Altarats’ admonition (translated here from the Ladino): “From this historical incident and others like it, we may contemplate the heroism of our people, and how fearlessly we (our people) fought like lions in defense of our God, and His law, and for their land, men who glorified our nation…. From this occurrence we can understand how in our history we have such heroic women who sacrifice their hearts to save their nation.”
After Ma’ase de la Yehudit, R’Altarats wrote: “As we were saved in ancient times by the hands of heroes and heroines, so too may we be saved from this exile with the help and good will of the good and righteous kingdoms, amen, may it be Your will.”
Looking for a religious reason to eat fried food? Try Hanukkah, a holiday in which Divine aid in Israel’s ancient military victory over the Seleucids, reflected in the miraculous burning of sacred olive oil, is remembered by busting out the frying pan, pouring in the oil, and preparing foods rich in lubricity, flavor, and calories. The Sepharadim of Southern Europe and the Middle East customarily prepare “leek fritters,” with leeks being “native to a large region stretching from the Mediterranean to India, where they’ve been cultivated for over 3,000 years.” With recipe.
Hanukkah in Eight Nights: Bring the Past to Light By Marian Scheuer Sofaer
Celebrate a family Hanukkah with dramatic readings about the feats of the Maccabees. In addition to the candle lighting blessings, Hanukkah songs, recipes, and sevivon game rules, this book incudes excerpts from ancient sources and vivid read-aloud stories by Moshe Pearlman for each night that will bring the riveting events of 164 B.C.E. to life. Good for school age children through adults.
Generations Eat Together, a Celebration of Jewish Foods By Anita Capouano
Generations Eat Together is a collection of over 325 unique recipes for well-known Mediterranean dishes, European specialties, and Southern American favorites. Together they bring to life the delicious flavors of the Sephardic and Ashkenazi - two distinct cultures represented in the Agudath Israel Etz Ahayem Synagogue of Montgomery, Alabama.
Even if you are not a cook, this book is for you. You'll love the delightful family food stories woven throughout the book showing just how much enjoying food together is part of the fabric of our lives. Helpful drawings and tips from the experts are a plus for cooks of every level.
ASF congratulatesDavid Serero on earning 10 nominations, including Best Performer of the Decade, Best Opera Singer of the Year, Best Producer of a Musical and of a Play at the Broadway World Awards!
Show your support by voting:
BROADWAY AWARDS: Click here to vote for the Musicals and Plays: Romeo and Juliet, Nabucco, Marriage of Figaro, Anne Frank, a Musical, and Lost in the Disco
OPERA AWARDS: David Serero (Best Opera Singer) Here!
Festival des Andalousies-Atlantiques
The Souiri sense of resilience compelled the Association Essaouira-Mogador’s team to mobilize in the belief that the show must go on!
We proudly announce that this year’s Festival des Andalousies-Atlantiques will be virtual with the Festival’s original dynamic and world-class artists.
Even better, we are now free of borders, barriers, constraints, or tickets! 13-16 December at 2:00PM EST
(20:00 Morocco Time)
This yearly rendezvous is generously provided for and open to the thousands of music-lovers, Muslims and Jews, who migrate every year to Essaouira for a musical fall season like no other. For nearly 20 years this autumn of light has been rooted in the emotion of our shared music, the richness of our mixed heritage, and the ever-renewed promises of a great Moroccan history that Jews and Muslims alike have been sharing for more than 20 years, in the fabled architectural wonders of Dar Souiri, Bayt Dakira, and El Minzeh.
Still in the making, the program for this festival includes an exhilarating selection of vintage concerts from previous editions: concerts that have established, beyond oceans, the cultural, spiritual, and artistic diversity at the heart of age-old modernity that Essaouira has chosen to embody.
The selections will also echo our morning symposiums, the expected and sought-after highlights of the Festival, during which violins, lutes, voices, and darboukas have often illustrated the moving and daring debates to the delight of all participants.
We invite you to follow our social media for details on the evolution of the programming and the dates of broadcasts that will be available on our Facebook and Instagram accounts starting 9 November 2020.
Though we will miss the live audience experience this year, the Essaouira Festival des Andalousies-Atlantiques will come back even stronger in 2021, as we are already working on the 18th edition to make it the occasion to meet again in joy and music.
In the meantime, rest in good health and let us support and appreciate culture.
Writing Between Tongues:
An Exploration of Hebrew and Arabic Calligraphy
In this interactive session and virtual gallery tour, we will dive into the rich visual worlds of Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy.
Through historical, spiritual, linguistic, and artistic lenses, we will discover the parallels between both languages. Educator, community organizer, and artist Ruben Shimonov will take us on an exploratory journey of his multilingual calligraphy and the ways he has used his art to enrich Muslim-Jewish interfaith communities.
We will end the session with a live calligraphy demonstration.
(No supplies necessary, but if you’d like, feel free to bring whatever writing utensils and paper you have at home to follow along)
Born in Uzbekistan, raised in Seattle, and currently based in New York City, Ruben Shimonov is a Jewish educator, community builder, social entrepreneur and artist with a passion for Jewish diversity and pluralism. He previously served as Director of Community Engagement & Education at Queens College Hillel—where he had, within his vast portfolio, the unique role of cultivating Sephardic & Mizrahi student life on campus. Currently, he is the Founding Executive Director of the Sephardic Mizrahi Q Network—a grassroots movement building a supportive, vibrant and much-needed community for LGBTQ+ Sephardic & Mizrahi Jews. He also serves as Vice-President of Education & Community Engagement on the Young Leadership Board of the American Sephardi Federation, an ASF Broome & Allen Fellow, as well as Director of Educational Experiences & Programming for the Muslim-Jewish Solidarity Committee. Within both organizations, Ruben has used his artistry in Arabic, Hebrew & Persian calligraphy to enhance Muslim-Jewish dialogue and relationship building. In 2018, Ruben was listed among The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” young Jewish community leaders and changemakers. He has lectured extensively on the histories and cultures of various Sephardic & Mizrahi communities. Among his speaking engagements, he has been invited to present at Limmud Seattle, NY and U.K. He is also an alumnus of the COJECO Blueprint and Nahum Goldmann Fellowships for his work in Jewish social innovation.
Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara-Piñer
Episode Five: Fish Stew of the Conversos and Matza
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!
Your generous contribution will support Chef Jawhara Piñer’s forthcoming academic publication and accompanying recipe book, as well as the ASF 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).
The ASF's friends at
The Jewish Review of Books present:
Suitcases Full of Letters:
A Sephardic Journey through the 20th Century
Join us for a conversation with acclaimed historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein.
She will discuss her award-winning book, Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century.
Thursday, 24 December at 5:00PM EST
Sign-up Now! (You can join the conversation and ask Sarah Abrevaya Stein your own questions)
Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century, named one of the best books of 2019 by The Economist and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. A National Jewish Book Award finalist.
A superb and touching book about the frailty of ties that hold together places and people. The New York Times Book Review.
An award-winning historian shares the true story of a frayed and diasporic Sephardic Jewish family preserved in thousands of letters.
For centuries, the bustling port city of Salonica was home to the sprawling Levy family. As leading publishers and editors, they helped chronicle modernity as it was experienced by Sephardic Jews across the Ottoman Empire. The wars of the twentieth century, however, redrew the borders around them, in the process transforming the Levys from Ottomans to Greeks. Family members soon moved across boundaries and hemispheres, stretching the familial diaspora from Greece to Western Europe, Israel, Brazil, and India. In time, the Holocaust nearly eviscerated the clan, eradicating whole branches of the family tree.In Family Papers, the prizewinning Sephardic historian Sarah Abrevaya Stein uses the family's correspondence to tell the story of their journey across the arc of a century and the breadth of the globe. They wrote to share grief and to reveal secrets, to propose marriage and to plan for divorce, to maintain connection. They wrote because they were family. And years after they frayed, Stein discovers, what remains solid is the fragile tissue that once held them together: neither blood nor belief, but papers. With meticulous research and care, Stein uses the Levys’ letters to tell not only their history, but the history of Sephardic Jews in the twentieth century.
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:
Tell Your Sephardi-Mizrahi Story With award-winning author Gila Green
Have you always wanted to write your life story?
Join our Zoom writing workshop that pushes beyond memoir and borrows fiction techniques.
All writing levels are welcome!
On Tuesdays
5 January – 2 February at 12:00PM EST 5 online sessions
Sign-up Now! (Registration required for the full course; Space is limited)
Have you always wanted to write your life story? Gila Green’s new Middle Eastern flavored Autofiction Workshop explores a writing form that pushes beyond memoir and borrows fiction techniques. Inventing your own dialogue and creating details can often free you from the need to stick to the facts, opening the door to a deeper story with emotional truth at its center. This zoom course includes a weekly lesson and in-class exercise. Instructor feedback will be provided on weekly writing assignments (up to 1,000 words). Short readings will feature Middle Eastern writers that include authors such as: Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Rachel Shabi, and Ariel Sabar.
The workshop is open to women and men of all writing levels.
About Gila Green:
Gila Green’s novels feature characters of Sephardi, Yemenite, and mixed Middle Eastern heritage because she couldn’t find any Jewish stories that reflected her experience growing up and decided to write them herself. Her novel-in-stories White Zion explores one Yemenite family’s journey from Sana’a to Jerusalem to Canada. In Passport Control, heroine Miriam Gil struggles to understand her Yemenite father’s past against a trove of family secrets. Gila is an author, a creative writing teacher, an EFL college lecturer, an editor, and a mother of five. When she’s not exploring the Middle East in her novels, she migrates to South Africa in her continuing environmental young adult series that takes place in Kruger National Park. In addition to her four published novels, her short works have been featured in dozens of publications including: Sephardic Horizons, Jewish Fiction, Jewish Literary Journal, Fiction Magazine, Akashic Books, The Fiddlehead, and others.
Join us for ASF’s 4th Annual Ladino Day created by Drs. Jane Mushabac and Bryan Kirschen.
You’ll hear Ruth Azaria, actor Hank Azaria’s mother, speak about growing-up with Ladino; Rabbi Nissim Elnecavé on expressions we love; Ladino students on learning the language; renowned writer Myriam Moscona; the premiere of a contemporary short play; and celebrated singer Daphna Mor.
Sunday, 10 January 2:00 - 4:00PM EST Zoom Event
Sign-up Now! (Early Bird price available until 17 December)
Ladino is a bridge to many cultures. It is a variety of Spanish that has absorbed words from Hebrew, Turkish, Arabic, French, Greek, and Portuguese. The mother tongue of Jews in the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, Ladino became the home language of Sephardim worldwide. While the number of Ladino speakers has sharply declined, distinguished Ladino Day programs like ours celebrate and preserve a vibrant language and heritage. These programs are, as Aviya Kushner wrote in the Forward last January, “Why Ladino Will Rise Again.”
Since 2013, International Ladino Day programs have been held around the world to honor the Ladino language, also known as Judeo-Spanish.
Historical fiction author Edith Scott Saavedra explores her journey to bring alive the culture and history of Sephardic Aragon and true stories of resistance to the Spanish Inquisition by giving voice to women and girls. Inspired by traditions passed down from mother to daughter for generations, the author would discover in the historical records episodes of resistance long suppressed by the monarchy and church in Spain, write a historical novel in English and Spanish editions, and set out to bring this content to students in Spain and the United States.
“The Lamps of Albarracín” is a fictional first-person narrative by a Sephardic girl that recounts the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition into the Kingdom of Aragon in the 1480s. It is based on extensive review of Spanish Inquisition testimony and historical research. The novel gives voice to the diverse peoples of late-medieval Aragon – Jews, Muslims, Christians, and persons of mixed heritage, with a focus on women and true stories of tolerance and courage. It also celebrates the rich culture and traditions of multicultural Aragon in the years prior to the Expulsion of the Jews.
Edith Scott Saavedra earned her BA and JD degrees from Harvard University. She has had a distinguished career as an international lawyer, business consultant and nonfiction author. The Lamps of Albarracín/Los Candiles de Albarracín, her first novel, has received media attention throughout the Spanish speaking world, including Radio Sefarad Madrid, Sefarad.es, eSefarad, Libertad Digital, Radio Aragón, Semanario Hebreo, and Radio Las 2 Orillas Bogotá.
Esther Amini grew-up in Queens, New York, during the freewheeling 1960s. She also grew-up in a Persian-Jewish household, the American-born daughter of parents who had fled Mashhad, Iran. In Concealed, she tells the story of being caught between these two worlds: the dutiful daughter of tradition-bound parents who hungers for more self-determination than tradition allows.
Exploring the roots of her father’s deep silences and explosive temper, her mother’s flamboyance and flights from home, and her own sense of indebtedness to her Iranian-born brothers, Amini uncovers the story of her parents’ early years in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest Muslim city; the little-known history of Mashhad’s underground Jews; the incident that steeled her mother’s resolve to leave; and her parents’ arduous journey to the U.S., where they faced a new threat to their traditions: the threat of freedom. Determined to protect his daughter from corruption, Amini’s father prohibits talk, books, education, and pushes an early Persian marriage instead. Can she resist? Should she? Focused intently on what she stands to gain, Amini comes to see what she also stands to lose: a family and community bound by food, celebrations, sibling escapades, and unexpected acts of devotion by parents to whom she feels invisible.
Esther Amini is a writer, painter, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Her short stories have appeared in Elle, Lilith, Tablet, The Jewish Week, Barnard Magazine, Inscape Literary, and Proximity. She was named one of Aspen Words’ two best emerging memoirists and awarded its Emerging Writer Fellowship in 2016 based on her memoir entitled: “Concealed.” Her pieces have been performed by Jewish Women’s Theatre in Los Angeles and in Manhattan, and was chosen by JWT as their Artist-in-Residence in 2019.
The novel takes readers into the worlds of 19th century Yemen, pre-State Israel, modern Israel, and modern Canada. You will hear the voices of a young boy marveling at Israel’s first air force on his own roof, the cry of a newly married woman helpless to defend herself against her new husband’s desires, the anger of the heroine’s uncle as he reveals startling secrets about his marriage and the fall-out after generations of war.
Gila Green’s novels feature characters of Sephardi, Yemenite, and mixed Middle Eastern heritage because she couldn’t find any Jewish stories that reflected her experience growing up and decided to write them herself. Her novel-in-stories White Zion explores one Yemenite family’s journey from Sanaa to Jerusalem to Canada. In Passport Control, heroine Miriam Gil struggles to understand her Yemenite father’s past against a trove of family secrets. Gila is an author, a creative writing teacher, an EFL college lecturer, an editor, and a mother of five. When she’s not exploring the Middle East in her novels, she migrates to South Africa in her continuing environmental young adult series that takes place in Kruger National Park. In addition to her four published novels, her short works have been featured in dozens of publications including: Sephardic Horizons, Jewish Fiction, Jewish Literary Journal, Fiction Magazine, Akashic Books, The Fiddlehead, and others.
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
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.
“We have to unite our energies together. All Jews, together…. If we are united, all Sephardim and also Ashkenazim, together... we will see the light!”
~Enrico Macias
The ASF Institute of Jewish Experienceis uniquely dedicated to ensuring that today’s Jews know our history; appreciate the beauty, depth, diversity, and vitality of the Jewish experience; and have a sense of pride in Jewish contributions to civilization. Donate Now!
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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).