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5 February 2021 
 
In Memory of Hayim ben Moshiyakh, A”H, who passed and 94 years old this week from COVID-19 and had “lived through a lot: losing both his parents by age 7, suffering an accident as a teenager in which he lost part of his leg, enduring a world war and Soviet persecution, starting life anew with his family as refugees halfway across the world. But one wouldn’t know any of that just by looking at him; he was always grateful and had a positive and peaceful disposition.” Read his grandson and ASF Broome & Allen Fellow Ruben Shimonov’s moving tribute to this extraordinary individual here. Khudo rahmat kunad (“may the Divine be compassionate with his soul” in Bukharian Farsi).
 
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Sephardi World Weekly Patrons Professor Rifka Cook,  Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina, Rachel Amar, Deborah Arellano, and Distinguished ASF Vice President Gwen Zuares!
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A Girl in a Blue Shirt (2013)
Book cover

 
Israeli novel becomes first to be translated into Arabic in Morocco
By The Jerusalem Post

Prof. Gabriel Bensimhon was born and raised in the Moroccan town of Sefrou, making Aliyah to Israel at age ten. His Hebrew-language novel, A Girl in a Blue Shirt (2013), recently became the first Hebrew book translated into Arabic in Morocco. The novel features a love story between a Moroccan immigrant and an Israeli-born girl, who was already in love with a Holocaust survivor. And all of this is set against the background of the massive Moroccan Aliyah during Israel’s early years. Confesses Bensimhon: “As a Moroccan Jew, I feel that I have come to realize a dream: the fact that my works are read in my hometown is a source of great personal pride.”


Ellie Cohanim, US State Department Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat anti-Semitism
(Screenshot courtesy of Youtube)


The ASF hosted the signing ceremony to ratify an agreement between the U.S. Department of State and trailblazing Moroccan NGO, Association Mimouna, pledging both parties to jointly fight anti-Semitism, on 15 January via Zoom.  Still, even remotely, you could feel the significance of the event. Watch as then-US State Department Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, Ellie Cohanim, an Iranian-Jewish immigrant to the United States, and Special Envoy Elan Carr, the son of an Iraqi-Jewish immigrant to America, sign the historic Memorandum of Understanding with Association Mimouna’s President Elmehdi Boudra and Vice President Laziza Dalil.
US, Moroccan NGO sign deal to fight all forms of antisemitism” 
By Benjamin Weinthal, The Jerusalem Post

Association Mimouna (AM) is a Moroccan NGO staffed by Moroccan Muslim volunteers who are dedicated to perpetuating the country’s Judeo-Moroccan heritage. AM recently signed an historic agreement with the State Department to jointly combat antisemitism, including anti-Zionism. The American Sephardi Federation enjoys a long relationship with AM, and the ASF’s Executive Director, Jason Guberman, celebrated the typically Moroccan openness and tolerance that animates the agreement: “‘Association Mimouna’s extraordinary journey from a campus club to today’s MOU signing ceremony with the US Department of State is a testament to the ingenious Moroccanity of its founders and our friends, Elmehdi Boudra, Laziza Dalil, and their compatriots.’”
Elmehdi Boudra, President of Association Mimouna
(Photo courtesy of Association Mimouna
)

President Simo Elaissaoui with fellow MANY (Moroccan Americans in New York) Members at the American Sephardi Federation’s 23rd NY Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Great Hall, Center for Jewish History, 28 February 2020

(Photo courtesy of Chrystie Sherman)
US Muslim, Jewish Groups Celebrate New Morocco-Israel Relations
By Philip Rapoport, The Media Line

The recent diplomatic agreement between Israel and Morocco, “is not only the result of diplomatic action, but is also the culmination of a long-standing relationship between Moroccan Jews and Muslims.” Moroccan American organizations such as the Moroccan American Congress and the Moroccan Americans in New York (MANY) celebrated the agreement, while the ASF’s executive director, Jason Guberman, placed the general trend of Morocco’s diplomacy in a larger context: “‘At the King’s initiative, Morocco has become a world leader in perpetuating its pluralist past – including the kingdom’s Sephardic Jewish history; cultivating the cultural connection between Moroccan Muslims and Jews; countering anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial; and building a peaceful and prosperous future.’”
Sephardi Gifts:
Where the Wind Blew: A Boyhood Lost in Tangier
By Michel Emile Bensadon

This memoir of coming of age in Morocco in the 1950s is also the memoir of a lost nation. The author’s childhood coincides with the end of the idyllic Sephardic culture that had flourished in Tangier for centuries. This is the story of two paradises lost: the dreamy childhood, which ends when Michel’s parents’ marriage breaks apart; the end of Morocco’s colonial rule, in which the Jewish community had grown and prospered. The “wind” in the title is Simoun, an infamous blast that blew in from the Sahara and terrified the author as a child. The wind is also the symbol for the wild forces at work in that part of the world and the havoc they wreaked upon the author’s family, and the Jews who left soon after.

The author has recreated the rich tapestry that was his Sephardic culture; a world redolent of spices, populated by exotic extended families, and lavish celebrations. The book spans the crucial years 1949-1960, and is a time capsule of that vanished Eden. This is the definitive portrait of a lost Sephardic paradise.

 
Light for Morocco
Aluminum and Bronze Cast by Oded Halahmy

From the world renowned, Baghdad-born artist Oded Halahmy’s “Hey, Light” Collection

Now on Sale Online Exclusively at The ASF’s Sephardi Shop


 
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Upcoming Events or Opportunities:

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

Writing Between Tongues
Part 2


With Ruben Shimonov

Following the success of December’s talk “Writing Between Tongues: An Exploration of Hebrew and Arabic Calligraphy”, we are excited to bring back educator and artist Ruben Shimonov for a follow-up interactive artist talk, virtual gallery tour, and workshop. In this 90-minute session, we will take a deeper dive into the rich visual worlds of Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy. 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 have a talk-back with the artist, as well as a live calligraphy demonstration during which you can try your hand at the calligraphy!

Sunday, 7 February at 12:00PM EST


Sign-up Now!



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.

Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

New Works Wednesdays

Following our New Works Wednesdays fall series with Sina Kahen discussing his first book in the “Ideas” series, we welcome him back for a discussion on the second, newly-released book “Ideas: Shemot.”

Sina will be speaking about “Monotheism & Science: How the Exodus impacted our understanding of reality.”


Wednesday, 10 February at 12:00PM EST


Sign-up Now!



The Torah is Judaism’s crown. The ideas gleaned from it have improved and advanced human civilization. Sina Kahen weaves together ideas from ancient to modern times, in an effort to provide an intellectually honest and spiritually fulfilling representation of the Torah’s weekly portions. Drawing from science, philosophy, psychology, and history, this series offers the reader a vision of Torah based on intellect and integration, rather than superstition and isolation.

Sina Kahen is author of ‘Ideas: Shemot’, the latest volume in his popular series on the weekly Torah portion, based on the Classical Sephardi approach to Torah. His full time work is in surgical robotics and AI, and he represents The Sephardi Habura in the UK.


Order your copy of “Ideas: Shemot” now

Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Persian Experience:

Book Discussion with Roya Hakakian


In Journey from the Land of No Roya Hakakian recalls her childhood and adolescence in pre-revolutionary Iran with candor and verve. The result is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about one deeply intelligent and perceptive girl’s attempt to find an authentic voice of her own at a time of cultural closing and repression.

Remarkably, she manages to re-create a time and place dominated by religious fanaticism, violence, and fear with an open heart and often with great humor.


Wednesday, 17 February at 12:00PM EST

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Roya Hakakian is the author of Assassins of the Turquoise Palace and Journey from the Land of No, and has published two collections of poetry in Persian. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” She has collaborated on programming for leading journalism units in network television, including 60 Minutes. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served on the editorial board of World Affairs. Since 2015, she has taught at THREAD, a writing workshop at Yale, and is a fellow at the Davenport College at Yale. She lives in Connecticut.

Click here to read more about the book,
Journey from the Land of No”.

Click here to find out more about our upcoming course,
The Persian Experience”.


Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The Sephardic Jewish Brotherhood of America and the American Sephardi Federation present:

Dr. Albert Menashe & The Holocaust in Salonika

With Dr. Joe Halio


A special book talk on the newly republished Memoirs of Dr. Albert Menashe, one of the few survivors from the Jewish Community of Salonika. Birkenau (Auschwitz II) How 72,000 Greek Jews Perished was a ground breaking work by a Holocaust survivor and was one of the first testimonies written by a survivor published after World War II.

Wednesday, 17 February at 7:00PM EST

Sign-up Now!
(Complimentary RSVP)



Joe Halio is a doctor of Geriatric Medicine based in Long Island. He is a board member of a number of Sephardic organizations, including: the American Sephardi Federation, the Sephardic Brotherhood of America, and the Foundation of the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture.

Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

Sephardi Thought and Modernity 2021 Webinar Series

A monthly lecture from February through June 2021, presenting different experiences of Sephardi modernization in different places and times.

On Thursdays at 1:00PM EST 
(11:00AM MST)

18 February  

Almog Behar (Tel Aviv University): Between Judeo-Arabic, Literary Arabic and Hebrew in Jewish-Arab (Literary) Modernity

18 March
Yaakov Yadgar (Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, University of Oxford): Sephardim in Israel and the critique of secularism

22 April
Clemence Boulouque (Columbia University):
In praise of the Orient: Elia Benamozegh’s Sephardic Modernities


20 May
Gabriel Abensour (Hebrew University of Jerusalem): Rabbi Yosef Knafo’s Struggle for Democratization of Knowledge in Fin de Siècle Essaouira

17 June
Yuval Evri (King’s College London) and Angy Cohen (University of Calgary): Foreign in a familiar land: language and belonging in the work of Jacqueline Kahanoff, Albert Memmi, and Jacques Derrida.

Sign-up for the Webinar Series Now!
(Complimentary RSVP)


The intention of this series is to spark the interest in processes of Jewish modernization not exclusively mediated by Europeanization. The questions we will be dealing with are related to non-dichotomic identities, multiplicity and loss of language, colonization, social transformation, and intellectual responses to it. We will approach these questions by looking at Jewish-Arab influences, the Sephardi response to European modernization, the responses of the rabbinic leadership and the work of Sephardi intellectuals.

Series organized by Yuval Evri (King’s College London) and Angy Cohen (University of Calgary).

There will be a change to Daylight Saving Time in March, so the event times in North America will remain the same, but the event time in your area may change, depending on your location. The start time on Feb. 18 is 11 a.m. (MST), 1 p.m. (EST), 6 p.m. (GMT), 7 p.m. (Madrid; GMT +1); on March through June events, the start time will be 11 a.m. (MDT), 1 p.m. (EDT).


The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Persian Experience:

Persian Music Workshop


Explore Persian music with singer, creator, composer, and researcher Maureen Nehedar

Sunday, 21 February at 12:00PM EST

Sign-up Now!



About Maureen:
Maureen Nehedar is an Israeli singer, creator, composer, and researcher. She has created a revival of Persian-Jewish tradition poetry (Piyutim). In August 2018 she released her new Piyyutim CD ‘Why do you stand afar’, in 2016 she released the CD ‘Gole Gandom’ and In 2014 she released the album “Asleep in the Bosom of Childhood’.In 2019 she won the Neve Shechter Prize and The Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts for Original Israeli Work.


Click here to find out more about our upcoming course,
The Persian Experience”.


Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Persian Experience:

East and West - Can the Two Walk Together?


Join us for an experiential workshop with poet Esther Shkalim where she will share about her life as a Persian Jew in Israel, accompanied by readings from her well-received works Sharkiya and What a Woman Must Know, published by Kinneret-Zemura-Bitan.

As part of “The Persian Experience,” East and West: Can the Two Walk Together? (Amos 3:3) is a discussion with poet Esther Shkalim on a Mizrahi woman in a Western, secular society.

Shkalim will discuss the following questions:
How does a woman from a Mizrahi traditional patriarchal society contend with Western, modern, secular Israeli society?
What is her relationship to the status of women in Mizrahi society, Orthodox society, and Israeli society?
How does she approach the ethnic mosaic of Israeli society?


Tuesday, 23 February at 12:00PM EST

Sign-up Now!


About the speaker:
Esther Shkalim is a poet of Persian heritage who researches Jewish diasporas of the East, with a focus on culture and community. Her two books, “Sharkiya” and “What a Woman Must Know” were published by Kinneret-Zemura-Bitan. In addition, she has published many poems in different books and journals, educational texts, and literary journals. Her poems are studied in universities, colleges and schools across Israel.


Click here to find out more about our upcoming course,
The Persian Experience”.


Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Persian Experience:

Uprooted from Iran with Sharona Mizrahi


In this part of “The Persian Experience” series, Sharona Mizrahi shares her personal story

Sunday, 28 February at 12:00PM EST

Sign-up Now!



About the speaker:
Sharona was born in Kerman, Iran. Her great-grandparents came from Hamadan and Yazd. Sharona’s great-grandparents escaped the famine of 1917-1920 in Hamadan, the city mentioned in the Book of Esther as Hegmatana or Ekbatana, the capitol of the Persian Empire during Acheshverosh’s regime.

Sharona’s oldest brother, Kurosh, has traced her family’s lineage back six generations. Sharona attended public school in Iran until her first year of high school. Then in 1984, she, along with two sisters and one brother Z”L, escaped from Iran. One night in August, two weeks prior to Rosh Hashanah, smugglers arrived in the middle of the night and the Mizrahi family dropped everything and left their house to escape.
In this talk, Sharona will give a brief history of her family and their one-year journey to the United States.


Click here to find out more about our upcoming course,
The Persian Experience”.


Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

New Works Wednesdays

In our extended New Works Wednesdays series, Daniel Tsadik discusses his new book,
“The Jews of Iran and Rabbinic Literature: New Perspectives.”

Dr. Tsadik’s book addresses the question of Iranian Jewry’s familiarity with rabbinic literature from the 16th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Many of the book’s theses challenge and revise prevailing views that see this Jewry as largely isolated from world Jewry and its rabbinic legacy.


Wednesday, 3 March at 12:00PM EST


Sign-up Now!



About the author:
A Fulbright scholar, Dr. Daniel Tsadik obtained his PhD in 2002 from the Yale University History Department. He authored several articles, a book entitled “Between Foreigners and Shi‘is: Nineteenth-Century Iran and its Jewish Minority” (Stanford University Press, 2007), another book entitled “The Jews of Iran and Rabbinic Literature: New Perspectives” (2019) which won the (Israel) Prime Minister Prize, and co-edited the book “Iran, Israel and the Jews: Symbiosis and Conflict from the Archaemenids to the Islamic Republic” (2019).
From 2008 to 2020, Professor Tsadik taught at Yeshiva University, where he served as Associate Professor of Sephardic and Iranian Studies. His current research is on Shi‘ite-Jewish polemics.


Order your copy of “The Jews of Iran and Rabbinic Literature: New Perspectives” now

Sponsorship opportunities available:
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 visithttps://courses.instituteofjewishexperience.org/

Please donate now via PayPal to support the American Sephardi Federation

With your generous, tax-deductible donation, the ASF can cultivate and advocate, preserve and promote, as well as educate and empower!

For more information about sponsorship opportunities: email or leave a message  at 212.294.8350. To donate by mail,  please send a check payable to “American Sephardi Federation,” 15 W 16th St., New York, NY, 10011

Together, we can go from strength to strength in the New Year!

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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).

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