Sephardic Culinary History with Chef Hélène Jawhara-Piñer

Episode VII:
Turrón and Conversos

Sephardi Culinary History 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, 28 February at 10:00AM EST

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Pre-order your copy of “Sephardi: Cooking the History.
Recipes of the Jews of Spain and the Diaspora, from the 13th Century Onwards” now

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 Ideas Monthly, 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.

Sponsorship and Naming opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience and National Museum of American Jewish History present:

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

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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

2021 Combat Anti-Semitism Movement Annual Summit


The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) is a global, interfaith coalition of over 310,000 grassroots members and over 300 partner organizations. Our coalition works tirelessly to eradicate Jew-hatred from the world. On March 1st, 2021, CAM will celebrate the second anniversary of its founding, and we want you to be a part of it!

Join us and our coalition of partners at the first-ever Combat Anti-Semitism Movement Annual Global Summit.

You will hear from a diverse group of international leaders and grassroots activists as we celebrate the last year’s achievements and discuss challenges that lie ahead. Anti-Semitism exists on all ends of the ideological spectrum and on all corners of the globe. We can only make a difference if we come together to fight it.

Monday, 1 March at 1:00PM EST

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The ASF Institute of Jewish Experience presents:

The Purim Experience:
The Jews of the Great Silk Road

Follow in the footsteps of the Bukharian Jewish merchants on the Silk Road and discover the ancient network of trade routes that were for centuries crucial to Eurasian cultural interaction. Explore with us the history of these roads connecting East and West, stretching from the Korean peninsula and Japan to the Mediterranean Sea.

Understand the impact and the contribution that Central Asia's Jewish communities of today's Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan made towards the development of this ancient path.

We will learn about the Jewish presence in this area for over 2000 years, will look into their houses and read into the letters that the Jews of Central Asia exchanged for centuries with their fellow European Jewish communities.

Monday, 1 March at 12:00PM EST

Sign-up Now!


About the speaker:
Manashe Khaimov is an Adjunct Professor in Jewish Studies, with a specialty in History and Culture of the Bukharian Jews at Queens College. Manashe was born in a city along the Silk Road, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where his ancestors lived for over 2000 years, which makes Manashe’s Jewish identity simultaneously Bukharian, Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Russian speaking.

He is a fourth generation community organizer, informal Jewish educator, and a lifelong learner who brings his passion working with Jewish community. He is founding director and social innovator of the Bukharian Jewish Union, the founder of AskBobo.org, the only Bukharian online dictionary and the founder of The Jewish Silk Road Tours ™ walking tours in NYC. Manashe researched and produced several documentaries about Bukharian Jewish community as part of the Bukharian Lens project: The Untold Story of Bukharian Jews; The Untold Story of Bukharian Jews and Ashkenazi Jews Who Were Evacuated During WWII to Central Asia; Bukharian Roots. Manashe launched MEROS: Center for Bukharian Jewish Research & Identity at Queens College Hillel.

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

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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:

New Works Wednesdays

In our extended New Works Wednesdays series, Ross Shepard Kraemer discusses her new book
“The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews.”

“The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity” examines the fate of Jews living in the Mediterranean Jewish diaspora after the Roman emperor Constantine threw his patronage to the emerging orthodox (Nicene) Christian churches.

Wednesday, 10 March at 12:00PM EST

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About the author:
Ross Shepard Kraemer is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies and Judaic Studies at Brown University, where she specialized in early Christianity and other religions of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, including ancient Judaism. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from Princeton University, and a B.A. from Smith College. Her many publications have focused particularly on gender and women's religions in the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, and on aspects of Jews and Judaism in the late antique Mediterranean diaspora.

Click here to learn more about “The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity: What Christianity Cost the Jews” 

Sponsorship opportunities available:
info@americansephardi.org

The Department of Anthropology & Archeology at the University of Calgary, King’s College London, the International Network of Jewish Thought (Universidad Complutense of Madrid), & the American Sephardi Federation present:
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 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
Course opens on 28 February

Sign-up now!

Jews lived in the Middle East, and particularly Iran, even before the advent of Islam. Iran has a long history with varying dynasties, dynastic changes, and evolving borders and Jews have been there continuously throughout these changes. Throughout the ascent of Islam in its different forms, Jews were integrated at times more and at times less economically. There were times of intellectual and spiritual growth as well as suppression and persecution. All this will be addressed and discussed in a historical context.

The course is divided into seven units:

1. The Ancient Period – the settlement of the Jews in Iran, Acaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanian times
2. 7th to 9th Centuries – The emergence of Islam, Islam and the Jews, Dhimma, and Jewish religious streams
3. 13th to 18th centuries – Mongols, Jewish Persian poets, Safavid times
4. Mid-18th century to 19th century – Invasion, dynasties, and persecutions
5. The latter part of the 19th century – Interactions with World Jewry, legal status and conversions
6. Early 20th century – Modernization and education, constitution revolution, Zionism
7. The 20th century – Pahlavi dynasty, Revolution, Mashadis, and Migration

Dr. Daniel Tsadik
Dr. Daniel Tsadik, a former professor of Sephardic and Iranian Studies at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, has been awarded The Prime Minister’s Prize (Israel) in 2020 for the Encouragement and Empowerment of Jewish Communities in Arab Countries and Iran for The Jews of Iran and Rabbinic Literature: New Perspectives, published by Mosad Ha-Rav Kook.
Tsadik researches the modern history of Iran, Shi'ah Islam, and Iran's religious minorities. A Fulbright scholar, he earned his Ph.D from the History Department at Yale University.

Dr. David Yeroushalmy
Born in Tehran, David Yeroushalmy completed his primary and part of his secondary education at the Alliance Israelite school in Tehran. He immigrated to Israel in 1961 and upon completing his secondary education he enrolled in the Department of Middle Eastern History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Completing his B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies and in Political Science, he served in the Israeli Army as an officer. He pursued his doctoral studies at Colombia University New York, in the Department of Middle East Languages and Cultures. He specialized in Persian and Hebrew languages and literatures. D. Yeroushalmy was appointed lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel-Aviv University, where he has been teaching Persian language and Iranian history and culture. His Book entitled The Judeo-Persian Poet Emrani and His Book of Treasure, was published by E.J. Brill Publishers, Leiden, in 1995. Dr. Yeroushalmy's current research focuses on the communal and cultural history of Iranian Jewry in the course of the nineteen-century.

Ms. Lerone Edalati
Lerone Edalati is a member of the Mashadi community of New York. In addition to her role as Associate Director of Donor Relations at ISEF, she researches and records the history and current practices of the Mashadi Jews. She holds a BA from NYU in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from The Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a Broome & Allen Fellow at the American Sephardi Federation and is currently gathering oral histories of Iranian Jews in NY.

Dr. Hilda Nissimi
Dr. Hilda Nissimi is the chair of the Generatl History Department at Bar Ilan University. Her most current research focuses on the formation adn change of identity layers in crypto-religious communities, with a particular focus on Mashadi Jews. Her book, The Crypto-Jewish Mashadis, was published in 1985 and remains the main text on the study of that population. She has written numerous articles on identity and forced conversions.

This course is made possible with the support of The Shazar Center, Israel.

For more information and other ASF IJE online course offerings visit: https://courses.instituteofjewishexperience.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/