In Memory of Alber Elbaz, A”H, the award-winning Moroccan-Israeli fashion designer, who was “a truly emphatic and generous designer, both in the clothes he made and in the way he conducted himself within the business. The graceful lines of his dresses mimicked the graceful lines of his life.”
Click here to dedicate a future issue in honor or memory of a loved one.
Thank you to Sephardi World Weekly Patrons Professor Rifka Cook, Maria Gabriela Borrego Medina, Rachel Amar, Deborah Arellano, and Distinguished ASF Vice President Gwen Zuares! Become a Patron today!
During Passover, Iranian regime-backed Houthis expelled almost all of Yemen’s last Jews. They continue to illegally imprison Levi Salem Musa Marhabi. Don’t turn away. Don’t close your eyes. Don’t let another group of Jews become forgotten refugees. Join the ASF’s campaign to #FreeLeviMarhabi.
In 1994, Ross Brann, Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies at Cornell University, won the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Sephardic Studies for The Compunctious Poet: Cultural Ambiguity and Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain, his study of Medieval Hebrew poets who had fun when they were young, repented when old, but who never stopped composing verses. Brann’s latest offering is Iberian Moorings: Al-Andalus, Sefarad, and the Tropes of Exceptionalism, and in it he examines the charm of Andalusian excellence, “tracing how Islamic al-Andalus and Jewish Sefarad were invested with special political, cultural and historical significance across the Middle Ages.”
In 2016, The Center for Jewish History’s Founder and Distinguished ASF Board Member Bruce Slovin sponsored a lecture series that included Professor Brann’s “An Intimate Rivalry: The Jews and Classical Islam.” Listen as ASF Broome & Allen Fellow Richard Sassoon asks an important question.
Torah for Our Times: Merits and Protection of Am Yisrael, 6 May 2021 (Photo courtesy of Ohr Torah Stone)
Rabbanit Shira Marili Mirvis is the first Israeli woman appointed to be the rabbinic leader of an Orthodox synagogue. In this fascinating lecture (beginning at 3:42), the trailblazing Rabbanit opens with a story about her beloved Moroccan grandmother and her connection to the monumental figure of R’Shimon Bar Yohai. Rabbanit Mirvis then goes on to examine what R’Shimon Bar Yohai can teach us about balancing spirituality, physicality, and the needs of the community, as well as how we can favorably judge our fellow Jews today.
R’Daniel Bouskila is a leading voice of Classic Sephardi Judaism in the contemporary Jewish public sphere. In this fascinating article, R’Bouskila interviews Rabbanit Shira Marili Mirvis, “the first-ever Israeli woman appointed to be the sole rabbinic leader of an Orthodox synagogue.” Rabbanit Mirvis points out that both of her parents “‘were born and raised in Morocco, and our home was deeply entrenched in Moroccan-Sephardic traditions. Those traditions included a love for Torah and a deep respect for our Torah sages.’” What’s more, “‘My decision to pursue advanced Talmud study… is actually a result of my Sephardic-Moroccan upbringing.’”
As a B.A. student at Colorado College, Kimberly Sánchez studied her very small hometown of San Luis, which also happens to be Colorado’s oldest town. In the course of her research, she discovered San Luis residents with Crypto-Jewish heritage: “On their deathbeds, I’ve heard that an elderly woman or man would say, ‘… This is who our family is, this is what my parents told me, and this is who we are.’” Soon she discovered Jewish roots in her own family, too, and some strange things from her past started to make sense, like the distinctive form of Spanish she spoke (with elements of Ladino) and the reason she could only eat animals with cloven hooves (i.e., kosher dietary laws).
Egyptian Jews in 19th and 20th centuries were a tremendously diverse and vibrant community, comprised of indigenous Jews (Rabbanites and Karaites) whose families had been living in Egypt for hundreds of years, joined by Jews from near and far attracted by the economic upswing under Muhammad 'Ali, the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) and the start of British rule (1882). European influence on life in Egypt was manifold, especially among the urban upper and middle classes of which most Jews were part. One result was, significant changes in the cultural, social and religious beliefs and behaviors of many segments of the Jewish community. These changes raised many novel issues requiring creative and wise responses on the part of the rabbis of Egypt. To their great credit, the leaders of Egypt's two largest Jewish communities—Cairo and Alexandria—made excellent decisions in their choice of rabbis, of whom quite a few combined deep classical Sephardic rabbinic learning with a willingness to creatively address a series of major issues and come up with novel and courageous decisions and guidelines for their community. In our upcoming two sessions we will study together and discuss several of their most interesting positions as reflected in their own words.
Thursday, 6 and 13 May @ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 7PM Cairo/Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
About the speaker:
Zvi Zohar is a Senior Research Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He is the Chauncey Stillman Professor of Sephardic Law and Ethics at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches in the Faculties of Law and Jewish Studies. He also heads the Rappaport Center for Assimilation Research and the Strengthening of Jewish Vitality, and is editor in chief of the international Journal of Law, Religion and State. At Shalom Hartman Institute, he heads the Alan and Loraine Fischer Family Center for Halakha.
Professor Zohar’s main area of research is the history and development of halakha from the earliest times to present. He has a special interest in the halakhic writings of Greater Sephardic rabbis in modern times. Professor Zohar has published more than 100 books and scholarly articles in Hebrew, English, French, and German.
His most recent book in English, Rabbinic Creativity in the Modern Middle East, was published in 2013 by the Hartman Institute’s Kogod Library of Judaic Studies in conjunction with Bloomington Academic Press.
As we are limited in our outings, we invite you to a virtual coffeehouse. Coffeehouses in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Cairo were an urban hub for Jewish working and middle-class men, as well as for a growing number of women. Together with Dr. Alon Tam we will recreate the atmosphere with music, good stories, and good conversation. Each person who registers at least a week in advance will receive some traditional (kosher) coffee and treats to share together at the coffee house.
Traditionally, Cairo’s coffeehouses hosted politicians, revolutionaries, and journalists; immigrants and locals; and people from different ethnic, racial, and religious communities. Coffeehouses were a fundamental social, cultural, and political institution for Jews from across the region. In our virtual coffeehouse we will introduce the history of coffeehouses in Egypt, especially in Cairo listen to some music, discuss the coffee and treats, and share some culture of the time and place.
Deliveries are limited to mainland US and Israel. Space is limited to 25 participants. Register this week!
Co-Presented by the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania
About the speaker:
Dr. Alon Tam is a social and cultural historian of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times, and of that region’s Jewish communities. His research interests broadly include urban history, social relations and identities, historical anthropology, culture and politics. Tam received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 with an award-winning dissertation about Cairo’s coffeehouses, while his current research focuses on Jewish social identities in twentieth century Cairo. A recent fellow at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies in Philadelphia, Tam presently holds the Rabin-Shvidler Postdoctoral Fellowship at Columbia and Fordham.
Jewish history runs very deep in the Caucasus—an ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse region at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. Jewish communities have existed continuously in Georgia, Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus (including Dagestan and Chechnya) for centuries, if not millennia. Join us in exploring the histories and cultures of this region’s oldest Jewish communities. Our first session will focus on Kavkazi Jews (also known as Mountain Jews, Gorsky Jews, or Juhuro), and the second session will highlight the story of Georgian Jews.
Sunday, 27 May & 3 June @ 9AM PDT ◊ 12PM EDT ◊ 5PM London ◊ 7PM Jerusalem ◊ 8PM Dubai
About the speaker:
Born in Uzbekistan and currently based in Seattle, Ruben Shimonov is an educator, community builder, and social entrepreneur with a passion for Jewish diversity. He previously served as Director of Community Engagement and Education at Queens College Hillel. Currently, Ruben is the Founding Executive Director of the Sephardic Mizrahi Q Network, an organization that is building a supportive and much-needed community for LGBTQ+ Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. He also serves as Vice President of Education & Community Engagement on the young leadership board of the American Sephardi Federation (ASF), Director of Educational Experiences & Programming for the Muslim-Jewish Solidarity Committee, and Director of ASF’s Sephardi House Fellowship—a year-long learning and enrichment program for college student leaders. He is an alumnus of the COJECO Blueprint and Nahum Goldmann Fellowships for his work in Jewish social innovation, and has been listed among The Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36” young Jewish community leaders and changemakers. Ruben has lectured extensively throughout the world on the histories and cultures of various Sephardic and Mizrahi communities. He is also a visual artist specializing in multilingual calligraphy that interweaves Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. He uses his artistry to deepen Muslim-Jewish interfaith learning and community building.
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 EDT
(11:00AM MDT)
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.
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).
Tell Your Sephardi-Mizrahi Story
With award winning author Gila Green
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.
Special bonus for this session: 4,500 manuscript editing at the end of the course included.
On Thursdays
27 May- 24 June at 11:00AM EDT 5 online sessions
Sign-up Now! (Registration required for the full course; Space is limited)
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 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.
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.
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.
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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).
