In Memory of the victims and survivors of the Farhud, the two-day, Nazi-instigated attack on Babylonian Jewry that took place 80 years ago on 1-2 June 1941 at Baghdad, Iraq.
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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.
David A. Dangoor, Exilarch of The Exilarch Foundation, Vice-President of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq (WOJI), and President of Jewish Renaissance (Photo courtesy of JNS)
David A. Dangoor is an Iraqi-Jewish businessman and philanthropist living in the UK who established a global project to “Remember the Farhud.” Well-versed in the history of the Farhud, Dangoor knows that instigators from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood like Haj Amin al-Husseini whipped the masses into a frenzy by concocting, “lies about Jewish takeover attempts to invade and destroy al-Aqsa Mosque… Unfortunately, it is a canard that has not gone away since and raises its head whenever necessary for those who wish to sew divisions in Israel.” What can we learn from the Farhud? That peace is best served by thoroughly defeating extremist forces and their lies: “It is exactly this type of incitement that Israeli politicians, religious leaders and other opinion-shapers should confront and demolish.”
Amin al-Husseini visits Trebbin, a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, 1942 (Photo courtesy of Kedem Auction House/Tablet Magazine)
Anyone who desires to see a tolerant and pluralist Middle East should learn about the Farhud, the 1941 pogrom against Iraqi Jewry. In this video presentation, Maurice Shohet, President of the World Organization of Iraqi Jews and an ASF Advisory Board Member, delineates the history of the Farhud for Congregation Bene Naharayim (the Iraqi Synagogue in Queens), including how the forces of Islamism and Nazism combined in inciting and executing the pogrom.
Special Feature: A Family’s Farhoud Remembrance
by David E.R. Dangoor
The Dangoor home on the banks of the Tigris river, Baghdad, Iraq, circa 1920s (Photo courtesy of The Scribe)
“This is as it was told to me by my father (Salim Eliahou Dangoor) and several members of his family.
Trouble was brewing. The third week of May my father’s Auntie’s (Naima Peress’) husband was asked to help to bring back Naim, my father’s brother, from the army. His camp had been bombarded by the British. He succeeded and Naim came home safely. Then in the morning of June 2nd, at the heat of Farhoud, my father’s Auntie and family heard a strong knock on our door. My father’s Grandfather Shaoul Khazma was staying in the house with the family. They were bracing themselves for the worst. Then a familiar voice said ‘Auntie open the door’. It was my father. He had put on his brother Naim’s uniform and riding trousers, and he was armed with a gun.
My father announced that he came to check on the family to make sure they were safe and alright. He then went to check on his father’s office and warehouse, which he discovered had been completely looted. He chased away intruders and later that evening returned home. My father loved his family and fear could not hold him back. He had to make sure they were alright and defend them if necessary.”
Why should we remember the Farhud? It’s not simply a matter of commemorating past atrocities. Islamism is a toxically violent, anti-Semitic, and totalitarian ideology that emerged in the first half of the 20th century with organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, and the 1941 Farhud was one of the first examples of the Islamist capacity for generating death and destruction.
The Farhud, an antisemitic attack on Baghdadi Jews and Jewish-owned property, took place during the holiday of Shabu’ot in 1941. This year marks 80 years since Iraq’s “forgotten pogrom,” and Yali Werzberger commemorates the Farhud by recounting the history behind the attack, including the Nazi dimension. Werzberger also incorporates the perspective of her grandmother, Rachel, a Baghdadi-Jew born and raised in Bombay, India, who lost family in the Farhud but who was still able to marvel, “at the Divine Hand that enabled the Jews of Baghdad, a community of thousands upon thousands of people, leave the way of life they had for over 2,500 years, carrying nothing more than a suitcase, and thanking Hashem that we are able to sit in peace remembering those who perished. May their memories be a blessing.”
Born in Baghdad in 1932, Professor Shmuel Moreh made Aliyah to Israel in 1951 and went on to a distinguished career as a scholar of Arabic literature, winning the Israel Prize for Middle Eastern Studies in 1999. But Moreh wasn’t your typical academic; he also knew how to box. That skill came in handy during the Farhud, when Moreh faced off against Faisal al-Gaylani, the son of Iraq’s pro-Nazi Prime Minister: “When the boy threatened to knock his eye out with a stick, Shmuel punched Faisal and the boy went running to their Christian headmistress.”
Professor Shmuel Moreh, A”H
(Photo courtesy of Ksenia Svetlova/The Jerusalem Post)
Mufti Haj Amin el Husseini giving the Nazi salute to soldiers he apparently recruited, Wiener Illustierte, 12 January 1944
(Photo courtesy of MidEast Web for Coexistence)
Dr. Edy Cohen, The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Nazi propaganda was largely responsible for instigating the Farhud (Farhoud), the two-day attack on Iraqi Jewry in June 1941. Inspiration for the Fahud can be traced to two figures, the German ambassador to Baghdad, Dr. Fritz Grobba, and the exiled mufti from Jerusalem and Nazi sympathizer and ultimately collaborator, Hajj Amin El Husseini. Husseini arrived in Baghdad in 1939 with a long track record of instigating anti-Jewish violence, “from the April 1920 Jerusalem pogrom… to the 1929 riots in which 133 Jews were murdered and hundreds injured, to the 1936-39 ‘revolt’ in which hundreds of Jews were murdered.”
Dorota Molin is a Semitic linguist who works at the University of Cambridge, specializing in, “Neo-Aramaic − the language of Jewish and Christian minorities from Kurdish Iraq.” Molin’s linguistic study led her to Sarah Adaqi, a Aramaic-speaking Jew who grew up in Kurdistan but who, at age eleven, lived through the Farhud, the 1941 Baghdad-based, anti-Jewish pogrom. In this extended post, Molin tells Adaqi’s story, a hair-raising chronicle of violence, confusion, and survival, dotted with occasional tales of humanity: “In Baghdad, there were also Muslims who loved the Jews. Such Muslims would help their Jewish neighbours by writing on their neighbours’ doors ‘this house is Muslim’. If a house had this sign, the rioters wouldn’t touch it. But if a house didn’t have such a sign, they would break in and kill those who were inside.”
Sarah Adaqi at 89, Jerusalem, Israel
(Photo courtesy of Dorota Molin/The Times of Israel)
Nazi Germany’s involvement in spreading antisemitism and destroying Middle Eastern Jewish communities during—e.g., the alliance with Haj Amin al-Husseini, publishing a cynically abridged Mein Kampf translation in Arabic, inspiring the Farhud pogrom—and after World War II is a critical but overlooked chapter in 20th century history. Now, Daniel Sasson, an Baghdad-born, 85-year-old Israeli, sheds light on part of that story in his recently published, Hebrew-language work, The Untold Story: The First and Last Ghetto in Iraq. In particular, Sasson relates how an alliance between Hitler and Iraqi Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gaylani led to the establishment of a ghetto in Diwaniya, a small city south of Baghdad: “‘[W]e knew that it was Nazi-inspired and that if allowed to continue, ghettos would become slaughterhouses to expel Jews living in the Middle East.’” The ghetto ended thanks to the British invasion and occupation of Iraq.
“During two days of unprecedented brutality over Shavu’ot 1941, hundreds of innocent Jews were murdered in Iraq,with many more injured, women raped, and businesses, stores, and homes looted and destroyed.
It was the beginning of the end for a community that had existed for over 2700 years, and the first of a number of violent episodes leading to the destruction of the ancient Jewish communities of the Arab world.
Please join us for this important webinar commemoration, which will feature the Hon. Irwin Cotier and Rabbi Joseph Dweck. Other speakers are David Khedher Basson, Cantor Daniel Benlolo, Yvonne Green, Bea Lewkowicz, Rabbi Maimon Pinto, Professor Efraim Sadka, Shimon Samuels, Yair Szlak, and Eta Yudin.”
Sunday, 30 May, 2021, at 12:00 PM (EDT), 17:00 (UK), 18:00 (Europe), 19:00 (Israel)
Show your support! Your generous contribution supports Chef Jawhara Piñer’s forthcoming publications and the ASF Institute of Jewish Experience
Pre-order your copy of “Sephardi: Cooking the History.
Recipes of the Jews of Spain and the Diaspora, from the 13th Century Onwards”
(recently ranked “#1 New Release in Spanish Cooking, Food & Wine” on Amazon).
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 this session of our New Works Wednesdays series, Claude Stuczynski will discuss Jesuit-converso interactions with Robert Markys and James Bernauer.
The special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies introduces the phenomenon of Jesuit-converso interactions, mostly in the early modern Iberian world. It summarizes the shifting attitudes of the Society of Jesus vis-à-vis New Christians of Jewish origin as actual or potential Jesuits and maps the multifaceted and variegated interplay between Jesuit priests and converso laymen, understood as a “tragic couple” relationship. This brief survey emphasizes the historiographical contribution of the last generations of Jesuit scholars, and of the five articles included in this special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies, to disclose a more overt “historical memory” of the Society of Jesus.
About the speakers: Claude B. Stuczynski is an Associate Professor at the Department of General History (Bar-Ilan University), three times fellow at The Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and past board member of the Center for the Study of Conversions and Interreligious Encounters (CSOC) at Ben-Gurion University.
Robert A. Maryks, PhD (2006), Fordham University, has published widely on the history of the Jesuits, including The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews (Brill, 2010). He is the editor of the Journal of Jesuit Studies; Brill’s Jesuit Studies Book Series, Jesuit Historiography Online, and Brill Research Perspectives in Jesuit Studies.
James Bernauer, S.J., is Kraft Family Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Boston College. For twelve years he served as the Director of the Boston College Center of Jewish-Christian Learning.
For more about the Journal of Jesuit Studies: https://brill.com/view/journals/jjs/8/2/jjs.8.issue-2.xml
A magnificent new cantata, composed by Jonathan Comisar,
based on George Washington’s historic
Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island
Composer Jonathan Comisar’s stunning new cantata, No Bigotry No Sanction, commissioned by Congregation Keneseth Israel in the Philadelphia suburb of Elkins Park, PA, embodies touchstones of Jewish and American music in a choral-orchestral setting.
The pre-recorded, streamed performance on June 2nd at 7 PM, conducted by Kensho Watanabe, features members of The Philadelphia Orchestra and a multicultural choir representing 17 languages.
The program includes introductory readings by renowned historical interpretive actor Dean Malissa, as “George Washington,” and a post-performance discussion with composer Jonathan Comisar and Congregation Keneseth Israel Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D., a professor of American Jewish History. The conversation will be moderated by Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Sam Katz of History Making Productions.
Promotional partners for the June 2nd performance of Comisar’s No Bigotry No Sanction are the Center for Jewish History, the American Society for Jewish Music, YIVO, the American Sephardi Federation, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the Lowell Milken Center for the Music of American Jewish Experience, American Conference of Cantors, the Cantors Assembly, the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the American Jewish Archives, and the American Jewish Committee.
“I love the way that the music starts out by evoking ancient Jewish sadness only to erupt into the excitement of fife and drums in the new American setting brought about by the Constitution. You save your most momentous music for Washington's most profound words—to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance—and you invest them with all the weight and majesty they deserve.” – Ron Chernow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Washington: A Life
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.
Thursday, 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.
Meet author
Daniela Weil
In conversation with historian
Noah L. Gelfand, Ph.D.
about THE DIARY OF ASSER LEVY
First Jewish Citizen of New York
Daniela Weil will discuss her recent work of historical fiction, which introduces young readers to the real-life figure of Asser Levy, the first permanent Jewish resident of Manhattan. Levy fled persecution in Recife, Brazil, arriving in New Amsterdam in 1654, where he helped lead the fight for religious and civil rights that first gave shape to the character of modern-day New York. This dramatic story will interest educators and students, and also parents and grandparents.
But Isabel's biggest secret is this: Though the Perezes claim to be New Christians, they still practice Judaism in the refuge of their own home. When the Spanish Inquisition reaches her small town determined to punish such judaizers, Isabel finds herself in more danger than she could ever have imagined. Amid the threat of discovery, she and Diego will have to fight for their lives in a quest to truly be free.
A timeless love story about identity, religious intolerance, and female empowerment, The Poetry of Secrets will sweep readers away with its lush lyricism and themes that continue to resonate today.
Co-Sponsored by: The Holland Society of New York, Andrew S. Terhune, The American Sephardi Federation, The Netherland-American Foundation, and The New York Historical Society
A Zoom link and password will be emailed to registered participants the day before the program.
About the speakers: Daniela Weil was born in Brazil. She graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in Biology. In addition to writing books, Daniela Weil has worked as a scientific illustrator and has written several science and history articles for children's magazines. In 2014, she began research on a familiar story from her home country: that Jews from Brazil had “founded” the Jewish community in New York in the 1600’s. Five years of research on several continents documented the story of the ship that carried the first group of Jewish refugees from Brazil to Manhattan, where they initiated the legal fight for religious rights.
Noah L. Gelfand, Doctoral Lecturer at Hunter College, teaches courses on early United States History and Native American History. He earned his Ph.D. from New York University. Among his awards are a Quinn Foundation fellowship from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and a Touro National Heritage Trust fellowship from the John Carter Brown Library. He is currently working on a book about the Jewish Atlantic world in the early modern era.
In this New Works Wednesdays session, Dr. Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah discusses her new book “Baghdadi Jewish Networks in the Age of Nationalism.”
The book traces the participation of Baghdadi Jews in Jewish transnational networks from the mid-nineteenth century until the mass exodus of Jews from Iraq between 1948 and 1951. Each chapter explores different components of how Jews in Iraq participated in global Jewish civil society through the modernization of communal leadership, Baghdadi satellite communities, transnational Jewish philanthropy and secular Jewish education. The final chapter presents three case studies that demonstrate the interconnectivity between different iterations of transnational Jewish networks. This work significantly expands our understanding of modern Iraqi Jewish society by going beyond its engagement with Arab/Iraqi nationalism or Zionism/anti-Zionism to explore Baghdadi participation within Jewish transnational networks.
About the speaker: Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah received her doctorate from Leiden University, in the Netherlands in 2019, specializing in the modern history of Jewish communities in the Islamic world. During her PhD she worked in Prof. Heleen Murre-van den Berg’s research project “Arabic and its Alternatives: Religious Minorities in the Formative Years of the Modern Middle East (1920-1950).” A revised version of her dissertation entitled "Baghdadi Jewish Networks in the Age of Nationalism" (Brill) was recently published. Following the conferring of her doctorate, she was awarded a Rothschild Hanadiv Europe post-doctoral fellowship for the research project ‘Jewish Transnationalism in the Age of Nationalism: Global Jewish Philanthropy 1918-1948’ also at Leiden University.
For more about the book (25% discount code: 72100): https://brill.com/view/title/56163
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 12:00PM EDT
(10:00AM MDT) PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME
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).
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).
