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31 August 2018
Mazal Tov/Mabrouk to both American Jewish Historical Society President Bernard Michael and American Sephardi Federation President David Dangoor on their appointments to serve as The Center for Jewish History’s new Co-Chair (along with Bruce Slovin, CJH’s Founder and a Distinguished Member of ASF’s Board of Directors) and Vice Chair, respectively. |
Mazal Tov/Mabrouk to both American Jewish Historical Society President Bernard Michael and American Sephardi Federation President David Dangoor on their appointments to serve as The Center for Jewish History’s new Co-Chair (along with Bruce Slovin, CJH’s Founder and a Distinguished Member of ASF’s Board of Directors) and Vice Chair, respectively.
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“Continuity, Persian Style” By Tabby Rafael, The Jewish Journal Tabby Rafael calls herself an intermarried Jew, but she uses the term in a relative sense: “That is to say, I am a Jew from Tehran who married a Jew from Shiraz, Iran.” Rafael deeply loves Persian Jewish traditions and the people who preserve them, such as, “Those wonderful women—their hearts full of pride and their ankles swollen from 45 years of housework—[who] sing in a cappella unison about a joyful bride and groom.” But she is concerned for the tradition’s future. At a recent Persian wedding in L.A., while the women with swollen ankles were singing a cappella, “A lot of the younger folks were scrolling on their phones.”
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By Tabby Rafael, The Jewish Journal
(Photo courtesy of Eden Ben-Zaken/Bandcamp)
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“20 percent of El Paso families may have Jewish roots, rabbi says; find out if you do” By María Cortés González, El Paso Times Four years ago, Bridgeport-born and JTS-educated Rabbi Stephen Leon established The Anusim Center in El Paso, Texas, in order, “To educate the descendants of the Sephardim who were forcibly converted from their faith or expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, and to provide a path of return to those who desire to reclaim their Jewish ancestral heritage.” Recently, R’Leon hosted the city’s “15th Annual Anusim Conference.” According to R’Leon, “10 percent to 20 percent of the non-Jewish population of El Paso… have Sephardic Jewish ancestry.”
To learn more about Rabbi Leon read August’s Sephardi Ideas Monthly: Across the Borderland: Crypto-Jews in the American Southwest. |
By María Cortés González, El Paso Times
To learn more about Rabbi Leon read August’s Sephardi Ideas Monthly: Across the Borderland: Crypto-Jews in the American Southwest.
The ASF’s Sephardi Scholars Series Presents:
Bayt Farhi and the Sephardic Palaces of Ottoman Damascus
Monday, 17 September, at 7:00PM
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Please click here to make a reservation
Professor Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis will present new research on the remarkable courtyard houses of the Farhi and other important Sephardic families in late 18th/early 19th century Damascus.
Her analysis of architecture and décor offers a lens into the Damascene Jewish community and its interaction with Ottoman culture.
Professor Elizabeth Macaulay-Lewis, an active archaeologist and architectural historian, is the author of Bayt Farhi and the Sephardic Palaces of Ottoman Damascus in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries (American Schools of Oriental Research, 2018). She currently teaches at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York (CUNY), where she also serves as the Acting Executive Officer in M.A. in Liberal Studies and directs the M.A. in Liberal Studies concentration in Archaeology of the Classical, Late Antique, and Islamic Worlds. She is the Deputy Director of Manar al-Athar, an open-access digital humanities resource for the study of the Middle East, co-director of the Upper Egypt Mosque Project, serves on the governing board of the Archaeological Institute of America, and is both Smarthistory’s Governing Board Chairperson and Contributing Editor for Art of the Islamic World. Professor Macaulay-Lewis has a DPhil in Classical Archaeology from Oxford University.
We look forward to seeing you!
Image Credit: “Old Damascus, Jew’s Quarter” by Frederick Leighton, 1874 (Photo courtesy of Museum Syndicate)
The Jewish Genealogical Society and The American Sephardi Federation Present:
Branching out from Sepharad: Solving a Converso Mystery with Sarina Roffé
Sunday, 21 October, at 2:00PM
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Ticket Info:
For non-members: $5 at the door
Free for JGS, ASF, NYG&B members
Sarina Roffé, professional genealogist, founder of the Sephardic Heritage Project, and author of Branching Out from Sepharad: A Global Journey of Selected Rabbinic Families with Biographies and Genealogies (Forward by Professor Walter P. Zenner, Sephardic Heritage Project, 2017), outlines the history and expulsion of Jews in Spain, their history in Syria, and immigration to the Americas.
She discusses the Kassin rabbinic dynasty from the 12th century through the 50-year leadership of Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin in Brooklyn, and solves a Converso mystery.
We look forward to seeing you!
The ASF’s Sephardi Scholars Series Presents:
Synagogues of Iran: Design and Development in Urban Context
Monday, 22 October, at 7:00PM
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Please click here to make a reservation
Professor Mohammad Gharipour will discuss his research and recently published book, Synagogues of the Islamic World: Architecture, Design, and Identity (Edinburgh University Press, 2017), which explores how the architecture of synagogues in Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain responded to contextual issues and traditions, as well as how these contexts influenced the design and evolution of synagogues. The book considers patterns of the development of synagogues in urban contexts in connection with urban elements and monuments, while revealing how synagogues reflect the culture of the Jewish minority at macro and micro scales.
This presentation is being made possible by the generous support of The Cahnman Foundation.
Mohammad Gharipour is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University at Baltimore, Maryland. He obtained his Masters in Architecture from the University of Tehran and a Ph.D. in Architecture and Landscape History from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has received several awards, including the Hamad Bin Khalifa Fellowship in Islamic Art, the Spiro Kostof Fellowship Award from the Society of Architectural Historians, the National Endowment in Humanities Faculty Award, and was recognized as “one of the twelve minority scholars in the US who are making their mark in academia” in 2016 by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education Magazine. Professor Gharipour’s books include Bazaar in the Islamic City (American University of Cairo Press, 2012), Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in Poetry, Arts, and History (I.B. Tauris, 2013), Calligraphy and Architecture in the Muslim World(co-edited with Irvin Schick, Edinburgh University Press, 2013), The City in the Muslim Word: Depictions by Western Travelers (co-edited with Nilay Ozlu, Routledge, 2014), and Sacred Precincts: The Religious Architecture of Non-Muslim Communities across the Islamic World (Brill, 2014). He is the director and founding editor of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture (www.intellectbooks.com/ijia)
We look forward to seeing you!
Image Credit: Haj Elyahu Synagogue, Isfahan, Iran (Photo courtesy of © Mohammad Gharipour/Diarna Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life), 2015.
Yemenite Faces and Scenes & Episodes in Yemenite History
The Teimani Experience, which closed on 5 June, continues in part with a photographic exhibit in our Leon Levy Gallery and an art exhibit in the Myron Habib, A”H, Memorial Display.
On view until September
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York City
Yemenite Faces and Scenes: Photographs by Naftali Hilger
Intrepid photographer and photo-journalist Naftali Hilger traveled extensively in Yemen in the late 1980s and early 1990s photographing structures, street scenes, and the last remnants of Jewish life. These images—including of Yemenite children learning to read Torah upside-down in their father’s shop and a family relaxing in their diwan (salon)—depict an existence that has faded into history as the ever-shrinking community has found refuge in a government compound at Sana’a.
Episodes in Yemenite History: Paintings by Tiya Nachum
A series of eight paintings by the artist and sculptor Tiya Nachum of Encino, CA. The paintings reflect the tragedies and triumphs of Yemenite Jewish history, from the Mawza exile to the founding of the Inbal Dance Troupe by Sara Levy. Each painting tells a story and each story is a history onto itself.
Donate now and your tax-deductible contribution will help ASF preserve and promote the Greater Sephardi history, traditions, and culture as an integral part of the Jewish experience!
Contact us by email to learn about giving opportunities in honor or memory of loved ones
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Copyright © 2018 American Sephardi Federation, All rights reserved. Thank you for opting (on our websites, at an event, or by email) to receive American Sephardi Federation Programming Updates and Publications. We apologize if this message was sent in error. The American Sephardi Federation is located at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, New York, 10011). www.AmericanSephardi.org | info@AmericanSephardi.org | (212) 548-4486 |
Copyright © 2018 American Sephardi Federation, All rights reserved.
Thank you for opting (on our websites, at an event, or by email) to receive American Sephardi Federation Programming Updates and Publications. We apologize if this message was sent in error.
The American Sephardi Federation is located at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, New York, New York, 10011).
www.AmericanSephardi.org | info@AmericanSephardi.org | (212) 548-4486
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