#Sephardic Jews

[koenji]

Ottoman Jewish Family in their home, Camille Rogier (French, 1810-1896), around 1840. Color lithograph enhanced with varnish on strong paper. x

[fenrislorsrai]

Ocho Kandelikas is a traditional Sephardi tune that was updated by singer and musician Flory Jagoda in Ladino, which is Judaeo-Spanish

[is-the-fire-real]

Jumblr, it'd be awesome if you could help out a small and/or new Jewish community and band. Plus, you only have to listen to an Instagram reel to do it.

One of the new Jewish organizations near me helped to put out a song for Hanukkah this year, a rock version of the Ladino song "Ocho Kandelikas". I marked Yom Kippur and Kabbalat Shabbat with the guy who did some of the singing/guitar/music direction. He is a Cool Dude who deserves the support!

It would be really awesome if y'all gave it a listen and some positive interactions. It is here; I can't make the embed links work for reasons that are mysterious to my elderly self.

A lot of folks in the community speak English and Hebrew as well as Spanish, so you have options when it comes to what language to write your comment in.

[sefaradweb]

Nacionalidad española por la vía sefardí

🇪🇸 La posibilidad de obtener la nacionalidad española o portuguesa por la vía sefardí ofrece a los descendientes de judíos expulsados durante la Inquisición una oportunidad única para reconectar con sus raíces. En Portugal, el proceso es accesible y permite obtener la ciudadanía mediante la demostración de ascendencia sefardí a través de documentos y apellidos, sin necesidad de residir en el país. En España, aunque la ley que permitía la obtención de la nacionalidad sefardí concluyó en 2019, la opción de hacerlo mediante una carta de naturaleza sigue vigente para casos excepcionales, como personas con vínculos históricos o culturales significativos con el país. Obtener la ciudadanía en cualquiera de estos países otorga los beneficios de ser ciudadano de la Unión Europea, incluyendo el derecho a vivir, trabajar y estudiar en cualquier país miembro, además de acceso a beneficios sociales. Para los dominicanos con ascendencia sefardí, estas opciones representan una valiosa conexión con su herencia cultural y oportunidades en Europa.

🇺🇸 The opportunity to obtain Spanish or Portuguese nationality through Sephardic ancestry offers descendants of Jews expelled during the Inquisition a unique chance to reconnect with their roots. In Portugal, the process is accessible and allows citizenship by demonstrating Sephardic ancestry through documents and surnames, without the need to reside in the country. In Spain, although the law allowing Sephardic nationality ended in 2019, the option to apply through a carta de naturaleza remains for exceptional cases, such as those with significant historical or cultural ties to the country. Obtaining citizenship in either country grants the benefits of being an EU citizen, including the right to live, work, and study in any member state, as well as access to social benefits. For Dominicans with Sephardic ancestry, these pathways represent a valuable connection to their cultural heritage and new opportunities in Europe.

[ichooseyoupikajew]

Yad Mizrah Magazine - Issue #1

If you haven't heard of Yad Mizrah, it's a brand new literary magazine that focuses on Sephardic and Mizrahi culture. I highly recommend you check it out.

But if there's any article that I think you should read, definitely check out From Exoticism to Extermination: Orientalising the Jew by Aurele Aaron Tobelem.

[jewish-vents]

Being non Ashkenazi in a country that isn’t Israel sucks so badly. I’m Mizrachi-Sephardi (I know it refers to Minhag at its core, but my family’s Israeli so we interpret these things more through a cultural lens), but mostly Mizrachi. The country I live in has barely any Mizrachi or Sephardi Beitei Knesset in it, and there’s also not much of a Jewish culture outside of Ashkenazi stuff. I want to connect to my heritage, but I can’t even go to the place that my Mizrachi side was built up, or we will literally get executed. I’m so tired of everything being so Ashkie centric in the diaspora, obviously there’s nothing wrong with Ashkenazi stuff but I just wish there was more of a movement for non Ashkie Jewish cultures. I don’t know, it just sucks that right now I can’t really feel comfortable in my community

.

[5oclockcoffees]

AFTER MY FIRST LECTURE on the history of the Jews of Salonica at a Conservative synagogue near Princeton, a perfect stranger with a typical Ashkenazi surname sent me a package. In a handwritten letter, he expressed his appreciation for my “wonderful talk,” but concluded: “I hope that the Ashkenazi strands here can enrich the Sephardic side too.” That “here” referred to the book that accompanied the letter: Sander Gilman’s classic 1986 study, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews. Did my first piece of fan mail insinuate that the history of the underrepresented Sephardic “side” was impoverished and could not stand on its own? Or that my de-emphasis of the Ashkenazi side amounted to self-hatred? I was so put off by the message surrounding the “gift,” that it took me years to crack the book open. That piece of mail also reminded me why I pursued the academic study of Sephardic history in the first place: it was, in part, a form of self-defense. I wanted to arm myself with an understanding of the world from which my family came — my grandfather, whom I called nono in Ladino, was born in Salonica, once home to a major Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire and today the second-biggest city in Greece — and also to comprehend and combat the kind of sly prejudice I encountered in Jewish spaces. I had already grown accustomed to Jews — principally white, Ashkenazi Jews — using me as a screen on which to project their own discomfort and ignorance about Jews whose stories they do not know or cannot fathom. At a community-wide Holocaust commemoration in college, one of the organizers insinuated that I had made up the fact that my Salonican-born great-uncle and his family had perished in Auschwitz, since she was a survivor herself and had never met a Jew from Greece. In another instance, neighbors my own age, who are now rabbis in the Conservative and modern Orthodox movements, knocked on my door one Shabbat morning and asked if I would serve as their “shabbos goy”: “Because, you know, you’re Sephardic . . .” During one of my first visits to a Jewish research institution in New York, a senior colleague found out that my mother is Ashkenazi and retorted: “Aha! That explains your intellectual curiosity,” as if to say that if I were fully Sephardic, I would have no business engaging in scholarly pursuits. A Jewish acquaintance, a baby boomer active in the Reform movement, recently learned of my family background and jokingly, or so it seemed, described “mixed breeds” like me with the derogatory term “mulattos.” A peer of my own generation invoked the “one-drop rule” — another “joke” — referencing the legal system in parts of the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries that disallowed anyone with a single black ancestor from “passing” as white in the eyes of the law. He referred to my son as an “octoroon,” a term used in slave societies to refer to those with one-eighth African and seven-eighths European ancestry. There is a Ladino refran, or proverb, that goes: Deshame entrar, me azere lugar (“Let me enter and I will make a place for myself”). I used to think that Sephardic Jews — like many “other” Jews — just needed to have the door opened by the gatekeepers, especially the white Ashkenazi Jewish establishment, in order for their fate to improve. But a seat at the table is not enough for today’s generation. Sephardic identity and culture have largely been swallowed up by Ashkenaziness, by whiteness, by erasures so complete that many of my peers no longer possess a consciousness of what it could mean to be Sephardic today. Those sublimated histories must be reclaimed and those submerged stories raised up. Confronting the deep-seated and disturbing history of intra-Jewish prejudice is a prerequisite for the empowerment of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews — and Jews of color — in Jewish spaces, and for a reckoning with the place of most Jews as targets of, and willing and unwilling accomplices to, the structures of white supremacy. Our white supremacy problem, by Devin E. Naar.

[gorskivijenac]

Sephardic Jews from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1900s. National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Austrian Museum of Folk Life and Folk Art

[koenji]

Rachel Sofaer, Jewish actress in Kolkata, in the Bollywood classic 'Punarianma: A Life Divine' in 1932.

Her family of Baghdadi Jews had migrated from Iraq first to Burma and then India. When Rachel's father fell on hard times financially, he permitted his daughter to act under the name Arati Devi. She was accompanied to the set by her mother and married a Baghdadi Jewish man in 1933 at age 21, never again acting in a film. Her cousin Abraham Sofaer became a Hollywood character actor. x

[socialistsephardi]

Oh btw look what my sister got me for my birthday

[rabbibejaranogutierrez]

Diario Judio Mentions the Jewish Conquistadors in the New World

Diario Judio Mentions the Jewish Conquistadors in the New World

https://diariojudio.com/opinion/libro-jewish-conquistadors-in-the-new-world-por-juan-marcos-bejarano-gutierrez/375313/?fbclid=IwAR3PuoUwYHMzD49rFbvR6G8EGICcVRTXxzL4k_k-OHYZ1WV_GUqD7IWRPGQ I was happy to come across this after a friend mentioned it! For more information on the book, see below: Three events transpired in 1492 in the Iberian Peninsula, which had tremendous ramifications for years…

[sefaradweb]

🇪🇸 El Instituto Cervantes ha incorporado recientemente a su Caja de las Letras un valioso legado cultural sefardí, donado por la Comunidad Judía de Salónica. Entre los objetos más simbólicos de esta donación se encuentra un juego de llaves de casas de sefardíes expulsados de Toledo en 1492 por los Reyes Católicos. Estas llaves han sido preservadas por generaciones de descendientes como un emblema de la esperanza de regresar a su hogar ancestral. El legado, depositado en el cajetín número 1.447 de la institución, también incluye discos de música judeo-española, actas de congresos internacionales sobre la lengua judeo-española, y una maqueta del futuro Museo del Holocausto de Salónica. El acto de recepción tuvo lugar el martes pasado, destacando los lazos profundos que unen la cultura sefardí con la hispánica. Carmen Noguero, secretaria general del Instituto Cervantes, subrayó la importancia de este legado para la cultura española, mientras David Saltiel, presidente de la Comunidad Judía de Salónica, destacó el valor histórico y simbólico de este patrimonio.

🇺🇸 The Cervantes Institute recently added a valuable Sephardic cultural legacy to its Caja de las Letras, donated by the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki. Among the most symbolic items in the donation is a set of keys from the houses of Sephardic Jews expelled from Toledo in 1492 by the Catholic Monarchs. These keys have been preserved by generations of descendants as a symbol of hope to return to their ancestral homeland. The legacy, placed in locker number 1,447, also includes records of Judeo-Spanish music, proceedings from international conferences on the Judeo-Spanish language, and a model of the future Holocaust Museum of Thessaloniki. The reception took place last Tuesday, highlighting the deep ties between Sephardic and Hispanic culture. Carmen Noguero, the Secretary General of the Cervantes Institute, emphasized the importance of this legacy for Spanish culture, while David Saltiel, President of the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki, highlighted the historical and symbolic value of this heritage.

[deathsmallcaps]

Day One of my 29th Win A Commission Contest! If you guess what story this is from before I post the title, you get a commission! Check out the tag #wac for more details! :) This one ends on September 18th, 2021. Here’s a hint for what story it is: The King (man on the left) is looking for a new land in which his people can prosper, and all he’s found is a silent landscape with a giant, mysterious castle in the distance. They overfarmed their last land.

@boopboopboopbadoop @hecho-a-mano and anyone else who’d like to try!