JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I first heard complaints about Ashkenormativity in March 2009, five or six years before the term was apparently coined. I was attending a conference in Chicago for young Yiddish speakers and college students interested in studying the language. While explaining how learning Yiddish as a teenager and…
My great, great grandpa, Solomon Calvo and his friend, Jacob Policar, were the first Sephardic Jews in Seattle, immigrating from the island of Marmara in Turkey. But their welcome in the local Jewish community wasn’t exactly as warm as you’d expect of Jews greeting other Jews. Upon arrival, they were told they couldn’t possibly be…
I’m a gay Mizrahi Jew who supports Israel. And the left hates me. It’s ironic. I am the embodiment of intersectionality. I’m the son of an Iraqi mother and North African Berber-Amazigh father. I grew up in an underprivileged community, a gay boy in the closet who then became an openly gay man. I identify…
After Kiddush on Shabbat, someone comes up to me to critique my recitation. Either the person asks why I pronounced the last word as “hagefen” rather than “hagafen,” or I am less-than-politely informed of the “correct” pronunciation. When I respond that my Sephardic custom is to say “hagefen,” the reply is always the same: “I…
So, has received a lot of discussion over the past few weeks on certain sectors of the Jewish blogosphere – far more than I expected. Much of this discussion has revolved around the fact that certain aspects of Ashkenazi culture themselves have largely been erased from the “mainstream” – be it Yiddish, certain foods, certain…
THE TEMPLE EMANU-EL STREICKER CENTER and Virtual
Aug 10, 2022
7 pm ET ·
Will the last Jew left in New York’s congressional delegation be reelected? Will New York’s senior congresswoman receive another term? Or will one of the newcomers upend Manhattan politics?
