Sephardic Jews
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Fast Forward Sephardic Chief Rabbi: ‘Women Can Do Laundry’
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi said women should not serve in the Israel Defense Forces and should not perform national service. Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef made the pronouncements on Saturday night during his weekly Torah lesson, according to reports. He cited the Rambam as saying that women who go out to wars commanded by the…
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Opinion For Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, Whiteness Was a Fragile Identity Long Before Trump
“I have lived for 26 years under the illusion that I am unconditionally white…. Recently I have started looking at my face and going, ‘Oh man, do I look too Jewish?’” Sydney Brownstone, the reporter who voiced this question in a recent Blabbermouth podcast, is not alone in wondering this. Many Ashkenazi Jews who have…
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Life Crossing the Bosphorus: My Great-Grandmother’s Sephardic Memoir
Exactly one hundred years ago, on September 8th, 1916, my great-grandmother Estrella penned the last entry in her French notebook. At the time she was attending an elite preparatory school for Jewish students in Paris. Like hundreds of other Sephardic teenagers from around the Mediterranean, Estrella had been plucked from her tiny Jewish community on…
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Fast Forward After Brexit, 300 British Sephardic Jews Seek Portugal Citizenship
— One of Portugal’s Jewish communities said it was observing an increase in requests for naturalization by British Jews following the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union. About 300 British Jews who are descendants of Portuguese Sephardic Jews requested Portuguese nationality from the Porto Jewish Community, compared to five before the June 23…
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Fast Forward Shearith Israel Will Appeal Loss in $7M Shul vs. Shul Feud With Touro Synagogue
— Congregation Shearith Israel in New York will appeal a federal court ruling last month stripping its control of the historic Touro Synagogue in Rhode Island. The Manhattan congregation filed a notice Tuesday saying it will appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in an effort to reverse last month’s decision concerning its…
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Fast Forward 1941 Baghdad Pogrom Commemorated With Candle Lightings
WASHINGTON — The author of a work on the Nazi-era massacre in Baghdad believed to have precipitated the Jewish exodus from Iraq is commemorating its 75th anniversary with candle lightings in four cities. Edwin Black, who in 2010 published “The Farhud,” about the June 1-2, 1941 massacre of at least 180 Jews in Baghdad, will…
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News Turkish Jews Proudly Defend Last Sephardic Homeland — Even as Some Flee
A prominent Turkish-Jewish businessman and politician, Cefi Kamhi is chairman of an Istanbul-based consulting agency and television distribution company. He heads three councils for Turkey’s foreign economic relations board, and represents his home country in the European Jewish Parliament. His wife is Muslim. Yet after several assassination attempts, Kamhi is under 24-hour police protection to…
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Opinion Inside the Western Hemisphere’s Only Romaniote Synagogue — and Its Greek Jewish Festival
Most of the year, the stretch of Broome Street between Allen and Eldridge Streets, on the Lower East Side in New York City, is fairly quiet. The majestic Kehila Kedosha Janina overlooks Chinese restaurants and repair shops as cars and motorbikes speed by on Allen Street’s southbound branch. But this Sunday, the block was crowded…
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