Sephardic Jews
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Culture Imagining Life of Dona Gracia, Portuguese Jew and Richest Woman in World
(Haaretz) — About 10 years ago, while visiting the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris, Israeli journalist Naomi Keren noticed an ancient silver medallion that bore the likeness of Dona Gracia Nasi. “I was taken aback,” Keren says. “What I saw contradicted everything I knew about the use of art in connection with…
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Fast Forward Spanish Jews Want 833-Year-Old Toledo Sephardic Synagogue Back From Catholics
Representatives of Spain’s Jewish communities asked Catholic Church officials to return a former synagogue in Toledo during an interfaith conference in Madrid. Isaac Querub, the president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, or FCJE, made the request Sunday during the 22nd meeting of the Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee, a body set up by the…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Ovadia Highway Coming to Jerusalem
A new highway into Jerusalem will be named for the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of the Shas party. Route 16, which will run near the neighborhoods of western Jerusalem and pass through Har Nof, where Yosef lived, will be named for the former chief Sephardic rabbi of Israel who died last week,…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Memorial Draws 40,000
Some 40,000 people participated in a memorial for Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem at the end of the mourning period. The memorial on Sunday evening at the grave site of the Shas party spiritual leader marked the end of the seven-day shiva period for the one-time Sephardic chief rabbi, who died on Oct. 7 at…
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Israel News Sephardic Shas Party Struggles To Survive Death of Towering Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
Will Shas, Israel’s largest ultra-Orthodox political party, survive the death of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Sephardic religious leader whose towering authority enabled him to found the party and unite its followers behind his will? Some political analysts are casting their glances backward in looking for clues — specifically, to the 1994 death of the Lubavitcher…
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Fast Forward Bill De Blasio Slammed Over Condolence Message for ‘Racist’ Rabbi Ovadia Yosef
New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio was dragged into a tabloid fight over the legacy of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef after the liberal Democrat expressed his sympathies for the death of the Israeli Sephardic leader. The New York Post slammed de Blasio for the boilerplate condolence message, noting it ignored Yosef’s history of attacks on…
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Opinion Rav Ovadia Yosef Was Provocative Bigot
News of the death of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a towering religious and political figure in Israel, plunged millions into mourning. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Yosef “was imbued with love for Torah and his people.” President Shimon Peres cut short a meeting with Czech Prime Minister upon hearing of Rav Ovadia’s death. Ordinary people fainted…
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Opinion No Need for Directions to Rav Ovadia’s Funeral
(JTA) — I didn’t need to ask directions. Stepping out of the Central Bus Station, I saw them, men in hats and coats walking together slowly, a steady stream moving east along one of Jerusalem’s central thoroughfares to the funeral of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. At 5 p.m., an hour before the funeral, the streets were already…
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