Sephardic Jews
The Latest
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Israel News Recognizing Jewish Refugees From Arab World
Naim Reuven was only 8 when he left Baghdad more than 50 years ago, but he still remembers going with his father to catch fish in the Tigris River. His dad worked in a laundromat, a middle-class father of six and one of Iraq’s more than 100,000 Jews. Baghdad’s Jewish community suffered a pogrom in…
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Fast Forward Rabbi Prays For Iran’s ‘Elimination’
The spiritual leader of the Sephardi Orthodox Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, called on Jews to pray on Rosh Hashana for the destruction of Iran and Hezbollah. The call on Saturday night came more than a week after Yosef was briefed on the threat from Iran by the head of Israel’s National Security Council, Maj.-Gen….
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The Schmooze Musical Migrations From Spain to Norway
In a thoughtful article published last year, memoirist and novelist André Aciman explored the “pathless Odyssey” around the Mediterranean taken by the song “Naci en Alamo.” Musicians of many different languages and ethnicities, including Yasmin Levy, have taken up this so-called “Song of the Gypsies,” whose origins are disputed and elusive. For Aciman, the ballad…
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Fast Forward Jews’ ‘Ethnic’ Category Scrapped for Testing
Jews should no longer be categorized by their ethnic origin when being tested for hereditary conditions, says the Health Ministry. The mixing of Jewish communities – mixed heritage – has rendered such categorization pointless, the ministry’s community genetics department says. Because of the proliferation of “mixed marriages” between Jewish communities, as well as technological advances,…
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Culture For Ladino Musicians, World’s A Stage
On July 9, amid rainwater cracks in limestone rock, charcoal ibex painted by prehistoric man and discarded artifacts from Victorian-era picnics, a loose collective of Jewish women will sing songs of the Sephardic Diaspora. Vocalists Sarah Aroeste, Mor Karbasi and Françoise Atlan will perform at the inaugural Gibraltar World Music Festival in the time-formed Cueva…
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The Schmooze Sephardic Music Festival Diary
This was the first time I went to the Sephardic Music Festival. Now in its seventh year, the festival held shows in New York from December 20 to 27, everywhere from 700-person capacity clubs to synagogue basements. I went to five concerts — mostly in the Village — and took notes. December 20: The Mast,…
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Israel News Shas Sets Up Shop in U.S.
In its 30 years of existence, Shas has evolved from a marginal ethnic political group to Israel’s fourth largest party in the Knesset and is today the unchallenged kingmaker of Israeli politics. Now, Shas — or in its full name, the Sephardic Torah Guardians Movement — is attempting to establish a beachhead among American Sephardic…
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The Schmooze Montserrat Figueras, Sephardic Music Pioneer
On November 23, the Catalan singer Montserrat Figueras died at her home in Bellaterra, near Barcelona, at the age of 69. Together with her husband, the legendary early bowed strings master Jordi Savall, Montserrat brought Sephardic music to the attention of a wide and appreciative audience of listeners, many of whom were unlikely to have…
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