Sephardic Jews
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Culture Do the Madrigals from Disney’s ‘Encanto’ descend from Sephardic Jews?
While I was watching “Encanto,” I wondered if its magical Madrigals, the family at the heart of the Oscar-nominated Disney animated film, were Jewish. They’re close-knit to the point of being smothering. They’re successful yet grappling with generations of pain. And their powers come from a candle that has miraculously burned for 50 years —…
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Food Adafina, a Sephardic Shabbat stew
Adefina, adafina, dafina, aní, hamín, caliente, trasnochado. All these names refer to one thing: the quintessential Shabbat dish of the Sephardic Jews of the 15th century. It was commonly known under different names, and this would have been one way Jews were able to deceive Inquisition officials, as this dish would have revealed the makers…
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Food Swiss chard stew with chickpeas
This recipe is reprinted with permission from Hélène Jawhara Piñer “Sephardi: Cooking the History.” In an Inquisition trial record from July 13, 1590, we learn that Catalina Albarez, a conversa, prepared a dish with meat (from which she had carefully removed the fat), Swiss chard, and chickpeas. The recipe below, acelgas con garbanzos in Spanish,…
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Food The deepest secrets of Sephardic cooking are buried here
Some cookbook authors get their recipes from chefs. Hélène Jawhara Piñer got hers from the Inquisition. The coiled holiday breads, long-simmered stews, and honey-sweetened, orange-scented desserts collected within Piñer’s remarkable new book of Sephardic cookery derive not from family recipes passed down through well-worn cookbooks or hand-scribbled notes on food-stained scraps of paper, but from…
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Culture How Jewish exiles from Vienna remade Hollywood in their image
When the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened earlier this year, it faced criticism for neglecting the foundational role American Jewish immigrants played in the movie industry. Its recent symposium and screening series, “Vienna in Hollywood,” planned long in advance of the opening, helped set the record straight. It highlighted the contributions of the European…
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Food Pumpkin knishes and spicy pumpkin dip: Jews and pumpkins go back long before Thanksgiving
I love pumpkin. I love it in a sweet dessert, I love it in a savory stew, and — I’m not afraid to say it — I love it in my morning latte. But I’ve never imagined my ancestors who lived in a Belarussian shtetl would have felt the same. Jews, it turns out, were…
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Food This old Sephardic recipe will become your go-to chocolate birthday cake
Our all-time favorite family birthday cake is a Sephardi Jewish Passover cake. I got the recipe from my mother’s friend Lucie Ades, whose family came from France and was of Spanish ancestry. I am guessing that they were from Bayonne in Southwest France, where Jews fleeing the Inquisition in the early sixteenth century settled and…
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Recipes The spinach frittata that connects me to my Sephardic grandmother
In one of the scenes from my book, “The Poetry of Secrets,” Isabel, the main character is served fritada espinaca, or spinach frittata, at a Shabbat dinner, her first one since she has been captured by the Spanish Inquisition. My choice of that food was deliberate. It’s an homage to my grandmother. She was born…
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