Sephardic Jews
The Latest
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News Proposed US census categories on race and ethnicity leave some Jews in a confusing place
New Middle Eastern-North African category still isn’t specific enough to meet communities’ diverse needs, advocate says
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Film & TV Does a small autonomous city in Morocco hold the key to religious coexistence?
A new film set in Melilla, a Spanish city on the edge of Morocco, features friendship between Jews, Christians and Muslims
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Recipes Sukkot makes me dream of a beef tagine with quinces
A fall dish for the holiday come from North Africa and draws out the charms of an often overlooked fruit
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Culture ‘A David and Goliath story’: The Jewish history of Cinco de Mayo
The 1862 Battle of Puebla paved the way for Mexico to become a haven for Jews fleeing persecution.
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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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