Sephardic Jews
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Fast Forward Only 5 Jews Are Left In Cairo Following The Death Of Jewish Matriarch
(JTA) — Marcelle Haroun, mother of the current president of Cairo’s Jewish community, has died at the age of 93. Her death, announced on Saturday, leaves five Jews known to be living in Cairo, Watani International reported. The five remaining are her daughter, Magda, and four granddaughters. The AFP news service reported in March 2017…
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Opinion Why Do So Many Sephardic Jews Have Christian Lastnames?
There’s a curious phenomenon which may be unfamiliar to American Jews: Many Germans who have no Jewish ancestors commonly use surnames like Rosenberg, Rosenthal, Meier, Weill, Schuster and Landau. The same is true of Sephardic Jews: Names like Henriques, Lopez, Mendes, Rodriguez and Pereira are commonly used by both Sephardic Jews and by Iberian Christians…
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Opinion Ashkenormativity? What about Israel-Centrism?
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. I first heard complaints about Ashkenormativity in March 2009, five or six years before the term was apparently coined. I was attending a conference in Chicago for young Yiddish speakers and college students interested in studying the language. While explaining how learning Yiddish as a teenager and…
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Fast Forward Sephardic Genes Widespread In Latin Americans Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
(JTA) — In a genetic study of 6,589 people from five Latin American countries, about a quarter displayed traces of what may be Sephardic Jewish ancestry. Geneticist Juan-Camilo Chacón-Duque and his colleagues published their findings last week in Nature Communications magazine, in an article titled “Latin Americans show wide-spread Converso ancestry and imprint of local…
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News Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Sephardic Claim Unleashes Fierce Debate About Jewish Identity
Crypto-Jews. Secret Jews. Conversos. Marranos. B’nai Anusim. These are the terms used for Jews, mainly of Spanish descent, who were forced to convert to Catholicism or die during the period of Spain’s Inquisition. While many Sephardic Jews did convert, some continued to practice their Judaism in secret. Now, this 500-year history of hidden Jewish lineage…
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Opinion Like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, My Latinx And Jewish Histories Intersect
At a Hanukkah party on Sunday night, Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shared that “generations and generations ago, my family consisted of Sephardic Jews.” In doing so, she publicly joined a vast community of people, including my family, in embracing the space where Jewish and Latinx identities intersect. It is a story that, sadly, has long sat…
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Opinion Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Sephardic Story Is One Forgotten By White Jews
It happens at least once every semester: a student learns that I teach courses in Jewish studies at my university here in southeast Texas and comes to visit me during my office hours. In most cases, I have never met this student before, and at first, the conversation is hesitant, as if the student lacks…
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Fast Forward WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Sings In Ladino After Acknowledging Jewish Roots
At a Hanukkah party Sunday evening, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sang a festive song in Ladino, a language associated with the Sephardic Jewish community, derived from Spanish. Ocasio-Cortez gave an impassioned speech at the menorah lighting, hosted by the Jews For Racial and Economic Justice in New York, sharing that her family has Jewish heritage. She…
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