 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Being raised in Aleppo in the latter days of World War II and during the creation of the State of Israel was not easy. Syria is a Muslim country, partly Christian, and the idea of a Jewish state in its midst was horrific to the Muslim governments of the Middle East.
Aleppo is in the northern pa...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
I’ve always been curious about my heritage. Growing up in Brooklyn, I always knew that the Sephardic community was made up of Jews who were exiled from Spain and who moved to countries like Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Lebanon. But, until about a year ago I knew virtually nothing about life in Be...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
The arrival over 350 years ago of 23 Sephardic Jews from Recife, Brazil to New Amsterdam (now New York) gave us the first page of a new chapter in the annals of Jewish history.
The Dutch wrestled away a large chunk of the Portuguese colony in Brazil in the 1620s. Jews had been allowed to settle...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Growing up on the streets of Beirut was no problem for Jews until the early 1970s, according to Elie Levy and Nissim Dahan, two native Lebanese Sephardic Jews. Lebanon was a democratic country, had a Parliament, free elections, free press and Jews were citizens, just as people of various ethnic and ...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Simon D. Roffe, my grandfather, was born in Morocco. He and his sisters Helen Beyda, Stella Emsellem, Pauline Tawil, Flora Ingber and Juliette Silvera, and his brother, Maurice Roffe, grew up in the French part of Casablanca and attended the French public school, Lycee Lyautey, the same school where...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
The history of the Jews in Australia began with the transportation of several Jewish convicts aboard the First Fleet in 1788, when the first European settlement was established on the continent in present-day Sydney. Today, an estimated 120,000 Jews reside in Australia, the majority being Ashkenazi ...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
The Israelites fled Egypt in haste, but well packed: They began their exodus with their
flocks, herds and unleavened bread, as well as the jewels and garments of the Egyptians.
When Soraya Masjedi Nazarian left Iran in 1979, she left behind almost all of her possessions.
“I didn...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Early Jewish Communities in Cairo
In 641 the Arab general Amr Ibn-el-As conquered Egypt and founded Fostat, (today old Cairo) and made it a capital of Egypt. Jews settled quite early in Fostat as it became a flourishing economic center.
With the conquest of all of Egypt by t...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Jews constitute a very small group within Pakistan. Various estimates suggest that there were about 2,500 Jews living in Karachi at the beginning of the 20th century, and a smaller community of a few hundred which lived in Peshawar. There were synagogues in both cities and, reportedly, the one in Pe...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Thailand, a 95% Buddhist country, has always been a nation that stood for religious tolerance. A number of Jews have made their home in Thailand over the years, and there is currently a thriving population, largely concentrated in Bangkok, the country’s capital.
History
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
It is generally believed that the Jewish community in Italy began in 161 BCE, when Judah the Maccabee sent a delegation to the Roman Emperor. Four families of Jewish nobility settled in southern Italy and were dependent on Israel for law and prayer. After the destruction of the Second Temple, when B...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Most people probably tend to associate Mexico more with wide-brimmed straw hats and exotic, heavily spiced food than with Sephardic Jewish observance and culture. Yet, since Mexico City, in a relatively short time, has become a celebrated center of Jewish life, it behooves us to explore it.
05/14/2008 | 265 Hits |  (0 vote) | Print | PDF
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Images of history and conquest flashed through my mind on the long overnight train ride from Paris to Rome. Indeed, which empire was as strong and prominent as Rome? The Romans were the masters of infrastructure; they invented and built aqueducts, roads and bridges. Rome epitomized culture in the cl...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
As a result of the Inquisition, many Sephardim left the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century and throughout the 16th century, in search of religious freedom. Some of them found their way to the newly independent Dutch provinces.
Many of the Jews who left for the Dutch provinces wer...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
The contemporary Sephardic communities in Latin America were created by Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, most of whom emigrated to the continent between the 1890s and the end of the 1920s. They combined religion with ethnicity by creating communal frameworks that united Jews from a common...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
During a recent visit to Mexico, I spent three days in Mexico City, where I had a chance to visit the institutions of the Aleppan Jewish community. My host was Dr. Liz Hamui, a professor at the National University of Mexico, whom I met at the International Conference on Syrian Jewry held in May at B...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
The Shehebar Sephardic Center (SCC) trains and sends rabbinical leaders to the four corners of the earth helping to revive dying communities by instilling Jewish values and practices, educating Jews about their history, preventing assimilation and assuring continuity. Their work is possible thanks ...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Iraqi Jews constitute one of the world's oldest and historically significant Jewish communities. It was to Babylon that the Jews were exiled around 600 BCE. The descendants of these exiles ensured that Babylonia became the most important Jewish community after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. The...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
Iraqi Jews were famous for commerce throughout the Eastern Hemisphere. They sat at the crossroads of trade routes, buying and selling, and venturing abroad to procure merchandise. Wherever they traveled, they brought Judaism with them. They also established communities in Indonesia when the country ...
|
 |
Community Articles/Jewish Communities
At the top of the sloping, green hill, the round castle looms dramatically against the sky. To the casual observer, the scene might just be another picturesque tourist attraction. But here at Clifford's Tower in 1189, in York, England, a tragic, but little-known event in Jewish history took place.
...
|
|
Image Magazine 
