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 part of the country. The land was flat and dry. The weather was mild, although colder in the winter as Aleppo is far from the Mediterranean Sea. Jews had lived in the region for over 3,000 years, long before the Jews of Spain arrived.

A Proud History
Yemenite Jewry represents a proud and unique heritage, replete with great rabbis, philosophers, poets, judges, and community leaders. They maintain the traditions of a Jewish community that hardly experienced Western or European influences on dress, mode of prayer, and pronunciation. But they have experienced other incursions of the outside world: persecutions, economic sanctions, and expulsions.

In the 12th century, Maimonides (the Rambam), preeminent Jewish leader, physician, halakhist, and philosopher wrote the Iggeret Teman (Letter to the Jews of Yemen) to give reassurance to Jews facing unbearable persecution under local Shiite rulers. He intervened several times to protect the Jewish community living in Yemen, thereby earning eternal mention in the local Yemenite version of the Kaddish. Indeed the Yemenite community still remains loyal to the teachings of Maimonides some 800 years after his death.

Jewish Family in Tangiers, Spanish Morocco, early 20th century

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 high Arab officials sent their children. Students included such elite as the great grandfather of the Moroccan King, Mullai Hassan.

The Roffe’s were a highly respected family in Morocco. One of my grandfather’s uncles was an ambassador to an Arab country and another uncle was the American consul in Morocco. He describes his family life as being honest and trusting.

Beirut, Lebanon, in the 1930s

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 religious backgrounds.

Jewish children generally attended the Alliance schools operated by the French or the Talmud Torah. The Alliance School was a private school, but fees were on a sliding scale, depending on what a family could afford. The rabbis taught in both the Alliance School and the Talmud Torah. While both schools had community support and assistance, it was generally understood that the poorer children attended the Talmud Torah and the higher class citizens attended the Jewish Alliance school.

Esnoga Synagogue in Amsterdam

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 were actually crypto-Jews, Jews who had converted to Catholicism but continued to practice Judaism in secret. Several of them ‘returned’ to the Jewish religion after they had settled in the Netherlands.

The Jews in Norway have a long history. The Jewish community in Norway is one of the country’s smallest ethnic and religious minorities. The largest synagogue is in Oslo, and a smaller synagogue in Trondheim is often claimed, erroneously, to be the world’s northernmost synagogue.

Norwegians converted from paganism to Christianity in the course of nearly 100 years, largely as a result of coercive measures. In the year 1000, all non-Christians were banned from Norway in an effort to institutionalize Christianity as the national religion. Although the ban was presumably targeted at pagan adherents, it also put Norway out of bounds for Jews for over 800 years.

Kahal Zur Israel Synagogue in Recife, Brazil

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 in the Protestant Netherlands since the Dutch freed themselves from Catholic Spain in the late 16th century. In order to strengthen their foothold in Brazil, the Dutch encouraged Jews (with whom they shared a common enemy in Catholic Spain and Portugal) to settle in the harbor city of Recife, in the northeastern province of Pernambuco.

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 Peshawar still exists, but is closed.

In Karachi, the Magain Shalome Synagogue was built in 1893 by Shalome Solomon Umerdekar and his son Gershone Solomon. Other accounts suggest that it was built by Solomon David, a surveyor for the Karachi Municipality and his wife Sheeoolabai, although these may be different names for the same people. The synagogue soon became the center of a small but vibrant Jewish community. Abraham Reuben was one of its leaders.

Shul in Cuernavaca, Mexico

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.

The Bassatine Cemetery in Cairo, Egypt

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 the Fatimides (969), Cairo was built north of Fostat. Jews moved to the new city and established for themselves a new quarter called Haret-el-Yahoud (Street of the Jews). In time, Cairo became the cultural center of all the Jewish communities in Egypt.