Recently, Shaare Shalom, celebrating its 10th anniversary and held its seventh annual bake sale at the beautiful home of Rina and Jack Kamin, in memory of Margo and Morris Zarif, A”H. For the past nine years I have been living in the Madison area, and I have watched how much Shaare Shalom Congregation has flourished. With the weather warming up, everyone was greeted to a clear night and a sunshiny day for the bake sale.
I proudly attended Magen David Yeshivah’s Author’s Tea, recently. With one glance you could see the community united, as mothers, fathers and grandparents gathered to see these kindergartners move forward.
One usually asks, what is an Author’s Tea? Magen David holds an annual charming performance by the entire kindergarten, marking the end of the school year. The children are the authors of their performance and after they perform guests are invited to a “tea” in their classrooms.
Washington was the place to be from June 2 through 4, when politicians gathered with 7,000 activists, students and scholars from all 50 states for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference. Among those present at this prestigious event were Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert and Presidential candidates McCain and Obama.
Also in attendance were IMAGE publisher Ben-Gurion Matsas from the East Coast Sephardic community and Dr. Jose Nessim from the West Coast Sephardic community. Both were there to show their support for AIPAC and to hear the politicians’ views.
On a recent Friday, a dark SUV pulled up to a waiting police car on Ave. T and out stepped the Rishon Le’Sion, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Hacham Shlomo Moshe Amar. The Hacham arrived erev Shabbat, joined by his wife Mazal and his son Eliyahu. Wearing the official dress of the Rishon Le’Sion, he was greeted by a small crowd of about eight people outside the beautiful home of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob S. Kassin.
Hacham Shlomo Amar has been the Chief Sephardic Rabbi of Israel since 2003, elected when he was only 55. Amar has come a long way since being born in Morocco in 1948 and immigrating to Israel in 1962, when he was only 14. From a boy growing up in the Arab city of Casablanca to the discrimination suffered by Moroccan Jews in early Israel, Hacham Amar has overcome difficult hurdles and today is recognized as a respected Torah figure, and is the president of the Council of Torah Sages.
Ahi Ezer Torah Center
Ahi Ezer Congregation has served the Sephardic community for almost 100 years, starting when the new immigrants from Syria came to the lower east side on Essex Street. Later on, as the community members moved to Brooklyn, Ahi Ezer Congregation moved to 64th Street, then to 71st Street and now, for the past 40 years, Ahi Ezer has been located on Ocean Parkway and Avenue S.
Ahi Ezer is involved in many projects that serve the Sephardic Jewish community in Brooklyn. They are truly one of the important organizations in our area.
In recent international publications, it has been noted that the “brain-drain” in Israel has reached the highest echelons of Israeli scientific research and higher education. Unless funding is increased, there is no doubt that Israel stands to lose its “next generation” of scientists and researchers—its future “Nobel Laureates.”
The Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) was created over 30 years ago, to address just such a crisis in basic science and cancer research. As a result of budget cutbacks by the government, ICRF grants have become one of the most important sources of funding outside of the diminishing support provided by universities and the Israel Science Foundation.
Aspecial Jewish Orthodox high school dormitory for girls 13-18 with learning disabilities and behavioral problems has opened outside of Jerusalem on a moshav (farm). The school uses new and unique methods.
The studies will spread out over the entire day. There will be activities made up of spiritual learning, secular studies as a basis for life, therapy, professions, extra-curricular activities, sports, creative projects, identity, hygiene, cooking, sewing and arts.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
