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.

Iranian Jews in Hamadan, Iran, 1918

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’t even have my wedding picture to show my children until nine years ago,” when she was able to get a copy from relatives in Israel, said the mother of three. “Thank G-d I brought my children and family out. And that is everything. Family is everything.”

For more than two millennia, the city of Toledo has sat on the top of a granite hill surrounded like a horseshoe by the River Tagus, just 40 miles from Madrid. The present day Alcazar (castle) stands where there was a Roman fortress. Jews were a part of Toledo’s history since the last years of the Roman occupation in 192 BCE.

The Jews existed peacefully with the Romans and were always an important part of the city. They became known as money-lenders, merchants of fine cloths and precious metals and intellectuals, and were generally well-respected by the other peoples of Toledo. For centuries, scientists, philosophers, poets and artists of widely differing backgrounds met in Toledo to exchange ideas.

Tempio Israelitico (Israel Temple) in Trieste, Italy 1912

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 Babylonia arose as the new Jewish center, Italian Jews remained loyal to the Jerusalem Talmud.

Kurdish Jews in Rawanduz, northern Iraq, 1905

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 was a Dutch colony. England, of course, cannot be forgotten. Iraqi traders established their own house of prayer in Brighton (1896).