A groundbreaking literary anthology reveals the nature and history of a lesser-known but vital branch of Jewish culture.

In the years following the founding of the State of Israel, close to a million Jews became refugees fleeing their ancestral homelands in the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. State-sanctioned discrimination, violence, and political unrest brought an abrupt end to these once vibrant communities, scattering their members to the four corners of the earth. Their stories are mostly untold. Sephardi Voices: The Forgotten Exodus of the Arab Jews is a window into the experiences of these communities and their stories of survival. Through gripping first-hand accounts and stunning portrait and documentary photography, we hear on-the-ground stories of pogroms in Libya and Egypt, the burning of synagogues in Syria, the terrible Farhud in Iraq, families escaping via the great airlifts of the Magic Carpet and Operations Ezra and Nehemiah, husbands smuggled in carpets into Iran in search of wives. The authors also provide crucial historical background for these events, as well as updates on the lives of some of these Sephardi Jews who have gone on to rebuild fortunes in London and New York, write novels, and win Nobel Prizes. Sephardi Voices is at once a wide-ranging and intimate story of a large-scale catastrophe and a portrait of the vulnerability of the passage of time.

Chapter 5 - Folklore of the Sephardim. The various themes of Sephardic songs and poetry include the celebration of romance, the joys of newborn babies and birth, and the observance of Jewish traditions and rituals. Spanish ballads were adapted by the Sephardic musicians and adapted to fit the new environments to which they were exiled. Different Sephardic singers and musicians perform in a variety of styles to illustrated the ideas which are expressed in this chapter. Chapter 6 - The Dispersion of Spanish Jews in the 20th Century. Large numbers of Sephardic Jews migrated to Western Europe and America in the early part of the 20th century. Some of these Sephardic communities have thrived in these new surroundings while others have declined. Sephardic songs performed in Paris, New York and other locations h.

The year 1492 has long divided the study of Sephardic culture into two distinct periods, before and after the expulsion of Jews from Spain. David A. Wacks examines the works of Sephardic writers from the 13th to the 16th centuries and shows that this literature was shaped by two interwoven experiences of diaspora: first from the Biblical homeland Zion and later from the ancestral hostland, Sefarad. Jewish in Spain and Spanish abroad, these writers negotiated Jewish, Spanish, and diasporic idioms to produce a uniquely Sephardic perspective. Wacks brings Diaspora Studies into dialogue with medieval and early modern Sephardic literature for the first time.

"Chosen Voices is the definitive survey of an often overlooked aspect of American Jewish history and ethnomusicology, and an insider's look at a profession that is also a vocation.Week after week, year after year, Jews turn to sacred singers for spiritual and emotional support. The job of the hazzan--much more than the traditional ""messenger to God""--is deeply embedded in cultural, social, and religious symbolism, negotiated between the congregation and its chosen voices. Drawing on archival sources, interviews with cantors, and photographs, Slobin traces the development of the American cantorate from the nebulous beginnings of the hazzan as a recognizable figure through the heyday of the superstar sacred singer in the early twentieth century to a diverse portrait of today's cantorate, which now includes women as well as men. Slobin's focus on the current nature of the profession includes careful consideration of the sacred singer's part in creating and maintaining the worship service, the recent relationship between the rabbi and the hazzan within the synagogue, and the music that contemporary cantors sing. This first paperback edition features a new preface by the author. A thirty-five-minute cassette for use with Chosen Voices is available separately from the University of Illinois Press."

This book presents for the first time the complete text of the earliest known Ladino-language memoir, transliterated from the original script, translated into English, and introduced and explicated by the editors. The memoirist, Sa'adi Besalel a-Levi (1820–1903), wrote about Ottoman Jews' daily life at a time when the finely wrought fabric of Ottoman society was just beginning to unravel. His vivid portrayal of life in Salonica, a major port in the Ottoman Levant with a majority Jewish population, thus provides a unique window into a way of life before it disappeared as a result of profound political and social changes and the World Wars. Sa'adi was a prominent journalist and publisher, one of the most significant creators of modern Sephardic print culture. He was also a rebel who accused the Jewish leadership of Salonica of being corrupt, abusive, and fanatical; that leadership, in turn, excommunicated him from the Jewish community. The experience of excommunication pervades Sa'adi's memoir, which documents a world that its author was himself actively involved in changing.

A rich and provocative overview of Jewish American poetry.

This is a collection of nine familiar Sephardic folk songs, most dating to the 16th century or earlier, both religious and secular in nature, in attractive arrangements for voice with pedal or lever harp accompaniments of moderate difficulty. Texts are in Ladino, with translations provided. Arranged by a well-known arranger/transcriber, Nine Sephardic Songs is perfect for those preparing voice and harp programs and fills a specific niche in available harp music.

A significant number of Sephardic Jews, tracing their remote origins to Spain and Portugal, immigrated to the United States from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans from 1880 through the 1920s, joined by a smaller number of Mizrahi Jews arriving from Arab lands. Most Sephardim settled in New York, establishing the leading Judeo-Spanish community outside the Ottoman Empire. With their distinct languages, cultures, and rituals, Sephardim and Arab-speaking Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances outside Jewish circles with Hispanics and Arabs, with whom they shared significant cultural and linguistic ties. The failure among Ashkenazic Jews to recognize Sephardim and Mizrahim as fellow Jews continues today. More often than not, these Jewish communities are simply absent from portrayals of American Jewry. Drawing on primary sources such as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories, Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the present, focusing on the age of mass immigration.