by Webmaster | Apr 25, 2016 | Holidays, Identity
What are your plans for Saturday night? As Jews around the world conclude the observance of Passover, many will be rushing to pizza parlors to fill their stomachs with delightfully leavened food. But Jews of North African descent take the party to a whole new level,...
by Webmaster | Apr 18, 2016 | Holidays, Identity
Pesach (Passover) is my favorite holiday. I enjoy reading about the journey from slavery to freedom and the journey of spiritual growth. I connect with Passover because I’ve gone through my own journey. My mother is a convert to Judaism and my dad was born Jewish. We...
by Webmaster | Apr 11, 2016 | Holidays, Identity, Recipes
We are Sephardic Jews. Originally from Spain, most of our families fled in 1492, expelled by the Monarchy to avoid a forced conversion to Catholicism under threat of death. Many of our families were welcomed into the lands of the Sultan, under Ottoman rule. There our...
by Webmaster | Apr 6, 2016 | Holidays, Identity, Recipes
What is the best way to usher in the Passover season? Not with handwringing and housecleaning, but with celebration, blessing and sweet joy! On Rosh Hodesh, the first day of Nissan, the Jewish month during which we celebrate Passover, Jews from Tunisia and Libya...
by Webmaster | Mar 30, 2016 | Identity
Each year, Jewish children around the world learn the Four Questions. After all the image of the small child chanting their way through the Four Questions is one of the most endearing images of the Passover seder. The image is so strong that for many it automatically...
by Webmaster | Mar 21, 2016 | Identity
And what is a drinking party without drinking songs? As in other Jewish communities, drinking alcohol was part of the celebration of Purim, and an extensive corpus of rhymed, Ladino poems known as koplas (or komplas) developed by Sephardic Jews in the Ottoman Empire....
