Ian Pomerantz

Does anyone know where this Zachur l’Tob originated?

I thought you would all enjoy this article.https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/web-articles/reflections-on-400-years-of-sephardic-choral-music/?fbclid=IwAR2-_i2Q-5gL9m6MEdjY1xrhX_ipTdUjT0IodnGBfiuIK1f1r6E3JOPR-hU

A very early mention of “a sort of Spanish” that was spoken by North African Jews in English, if not the first, in 1675 in “The Present State of the Jews, etc.” by Lancelot Addison (1632-1703).*Edited from Haketía, which is an anachronism

Does anyone know exactly when the municipality of Carção in northern Portugal adopted this municipal heraldry? My guess is that it occurred around 1992 but I can’t find any sources. David Mendoza, Aron Sterk?

What do you all think of this?

Here’s a new one! A fado bar in Coimbra that moved into a deconsecrated 17th-18th century church and decided to market their space as the Ancient Synagogue of Coimbra. Especially fascinating since the “synagogue” is *checks notes* cruciform!

A question:When and why did some members of the community in Livorno start adopting Levantine dress as opposed to the tricorn and calções seen in the majority of the Western Sephardic world?

Joseph Cohen Belinfante fled from Portugal to Turkey in 1526. By the 1700s, his descendants were prominent members of the Amsterdam community, such as Isaac Cohen Belinfante (c. 1720 – 7 September 1781) and Moses Cohen Belinfante (24 September 1761 – 29 June 1827). Who was the first Belinfante to settle in Amsterdam, and when did he arrive?

The curious case of Mariana Pequena.

Hopefully this new festival in Izmir will provide both a counterweight to the more obnoxious “Sephardic Festivals” in Spain, as well as a blueprint for future Sephardic cultural events for non-Sephardic audiences.

Dr. Pieter Vlaardingerbroek will present an illustrated talk on the architecture and interior of the 1675 Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam, the "Esnoga," and its influence on the architecture of the 1763 Touro Synagogue in Newport.

I find this fascinating.

Something interesting is happening in Bayonne!

I take these estimates with a large grain of salt. That said, does anyone here know what constitutes MyHeritage’s North African Sephardic pool? My father has uploaded his file and they give him 10.7% Iberian and 7% “North African Sephardic.” Note that he has absolutely no Maghrebi ancestry to speak of.

I found some more ibn Yahya nonsense for you all to enjoy.What are the dangers of medievalism when constructing a national past? What are the limitations of historical memory and oral tradition? And when is a certified “medieval synagogue” neither medieval, nor a synagogue?

Of interest to many of you.

For those who are interested in the trajectory of Ladino-language music in the next few decades, this will be of great interest.

If you need something fun to do Tuesday nights.

“The PJ will now follow the trail of the millions found in the rabbi's accounts, in an attempt to find correspondence with some of the 80,000 naturalization cases that have already occurred in Portugal since 2011. In yesterday's and today's searches, the PJ seized information about 80,000 naturalization cases.”

Contemporary discourse tends to severely minimize the role of Sephardic Jews in the birth of the Reform Movement. The first two cantors of the Hamburg "Mother Temple" were Sephardim-David Meldola and Joseph de Mose Piza. In some communities, the effort was as much or more of a Sephardic one than an Ashkenazi one. In the case of London. Written by David Phillipson within living memory of the event:...

I’ve been hearing of a large amount of rejections received via certified mail coming from Spain to Sephardic families who have followed the Spanish law of return in good faith, essentially changing the requirements of the law post-facto. Several certificate-granting organizations have sent out communications to that effect by email. Does anyone know exactly what is going on at the Ministry of Just...

Why is Haym Solomon’s name spelled like this on his maseva?

This restoration of frame footage from Ottoman Jerusalem is really wonderful.

Speculation of the Sephardic ancestry of the French essayist and humanist Michel de Montaigne surfaced as recently as 2008 in the Encyclopaedia Judaica [Goitein, Denise R (2008). "Montaigne, Michel de". Encyclopaedia Judaica. The Gale Group.]Is there any hard documentation that connects de Montaigne to the Jewish communities of Spain and Portugal?

This American Sephardic hanukkiya is the gem from the collection of Rabbi Howard Berman and is one of the very few surviving Colonial American menorahs. It is a hand beaten brass oil lamp in the Dutch style, made in New York, circa 1750. During the Revolutionary War, it was brought to Kingston, NY with its original owners, a family that joined most of the American Patriots of the Jewish community ...