Neil van der Linden

Via Rohini Naagath “The museums and guidebooks in Kochi speak mostly of European “arrivals” and conquests and control, or else focus on the lives of royal families surviving detached from their surroundings with foreign support. But the streets tell a different, richer, and far more beautiful story than the official one. Around every corner, the curious visitor stumbles upon a synagogue, or a bri...

Via Rohini Naagath “The museums and guidebooks in Kochi speak mostly of European “arrivals” and conquests and control, or else focus on the lives of royal families surviving detached from their surroundings with foreign support. But the streets tell a different, richer, and far more beautiful story than the official one. Around every corner, the curious visitor stumbles upon a synagogue, or a bri...

Noam Vazana:"One of the riches of Ladino music is its matriarchal repertoire. When the Jews came to the Iberian peninsula they didn’t speak the local languages. The men spent all day in the synagogue speaking Hebrew and it was the women who maintained the household, looked after the kids, dealt with the local merchants and created the Ladino language" http://nanimusic.com/songlines/

Great, and as it should be!

The ban on Spinoza and his writings lives on and continues to have ramifications.

This evening at Podium Mozaïek I will give a an introductory talk to a concert of Sufi and classical Moroccan songs by the Marmoucha Ensemble, led by Avishai Darash, with singer Hamid Ajbar. My talk will focus on the Arabo-Andalusian music and its influence in the Maghreb and the history of Emirate and Caliphate of Cordoba, home of Ibn Arabi, Wallada, Zirjab, Ibn Batouta, Maimonides, Averroës and ...

For me the best interpretations of some of King Alfonso el Sabio's Cantigas de Santa Maria, by the Schola Cantorum under Thomas Binkley, feat. a.o. Montserrat Figuerras.The King of Toledo (who almost would have become King of Holland and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire) who at his court invited Christian, Muslim and Jewish musicians and other artists. And that is what we hear on this recording.

Many reluctant Jewish converts (Conversos) and their Muslim counterparts (Moriscos) publicly worshipped as Christians while practicing their true faiths behind closed doors, including those of the kitchen.“Food became a marker of identity,” says Ana Gómez-Bravo, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington.“We know from Christian records that there was a lot of sur...

16th century Spanish folksong, from after the 'reconsquista', the expulsion or forced conversion of Muslims and Jews from Christened Spain. Here sung byTeresa Berganza, with guitarist Narciso Yepes'Three Moorish women stole my heart in Jaén:Axa and Fátima and Marién.Three strong Moorish ladiesWent off to pick olives,And found them all picked in Jaén:Axa and Fátima and Marién.And they found they al...

International Conference on Maimonides in Cairo.Maimonides Golden Path: A Journey Through Space, Time and Knowledge(Cairo, October 2-4, 2021)Saturday, October 2, 2021 ( AUC – Ewart Hall)18:30-19:00 Greetings and opening remarks Magda Haroun, President Jewish Community in Cairo Audrey Azoulay, Director-General UNESCO Jonathan Cohen, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt 19:00-21:15“From Cairo to the Cloud: The...

The Forgotten Jewish Pirates of Jamaica.Today, some tour operators and cultural historians are calling attention to the country’s little-known Jewish heritage. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/forgotten-jewish-pirates-jamaica-180959252/?fbclid=IwAR2Jhrey9wyeqdm4IiLpeiIlMMZQZDVaXeJ847dADHK6Y0vi14wYNBa1Hq8

The presence of the Portuguese Jews in the cities of Europe in the early modern period aroused curiosity mingled with enthusiasm and suspicion. For some visitors in cities like Venice and Amsterdam, these were the first flesh and blood Jews they had ever encountered. The Portuguese Jews’ splendid dress, cosmopolitan education, and excellent mastery of European languages contradicted the common ste...

Via Linda Olsvig Whittaker​: Interestingly, many of the Algierian pirates, raiding Spain under Ottoman rule, were Sephardi Jews who had been driven from Spain and had a real grudge. Many of them also ended up raiding in the Caribbean.

Traces of Matriliny among Kerala JewsOphira Gamliel, University of Glasgow**********Translated from an unpublished article I wrote especially for Sanghaditha women's magazine:Traces of Matriliny among Kerala JewsOphira Gamliel, University of GlasgowJudaism is a patriarchal system, similar in many respects to Islam. The only difference is that the religious affiliation is transmitted via the mother...

Fatma Bassiouni in Egyptian Jews (يهود مصر)Vintage store flyers from Adès department stores in Egypt. The Adès Family were a prominent Egyptian family of Sephardi origin. They owned and operated one of the oldest and largest wholesale businesses in Egypt, as well as a chain of department stores in Cairo and Alexandria. Members of the Adès family were active in the textile trade during the latter h...

Egypt’s synagogues reflect the country’s cosmopolitan history and its multicultural and pluralistic religious heritage which extended beyond the trichotomy of Abrahamic religions. According to contemporaneous sources, at its zenith, Egyptian Jewry was among the world’s most diverse Jewish communities, comprising Jews of all denominations and ethnic backgrounds.

Three Moorish girls, Aisha, Fatima e Maryem. Spanish post 1492 chanson.https://open.spotify.com/track/7CYsegbkidzHRQOL8WjvrY?si=UVW0bnMIR7KaP3eHfcCCTw&dl_branch=1

Common Culture and Particular Identities: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Ottoman Balkans, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, December 2013, pp. 1-298.https://www.academia.edu/18172041/Common_Culture_and_Particular_Identities_Christians_Jews_and_Muslims_in_the_Ottoman_Balkans_Ben_Gurion_University_of_the_Negev_Faculty_of_Philosophy_University_of_...

Common Culture and Particular Identities: Christians, Jews and Muslims in the Ottoman Balkans, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, December 2013, pp. 1-298.https://www.academia.edu/18172041/Common_Culture_and_Particular_Identities_Christians_Jews_and_Muslims_in_the_Ottoman_Balkans_Ben_Gurion_University_of_the_Negev_Faculty_of_Philosophy_University_of_...

The Ottoman Empire clearly favored the Iberian refugees, and this, together with their more “advanced” culture and access to heretofore unheard-of technologies, were among the factors of Sephardization of the Jews of the Levant. People began to make up Spanish genealogies for themselves, switched to Judeo-Spanish in Arabic-speaking or Greek-speaking surroundings, and finally almost convinced thems...

The Ottoman Empire clearly favored the Iberian refugees, and this, together with their more “advanced” culture and access to heretofore unheard-of technologies, were among the factors of Sephardization of the Jews of the Levant. People began to make up Spanish genealogies for themselves, switched to Judeo-Spanish in Arabic-speaking or Greek-speaking surroundings, and finally almost convinced thems...

Yosef Tobi, Literature, Judeo-Arabic. In: Norman Stillman (ed.), Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World, Leiden-Boston 2011, vol. III, pp. 271–278

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/world/europe/spain-jews-citizenship-reparations.html?smid=url-share&fbclid=IwAR3hrY1X07qOR1aAGyDZUvZuDvkXwD8j4EsOOZ8IluvGxWEKymk1hFYs95U

The Maimonides restaurant in Fes, in the house where he lived when travelling from Cordoba, where he was born, to Cairo and in a sidestep to Jerusalem (where he became the personal physician of Salaheddin and continued his scientific and theological work).

More pictures from the house of 12th century Jewish scientist, philosopher, theologian and later Salaheddin's physician Maimonides, when he lived in Fes, Morocco.