Posts by Raif Melhado
265 posts
Gregory Castro for the win!
I very much enjoyed a rare S&P-fusion Shabbat service today in Atlanta, Georgia at the New Toco Synagogue.There was a bar mitsva in a family from the Caribbean, and they were keen to have our rite read for the occasion. I was humbled to serve as reader for Shaharit and Musaf, using the beloved melodies of Shearith Israel and Mikveh Israel. The Torah was read Yerushalmi-style by a family friend, ...
Over Shabbat I tried finishing a book the last chapter of which describes the destruction of the cemetery at Salonika.I knew from a previous reading that it would be horrible, but even so it made my blood boil so much that I had to put it down. I just can’t with how many people were willing to do those things, and how fruitless were the efforts to stop it from happening.This raises a problem I’ve...
Cool find from the indomitable Israel Mizrahi. Book of color photos about how Sedek Veshalom was taken from Suriname and reassembled in the Israel Museum
Neat find from a book in the “seforim” group: three ceiling-mounted Shabbat lamps
Hanukka Alegre!
I am curious if we could make a good list of biographies of our people. It could be more than rabbis, but the examples that come to mind right now happen to be of rabbis. Who can add to it? It would be cool to have men and women of various walks of life."Dissident Rabbi: The Life of Jacob Sasportas""Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam""Isaac Leeser and the Making of American Judaism""H. Per...
UPenn Press is having a 40% off sale from now till the end of the year. There are some titles of interest to this group in their repertoire.
Mongadim Lesimha!
Morir Habemos
Getting spam ads in Spanish seems like a lowest-common-denominator assumption to make: “his name is Melhado? Send him the Spanish one!”But presetting my kids’ TV program to have Dutch subtitles - I’ll doff my hat for that one! 😂
From Haham Gaon’s “Prayer Book for Boys and Girls,” 1969.
Dangerous: with a few exceptions, Princeton University Press is offering a site-wide discount of 50% off. There are several titles of interest to our group
Over Pesah I enjoyed the opportunity to read “Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey through the Twentieth Century” by Sarah Abrevaya Stein (2019, 336 pp.)Seven years before publishing this book, Stein and Aron Rodrigue worked together to edit the Judeo-Spanish memoirs of Saadi Besalel Alevi Ashkenazi (1820-1903), along with translator Isaac Jerusalmi. Alevi was an important printer and free-thinking...
This link says it is (just barely) able to get me the Bienfaisante matsot in time for Pesah. Shipping was steep but I splurged. If you're into that, now's the time:
Wow, yesterday and today only, UPenn press has a 50% off coupon on all available books. There’s a few dozen titles that are right up our alley in this group. FOUNDERSDAY25 at checkout and magically your order is half price.
I had a fabulous moment of Gen Z approval for our minhag this morning.Our school is hosting a flag football tournament, and players for another team joined us for Shaharit. The tefillot and most football players are Ashkenazi, but it is known that I read Torah if no student wants to read, and this week no student wanted to read.Therefore the players on the visiting team heard me read in our minha...
I appreciate the photos that are currently under discussion.The part of me that wants to give people the benefit of the doubt would entertain the possibility that the primary “sabtext” here is simply unfamiliarity with Latin and English orthography. The curator thanks Haim Beinart, who has published several pertinent historical writings about our Nacao. Clearly the exhibit seems designed to hono...
Does anyone have a tribute to Rabbi Ishak Havela z”l that brings some details forth about his career and impact?I’m trying to find a good way to communicate that in writing, and what I see online is sparse in detail.
Hanukka alegre!
As a thought experiment: if there were such a thing as a smaller Sephardic siddur meant to be easily tucked into a Tallet case on Shabbat, what would it need to have aside from the prayers themselves?Like:Kiddush and Birkat Hamazon Favorite PizmonimSpecial things that are not commonly printedAnything I'm not thinking of
There are three possible haftarot for Shemot - does anyone know if one of them was preferred in Egypt? Choices are:“Many Sephardim” - Yirmeya 1:1-2:3“Some Sephardim” - Yehezkel 16:1-13Ashkenazim - Yeshayahu 27:6-28:15Bonus points if you have a source
On a recent Shabbat, I was out in an unfamiliar part of my neighborhood trying to find a specific house on spotty information.A helpful neighbor sent me to the right place, but when we traded names, she stopped me and said I must be Sephardi. It seemed that she too was Sephardi, with her dad having come to Atlanta decades ago from Rhodes.I explained that there weren’t too many Melhados in Rhodes ...
Mongadim Lesimha!
“Joseph Elias Montefiore in a short wig, tail coat, and knee breeches; his wife, also apparently in a wig and a remarkable hat.”From “A History of Jewish Costume,” by Alfred Rubens