Posts by Stephen Belsky
9 posts
Has anyone dealt with the process of applying for Portuguese citizenship based on Sefardic ancestry? Whether for yourself or someone else? I got asked to write a letter for someone attesting to the historical records of their ancestors, and I don't know if there's some kind of standard form for such a letter that the authorities of the Portuguese Jewish Community or the Portuguese government wou...
Is there a specific recognized Hebrew spelling for “Jamaica” traditionally used there?
My full analysis and guide to the הפטרות as attested in Moses Lopez's 1806 Jewish calendar published in Newport, including comparisons with more standard sources of S&P custom as well as other “aphtora” listings from around the Jewish world; and recommendations for when to deviate from his seeming deviations if one wanted to revive this minhag as recorded.
“Shang” as a nickname for ישעיהו
How have you Preserved the Western Sephardic Tradition this weekend? (or at least a weird deviant branch of it 😅)
I'd like to develop a transliteration style (for transliterating prayers to sing along for people who can't read or struggle with Hebrew) that balances readability with exactitude, and can also be easily read in an S&P pronunciation as well as traditional American Ashkenazi and/or contemporary Israeli pronunciations.I feel like the biggest challenge so far is how to encode the 'soft bet'. I think...
R’ Eli Duker wrote this great little article on the Seforim Blog about Moses Lopez’s 1806 Jewish Calendar printed in Newport, RI. It answers some questions and highlights others that remain mysterious.
Hopefully this isn't some kind of controversial topic, but is the "teba" specifically the *reader's desk* one stands at, or the *platform* on which the reader's desk stands? I've already seen contradictory definitions from different sources, looking for clarification. Thanks!
According to Moses Lopez's 1806 Jewish calendar published in Newport, RI, USA, the הפטרה for parashat קדושים is from יחזקאל chapter 20, verses 1-20. Does this match other sources of S&P minhag? The lists of הפטרות I'm seeing show Sephardi custom as starting with the 2nd verse, not the first.Also, of more immediate concern – he says that the הפטרה for פרה ends at verse 38, not 36. Is that the at...