## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 24 OCTOBER 2021*## *FROM COBBLERS TO COSMOPOLITANS: THE BARUCH LOUSADA STORY*How did a family of local Portuguese cobblers become merchants on the world stage?*** Julian Land*** tells the story of his research on the Baruch Lousada family. He will discuss nine members of this illustrious lineage, as we follow the Baruch Lousada from brushes with the Inquisition to the founding of Bevis Marks, commercial success in the Caribbean, and ennoblement in Spain. The f...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 17 OCTOBER 2021*## *WITH HANS WALLAGE *## *SEPHARDIC DIPLOMATIC POWER*Under Dutch rule in Brazil (1630-1654), the local and Amsterdam Sephardic communities tried to convince Dutch authorities to intervene and protect their interests. When asking for help, they emphasised their value as international merchants, as well as other areas in which Jews contributed to the Dutch colony. *** Hans Wallage ***will discuss some of these arguments and will pr...
Osenkot & CastelloI wrote here before about the panels with the names of the members of Ets Haim, the charity that supported the students at the school with the same name, These panels are lining the walls of the Wintersnoge in Amsterdam. Browsing them I stumbled upon a strange sounding name: Jos.h de M.r Osenkot. He joined the chairy in 1746. I thought it wa strange name in this context, but it turns out that it is a very strange name overall. I looked up the membershipslist in the archives of ...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, 10 OCTOBER 2021*## *WITH RAQUEL LEVY-TOLEDANO*## *A MOROCCAN JEWISH GENEALOGICAL JOURNEY*Through family lore and document-based genealogy, ***Raquel Levy-Toledano*** 'discovered' a great-grandfather born in Manchester, England. But what she had been told was wrong! Genetic genealogy introduced her to a whole new family: the Levy Belfsahi of Mogador in Morocco. Her genealogical journey highlighted the need for better organised research into Moroccan Jewish genealogy....
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 3 OCTOBER 2021*## *WITH TON TIELEN*## *AMSTERDAM RESEARCH: ETS HAIM SCHOOL, LIBRARY, AND CHARITY*On the 4th Sivan 5376 (1616) the Portuguese Congregations Bet Jacob and Neve Shalom founded the Ets Haim ("Tree of Life") school in Amsterdam. This school provided a high-quality education for Jewish men. Each classroom or grade at the school had a specialist library and there was also a general library where they could find every necessary book for their studies. ...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2021*## *WITH FLORBELA VEIGA FRADE*## *THE NAÇÃO PORTUGUESA IN ANTWERP*Without Antwerp, there may have been no Western Sephardic diaspora. After the Expulsion from Spain and before the emergence of Amsterdam as a Sephardic hub, there was a community of New Christian merchants in Antwerp. Linked to the Spanish Crown through the pepper monopoly, they operated an international trade network from the city. The community self-identified as the Nação Po...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 19 SEPTEMBER 2021*## *WITH VALERIE MCGUIRE*## *THE JEWS OF RHODES: BETWEEN OTTOMANS AND ITALIANS*A Jewish community had lived in Rhodes and Kos since Antiquity. In 1912 Italy captured these Aegean islands from an Ottoman Empire in decline. Planning an ambitious future of a 'Roman' empire in the Mediterranean, the Italian state invested in rebuilding and growing the Jewish community. Some resident Jews eventually acquired Italian citizenship. But the rise of Mu...
Moses Levie Bentubo, born in Morocco, 89 years old, died in the Hague 26 August 1820, at the ripe old age of 89 years. He was the son of Abraham Levy Bentubo and Toian Azogie. He was married to Ribca Alvares. I have a few questions about this: is anything more known about Moses and his father Abraham Levie Bentuba from Morocco? His mother’s name is Azogie, could that be Azougy? And lastly, is Toian a recognized given name in Morocco?Image: death certificate of Moses Levie Bentubo, The Hague.
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, 5 SEPTEMBER 2021*## *WITH ALI ERGINSOY*## *ESTHER THE QUEEN AND THE BROTHERS BUZAGLO *Join us this Sunday to hear ***Ali Erginsoy ***tell the amazing story of a Sephardic adventurer, his wayward son, the wronged widow, and the scheming brother-in-law. The great historian Cecil Roth said of Joseph Buzaglo: “If in the annals of the eighteenth century there was any career more fantastic than his, it has escaped the notice of the present writer.” The lives of three of Jo...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 22 AUGUST 201*## *WITH SYLVIANE SERRUYA*## *FROM MEGORASHIM TO DHIMMIS TO FRENCH CITIZENS*This is the first Sephardic World meeting in French! For those whose French is less than fluent, slides will have English text. Questions can be asked in French and English.***Sylviane Serruya ***has researched her Algerian great-grandfather, Moïse de Tétouan. Moïse's story is representative of Sephardic Jews in Morocco and Algeria. Expelled from Spain, the family first b...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING SUNDAY 15 AUGUST 2021*## *WITH SALOMON VAZ DIAS*## *SEPHARDIC TRADITIONS OF OLD AND NEW AMSTERDAM*The Western Sephardim created a unique religious tradition within Judaism. We cannot understand our ancestors without knowing the customs they followed. Two weeks ago Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld discussed the development of the Amsterdam community, and the arrival of refugees from the Balkans, from an academic perspective. This week ***Salomon Vaz Dias*** shares a religious pe...
## * SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, 8 AUGUST 2021*## * WITH DANIEL STRUM*## * TRADE AND THE SEPHARDIC DIASPORA: A REAPPRAISAL*The sugar trade linking Brazil, Portugal, and the Netherlands was a key feature of the early modern Atlantic Sephardic world. Brazil became the world's leading producer of sugar and the first great plantation colony. The sugar trade boosted the economy of Portugal and contributed to the upsurge of the Dutch market. Sephardim were integral t...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, 1 AUGUST 2021*## *WITH TIRTSAH LEVIE BERNFELD*## *BALKAN SEPHARDIM IN EARLY MODERN AMSTERDAM*Balkan Jewish refugees from war arriving in late 17th Century Amsterdam must have been astonished. Even though connected to the resident Portuguese Jews through ethnic‐religious bonds, they were entering an alien world.Most of the Sephardim of Amsterdam were conversos. They had been living as Catholics – outwardly at least ‐ for generations before returning to their ancestral...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 25 JULY 2021*## *THE NEED FOR A SEPHARDIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY*Sephardic genealogy has taken great steps forward over recent years. Following the pioneering work of Jeff Malka and others, the Sephardic Diaspora Facebook group launched in 2014 to provide a home for serious discussion of Iberian Jewish genealogy. Over the last eighteen months, the Sephardic World meetings have made a useful contribution. Today we announce the creation of the Sephardic Genealogic...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 11 JULY 2021*## *THE JEWS OF JAMAICA, AN INTERVIEW WITH AINSLEY COHEN HENRIQUES****Ainsley Cohen Henriques*** is synonymous with Jewish Jamaica and is one of the best-known personalities in the world of Sephardic genealogy. This week on Sephardic World we shall be talking to him about the Jewish community of Jamaica, its history, and genealogy. We shall discuss the Jamaican Jewish archives and other useful records and resources. Ainsley has known many of the i...
*Sephardic World Meeting, Sunday 4 July 2021, with Marius Heemstra*## *THE ITALIAENDER FAMILY (ALIAS LEVI VITORIA) OF AMSTERDAM: BETWEEN SEPHARDI AND ASHKENAZI, WITH LINKS TO LONDON AND COPENHAGEN*The founding father of this family is Abraham Levi Vitoria (1639-1699), who was also called Italiaender (Italian) because he came to Amsterdam from Venice. He was a tobacco merchant and seems to have been a member of both the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi communities in Amsterdam around the time that the...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD, SUNDAY 27 JUNE 2021, WITH JOSHUA MARRACHE*## *GIBRALTARIAN JEWS IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES*Jews arrived in Gibraltar soon after the British captured the Rock from Spain in 1704. The colony has been an important link between the Jewish communities of North Africa and London, as well as those in Italy and beyond. The community records have not been digitized and represent a largely unknown treasure-trove.***Joshua Marrache ***is the seventh generation of his family to live...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING 20 JUNE 2021 WITH ALI ERGINSOY*## *THE GOMES DA COSTA - TO JAMAICA AND BACK*To escape poverty in London, four out of five of Aaron Gomes da Costa’s children moved to Jamaica. Did they succeed, and at what price? Along the way, we confront slavery, interracial and Sephardic-Ashkenazi marriages, and the societal pressures that took some of them away from Judaism.*** Ali Erginsoy ***returns to Sephardic World to share the incredible story of the Gomes da Costa family.***...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING – SUNDAY 13 JUNE 2021 -WITH TON TIELEN*## *ISAAC PALLACHE - A TROUBLED LIFE*Isaac Pallache was a restless soul. He traveled four continents and many countries. He flirted with Catholicism at a young age, pretended to be a Muslim, converted to Christianity, but continued in his Jewish ways. His first marriage ended before it began. His second, more fruitful, the marriage produced eleven children. His life was one of thwarted ambition, fateful decisions, failed projects...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING SUNDAY 6 JUNE 2021*## *THE PALLACHE: MOROCCAN-JEWISH DIPLOMATS IN 17TH CENTURY DUTCH COURT RECORDS*This week we are joined by ***Professor Gerard Wiegers ***to discuss the Pallache family.Two cases before the Court of Holland (Hof van Holland) around 1612 shed an interesting light on the role of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands in general, and on the Pallache family in particular. The cases deal with tensions within the Pallache family, whose heads, Samuel and Joseph...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING SUNDAY 30 MAY 2021*## *CHASING SHADOWS - BRINGING THE GOMES DA COSTA FAMILY TO LIFE*Many Sephardic families escaped the Portuguese Inquisition. They are often shadows, ghostly figures about whom we can discern little more than the most basic facts. Yet, with perseverance and the extraordinary range of digitized resources now available, it is possible to learn much: where and how they lived, what they did, their struggles and triumphs.***Ali Erginsoy*** has been studyi...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 23 MAY 2021 WITH DAVID MENDOZA*## *GENEALOGY OF THE JEWS OF EGYPT*For a hundred years an incredible Jewish culture flowered in Egypt. People poured in from all corners of the Sephardic and wider Jewish world to meld into a sophisticated cosmopolitan community. All this was destroyed by the rise of post-War Arab nationalism. Often families were forced to leave at short notice leaving virtually everything behind.***David Mendoza ***will reveal the ingenious ways...
Today!***SPAIN - ESSENTIAL PRE-1750 RECORDS***The Spanish archives are largely unknown territory to Sephardic genealogists. We now have an opportunity to discover more about our ancestors' lives in Spain. ***Daniel Smith Ramos***, an engaging speaker, takes us a whirlwind tour of Spanish non-Inquisition records. These include Church, Local, University, Notarial, Military, and other genealogical resources.The vast Spanish PARES database can be intimidating. Daniel offers some search tips. Also, s...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING, SUNDAY 2 MAY 2021*## *"VINDOS DE PORTUGAL": TRACKING THE BACKGROUND OF PORTUGUESE REFUGEES IN 18TH-CENTURY LONDON*Between 1720 and 1734, 106 of the 303 ketubot issued by Bevis Marks synagogue in London recorded the couple as 'Vindos de Portugal', arrivals from Portugal. This was consequential to an upsurge in activity by the Portuguese Inquisition.***Carla Vieira ***has researched these Portuguese exiles who settled in London during the first half of the 18th century...
## *SEPHARDIC WORLD MEETING SUNDAY 25 APRIL 2021*## *IS THERE GENETIC EVIDENCE OF JEWS IN PORTUGAL?*Portugal was the crucible of the Western Sephardim. Not everyone left. Is there such a thing as Sephardic DNA? Can members of diaspora Sephardic communities be linked to individuals in Portugal? What can genetic studies in Portugal tell us about Sephardic migration? Can genetics be a tool in unraveling the history of the Sephardic diaspora?***Inês Nogueiro ***was born in northeastern Portugal, a r...