Currently Browsing: Sephardi 2 articles
Shaddai
Mirushe ‘Mira’ Zylali reviews Loolwa Khazzoom’s new album. The Aramaic-language piyyut ‘Yah Ribbon “Alam”’ ends with a prayer for a restored Jerusalem. Written in the late 1500s by Rabbi Israel Najara, the then-rabbi of Gaza, it has been sung for four hundred years as a Shabbat hymn – that’s 21,000 Shabbatot. On Shabbat, God asks […]
The expulsion of the Jews in 1496
Dora Guennes explores the first brain drain from Portugal. On December 5, 1496, King Manuel I signed the decree that expelled most of the Jews from Portugal. The resulting legal act – The Expulsion of the Jews and Moors from the Kingdom of Portugal – marked the diaspora of the Sephardi Jews, a community of […]