Sephardic Diaspora Research Articles

From Spain to the Balkans: Textile Torah Scroll Accessories in the Sephardi Communities of the Balkans

The article deals with the development of three accessories of the Sephardic Torah scroll: the Torah binder–a narrow and long strip which fastened both parts of the scroll; the Torah wrapper–which protects the parchment; and the Torah mantle–the exterior covering of the Torah scroll. These textile accessories originate in the Talmudic mapppah/ miṭpaḥat , a square piece of fabric which, in the ancient period, was used to wrap the Torah scroll. This object turned out to be the origin of the European means of protecting and adorning the Torah scroll. While in Ashkenazi communities only the Binder and the Mantle are customary, the uniqueness of the Sephardi tradition is an additional accessory–the Wrapper. The Wrapper, a fabric equal in height to that of the parchment, is wound around the staves, and is customary to this very day in the Sephardic Diaspora. Although the Binder and the Mantle are common to all European and Sephardi communities, in the latter these ceremonial objects have unique visual features. One of them is the use of precious fabrics, mainly brocades and gold embroidered fabrics. Such a magnificent background did not encourage the development of dedicatory inscriptions, on the one hand, but on the other it did encourage the recycling of precious textiles that had previously served in other capacities in daily life. The article is based on the documentation of ceremonial objects from various collections as well as on Rabbinic literature and field research in Sephardi synagogues in Israel and abroad.

L'émergence de Saint-Esprit-lès-Bayonne

Families of Portuguese origin settled in the Saint-Esprit’s seigniory facing Bayonne, a city where they could not be admitted. There they were allowed to live a Jewish life and they worked patiently and succeeded in settling out of reach of water the bank of the river Adour that up till then got under water twice a day. Thus an urban space was created which grew during the XVIIth century. In Bayonne people dealt with their various items of business during the day ; their family and religious life was spent in Saint-Esprit. Their bearings in the realm of France more vulnerable than those of their Christian neighbors, made them still more aware of the necessity to seek the protection of the king and of the fact that the French space was all dedicated to the king and his court. Moreover they belonged to the western Sephardic diaspora thanks to very strong family links, established through marriages which were made, one generation after another, between their families and those of Portuguese Jews from London, Amsterdam and Hamburg.

Assimilation versus Idiosyncrasy: Strategic Constructions of Sephardic Identities in Hong Kong

This article analyses how Sephardic traders constructed identities in order to foster their social, political and economic aims in Hong Kong from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. It argues that there was no uniform relationship between seeking integration in the colony and assimilating to the characteristics of the British elites who controlled access to important resources. Sephardim formed identities which featured Anglicised characteristics to overcome exclusion, while they also deliberately asserted their distinctive identities to draw on the resources of their own community in Hong Kong and in the wider Sephardic diaspora.

Reference Sources for Sephardic Studies

Some of the main reference sources for Sephardic studies in the broader sense, namely, covering issues related not only to the Jews of the Iberian peninsula and their descendants, but also to those of the Middle East and North Africa for the same period of time, are described. The categories covered are: Sepharad and Sephardic culture, the Sephardic diaspora, catalogs of special collections, and subject catalogs.

Wayward New Christians and Stubborn New Jews: The Shaping of a Jewish Identity

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, but especially during the seventeenth century, the western Sephardic diaspora consolidated. The communities of Amsterdam, Leghorn, Hamburg, London, and small settlements which developed around them, and later also in Bayonne and Bordeaux, created an organizational network binding themselves together and allowing them to view themselves as part of a single socio-cultural entity. These communities were founded by former New Christians who had lived cut off from Jewish sources for many generations. Their Jewish education was shallow and the first Jewish community which they knew was generally the one which they themselves had created.1 One of the greatest threats to the integrity of the communities of these "New Jews" was the presence of New Christians from among the Na~o who, after leaving the countries of Iberia, preferred to equivocate and refused, for various reasons, to identify themselves unequivocally as Jews and to behave accordingly. For example, Esteban de Ares Fonseca, in testimony he delivered voluntarily before the Inquisition in Madrid on May 15, 1635, maintained that he had not intended to practice Judaism of his own free will and initiative. After becoming involved with a tribunal of the Inquisition in Lisbon, where he was accused of Judaizing, this Portuguese converso fled to Bayonne, where he arrived, in his words, as a "Catholic believing what the holy Catholic church instructs and believes." The conversos of Bayonne and Bordeaux did not succeed, as it were, in convincing him to abandon Christian belief, to which, according to his testimony, he continued to adhere even after arriving in Amsterdam. In the Dutch capital he sought relief from his economic distress among his relatives: They greeted him with great joy and told him that these were the miracles of God, that He brings to Judaism in unpredictable ways those who lived in the blindness of the Christian religion. They immediately began to care for him so as