Put your bagels away — the Sephardim and Mizrachim are cooking up a treat
YOU MAY not be inclined to take a trip to Libya or Yemen. For obvious reasons: these countries which once had flourishing Jewish communities are too risky to include on the Jewish tour map.
But you can learn something about them through Diarna, an innovative online resource set up to preserve the history and stories of the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa before it is too late.
Its co-founder, Jason Guberman, is a guest at Limmud as part of an effort to highlight Sephardi and Mizrachi culture at this year’s festival. Rather than being boxed into a selfcontained track, it has been threaded throughout the different strands of the programme.
The subject is close to the heart of Elliot Jebreel, the festival’s joint programming chair, whose parents and elder sister were born in Iran before the family moved to Manchester.
“The predominant Jewish culture in the UK is Ashkenazi,” he said. “For me, it is about trying to redress the balance a little bit. I went to Jewish schools and most of what I learned was Ashkenazi Judaism. “I learned about the Shoah, the pogroms. I learned all the history, the halachah, I learned Yiddish songs when I was at Kerem [school in London]. And when you look at how Jews are portrayed in the UK, more generally, it’s Ashkenazi culture — bagels, smoked salmon, gefilte fish.” One festival session is even entitled “We don’t eat bagels here”, which is being jointly presented by a lawyer from Istanbul, Ela òNW^MRXĔU^
Rabbinic teachers include Rabbi Haim Ovadia, a Sephardi teacher from the USA who is linked to Torat Chayim, a network of modern-thinking Orthodox rabbis: and Rabbi Joseph Dweck, head of the S&P Sephardi Community in London who
Dana International will talk on why the Spanish and Portuguese eschewed kabbalah.
Angy Cohen, an academic at Tel Aviv University, is giving a variety of talks including one on Flora Sasson, an Iraqi Torah scholar in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Among those taking the stage will be Leila Broukhim, a flamenco dancer from Madrid, and Chloe Pourmorady, from the large Iranian Jewish community in Los Angeles, whose music blends new and old . Eurovision winner Dana International is of Yemeni lineage.
Late at night, the Eastern beats disco will be jointly hosted by Gal Farhi, a London-based Israeli who is of Libyan heritage, and Joey Leskin, part of the Limmud volunteer team, who has a Yemeni background.
A number of sessions will be led by Edwin Shuker, the Board of Deputies joint vice-president who appears in the film Remember Baghdad, about the lives of Jews in Iraq.
Another audio-visual trip back into the Iraqi Jewish past is the Wolf of Baghdad, while Parisian Miriam Tangi’s sessions include a photographic look at the last Jews of Yemen.
“There are a lot more of young Sephardim and Mizrachim trying to get back to their roots and rediscover what their family stories are,” Mr Jebreel said.