Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698-1760) known as the "Baal Shem Tov" founded the Chassidic movement in Eastern Europe and began spreading his teachings in circa 1734 . One of the results of this movement was the practical application of Kabalistic concepts and ideas into daily Jewish ritual. If until t...

What does the name of a Spanish city, 2 Jewish martyrs and a Socialist activist have in common? My upcoming paper (now over 30 pages and growing) explores the history and genealogy of Sephardic Jews who settled in Eastern Europe. It is a subject that I find fascinating and I believe is woefully unex...

I apologize for being away for so long. Alot has changed for me over the past couple of months. I am currently residing on the west coast (Los Angeles to be exact) and teaching history at a local Yeshiva High School. Thank God, things are great here. I am currently hard at work on an article of mine...

"And Artscroll Created Aleppo in its Own Image": The Positioning of Aleppo as a Holy Ultra-Orthodox Community in Aleppo, City of Scholars By: Zvi Zohar Translated from the Hebrew by Inbal Karo Introduction: In 2005 an elegant book, in an album-like format, was published in the United States, bearing...

The Sefer Yeven Metzulah was written by Rabbi Natan Nata Hanover, a survivor of the Chmielnicki-led massacres of Jews in Poland and Ukraine in 1648-1649 [1]which came to be known as גזירות ת"ח ות"ט. This edition (pictured) was published in Tel Aviv in 1966 by the Socialist Zionist Hakibbu...

Not long ago, I came across this story: Talmud Torah school rejects four-year-old due to Sephardi grandfather. Principal says child has ‘stain’ in genealogy Leaving aside the obvious chillul hashem such stories generate (just do a google search and see for yourself how many anti-Semitic websites...

Marc Shapiro writes here: I read about the outrage taking pla ce in Emanuel, where in the local Beit Yaakov Sephardi students are being segregated from Ashkenazim to the extent that the two are not even permitted to play together. The Shas party has referred to this as nothing less than Apartheid, w...

read about it on my other blog...

Though most of the leading Jewish communists in Europe were Jews of Ashkenazic origin, there were a substantial number of Sephardim too who were active in Socialist and Communist movements, particularly in Yugoslavia whose Jewish population had been majority Sephardic for some time [1]. One of the s...

Yashar (pictured, right) (Yosef Shlomo Rofe) Delmedigo of Candia, Crete (1591-1655) was a colorful Jewish personality of the 17th century, what some might call a true 'Renaissance Rabbi'. A wandering Jew, he toured most of the major European capitals, temporarily settling in some of them and even ac...