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The images in this exhibition were selected from 101 Treasures from the National Library of Israel, a new book published by NLI. Read more

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About the Piyut and Tefillah Website

Liturgical hymns, called piyutim in Hebrew (piyut is the singular form), which incorporate prayer and folk poetry and which have been played and sung for generations, are among the Jewish people's greatest spiritual and cultural assets. Reaching back to ancient times, this expansive and enduring art form encompasses sacred and secular song and revolves around life cycle events and Jewish festivals. Sung in many different voices and languages, the art of piyut continues to reverberate to this day.

Each piyut and prayer has the capacity to open gates to the past, hinting at an unparalleled cultural and spiritual wealth. The songs, prayers and melodies passed down from generation to generation hold within them a power that touches the hearts of people, across time, space, and social boundaries.

Spearheading the piyut revolution in Israel is "An Invitation to Piyut" from the Snunit Association, a social and cultural initiative established in 2004 with the support of the Avi Chai Foundation. The project seeks to revive the Jewish people's traditions of piyut and prayer by documenting, preserving and providing access to materials and content. We believe that this tradition is a central pillar of Jewish culture and we have been working for years to make it available to the general public in the State of Israel and Jewish communities around the world.

The Invitation to Piyut website launched in 2005 and operated until 2016. Starting this year, we will operate the Piyut and Teffilah website here in cooperation with the National Library of Israel and the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage. The site contains thousands of piyutim and prayers from all Jewish ethnic traditions, along with educational programs, cultural events, musical productions, a publication arm and more.

The Piyut and Teffilah website seeks to document and preserve, make accessible and revive many diverse traditions of piyut and prayer from Jewish communities around the world. In so doing, we hope to enable both continuity and inspiration, mutual pollination and the development of multi-vocal versions, based on layers that are thousands of years old.

The site offers the general public access to the various components of the world of piyut and prayer, from the texts and melodies to conceptual, historical, cultural and topical backgrounds. The website's databank of piyutim and prayer contains both popular and lesser known performances. We are attentive to the varied and multifaceted work that has been created over the generations, even to this day, in communities in Israel and around the world, and we are open to the broadest possible range of creative output.

The website is the flagship project of the Invitation to Piyut initiative from the Snunit Association, in collaboration with the National Library of Israel, the "Landmarks" project at the Ministry of Heritage and Jerusalem and the Avi Chai Foundation.

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The Piyut and Tefillah Website - From the Snunit Association

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Liturgical hymns, called piyutim in Hebrew (piyut is the singular form), which incorporate prayer and folk poetry and which have been played and sung for generations, are among the Jewish people's greatest spiritual and cultural assets. Reaching back to ancient times, this expansive and enduring art form encompasses sacred and secular song and revolves around life cycle events and Jewish festivals.

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Search Results on the National Library of Israel Website

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Using the National Library of Israel catalog (formerly known as “Merhav”), you can discover millions of books, manuscripts, photographs, songs and a variety other of items from the Library collections

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Aliza Moreno <Aliza.Moreno@nli.org.il>

Sarah Palmer <sarah@nliusa.org>

Shuvi Hoffman <Shuvi.Hoffman@nli.org.il>

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Note: you need to sign in to the NLI to access these databases

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The NLI website offers free access to international online databases

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NLI session for PJ Sephardic Stories Initiative

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Check out this Presentation designed by Shuvi Hoffman.

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The Many Lives of the Synagogue El Transito

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The Many Lives of the Synagogue El Transito

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When Samuel Ha-Levi illegally built a synagogue in the provincial Spanish town of Toledo, no one could have known that it would one day become a church, then a military barracks in the Napoleonic war, a national monument, and finally a museum... but that's just the beginning!

And perhaps this is why the Synagogue El Transito, sitting right inside the historic town, is endowed with such a full and theatrical history.

We don't know exactly how far back Jewish history in Toledo dates, but we can be sure that Jews have lived there since at least the 6 th century, for in the year 589 CE the Council of Toledo created a decree prohibiting Jews from marrying Christians, holding public office or owning Christian servants. As you can imagine from the intonation of those decrees, the Jews suffered greatly under Christianity in Toledo, especially when the 8 th Toledo Council created even more extreme antisemitic legislation in the year 652CE. They say that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and this was never truer than when the rift between the Christians and the Jews led the Jewish community to aid in the Muslim conquest of Toledo in the year 715 CE. The Jews made fast friends with the new conquerors and even spoke Arabic in this period, as evidenced by the fact that Jewish documents from this time were written in Arabic (Asher b. Jehiel, Responsa, No. 56; Solomon ben Adret, Responsa, iii. 427.)

In 1252, King Alfonso the 10 th (9 Alfonsos weren't enough apparently) captured the city of Toledo and declared it Christian once again, yet this time he made sure that the Jews were treated as equals.

By this point many Jews had migrated to Toledo, as Muslim persecution in other parts of Spain drove them to seek refuge. These Jews rose to prominence, holding important roles in politics and government. At one point the King of Toledo even graced the Jews with the biggest compliment of all by taking a Jewish mistress (Fermosa) and a Jewish royal physician (Hayyuj Alfata)!

In the mid-1200s, the Archbishop of Toledo grew concerned by the financial and political prominence of the Jewish community and decided to curb it by imposing a tax and housing tithe on every Jew over the age of 20 (Jacobs, "Sources," No. 1265.) This seems not to have worked out so well, considering the fact that by 1290, nearly half of the town's considerable wealth was still owned by Jews!

During this time period, the Nasi or leader of the Jewish community doubled up as the spiritual leader of the community, and in 1305 the Jews of Toledo chose the learned nobleman Asher Ben Jehiel Abulafia (d. 1328) to lead their congregation. It was under his political and religious guidance that our story begins.

On a fine Spanish day in 1320, a boy named Samuel Ben Meir Ha-Levi Abulafia was born into the influential Abulafia family. The Abulafias, including the aforementioned Asher, had been leading the Jewish community in both Toledo and in fact all of Castilla for over 100 years. However, Samuel's parents died of the plague while he was still a boy, and because Samuel was too young to take over their legacy, he was instead apprenticed to the Knight Juan Alfonso. Owing to a nice bit of nepotism, his political dynasty serving the kings of Castilla for several generations, Samuel rose quickly through the ranks of the court until he found his own meaningful employment in the court of King Pedro the 1 st of Castilla, also known as King Pedro the Cruel (which we won't go into - let bygones be bygones, and all that). Samuel was first crowned the Mayor of the town, then the Treasurer, and finally the High Judge of Toledo. It was during his stint as Treasurer that he decided to build a synagogue. It was by no means the first synagogue in the area - Toledo was already home to the largest synagogue in Spain as well as 9 others, but this one was Samuel's own house of worship.

In 1357 the synagogue was opened. It was connected to Samuel Ha-Levi Abulafia's house and he presided over the services. Generously paying it back to the community who had so exalted him, Samuel also opened the synagogue as a hub for Jewish education, and a Yeshiva house of study.

One of the many things that made this synagogue interesting was the fact that in the 14 th century, Spain had actually decreed a ban on all construction of Jewish educational institutes and synagogues. However, Samuel's close relationship with King Pedro (cruel or otherwise), meant that he was able to find some legal loopholes, and more importantly, get away with them. The ban on synagogues did not extend to private homes, and bribes were sometimes accepted for the construction of Yeshivot, which King Pedro turned a blind eye towards. Maybe this was a nod to their close friendship, or maybe it was a royal token of apology for the persecution that the Jews had just faced in Toledo during the Black Death of the 1340s. Either way, the synagogue was allowed to stand, and for that we can be grateful.

Samuel Ha-Levi quite deliberately disobeyed the regulations requiring synagogues to be plainly decorated, smaller, and lower than churches, and once again King Pedro looked the other way. The rectangular prayer hall has a 12-meter-high ceiling and is decorated lavishly in a mix of styles. Hebrew inscriptions can be seen even till this day which extol both King Pedro and Samuel Ha-Levi. Arabic inscriptions and Psalm passages are also apparent on the walls, next to the Ha-Levi coat of arms and lots of magnificent windows.

During services, a second-floor gallery was set aside for the women, which was pretty forward thinking for the time! Contrary to the highly decorated interior, the façade of the synagogue was constructed of brick and stone, and was relatively unadorned, in order to draw less attention to the illegal structure, despite the fact that its towering roof raised the whole synagogue somewhat above all the nearby structures.

This house of prayer was a vibrant and animated place of worship for many years, but then tragedy struck. As the 14 th and 15 th centuries wore on, antisemitism had been back on the rise yet again. Samuel Ha-Levi obviously set out to protect Jewish rights and freedoms, but due to this, King Pedro was unable to keep defending him. Eventually the rift between the two men grew into an all-out war - Samuel was arrested on charges of corruption and eventually tortured to death. His house remained, as did the synagogue, and despite repeated and growing attacks on the Jewish community in Toledo as the 1300s came to an end, the synagogue was saved. This was not an act of good faith, but rather one of self-interest, for the synagogue was soon to be converted into a church.

In 1492, amidst a further uptake of antisemitism, the Jews were finally given an ultimatum: the Catholic monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, issued the Alhambra Decree, which gave Spanish Jews the choice to either convert to Catholicism, leave the country, or face expulsion. The decree was supposedly motivated by the belief that Jews had not fully assimilated into Spanish society and that their presence was a threat to the country's religious and cultural identity, but no justification can be made for the horrors which befell the Jewish community during these terrible years of persecution. The Spanish expulsion marked the apparent end to centuries of Jewish presence in Spain, and led to the forced migration of thousands of Jews to other parts of Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire.

The Synagogue El Transito was to remain a church until the early 1800s, when, during the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon in 1808, Toledo was forced to play a leading role. Toledo is very strategically located in the center of the peninsula of Spain and close to Madrid, so it became one of the central hostile points in the country. Despite heavy resistance, over 10,000 French troops along with their 400 horses took up residence in Toledo, under guidance from General Dupont. The Spanish fought back, and the ever-changing defensive lines of both armies often fell smack-bang in the middle of Toledo, causing much damage and unrest to the town. During that time, the Spanish revolutionaries and fighters needed barracks, and the vast space of the Church of El Transito provided just the right shelter.

Having lost its status as a church, the Synagogue El Transito was turned briefly into a national monument. The decline of Christianity in the late 1800s combined with the building's military prowess meant that it was easily turned into a heritage site, and it was only after gaining this national monument status that its history was slowly excavated, one layer at a time.

During the 19 th century, Spanish Jewish communities began to rebuild themselves, slowly at first, as Jews tentatively returned to their homes and found a more welcoming society than the one their ancestors had fled from. Despite that, no Jews returned to settle in Toledo. But as historians and world heritage staff explored the grounds of the building, they recognized just how important it had once been for the Jewish community, and pledged to return it to their possession.

Arturo Mélida y Alinari became the head architect of this immense restoration project and he worked tirelessly, firstly on the roof and outside walls, and then as he grew to notice all the many safety hazards present in the structure, he turned his attention to reinforcing the ancient building. In 1911, the building was given to the Museum Fund of Spain, who pledged to gift it back to the Jewish community as a Museum of Sephardi Culture and History. They doubled down on the restoration efforts, and started on the interior walls and the women's gallery. A debate soon raged over whether to also restore the church features, and eventually it was decided that it would only be fair to pay homage to the building's years as a church, so the choir stage and a few other Christian features were also restored to their former glory. Finally, some new features were added to the building, including a large Jewish library and a new Center for Hebrew Studies.

Of the five grandest medieval synagogues in Toledo, only two have survived: the Synagogue El Transito, now the Sephardic Museum, and Santa María la Blanca which also, as the name suggests, spent some time as a church. Toledo is sometimes known as the "Sephardic Jerusalem" due to its beautiful Jewish heritage buildings and synagogues, and its historic Jewish quarter which can still be visited today.

The Synagogue El Transito no longer hosts prayer services, and the only Jews in the town today are visitors, snapping pictures and tracing the vast Jewish history of the area, seeking to view some of Spain's most precious medieval Jewish architecture. From a synagogue to a church, to a military barracks, then a national monument, and finally a museum and synagogue once again, the Synagogue El Transito tells the riveting and tragic story of Spanish Jewry all the way from the Middle Ages, until today.

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The Many Lives of the Synagogue El Transito

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When Samuel Ha-Levi illegally built a synagogue in the provincial Spanish town of Toledo, no one could have known that it would one day become a church, then a military barracks in the Napoleonic war, a national monument, and finally a museum... but that's just the beginning!

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Kosher Pork Chops and Crypto-Jewish Identity

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Kosher Pork Chops and Crypto-Jewish Identity

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In Genie Milgrom's family, hidden Jewish identity was preserved for generations in the food they ate

One of the saddest chapters in Jewish history is also one of the more interesting on a gastronomic level. Following the forced conversions in 15th-century Spain, the Inquisition and subsequent Expulsion, many so-called New Christians secretly maintained Jewish beliefs. Practicing in secret to avoid arrest and torturous execution, they are now known as Crypto-Jews.

Foods that were considered "Jewish" could mean a death sentence when Crypto-Jews ate certain telltale dishes. Inquisition court documents repeatedly make this connection clear.

Many Crypto-Jews conspicuously ate pork to "prove" their Christian faith, while others devised tricks to avoid such transgressions while not giving away their secret.

Nonetheless, clearly not everything Crypto-Jews ate was necessarily related to their true or assumed identity - most foods were probably neutral in this regard.

So what did Crypto-Jews eat? And how have those foods developed over the past 500 years?

The recent book Recipes of My 15 Grandmothers by Genie Milgrom offers a fascinating personal window into the lives and foodways of the descendants of Crypto-Jews across the centuries.

Twenty-Two Generations

Milgrom's story is a big part of what makes the book as interesting as it is. Born Catholic in Havana, Cuba, she felt Jewish from a young age. Finally, in her 30s, she converted to Orthodox Judaism. It was tough for a single mother of two, largely disconnected from her old life and still struggling to integrate into a new community.

In time, she began to conduct intensive genealogical research, eventually uncovering "an unbroken maternal lineage going back twenty-two generations to 1405 pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal." It turned out that she had actually been Jewish all along!

Still, while names and cold biographical facts drawn from archival records may be significant, what Milgrom really yearned to discover were the more personal details. Turning to her mother, she asked for anything that might have been handed down from previous generations.

Her mom denied having anything. And then fate stepped in.

"Finally, the sad day came when my mom could no longer live in her home, and it was at that moment that I found many old books full of pages of handwritten recipes and scraps of paper with small writing and tiny notes written in light pencil. All of these pages were done in different handwritings, some with more flourishes than others, but always written by the women. With this, I found the recipes of the grandmothers."

Culinary Connections

While Milgrom had already written and spoken a lot about her genealogy and her research, this discovery led her to edit and compile the recipes into the cookbook.

Though an experienced home cook, Milgrom was neither a professional chef nor cookbook writer.

She recruited a cadre of friends and colleagues to help her test-cook the recipes, and throughout the book she repeatedly mentions that she had not even tasted all of its recipes herself.

While on the culinary level this might not hold up alongside other contemporary cookbook favorites, there are certainly unique and delicious recipes to be found within. But beyond that, the book is a great exploration of a certain blank spot in Jewish culinary history.

I know of one other book that looks at the subject. Husband and wife professors David M. Gitlitz and Linda Kay Davidson published the fascinating (and award-winning) A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews, culling food facts from Inquisition archives and reconstructing the original dishes.

But their recipes, enlightening as they may be, were largely their own approximations and guesses. Milgrom's book works as a perfect companion - personal recipes to pair with the broader archival research.

Kosher Pork Chops

Milgrom writes that she was surprised to find no recipes in the entire collection that mixed milk and meat. When I asked her about pork (a major ingredient in Spanish cuisine) she told me, "As a matter of fact, my family recipes only started having pork in Cuba in the 1930s and 1940s."

Thus, one of the most surprising recipes she uncovered among the collection of hand-bound books and paper scraps was one for chuletas - pork chops.

She could barely bring herself to read the recipe, but when she finally did, she was greatly amused. Though they are called "pork chops", the recipe is actually a sort of French toast that is disguised to resemble pork chops! Perhaps a more suitable name would be " imitaci ó n de chuletas ".

Milgrom claims that they are "the best look-alike to a pork chop that I have ever seen," and speculates this dish was designed to throw off suspicious neighbors.

I have not made these, nor do I know what pork chops should really look like, but I must admit that I find it hard to believe anyone could be truly convinced for more than just a passing glance. Smell and consistency would be dead giveaways. Still, whether or not this was actually their origin, there is undoubtedly an intriguing history cooked into this imitaci ó n.

Preserving Hidden Identity

Perhaps the most oft-repeated aspect of Crypto-Jewish life is the persistence of Jewish practices that generations performed, without even necessarily knowing why. Famous examples include lighting candles in a hidden place on Friday night, circumcision and sweeping towards the center of the room (rather than out the door, so suspicious neighbors wouldn't know they are preparing for Shabbat).

Throughout the book, Milgrom mentions a number of food-related customs that her grandmother passed on to her, all of them quite clearly having Jewish origins. Examples include checking eggs for blood spots, strictly washing and checking lettuce leaves to avoid all insects, burning a small wrapped piece of dough in the back of the oven ("taking challah") or even just describing a pareve cake as something that "could be eaten after any meal" with no further explanation.

Most of these were described to Milgrom simply as "family traditions" or things that would bring good luck.

She explains that her grandmother only taught these recipes and techniques to her, though there were four other grandchildren. This makes one wonder how much her grandmother knew about her Crypto-Jewish background. Reading through the grandmothers' recipes we must ask whether she too pieced together the truth of their Jewish background, or whether something more subconscious was at play.

Unfortunately, we will never know.

For the Holidays and Beyond

On a broader level, there are many other crossovers between the recipes in this book and Jewish food in general. As Milgrom has pointed out, it is worth noting that her family's recipes are distinct from Sephardic cuisine, as that community blended its Spanish roots with the influences of the areas in which they lived - Turkey, Italy, the Balkans and the Levant, largely. Primarily, her grandmothers' food is typically Spanish, with adjustments and developments over time.

Many dishes were things that Milgrom sees as more or less connected with Jewish holidays.

Cocido madrileño is a clear stand-in for a Shabbat hamin or chulent - the traditional lunch dish left on the fire throughout the night to avoid the prohibited cooking on the Sabbath. Other recipes appear perfect for various holidays as well, such as the dark fruit cake for Rosh Hashanah and orejuelas y pestiños ("ears and pastries") for Purim. Sweets shaped like ears and other body parts are prepared for the holiday in many Jewish cultures, with the Hebrew term for hamantaschen being " oznei Haman" or "Haman's ears". Pestiños are a common Spanish pastry often associated with the period preceding Easter, roughly the same season as Purim.

Dulces en almibar are like donut holes covered in a special kind of flavored syrup. Whether intentional or not, they certainly seem Hanukkah-appropriate.

Milgrom also points out how many dishes there are that surprisingly contain no wheat flour, making them appropriate for Passover.

Finally, though distinct from Sephardic cooking, as mentioned above, there are a number of dishes represented that are indeed Sephardic classics. She highlights her grandmothers' "Decorated Rice" (saffron rice with raisins, almonds and cinnamon) and the pareve flan-like Tocino del Ciello as Sephardic classics. Bollas and rosquillas are other common Sephardic pastries that appear in these pages, too.

While the descendants of Crypto-Jews may now be free to cook whatever they like, their recipes offer a window into generations of kitchens and lives, providing a tangible and tasty link to the past.

A version of this article first appeared on "The Taste of Jewish Culture". It has been published here as part of Gesher L'Europa, the National Library of Israel's initiative to share stories and connect with people, institutions and communities in Europe and beyond.

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Kosher Pork Chops and Crypto-Jewish Identity

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In Genie Milgrom's family, hidden Jewish identity was preserved for generations in the food they ate One of the saddest chapters in Jewish history is also one of the more interesting on a gastronomic level. Following the forced conversions in 15th-century Spain, the Inquisition and subsequent Expulsion, many so-called New Christians secretly maintained Jewish beliefs.

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Resurrecting One of the World's Oldest Jewish Communities

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Resurrecting One of the World's Oldest Jewish Communities

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After decades in ruins, Nikos Stavroulakis set out to revitalize Jewish life on the Greek island of Crete

Jews first arrived in Crete from Egypt some 2,300 years ago, perhaps as part of Egyptian military campaigns. A century or two later, they came from the Land of Israel during the Maccabean Revolt.

At the time, Hellenized, Greek-speaking Jews were establishing communities throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, considered to be some of the oldest known Jewish diaspora communities.

Their descendants came to be known as "Romaniote Jews," over time developing a distinct culture including liturgical traditions and songs, and speaking "Yevanic", a Judeo-Greek dialect infused with Hebrew loanwords and written in Hebrew script.

Romaniote synagogues even have a distinct interior layout that differs from Sephardic and Ashkenazi synagogues.

Through ancient inscriptions, medieval manuscripts and other written and archaeological sources, we can trace some of the history of Cretan Jewry, which thrived under Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Andalusian Arab, Venetian and Ottoman control, before being nearly extinguished under German occupation in 1944.

Today, the Etz Hayyim Synagogue in Hania is practically the only remaining testament on the island to the rich Cretan Jewish heritage, which spanned two millennia.

Ancient sources

Jewish communities on Crete are first referenced in 4 th century BCE epitaph inscriptions from Kassanoi and Kissamos where, in the city of Kissamos, a "Sophia of Gortyna, an elder and leader of the synagogue" attests to the leading role of women in diaspora communities.

A community in Gortyna is described in the First Book of Maccabees (15:23) dating to around 142 BCE, when Gortyna was the most prosperous city in Crete. Although only fragmentary inscriptions remain in Crete, inscriptions dating to the 3 rd and 2 nd centuries BCE from an ancient synagogue on the island of Delos honor two citizens of the Cretan cities of Heraklion and Knossos, providing evidence of the existence of a Jewish community on the island during that period, as well.

By the time of the Roman conquest of Crete in the 1 st century BCE, Jewish communities were thriving in most of the major cities, including Gortyna, Kissamos, Hania, Rethymnon, Knossos and Sitia.

According to the renowned Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, the larger Greek islands, including Crete, were "full of Jewish settlements" ( Legatione ad Gaium, 282).

Jewish communities in Crete are also referenced in the New Testament's Acts of the Apostles (2:11) as having been present at Pentecost (Shavuot) in Jerusalem, as well as in the Epistle of Paul to Titus (1-9:16) in which Paul describes the "Jewish Christians" in Crete. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West in 476 CE, Roman rule continued in the eastern part of the empire, later termed the Byzantine Empire, where its citizens continued to view themselves as "Romans", a term that would eventually be associated with the Greek-speaking Jews, the Romaniotes.

At the time, Crete was one of the 64 provinces of the Byzantine Empire, with its capital in Constantinople. Jews are not explicitly mentioned in extant historical accounts from the short-lived "Emirate of Crete" (825-961 CE), established following the Andalusian Arab conquest of the island, but they certainly remained.

During the late Byzantine period (961-1204 CE), historical sources indicate that Jewish communities were not permitted to live within the island's walled cities, but were instead required to live outside the walls as close as possible to the main city gates which offered protection in times of danger.

Into and outside the Ghetto

In 1204, after the sacking of Constantinople as part of the 4 th Crusade, which led to the temporary dissolution of the Byzantine Empire, Crete became a Venetian colony called the "Kingdom of Kandia" with Heraklion (Kandia) as the island's capital. According to Venetian accounts, Crete's Jewish population grew significantly in the 14 th and 15 th centuries due to the influx of Sephardi Jews from the Iberian Peninsula following the exodus of 1391, the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 and again after the Spanish Expulsion in 1492. It seems that these and other immigrant families were absorbed into the indigenous Romaniote communities through the adoption of the local language, culture and religious customs, along with intermarriage.

By the 16 th century, the three main Cretan cities, Heraklion (Kandia), Rethymnon (Retimo) and Hania (La Canea) were flourishing under Venetian rule, their populations steadily growing and the economy thriving due to trade and shipping.

At this time, Cretan Jews maintained already-established communities in the three major cities, though they were required to live in segregated ghettos or quarters called " Zudecca ", where they worked as grocers, artisans, tanners, butchers, money lenders and traders of silk, metals, dyes and leather. They were also active in intellectual pursuits including philosophy and theology and many individuals travelled widely, especially to places like Padua and Mantova in Italy, where they trained as doctors, lawyers and rabbis.

Alongside these urban communities were rural Jewish settlements, which produced kosher cheeses, wines, grains and citrons for both export and local use. By the end of the 16 th century, there were approximately 1600 Jews in Crete who worshipped in up to nine synagogues around the island. At that time, Heraklion was the largest community with four synagogues. Hania had two: Beth Shalom (Sephardic) and Etz Hayyim (Romaniote), both of them located in the historic Jewish neighborhood of Evraiki.

The period of Ottoman rule in Crete (1669-1898), particularly in later years, brought economic hardship to the island's general population, and as a result the Jewish communities in Heraklion and Rethymnon diminished.

Many wealthy Jewish families moved to Hania, the new Ottoman capital of the island, and farther afield to Venice and elsewhere in Italy and to other Mediterranean port cities like Gibraltar, Istanbul and Salonika. Yet, Ottoman authority was also favorable to Crete's Jewish communities, which were afforded some degree of religious autonomy, just like their Christian Orthodox neighbors, under the Ottoman millet system.

In towns like Hania, the former ghettos were opened and Jews were allowed to settle in neighbouring quarters where they were permitted to buy and legally inherit property for the first time.

This in particular may be what enticed Sephardic immigrants from North Africa and Izmir to the city at the time. However, by the 19 th century, sporadic violent revolts against Ottoman rule in Crete led many Jews to emigrate elsewhere.

It is estimated that in 1817, there were 150 Jewish families divided between Heraklion and Hania; in 1858, there were 907 Jews on the island; by 1881, there were only 647 Jews in Crete, with the majority residing in Hania.

German occupation

The German occupation of Greece began in April 1941 and lasted until 1945. Following the failed Italian invasion of Greece in October 1940, Germany assisted its Italian and Bulgarian allies in their expansionist aspirations and invaded the country.

Crete itself was invaded by the Germans in May 1941 through a major airborne campaign, and the three main cities of Hania, Rethymnon and Heraklion were badly bombed. The Germans were met by fierce resistance from the local population and by the Allied forces, but they eventually prevailed and established their occupation regime in June 1941.

From this time onwards, most of Crete's Jews, numbering only about 350 members, were residing in Hania where they increasingly faced restrictions imposed upon their daily lives. Some individuals managed to escape Crete for Athens during the occupation. Some survived there in hiding, while others were eventually arrested and sent to the extermination camps.

It was not until 1944 that the Hania community was to be deported to Auschwitz.

On May 20 th of that year, the Cretan Jewish community was arrested and taken to a local prison for two weeks before being transported to Heraklion, where they boarded a German steamship, the Tánaïs, together with Italian prisoners of war and Cretan resistance fighters. The ship was to sail to Athens and the Jewish prisoners were then to be transported by train to the death camps in Poland. Due to the ongoing naval war in the Mediterranean, however, the ship was torpedoed by a British submarine not long after departing Heraklion and it sank with all of its prisoners in the early hours of June 9, 1944.

Once the community had been deported, Hania's Jewish neighbourhood was ransacked by the Nazis who also stripped the Etz Hayyim Synagogue - the island's last remaining Jewish house of prayer - of its religious artifacts, books and the centuries-old community archive.

Etz Hayyim stood abandoned from then until the 1990s, when Hania resident Nikos Stavroulakis (an artist, art historian and founding director of the Jewish Museum of Greece) decided to rebuild and revive the synagogue.

Reviving Etz Hayyim and the Cretan Jewish tradition

Almost 50 years after the end of WWII, the fortunes of the Etz Hayyim Synagogue were to change thanks to Nikos, who managed to garner significant interest and funding to fully restore the synagogue in just a few short years.

Heading the work under the aegis of the World Monuments Fund in cooperation with the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KISE), Nikos secured support from leading European Jewish philanthropists - including the Rothschilds and the Lauders - as well as numerous other foundations, agencies and individuals.

On October 10, 1999 the synagogue was officially rededicated by Rabbis Jacob Arar and Isaak Mizan of Athens, and Rabbi Yacob Dayan of Salonika. Approximately 350 people attended, with members of the various Greek Jewish communities, representatives from the Orthodox and Catholic churches in Hania, along with local and international dignitaries, including the German ambassador to Greece.

Etz Hayyim today

Since 2010, the Etz Hayyim Synagogue has been operated by a non-profit organization in cooperation with the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece (KISE). The organization is registered as a charity in Greece and - because Etz Hayyim does not receive any public funding - it raises funds for the maintenance and preservation of the synagogue and for the various religious and cultural events held there.

Today, Etz Hayyim is both an active place of worship where a small multinational and multi-faith group called the " Havurah " share communal experiences, as well as a vibrant community and cultural center that hosts exhibitions, lectures, readings, films and concerts.

Its small team of dedicated staff undertake ongoing research into the history of the Cretan Jewish community, while engaging both local and international school groups and teachers as part of the synagogue's ongoing educational outreach program. The synagogue welcomes Jews of all different backgrounds and non-Jewish visitors, who can take a guided tour of the synagogue and learn about Cretan Jewish history and traditions, or attend regular Kabbalat Shabbat and High Holiday services.

Two decades after its rededication, Etz Hayyim has once again become a fixture in the religious and socio-cultural life of Hania as a place of prayer, study, recollection and reconciliation.

Remembering Nikos

Nikos Stavroulakis, founding director of the new Etz Hayyim Synagogue and legendary figure in Greek Jewish life, passed away in 2017. The Etz Hayyim staff is currently cataloguing Nikos' private collection of artifacts, books, documents and other items. The Nikos Stavroulakis Collection will eventually be made available to researchers and the general public.

If you have any materials (photos, letters, documents, etc.) relating to Nikos or his work, please email the Etz Hayyim staff: [email protected] .

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This article has been published as part of Gesher L'Europa, the National Library of Israel's initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.

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Resurrecting One of the World's Oldest Jewish Communities

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After decades in ruins, Nikos Stavroulakis set out to revitalize Jewish life on the Greek island of Crete Jews first arrived in Crete from Egypt some 2,300 years ago, perhaps as part of Egyptian military campaigns. A century or two later, they came from the Land of Israel during the Maccabean Revolt.

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How a 500 Year-Old Torah Scroll Was Saved from the Nazi Conquest of Rhodes

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How a 500 Year-Old Torah Scroll Was Saved from the Nazi Conquest of Rhodes

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The scroll was hidden away from the German occupiers in an unlikely location...

The Torah scroll pictured above was originally inscribed in Spain in either the 14th or 15th century, but that was just the beginning...

At some point, it arrived at the famous Kahal Shalom synagogue on the island of Rhodes, which is today the oldest active synagogue in Greece. It was likely brought there by Jewish exiles from Spain or their descendants and may very well have been stored in the synagogue since its founding in 1593.

The first evidence of a Sephardic-Jewish presence on Rhodes dates to the Ottoman period, which began with the conquest of the island in 1522.

For hundreds of years, the members of Rhodes' Jewish community would read from this scroll at services held at Kahal Shalom. The community thrived and by the 1920s, a quarter of the town of Rhodes' population was Jewish. It all came to an end with the Nazi conquest and the deportation of the island's Jews to Auschwitz in July of 1944.

Just a few days before the deportation, members of the community were able to smuggle the scroll out of the synagogue and place it in the custody of the Mufti of Rhodes, Sheikh Suleyman Kasiloglou. The mufti is said to have hidden the Torah under the pulpit of the Murad Reis Mosque, where the Nazis would never think to look.

1,673 Jews were sent from Rhodes to Auschwitz where they were put to death. Selahattin Ülkümen, the Turkish Consul-General on the island, was able to save around 50 members of the community by stating that they were Turkish citizens. This was only true for a dozen or so. Regarding the rest, Ülkümen fabricated a lie claiming that spouses of Turkish citizens were citizens themselves. His heroic intervention saved their lives.

Following the conclusion of World War II, the Torah scroll was returned to the community's few surviving members, in the presence of soldiers from the British Army's Jewish Brigade.

In June of 1999, the scroll was deposited at the National Library of Israel by Jacqueline Benatar and her sister Miriam Pimienta-Benatar, to serve as a memorial to the martyrs of Rhodes, their parents among them. The donation was carried out at the suggestion of the President of the Rhodes Jewish community, Mr. Moise Soriano.

You can find the Rhodes Torah scroll today at the National Library of Israel.

If you liked this article, try these:

The Package is Secure: How Jewish Women Were Smuggled to Safety in 19th Century Italy
The 13th Century Manuscript That Was Saved From the Nazis
The Book that Survived Kristallnacht and Made it to the Land of Israel

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How a 500 Year-Old Torah Scroll Was Saved from the Nazi Conquest of Rhodes

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The scroll was hidden away from the German occupiers in an unlikely location... The Torah scroll pictured above was originally inscribed in Spain in either the 14th or 15th century, but that was just the beginning... At some point, it arrived at the famous Kahal Shalom synagogue on the island of Rhodes, which is today the oldest active synagogue in Greece.

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One of the World's Oldest Esther Scrolls Comes Home

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One of the World's Oldest Esther Scrolls Comes Home

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Mid-15th century Iberian megillah now at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and online

One of the world's oldest known Esther scrolls (also known as a " megillah") has been gifted to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, home to the world's largest collection of textual Judaica, where it has also been made available online for the first time.

Esther scrolls contain the story of the Book of Esther in Hebrew and are traditionally read in Jewish communities across the globe on the festival of Purim, which will take place on February 25-28 this year.

Scholars have determined that the newly received Esther scroll was written by a scribe on the Iberian Peninsula around 1465, prior to the Spanish and Portuguese Expulsions at the end of the fifteenth century. These conclusions are based on both stylistic and scientific evidence, including Carbon-14 dating.

The megillah is written in brown ink on leather in an elegant, characteristic Sephardic script, which resembles that of a Torah scroll. The first panel, before the text of the Book of Esther, includes the traditional blessings recited before and after the reading of the megillah, and attests to the ritual use of this scroll in a pre-Expulsion Iberian Jewish community.

According to experts, there are very few extant Esther scrolls from the medieval period in general, and from the fifteenth century, in particular. Torah scrolls and Esther scrolls from pre-Expulsion Spain and Portugal are even rarer, with only a small handful known to exist.

Prior to the donation, this scroll was the only complete fifteenth century megillah in private hands.

The medieval scroll is a gift from Michael Jesselson and family, continuing long-standing family support of the National Library of Israel and its collections. Michael's father, Ludwig Jesselson, was the founding chair of the International Council of the Library (then known as the "Jewish National and University Library") and a strong leader and advocate of the Library for decades.

According to Dr. Yoel Finkelman, curator of the National Library of Israel's Haim and Hanna Salomon Judaica Collection, the new addition is "an incredibly rare testament to the rich material culture of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. It is one of the earliest extant Esther Scrolls, and one of the few 15 th century megillot in the world. The Library is privileged to house this treasure and to preserve the legacy of pre-Expulsion Iberian Jewry for the Jewish people and the world."

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One of the World's Oldest Esther Scrolls Comes Home

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Mid-15th century Iberian megillah now at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and online One of the world's oldest known Esther scrolls (also known as a " megillah") has been gifted to the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, home to the world's largest collection of textual Judaica, where it has also been made available online for the first time.

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Jewish Languages

In 2016, the National Library of Israel piloted a partnership with the European Days of Jewish Culture, a project of the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ), celebrating Jewish culture in dozens of cities throughout Europe annually in early September.

The theme of the 2016 European Days of Jewish Culture focused on Jewish languages. The NLI drew on the vast materials in the Library's collections, providing participating cities with materials to create their own exhibits as part of their own local events.

The exhibition produced by the NLI consisted of seven panels, each displaying the history of a specific Jewish language, providing specific examples from the treasures in the Library archive and collections.

NLI Languages Exhibit in Slovenia

Understanding the relationship of the Jewish people with language is critical in recognizing the impact on the cultural and traditional norms that have come forth from Jewish communities both historically and in modern times. Over hundreds of years of migration and settlement, Jews have spoken dozens of different languages. Jews have historically spoken and written in a language differing from the native language of where their home country. In some cases their languages have differed by including embedded Hebrew words and in others, they spoke a completely different tongue than the local dialect.

The NLI panels, produced originally in English, featured Modern Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic, Judeo- Arabic, Ladino and other Jewish languages, providing a historical background for the different dialects and showing samples of the use of that language in different communities as they appear in the NLI collections.

Displayed in 23 cities across 11 European countries, the panels, which feature more than 30 of the unique treasures housed in the NLI, were translated into six different languages, exposing the materials and information to thousands of participants in the European Day of Jewish Culture events across Europe.

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In 2016, the National Library of Israel piloted a partnership with the European Days of Jewish Culture, a project of the European Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Culture and Heritage (AEPJ), celebrating Jewish culture in dozens of cities throughout Europe annually in early September.

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The Jewish Expulsion From Spain and the Sephardic Diaspora

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The Jewish Expulsion From Spain and the Sephardic Diaspora

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The Jewish Expulsion From Spain and the Sephardic Diaspora

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The expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492 was a seminal event in Jewish history. The NLI has collected numerous historical materials on the subject.

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Browse by title | Newspapers | The National Library of Israel

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Browse by title - Browse through all of the newspapers and magazines in our collection

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https://sephardivoices.com/

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Search Results on the National Library of Israel Website

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Using the National Library of Israel catalog (formerly known as "Merhav"), you can discover millions of books, manuscripts, photographs, songs and a variety other of items from the Library collections

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Five-Hundred Years in the Life of the Amon Family

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Five-Hundred Years in the Life of the Amon Family

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From the surrender of Spain to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond, they were there

The name first appears in the first book of the Torah.

The Almighty - in bestowing a new name upon Abram - announces to him that "Your name will be 'Abraham,' for I have made you the father of many [ Av Hamon] nations."

The name 'Hamon' thus translates as 'multitude' or 'many'.

Talmudic scholars, moreover, indicated that there exists a deeper meaning to this name. Indeed, the commentators state that the very name "Abraham" is but an abbreviation of "Av Hamon," ('Father of Many'), while each letter signifies a special attribute or character trait of Abraham, the progenitor of not only the Jewish people, but of monotheism itself.

As a last name, it will variably be spelled "Hamon" or "Amon".

Abraham to Isaac

The first individual who bears this name in the historical record (and thus my family's first appearance) seems to be Isaac Amon of Granada in the late 15 th century.

Private physician to Muhammad XII (or Boabdil) the last Nasrid sultan of Granada, Isaac witnessed the surrender of the last Muslim ruled city to Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Monarchs, in January 1492.

Besides some speculation, history tragically reveals no more of this forebear of the Amon family.

It does, however, record the existence of another Amon named Joseph, a younger relative who was also in Granada at that time.

One historian believed that Joseph was born in Italy, scion of the famous family of Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura, though the consensus is that the Amon family is of Iberian origin.

At the sultan's court

Notwithstanding this venerable story, Amon family lore holds that Sultan Bayezid ordered Joseph to declare the Shahada and convert to Islam.

He was given three days to decide.

Joseph refused and defiantly proclaimed that he, his family, and his brethren had fled their ancestral homeland in search of religious liberty. He offered up his life but declared that he would not betray his faith.

Impressed by his staunch conviction, Bayezid invited Joseph to become his physician and advisor. Consequently, Joseph loyally served Bayezid and his son Selim I (r. 1512-1520), often accompanying them on military expeditions to Egypt and Syria, as the Ottoman Empire continued to increase its vast territorial holdings.

Joseph's son Moses, who had left Spain as an infant, rose even higher than his father in the esteem and service of the Sultan and his Jewish brethren. He served as physician, advisor, and diplomat to Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520-1566), the longest reigning Ottoman sultan, throughout much of his 46 years in power.

Although other Amons may be mentioned in various encyclopedias and resources, none of them merited to receive the historic stature or station of these three forefathers, all of them medieval physicians.

The Amons of late-Ottoman Istanbul

Closer to our own time, my great-great grandfather Ishak Amon Effendi is the earliest known member of my directly traceable family branch.

Born and raised in Istanbul, he was a teacher of mathematics, a rabbi, and a member of the Communal Council. His grandson (my grandfather) told me that as a sign of his prestige, Rabbi Ishak was even offered the position of Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire following the Turkish War for Independence.

Unwilling to become involved in political machinations, he declined the offer to succeed Rabbi Haim Nahum Effendi, who had left to become Chief Rabbi of Egypt. Nonetheless, the Ottoman government bestowed "Effendi" (a title of nobility equivalent to being knighted in England and rarely given to Jews) upon him as a sign of the esteem in which he was held.

Though the letters are fading, words in Turkish and Hebrew note that he was honored by the nation for his contributions and mourned by his people.

Rabbi Ishak's son Davit was my great-grandfather. Born in 1881, the same year as Ataturk, he owned and operated his own import-export business in Istanbul. Married by Rabbi Raphael David Saban, the future Chief Rabbi of Turkey, Davit had two brothers and a sister. He died in 1977, the year after my father started medical school, and a dozen years before I was born in the United States.

The Midwest via modern Turkey

His son - my grandfather - Rene Isaac Amon, was a formative influence in my own life. Born in December 1923, a month and a half after Ataturk proclaimed the Turkish Republic, he grew up in a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional, multi-national neighborhood of Istanbul. He was a polyglot, who spoke French with his parents, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) with his grandparents, Greek with his friends, Turkish in the streets, and Hebrew in school. He later learned German and Russian for study purposes and perfected his English as an attaché between the Turkish Army and the British military during the Korean War.

Shortly thereafter, my grandparents made the decision to move to America, with a young child - my father Erol - in tow. Arriving in Chicago during fall 1957 (when my dad was three years old), my grandparents had to reorient themselves to a new culture.

My grandfather's Masters in Engineering from Istanbul Technical University was insufficient for career advancement. As such, despite 15 years of practice, he attended Northwestern University to obtain his PhD (and thus earn "his union card" as he put it). In his early 40s, he was thus writing his dissertation, teaching full time at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and raising my father.

My grandfather's interests were numerous and his curiosity insatiable. He continued to read works in multiple languages, discuss religion, history, literature, engage with mathematical problems, and watch movies with us at night.

Into the 21st century

My grandmother (of Nahmad and Safra family origin), passed on in September 2013, while my grandfather passed on in October 2018, two months' shy of his 95 th birthday.

Mentally lucid and cognizant until the end, (speaking in French and Ladino with friends in person and on the phone even just a few days before his passing), he impressed upon our family the importance of remembering our history and passing it on to future descendants, to those who will unfortunately not know him except through our indelible recollections and memories.

In this final enterprise, he followed the notable example of our lawgiver and prophet Moses, who near the end of his own life exhorted the Nation of Israel to "remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past. Ask your father and he will inform you; your elders and they will tell you."

My genetic story (from 23&Me) reveals that I have relatives on five continents. Indeed, the Amon Diaspora spans the globe; members live in the United States (such as Cleveland, Seattle, New York, Boston, and St. Louis), Costa Rica, Turkey, Israel, France, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Even more significantly, my Amon ancestors hail from Egypt, Iraq, Italy, Turkey, Lebanon, Spain and Portugal. Though great expanses of space and time separate us, they live on in us.

Our DNA is the "living embodiment" of our chronicle in the scroll of family, Jewish, and human history.

It is said that we are only remembered for three generations. Accordingly, it is incumbent upon us to bear witness to the lives of our ancestors throughout the centuries, so they may live on for posterity. As the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and member of the House of Lords memorably wrote, "I hear their call to write the next chapter... [and] continue their journey because... I may not let it and them fail. I cannot be the missing letter in the scroll."

Ultimately, from 15 th century Isaac Amon to 21 st century Isaac Amon, the story and legacy continues.

This article has been published as part of Gesher L'Europa, the National Library of Israel's initiative to share stories and connect with people, institutions and communities in Europe and beyond.

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Five-Hundred Years in the Life of the Amon Family

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From the surrender of Spain to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent and beyond, they were there The name first appears in the first book of the Torah. The Almighty - in bestowing a new name upon Abram - announces to him that "Your name will be 'Abraham,' for I have made you the father of many [ Av Hamon] nations."

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Greek songs and stories, a book from Morocco, and one ruby-eyed snake ring...

My maternal grandmother, Marguerite Sananes, née Saltiel, of blessed memory (1900-1997), was a native of the northern Greek city of Salonica (Tk. Selanik, Gk. Thessaloniki).

At the time of her birth it was one of the great ports of the Ottoman Empire. Her forebears on that side of our family had fled to safety in Muslim Turkey from Toledo in 1492 following the infamous edict of expulsion by Ferdinand and Isabella. Like other Sephardim (except for those from the other kingdom of the Iberian peninsula, Portugal, of course) we preserved the Judeo-Spanish language, Ladino or Judezmo, which my mother Charlotte, her three sisters Esther, Clarice, and Gloria (may their memory be for a blessing), Grandma, and my Great-grandmother Rachel of blessed memory all spoke as their native tongue.

Sephardim wrote Ladino in the notoriously difficult Hebrew cursive called Solitreo; they printed it in "Rashi" and standard square-character Hebrew letters. Great-grandma Rachel (whom we called Manache) knew Ladino, Italian, and, I am told, some Greek and Turkish, and that was enough- by the time I knew her she had reverted to Spanish alone.

Manache had learned English well enough to pass the test on the US Constitution for her citizenship examination, and to converse fluently with my father, an American-born Ashkenazi Jew innocent of Ladino, not to mention Turkish or Bulgarian. Manache passed away in 1964 at the age of 96.

In the year of Grandma Marguerite's birth, Salonica was the only great city on earth with a majority Jewish population. Most of the Jews belonged to the working classes, and they spearheaded the nascent labor movement in the Ottoman Empire. Many were stevedores, and on Shabbat, the port came to a standstill.

Grandma Marguerite told me when I was very young how she used to distribute socialist newspapers in Ladino to workers at the waterfront- she reminisced about the famous White Tower (Gk. Leukos pyrgos) by the sea. Our family attended the synagogue called Los figos locos, "The Wild Figs", which, she explained, was named after a place remembered from the Toledo of the fifteenth century.

These memories were still vivid after nearly half a millennium: many Jews still kept the keys to the houses in Spain that they had been forced to abandon.

In the Balkan Wars, when Grandma was twelve, the city reverted to the Kingdom of Greece and returned to its original name, Thessaloniki. Grandma had attended the school of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, where she learned fluent French, and had been set to attend college in Auteuil. But the World War broke out in 1914 and those plans never materialized; she became a journalist for a local newspaper.

Her knowledge of French enabled her to find a job with the French military authorities and to feed our family during the famine in the aftermath of the conflagration that devastated the city, particularly the poorer, Jewish neighborhoods, in 1917.

Manache broke her hip during the Great Fire. It was never set; and when I was little she used to get about the house with a great cane. She was a tall, gaunt woman, bedridden in her last years, and used to call me to her saying " Camina, pasha! " - "Walk, little prince!"

Grandma, her parents, and many other members of the Saltiel and Ben Ruby families immigrated to the United States in 1920, sailing from Piraeus- the port of the Greek capital, Athens- on the Meghali Ellas, ("Greater Greece", after the grandiose plan of Venizelos to liberate Ionia and the Hellenic communities of Pontus and the Anatolian interior from Turkish rule).

It ferried thousands of Greek, Jewish, and Armenian immigrants from Athens to the New World. Grandma used to describe the good ship to me when I was a boy as rather less grand than its name might suggest: "half a walnut shell".

Over the month-long passage the only food was bread and onions that were, she used to add, not very fresh. But the Meghali Ellas bore its passengers safely to New York.

Great-grandmother Rachel was a clairvoyant and practiced magic: I remember being told that she would go and sacrifice a black cock at midnight over the grave of the spirit she discerned had caused an illness in the family. Manache wore a gold ring of entwined snakes, one with a single ruby eye; the other, with a single diamond eye: I inherited it upon her death.

It may have significance as an apotropaic amulet, cf. the brazen serpent Nechushtan of Moses. I am named after her husband Ya'aqov, whom people called " el bueno ", "the good", for his kindness and his honesty in business.

In Ottoman Salonica he had been a grain merchant: he was a polyglot and used to strike a verbal deal with the farmers up north in the partly Slavic-speaking province of Macedonia and in Bulgaria, and seal the contract for the price for the year's crop with a handshake. He always paid the agreed sum, even if it turned out to be a bad harvest. So he was good, if not rich.

The family settled on upper Park Avenue in Manhattan- then as now a poor neighborhood. They advertised for a suitable match for Grandma in the Ladino newspaper, and when each swain came to call, the women would leave a book on the table and hide in the kitchen to see what the prospective spouse did with it.

Most men showed no interest in the book. (That is fair enough, in retrospect: they had not come to visit a library.) One fellow did, but as he was holding it upside-down it was plain he was not literate and therefore a bad match.

Finally, a somewhat older gentleman immersed himself in the volume, not looking up right away when the ladies emerged. So Grandmother married him.

Joseph Sananes, my maternal grandfather, was also a Sephardic Jew and Ladino speaker, but from the other Mediterranean edge of the Iberian dispersion: Tetuan, on the northern coast of Morocco.

The newlyweds settled in a large, comfortable house in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Grandpa was a successful businessman in the 1920s.

Those were the days of the Prohibition of liquor in the United States, so he grew grapes in the backyard and made Shabbat wine for our family, as well as the strong anisette liquor raki. Grandma baked honeyed kadayif pastry and cooked the Moroccan tejine for him, along with the traditional Shabbat adafina stew and the delicious dishes of the Jews of Greece.

Ethnic memory in America is often culinary, partly because such innocuous things spice quaintly the melting pot of the shared, diverse culture, but partly too because tastes and smells of early childhood have a visceral power in the memory.

The stock market crash of 1929 that ushered in the Great Depression wiped out the family finances, but Grandpa worked very hard and managed to support his wife, four daughters, and a large extended family. He would enjoy a small glass of raki when he came home from work, and my mother told me he regularly studied the works of the eleventh-century philosopher and Torah sage, the Rambam (Maimonides).

On Shabbat and other holidays, visitors would come to call and Grandma served them raki, coffee, and homemade candied orange peel. The other Moroccan Jews - some of whom were unlettered, rough men - considered my gentle, learned Grandpa a " hakham ", and turned to him as a sage and adjudicator of disputes.

My Grandfather Joseph Sananes, passed away in 1956, when I was three; but I am told he and I were great friends: once one evening after supper he gave me a thimbleful of Turkish coffee in my parents' apartment on the southwest corner of 164 th Street and Broadway in Manhattan and I giggled all night long.

I still treasure his silver tiger-eye ring and have the painted wooden stool embossed with metal studs that he made for me.

But the most precious inheritance is a Psalter given him when he left Morocco for the new world, around 1900 (see Plates 5, 6, and 7). This Sefer Tehillim was printed at Livorno, in the year encoded on the title page as " Ve-zot ha-berakha ", "And this is the blessing" [= 5626, 1865 CE] with the owner's name embossed on the tooled red leather cover:

"With peace upon Israel! Shelomo son of David/ N[ahon?], May the right hand of God preserve us, in the city of Tetuan, may God protect her."

There follows a dedication on the verso of the title page:

"This book is a gift given as a memorial of love and affection to one close to me who is from amongst those who know God's law, the friend of my soul and spirit: in honor of Rav Joseph Sananes, may his Rock watch over him. 'And thou shalt discourse upon it by day and by night.' (Joshua 1.8) The Psalms of King David, peace be upon him: may he by his merit defend us and all Israel, Amen."

Shelomo ben David's signature in the cursive S olitreo script used for Ladino follows.

This much, then, for the circumstances of the written evidence.

"Write it down!" the historian Simon Dubnow commanded the Jews of the ghetto of Riga before the Nazis murdered him in 1941. So, one writes, in love and vengeance.

But of the life itself there is much more that cannot be set down in any book, but that moves and speaks in color and sound and scent in the tableaux vivants of the chambers of the mind where the past lives- the lazy warm light of a Sunday afternoon, the taste of fish cakes and rice with tomato sauce and fried peppers in a little Brooklyn kitchen, the crackle of fijuela pastries, the hard sweet rolls called roscas.

Coffee brewing. The voices.

Stories about Djuha, the holy fool, and the way Grandma told them as cousin Michelle and I hung on every word in enraptured delight: The time he taunted the cat who snatched his fish by saying, "You've got the fish, but I have the recipe!" or the time he asked the wind to help him carry the heavy bag of flour he needed to bring home...

The melody of the Greek lullaby Grandma sang " Samiotissa" ("The girl from Samos") and of the Ladino song " La vida dó por el raki" ("I would give my life for raki!")

Picnics and laughter.

And still, beyond, remoter memories: a white tower, the flowering Aegean sea, men in fezzes, the hushed Sabbath of Salonica.

And before that, in the backward and abysm of time, wild fig trees in a dry Castilian landscape, and the arabesques adorning the walls of a holy house in Toledo.

It is said that the Holy One, Blessed be He, will accomplish the resurrection of the dead through His perfect memory of all they were and all there was.

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This article has been published as part of Gesher L'Europa, the National Library of Israel's initiative to connect with people, institutions and communities across Europe and beyond, through storytelling, knowledge sharing and community engagement.

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Memories from my Sephardic Grandparents, by James Russell

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Greek songs and stories, a book from Morocco, and one ruby-eyed snake ring... My maternal grandmother, Marguerite Sananes, née Saltiel, of blessed memory (1900-1997), was a native of the northern Greek city of Salonica (Tk. Selanik, Gk. Thessaloniki). At the time of her birth it was one of the great ports of the Ottoman Empire.

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A Peek into Paradise: What Can Medieval Manuscripts Teach Us about Adam and Eve? >

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Join us for a Hanukkah video journey across cultures and time, featuring treasures from the National Library of Israel!