A traveling museum exhibit from The Alexander Levi Heritage Project

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Different Countries, Different Languages

A Jewish family; Damascus, Ottoman Syria  (1901)

Mizrahim

The word mizrahi means “east” in Hebrew and refers to  descendants from the Jewish communities of the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus. Mizrahim  hail from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Iran or Persia and Bukkhara.  Others come from Kurdistan, Georgia,  and India (by way of Baghdad). Typically Jews in Arab countries have spoke a variation of Arabic written in adapted Hebrew script rather than Arabic script.  Older Arabic-speaking communities have  distinguished themselves Ladino or Judeo-Spanish speaking newcomers to the region.

Track 9:  Mose Salyo de Misriyim (Ladino; Moroccan melody) This is a song in Judeo-Spanish sung to a Moroccan melody, about Moses encountering God in the Burning Bush.(From "Sounds of Judaica," a music multimedia presentation written and performed by Karin Pritikin.)

To hear more selections visit the Multimedia Arena

Moses Maimonides, or Moshe Ben Maimon, Rabbi, physician and philosopher (Born, Cordoba Spain, 1135; Died, Egypt, 1204)

Sephardim

Sepharad, a place name mentioned in the bible, has been associated with the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) since the second century. Before 1492, most of Spain’s provinces and cities had active Jewish communities and there were even smaller towns that had been founded by Jews. After the Sephardim were expelled from Spain and Portugal (1492 and 1497) they dispersed —settling in  Morocco and North Africa, the Ottoman Empire and Greece, Bosnia and Herzegovina, southern France and Italy.  There were also Sephardic communities in Southwest Asia, Spanish South and North America including Portuguese Brazil, and the Philippines. Sephardim  can be found in England, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and its possessions like Curacao and Aruba. The traditional language of most Sephardim is Ladino, or Judaeo-Spanish, a language based in  Castilian Spanish, containing a rich vocabulary from Greek,  Arabic, Turkish, French and Hebrew, often written with Hebrew characters.

Hear  Adon Olam (Italian, Rossi, 1550; Vita Clsava ,1732; Contemporary Alsatian adaptation of Rossi’s Kaddish These are three versions sung in Sephardic French and Italinate synagogue services; two by Salamone Rossi (b. 1530) with one in between by Guiseppe Vita Clava, composed in 1732. (From "Sounds of Judaica," a music multimedia presentation written and performed by Karin Pritikin.)

To hear more selections visit the Multimedia Arena

Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, mystic and rabbi known as The Baal Shem Tov, considered the founder of  Hasidic Judaism. (Born, Okopy, part of Poland, Russia and Galicia and now in the Ukraine, 1698; Died, Medzhybizh, once part of Lithuania, urkey, Poland and Russia, now in the Ukraine, 1760.)

Ashkenazim

Ashkenaz, the medieval name for Germany, denotes the origin of  today’s Eastern European Jews. Their medieval ancestors, most of whom originally came from  the Middle East, built communities in the Rhineland. During times of political strife and expulsion from the 10th to the 19th centuries, Ashkenazi  Jews migrated east ward into non German-speaking areas like Eastern Europe, Hungary, Poland, and Russia. While the Mizrahim and Sephardim remained culturally seperate from their neighbors, the  Ashkenazim’s cultural and religious practices were influenced by their contact with other peoples of the regions where they settled including Germans, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Russians. As they migrated, the Ashenazim carried the Yiddish with them—a  Germanic Jewish language enhanced with words from Hebrew, Italian, and Turkish. The major Ashkenazi language since medieval times, Yiddish is usually written in the Hebrew alphabet but uses German pronunciation.

Hear Shnirele Perele (Traditional Yiddish) This is a song in Yiddish about the coming of Moshiach ben David.(From "Sounds of Judaica," a music multimedia presentation written and performed by Karin Pritikin.)

To hear more selections visit the Multimedia Arena

A typical Ashkenazi recipe uses walnuts or hazelnuts, apples honey, cinnamon and sweet wine (attributes of the Jews mentioned by King Solomon in Song of Songs).  Mizrahi Jews from Egypt use dates, raisins, walnuts, cinnamon and sweet wine.  In Greece and Turkey, chopped almonds and stronger wine are added to apples and dates. In Italy, chestnuts are substituted for almonds.  In Iraq and Central Asia, charoset is sweetened with homemade grape jelly. In Spanish and Portuguese  communities of the New World, such as Surinam, the Sephardim might put coconut in their charoset while in the Yemenite community in Israel, bananas and oranges are not  uncommon ingredients.

How to Make Israeli Charoset                    (from epicurian.com)

Matzo meal
1 peeled and cored apple
3 sliced bananas
10 pitted dates
1/4 cup almonds
1/4 cup walnuts
the juice and grated rind of 1/2 lemon
the juice and grated rind of 1/2 orange
1/2 cup sweet red wine
1 tsp. cinnamon
Sugar or honey