Music: Sephardic music website

Sephardic family history researchers now have a chance to listen online to the same recordings their ancestors heard and sang. Perhaps you’ll even remember a grandparent singing some of these beautiful melodies, or recognize a synagogue liturgical piece.

Joel Bresler has created the Sephardic Music site, showcasing more than a century of recorded Sephardic music, beginning with old 78s down to today’s formats.

On the home page, on the right, are samples of the earliest Sephardic recordings and others more contemporary. Bresler has compiled extensive details about the recordings, the artists and performance styles.

The next section covers the second half-century of recorded Sephardic music, touching on the increasing recordings and diverse performing styles.

There is a discography of Sephardic 78s listed by label, by artist and by song title. Included is information on the record companies, as well as early catalogs and advertisements.

Eventually, the site will offer a comprehensive list of all modern era recordings and more than 10,000 song samples. Just as one example, there is a section for the discography and samples for more than 125 versions of the Sephardic song, a la una yo naci.

Definitions and history are included with the caveat that the site focuses on the music of Jews descended from those exiled from the Iberian Peninsula and who landed in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Morocco. An important cultural marker is the use of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) in most of the recordings.

Bresler does not cover music from Iran, Syria, Yemen, India, etc. even though he says “it is wonderfully enjoyable listening,” and that explained why I didn’t see our very famous cousin, the classical Persian singer Yona Dardashti, known as the Nightingale, in Teheran, Iran.

Bresler includes a plea to those who may hold old Sephardic recordings, and states that he will collaborate with collectors and record companies to spur re-release of the recordings on CD and the Web.

To date we have processed close to 8,000 song performances, along with accompanying graphics. When done, the digitized collection should include well over 90% of the modern corpus, and half or more of the 78s. The Phase II sephardicmusic.org site will list all known commercial recordings of Sephardic music, including sound samples of over 10,000 performances and cover graphics. Song titles in the broader discography will be linked as they are now for the 78s, enabling users to easily locate all versions of a particular song. We will include selected song texts as well.

He also wants to integrate the site’s holdings into Hebrew University’s library system, for the benefit of researchers and libraries worldwide. He’s also looking for time, money and expertise to help build the future website and integrate with HU.

Contact Bresler through the site link above if you can help, have old recordings or for more information.

New York: Lodz film, Nov. 2

The last Yiddish film produced in Poland will be screened in New York on Sunday, November 2.

Our Children – אינדזערע קינדער – Undzere Kinder – was filmed in an orphanage (Helanovek, near Lodz) in 1948. It is in Yiddish with English subtitles.

The film screening and a panel discussion, hosted by the Freudian Colloquium Committee, will take place from 2-5pm at 802 Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South.

The panel moderator is Rivka Greenberg, with panelists Maurice Preter, Isaac Tylim, Judith Eckman-Jadow. Click here for information on the participants.

The film is part docu-drama, part melancholic comedy. Produced in Poland, it was never shown there. It depicts a comedy duo performing for an audience of Jewish orphans, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust.

Their performance stirs up painful memories of recent events, and offends the children by the sentimentalized and naive depiction of war-time conditions. Having all lived through the reality of separation and loss, the children start telling their stories.

The film has become a tradition initiated by Dr. Preter, at international psychoanalytic conferences to explore post-Shoah psychological trauma and its representation in film.

Click here for information on the film and the participants.

There’s a very interesting piece by Shimon Redlich describing Lodz, his experiences and the making of the film here.

Interested in more information for Lodz?

Roni Seibel Liebowitz of the Lodz Area Research Group (LARG) has listed these online Lodz resources:

Lodz ShtetLinks

Lodz Area Research Group (LARG)

Belchatow ShtetLink

Belchatow Yizkor Book Project

Jewish Records Indexing-Poland (JRI-Poland)

‘Jewish Names of Morocco’ back in print

An extremely useful book for Sephardic genealogy and Jewish names is Abraham Laredo’s “Les noms des Juifs du Maroc,” (Moroccan Jewish Names). Published in 1978, it has been out of print for many years.

The book offers historical analysis, social and geographical origins of each of the Jewish names in northern Morocco.

Spanish publisher Libreria Hebraica has now reprinted it in a two-volume facsimile edition (the book is in French). The first volume has 480 pages; the second volume is 1,161 pages. There appears to be a new name index in Latin letters. The price is 65 euros.

The publisher offers another book by Laredo, The Origins of the Jews of Morocco (Los orígenes de los judíos de Marruecos). It appears to have been re-edited with an introduction and notes by Jacobo Israel Garzon, and published in July 2007. According to the website, the book is necessary to understand the history of the Moroccan Jews. The 218-page book is 22 Euros.

Israel Garzon has also written The Jews of Tetuan (Los judios de Tetuan, Hebraica Editions, 2005)/ The 264-page volume is 24 euros. This book covers society, architecture (including old and new Jewish Quarters, the cemetery and more), culture, folklore, language, liturgy, as well as other topics.

Jacobo Israel Garzon is president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain.

The website is in Spanish, but it isn’t too difficult to navigate. On the left, find the Busqueda Rapida (Quick Search) box, followed by Busqueda Avanzada (Advanced Search). Type in an author or keyword. Under advanced search, there’s a filter for a specific search (old books, new books, scholarly books, events, and Hebraica Editiones). The Spanish terms in the drop-down menu are libro antiguo, libro nuevo, libro erudite, eventos, and titulas de Hebraica Ediciones.

There are books in the list about Sephardim in many places (Turkey, various cities in Spain, etc.), dictionaries of Judeo-Espanol and many other topics.

info@libreriahebraica.com is the email for information on any of their works. I’m sure that someone there will be able to read and answer your query in English if you need help.

New Blog: Jewish Art Monuments

Samuel Gruber writes the Jewish Art Monuments blog.

Sam is a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition and education projects. Trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and archaeologist, his expertise for two decades is in Jewish art, architecture and historic sites.

I’m happy to announce that he will be contributing his expertise to the Jewish Graveyard Rabbit. And, if you think the name is familiar, he’s the brother of expert Jewish travel writer Ruth Ellen Gruber; they often work together.

Here’s how Sam describes his blog:

This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sties – especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.

His blog, he says, “allows me to clear my email and my desk, by passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following. Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss. Much of this material on this blog I share with the International Survey of Jewish Monuments. ISJM is always looking for volunteers!”

His blog came to my attention with this posting on the Jews of North Carolina, recounting that the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina (JHFNC) premiered its documentary film “Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina” with showings in Greensboro, NC on October 11 and 19, to be followed on February 22, 2009 in Charlotte. The film is the first part of a much larger project (museum exhibit, educational resources and a book).

There’s more information in this Greensboro News article.

North Carolina’s only Jewish historical group, the JHFNC was established in 1996 and seeks to promote understanding of the Jewish people by educating both Jews and the general public about the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people and by encouraging appreciation of the beauty of Jewish ritual and practice. It collects and preserves artifacts and records the history of Jewish settlement in North Carolina, presents programs on the state’s Jewish experience, and connects state resources.

The exhibit, “Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina” will present four centuries of Jewish life and. in 2010, will travel to the state’s major history museums.

The article indicates that Sara Lee Saperstein of Greensboro, a JHFNC board member, remembered only a single sentence about Jews in her eighth-grade state history book. As an adult, she learned about metallurgist Joachim Gans of Prague who arrived in 1585 with Sir Walter Raleigh. She hadn’t realized that the state’s Jewish history went back that far.

JHFNC research historian Leonard Rogoff has sought project support for 10 years. and said “We heard, ‘I thought we were going to be forgotten,’ a lot.”

The documentary’s audience is not only Jewish, however. Prior to Ellis Island, many immigrants (including Jews) entered through coastal shipping ports, such as Wilmington and Charleston.

“The interesting thing about North Carolina is not only that the story has never been told or presented, but it’s never really been researched,” Rogoff said.

Many early Jews were peddlers who settled where their money ran out. The story begins there but continues with those same families creating successful companies employing thousands of people and how they built their communities, including Brenner Children’s Hospital (Winston-Salem), Levine Children’s Hospital (Charlotte), Moses Cone Hospital (Greensboro) and the Brody School of Medicine (East Carolina University).

In 1949, Benjamin Cone became Greensboro’s first Jewish mayor when Jews were only some 500 in the city of 70,000.

A line producer of the film said that in the 19th century, according to Southern historians, many Christians who lived in the stat had a strong affiliation with the Old Testament. “These people coming in were viewed as the ‘people of the book’ and they were viewed with fascination. People would come to them and have their babies blessed.”

The flip side: There were also murders, mob attacks and social discrimination.

There’s much more; read the complete story at the link above.

Canada: Woman traces ancestry to 700AD

A Belleville, Ontario paper carried a story that belongs in the “skeptic” category – if I had one.

I kept thinking it was just a typo, and the story said nothing else about these deep roots.

The roots of Linda Harris’ family tree are deep, so deep in fact the Belleville woman has not only been able to trace her ancestry back to 700 AD, but learn some of her forebears were prominent Belleville citizens, too.

For the past eight or nine years, Harris has used the Internet as a tool to investigate her heritage and look for ancestors for both she and her husband’s families. It’s a time consuming hobby which has lead her across the world wide web and has allowed her to resurrect a number of interesting people.

Read the complete story at the link above. Even a casual reader would think that if she had traced family back to 700 AD, the reporter might have been curious and written more about it.