Since 1492 when the Sephardic Jews were expelled from Spain, the Spanish-Jewish community was dispersed throughout North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Europe. The emigration process was hard and lasted for generations. The historical and cultural evolution of each of these three groups was distinct and depended on the political conditions of the country […]

When Maya and Noa Dori were kids growing up in Israel, they used to spend Shabbat with their grandmother Lisa Romano. One night, as Maya tells it, they walked outside and “started to pinpoint the stars.” Their grandmother quickly swatted Noa’s hand, furious. “She said, ‘It’s forbidden,’ ” Maya remembered during a recent phone call […]

SINGER AND SONGWRITER OF JEWISH DESCENT, FORTUNA WAS RAISED IN THE CITY OF SÃO PAULO, ALWAYS DEEPLY TIED TO MUSIC, DANCE AND THEATER. In the 1980s, while staging her first plays, she composed a repertoire of songs in partnership with the Curitiba-born poet Paulo Leminski (1944 – 1989). The decisive chapter of her career, however, would initially […]

We generally associate the word “oratorio” with weighty musical works on Christian subjects by Baroque composers like J.S. Bach. But on Tuesday, April 30, the multifaceted Bay Area composer and musician Sascha Jacobsen will premiere a new oratorio at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco on the subject of the Sephardic diaspora. The lyrics of the choral portions of “Kanta […]