Editors' Note
Dear readers of Sephardic Horizons,
The current issue of Sephardic Horizons is slightly eclectic. Our articles this time fall roughly into two camps—Morocco and the New World. We bring you Marvin J. Heller’s erudite essay on a short but glorious interval of Hebrew printing among the early exiles from Iberia who moved to Fez and, surmounting tremendous difficulties as always, brought Jewish enlightenment and the latest technology to North Africa. And we bring you an opposite kind of effort, no less creative: a touching and lyrical short story by Julie Rosenzweig set in an imaginary Morocco of the recent past.
In the Americas, our authors throw light on several important moments in the hesitant and painful process of achieving religious liberty for Jews. Karen Lissette Delgado reviews Ana Schaposchnik’s The Lima Inquisition: The Plight of Crypto-Jews in 17th-Century Peru. Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota’s article reveals the incredible Ḥaluqah system of travelling emissaries and rabbis who in their efforts to support the communities in the Holy Land travelled across the Sephardic world, and included all the communities of the Caribbean and North America, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, performing a most important effort of religious coordination. Marc Leepson tells the story of Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, who saved and preserved Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello from ruin, and also revolutionized the U.S. Navy by campaigning to abolish corporal punishment, and that of his nephew, Jefferson Monroe Levy, who likewise devoted his wealth and lifetime efforts to Monticello, both of them encountering anti-Semitism along the way. In the Caribbean again, Sandra M. Cypess reviews the Mexican novelist Angelina Muñiz Huberman’s new novel Los esperandos: piratas judeoportugueses . . . y yo.
Our Ladino section brings an enlightening essay on Izmir then and now by Rachel Amado Bortnick, and Karel Valansi gives her personal take on “Ladino i yo.” We bring three ‘review essays’ the first being the last essay by our late friend and member of the Vijitas de Alhad of Washington DC, Bension Varon, on a study of Bayt Farhi of Damascus, another by Nimrod Raphaeli on a Muslim history of the Jews of Iraq, and a third by Albert Garih on the anthology Muestros Dezaparesidos, commemorating the deportation of Sephardim from France in the Holocaust.
We mourn the passing of a dear friend and the founder of Vijitas de Alhad of Washington DC, Nona Flory Jagoda, at the age of 97. Her music delighted us and her example inspired a revival of Ladino music around the world. May her memory be a blessing. Here is an interview by Rosine Nussenblatt from 2010 (Part 1 & Part2), and a poem by David Almalek Wolinsky, "The Girl whose Dress was a Parachute".
We join others in honoring the late Prof. David M. Gitlitz. Through his meticulous scholarship (often with his wife, Prof. Linda Kay Davidson), he brought to life the tribulations of the secret Jews who remained in Spain and those who sought refuge in colonial Mexico. His painstaking research in historic archives served to illustrate the travails of those who chose to follow their ancestral faith in the face of extreme persecution. Not to be forgotten are the numerous colleagues and students whom Prof. Gitlitz generously mentored and to whom he served as an invaluable resource. Our deepest condolences are sent to his family at this time of loss.
We hope you enjoy our new offerings,
Judith Roumani and Annette Fromm, Editors