This time around, Sarah Aroeste is making history by creating the first all-Ladino Hanukkah album, Hanuká! The record is a gorgeous reimagining of the Jewish holiday, shattering our preconceptions of what Hanukkah music should sound and feel like. In every way, Hanuká! is an instant classic. And while I could go on and on singing Aroeste’s praises, the album speaks for itself and deserves a top-to-bottom listen before taking its hard-earned place in your holiday playlist.

I sat down with Sarah on Zoom to talk more about her groundbreaking record, and after gushing about bimuelos for a good minute, we got down to business: the music and the festival of lights.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you decide to release a Hanukkah album? How long has this been in the works?

So, I was already in the middle of recording a different album, and then last winter, while I was recording Monastir, and doing everything from my monitor, I had so many Zoom Chanukah appearances. And for all of these appearances, I had to come up with an interesting repertoire, not only to keep my audiences excited, but to keep me excited. I found myself with all that I had researched and I realized, I have enough to make an album with such a treasure trove of material that most people have never heard of. 

There was something about COVID Hanukkah last year that felt different than previous years. We were all hungry and thirsty for joy. But it came out so visibly for Jews during the Hanukkah season in a way that I feel like it hadn’t previously. I just felt like it was so joyful last year, despite the pandemic, and I wanted to harness some of that joy and combine it with that repertoire that I had developed over that period. 

So right after Hanukkah, I said to my producer, “I know we’re in the midst of recording a different album. But I want to make sure that we record this as fast as we can, so we can bottle this energy.” So I spent about six months as the other album was rolling out  arranging and conceptualizing the Hanukkah album. And this summer, in July, I had a window to go to Israel where my producer lives, and we recorded the Hanukkah album and shot the “Ocho Kandelikas” video at the same time.

Wow, that must have been hard, especially as you were promoting the first album.

If you heard the Unorthodox podcast episode that came out last week, I was supposed to do that months and months ago when Monastir came out. But it kept on getting delayed. So it was actually part of the Hanukkah episode, which was so weird because I actually have a Hanukkah album, but that’s not what the focus was.

So yes, it was a little bit of a ‘ping-pong’ back and forth, but as a creative artist, especially living through the pandemic, I had so much bottled up energy that I just had to get out this year. So, it was a banger, putting out two records, but they’re so different. And I think they both express the joy of Sephardic culture in different ways. They sort of fed off of each other.

They’re really so beautiful and so expressive. In both of them you can feel all the influences of Sephardic culture and what that carries. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

You know, I write a lot of my own music, but on these two albums, I just wrote two original songs. So I can’t take credit for the other melodies and lyrics that are included. But yes, the nature of Ladino music–one of the reasons why I love it so much–is that you can hear both through the melody and the rhythms, the influences of the wide expanse that represents Sephardic Jewry.

As Jews went eastwards from Spain, they picked up influences from all of their neighbors, and to the extent that I could maintain those same rhythms and melodies, I did, because I love them. In some cases, I reimagine songs and I write them in my own way, but I try to give as much of an Ottoman-Balkan-Eastern-Mediterranean feel to my music as I can.

Right, and in that vein, you completely re-imagined “Ocho Kandelikas” in your album with a Flamenco version. 

I adored Flory Jagoda who passed away earlier this year. She was such a huge influence on me. And she’s the original. I mean, to say I’m a fan of Flory Jagoda is an understatement. She was everything to me. In terms of her career as a singer-songwriter and Ladino, she is the queen. Nobody can surpass her or her original version. And that song has been done so many times, in every way. For anybody who knows anything about Ladino music, it’s been there, done that. There’s nothing new I can give to it.

So when I was conceptualizing this album, I reached out to Flory’s family and I said, “Listen, I want to put together this album. I don’t want to have ‘Ocho Kandelikas’ on it. And instead, I want to do the lesser-known ‘Hanuka, Hanuka’.” It’s such a sweet song that she wrote–track eight on my album. I love singing it with my children, who actually record it. And I was gonna leave it at that. 

While I was conceptualizing my other album, Monastir, I wrote a song that I wanted to have an Andalusian sound to it. So I hired this incredible Israeli flamenco singer, Yehuda Shuky Shveiky, who recorded this song for me on my other album, and as we were recording that, I said, “Wait a second, that is something I could do differently. That is something I could bring to ‘Ocho Kandelikas’.”

As soon as we finished recording the track for the other album, I said to him, “Do you want to collaborate on a flamenco version of ‘Ocho Kandelikas’?” And he was all in, so I really gave him the latitude to arrange it because flamenco is his life. I said, “these are the parameters. I don’t want to move so far away that you can’t tell that it’s that song.” But the only way I would feel comfortable doing it is if I don’t try to imitate Flory but do it entirely in my own way. 

And I love the idea of giving it a Spanish Andalusian flair because Ladino comes from Spain. And even though Flory’s version is very Balkan because she came from Bosnia, I was sort of paying homage to her, but also to the Spanish roots of the language. I was pretty confident that a flamenco version had never been done of the song. There have been new Tango versions, and everything’s been done to it, but not flamenco. So this was our chance to really put our stamp on it.

It’s palpable how much you respect and love Flory. In fact, you have a picture of her in the beginning and the end of the “Ocho Kandelikas” music video, which just came out. Did you ever get to meet her?

Oh, many times. I mean, not many, but enough. I sang with her. She was a friend–I’m emotional just thinking about her. It was important, like I said, to give her all the kavod and the respect, because this is her classic, iconic song. And so not only did I want to maintain the integrity of the song, through my version, I wanted to pay a nod to her, that it came from her. So that’s why we felt it was important to actually have her image in the video. So the photograph is at the beginning and at the end of the song. She was just a beautiful, beautiful soul.

She meant a lot to the Sephardic community because she gave us representation. Now, you’re continuing that legacy. What impact do you hope to have in the Jewish community?

My goal in creating this album was twofold. One was to celebrate Hanukkah. Simply put, there had never been an all-Ladino collection of Hanukkah songs. I wanted people to know that there’s lots of wonderful Sephardic Hanukkah songs, and I wanted to create a collection that is just an expression of joy for Hanukkah, and at the same time, also an expression of joy for Ladino.

I said in my liner notes, Hanukkah is a miracle. And so is Ladino. We are here to celebrate that. The fact that it has lasted this long, despite the Holocaust, despite its endangered status, it is still here. Let’s celebrate that miracle. So you put those two things together, and I just wanted it to be an explosion of joy. 

And that’s representative not just in the music, but I wanted to have bright colors on the album cover, right? We’re not just stuck with blue and gold. We’re light. We’re all of these colors reimagined. I didn’t want to be this cliche, with a menorah… and you know, dreidel isn’t really what we played with in the Sephardic world. I wanted it to feel bright and Mediterranean, not only the music, but in its color palette and in the feel of it. 

Do you study Ladino, by the way?

For many, many years. I started studying it through music. I’ve had teachers along the way. When I write my own music. Most of my albums prior to the last two were all original songs. This Hanukkah album is actually my seventh album, but I do have mentors in the field to review my work before I publish.

And what’s your favorite song in the album?

I really love track number four, “Fiesta de Hanukah.” It’s one that I wrote, which maybe I’m not allowed to say, but it’s the blessings that we say over the candles, but in Ladino. I wrote it using the Ladino translation of the traditional Hebrew blessings. 

I love this song because my kids love it the most and they love jumping in on the choruses. It’s just really festive. And I wanted to create my own tradition, being able to say those blessings in song in Ladino.

My personal favorite was “Ya Viene Hanuká.” I loved it.

Yeah! So, Gloria Ascher sings that. She was one of my teachers, and she’s been a mentor of mine. She is a delightful, delightful woman. She was one of the first people to teach Ladino in America in a university. She was the first professor of Ladino at Tufts. I love capturing the voices of my mentors on my albums. Every album has a couple of cameos. And I really wanted to feature her on this one.

What advice do you have for people who want to connect to Ladino?

I’ve actually written resource articles! On my website, there’s a whole area of Latino resources, but in the last three years, or two years, the accessibility for learning Ladino has exploded, especially since the pandemic. Now it’s on mobile apps. There are just so many ways now to connect.

Sarah Aroeste’s Hanuká! is available now on all streaming and music retail platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music. Aroeste’s “Ocho Kandelikas” music video is watchable on Youtube and on her website, which also has resources for learning Ladino and more information on the artist and her work.

The post Sarah Aroeste’s Ladino Hanukkah Album Is Here—And It’s Glorious appeared first on Jewcy.

On a Friday evening of February last year, Ruben Shimonov was waiting in his friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, New York. Everything was ready for the traditional Shabbat dinner to begin: The table was set, the food ready to be served. Now, it was time for the guests to come in.

What he had prepared was not an ordinary Shabbat dinner. Through a secret Facebook group, he and his friend Ramiz Rafailov had organized their first-ever Shabbat gathering for queer Jewish 20s and 30s with Sephardic and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) backgrounds in New York.

When he proposed the idea of hosting the dinner, Shimonov had no idea how many people would show up. About thirty people ended up coming; including some with a Persian background, some Iraqi, some originally from Azerbaijan. “There was a gap that needed to be filled,” Shimonov said in an interview. “This showed there was the desire to have a space where we could unapologetically be our full selves.”

Shimonov was born in Uzbekistan, and moved to the States with his parents as refugees seeking asylum when he was six. He was raised in Seattle in a Bukharian Jewish family. After moving to New York, he began working as a communal leader in organizations like the Queens College Hillel and the American Sephardi Federation.

He had recently joined the small Facebook group for Sephardic queer Jews, when he and his friends started wondering: “Where do we fit? Is there a place where we can bring our full selves? The answer was, ‘Not really.’” They felt that they could not fully belong to queer Jewish spaces—which are predominantly Ashkenazi—or to Sephardic synagogues and cultural spaces, where LGBTQ identities are often a taboo.

Shimonov, who is now 30, believes that whenever “you want change, you should make it yourself. I wrote in a post [in the Facebook group], ‘Maybe we can take this beautiful digital space to the next step and meet somewhere.’ . . . I started getting positive responses.”

That first dinner was so successful, that ever since he has organized similar gatherings on a monthly basis—each time in a different private home, always on Shabbat. Some participants said they felt as if they had regained possession of their Jewish roots without compromising their LGBTQ identity.

The Facebook group, which remains secret to protect the identities of its members, not all of whom are publicly out of the closet, has grown from fewer than 100 members last year to over 300. The group, which has now evolved into a grassroots organization, will gather at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center for its first weekend retreat this coming Friday. The Shabbat dinners and the retreat are both taking place thanks to the support of Moishe House, COJECO, OneTable, and Genesis Philanthropy Group.

Rebecca Davoudian, who lives in Great Neck, New York, and hosted one of the dinners, said that homosexuality is often a taboo in Sephardic communities. “It’s nice to give people a space where they can be Mizrahi and Sephardic and queer and Jewish.”

Another participant, Jonathan Cohen, felt similarly. “We’re a minority within the minority within the minority,” he said. Cohen’s family is originally from Iraq and Yemen. He recently moved back to New York after spending eight years in Israel; in Tel Aviv, he laughed, “half of the people are Mizrahi and gay. But when I moved to America, I wondered, ‘Who is my friends group going to be?’”

Cohen described the dinners as fun and intimate. Shimonov usually breaks the ice between the attendees, asking them to share their thoughts or memories on a specific concept or word.

“The Mizrahi identity is complex,” continued Cohen. “We’re not one people, we come from different countries and speak different languages. But being the ‘other’ unifies you. Seventy years ago we thought we’d lose our culture, but now we’re reviving it.”

Until a few years ago, Shimonov himself thought he could not merge his Bukharian and queer identities. But now he thinks differently.

“It’s difficult,” he said, “but many of us refuse to forego part of our identity for another. We are a composition of all these different tiles of the mosaic that makes us up. We want to hold on to all these different parts of our identity, because they’re beautiful.”

Photo from March 2018’s Shabbat dinner, courtesy Ruben Shimonov.

The post A Space for LGBTQ Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews appeared first on Jewcy.

Hey, you! Yes, you!

Do you like Sephardic music? Do you not know if you do? Do you like music? Do you like Jews? Then you’re bound to have a good time at the American Sephardi Music Festival!

From the Ladino stylings of Sarah Aroeste, to a Sephardic taste on opera, take a break from ashkenormativity (if that’s your usual thing) to luxuriate in a series of concerts.

The festival is taking place at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan, over August 24th, 27th, and 28th.

And how can you get in for free? You’re in luck! Jewcy is giving away two pairs! When you win, just pick yourself a concert in the festival, and you’ll be good to go.

You have one week to try for the tickets, and all you have to do is subscribe to our newsletter (it often features amazing GIFs that may or may not feature Gal Gadot). New subscribers to Jewcy’s email list between now and Thursday, August 17th are entered automatically.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s do this! There’s a purple box next to this article, or, use the form below!

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Stuffed monkey (Jewish Lond.). A very pleasant close almond biscuit. Now the confectioner exchanges his stuffed monkeys, and his bolas… for unleavened palavas, etc.—Zangwill, Children of the Ghetto.

I had never heard of a “stuffed monkey,” so obviously I had to find out how to make it for myself. I’ve since received requests to share, so here it is: A stuffed monkey.

The recipe seems to come from Sephardic Dutch Jews (they would have originally been from Portugal) living in England. It’s sweet, but not rich, and serves like a tart or a pie. The above-cited 1902 book Children of the Ghetto references it as a “contemporary confectionary,” though I found a reference to it by name in as early as 1882. So, now you know exactly what to serve at your Jewish steampunk tea party!

In regards to the weird name (yuck, it does not make you think of an appetizing pastry), the “stuffed” is a reference to the nature of the dessert.  As for “monkey?” There are multiple theories, including that the family that popularized it was called Monnickendam, or that it comes from the Arabic for stuffed: “makhshi.”

The recipe below is a cobbled together version of three that I found online: From Cook It Simply,  Jewish Mother Cooking, and The Vintage Cookbook Trials (which took its recipe from Florence Greenberg’s 1967 British Jewish cookbook):

For the crust:

• 2 cups and 2 tbsp. flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 stick of butter
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• ½ tsp. vanilla (optional)

For the filling:

• The peel of one large orange
• 1/2 cup golden raisins (or try dark raisins or dried cherries)
• 1 1/3 cup chopped/slivered almonds (feel free to experiment with other nuts)
• 1 ½ tbsp. brown sugar
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
• 3 tbsp. melted butter
• 1 egg yolk (save the white for glazing)

For the glaze:

• 1 egg white
• handful of sliced/slivered almonds

DIRECTIONS:

1. Sift the flour, salt, and cinnamon into a bowl, and rub in the butter until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Stir in the eggs, sugar, and vanilla, and knead into a smooth dough.

3. Divide the dough into two sections. Wrap each half in plastic and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.

4. Preheat oven to 375°F.

5. Combine all the ingredients for the filling in a bowl and mix well. Use a food processor to make the mixture paste-like. Don’t worry about it being smooth; it’s fine to have bits of peel, almonds, raisins, etc., visible.

6. Lightly grease an 8″ pie or other baking tin

7. Roll flat and spread one of the dough pieces out into the bottom of the pan.

8. Spread filling over the dough, then roll out the other piece of dough and lay it over the filling.

9. Pinch edges together so the filling doesn’t leak out (it helps to smooth out cracks with a teaspoon of water). Brush top of dough with the egg white mixture and generously sprinkle with the almonds.

10. Bake for 30 minutes, or until golden-brown. Let cool and serve!

Enjoy, and comment below or tweet us if you try it out!

Featured image credit: Wikimedia 

The post What the Heck is a Stuffed Monkey? appeared first on Jewcy.

Opening the concert is groundbreaking music by Brooklyn’s DeLeon, which re-imagines ancient melodies as contemporary pieces.

Held at NYU Skirball Center
566 LaGuardia Pl. at Washington Sq S.

Tickets:
$30 for WMI + JCC Members
$35 for Nonmembers

The post Sephardic Voices Today: DeLeon appeared first on Jewcy.

Israeli Sephardic leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef really screwed things up for the rest of us who wanted to keep our media controlling, bank controlling, and everything else controlling a bit more hush hush.  According to the JTA, the 90-year-old had to go and open his big mouth, and tell the world the huge secret: “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel.”

Seriously Yosef, we’ve done such a good job at making people think otherwise, now the masses won’t be as surprised when we rip off our masks and reveal ourselves as demon lizard people who have been enslaving all gentiles for the last 3,000 years.

Thanks SO much.

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