Basque Country – Following The Converso Escape Route
Basque Country is a unique and fascinating region. It preserves its own language – not like any other, though it straddles both sides of the French-Spanish border. Located just west […]
Category Archives: Travels
My Odyssey to Discover and Touch Past and Present Spanish Jewish Life
Catalonia – Barcelona and Girona
My recent trip to Spain reinforced my love of local history museums. Local museums typically orient broader historical developments around their own. In so doing they add new perspectives to historical developments that […]
The World’s Longest Running Synagogue?
I write this post in the hope of answering a question that I’ve been pondering for the past few months. What is the world’s longest continuously running synagogue? I ask […]
South Manchester – Sha’are Rahamim, Hayim and Zedek
South Manchester will soon be home to the first Sephardic synagogue constructed in England in decades. I received a sneak peek at its construction when I went to Manchester before […]
The Venetian Ghetto – Birthplace of the S&P
Venice is where it all began for the Western Sephardim (though there may be some antecedents in Ferrara). It was there that the first openly Jewish Western Sephardic (“S&P”) community was […]
North Manchester – Sha’are Tefila
Manchester is one of the most recent cities to establish a Spanish & Portuguese community. Theirs was inaugurated in 1874 along Cheetham Hill Road in North Manchester. Jews first arrived […]
Nidhe Israel – Bridgetown, Barbados
With its white sandy beaches, blue skies, and year-long warm weather, it’s difficult to imagine that the island of Barbados was once home to a thriving Spanish and Portuguese Jewish […]
The Portuguese Inquisition – Coimbra, Portugal
Upon visiting Portugal it isn’t generally apparent where significant moments transpired concerning Jews, unless someone shows them to you. That is mostly the case in Coimbra, too, where the Portuguese Inquisition […]
Shearith Israel – New York
Shearith Israel is the oldest Jewish congregation in America, founded in 1654. It was there that I first encountered and then became inspired by and engrossed in the history and […]
The Novo Cemetery – London
It seemed appropriate that one of my first functions as Rabbi of Bevis Marks Synagogue should be to pay my respects to the congregation’s bygone parishioners. I was given just […]
Shalom Says Hello 