12/3 EVENT | Ladino Day 2023: 'Kantika', a Sephardic Novel by Author Elizabeth Graver
2023-12-03 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom
Join author Elizabeth Graver in conversation with Isaac Alhadeff Professor of Sephardic Studies Devin E. Naar for a discussion of “Kantika,” a moving, multi-generational saga inspired by Graver’s grandmother. Rebecca Baruch Levy (née Cohen) was born into a Sephardic Jewish family from Istanbul in the early 20th century, and her kaleidoscopic journey takes her to Barcelona, Havana, and ultimately New York, exploring themes of displacement, endurance, and family as home.
“Kantika” — meaning “song” in Ladino — is a lush, lyrical novel which celebrates the legacy of language, and the insistence on seizing beauty and grabbing hold of one’s one and only life.
“Far from being a Pollyannaish tale of New World success, ‘Kantika’ is a meticulous endeavor to preserve the memories of a family, an elegy and a celebration both.” — Ayten Tartici, New York Times, April 2023

About the speakers
Elizabeth Graver’s fifth novel, “Kantika” (Metropolitan Books/Holt, 2023), was inspired by her grandmother, Rebecca Baruch Levy (née Cohen), who was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul, and whose tumultuous and shape-shifting life journey took her to Spain, Cuba and New York. German and Turkish editions are forthcoming. Elizabeth’s fourth novel, The End of the Point, was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in Fiction and selected as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her other novels are “Awake,” “The Honey Thief,” and “Unravelling.” Her story collection, “Have You Seen Me?,” won the 1991 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Best American Essays. The mother of two daughters, she teaches at Boston College.
Devin E. Naar is the Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies, Associate Professor of History, and faculty at the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Born and raised in New Jersey, Dr. Naar graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis and received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University. He has also served as a Fulbright fellow to Greece. His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. The book won the 2016 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Research Based on Archival Material and was named a finalist in Sephardic Culture. It also won the 2017 Edmund Keeley Prize for best book in Modern Greek Studies awarded by the Modern Greek Studies Association.

Ladino Day 2023 is supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund in Sephardic Studies and presented in partnership with the Sephardic Brotherhood of America.
Ladino Day 2023 is also cosponsored by the Departments of History, Linguistics, Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, and Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington, as well as by Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Network, the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, Sephardic Heritage International (SHIN) DC, and the Turkish American Cultural Association of Washington (TACAWA).

2/28 LUNCH & LEARN | The Invention of the Postcard: The Circulation of Jewish Visual Culture in Ottoman and Greek Salonica with Shalom Sabar
2024-02-28 12:00 - 13:00 | Thomson Hall 317, Thomson Hall 317, Seattle
The invention of the postcard in the late nineteenth century revolutionized how people exchanged information and images. While first introduced in the United States, the postcard quickly spread across the world. In the realm of the Ottoman Empire, where post offices had operated since the middle of the nineteenth century, the postcard added a new dimension to the emerging technologies of communication.
Join us to hear Professor Shalom Sabar discuss how his review of extensive collections of Jewish postcards from Salonica (1897-1917) helps us to understand the self-perception and the experience of the Jews living in the city.
Lunch will be provided. This event is free and open to the public, but RSVP is required. Click the button below to register:
Register Now >
This event is co-sponsored by the Division of Art History at the University of Washington.

About the speaker
Shalom Sabar is a Professor Emeritus of Jewish Art and Folklore at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He received his Ph.D. in Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles in 1987. He is the author of more than 250 publications exploring Jewish art and the material culture of Jewish communities in the Sephardi and Ashkenazi worlds in Europe and the Islamic East. His research areas include Jewish ceremonies and rituals, life cycle events, objects of daily life, ephemera, folk art, amulets, and magic, as well as the visual culture of illustrated Hebrew books and manuscripts. Shalom Sabar is also an avid collector of Israeli and Jewish ephemera and has guided numerous traveling seminars to Jewish sites in Europe, North Africa, India, and Central Asia
The University of Washington is committed to providing access and accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. To make a request connected to a disability or health condition contact Grace Elizabeth Dy at (206) 543-0138 or jewishst@uw.edu at least 10 days before the event.

3/27 EVENT | A Spark of King David: The Musical Poetry of Rabbi Israel Najara Then and Now
2024-03-27 19:00 - 20:30 | Kane Hall 220, 4069 Spokane Ln, Seattle, WA, 98195, US
Can a 16th-century religious Hebrew poet remain relevant to contemporary audiences? Rabbi Israel Najara’s poetic legacy proves that this is indeed possible. A Middle Eastern contemporary of William Shakespeare, nicknamed “A Spark of King David” by his followers, Najara’s poems continue to be used for Jewish rituals and festivities in the present day.
Join us to hear from Professor Edwin Seroussiwhy Rabbi Najara’s poetry of hope and redemption has persisted in synagogues, in Jewish homes, and on Israeli pop stages to this very day.
Register Now >
Also register for Edwin Seroussi’s talk on Thursday, March 28, at 7:00 p.m.:
Sonic Ruins of Modernity: Ladino Folksongs Today

About the speaker

Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor Emeritus of Musicology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Chair of the Academic Committee of the Jewish Music Research Centre, Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College and, in 2023/4, Fellow at the Herbert G. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on Jewish musical cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East and their interactions with Islamic cultures, Judeo-Spanish song and music in Israel. He explores processes of hybridization, diaspora, nationalism and transnationalism in diverse contexts and historical periods such as the Ottoman Empire, colonial Morocco and Algeria, Germany’s Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Zionist settlement in Palestine and the Judeo-Spanish-speaking diaspora.

This series is cosponsored by the UW Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, the UW Middle East Center, the UW Near and Middle East Studies Ph.D. Program, ArtsUW, part of the College of Arts and Sciences, and by the Ethnomusicology Program at the University of Washington.
It was made possible with the support of the Hazzan Isaac Azose Fund for Community Engagement, which was created in partnership with the Isaac Alhadeff Foundation and the Benoliel Family Fund, with additional support provided by Congregation Ezra Bessaroth, the Seattle Sephardic Brotherhood and the Sephardic Bikur Holim Congregation, as well as Jack I. Azose, Howard Behar, Harley and Lela Franco, Jeff and Jamie Merriman Cohen, Jack Schaloum and Marlene Souriano Vinikoor.

The University of Washington is committed to providing access and accommodation in its services, programs, and activities. To make a request connected to a disability or health condition contact Grace Elizabeth Dy at (206) 543-0138 or by emailing jewishst@uw.edu at least 10 days before the event.

Ladino Day 2025 | Sephardic Homelands: Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship and the Question of Belonging Today
2025-11-16 10:00 - 11:00 | Kane Hall 210, 4069 Spokane Ln NE, Seattle, WA, 98105
This year’s Ladino Day program, “Sephardic Homelands: Spanish and Portuguese Citizenship and the Question of Belonging Today,” critically examines the significance of the decision exactly ten years ago, in 2015, of the Spanish and Portuguese governments to offer citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled five centuries ago.
The discussion will situate Spain and Portugal’s offers within broader debates about the homelands that Sephardic Jews have claimed as their own over the generations, while also recognizing that millions of people in the world remain stateless today.
Register to attend >
A kosher reception will follow the program.
About the program
Isaac Alhadeff Professor in Sephardic Studies and program Chair, Devin E. Naar, will host Professor Emerita Rina Benmayor, California State University Monterey Bay, and Professor Dalia Kandiyoti, City University of New York (CUNY), College of Staten Island, in a conversation to discuss their research on this topic as featured in their edited volume, “Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants,” appearing in paperback this autumn.
The event will also feature readings by Los Muestros Ladineros, Seattle’s Ladino-language group, of Ladino poems about the multiple “patrias” claimed by Sephardic Jews.
View the program livestream
* This event will be livestreamed! *
Starting at 10am Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, November 16, we invite you to view the livestream below on this page, or on our YouTube channel.

About the speakers
Rina Benmayor is Professor Emerita in the School of Humanities and Communication at California State University Monterey Bay, where she taught oral history, literature, digital storytelling, and Latinx studies. She has authored books and articles on these subjects as well as on Sephardic folklore, identity and migration, cultural citizenship, testimonial writing and storytelling. She authored “Romances judeo-españoles de Oriente” (1979), an original field collection and study of Sephardic romansas collected in Los Angeles and Seattle (1972-73). The recordings are archived at the University of Washington Sephardic Studies Digital Collection. In 2017, she conducted with Dalia Kandiyoti an extensive oral history project on the Spanish and Portuguese citizenship laws for Sephardi descendants, and coedited “Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants: Returning to the Jewish Past in Spain and Portugal” (Berghahn Books 2023). The interviews gathered for this study are being archived at the University of Washington as well. She is currently coediting, with Rachel Amado Bortnick and Liliana Benveniste, a Ladino translation of “Las Romansas de la Ratona Savia,” a collection of Spanish ballads for children written by Paloma Díaz Mas. She has also been writing a family memoir about her Greek Sephardic family.
Dalia Kandiyoti is Professor of English at the City University of New York (CUNY), College of Staten Island. Her Ph.D. is in Comparative Literature from New York University. She is the author of “The Converso’s Return: Conversion and Sephardi History in Contemporary Literature and Culture” (Stanford UP, 2020) and “Migrant Sites: America, Place, and Diaspora Literatures” (Dartmouth College/UP of New England, 2009), and of peer-reviewed articles on migration in contemporary literature and on Sephardic and Latin American diasporas and experiences. She has also co-edited, with Rina Benmayor, “Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants: Returning to the Jewish Past in Spain and Portugal” (Berghahn, 2023). Her contribution to this volume received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. With Rina Benmayor, she has conducted extensive oral histories with Sephardic applicants for Spanish or Portuguese nationality. These oral histories are being archived at the University of Washington.
Ladino Day 2025 is generously supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies and The Sephardic Foundation on Aging.
The event is cosponsored by the Departments of Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures and Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Washington, as well as by the Sephardic Brotherhood of America.

Public Lecture - The Jews of Edirne: The End of Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders
2026-05-19 04:30 - 18:00 | HUB 145, UW Campus, 4001 E Stevens Way NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, United States
Join us in welcoming visiting author and scholar Jacob Daniels, discussing his new book, The Jews of Edirne: The End of the Ottoman Europe and the Arrival of Borders.
Free and open to all; registration required here.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the city of Edirne was a bustling center linking Istanbul to Ottoman Europe. It was also the capital of Edirne Province—among the most religiously diverse regions of the Ottoman Empire. But by 1923, the city had become a Turkish border town, and the province had lost much of its non-Muslim population. With this book, Jacob Daniels explores how one of the world’s largest Sephardi communities dealt with the encroachment of modern borders.
Jacob Daniels is Assistant Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in History at Stanford University in 2022.
Sponsored by the Sephardic Studies Program, the Middle East Center, and the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies.
