Sephardi Voices

The eight sessions will explore the history and culture of the Jews from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean. Specialist speakers will take you on a journey that will illuminate the rich tapestry of Sephardi/Mizrahi life, transformed by post-1948 migrations to different parts of the world. Sephardi Voices is a new international audio-visual oral history project which aims to record the testimonies and narratives of Jews displaced from North Africa and the Middle East. This course will introduce you to the project and enable participants (if interested) to become involved.

Tuesday mornings 10.30-12.30

Prof. Henry Green is the former Director of Judaic and Sephardic Studies at the University of Miami, Florida, USA and has served as a Visiting Fellow at Oxford University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Toronto. He has published extensively on the Sephardi, Israel and American Jewry. Currently, Dr. Green is leading an international audio/visual oral history project, Sephardic Voices. He has been invited to give testimony to the USA Congressional Human Rights.

Dr. Bea Lewkowicz is a social anthropologist and oral historian. After studies in Cologne and Cambridge, she received her PhD from the London School of Economics. Her thesis on the Jewish Community of Salonika was published in 2006. She has co-directed the Refugee Voices Archive and is currently the director of Sephardi Voices UK. She has produced a number of films for exhibitions, such as ‘Refugee Experiences’ currently on show in the history gallery of the new Jewish Museum in Camden.