Intro. to Modern Sephardi & Mizrahi Histories with Alma Heckman on Zoom
Tuesday, March 29, 2022 • 26 Adar II 5782
7:00 PM - 8:00 PM
A Look to the East: Exploring the Journeys and Cultures of Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews
A TBE Lifelong Learning series, partnering with Senior Connections, TBE Film Club and Santa Cruz Hillel
Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are a mystery to many American Jews, even though they make up a sizable part of the worldwide Jewish population. This series will offer a peek into Sephardi and Mizrahi life through presentations on culture & history, food, individual stories, music, and film.
Tuesday, March 29, Alma Heckman on Mizrahi/Sephardic History
Sunday, April 10 4pm Mizrahi Food with Sharon Profis
Monday, April 18, 4pm Personal Stories Panel
Monday, April 25, 2pm Senior Connections, Rosemary Zumwalt on Sephardic Culture
A Look at Modern Sephardi and Mizrahi Histories
with Dr. Alma Heckman, Assistant Professor of History at UCSC
The Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east, have been home to significant Jewish populations since the ancient past. During the second half of the twentieth century, however, most Jews in the region left their homelands either for the new State of Israel or other countries. This talk will present an overview of modern Sephardi and Mizrahi history from the nineteenth century to the very recent past, with emphasis on questions of belonging and the frictions of colonialism, nationalism, and the demographic upheavals.
Alma Rachel Heckman is the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and assistant professor in the Department of History. Her research interests include modern Jewish history, labor history, transnational Jewish political activism, colonialism, nationalism, third worldism, syncretism, and North Africa and the Middle East. In addition, she is working to digitize, transcribe, and publish interviews with European Jewish refugees from World War II who found safe harbor in the Middle East and North Africa in an effort to expand Holocaust studies beyond a Eurocentric narrative.
Heckman received her PhD from UCLA and has previously held fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and at the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies.
Register
| Share Print Save To My Calendar |
Tue, April 29 2025 1 Iyar 5785