Blog Post

I have always found the expe­ri­ence of speak­ing about the sub­ject of the book, Sephardic Jews and relat­ed top­ics (i.e. Cryp­to Jews, Jews and the Age of Dis­cov­ery, Notable Sephardic Women, etc.), always reaf­firm­ing. This past Fri­day, 1/29, was par­tic­u­lar­ly ener­giz­ing as I shared the evening with over 100 per­sons, all but a few chrono­log­i­cal­ly gift­ed cit­i­zens and all engaged and atten­tive, eager to learn what they could and many shar­ing with us, whether through state­ments or ques­tions after­wards or by vig­or­ous nod­ding or smil­ing, even some few frown­ing, as I went along.
I had pre­pared myself for the ten­den­cy of even some of the most enrapt lis­ten­ers to get sleepy at night, so I trimmed the usu­al 40 min­utes or so down to 30. But this audi­ence was very much awake and present, some engag­ing me in con­ver­sa­tion in the time lead­ing up to the pre­sen­ta­tion, oth­ers crowd­ing around the podi­um after the conclusion.
There were some neat com­ments in my guest book, such as “Bra­vo! I sing Sephardic songs!” I’m sure to email her to ask about it, always eager to learn new sources on Sephardic music and singing, whether for arts pro­grams for the Soci­ety for Cryp­to Juda­ic Stud­ies, or for my own interest.
We arrived ear­ly and were served a won­der­ful din­ner by Pro­gram Chair Lenore Rosen­blum, who, I dis­cov­ered, came from my col­lege town, Syra­cuse, NY. Lenore, bless her, want­ed to help us beat Fri­day night traf­fic, so she got us out there ear­ly. We spent the night after­wards in a hotel with a view of the ocean in near­by Lagu­na Beach. It’s a good thing there was a spa in the room to help set­tle me down from the excite­ment of the evening and be able to fall asleep.
Thanks for the inspir­ing expe­ri­ence, my new friends in the Lagu­na area, and for help­ing this chrono­log­i­cal­ly gift­ed indi­vid­ual meet some new role mod­els in intel­lec­tu­al vitality.