Sephardic Genealogy

26/10/2025

Amsterdam to the Americas: The Making of a Sephardic Atlantic - Sephardic World, Sunday 26 October 2025

1492 was a fateful year: the expulsion of Jews from Spain coincided with Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the New World. Soon after, people of Jewish descent began settling in Spain’s American colonies. Some practised Judaism in secret. Their later connections with Amsterdam—where a new Jewish community emerged in the 1590s—enabled a return to open Jewish life. Iberian New Christians also used Amsterdam as a springboard to Dutch Brazil, where the first Jewish congregations in the Americas were founded in the 1630s. There, New Christians lived again as Jews until the Portuguese reconquest of 1654. As Dutch Brazil fell, Jewish settlers dispersed to the Caribbean, the Guianas, and the eastern seaboard of North America, where they engaged in trade and tropical agriculture.

Wim Klooster is Professor and Robert H. and Virginia N. Scotland Endowed Chair in History and International Relations at Clark University. He has written widely on Dutch colonialism, smuggling, Jewish history, and the age of revolutions. His books include The Dutch Moment and Revolutions in the Atlantic World, and he is editor of The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions and coeditor of Jewish Entanglement in the Atlantic World.

This meeting is live for patrons only. Please remember that clocks go forward in Europe this Sunday, so the meeting time this week is an hour later for people in the Americas. Patrons can join us live on Sunday 26 October 2025, at 12 noon in LA, 3pm in NYC, 7pm in London, 8pm in Paris/Amsterdam, 9pm in Jerusalem, and 4am the next morning in Sydney.

If you want to support our work, join events live, and put your questions direct to speakers, please sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/sephardi

10/10/2025

From Rabbi to Rebels: The Sasportas Story

Haham Jacob Sasportas (1610–1698) was one of the great Sephardic leaders of the 17th century. None of his descendants reached his stature in Jewish leadership. Yet, many of them led remarkable lives. His progeny carved out careers in the worlds of diplomacy, privateering, revolution, government, international trade and the arts. This week on Sephardic World, Rémy Chicheportiche concludes his discussion of this remarkable family.

Rémy trained as a physicist and researches statistical finance and also researches the Sasportas family. His recent work focuses on reconstructing the family history from fragmented archival and online sources.

Patrons can join us live on Sunday 12 October 2025, at 11 noon in LA, 2pm in NYC, 7pm in London, 8pm in Paris/Amsterdam, 9pm in Jerusalem, and 4am the next morning in Sydney.

Do you want to join us live for this meeting? Become a patron and support our work! The Sephardic Genealogical Society is now the largest producer of educational material in the Sephardic world — and we rely on your support to keep going. If you value our free lectures and wider work, please consider becoming a patron for as little as $5/month via our Patreon page. Your support directly funds new content, events, and research. https://www.patreon.com/c/sephardi

10/10/2025

Research in Arab Archives?

We are in contact with a genealogist based in the Middle East who - for a fee - may be able to assist with research in Arabic archives. This includes archives in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. If you are looking for documents that are believed to be in the archives of those countries please send a clear, detailed request saying what information you are researching, and we shall obtain a price quotation.

This is a new and promising contact, but we have not yet seen their work.

06/10/2025

Researching Jewish genealogy in Venice. Now available to watch on YouTube:

The Serene Republic of Venice is hugely important to Jewish history, as a commercial centre, a crossroads, and a religious hub. Of course,the word ‘ghetto’ o...

28/09/2025

The Spanish King’s UN speech used a “some of our best friends are Jews” line before attacking Israel, citing the flawed 2015–19 Sephardic law as an example of his country's claimed goodness. He didn't reference the explosion of antisemitism in Spain.

Casa Real

08/09/2025

Esta tarde, la centenaria sinagoga portuguesa de Ámsterdam celebró su 350.º aniversario. El rey Guillermo Alejandro asistió al servicio y posteriormente conversó con el Gran Rabino y jóvenes de la comunidad, entre otros. Leer más.La celebración conmemoró el 350.º aniversario de la Sinagoga...

08/09/2025

The Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages is offering free courses via Zoom, but you need to sign up this week. Languages include Haketia, Judeo-Italian and Ladino.

Applications for classes starting in Michaelmas Term 2025 will open in August/September 2025. (You can check time-zone comparisons on sites such as this one; Oxford dates of term are available on the University website) Begun in October 2021, the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL) of the...

29/08/2025

The Jews of Edirne, Turkey

Edirne once held one of the world’s largest Sephardic communities. Drawing on Ladino, French, Turkish, and English sources, Jacob Daniels traces how upheavals from the Young Turk Revolution to the Thracian violence of 1934 reshaped their identity: wary of Zionism under Alliance schools, briefly supportive during the Greek occupation, then forced into silence under the Turkish Republic. Prosperous yet resented, Edirne’s Jews became the last minority in a sensitive borderland, and the 1934 attacks—though not fatal—drove most to Istanbul, ending centuries of communal life.

Jacob Daniels earned his History PhD at Stanford. He now serves as Assistant Professor of Instruction and Assistant Director of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.

Patrons can join us live on Sunday 31 August 2025, at 11 noon in LA, 2pm in NYC, 7pm in London, 8pm in Paris/Amsterdam, 9pm in Jerusalem, and 4am the next morning in Sydney. Patrons will receive a link in a separate email. Everyone else is invited to watch the YouTube premiere the next week. https://www.youtube.com/c/SephardicGenealogyAndHistory

15/08/2025

Sephardim in Eastern Europe?

Many Ashkenazi families have traditions of Sephardic ancestry. Recently this hit international headlines when a Russian businessman received Portuguese citizenship based on such claims. How much evidence is there to support these Ashkenazi traditions?

This week’s multi-expert meeting will explore the question from the perspective of the Amsterdam archives, claims by prominent rabbinic dynasties, genetic evidence, and more recent claims connected to Spanish and Portuguese nationality applications. Join us for an insightful and possibly myth-busting meeting.

Patrons can join us live on Sunday 17 August 2025, at 11 noon in LA, 2pm in NYC, 7pm in London, 8pm in Paris/Amsterdam, 9pm in Jerusalem, and 4am the next morning in Sydney. Patrons will receive a link in a separate email. Everyone else is invited to watch the YouTube premiere the next week. https://www.patreon.com/c/sephardi

14/08/2025

Congratulations to David Silvera of A Nação Hebraica for winning the IAJGS's Lifetime Achievement Award for his pioneering work using AI to transcribe historic documents from the London Spanish & Portuguese Jews' Congregation. Well deserved recognition. https://anacaohebraica.transkribus.eu/

18/07/2025

Breaking Down Brick Walls: Solving Sephardic Genealogical Mysteries

This Sunday’s Sephardic World meeting is open to everyone on our mailing list, not just patrons. If you are facing a genealogical brick wall in your Sephardic research, we invite you to share it with the group. Whether you are struggling to trace a particular ancestor, unravel a surname, or link a family across borders, others in the community may be able to offer insights or suggest sources you have not yet considered.

If possible, please send your questions in advance to:n
society@sephardicgenealogy.com
This will help us structure the discussion more effectively.

If you are not yet on our free mailing list, please sign up here: https://www.sephardic.world/sephardic-world. Non-subscribers are still invited to submit questions.

Please note that we are not specialists in DNA analysis, so queries of that kind are best directed elsewhere.

Join us live this Sunday, 20 July 2025, at 11 noon in LA, 2pm in NYC, 7pm in London, 8pm in Paris/Amsterdam, 9pm in Jerusalem, and 4am the next morning in Sydney.

04/07/2025

Sephardi Spaces: Researching Sephardic Migration

This Sunday, Dr Shai Cohen’s talk will introduce Sephardi Spaces, a research project launched in 2023 that traces the migrations of Sephardic families from the Iberian Peninsula to their global diasporas. Combining historical scholarship with digital mapping, the project seeks to understand how Sephardic identity has evolved across different geographies and generations. A central element is an interactive GIS-based platform that allows users to explore these movements in spatial and cultural terms, offering new ways to visualise continuity and change within Sephardic traditions, languages, and communal life.

Dr Cohen brings to this work a wide-ranging scholarly background that bridges early modern Iberian literature, Jewish-Christian relations, and digital humanities. A Senior Lecturer at the University of Miami and Director of its AI and Humanities Lab, he has published on political satire in Habsburg Spain, converso identity, and cultural hybridity. His current work integrates AI and extended reality (XR) technologies to preserve and interpret Sephardic heritage. Sephardi Spaces exemplifies this interdisciplinary approach, offering both historical insight and contemporary relevance in understanding how diasporic identities are shaped and redefined over time.

Patrons can join us live on Sunday 6 July 2025, at 11 noon in LA, 2pm in NYC, 7pm in London, 8pm in Paris/Amsterdam, 9pm in Jerusalem, and 4am the next morning in Sydney. Patrons will receive a link in a separate email. Everyone else is invited to watch the YouTube premiere the next week.
https://www.youtube.com/c/SephardicGenealogyAndHistory

If you are not yet a patron and would like to support our work, you can join us here: https://www.patreon.com/sephardi Even $5 a month or a single payment of $60 for a year makes a meaningful difference and gives you the chance to put your questions directly to leading experts in the field.