Contributors

Elizabeth Graver: 
A Long Journey

Elizabeth Graver is the author of Kantika, a Sephardic multi-generational saga that moves from Istanbul to Barcelona, Havana, and New York, exploring displacement, endurance and family as home. Kantika was awarded a National Jewish Book Award, an Association of Jewish Libraries Fiction Award, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, a Massachusetts Book Award, and the Julia Ward Howe Prize. It has been translated into German and Turkish. The author of four other novels and a short story collection, Elizabeth Graver teaches at Boston College. 

Find out more about Elizabeth here

Nadia Ragozhina: 
My Search for Myself

Nadia Ragozhina is a senior journalist at BBC News who has worked as an international news journalist and producer for over twenty years. Her curiosity about her Jewish heritage and identity growing up in post-Soviet Moscow led her to search for a "missing" branch of her family. Once she followed the trail of family history to Switzerland, Nadia was able to reunite her family and piece together stories hidden for generations. Her book, Worlds Apart: The Journeys of my Jewish Family in Twentieth-Century Europe, is the result of her research. Nadia lives in London with her husband and three daughters.

Find out more about Nadia here

David Gerbi: 
You Must Believe in Miracles

Dr. David Gerbi was born in Tripoli, Libya, in 1955. He and his family became refugees in Italy in 1967 and eventually made a new home in Rome. David became a successful psychotherapist and an active member of the Jewish community and returned to Libya several times, eager to rebuild his relationship with the country. His goal is to preserve the last two synagogues and to bring the bones of the Jews that remain in the cemeteries of Jado and Homs and in warehouses in Benghazi to Israel.

Claudia Hercman: 
Memory and Silence

Claudia was born and raised in Buenos Aires, within the Argentinian Jewish community. She works as a tour guide and translator, and she is also a sculptor and painter. Her work centers on the themes of Memory and Uprooting, honoring her four grandparents who emigrated from Poland to Argentina in the 1930s.

Find out more about Claudia's art: www.claudiahercman.com.ar

Find out more about Claudia's tours: www.jewishargentina.com.ar

Nachshon Rodrigues Pereira: Echoes of the Esnoga

Nachshon Rodrigues Pereira is the community leader and cantor of the Bendigamos community in Amsterdam. His family has been part of the Portuguese Jewish community of the Netherlands for four centuries. After studying political science and a brief political career, he chose to dedicate most of his time to teaching and rebuilding the Jewish community in Amsterdam. Today, he works for the Jewish Nursing home in Amsterdam, teaches Bar Mitzvah students, writes for a Jewish news website, and organizes Jewish concerts.

Rachel Wahba: 
Stateless 

An Egyptian-Iraqi Jew, Rachel was born in India in 1946 and grew up stateless in Japan. As a Mizrahi Jew and Zionist activist, the many dimensions of her exile and displacement in the first twenty years of her life are a constant theme in her work as a writer, content creator, former psychotherapist, and in her advocacy as an advisory board member for JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa). and the Northern California Stand With Us Chapter. She is also the co-founder of Olivia Travel, a women's travel company.

Find out more about Rachel here

Joseph Michael Vardakis: Evolving Identities

Joseph Michael Vardakis was born in Athens, Greece. He holds degrees in Psychology (B.A.), Psychobiology (M.A.), and Clinical Psychology (M.S.). Having lived and studied in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Israel, he now resides in Athens, where he maintains a clinical practice and works in education. His experience includes research work in Israel, counselling new immigrants for the Ministry of Absorption, and volunteering with the Jewish community of Cape Town before beginning his studies.

Dora Koranyi: Where There is Hope, There is Home

Dóra Korányi was born in Budapest, Hungary. She is the co-founder of Qesher, a project launched in 2020 to showcase Jewish communities around the world. A psychologist by training, she earned her B.A. in Israel before returning to Hungary to complete her master's degree. Back in her hometown, she became deeply involved in Jewish life, working as a project coordinator for youth programs in various Jewish organizations and playing an active role in a grassroots, egalitarian community for young Jews.

Eliaz Reuben-Dandeker: Growing up a Bene Israel Jew of India in Israel

Eliaz Reuben-Dandeker is a 4th-generation Israeli, descendant of the leaders of the Bene Israel community from the 18th century, the Kammodan Mocadem Divekars. He is an author, archivist, documentary maker, lecturer, artist, and publisher. Eliaz is the founder and owner of the Kammodan Mocadem Publishing House and has published seven books, taking part in several others. He was also a co-founder of various Jewish-Indian initiatives, including The Next Generation of Indian Jews in Israel and Abroad and Masale. Eliaz has lectured and given interviews around the world on topics such as the Jewish communities of India and PTSD related to combat experience.

Ron Gomes Casseres: Interwoven in Curaçao

Ron Gomes Casseres descends from Sephardic Jews who came to Curaçao in 1690. He is a leader of the historic Mikvé Israel-Emanuel community. Now retired, one of his interests is the history of his Jewish community and its practices. For his social and cultural contributions to the Curaçao community, he was awarded decorations by the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Valeriya Nakshun: 
The Family Project

Valeriya Nakshun was born in the Republic of Dagestan, a constituent republic of Russia, and immigrated to the United States with her family as a refugee in the late 1990s. She is a Kavkazi Jewish culture writer, community organizer, artist, and storyteller based between Washington D.C. and Baltimore. Valeriya served as a Community Outreach Fellow at Sephardic Heritage International DC (SHIN-DC) and is a former dancer with the Silk Road Dance Company (SRDC). 

Nesim Bencoya: Through the Streets of the Judería

Born in Izmir, Turkey, Nesim Bencoya moved to Israel, where he studied sociology and worked in informal education before becoming Director of the Haifa Cinematheque. Returning to Izmir in 2010, he dedicated himself to preserving the city's Jewish heritage as coordinator of the Izmir Jewish Cultural Heritage Project. In 2018, he founded the Izmir Sephardic Culture Festival, further promoting the city's Jewish cultural legacy.

Find out more about the Izmir Jewish Heritage Project here

Gavin Morris: When Most Went West, We Went South

Gavin holds a B.A. in History and Jewish Civilization, as well as an M.B.A., both obtained at the University of Cape Town. In 2012, he became the director of The South African Jewish Museum, where he has overseen the development of numerous exhibitions, a digital social history archive, and educational and cultural diversity programs.

Find out more about the South African Jewish Museum here

Sarah Sassoon: What is Hidden in a Cheese Sambusak

Sarah Sassoon is an Australian-born Iraqi Jewish writer, poet, and educator whose work explores Iraqi Jewish history, refugee stories, resilience, and Middle Eastern women's experiences. Author of the award-winning Shoham's Bangle and This Is Not a Cholent, her poetry chapbook This Is Why We Don't Look Back won the Harbor Review Jewish Women's Poetry Prize. She advises Distinctions Journal and Yad Mizrah Magazine and co-authored The In-Between. Sarah lives in Jerusalem with her family.

Find out more about Sarah here

Artur Livshyts: 
My Roots, My Strength

Artur Livshyts was born in Minsk, then part of the Soviet Union and now the capital of independent Belarus. He spent a year living in Nashville, Tennessee, where he discovered Judaism, studied Hebrew, and celebrated his bar mitzvah. He later spent a year at a boarding school in Israel before returning to Belarus, where he completed his education in Minsk, studying Law. He has dedicated his life to working toward the revival of the Jewish community in Belarus.

Find out more about Artur's work here

Ran Menashe: The Karaites of Egypt: A Hidden Chapter in Jewish History

Ran Menashe (Ranash) was born and raised in Ra'anana, Israel, in a secular Karaite family. He is a freelance educator, lecturer, and group facilitator specializing in personal development and mind-body connection, working with diverse age groups and IDF soldiers. As a social entrepreneur, he has founded and led two non-profit organizations focused on self-reflection and identity. For the past fifteen years, Ranash has also been studying and teaching Jewish thought and philosophy, which has led him to focus on raising awareness of Karaite Judaism.

Ruth Behar: 
A Suitcase By My Bed

Ruth Behar was born in Havana, Cuba, and grew up in New York. She is a cultural anthropologist, poet, and award-winning writer of fiction whose work often explores her journeys and identity as a Cuban-American Jew. She has lived in Spain and Mexico and has returned to Cuba to build bridges through culture and art. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is the James W. Fernandez Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Find out more about Ruth here

Alan Niku: 
My Heart is in the East

Alan Niku is a filmmaker, writer, and scholar of Mizrahi culture from San Luis Obispo, California, based in Los Angeles, with parents originally from Iran. A native speaker of Persian, he spends his time learning related Jewish languages, deciphering Judeo-Persian manuscripts, and interviewing community members about their stories. He is also a musician and an amateur chef, teaches history and Jewish heritage at various levels, and seeks to educate the world about the underrepresented cultures of the Middle East through his writing and films.