L' Shana Tova

EVENT: Song & Word Performance. May 14, Thursday, 6:00 pm

Santa Fe Art Institute. Thursday, May 14 at 6:00 pm in Tipton Hall, College of Santa Fe


Memory Preserved: Sepharad Hidden and Revealed

The Santa Fe Art Institute and Gaon Books present an event remembering the Sephardic and crypto-Jewish traditions of New Mexico through song and literature as a part of its series: “Memory: Shadow & Light – Art as Individual/Collective Memory”. Memory Preserved features music by Vanessa Paloma with Judeo-Spanish songs from the colonial period, word memories of Sepharad by authors Isabelle Medina-Sandoval and Mario X. Martinez and visual images by artist Gloria Abella Ballen. This event will launch a new novel by each of these writers.

Ms. Paloma specializes in the traditional performance of Judeo-Spanish songs from the Sephardic Diaspora. This music, tinged with fate and sadness, passion and joy, came to the Americas with Spanish settlers. Ms. Paloma is a Research Scholar of Brandeis University currently living and working in Casablanca and has performed widely across the United States, Latin America, Europe, North Africa, Israel, and East Asia. She is the lead singer of Flor de Serena, a Los Angeles based ensemble doing Judeo-Spanish music.

In Guardians of Hidden Traditions Isabelle Medina-Sandoval tells the saga of her family starting in Spain and migrating to Mexico and eventually New Mexico. Told with historical depth and accuracy, these stories of love and determination introduce us into the lives of women along with their marriages and children, thoughts and dreams, and their preservation of the memory of Jewishness. It is a powerful novel about hidden identity and culture being secretly safeguarded from generation to generation with a mixture of passion and fear. Dr. Medina-Sandoval is a published poet and leader in bilingual education. (See the description below in this blog.)

In Converso Mario X. Martinez has created a compelling historical novel about nineteenth century town life, drawing from events during the period of Archbishop Lamy. There are powerful Dons, dashing young men, beautiful women, crypto-Jews, conflicts, and the suspicious death of an overly inquisitive priest, all wrapped within memory and family tales in historical New Mexico. After graduate work at Harvard University Martinez returned to his native state where he writes and teaches. (See the description below in this blog.)

These two historical novels are part of a series by Gaon Books on Western Sephardic Traditions, including the crypto-Jewish experience in the Americas. For further information Ron Duncan-Hart, Senior Editor, e-mail gaonbooks@gmail.com or call 505.920.7771.

Isabelle Medina-Sandoval, Guardians of Hidden Traditions

Guardians of Hidden Traditions is a historical novel narrating the experiences of generation after generation of crypto-Jews, beginning in Spain in the late 1300’s and ending in New Mexico in the early 1800’s. It tells the stories of mothers, daughters, and their families as they hide from the Inquisition and migrate to new lands seeking freedom and peace.

Isabelle Medina-Sandoval draws from stories and research about her own family to create this novel. The story is built around a real core of events, and she includes historically rich details about the lifestyles of the various time periods.
The cover features the painting, Rosa de Castilla, by Diana Bryer.

•••••••• Guardians of Hidden Traditions is a fascinating and moving story of a people that held on to deep traditions and culture through tremendous trials and tribulation. Dr. Medina Sandoval has woven into this work the beautiful story of our ancestors. The work provides a deep sense of belonging for a group that survived in the hearts and minds of individuals with deep faith in something omnipotent. This work is something that we as a people need to pass on to our young people in our educational systems. The culture and traditions portrayed in this work is really part of our Land of Enchantment. The Rosa de Castilla and the many traditions are part of New Mexico and its people.
--Dr. John Mondragon, Professor, University of New Mexico

Isabelle Sandoval’s Guardians of Hidden Traditions brings an important, but little-known aspect of Spanish-American history to light and to vibrant life through an exciting story and engaging and colorful characters. The story is epic in scope, yet highly personal as it documents the continuity of faith and fear in twenty-five generations of a family of hidden Jews in Spain and the New World. This is a book that is sure to inform, to entrance, and to move both adult and young adult readers.
--Dr. Craig Castleman, Educator

Mario X. Martinez, Converso

Converso is a story of crypto-Jewish life in a small town in northern New Mexico during the 1870’s, the time of Bishop Lamy. Abran Espinosa along with his uncle, Don Moisés Espinosa, discover their Jewish birthright through an old family journal. The newly-appointed priest, Father LaSalle, mistakenly suspects them of sorcery, leading to a confrontation and Abran’s exile from the local church. The resulting story is compelling and surprising.

Mario X. Martinez uses stories from his family to create this historical novel of powerful Dons, dashing young men, beautiful women, and the foreign priest who did not understand New Mexican life and culture. This combustible mixture leads to conflict, revenge and the suspicious demise of the priest as he was conducting mass. This is a story that Willa Cather would have understood about life and death and the secrecy with which crypto-Jewish families lived and protected their identity.

In Converso, Mario Martinez weaves a fascinating story about the survival of a culture, that of the Crypto Jews of New Mexico. Everyday we are learning more and more about the complexity of Hispanic civilization as brought to the Americas by Spaniards in the 17th century. While the Catholicism of Spain is evident and obvious, the other religions of the book in Iberia, Sephardic Judaism and Islam, made healthy contributions to what is today a thriving community. Martinez brings history to life and puts forth a thought provoking thesis: There are Crypto Jews among New Mexico's Hispanic community in the 21st century.

-- Robert D. Martinez
History Teacher and New Mexican Folk Musician


For further information go to: http://www.conversothenovel.com

Silvia Hamui Sutton, Cantos judeo-espanoles

Cantos judeo-espanoles: simbologia poetica y vision del mundo.
Judeo-Spanish Songs: Poetic Symbolism and World View

Silvia Hamui Sutton has written a most complete coverage of Judeo-Spanish songs, drawing from every part of the Sephardic Diaspora. She shows how the songs follow the life-cycle events and support the emotions associated with each. She gives dozens and dozens of song texts and explains their meanings. She is an ethnomusicologist in Mexico.


“El lenguage simbólico, las costumbres y rituales del ciclo de vida, así como las prácticas cotidianas sefaradíes se abordan de manera minuciosa en este admirable libro que nos aproxima, de manera erudita y amena, a la cosmovisión de los hispano-hebreos a través de sus cantos.”
– Dra. Graciela Cándano Fierro
Investigadora del Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

“Excelente aportación crítica que ofrece una perspectiva de los cantos judeo-españoles en torno a los rituales del ciclo de vida. El desglosamiento y análisis de significados simbólicos nos deja penetrar, tanto en la movilidad del lenguaje mediante la tradición oral, como en los valores y las prácticas existenciales que se actualizan constantemente hasta nuestros días.”
– Dra. Alicia Gojman de Backal
Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

“Observar cómo el lenguaje expresa una forma de pensar y de estar en el mundo, desentrañar los significados de los cantos tradicionales sefaradíes, reflexionar acerca de los acontecimientos históricos que enmarcaron la diáspora, fueron algunos de los objetivos que se planteó Silvia Hamui Sutton al realizar este trabajo. Su vocación especial al estudio nos da aquí una interesante lectura de los signos contenidos en la lírica perteneciente a los ritos y las costumbres de los hispano-hebreos. Si, como ella dice, la palabra abre las posibilidades de adentrarnos en la cosmovisión que tiene una sociedad, las páginas de este libro revelan una inteligencia y una perspicacia que merecen nuestro reconocimiento.”
– Dr. Sergio López Mena,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

“El estudio realizado por Silvia Hamui Sutton es revelador y sugerente, pues en él muestra, desde los cantos judeo españoles, las ricas y complejas relaciones entre la simbología poética y los rituales en el ciclo de vida, ofreciendo al lector una perspectiva original de la palabra y las creencias, que se hallan entre la profano y lo sagrado, todo ello reflejando parte de la visión de mundo hispano hebrea.”
– Dra. Mariana Masera
Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas,
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Western Sephardic Traditions

Gaon Books on

Western Sephardic Traditions

Isabelle Medina-Sandoval, Editor

Gaon Books about Western Sephardic life and history from Europe to the Americas, exploring experiences from the Diaspora, including crypto-Judaism.


Volume 1. Silvia Hamui Sutton, Cantos judeo-españoles: simbología poética y visión del mundo.

Volume 2. Isabelle Medina-Sandoval. Guardians of Hidden Traditions.

Volume 3. Mario X. Martinez. Converso.

Forthcoming:
Sandra Toro, By Fire Possessed (The life of Dona Grazia Nasi)

Angelina Muniz-Huberman, The Confidantes

Angelina Muniz-Huberman is arguably the best Jewish, woman writer in Mexico and in all of Latin America. In more than twenty books she has written fiction and non-fiction on Jewish themes and others.

In The Confidantes, two women gather to tell stories one day. As the stories take life, the two women become their own characters. A day and night of telling builds into a crescendo of unimaginable truth where the boundaries between story, fable, and myth evaporate like breath and words. Personal memories and nighttime dreams are woven into romances and exotic yarns from Casablanca to Catalunya. Plumbing the depths of human sentiment and existence, the confidantes lead us into veiled pathways rarely traveled.

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman’s writing is lyrical and alluring, and Andrea Labinger’s translation preserves the magic.

••••••••••••
I read the novel without stopping. What a delightful tribute to Scheherazade, and indirectly, to Cervantes. -- Ilan Stavans

Angelina Muñiz-Huberman has established a solid reputation as one of Mexico´s better women writers, one of its better Jewish writers, one of its better Spanish refugee writers, and indeed one of its better contemporary writers. -- Seymour Menton, World Literature Today

In The Confidantes we find a broad range of emotions, introspections, and thoughtful looks inside ourselves that truthfully show how unpredictable, obsessive and susceptible we are as humans.
-- Mary Carmen Sánchez Ambriz, Siempre

During a day and night two women, the confidantes, get together to tell stories, but little by little the narrators are transformed into the characters. -- Jorge Luis Espinosa, Unomásuno.

Susan Vorhand, The Mosaic Within

The Mosaic Within is a life changing discussion of the connectedness between spirituality, personality, and self-healing. Dr. Susan Vorhand’s approach of soul-centered psychotherapy combines psychology and religious mysticism to achieve a unique integrity of the inner self. She combines the richness of Jungian psychology and its understanding of the primordial myths of humanity with the spiritual insights of Kabbalah to create this break through understanding of the interwoven quality of our spirituality and personality. Dr. Vorhand explores her own personal experiences and those of others to give real life examples of healing, ranging from self-doubt to eating disorders. Her combination of the strengths of Jungian psychotherapy and Kabbalah produces an alchemy of understanding the self, achieving gold in a way not anticipated by Medieval alchemists.

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The interface between the physical and the spiritual world and the balance between the two resonate thoughtfully and clearly in Dr. Susan Vorhand’s work. The inner workings and challenges of body, soul, mind and matter are interwoven so neatly, to allow the reader entry into God’s upper spheres and man’s life long struggles and goals. Dr. Vorhand’s book is scholarly as well as sensitive and personal, balancing well between the teachings of the greatest Jewish minds and the approaches of the finest healers.

Rabbi Dr. Eliyahu Safran, Vice President
Orthodox Union, Kashruth Division
New York


With poetry in her heart, Dr. Susan Vorhand brings together a wide range of literature to stimulate and stretch our understanding of the psyche. While gracefully bridging Kabbalah, alchemy and Jungian psychology, she posits that we psychologists are alchemists of the soul/psyche who “grind and purify, dissolve and coagulate, analyze and synthesize, sublime and distill, the matter of our lives.” Some spiritual concepts, by their nature, are limited by words. However, in this book, they are fortunately further illuminated by the artistic renderings of Gloria Abella Ballen.

Joyce Friedman, Ph.D.
Neuropsychologist, University of Oklahoma
Vice President of Kavod v’ Nichum, North America

Nina S. de Friedemann, African Saga

African Saga is a must read on the African Diaspora in the Americas. Nina S. de Friedemann writes with definitive ethnographic and ethnohistorical detail about the cultural origins in Africa, forced labor in the Americas, and the role of African descent peoples in contemporary society. Although she wrote seventeen books, this is her most comprehensive statement about the African experience in Latin America.

She was one of the creators of the field of Afro-Colombian studies and arguably the most important researcher of her time on the subject. In recognition of her scholarship and writing, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and named Latin American Coordinator for the UNESCO Project on the Slave Route among other honors.


Comprehensive review of Afro-Colombian history. At the same time, powerful tool to combat racism due to the way it highlights the contributions made by African captives and their descendants to the building of their nation. A book committed to the future of Africanness in the Americas, due to the political and ethical framework which also guided the life of its author, Nina S. de Friedemann.

--Jaime Arocha,
Professor of Anthropology
National University of Colombia


The late Nina Friedemann introduced a radical but reasonable afrocentrism into the literature on Afro-Colombian people by drawing on her extensive and impressive ethnography synergized with painstaking history, ethnohistory, narrative historicity and even archaeology of Africa and the Americas...Required reading for all students and scholars of the African Diaspora.

--Norman Whitten
Professor of Anthropology
University of Illinois

Vanessa Paloma, Mystic Siren

Vanessa Paloma is an internationally known performance artist, author, and lecturer on music and Judaism, as well as being a scholar in the field of women’s spirituality. In addition to solo work, she founded and co-directs Flor de Serena, a Judeo-Spanish ensemble. A Fulbright Scholar to Morocco in Judeo-Spanish song and mysticism, her work has also been supported by the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis University, Maurice Amado Foundation, California Council for the Humanities, The Righteous Person’s Foundation, and American Sephardi Federation among others. She has performed widely from the United States and Israel to Europe, South America, and China.

Mystic Siren is about women’s spirituality, Jewish mysticism, and Sephardic music and cultural traditions. Paloma’s explanations of the place of women in creation are critically important for both men and women in our times. It is a delightful read that ranges from fable to Kabbalistic meditations, and it is grounded in religious practice and study of the Torah. Mystic Siren is beautifully designed, and it is a unique artistic and scholarly collaboration between this talented mother-daughter team.

Gloria Abella Ballen, the artist and designer, has won numerous international awards with recognition from UNESCO and the National Endowment for the Arts among others. Her work is in the collections of modern art museums in the United States, Mexico, and Colombia.

Vanessa Paloma writes with a modern sensibility and an old school bohemian romance. This little book is an unusual mix of fable and spiritual wisdom that will elevate and enrich the reader, even the parent who is reading to the child.
David Suissa, Editor, Olam Magazine

Vanessa Paloma...is a passionate scholar and performer of songs from the Sephardic Diaspora from North Africa to Turkey...
NPR

Paloma...brings this richness of heritage to her work as an author, performer, teacher and preserver of Ladino songs and music.
Here & There, Hadassah Magazine

Flor de Serena’s…artistic Ladino landcape is marked by elegance and emotion…conveying both these elements with intoxicating skill…Serena is an ethnic music lover’s dream…
Ben Jacobson, The Jerusalem Post

...a major presence...particularly spirited... ...multitalented soprano...
Elissa Strauss, Forward Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

Kol Bat: Books by and about Jewish Women

Gaon Books by and about Jewish Women
Vanessa Paloma, Editor

Kol Bat (voice of the daughter) is the mirror image of the Biblical phrase Bat Kol, which refers to the echo of a feminine voice responding to unanswerable questions from the heavens. Through this collection, contemporary women speak with insightful voices in the worlds of academia, religion, activism, arts and beyond.

Titles in the Series

Volume 1. Vanessa Paloma, Mystic Siren: Woman’s Voice in the Balance of Creation.

Volume 2. Nina S. de Friedemann, African Saga: Cultural Heritage and Resistance in the Diaspora.

Volume 3. Susan Vorhand, The Mosaic Within: An Alchemy of Healing Self and Soul.

Volume 4. . Silvia Hamui Sutton, Cantos judeo-españoles: simbología poética y visión del mundo.

Volume 5. Angelina Muñiz-Huberman. The Confidantes

Volume 6. Isabelle Medina-Sandoval. Guardians of a Hidden Tradition.

Forthcoming:
Volume 7. Anne Freeling Schlezinger, A Woman of Honor: Diary of an American Jewish Journey.

Volume 8. Carol Rachlin, Rita: the Biography of a Sauk Indian Woman