Explore Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish Civilization
Explore the histories, traditions, ideas, and cultural contributions of Jewish communities across the Middle East, North Africa, and the broader Sephardic world. Through historical scholarship, personal testimonies, music, literature, and cultural resources, JIMENA celebrates the richness of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish civilization and its enduring contributions to Jewish life.
Explore by Country
Learn about Jewish life across the Middle East and North Africa. Each country page highlights community histories, traditions, migration stories, and cultural artifacts.
Holidays and Festivals
From the Rosh Hashanah seder of blessings to Mimouna’s open doors, Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews celebrate the Jewish year with their own melodies, foods, and customs. Explore how communities from Morocco to Iran mark each holiday, and the special celebrations they created along the way.
Shabbat
The weekly day of rest, welcomed with blessings and song, savored over slow cooked dishes, and in winter greeted before dawn with the poetry of the bakkashot.
Rosh Hashanah
A table of symbolic foods and blessings, a month of predawn prayers, and the many ways Sephardic and Mizrahi families welcome a sweet new year.
Yom Kippur
The Day of Atonement: a month of dawn prayers, a day dressed in white, poetry from medieval Spain, and break fast tables from Baghdad to Rhodes.
Sukkot and Simchat Torah
Booths hung with carpets and lanterns, a chair set aside for honored guests, and joyful processions with Torah scrolls in silver cases.
Hanukkah and Chag HaBanot
Eight nights of light, honey soaked fritters, Ladino songs, and a North African festival that honors women and girls.
Tu BiShvat
The New Year of the Trees: a farmers' date from ancient Israel that the mystics of Safed and Sephardic and Mizrahi families turned into a feast of fruit.
Purim
Queen Esther's story from ancient Persia, and the many local Purims that Jewish communities created to remember their own rescues.
Passover
From the sweet Bsisa that welcomes the month of Nisan to scallions at the seder table, the many ways Sephardic and Mizrahi families retell the story of freedom.
Mimouna and Seharane
Two joyful celebrations of spring, open doors, and togetherness, carried from North Africa and Kurdistan to Israel and around the world.
Lag BaOmer
A day of light, song, and celebration in the weeks between Passover and Shavuot, honoring the sage Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai.
Shavuot
A wedding contract between God and Israel, a night of study, honey on a child's first letters, and buckets of water in the streets of the mellah.
Nowruz and Iranian Jews
The Persian New Year arrives with the first day of spring. For generations, Iranian Jews have welcomed it with fresh sprouts, open doors, and family picnics, right in the season of Purim and Passover.
Tisha B'Av
A day of mourning for Jerusalem's Temples, which Sephardic Jews also came to remember as the season of the expulsion from Spain in 1492.
Lifecycle and Customs
Welcoming a baby, celebrating a wedding with henna, mourning a loved one, and visiting the graves of revered sages: these moments have carried Sephardic and Mizrahi families through generations. Discover the rituals and traditions that mark life’s milestones across the Middle East and North Africa.
Welcoming a Child
From Zeved HaBat, the “gift of the daughter,” to Elijah's chair and names that honor living grandparents: how Sephardic and Mizrahi families greet a new baby.
Bar and Bat Mitzvah
Coming of age in Sephardic and Mizrahi communities: first tefillin, the Torah read in a family's own melody, sweets, songs, and the newer celebrations for girls.
Henna
A night of color, music, and blessing on the eve of a wedding, celebrated by Jewish families from Morocco to Yemen to India.
Weddings
Spreads of symbolic foods, velvet gowns embroidered in gold, painted marriage contracts, and songs that carry a couple from engagement to the Shabbat that follows.
Mourning and Remembrance
How Sephardic and Mizrahi families care for the dead, comfort mourners, and keep the memory of loved ones alive through prayer, study, food, and community.
Food and Foodways
Saffron rice and slow cooked stews, flaky pastries and spiced coffee: how Sephardic and Mizrahi kitchens carry history, faith, and family memory.
The Hamsa and Protective Customs
An open hand shared by Jews, Muslims, and Christians across the Middle East and North Africa, and the customs people used to guard life's most precious moments
Hillulot and Pilgrimage
Candles, music, and feasting at the tombs of beloved sages and prophets, from Morocco and Tunisia to Iraq, Iran, and Israel.
Dress and Jewelry
Velvet and gold thread, silver filigree, and silk ikat: how Jewish families from Morocco to Bukhara dressed, and the artisans who made it all.
Language, Learning, and Thought
Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews built rich traditions of language, scholarship, music, and leadership, from the poets of al Andalus to the women who passed down songs and wisdom at home. Learn about the ideas, voices, and ways of learning that shaped these communities and still inspire today.
Languages
From Ladino to Judeo Arabic, Juhuri, and Neo Aramaic: the many tongues of Jewish life across the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.
Classical Sephardic Judaism
Torah joined with philosophy, poetry, science, and medicine: a thousand year tradition of Jewish learning, and an approach to Jewish law many see as practical, moderate, and inclusive.
Sephardic Approaches to Teaching and Learning
From the neighborhood classrooms and the great study houses of Baghdad to family songs and today's classrooms: how Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews have passed knowledge from one generation to the next.
Masorti Judaism and the Denominations
Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and “traditional”: how Jews organize religious life, and why many Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews never divided into movements at all.
Music, Piyyut, and Song
From Andalusian poetry sung before dawn to Baghdad radio stars and Israeli chart toppers: the sounds of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish life.
Women, Tradition, and Leadership
From grandmothers' songs and healing lore to Rosh Chodesh celebrations, scholars, and singers: how Sephardic and Mizrahi women carried Jewish life forward.
Healing and Medicine
Court physicians, translators, and grandmothers with healing words: how Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews cared for the body and the spirit for more than a thousand years.
Science and Philosophy
Reason and faith, stars and numbers: how Jewish thinkers of the Islamic world and Iberia shaped philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics, and helped carry knowledge between Muslims and Christians
Poetry
From wine songs and war poems in medieval Spain to Ladino ballads, Persian epics, and today's Israeli and American poets: a thousand years of Sephardic and Mizrahi verse.