Sephardic traditions take center stage with culinary and musical weekend
Savor the weekendUpcoming learning opportunity

Sephardic traditions take center stage with culinary and musical weekend

'Sephardic culture is so vibrant, and it's so alive. It really is living history in a way that people just don't know about'

Sarah Aroeste and Susan Barocas hold biscochos, classic Sephardic cookies. (Photo courtesy of Susan Barocas)
Sarah Aroeste and Susan Barocas hold biscochos, classic Sephardic cookies. (Photo courtesy of Susan Barocas)

An experiential weekend will enable Jewish Pittsburghers to explore Sephardic history through food and song. On Feb. 7 and 8, chef Susan Barocas and musician and author Sarah Aroeste will present several tasty and meaningful learning opportunities.

On Friday night, Aroeste will join Cantor Toby Glaser and local musician Sara Stock Mayo to lead a Sephardic Kabbalat Shabbat service at Rodef Shalom Congregation. The next morning, Aroeste will return to the Shadyside congregation for a family musical program.

On Saturday afternoon, Barocas will teach a Sephardic dessert cooking class at Temple Sinai in Squirrel Hill. Then, after Shabbat, Barocas and Aroeste will guide a Sephardic culture program, at Temple Sinai, complete with music, food and storytelling.

For years, Barocas and Aroeste have traveled the U.S. sharing multisensory experiences. Under the umbrella of Savor, the duo has introduced numerous participants to Sephardic culture and tradition.

Mayo first heard about Barocas and Aroeste from a friend in another city, she said.

“The more I started digging, I was like, ‘This is so great. We need to bring them to Pittsburgh.’”

Mayo is director of community engagement at the Rotunda Collaborative. Following construction, the Rotunda Collaborative will host educational and other cultural events inside the former B’nai Israel congregation in East Liberty.

“While the Rotunda Collaborative is not going to be not just a Jewish entity, I really see a hole in the community for bringing in Jewish sorts of arts and culture, and I thought this is a really good opportunity to both educate people and also have fun and bring community together,” Mayo said.

Sarah Aroeste performs before an audience in Naples, Florida. (Photo courtesy of Susan Barocas)

Wearing multiple hats, Mayo worked with Barocas and Aroeste to craft a weekend of education and enjoyment for audiences of all ages.

While Savor has hosted multiple one-off programs, a smorgasbord of events is the best mechanism for introducing people to the richness of Sephardic culture, Aroeste explained.

“The fact that we can offer such a diversity of programming is really paramount for us,” she told the Chronicle by phone from her home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. “This is an oral tradition — both the food ways and the music — it was passed down, not through written-down recipes or written-down lyric sheets, but through experience and through the mouth. … That’s what we try to mimic when we’re in a community: to make sure that everybody has a hand in this, in this world tradition.”

Sephardic Jewish history is traced to Spain and the early years of the Common Era, according to My Jewish Learning. For centuries, the community flourished; however, in 1492 the Sephardic Golden Age ceased after King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella expelled Spain’s Jews.

Following similar expulsions in Portugal, Sephardic Jews soon migrated to Amsterdam, North Africa and the Middle East.

Susan Barocas, right, leads a cooking demonstration in Newton, Massachusetts. (Photo courtesy of Susan Barocas)

“We have lived in almost every country in the world. And so, as a result, when you look at Jewish cuisine, you’re looking at world cuisine,” Barocas said by phone from her home in Washington, D.C.

The U.S., with its minority of Sephardi Jews, is an outlier, Barocas continued: “If you go to Israel and if you go to other places, you find that there’s this wonderful diversity of Jewish culture.”

Merely 4% of U.S. Jews identify as Sephardic or Mizrahi, whereas 66% of U.S. Jews consider themselves Ashkenazic, according to the Pew Research Center. Within Israel, the divide is “nearly evenly split,” as Ashkenazim represent 45% and Sephardim/Mizrahim represent 48%.

Barocas and Aroeste both trace their roots to Sephardi families from Manastir, a city now located in North Macedonia.

Preserving their families’ legacies, and the story of Sephardic Jewry is imperative, the Jewish professionals said.

“We hear such doom and gloom about Jewish history and Jewish culture, and I’m not even just talking about what’s in the news today,” Aroeste said. “Sephardic culture is so vibrant, and it’s so alive. It really is living history in a way that people just don’t know about.”

“It’s important that we Jews continue to understand Sephardim and the rest of the diversity of Jewish experience,” Barocas said. “That is so important to me. I don’t want to let that die.”

A schedule of events, and registration information, is available at rotundapgh.com/projects.

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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