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“Blessed be He who shows loving kindness to the undeserving, for he requited me with every kindness” in the dead of night, on Monday, in the early morning of the 9th of Kislew…
I record how, in the year 1625, the Grand Duke came to Sienna, and Messer Abraham Pesaro and Messer Buonaventura Gallichi were appointed to collect the levy. From me, they demanded a pair of sheets, a…
When I was born, I was given the name Manuel, after my grandfather, Manuel Alvares Pinto, as was said earlier. For this reason and because I was my father’s eldest son, my grandfather always had me…
This text of an excommunication, found in David Aboab’s manuscript of Sefer emet ve-yatsiv (True and Certain), chronicles a conflict in the Sephardic congregation of Curaçao. The first Jews arrived in…
Now comes the turn, with awe and reverence, awe and reverence without end, of my father, the pious, God-fearing, learned one, may his strength be for the Torah [see Esther 2:15], the supernal light…
Gootie, my grandma, was a short, large-boned woman who made the kitchen her kingdom. She entered the living room only on special occasions—like Monday night to watch “I Love Lucy.” She had to think…
Few children know the stories of their parents. During my childhood, I knew only that mine were an impossible match—which did not prevent my mother from spending day and night at my father’s bedside…
I remember the moment when it dawned on me that my father did not impress the world at large as a powerful figure. We were at a camera store on the Plaza—a faux-Andalusian shopping district that…
The day he was gone her suitor arrived. I don’t know what else to call him. He advertised himself as my uncle, but he didn’t have our famous cheekbones and Tatar eyes. He couldn’t have belonged to…
There are two things I ought to make clear. First, almost as soon as she starts telling me about her career (as we wade through the sleet from the bus stop to the market), my grandmother declares that…