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I, David, son of King Solomon of blessed memory, from the Khibur Desert, arrived at the gate of the State of Rome on the fifteenth day of the month of First Adar in the year 5584 [1524]. A…
A scion from Portugal by the name of Solomon Molkho sprouted forth from the trunk of Israel [see Isaiah 11:1] and spent his youth among the scribes of the king—where they had been scattered since the…
The tale of the Generation of the Land is a sad tale. Reflecting about the source of the depression that the situation in Israel instills in me, I can only ascribe it to expressions of ethnocentric…
Even after the mourning period was over, when the flat was finally empty and my father and I locked the door and were alone together, we hardly talked to one another. Except about the most essential…
If I had to pick one defining moment in my Iranian life, it would be 5:00 a.m. one Friday in the fall of 1968. I was fifteen. Normally I woke to the sounds of a peddler selling green almonds and fava…
Ruschuk, on the lower Danube, where I came into the world, was a marvelous city for a child, and if I say that Ruschuk is in Bulgaria, then I am giving an inadequate picture of it. For…
Stanislaw often told me how much he liked my company, and sometimes he wondered about my Jewishness: “Look at yourself! You cannot be Jewish!” he would exclaim. And yet whenever he spoke to me about…
Jewish children grow up quickly. If only their bodies ripened as quickly as their hearts and minds! Were this an artist’s crayon in my hand instead of a pen, I would draw the following caricature of…
R. Isaac ben Abraham ben Judah ‘Akrish, may he rest in peace, from exile in Spain and Naples, said that he would not receive the proud waters [of baptism; see Psalms 124:5], and was driven out…
[ . . . ] We have nooses fastened around our necks; when the pressure abates for a moment, we utter a cry. Its importance should not be underestimated. Many a time in history did such cries resound…