Following the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 1950s, Sudan’s Jews fled; there was almost no trace of the community except the small Jewish grave yard in downtown Khartoum — rubbish-strewn and littered with pieces of demolished Jewish gravestones. Chaim Motzen, a young Canadian, undertook a decades-long mission to restore a symbol of Sudan’s multicultural past.

Sudan has a small but rich Jewish history. In the 1900s, hundreds of Arabic-speaking Jews from across the Middle East lived in the Sudanese capital harmoniously alongside Muslims and Christians, working as merchants, business folk, doctors and lawyers. Black and white photos from the era show Khartoum’s Jews joyously celebrating bar mitzvahs and weddings, mingling seamlessly with the city’s other communities. But anti-Semitism washed across the Arab world at the start of the conflict with Israel, and the Jews fled.

When Islamist dictator Omar al-Bashir came to power in 1989, the Jewish community came under serious attack. In the tiny graveyard, tombstones were smashed into thousands of pieces; marble slabs were looted; and local authorities allowed the site to become a dumping ground.

Chaim Motzen wanted to change all of that. He received permission from the Minister of Religious Affairs, Nasr Eldeen Mofarih, in the new transitional government to restore the site as a private individual. He paid for a Sudanese archaeologist and dozens of workers out of his own pocket, and he got to work.

Over several weeks, they removed truckloads of trash from the site — glass, car parts, medical waste, scorpions and beehives. Eventually, they discovered 71 graves and headstones smashed into fragments. Then for months, Mr. Motzen and the archaeologist laboriously pieced the Arabic and Hebrew inscriptions together like giant puzzles.

He then researched the names he found on the headstones and tracked down relatives, restoring physical links to family history thought lost.

Jared Kushner, an advisor to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, has launched the Abraham Accords for Peace Institute to promote trade, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges between Israel and the Arab countries. Joining Kushner in advancing the Abraham Accords, which brought about normalization agreements between Israel and Sudan, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, is Avi Berkowitz, a friend Kushner brought in to be the chief Middle East peace negotiator to broker the accords.

Others associated with the institute are Haim Saban, an Israeli American entertainment mogul and major donor to the Democratic party; Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi; and the ambassadors of Bahrain and the UAE to Washington. Rob Greenway, the senior Middle East official on Trump’s National Security Council, will be the executive director.

An ancient oil lamp, believed by archaeologists to bring good fortune, was uncovered in a recent excavation in Jerusalem at the City of David National Park. The lamp was discovered at the foundation of a building that once stood on the famed pilgrimage road of ancient Jerusalem. Ari Levy and Yuval Baruch of the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a press release that they believe the rare bronze lamp had been intentionally deposited in that location to bring luck to the building’s residents. The lamp may have been elated to protecting the Siloam Pool, the city’s main water source.

The lamp supposedly dates to the Roman Period, after thew sacking of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Ritual object burial under important buildings was common during that period, archaeologists said.

The artifact is shaped as half of a lamp, and was constructed by pouring liquid bronze into a sculpted mold in the shape of a grotesque, bearded man. A Roman artistic motif, similar to a theatrical mask, adorns the lamp on the outside, and the tip of it is shaped as a crescent moon. The lamp’s shape — half of a grotesque face — is part of what makes its discovery7 historic, and researchers are now debating what the shape implies about its intended use.

“The lamp is a unique find, the first of its kind discovered in Israel,” Ari Levy said.

The prayer below was composed by Polish-born Jewish-American author Isaac Bashevis Singer (ca. 1903-1991), whose published work includes numerous volumes of fiction, essays, memoir, and stories for children. It was handwritten on the back of a rent receipt made out to Singer by Riesner & Gottlieb, which shows he lived on 410 Central Park West, Apartment 12F, and that he paid $73.50 for March 1952.

On November 15, 1952, he published an article in the Forverts using one of his better-known pseudonyms, Yitskhok Varshavski, titled “Mentshn vos gloybn un mentshn vos tsveyfln” (People that Believe and People that Doubt), which discusses the faith of skeptics. The article ends with a personal credo: “Di elementn fun yidishkayt zaynen aynfakh: es iz a gloybn in an eyntsikn got un az der got iz in grunt gut un farlangt fun mentsh tsu zayn gut oyf zayn shteyger. Oyf di dosike aksiomen ken men boyen in yedn dor. Dos is der fundament, vos keyn shum vintn konen nit avekblozn” (The elements of Judaism are simple: it is a faith in a single God, a God who is fundamentally good, and who wants people to be good in their way. Every generation can be built on these axioms. It is a foundation that no winds can blow away).

    The prayer, written in Hebrew, appears to express a personal call to faith and Singer’s personal conception of religion. He would later formulate these ideas in a series of Yiddish articles: “A perzenlikhe oyffasung fun religie” (A Personal Conception of Religion, August 9, 1966), “Di getlikhe kunst un dos getlikhe visn” (Divine Art and Divine Knowledge, August 10, 1966), and “Mayn bagrif vegn got un di flikhtn fun mentsh” (My Concept of God and the Duties of Man, August 11, 1966), which he presented, in English, in spring 1979 at a lecture at the Gallatin Division of New York University’s series on “The Writer at Work.”

The text below reproduces Singer’s original Hebrew prayer in full.

                                                            Untitled (Prayer, c. 1952)

Master of the Universe, fill my heart with love for my people, and rest for the soul.
Let me see the Creator in each and every creature, its mercy for each thing it creates.
There’s not a single drop of water or particle of dust in which your light is lacking, or that is outside your domain.
There is no creature without its creator.
Those who know this live always in joy.
Their parents are but bodies that are here today, and are tomorrow in their graves.
All their friends, all their possessions and honors, are like a passing shadow.
They are themselves like passing clouds, like Jonah’s tree.
But you – you have always existed and will always exist.
You are the only true being, the essence of all things.
Only for you are all problems solved, all challenges effortless.
There is nothing devious in you – no retribution, injustice, or fault.
Evil lives in all things temporary, not in what exists eternally.
You know why you created evil – and who are we to question your integrity?

We have only one comfort in this world – that you are our maker and that we have the power to serve you with joy, awe, and love, all our lives – and that you have given us the ability to understand such things.
Though we may not know the purpose of life, or why you sent us into this world to suffer, we understand that it is our duty to build and not to destroy, to comfort and not to torment, to bring joy rather than sorrow to your creatures.

There is only one joy: to increase and not to lessen the world’s joy.
Seek happiness, but not on account of your neighbors or family, for you are they and they are you, you are bonded, children of God.

God, guard my tongue from evil, my lips from deceit, my mind from sin.
Open my heart to your commands, let my heart seek your teaching, and let all my actions serve a higher purpose.

Those who fear God are the only ones who do not hurt each other, neither in fact nor in principle.

They will never wage war against each other, and for this reason they are the symbol of peace, as it is written: “and your children’s peace shall grow.”

“Prayer, circa 1952” © 2021 by the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust. Translation © 2021 by David Stromberg. Used with permission of the Susan Schulman Literary Agency.

When the ancient Israelites were slaves in Egypt, they assimilated into Egyptian society — with three key exceptions: They never lost their distinctive Jewish mode of dress, they maintained their Jewish names, and they kept their Jewish language. These three features enabled them to hold on to their Jewish identity.

Scattered far and wide, Jewish communities have carved out distinctive languages, often keeping them apart from the larger non-Jewish communities surrounding them. Dr. Mary Connertey, a teaching professor emeritus at Penn State Behrend, explained to Aish.com, an online resource for Jewish content, that “Anywhere Jews have lived, they have created their own language.”

Here are six Jewish languages that helped to preserve their communities through the years:

Yiddish

Yiddish evolved among Jewish communities in Slavic and Germanic-speaking lands in the Middle Ages, incorporating German, Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic and other language elements. It was widely spoken in central and eastern European communities from the early Middle Ages and continues to be spoken today in Jewish communities in Europe, Israel, and in North and South America.

Ladino [pictured]

Ladino, variously called Judeo-Spanish, Judezmo, Judio, Jidio, or Spanyolit, is a language that has been spoken by Sephardi Jews around the world for generations. It has its origins in Medieval Spain, where the country’s large, vibrant Jewish community developed a unique way of speaking, blending Hebrew and some Arabic words with Medieval Spanish. Today, Ladino is still spoken by thousands of mostly elderly Jews.

Yevanic

Jews living in the northern regions of Greece developed their own language called Yevanic, also known as Judeo-Greek. The area was home to Romaniote Jews, who traced their origin to Jews from the ancient Byzantine empire.

The name Yevanic derives from the Hebrew word for Greece: Yavan. Yevanic contained many Greek words and also incorporated Hebrew, Arabic and Italian.

A pocket of Yevanic speakers exists in Turkey, and some in Iran, perhaps only a few hundred worldwide. Today, the language is kept alive by a few families in Jerusalem and New York — and by scholars who continue to research Yevanic and other still-existing Jewish languages.

Bukharian

For generations, Bukharian Jews lived in scattered communities across Central Asia, primarily in present day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. They trace their history back to Biblical times, when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia conquered ancient Israel, destroying the first Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 587 BCE, and exiled many Jews north into Babylonia.

Although many Jews returned to Jerusalem and other Jewish lands, some Jews remained in exile, migrating even farther north into Central Asia. These Jews were sometimes known as Bukharian Jews because many lived under the reign of the Emir of Bukhara. Today, more than 200,000 Bukharian Jews live in Israel and also in the United States. While Bukharian is no longer widely spoken, many older Bukharian Jews continue to remember and speak this distinctive Jewish language.

Judeo-Arabic

Distinct forms of Arabic spoken by Jewish communities in the Middle East began to evolve as early as the 8th century. Judeo-Arabic is considered a “language variety” rather than a fully distinct language, heard today in parts of Yemen, the Maghreb, Iraq, and Egypt. Judeo-Arabic dialects incorporate Hebrew and Aramaic words, and sometimes older Arabic words that have fallen out of use.

Some of the most notable works of Jewish literature were written in Judeo-Arabic. Judah Halevi (1075-1141), for instance “composed his 12th-century classic work, The Kuzari (Kitab al-Xazari), in Judeo-Arabic, the language of the educated Jewish classes. Maimonides wrote his classic Jewish work, Guide for the Perplexed, in Judeo-Arabic

Judeo-Italian

In the Middle Ages, Italian Jews developed a unique mode of speaking known today by scholars as Judeo-Italian. Written in Hebrew letters, Judeo-Italian flourished after Jews were confined to small ghettos.

Since Italian Jews were so restricted in the Middle Ages, the language traditions they developed were intensely local. What the Jews spoke and wrote was mainly the dialect spoken in their places of residence, so we speak of Judeo-Roman, Judeo-Piedmontese, Judeo-Venetian, etc.

Beginning in the Renaissance, Judaic languages in Italian became more Italianized; soon they were simply dialects of local forms of Italian. Although no speakers of Judeo-Italian remain in Italy, a movement among some younger Jews in Rome wants to revive Judeo-Italian and its traditions.

Languages reflect history

Today, most of these Jewish languages — and other yet smaller and lesser known Jewish languages — are considered endangered, their native speakers aging and dwindling. In part, this abandonment of traditional Jewish languages reflects the robust state of Israel as the homeland of the world’s Jewish communities.

As Jews have moved to Israel from across the globe, their children grow up conversing in Hebrew. In some cases, Jews have abandoned their traditional languages, owing to a decrease in anti-Semitic activity with Jews allowed to socialize and educate their children in the dominant language of their native country.

But these various Jewish languages reflect the history of our ancestors around the world. The poetry, songs, sayings and writings in Jewish languages are a crucial record of how our ancestors lived; they are a tribute to the rich Jewish lives our forebears led.

—Excerpted from an article published in Aish.com/February 2021

Submitted to The Shofar by Ken Stein

Steven Spielberg has launches a film foundation called Jewish Story Partners to fund documentaries that “tell stories about a diverse spectrum of Jewish experiences, histories and cultures.”

The new entity is funded by the Righteous Persons Foundation, which Spielberg and his actress wife Kate Capshaw founded after Spielberg’s experience making “Schindler’s List” in 1993. Two Jewish philanthropies, the Maimonides Fund and the Jim Joseph Foundation, have also contributed funds.

The organization, which starts with $2 million, will soon announce its first round of grantees, who will receive $500,000 in total this year. It is already taking applications for a second round of grants, and says it hopes to ramp up its funding over time.

Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation has funded a range of Jewish initiatives beyond the film world, including the USC Shoah Foundation, which has created an archive of recorded Holocaust survivor testimonies. Spielberg is also a recent recipient of the Genesis Prize, which is given to “extraordinary individuals for their outstanding professional achievement, contribution to humanity, and commitment to Jewish values.” Spielberg intends to donate his $1 million prize earnings along with $1 million of his own to 10 different organizations fighting for racial and economic justice.