UCLA Sephardic Archive Initiative

Launched in the spring of 2015, the UCLA Sephardic Archive Initiative (SAI), aims to:

• work with partners in the UCLA Library Special Collections to identify collections of interest
• help UCLA Library Special Collections accession material sources related to Sephardic heritage
• through open-access, online exhibits, use these collections to share the history and culture of Sephardic California with students, scholars, and an international user public

The SAI has worked with UCLA Library Special Collections to help it acquire the major archival holdings of the Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, an institution whose roots reach back to the second decade of the 20th century and the beginnings of Sephardic settlement in Los Angeles, now currently open to the public. Other recent acquisitions include: the Moreno and Dagmar Gabay Book Collection, which includes over 150 volumes of Sephardic religious and devotional works written in Hebrew and Ladino and published between the 17th and 20th centuries in the centers of Ottoman and Italian Jewish publishing; the papers of Al and Rose Finci, which provides an intimate portrait of a couple whose paths crisscrossed Hitler’s Europe – in Yugoslavia, Poland, and Italy – and who established themselves in Los Angeles after the Holocaust; and the Danielle Avidan and Anna Mireille Abitbol Archive, which documents the lives of an Algerian-born painter and photographer and her Moroccan-born daughter as they witnessed war, decolonization, art and fashion on three continents. All three of these collections have been deeded to Special Collections.

For more info, visit SAI’s Website

See SAI’s digital project “100 Years of Sephardic Los Angeles”