Upcoming events

Exploring the intersection of history, food, and culture

FESTIVAL SEfarad

NEW YORK

Cooking Sephardi History

Date: Friday, June 6, 2025

Time: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Location: TriBeCa Synagogue

49 White St, New York, NY 10013

About the event

Join Festival Sefarad with culinary historian, celebrated chef, and cookbook author Dr. Hélène Jawhara Piñer as she reflects on ways food can tell stories about Sephardic Jews. The workshop will feature a cooking demo as Hélène will demonstrate the preparation of Sephardic summer recipes from her cookbooks.

Books available to purchase there.

It will followed by a book signing.

Tribeca Synagogue
49 White St, New York, NY 10013

Upcoming events

Exploring the intersection of history, food, and culture

FESTIVAL SEfarad

NEW YORK

Inaugural Festival Sefarad Shabbat Dinner

Date: Friday, June 6, 2025

Time: 7:00 pm

Location: TriBeCa Synagogue

49 White St, New York, NY 10013

About the event

Join award-winning scholar and chef Dr. Hélène Jawhara Piñer, who is flying in from France, to inaugurate Festival Sefarad with a celebratory Shabbat dinner. As a culinary historian of Jewish Spain, Dr. Hélène Jawhara Piñer mines the rich and varied history of Sephardic cooking from the records of Inquisition trials, medical treatises and medieval cookbooks written in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Italian and Hebrew. Hélène Jawhara Piñer received her PhD in Medieval History and the History of Food from the University of Tours and the University of Bordeaux. Winner of the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for her 2021 cookbook, Sephardi: Cooking the History, she is also the author of Jews, Food, and Spain (2022), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Piñer’s latest cookbook, Matzah and Flour, is a collection of 125 meticulously crafted recipes showcasing the transformative power that flour from grains like barley and chickpeas had in sustaining Sephardic families throughout history.

MENU
Soup: Modern Ḥarīra: Tomato and Flour Soup (M&F)
Meat: Harisa: wheat grain and chicken stew & Roasted eggplant(M&F) p.229
Fish: Mexican converso fish stew for Shabbat & Roasted spiced potatoes (Sephardi)
Dessert: Neulas encanonadas: Brik pastry rolls with almonds and honey (Sephardi)
Manjar blanco p.71 (M&F)

Tribeca Synagogue
49 White St, New York, NY 10013

Upcoming events

Exploring the intersection of history, food, and culture

NEW YORK

SEPHARDIC JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

El Museo del Barrio
1230 5th Ave, New York, NY 10029
June 8, 2025, 7:00 - 10:00 PM EDT

Join us for Opening Night of the 27th New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival at El Museo del Barrio — an unforgettable evening of joy, artistry, and community.

I will give a talk on the richness of Sephardi culture during this opening night ceremony.

We will present the 2025 ASF Pomegranate Awards to honor vibrant Sephardi voices for outstanding achievements on stage & screen, in literature, music, and cultural preservation:

🌟 Yael NaimPomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Music

📚Roya HakakianPomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature

🎭Michel BoujenahPomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Stage and Screen

🎶FortunaPomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Preservation of Sephardic Culture

The Pomegranates are sculpted with love by world-renowned, Baghdad-born artist Oded Halhamy.

Program & Tickets

Spain flag in front of building
Spain flag in front of building

Palma de mallorca

I am inviting as a guest speaker to the Ahlan of the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS) seminar scheduled to take place from the 13th to 16th of June in the city of Palma de Mallorca, Spain.

I will be leading two sessions on the Sephardi food heritage during the seminar.

beige wall
beige wall

Tel Aviv

August 2025

Miami

November, 20th 2025

Chef’s Table

a statue in front of a building
a statue in front of a building

Syracuse university

February 2026