Exploring the intersection of history, food, and culture
Upcoming events
Syracuse university
18- 19 February 2026
Philadelphia
APRIL, 2th-7th 2026
Mikveh Israel Passover Shabbat talk
Temple University (Hillel)
Curaçao
August 2026
college of Charleston
South Carolina
November 2026
oberlin university, ohio
February 2027
Past 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
Charenton-le-Pont
librairie la vie immediate
10 decembre 2025
17h -19h30
Rencontre avec Hélène Jawhara Piñer pour son livre de cuisine sur l'histoire des Juifs Séfarades : Séfarade : Une histoire culinaire des Juifs d'Espagne et de la diaspora en 55 recettes (éditions du Rouergue, 2025).
Gratuit
gradignan
Librairie le vrai lieu
8 novembre 2025
17h30 - 19h30
Rencontre avec Hélène Jawhara Piñer pour son livre de cuisine sur l'histoire des Juifs Séfarades : Séfarade : Une histoire culinaire des Juifs d'Espagne et de la diaspora en 55 recettes (éditions du Rouergue, 2025).
Gratuit
Tel Aviv
21-23 October 2025
ONLINE & In person
Holiday Tables, Ladino Voices: Sephardic Traditions Across Generations
september 26th 2025
10:10-11am PT
Join us for a hybrid talk and cooking demonstration! Celebrating holidays has always been a powerful way to pass traditions from one generation to the next—through prayer and ritual, through stories and objects, and of course, through food. For Sephardic Jews, preserving their cuisine was not always easy, given the complex history of displacement and diaspora, but they managed to keep it alive. We find Ladino words for beloved dishes in old documents, proof of how deeply food anchored Sephardic identity. This session invites you to discover how holiday celebrations shaped the lives of Sephardic Jews in 16th-century Spain, and to taste a piece of that history with a Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year) recipe from Dr. Jawhara Piñer’s cookbook Matzah and Flour: the delightful pasteliko
1229 Dwinelle (A Level)
Light snacks and refreshments served!
Free
Tours
11 septembre 2025
18h30 - 20h
Rencontre avec Hélène Jawhara Piñer pour son livre de cuisine sur l'histoire des Juifs Séfarades : Séfarade : Une histoire culinaire des Juifs d'Espagne et de la diaspora en 55 recettes (éditions du Rouergue, 2025). La rencontre sera suivie du verre de l’amitié.
Résumé : « À la croisée de l’histoire, de la mémoire et de la gastronomie, ce livre de cuisine retrace l’histoire des juifs d’Espagne et de la diaspora à travers leurs traditions culinaires. Ouvrage singulier, il est le fruit de plusieurs années de recherches et d’analyse de sources anciennes et originales. Des premières recettes juives mentionnées dans un livre de cuisine daté du XIIIe siècle, aux manuscrits de l’Inquisition, en passant par les traités de médecine rédigés par les plus grands savants séfarades, Hélène Jawhara Piñer préserve et transmet un héritage culinaire et un pan méconnu de l’histoire juive ».
Gratuit
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
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 Naim — Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Music
📚Roya Hakakian — Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature
🎭Michel Boujenah — Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Stage and Screen
🎶Fortuna — Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Preservation of Sephardic Culture
The Pomegranates are sculpted with love by world-renowned, Baghdad-born artist Oded Halhamy.
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.