Learn about Sephardic Culture while making Biscochos, the most traditional Sephardic cookie, with Sarah Aroeste.
Determined to help bring Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) culture to a new generation, Sarah Aroeste, an international Ladino singer/songwriter, author and cultural activist, draws upon her Sephardic family roots from Greece and Macedonia (via Medieval Spain) to present traditional and original Ladino songs with her unique blend of rock, pop, and jazz.
Since 2001, Aroeste has toured the globe performing and speaking, and has recorded five albums, A la Una: In the Beginning (2003), Puertas (2007), Gracia (2012), Ora de Despertar (2016), the first-ever all-original Ladino children’s album, and Together/Endjuntos (2017) the first bilingual Ladino/English holiday album. In 2014 Aroeste won the Sephardic prize at the International Jewish Music Festival in Amsterdam, and in 2015 she represented the USA in the International Sephardic Music Festival in Cordoba, Spain.
Aroeste is currently directing The Monastir Project, a music collaboration between Israelis and Macedonians to pay tribute to a once thriving Balkan community. In addition to writing music, Aroeste has published numerous articles and essays about Sephardic cultural preservation, and pens Sephardic-themed books for children. Her most recent book, Buen Shabat, Shabbat Shalom (Kar-Ben and PJ Library), was published March 2020. Bringing Ladino words and music to young and old, Aroeste has garnered wide critical acclaim for her efforts to introduce Sephardic culture to wider audiences. For more: www.saraharoeste.com
Suggested donation of $15 to The Monastir Project https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/sarah-aroeste-the-monastir-project/
The Monastir Project is an initiative Sarah founded to record the Jewish history of Monastir, a small city in the Balkans (now known as Bitola in N. Macedonia) where her family is from and where the Biscocho cookie originated. The entire population of Monastir Jews (98%) was exterminated in Treblinka. The Monastir Project brings together musicians from the US, Israel and Macedonia to preserve, through music, this beautiful culture now lost. Proceeds go towards Jewish preservation work on the ground in Bitola, such as documenting names in the old Jewish cemetery that still stands there. Monastir was the sister city to the larger and more well-known Salonika (now in Greece). Both cities defined Sephardic culture in the Eastern Mediterranean up until WWII. The Monastir Project allows people to pay tribute to this important slice of history.
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