Tag Archives: Spanish Jews

Jew of the Week: Andrés Cantor

World’s Greatest Sports Commentator

Andrés Cantor (b. 1962) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Jewish parents of Romanian and Polish heritage. His grandparents fled to Argentina during the Holocaust. Cantor spent the latter half of his youth in California, where he played soccer for his high school team and edited the sports section of the school paper. After interning at the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain, he officially became a sports journalist. Cantor got a job as a play-by-play sports commentator for Spanish-language TV in America. Soon, he became famous for his long and loud “goaaaaaaal” calls. Though he did not come up with it, he has been credited with making it world-famous. He first used it during the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, and introduced it to English-speaking audiences during the 1994 World Cup that was held in the US. By the 1998 World Cup, Cantor was featured making the goal call in a popular Volkswagen commercial (also in 2014), and the Telemundo network has since turned it into a ringtone. Aside from the goal call, Cantor is famous for his deep knowledge of sports and his excellent and insightful overall commentary. He was the main Spanish commentator for the 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games, and also did English commentary during the 2000 and 2008 Olympics, and commentary in both languages in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He is currently Telemundo’s lead announcer at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He also hosts a daily radio show called Futbol de Primera, broadcast across 100 different stations, and has written a book, Goooal! A Celebration of Football. Cantor voiced himself in a 2014 episode of The Simpsons (see the clip here). In 1994, he was America’s “Sports Personality of the Year”, and has received an award from the National Soccer Hall of Fame. He has won a whopping six Emmy Awards for broadcasting. FIFA described him as one of the greatest sports commentators of all time.

The Mexican Rabbi Giving Out Free Kosher Burgers in Qatar

Words of the Week

Slowly and by degrees, science is being brought to recognize in the universe the existence of One Power, which is of no beginning and no end; which existed before all things were formed, and will remain in its integrity when all is gone – the Source and Origin of all… This sum total of scientific discoveries of all lands and times is the approach of the world’s thought to our Adon Olam, the sublime chant by means of which the Jew has wrought and will further work the most momentous changes in the world.
– Waldemar Haffkine, renowned scientist and “saviour of humanity”

Jews of the Week: Sarah of Yemen and Qasmuna bint Ismail

Great Arabic Poets

The single surviving poem of Sarah of Yemen

Sarah (fl. 6th-7th century) was born to the Jewish Banu Qurayza clan of the Arabian Peninsula, in the pre-Islamic era when much of the peninsula was inhabited by Jews. Her family originally hailed from what is today Yemen. They lived in Yathrib, the flourishing oasis of the Banu Qurayza Jews. In 622, Muhammad entered the city, and in 627 he annihilated the Banu Qurayza tribe (and renamed the city “Medina”, making it the first capital of the Islamic empire). Sarah was a poet, and one of her poems describing the devastation of Yathrib has survived. It was first printed in a 10th-century anthology of Arabic poems called Kitab al-Aghani. She wrote: “By my life, there is a people not long in Du Hurud; obliterated by the wind. Men of Qurayza destroyed by Khazraji swords and lances; We have lost, and our loss is so grave…” According to legend, she fought in the battle against Muhammad and was killed. (In a little-known quirk of history, Muhammad actually took two of the Jewish captives for himself as wives, and one of them is even considered a “mother of Islam”!) Incredibly, Sarah of Yemen may be history’s oldest and first known Arabic poet.

Another famous Jewish-Arab poet was Qasmuna bint Ismail (fl. 11th-12th century), who lived in Andalusia (today’s Spain). She was the child of a wealthy and well-educated Jew, who made sure his daughter was literate and taught her the art of poetry. Qasmuna is the only Sephardic Jewish female poet whose work has survived. Three of her poems were published in a 15th century anthology. In one of her poems she wrote: “Always grazing, here in this garden; I’m dark-eyed just like you, and lonely; We both live far from friends, forsaken; patiently bearing our fate’s decree.” In another she describes reaching the age of marriage and the struggle of finding the right partner: “I see an orchard, Where the time has come; For harvesting, But I do not see; A gardener reaching out a hand, Towards its fruits; Youth goes, vanishing; I wait alone, For somebody I do not wish to name.” She has also been referred to as “Qasmuna the Jewess” and “Xemone”.

The Guardian Angels of Israel

Back When Palestinians Insisted There’s No Such Thing as Palestine

Words of the Week

In Judaism the word for “education” (chinukh) is the same as for “consecration”. Is your child being consecrated for a life of beneficence for Israel and humanity?
– Rabbi Dr. J.H. Hertz, former Chief Rabbi of Britain

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Yosef Karo

Code of Jewish Law

19th Century Illustration of Rabbi Yosef Karo

Yosef ben Ephraim Karo (1488-1575) was born in Toledo, then in the Spanish kingdom of Castile. The infamous 1492 Spanish Expulsion of the Jews took place when he was just four years old. The family first fled to Portugal, and were then expelled from there as well in 1497. They eventually settled in Nikopolis, in the Ottoman Empire, which had opened its doors to Sephardic Jewish refugees. (The Ottoman Sultan at the time, Bayezid II, reportedly said: “They tell me that Ferdinand of Spain is a wise man, but he is a fool, for he takes his treasure and sends it all to me.”) Karo was tutored by his rabbi father and soon became a rabbi himself. He also studied under the great Rabbi Yosef Taitazak in Salonica. For a couple of years, he served as a rabbi in Adrianople, and eventually resettled in Tzfat. At the time, Tzfat was experiencing a resurgence of Jewish life and a renaissance in Jewish scholarship, thanks mainly to an influx of Sephardic Jewish refugees. It soon became the “capital” of Jewish mysticism, and Rabbi Karo was one of its most famous mystics and scholars. It was in Tzfat that he composed the Shulchan Arukh, to this day the standard code of Jewish law worldwide. (Tzfat boasted one of the first printing presses in the Middle East, helping to spread the Shulchan Arukh far and wide and making it extremely popular and accessible.) The Shulchan Arukh was itself only a summary of the far broader and more complex Beit Yosef, which was Rabbi Karo’s true magnum opus that he worked on for over twenty years. Rabbi Karo opened his own yeshiva, with 200 students including the renowned “Ramak”, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero. Karo also served as the chief rabbi on the Tzfat beit din. In fact, he was one of the main leaders in a rabbinic attempt to re-establish the ancient Sanhedrin. Rabbi Karo was recognized as the preeminent authority for all Sephardic Jewry worldwide, and was deeply respected by Ashkenazi Jews as well who, on several occasions, asked him to intervene in local European disputes. Among his other noted publications are Kesef Mishneh, a commentary on the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides, along with a textbook for Talmudic study. One of his most intriguing works is Maggid Meisharim, a personal journal which records his prophetic experiences and the teachings he received from an angel over a period of fifty years. Rabbi Karo is often referred to simply as Maran, “Our Master”.

Words of the Week

Today, what is demanded of the Jewish people is mesirut nefesh, self-sacrifice, and this is particularly true with regard to chinuch, education. The resources for which we have labored must be dedicated to the education of children – both our own, and the children of others.
– Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe