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Edmond Nathan ben Mimoun Yafil (1874–1928) was a Jewish musician and music educator in Algiers. He held a baccalaureate certificate in Arabic and obtained his early musical training in the Arab cafes of the Casbah, learning, among many other things, the music of the ṣanāʿa genre. Yafil performed with and studied under the conductor and master Muḥammad Ben ʿAlī Sfindja. He subsequently worked as an interpreter and transcriber in the research on Algerian music conducted by the French ethnomusicologist Jules Rouanet. The collaboration between Yafil and Rouanet produced severa…

Charles Bensimhon (1917–2006) was a Moroccan educator in the Alliance Israélite Universelle (AIU) network. Born in Marrakesh, Bensimhon attended the Alliance school in El Jadida (Mazagan) and then earned a diplôme supérieur at the Ecole Normale Israélite Orientale (ENIO) in France. Bensimhon held teaching positions in Essaouira (Mogador) and Marrakesh in 1937 and 1938, respectively. In 1957, the AIU appointed him director of the school in Casablanca.Bensimhon was not only an outstanding teacher but a writer and historian who published articles in the Bulletin de l’Enseignemen…

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The advent of the World Wide Web has drastically changed how scholars do research. While archives, libraries, and on-site research are still necessary, websites offer many additional resources that augment the traditional venues. Different types of websites boast different resources in a multitude of languages, including, among others, online archives and documents, bibliographies, academic articles, discussion forums and panels, photos, videos, sound clips of music and lectures, and lists of co…

1. Medieval PeriodThe institution of marriage in the Jewish communities of the medieval Islamic world followed the basic rules and customs prescribed in the Talmud. These were often blended with local customs and conditions, depending on place and time. The main sources on Jewish marriage in medieval Middle Eastern and North African communities, in addition to the rabbinic literature, are the actual marriage and betrothal contracts preserved in the Cairo Geniza.      Marriage involves a change in the personal status of a man and a woman from bachelorhood to matrimony tha…