Congregation Agudath Achim

06/21/2026

Happy Fathers Day !

06/18/2026

● The basis of today's Soanish Portugese Synagogue in Manhattan

✡️ When the Jews of Spain were expelled in 1492, they carried their synagogue architecture, their melodies, their prayer rites, and their language with them across the Mediterranean. Five hundred years later, you can still hear Spain in their prayers. 🕍
The Sephardic synagogue tradition is one of the most visually distinctive in all of Judaism, shaped by five centuries of life in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa following the catastrophic expulsion from Spain in 1492. Unlike the Ashkenazi synagogue tradition that developed in the colder climates of Eastern Europe, Sephardic houses of worship absorbed the aesthetic languages of their host cultures — Ottoman tile work, Moorish geometric patterning, Mediterranean color palettes of cobalt, ochre, and terracotta — while maintaining the specific architectural requirements of Jewish law. The central bimah surrounded by facing pews rather than the Eastern European arrangement of forward-facing rows toward a front ark is not merely a stylistic preference. It reflects a fundamentally different understanding of communal prayer, one in which the congregation faces each other and the Torah reading rather than a single focal point at the room's end.
The prayer rites preserved in these synagogues are equally distinctive. Sephardic liturgy retains elements of the original Spanish Jewish tradition that diverge significantly from Ashkenazi practice — different melodies, different text versions in some prayers, different customs around holidays and lifecycle events. The Ladino language, a form of medieval Spanish written in Hebrew letters that Sephardic Jews carried from Iberia into exile, was the spoken language of these communities for centuries and is still sung in some of the oldest liturgical melodies used in Sephardic synagogues today. A handful of elderly speakers remain. The language is nearly gone. But the prayers that carry it are still chanted every Shabbat in synagogues from Istanbul to Jerusalem to Buenos Aires. What does it mean to pray in the accent of a country that expelled your ancestors five hundred years ago?
HASHTAGS:

06/18/2026

● Rabbi Ciment after reciting one of the Sheva Brachot 7 Bkessings - under the Chuppah. Wedding of Hadassah Tabak

Tap to view!

06/17/2026

Hadassah Tabak with her Mom and Dad Sophie and Jonathan. ● Wedding, Crown Heights

06/17/2026

• short video - wedding of Hadasah Tabak, Crown Heights, 'Bedecken Ceremony

Tap to view!

06/17/2026

Jonathan Tabak, Rabbi Mark Biller Debbie Luckom
Hadassah Tabak's Wedding, Crown Heights

06/17/2026

With Rabbi Ciment at Haddasah Tabak's Wedding in Brooklyn

06/17/2026

At Hadassah Tabak's Wedding in Brooklyn today
Jonathan and Haddy and Sophie below

06/16/2026

● Albania!