It was Tisha B’Av, 1492. On that dark date on the Jewish calendar, when Jews fasted in mourning of the destruction of both Temples that once stood in Jerusalem, the entire Jewish community of Spain experienced its own calamity. Like their ancestors driven out from Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av, Sephardic Jews officially were expelled from Spain on this same day of remembrance. The Edict of Expulsion by the Spanish monarchs was the culmination of nearly a century of a bloody inquisition, when thousands of Jews were persecuted, burned at the stake or forced to convert to Catholicism.

The illustrious Spanish Jewish community that once enjoyed a “Golden Age” producing brilliant works of Torah commentary, poetry, mysticism, and philosophy now was banished to exile in a diaspora.

This tragic period in Sephardic history was chronicled in a historical-liturgical work titled Emek Ha-Bakha – The Valley of Tears. Composed by Yosef Ha-Kohen, a Sephardic Jew whose parents were among those expelled from Spain, the work later was translated into Ladino as El Vaye de los Yoros. To this day, Sephardic Jews read this tragic work on Tisha B’Av.

Along with Yosef Ha-Kohen’s parents, a family with a 4-year-old son, also named Yosef, was expelled from Spain. The young boy became known as Yosef Karo (“karo” being the Judeo-Spanish word for “dear”). Yosef Karo eventually became a rabbi and Judaism’s most important codifier of Jewish Law (halakha).

It is the life journey of Yosef Karo, together with many other Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain on Tisha B’Av, that jumpstarted the “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” paradigm that has become part of Sephardic Jewry’s DNA. Refusing to die out or disappear on Tisha B’Av in 1492, Sephardim would now search for a new home, the destiny of which would be a return to the Land of Israel.

Yosef Karo’s post-expulsion journey was filled with dramatic twists and turns. No matter where he and his family settled — Portugal for a short time and then the Ottoman Empire — tragedies, both national and personal, seemed to follow them. Yosef never seemed to feel at home within the Ottoman Empire, living out the prescient words of the Sephardic poet Yehuda ha-Levi: “My heart is in the East.” Rav Karo’s resilience through many tragedies led him to a mystical revelation, one that would take him and many Sephardic Jews back home to Israel.

This mystical revelation happened on Erev Shavuot in Salonika in 1533. Yosef Karo and his friend, Rabbi Shelomo Alkabetz, sat down to study a variety of biblical, Talmudic and mystical texts. The selected sections they studied were about the Creation of the World, the Revelation on Mount Sinai, and the account of how Ezra and Nehemia returned to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. The contents of these texts formed a pattern — Creation, Revelation and Redemption — symbolizing Jewish chronology’s “from exile to redemption.” Inspired by the texts he was studying, Yosef Karo heard an inner voice speaking to him:

“Go up to the Land of Israel, for not all times are opportune.”

Hearing these words on this sacred night of Shavuot, Yosef Karo came to realize that if Sephardic Jewry was expelled on the same date when his ancestors were exiled from the Land of Israel, it must be a sign that he and other Sephardic Jews needed to reverse that decree of exile. He then understood that the expulsion from Spain was not Sephardic Jewry’s loss of a home, but rather the event that jumpstarted the return to their true home — the Land of Israel.

In Jerusalem, the newly arrived Sephardim built a beautiful community centered around education, prayer and charity. ”

It wasn’t too long before Yosef Karo and Shelomo Alkabetz, their families and many other Sephardim set sail from the Port of Constantinople to the Land of Israel. On arrival, some settled in Safed, others in Jerusalem. This was the first large-scale migration of Jews to the Land of Israel. These 16th century Sephardim were the original proactive “Spiritual Zionists.”

In Safed, these descendants of the Golden Age of Spain developed their own new golden age, that of Kabbalah and mysticism. Their resilience and Zionism was expressed in their unique genre of mysticism known as “Kabbalistic Messianism,” whereby Torah and Kabbalah study in the Land of Israel would help bring about the Messianic Age of eternal peace.

From his beloved new home in Safed, Rav Karo would help revive and strengthen the observance of the Torah for all Jews by composing the Shulkhan Arukh. This masterpiece was widely accepted throughout the Jewish world as Judaism’s most authoritative code of halakha.

Yosef Karo’s friend, Rav Alkabetz, helped deepen the spiritual experience of Jews welcoming Shabbat on Friday night by composing the beautiful liturgical poem, Lekha Dodi. Jews all over the world sing this poem on Friday evenings during Kabbalat Shabbat, welcoming the “Sabbath bride” in the same spirit as she was welcomed by the Sephardic mystics in Safed.

As classic Sephardic texts born out of the “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” paradigm, both Shulkhan Arukh and Lekha Dodi remain central to the Jewish experience to this day.

In Jerusalem, the newly arrived Sephardim built a beautiful community centered around education, prayer and charity. They drew inspiration from first century Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, whose resilience in the face of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans helped save Judaism.

During the revolt against the Romans that ultimately led to the destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Yohanan was forced to leave Jerusalem. He famously founded a yeshiva in Yavneh, and when asked how Judaism would survive without the Temple, he said that Jewish continuity would come through Torah study, prayer and acts of charity.

Drawing inspiration from Rabbi Yohanan’s formula for continuity, the Sephardim in Jerusalem built schools, yeshivot, hospitals, food banks, and shelters for widows and orphans. They also built a big beautiful synagogue that still stands today: Beit Knesset Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai. The naming of the synagogue after this famous sage was the community’s expression of its “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism.” As exiles who now came home to Jerusalem, they wished to symbolically bring Rabbi Yohanan back to his natural home — Jerusalem.

Similar to the Sephardim in Safed, the Sephardim in Jerusalem also believed they would help bring the Messiah, and therefore symbolically placed a shofar and jug of oil in the Yohanan Ben Zakkai synagogue. Tradition teaches that when the Messiah comes, we will sound a great blast of the shofar and then will anoint the Messiah as king, in the same manner as all kings were anointed in Israel by pouring oil over their heads.

The Jerusalem Sephardim believed that this ceremony would take place in the Yohanan ben Zakkai synagogue. Despite the many difficulties that the Jewish Quarter underwent, including 19 years of Jordanian occupation (1948 to 1967), the shofar and jug of oil are there to this very day in the synagogue, which the Sephardic community of Israel reclaimed and renewed after 1967.

This deep Sephardic connection to Jerusalem and the Land of Israel continues today, and I am proud to be a part of it. “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” is in the DNA of the organization I head, the Sephardic Educational Center (SEC), and it also is embedded deeply in my family.

The SEC is the only Sephardic organization with a physical headquarters in the heart of the Jewish world: the Old City of Jerusalem. The decision to build the SEC as an Israel-centered organization was the vision of our beloved founder, Dr. Jose Nessim, z”l, together with the many philanthropists and activists who supported his dream. Basing the SEC in the Old City was a natural decision, a modern-day expression of Sephardim returning home.

Located adjacent to the Yohanan Ben Zakkai synagogue, the buildings that comprise the SEC campus once were the headquarters of the illustrious Sephardic community that lived and thrived in the Old City. During the Ottoman and British periods in the Land of Israel, our historic Spanish/Sephardic Courtyard building housed the four most important Sephardic institutions in the Old City: the legendary Sephardic Talmud Torah; the prestigious Yeshivat Tiferet Yerushalayim; and two socially conscious charity institutions, the Sephardic Community Orphanage and the Sephardic Shelter for Widows. The buildings also served as the home of the Rishon L’Zion, the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel.

Reflecting the link between the Sephardic exiles from Spain and their return home to Jerusalem, historian Yaakov Yehoshua writes:

“There are some who believe that this Talmud Torah building exists since the Jews were in Spain, and after the expulsion in 1492, our ancestors carried it from Spain and planted it in Jerusalem.”

From the very same place where Sephardic Judaism once developed and thrived, the SEC’s many educational and leadership programs have revived the Classic Sephardic teachings and philosophy of our ancestors, transmitting these teachings and values to a new generation of rabbis, educators and community leaders.

Plans now are underway for our exciting new Sephardic Heritage of the Old City Museum and Visitor’s Center, to be built on our SEC campus. This museum will fill the gap in presenting to the world the untold history of the Sephardic communities of Jerusalem, when the Old City spoke Ladino. It also will be a testimony to the “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” narrative that brought Sephardic Jews home to this very neighborhood after the expulsion from Spain.

But there was a need even deeper that our founder Dr. Nessim and the others recognized early on that continue to speak loudly to the paradigm of “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism”: organized trips to Israel for teenagers and young adults. It is through these real-life experiences in Israel that the SEC transmits Classic Sephardic Judaism to the next generation.

The SEC is the first — and to this day the only — Sephardic organization that has placed Israel trips at the core of its organizational mission and philosophy. The success of this vision is seen through the thousands of young people that have gone on SEC signature trips to Israel, from the original 1980s version through today’s “Hamsa Israel” trips that I proudly lead. Generations apart, these trips share in common SEC alumni who developed a deep love for Sephardic Judaism and Israel through their trip experience.

When our Israel trip alumni say “the SEC,” they don’t mean the organization, they mean the campus in Jerusalem — their “home away from home” in Israel.

It was now my turn to transmit my inherited resilience. ”

When I say “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” in my family, that translates into three generations of IDF combat soldiers.

On May 14, 1948, my father Nessim Bouskila, then a 22-year-old Moroccan Jew living in France, was riding the Paris metro when he saw a man reading a special afternoon edition of the France Soir newspaper. The front-page headline read, “L’etat d’Israël est ne” (“The State of Israel is born”). Overjoyed, he ran to a newsstand, but his jubilation turned to dread when he read the subhead that appeared to bleed through the paper like a death sentence: “Egyptians announce ‘Our troops are entering the Holy Land.’”

“The birth of the State of Israel is what we grew up praying for and dreaming of,” my father told me, “so I did not need to read any further.” He made his way to the headquarters of the Jewish Agency in Paris, where he found more than 400 young men and women already lined up, eagerly awaiting to help defend the new Jewish state.

My father served in Israel’s War of Independence as a combat soldier in the legendary Palmach Unit. With my father transmitting this resilience to me, I proudly followed in his footsteps. In 1984, I enlisted in the IDF, serving in the First Lebanon War as a combat soldier in the Givati Infantry Brigade.

It was now my turn to transmit my inherited resilience. That came to fruition in 2018, when upon graduating high school, my son Ilan would become the third generation of the Bouskila family to enlist in the IDF as a combat soldier. Ilan chose the Givati Infantry Brigade (which made me proud!), serving in its elite Shaked Battalion.

On October 3, 2023, my wife Peni and I landed in Israel from our home in Los Angeles. We were scheduled to spend three weeks there, celebrating Sukkot, working at the SEC and spending time with Ilan, who stayed in Israel after his army service, met and got married to Kayla Flaum, and started his college studies.

Four days later, October 7. That date speaks for itself.

Both Kayla and Ilan were drafted to reserves, Kayla to the north, Ilan to the south. Kayla did patrols and guard duty, while Ilan went to war in Gaza with his new combat infantry reserve unit, Mesayaat 906.

While this brave newlywed couple served Israel in wartime, Peni and I spent all of our time worrying, not sleeping a wink and volunteering everywhere we could. The SEC’s Rica Emquies Israel Relief Fund raised over $400,000, with which Peni and I were able to procure and deliver supplies to IDF bases all over Israel, help evacuated families come stay at the SEC campus, and offer support to families of hostages, bereaved families and victims of terror.

As long as our kids were serving in this war, Peni and I refused to go back to Los Angeles. A three-week trip became six weeks, eight weeks, possibly one year. We then came to a decision that was a long time in the making for us: This trip to Israel would be permanent. We have made aliyah and proudly now call Israel our home.

To once again borrow the iconic sentiments of the Sephardic poet Yehuda ha-Levi: “Our hearts were always in the East” — and now, so is our actual home.

In the shadow of October 7, the historic legacy of “Sephardic Resilience, Sephardic Zionism” proudly lives on — in Israel, at the Sephardic Educational Center in Jerusalem and in my family.