Bio -Oro Anahory-Librowicz
Oro Anahory-Librowicz is a retired Professor of Spanish at Université de Montréal. She was born in Morocco into a traditional Sephardic family. She studied Spanish language and literature at the University of Paris (M.A.) and at Columbia University in New York where she obtained her Ph. D. She wrote her doctoral dissertation and has done extensive research on the traditional Judeo-Spanish songs that were preserved and transmitted by the Sephardic Jews after their expulsion from Spain to the present day. She is also the founder and director of the musical ensemble Gerineldo, devoted to the interpretation and dissemination of the Sephardic traditional songs. The group performed throughout North America, as well as in Spain, Israel and Venezuela.
Oro also holds a master’s degree in theatre and her double passion for oral tradition and theatre has led her to storytelling. She has performed in Canada, Spain, England, Brazil, Israel and Venezuela and has told stories on radio and film. In her own words, « Stories connect me to my Jewish heritage and make me experience universal human values. Stories help me make sense of the world. They link me to other human beings and bring together the fragmentary reality of my daily life, giving me a unique sense of wholeness. »
In 2006, Prof. Librowicz received a medal from the King of Spain in recognition of her distinguished career in Spanish and Sephardic studies.
She was named StorySave Teller of 2022 by Storytellers of Canada and produced an album of stories: Being Born Is a Miracle. Of Memory and Exile. [PLS add here that there is a way to order the album]
►November 4th, 7h-8h30 p.m. Saturday Night Concert. "Passing on Our Jewish Legacy to the Next Generation" 12mn. Source: adapted from the book King Solomon and the Golden Fish. Tales from the Sephardic Tradition, collected & edited by Matilda Koen Sarano; translated and annotated by Reginetta Haboucha, p. 213-220.
Summary: A childless rabbi and his wife adopt an orphan to whom they can pass on their Jewish heritage. They call the boy Matan, in Hebrew 'gift'. When Matan turns 20, he tells his father that he wants to marry Marika, their gentile maid. The father will give his blessing only if Matan can answer a riddle: "What does the boiling water tell the fire?". Matan goes in search of the answer. He meets Miriam, a very smart young woman, who solves the riddle: The water is furious at the fire. It says that, thanks to it, the tree grew and now the wood used to light the fire is burning the water.
Matan realizes what his father meant: his father took him out of the orphanage, raised him as a Jew, gave him a legacy to carry on for future generations and now Matan wants to burn him by marrying a non-Jewish woman.
►November 5th, Sunday at 2h30 p.m. (4h30 Montreal time); Sephardic program: 20mn. Three autobiographical tales (12mn), Joha/Nasrudin at the Mosque (3mn) and Tree As a Witness (5.5mn). Title: Being Born Is a Miracle.