WHO WE ARE

Hershel Weiss

(He, him)  Director of Casa Sefarad, Fix-It Person at Nahalat Shalom

Contact: hershel@hershelweiss.com or casasefaradnm@proton.me

Hershel was raised both Sefardi and Ashkenazi, with Orthodox grandparents and Atheist Communist parents. “Because Ladino was spoken in my childhood household but not shared with me, being around Spanish-speaking Jews closes a broken circle.” Hershel can be found at Nahalat Shalom five days a week in his woodshop building furniture, Torah arks, and Judaica; in a furnace room, on the roof, fixing a sink, pulling weeds in the courtyard, or meeting with someone amazing in the Sefardic Learning Center. Hershel is also the official Challah Baker for Sefardic Shabbats and a Citizen of Spain and the United States. He participates in Muslims and Jews United and Shomeret Shalom, a Jewish non-violence group based upon the teachings of Nahalat Shalom founding Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb. Hershel works with other Jews of Color in an international peer counselling organization.

“Casa Sefarad exists for all who are reclaiming our Sefardic heritage. Cultural survival is an affirmation of the life force running through all of us.”

 Evie Vigil

(They/Them) Assistant Director of Casa Sefarad

Contact: echointheegg@gmail.com or casasefaradnm@proton.me

Informed by the crypto-Jewish survival strategies of their lineage, Evie comes from a family that has been in New Mexico for centuries: Hispanic, Mexican, and Sephardic diaspora on their father's line; Polish and Scottish roots on their maternal line. Born and raised in Albuquerque, they hold a unique position of honoring these ancestral roots at Nahalat Shalom, arrives to Casa Sefarad with devotion, curiosity, and excitement to fortify this life-affirming project. As a writer, visual artist, facilitator, Somatic Sex Educator and Deep Listening practitioner, Evie holds an informed perspective on ways to move with care and integrity as Jewish settlers on Tewa lands, while offering emergent and experimental possibilities for gathering and learning together. When not at Nahalat Shalom, you can find Evie being an absolute polymath: reading, writing poetry, growing corn, building clay altars, organizing, offering bodywork and skill-share as a somatics practitioner, and hanging with their partner and family.

“My vision for Casa Sefarad is that it has the potential to live beyond us, and that it nourishes all of our relations–past, present, and future.”

Héctor Contreras López

Poetry consultant, researcher, and translator. 

Contact: pacheco1415@gmail.com

Hector has been interested in and impressed by Jewish culture and literature since he was a kid. In 1991, while studying for his master’s degree in Spanish American Literature, he started translating literature from English into Spanish. For the next twenty years, he wrote many papers on Mexican and Spanish American Jewish writers, mostly of Ashkenazi origin. All this changed when Hershel Weiss, Director of Casa Sefarad, suggested he begin to focus his attention on Sephardic poetry. Since 2014, translations, poetry readings, and talks have found their place in the Festival Sefardí and Sephardic Shabbats.  When not at Casa Sefarad, Hector can be found reading, translating poetry, writing, teaching literature and Spanish, traveling, playing the guitar, listening to music, and keeping in touch with family and friends.

Sophie Shefia