Tales of Jewish Sudan: with Daisy Abboudi

Our Guest

Daisy Abboudi is a historian and the creator of Tales of Jewish Sudan, an oral history archive documenting the Jewish community of Sudan through interviews, photographs and recipes. She began the project in 2015, initially to record her family's recipes, and went on to interview around seventy former community members living in America, Israel, Geneva and beyond. She has also worked with Sephardi Voices UK, interviewing Jews displaced from across the Middle East and North Africa.

Key Topics

• Origins: how Jews from across the Ottoman Empire -  Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian, Moroccan -  came to settle in early twentieth-century Sudan
• Departure: British colonial administration, Sudanese independence in 1956, and the community's exodus by the mid-1960s

Your Guide

Short definitions and terms referenced in this episode:

• Jaha: a trickster figure from Middle Eastern and North African folklore, known across the region under various spellings (also Juha, Goha)
• Ottoman Empire: the Turkish-led empire that governed much of the Middle East, including Sudan in its earlier period, until its collapse after the First World War

Want to learn more?

Explore past episodes that also trace displaced and multi-origin Jewish communities:

• S2E5 – Endangered, Not Erased, with Samantha Ellis: an Iraqi Jewish refugee family history
• S2E9 – “I tick a lot of boxes”, with Shelley Silas: Baghdadi Jewish and Indian heritage

References and Resources

Tales of Jewish Sudan, Daisy's oral history archive of the Sudanese Jewish community

Sephardi Voices UK, the oral history project Daisy has also worked with

Find us elsewhere, here!

Show credits

Host / Producer: Eylan Ezekiel

Post-production: Communicating for Impact

Artwork: Emily Theodore

Music: Aleksafor utransndr Karabanov

Sound effects: Serge Quadrado

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