What’s in a name?
Sandra Aboulafia, interviewed May 30, 2012, Brooklyn Borough Hall:
My family is both Sephardic and Ashkenazi. Aboulafia is a very, very old name. It can be traced back to the year 800. Rabbi Aboulafia came from Toledo, Spain and the El Greco museum used to be the home of Samuel Aboulafia, and my brother is Samuel Aboulafia, so the name has carried through all this history. During the Spanish Inquisition, the family moved to Turkey and from Turkey they also went to Israel, and this is a name that is well known with the rabbis. In Jerusalem, there is an Aboulafia street, there is an Aboulafia bakery, there is an Aboulafia synagogue.
On Passover, we would have two different Passovers because my mother’s family was Ashkenzi and my father’s family was Sephardic. They used to put all the food on a tray and take the tray and carry it over heads when we would say the prayers. So this is the difference between the Sephardics and the Ashkenazis. But we are still living in Brooklyn our whole lives, and the synagogue we went to is still where it was when I was a little girl, and it’s the Avenue N Jewish Center. And I’m one Ocean Parkway, and I’m going to stay there until the end of my day.