Ken Blady, M.A.

Jewish Educator, Writer, Translator
1305 Evelyn Avenue · Berkeley, CA 94702 · Tel 415.264.4110 · kenbee13@live.com


Ken is available for lectures, seminars
and classes on the following subjects:

  • Exotic Jewish Communities Around the World -- Mizrachi (Oriental) Jews on the African and Asian Jewish Geographical Periphery:

  • Jewish Communities In Islamic Lands: A Lecture/Slide/Video Presentation:


  • This lecture deals with aspects of the history, religious life, and material culture of Sephardic and Mizrachi Jews living in an Islamic milieu in various part of West Asia, the Caucasus, the Crimean Peninsula, Central Asia and North Africa. Jewish life under Islam may have been less onerous than in Catholic Europe but in certain times and places and especially in Shiite Muslim lands (Yemen and Iran) the Jews were subjected to all kinds of indignities, abuses, and institutionalized contempt. The Jews were very similar in physical appearance, cuisine, lifestyle, customs, and even in language (which was normally a variant of the local language mixed with Hebrew words) with the indigenous Muslim peoples whom they lived among, which challenges the concept of Jews as a race. Some topics to be discussed in this lecture:


  • The History of the Sephardim and Crypto-Judaism:

  • Spurious and Controversial Jewish Communities:

  • Proselyte Communities:

  • The World of Our Great-Great-Grandparents: The Early History of Eastern European Jewry
  • From Nebishes to Allrightniks: Jewish Immigration to NYC (1875-1925)
  • Jewish Immigration to America: Sephardic, German, Eastern European
  • The American Immigration Experience: Irish, Italians and Jews
  • A History of the Jews of San Francisco:

  • The World of Jewish Fundamentalism: Chassidim and Misnagdim
  • From Bible to Belter: The Jewish Boxers' Hall of Fame (lecture/slide presentation/book reading)
  • The Jewish Baseball Players Hall of Fame
  • Jews in the Mob
  • The World of Chabad-Lubavitch: Beyond the Hype
  • Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade


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