In the years following the founding of the State of Israel, close to a million Jews became refugees fleeing their ancestral homelands in the Middle East, North Africa, and Iran. State-sanctioned discrimination, violence, and political unrest brought an abrupt end to these once vibrant communities, scattering their members to the four corners of the earth. Their stories are mostly untold. Sephardi Voices: The Forgotten Exodus of the Arab Jews is a window into the experiences of these communities and their stories of survival. Through gripping first-hand accounts and stunning portrait and documentary photography, we hear on-the-ground stories of pogroms in Libya and Egypt, the burning of synagogues in Syria, the terrible Farhud in Iraq, families escaping via the great airlifts of the Magic Carpet and Operations Ezra and Nehemiah, husbands smuggled in carpets into Iran in search of wives. The authors also provide crucial historical background for these events, as well as updates on the lives of some of these Sephardi Jews who have gone on to rebuild fortunes in London and New York, write novels, and win Nobel Prizes. Sephardi Voices is at once a wide-ranging and intimate story of a large-scale catastrophe and a portrait of the vulnerability of the passage of time.

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RICHARD STURSBERG is a leading expert on Canadian media and culture, and an experienced cultural executive. He has served as Assistant Deputy Minister of Culture and Broadcasting in the federal government, president of the Canadian Cable Television Association, President of Starchoice and Cancom, chairman of the Canadian Television Fund, executive director of Telefilm Canada, and head of English language services at the CBC. He has been a board member of the Canadian Film Centre and the Banff Television Festival. His book on his experience at the CBC, The Tower of Babble, was named one of the best books of 2012 by the Globe and Mail. He currently advises various Canadian media companies and sits on the boards of Hollywood Suite and Digital Media at the Crossroads. He lectures at the Ryerson/York graduate program on media policy and is the President of PEN Canada. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

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