Moïse Rahmani


Moïse Rahmani was a Belgian Sephardic author, editor, and publisher of Los Muestros magazine.

Biography

Rahmani was born in Cairo, Egypt into a Jewish family. His Jewish paternal grandmother was from Rhodes. He grew up in the Heliopolis district.
In 1956, at the age of 12, he and his family left for the then Belgian Congo, where a Greek-Sephardic Jewish community already existed. His family emigrated during the Congo Crisis of 1960–1966.
A resident of Belgium since 1980, Rahmani worked as a diamond dealer.
In 1990, he founded the Institut Sefarade European and launched the quarterly review Los Muestros, which published news of Sephardic communities around the world. The review published in three languages–French, English, and Ladino–as testified by its three-language subtitle: "La voix des Séphardes," "The Sephardic Voice," and "La boz de los Sefardim."
Los Muertos ceased publication in 2015 due to a combinations of Rahmani's fatigue, declining health, and finances.

Death

Rahmani died on September 18, 2016, in Brussels after a long illness.
His funeral was held at the Cimetière de Wezembeek-Oppem on September 22, 2016.

Works

Rahmani researched and wrote numerous publications on the Jewish community of the Belgian Congo.
He wrote in three languages. He published the following books :
In 2014, King Felipe VI of Spain sent personal wishes for the 25th anniversary of Los Muestros.
In 2015, Rahmani said of his own concept of Convivencia, "In my ideal community, I would no longer be amazed if the head of the Hebrew State visits an Arab country, nor if one of his counterparts visits Israel."
In September 2016, the Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif David Susskind remembered Rahman as a "pillar of the Sephardic community in Brussels, the Jews of Rhodes and memory of Congo".