Kahn, Laaff and Fin visit the Balkans and Italy

Beverly Kahn of Swampscott, Ann Laaff of Salem, and Suzanne Fin of Marblehead enjoyed a tour of the Western Balkans, a region rich with Sephardic Jewish history. Dr. Joseph Benatov, a Bulgarian-born Jewish professor of Hebrew at the University of Pennsylvania, led the group through the grand synagogues, museums, and natural scenery of Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Trieste.

The group visited several important sites in Jewish history: synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, some dating back from the 16th century, and viewed the Sarajevo Haggadah, which is thought to be the oldest Sephardic Haggadah in the world. In Trieste, Italy, they visited the Synagogue of Trieste, one of the largest, most important European synagogues still in use today.