2025 Conference
November 2, 2025
Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque
5520 Wyoming Blvd NE, 87109
We invite you to celebrate a remarkable milestone—our 40th anniversary! For four decades, NMJHS has worked together to preserve, honor, and share the stories that shape our collective past. This moment invites us to reflect on how far we’ve come—and to look ahead with energy and purpose.
Please join us at for a wonderful 40th anniversary celebration. This event will delight with “tastes” of New Mexican Jewish life.
Click here to register online.
Sponsor or support the 40th Anniversary Celebration by clicking here.
If you have any questions or need assistance, email us at admin@nmjhs.org or call 505-348-4471
- 10:30 – 11am
Doors Open – Join the Celebration! - 11:00 – 12:00
What’s in Your Chile? The Hidden Sephardic Influences of New Mexico Cuisine
presented by Claudette Sutton - 12:15 – 1:30pm
A Toast to 40 Years: Celebratory Luncheon - 1:30 – 2:15pm
Matzoh Ball Moon: Excerpts from “Another Desert: Jewish Poetry of New Mexico” and other poems
presented by Joan Logghe, Santa Fe Poet Laureate Emerita - 2:15 – 3:15pm
In the Fruitful Margins of Diaspora: Yiddish Music in New Mexico
presented by Jordan Wax - 3:15 – 4:00pm
Mix, Mingle and Farewell
What’s in Your Chile? The Hidden Sephardic Influences on New Mexican Cuisine
presented by Claudette Sutton
Your favorite New Mexican foods, including biscochitos, sopapillas and carne adovada, carry a hidden history. This tasty talk will uncover how the ancestral foods and cooking techniques of Sephardic Jews traveled from the Middle East to Spain and up the Camino Real, evolving into the beloved dishes of New Mexico.
Claudette Sutton is a Santa Fe-based author and editor with deep roots in the Syrian-Jewish community. For almost 40 years, she has lived and worked in Santa Fe, where she has been amazed by the echoes between New Mexico’s culinary and cultural history and her Sephardic heritage.
Her first book, Farewell, Aleppo, detailing her father’s upbringing in one of the world’s oldest Jewish communities, won the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for historical nonfiction. Her upcoming book, written as a series of letters to her late mother, tracing her grandparents’ journeys from the Middle East to America through Cairo, Aleppo, Haiti, Manchester and Paris, is nearing completion.
Claudette is available for editing and consultations on your writing projects. For more information on her work, please visit her website: www.claudettesutton.com.
Matzoh Ball Moon: Excerpts from “Another Desert: Jewish Poetry of New Mexico” and other poems
presented by Joan Logghe
Santa Fe Poet Laureate Emerita Joan Logghe explores poetically being from the Back East of Pittsburgh via Hungary and Lithuania, bringing her loving perceptions of Judaism, into New Mexico since 1973. Holidays, family, interest in Crypto Jews, and treating visitors as children, under the influence of her Beautician mother and Haberdasher father.
In the Fruitful Margins of Diaspora: Yiddish Music in New Mexico
presented by Jordan Wax
Join accordionist, composer, and language activist Jordan Wax for a solo performance of original and traditional music in Yiddish and Spanish and a reflection on the unique cultural context of Yiddish in the American Southwest.
Jordan Wax (Santa Fe, NM) is a traditional musician, composer, and an avid student of heritage music and language traditions in a variety of cultural contexts: New Mexico, the Missouri Ozarks, Central, Mexico, Ecuador, and in the margins of the Ashkenazi diaspora. In this solo performance he’ll share original and traditional songs in Yiddish and Spanish–contemporary and personal works informed by 30 years of working with elders to absorb the nuances of spoken and instrumental Yiddish dialects, and reflect on the unique opportunities and challenges of working as a Yiddish cultural activist in New Mexico.
Link: www.jordanwax.com
Video: Makht (Culture and Dispossession in the American Southwest)
Ready to celebrate? – Click Here to Register Online!
Join us as we mark 40 years of NMJHS on Sunday, November 2, 2025, from 10:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque. Registration is open through October 27th.
To register by mail click here to download the printable form.
If you would like to support our program, donate online here or click here to print the program donation form.
Please mail completed forms and your check, payable to:
New Mexico Jewish Historical Society
5520 Wyoming Blvd NE
Albuquerque NM 87109
NMJHS Members & Sister Organizations – $75
Full event registration for current NMJHS members and members of sister organizations.
Includes all sessions, luncheon, and beverage breaks.
Non-Members – $95
Full event registration for non-members.
Includes all sessions, luncheon, and beverage breaks.
Luncheon Only – $55
Registration for luncheon only.
Does not include access to sessions.
If you have any questions or need assistance, email us at admin@nmjhs.org or call 505-348-4471
Cancellation Policy:
You must email admin@nmjhs.org by October 24 to receive a refund, or to convert your registration fee to a tax-deductible donation.
Nearby Hotel Properties:
Hilton Garden Inn / Journal Center
Holiday Inn & Suites / North I-25
Marriott Hotel – Several Properties
Kindly make your own arrangements directly with the hotel. No group rates or room blocks are secured.
We wish to thank the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque for their support of this year’s event.
And many heartfelt thanks to the Fall Conference Committee, Deborah Avren, Debra Wechter Friedman, and Stuart Simon for their dedication and hard work in organizing this meaningful 40th Anniversary celebration.