A common practice among Sephardim both eastern and western is to read the aftará for the morning of the fast of Aḇ with a verse-by-verse midrashic translation. Western Sephardim use an Early Modern Spanish text, while Eastern Sephardim use a Judezmo (or Judeo-Spanish proper) text. Attached is a transcript of a Western Sephardic verse-by-verse targum of the aftará for the Shabbat before 9 Aḇ, based on the text found in Isaac Leeser’s Siddur Siftei Tsadiqim, volume 6: Seder haTefilot laTaaniyot (1838), pp. 174-184. Each verse is included in Hebrew, as well as the original Spanish text, and a slightly modernized Spanish text underneath to clarify archaic forms or words that have fallen out of use. Also included are from-scratch English translations. . . .

In North Africa, a unique custom developed of reciting a Mi Khamokha v-Ein Kamokha piyyut, inspired by the famed Shabbat Zakhor work of Yehuda haLevi, on the Shabbat before a local Purim (a celebration of community’s deliverance from destruction). This piyyut, written by R. Avraham ben Rafael Khalfon, was recited on the Shabbat before 29 Tevet in the community of Tripoli, to celebrate the victory of the Karamanlid dynasty over the despotic usurper Ali Burghul (after events transpiring from 1793-1804). . . .

The Seder ha-Tamid, a Provençal (Nusaḥ Comtat Venaissin) siddur published in Avignon in 1766, has liturgical additions for an amazing five different local festivals — one for Avignon, and two each for Carpentras and Cavaillon. I’m working on transcribing all of these, but to start, here’s an Al haNissim for the twenty-eighth of Shvat in Avignon. Written in rhymed prose, this text tells the story of a gentile who fell headfirst down a deep well near the synagogue, but successfully managed to flip himself over and wedged his feet in the walls. Even more miraculously, afterwards he declared that it was his own fault he fell in the pit! The Jews of the Comtat, an area under direct papal control at the time, were well aware of the tenuousness of their position, and were the man a talebearer then they could have faced a pogrom or exile. . . .

An announcement of ḥerem stam (a general threat of excommunication) on the occurrence of stolen or waylaid goods, found in this form in a 1730 Seder Hazkarot Neshamot copied by Shabetai Sheftel ben Zalman Auerbach (HUC Ms. 453, 21r). If a community member was stolen from, they could go to the sexton (shammash), who would declare the theft and proclaim a general threat of excommunication on all who knew anything about the occurrence and failed to speak on the matter. . . .

This is a pizmon for Shabbat Shirah (Parashat B’Shalaḥ) by an unknown author. The text is as transcribed from the pizmonim included in the siddur משמרת הקדש: קול שומר שבת Mishmeret haQodesh: Qol Shomer Shabbat (Pisa 1821), p. 117. . . .

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the common practice among Western Sephardim was to read some or all of the aftarót recited in the three weeks before the fast of Aḇ with a verse-by-verse “Ladino” (in this case meaning standard Early Modern Spanish, not Judezmo) translation. According to Joseph Jesurun Pinto (ḥazzan of Shearith Israel in New York from 1759 to 1766), it was customary in Amsterdam for only the final of the three aftarót, the aftará of Shabbat Ḥazon, to be recited with this Spanish targum, while in London it was customary for all three to be recited. This practice fell out of common usage in the past few centuries, although the Western Sephardic community of Bayonne preserved it up until the Shoah. But to this day a unique cantillation system is used in most Western Sephardic communities for the three aftarót before the fast. . . .