This ground-breaking documentary history contains over 150 primary sources originally written in 15 languages by or about Sephardi Jews-descendants of Jews who fled medieval Spain and Portugal settling in the western portions of the Ottoman Empire, including the Balkans, Anatolia, and Palestine. Reflecting Sephardi history in all its diversity, from the courtyard to the courthouse, spheres intimate, political, commercial, familial, and religious, these documents show life within these distinctive Jewish communities as well as between Jews, Muslims, and Christians.

Sephardi Lives offer readers an intimate view of how Sephardim experienced the major regional and world events of the modern era-natural disasters, violence and wars, the transition from empire to nation-states, and the Holocaust. This collection also provides a vivid exploration of the day-to-day lives of Sephardi women, men, boys, and girls in the Judeo-Spanish heartland of the Ottoman Balkans and Middle East, as well as the émigré centers Sephardim settled throughout the twentieth century, including North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The selections are of a vast range, including private letters from family collections, rabbinical writings, documents of state, memoirs and diaries, court records, selections from the popular press, and scholarship.

In a single volume, Sephardi Lives preserves the cultural richness and historical complexity of a Sephardi world that is no more.

Auteur
Julia Phillips Cohen is Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University. Sarah Abrevaya Stein is Professor of History and Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies at UCLA.

Contenu

Sephardi Lives: A Documentary History, 17001950

Author(s): Julia Phillips Cohen and Sarah Abrevaya Stein

book abstract
Sephardi Lives fills a significant gap in the existing literature on modern Jewish and Ottoman history by presenting a diverse array of primary sources generated by or about Sephardi Jews in the heartland of modern Judeo-Spanish culture (Southeastern Europe and the Levant under Ottoman and post-Ottoman rule) and in its diaspora (the United States, the Caribbean, South America, Europe, and Africa). The approximately 150 sources in this editionoriginally composed in fifteen languages, including Ladino, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish, French, Greek, Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Yiddish, and Englishare of scholarly value to students, researchers, and general readers alike. Individuals engaged in Jewish Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as those researching life in the nation-states that emerged after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, will find in this collection perspectives and selections otherwise inaccessible to them, as will scholars of Europe, the United States, and Latin America. The texts included in the book as well as the individuals who drafted them remain largely unknown in any field; those written in Ladinothe native language of Sephardim in the Judeo-Spanish heartland of the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean and today a dying languagewere condemned to remain obscure indefinitely before they were translated and prepared for a larger scholarly, student, and popular public. 1 Everyday Life: On the Street and in the Synagogue, from Court to Courtyard chapter abstract
This chapter contains a wide range of sources that explore daily life and culture in the Ottoman Jewish heartland of Southeastern Europe, the Levant, and beyond. Among the topics covered in this chapter are gender roles and relations; experiences of childhood; familial bonds; natural disasters; the pursuit of education and justice; relations among Jews, Muslims, and Christians; commercial relations and relationships to neighborhood, city, region, and empire. 2 Violence, War, and Regional Transformation chapter abstract
This chapter offers a selection of primary documents that explore the dramatic regional transformations that affected different cities and regions across the Ottoman Empire and its successor states in Southeastern Europe and the Middle East throughout the modern period. Topics explored include imperialism, anti-minority violence, state reforms, the Young Turk Revolution, the Balkan Wars, the First World War, minority rights, and the retraction of the borders of the Ottoman Empire. 3 Political Movements and Ideologies chapter abstract
Through primary documents, this chapter explores the politicization of Sephardi Jewry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as different individuals debated and sided with the various novel political movements, including feminism, Zionism, socialism, Ottomanism, and communism. 4 The Second World War and Its Aftermath chapter abstract
This chapter explores, through original source material, Sephardi experiences of the Holocaust and the Second World War. The chapter offers stories of deportation, ghettoization, hidden children, partisans, and death camp survivors, tracking the spread of the Third Reich across Southeastern Europe, as well as the rise of antisemitic legislation and sentiment in Turkey. It documents the decimation of the Judeo-Spanish heartland, and traces attempts to contend with this loss in the wake of the war. 5 Diasporic and Émigré Circles chapter abstract Through an array of primary sources, this chapter explores the shaping of a Sephardi diaspora from the Judeo-Spanish heartland of Southeastern Europe and the ...