Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries: History and Culture in the Modern Era

by Harvey E. Goldberg (Editor)

Overview

"Providing an unparalleled overview of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewish communities in world history, this authoritative, stimulating work, superbly edited and clearly written, also suggests new approaches to assessing their cultural practices and relation to the wider societies of which they formed, and in many cases continue to form, a part." —Dale F. Eickelman, Dartmouth College

Historians, anthropologists, and linguists from Israel, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States provide a comprehensive picture of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries in modern times. The volume touches on such themes as the impact of modernization upon Sephardi communities in North Africa, the Balkans, and other areas of the Ottoman Empire; responses to cultural change in Sephardi communities of Iraq and North Africa; issues relating to contemporary Jewish languages and literatures; and conceptions of ethnicity and gender in Sephardi communities.

Contributors include Joelle Bahloul, Jacob Barnai, Esther Benbassa, Yoram Bilu, David M. Bunis, Joseph Chetrit, Harvey E. Goldberg, Isaac Guershon, André Levy, Laurence D. Loeb, Susan Gilson Miller, Amnon Netzer, Aron Rodrigue, Esther Schely-Newman, Daniel J. Schroeter, Norman A. Stillman, Yosef Tobi, Yaron Tsur, Zvi Yehuda, and Zvi Zohar.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253210418
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	03/22/1996
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

HARVEY E. GOLDBERG is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Hebrew University and author of Jewish Life in Muslim Libya: Rivals and Relatives.

Table of Contents

Preface

Note on Transliteration

Interduction by Harvey E. Goldberg

Part I: Sephardi and Middle Eastern Communities in the Context of Modern Jewish History

1
Middle Eastern and North African Jewries Confront Modernity: Orientation, Disorientation, Reorientation
Norman A. Stillman

2
From Sabbateanism to Modernization: Ottoman Jewry on the Eve of the Ottoman Reforms and the Haskala
Jacob Barnai

3
Eastern Sephardi Jewry and New Nation-States in the Balkans in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Aron Rodrigue

4
The Process of Modernization of Eastern Sephardi Communities
Esther Benbassa

5
The Transformation of the Jewish Community of Essaouira (Mogador) in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Daniel J. Schroeter and Joseph Chetrit

Part II: Varieties of Responses

6
Traditional Flexibility and Modern Strictness: Two Halakhic Positions on Women's Suffrage
Zvi Zohar

7
Iraqi Jewry and Cultural Change in the Educational Activity of the Alliance Israelite Universelle
Zvi Yehuda

8
Haskala in a Sectional Colonial Society: Mahdia (Tunisia) 1884
Yaron Tsur

9
The Maskil and the Mequbbal: Mordecai Ha-Cohen and the Grave of Rabbi Shimon Lavi in Tripoli
Harvey E. Goldberg

10
The Foundation of Hispano-Jewish Associations in Morocco: Contrasting Portraits of Tangier and Tetuan
Isaac Guershon

11
Kippur on the Amazon: Jewish Emigration from Northern Morocco in the Late Nineteenth Century
Susan Gilson Miller

Part III: Languages and Literatures

12
The Flowering of Judeo-Arabic Literature in North Africa, 1850-1950
Yosef Tobi

13
Modernization and the Language Question among Judezmo-Speaking Sephardim of the Ottoman Empire
David M. Bunis

14
Persian Jewry and Literature: A Sociocultural View
Amnon Netzer

Part IV: History and Memory

15
Gender, Marriage, and Social Conflict in Habban
Laurence D. Loeb

16
"The Peg of Your Tent": Narratives of North African Israeli Women
Esther Schely-Newman

17
Nostalgia and Ambivalence: The Reconstruction of Jewish-Muslim Relations in Oulad Mansour
Yoram Bilu and Andre Levy

18
The Sephardi Family and the Challenge of Assimilation: Family Ritual and Ethnic Reproduction
Joelle Bahloul

Appendix I: Population Graph, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Appendix II: Population Table, 1970s and 1980s
Glossary
Contributors
Index