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"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.

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a rare find
Excellent research treating the Sephardi experience in Morocco since the expulsion of Spain's Jews. Some material was familiar to me from family legend. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent history of the Sephardic Jews
Because most of the Jews in the USA today are Ashkenazim (descended from the Jews of Eastern Europe), I knew very little about the Sephardic Jews until I read this book many years ago.Since then, I have learned that the FIRST Jews to arrive in the Americas were Sephardic, many of them fleeing the Spanish Inquisition.

"The Road from Babylon" traces the history of the Sephardim from theBabylonian Captivity (hence the title) to the present day (or at least to 1985, when this book was published.)According to the text, "Sephardic" orignally referred to the Jews who fled Spain in 1492, but is now applied to "Jews whose ancestors lived in the Balkans, Asia Minor, North Africa, and all round the Mediterranean in the Near and Middle East." (P.1)We should also note that the majority of Jews in Israel today are Sephardim, descended from Jews who fled persecution in the Arab countries after Israel was founded in 1948.(121,000 left Iraq in 1951 -- see p. 231.)

In terms of format, the book is well-written and researched, and includes two sections of B&W photos, showing Sephardic communities, synagogues, and traditional dress down through the centuries. ... Read more

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Until the publication of this remarkably comprehensive history of the Sephardi diaspora, only limited attention had been given to the distinctive Judeo-Spanish cultural entity that flourished in the Balkans and Asia Minor for more than four centuries. Yet the great majority of Sephardi Jews, after their expulsion from Spain in 1492 and subsequently from Portugal, found their way to this region, drawn by the political stability and relatively tolerant rule of the Ottoman Empire, as well as by promising socioeconomic conditions. Esther Benbassa and Aron Rodrigue show how Sephardi society and culture developed in the Levant, sharing language, religion, customs, and communal life as they did nowhere else, both during prosperous times and during the declining fortunes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The impact of westernization, the end of Ottoman power, and the rise of fragmenting nation-states transformed this vital community in the modern era. And, like many other Jewish communities, the unique Judeo-Spanish culture was dispersed and destroyed by the Holocaust and the migrations of the twentieth century. Sephardi Jewry presents its vivid history in a readable, well-documented narrative. ... Read more

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Sephardi Jewry: A History of the Judeo-Spanish Community, 14th-20th Centuries
The book was virtually brand new, and was delivered promptly.It was very enlightening.

Sephardim Refugee Community in the Balkans
This book is truly informative if you're interested in what happened to the 15th century Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal. The author begins by talking about the position and status of the Jews in Spain on the eve of their expulsion and the circumstances leading to their forced conversion and expulsion at the end of the 1400s. Many Jews were prosperous and held high positions in Spain (some continued to do so after converting to Christianity). The author states that many Jewish families were torn apart and separated as some chose conversion whilst other family members left so that they can remain Jewish.

These Sephardic Jews were dispersed all over : some to Southern France, Italy, Morrocco, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, the Balkans and Turkey...others to Holland and England, sometimes using them merely as transit points to the New World. This book discusses the Sephardim refugee community in the Balkans only and the rest of the Sephardic Jews who settled elsewhere are actually outside the scope of this book [which is quite disappointing]. I guess the number of Sephardim refugees must have been enormous as even those who settled in the Balkans (and those who chose to stay on in Spain and become Christians) were quite substantial in numbers.

The author does describe in fairly great detail the condition of the Sephardim in the Balkans under Ottoman rule, the organisation of their religious communities and their relationship with other communities; both Gentile (i.e. Armenians, Greeks, Turks) and other Jews (i.e. Greek-speaking Romaniots, Arab-speaking Mizrachim, the Yiddish-speaking Ashkenzaim) in the Ottoman Balkans. Sabbatai Zevi, the "Jewish Messiah" and the conversion of himself and his followers to Islam (hence the founding of the Donmeh community) is also briefly mentioned.

Although, quite a detailed book, I'm only giving it 4 stars because it can be quite a dry read at times, not unlike thesis done by professors which I think that's what the author is.

An excellent read would be "Jewish Communities in Exotic Place" by Ken Blady.

Concise, researched thoughtful
an incredible journey into the history of a long forgotten and often neglected "sect" of Judaism

It is insightful and allows you to understand why it went into decline and project into the future. ... Read more

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The essays in this volume deal with the social and intellectual history of the western Spanish and Portuguese Jews who established new communities in north western Europe during the 17th century. The founders of these communities were mainly former "Marranos", descendants of those Jews who had converted to Christianity in the closing years of the Middle Ages. After being separated from the Jewish world for many generations, they returned to Judaism and became an integral part of the Sephardi nation. Amsterdam became the metropolis of this new Jewish diaspora, which was charaterized by both ts involvement in colonial trade and its intellectual ferment. The reencounter of these Jews with Judaism was a complex affair, and for many of these former New Christians rabbinic Judaism aroused harsh criticism. In order to set the boundaries of their new identity, the leadership of the Sephardi communities of Amsterdam, Hamburg and London adopted a variety of strategies designed to rein in these wayward spirits.This process of socialisation into the Jewish world created a new type of Judaism, and those whose Jewish life was framed by this new amalgam can be considered the precursors of modernity in European Jewish society. ... Read more

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On March 15, 1943 the first Greek transport left from Salonika and arrived at Auschwitz on March 20th. It was the beginning of the end of Greek Jewery. Among the 2,800 deported Jews was the 15-year old Heinz Kouinio. Wrenched abruptly from a comfortable upper-middle class home, Heinz found himself immersed in the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Heinz, along with his mother, father and sister, would ultimately survive. What kept him going was his fervent wish that his murdered brethren would be remembered and that their killers would be punished. Heinz kept a diary in which he recorded his experiences. That diary is the basis of this book. ... Read more

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must read
this book is a must read, very direct and tragic story of a greek-jewish (Sephardic) family who survived the awful concentration camps of the Nazis. ... Read more

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This collection of essays examines an important and under-studied topic in early modern Jewish social history--the family life of Sephardi Jewish families in the Ottoman Empire. At the height of its power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Ottoman Empire spanned three continents, controlling much of southeastern Europe, western Asia, and North Africa, as well as territory in Western Europe, including the cities of Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Livorno, and part of southern France. Thousands of Jewish families that had been expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century created communities in these far-flung locations--communities that were very different from those of Ashkenazi Jews in the same period.The authors of these essays use the lens of domestic life to illuminate the diversity of the post-Inquisition Sephardi Jewish experience, enabling readers to enter into little-known and little-studied Jewish historical episodes. ... Read more

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Haggadah commentary and the laws of Passover and the Seder, based on the 'Shulchan Aruch' and contemporary Sephardi authorities.With diagrams and richly colored plates. ... Read more

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This book examines the interaction between the Baghdadi Jews and their Ashkenazi coreligionists, some 6-8,000 who escaped from religious persecution in Russia, and some 20,000 refugees from Nazi persecution. ... Read more

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Moreshet Sepharad: The Sephardi Legacy sets out to summarize the monumental legacy of a Jewish community that resided within the historical boundaries of Spain for some fifteen hundred years. Many chapters evaluate the contribution of Sephardi Jewry to the renaissance of Hebrew Language and science. These as well as many issues in Jewish communal life, have been analyzed and evaluated both in the context of Spain prior to the Expulsion and in the various settings where the exiles settled and formed new social patterns. The thirty-eight chapters which make up the work provide guidelines which the student or interested reader may utilize to gain a deeper understanding of the essence of Sephardi Jewry in the basis of its glorious past and heritage. ... Read more

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In addition to the narration of his daily life in the camps, Isaac Bourla jotted down the thoughts, impressions and feelings of the young idealistic boy that he was then, the boy who was suddenly taken from one world and transplanted in another completely alien one. Like millions of other people he would never have believed that such a world existed. After the two darkest years of his life he emerged from this hell realizing to just what extent the human conscience can be debased, to what levels of degradation a human being can be led, and how much can be endured to secure one s survival. ... Read more

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Requiem for an Era
I believe that every adult should read at least one or two autobiographies on the lives of those persons who were unlucky enough to be caught up in the horror that the Nazi Regime perpetrated in Europe from 1939-1945. Every book that I have previously read in this category has been immensely moving in its own distinct way. This book is no exception. The narrator, the young man the author once was, cannot help but remain in your mind long after you have finished the book. It could have been you. It could be you if we do not assume our responsibility towards our fellow man in a more positive and consistent way than we seem to be doing at present... Read the book. ... Read more

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A pre WWII peek into a Balkan family
This book, while perhaps not of general interest, was fascinating to me, since my husband was born in Sofia, Bulgaria and was a distant relative of the author.The blindness of the participants to the events swirling around them in Europe was startling.Their concerns with business and success overrode any concern with the outside world.Marriage between cousins, uncles and nieces, was common emphasizing the clannishness of the Jewish population.This world ended with the commencement of WW II. The book definitely has a limited audience. ... Read more