Sephardic Identity

Sephardic Identity PDF

Author: George K. Zucker

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2005-03-09

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Sephardim, a group of Jews whose ancestors were exiled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century, have fought to retain their identity. These essays are divided into sections exploring history, sociology, anthropology, language, literature, and the performing arts.

Sephardi, Jewish, Argentine

Sephardi, Jewish, Argentine PDF

Author: Adriana M. Brodsky

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-10-31

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 025302319X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

“A much-needed monograph on the role of Sephardic Jews in Argentina, and . . . an important contribution to the study of Jews in Latin America overall” (Choice). At the turn of the twentieth century, Jews from North Africa and the Middle East were called Turcos (“Turks”). Seen as distinct from Ashkenazim, Sephardi Jews weren’t even identified as Jews. Yet the story of Sephardi Jewish identity has been deeply impactful on Jewish history across the world. Adriana M. Brodsky follows the history of Sephardim as they arrived in Argentina, created immigrant organizations, founded synagogues and cemeteries, and built strong ties with coreligionists around the country. Brodsky demonstrates how fragmentation based on areas of origin gave way to the gradual construction of a single Sephardi identity. This unifying identity is predicated both on Zionist identification (with the State of Israel) and “national” feelings (for Argentina), and that Sephardi Jews assumed leadership roles in national Jewish organizations once they integrated into the much larger Askenazi community. Rather than assume that Sephardi identity was fixed and unchanging, Brodsky highlights the strategic nature of this identity, constructed both from within the various Sephardi groups and from the outside, and reveals that Jewish identity must be understood as part of the process of becoming Argentine.

Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas

Contemporary Sephardic Identity in the Americas PDF

Author: Margalit Bejarano

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 2012-06-18

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0815651651

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Offers a wide overview of the Sephardic presence in North and South America through eleven essays discussing culture, history, literature, language, religion and music.

Sephardic Jews in America

Sephardic Jews in America PDF

Author: Aviva Ben-Ur

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0814725198

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A significant number of Sephardic Jews, tracing their remote origins to Spain and Portugal, immigrated to the United States from Turkey, Greece, and the Balkans from 1880 through the 1920s, joined by a smaller number of Mizrahi Jews arriving from Arab lands. Most Sephardim settled in New York, establishing the leading Judeo-Spanish community outside the Ottoman Empire. With their distinct languages, cultures, and rituals, Sephardim and Arab-speaking Mizrahim were not readily recognized as Jews by their Ashkenazic coreligionists. At the same time, they forged alliances outside Jewish circles with Hispanics and Arabs, with whom they shared significant cultural and linguistic ties. The failure among Ashkenazic Jews to recognize Sephardim and Mizrahim as fellow Jews continues today. More often than not, these Jewish communities are simply absent from portrayals of American Jewry. Drawing on primary sources such as the Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) press, archival documents, and oral histories, Sephardic Jews in America offers the first book-length academic treatment of their history in the United States, from 1654 to the present, focusing on the age of mass immigration.

Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in America

Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in America PDF

Author: Saba Soomekh

Publisher: Purdue University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1557537283

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in America includes academics, artists, writers, and civic and religious leaders who contributed chapters focusing on the Sephardi and Mizrahi experience in America. Topics will address language, literature, art, diaspora identity, and civic and political engagement. When discussing identity in America, one contributor will review and explore the distinct philosophy and culture of classic Sephardic Judaism, and how that philosophy and culture represents a viable option for American Jews who seek a rich and meaningful medium through which to balance Jewish tradition and modernity. Another chapter will provide a historical perspective of Sephardi/Ashkenazi Diasporic tensions. Additionally, contributors will address the term "Sephardi" as a self-imposed, collective, "ethnic" designation that had to be learned and naturalized-and its parameters defined and negotiated-in the new context of the United States and in conversation with discussions about Sephardic identity across the globe. This volume also will look at the theme of literature, focusing on Egyptian and Iranian writers in the United States. Continuing with the Iranian Jewish community, contributors will discuss the historical and social genesis of Iranian-American Jewish participation and leadership in American civic, political, and Jewish affairs. Another chapter reviews how art is used to express Iranian Diaspora identity and nostalgia. The significance of language among Sephardi and Mizrahi communities is discussed. One chapter looks at the Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jewish population of Seattle, while another confronts the experience of Judeo-Spanish speakers in the United States and how they negotiate identity via the use of language. In addition, scholars will explore how Judeo-Spanish speakers engage in dialogue with one another from a century ago, and furthermore, how they use and modify their language when they find themselves in Spanish-speaking areas today.

Modern Spain and the Sephardim

Modern Spain and the Sephardim PDF

Author: Maite Ojeda-Mata

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-12-20

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 1498551750

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book scrutinizes the hitherto-unchallenged idea of the Sephardic identity as a mix of Spaniard and Jew. Ojeda-Mata examines the processes by which this conceptualization of the Sephardim developed from the nineteenth century onward and the consequences of this conceptualization for Sephardic Jews during World War II and in the present day.

Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic

Narratives from the Sephardic Atlantic PDF

Author: Ronnie Perelis

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2016-11-21

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0253024099

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Identity, family, and community unite three autobiographical texts by New World crypto-Jews, or descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity in 17th-century Iberia and Spanish America. Ronnie Perelis presents the fascinating stories of three men who were caught within the matrix of inquisitorial persecution, expanding global trade, and the network of crypto-Jewish activity. Each text, reflects the unique experiences of the author and illuminates their shared, deeply rooted attachment to Iberian culture, their Atlantic peregrinations, and their hunger for spiritual enlightenment. Through these writings, Perelis focuses on the social history of transatlantic travel, the economies of trade that linked Europe to the Americas, and the physical and spiritual journeys that injected broader religious and cultural concerns into this complex historical moment.

Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?

Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity? PDF

Author: Reuven Snir

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2015-02-24

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 9004289100

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity?: Interpellation, Exclusion, and Inessential Solidarities, Professor Reuven Snir, Dean of Humanities at Haifa University, presents a new approach to the study of Arab-Jewish identity and the subjectivities of Arabized Jews. Against the historical background of Arab-Jewish culture and in light of identity theory, Snir shows how the exclusion that the Arabized Jews had experienced, both in their mother countries and then in Israel, led to the fragmentation of their original identities and encouraged them to find refuge in inessential solidarities. Following double exclusion, intense globalization, and contemporary fluidity of identities, singularity, not identity, has become the major war cry among Arabized Jews during the last decade in our present liquid society. "In Who Needs Arab-Jewish Identity? Reuven Snir brings out an important contribution to studies of the history, literature and identity of Arabized Jews, showing the significant shifts these communities have undergone in the ways their identities have been defined and constructed in the modern period." - Lisa Bernasek, University of Southampton, in: Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 18.2 (2019)

A Sephardi Sea

A Sephardi Sea PDF

Author: Dario Miccoli

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0253062942

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A Sephardi Sea tells the story of Jews from the southern shore of the Mediterranean who, between the late 1940s and the mid-1960s, migrated from their country of birth for Europe, Israel, and beyond. It is a story that explores their contrasting memories of and feelings for a Sephardi Jewish world in North Africa and Egypt that is lost forever but whose echoes many still hear. Surely, some of these Jewish migrants were already familiar with their new countries of residence because of colonial ties or of Zionism, and often spoke the language. Why, then, was the act of leaving so painful and why, more than fifty years afterward, is its memory still so tangible? Dario Miccoli examines how the memories of a bygone Sephardi Mediterranean world became preserved in three national contexts—Israel, France, and Italy—where the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa and their descendants migrated and nowadays live. A Sephardi Sea explores how practices of memory- and heritage-making—from the writing of novels and memoirs to the opening of museums and memorials, the activities of heritage associations and state-led celebrations—has filled an identity vacuum in the three countries and helps the Jews from North Africa and Egypt to define their Jewishness in Europe and Israel today but also reinforce their connection to a vanished world now remembered with nostalgia, affection, and sadness.