Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries

Book excerpt: "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.