You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Jewish society in the Ottoman Empire has not been the subject of systematic research. The seventeenth century is the main object of this study, since it was a formative era. For Ottoman Jews, the 'Ottoman century' constituted an era of gradual acculturation to changing reality, parallel to the changing character of the Ottoman state. Continuous changes and developments shaped anew the character of this Jewry, the core of what would later become known as 'Sephardi Jewry'.Yaron Ben-Naeh draws from primary and secondary Hebrew, Ottoman, and European sources, the image of Jewish society in the Ottoman Empire. In the chapters he leads the reader from the overall urban framework to individual aspe...
The fifty years between 1680-1730 were one of the most fascinating in the history of Europe and in Ottoman history. A period of coalitions and wars, climate changes, and natural disasters took place. This previously unpublished chronicle contains valuable information in various fields. It was written in Semi-Biblical Hebrew by a Jewish rabbi residing in the Crimean Peninsula, and includes insights on the political upheavals in the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman capital; the wars between the Ottomans, Habsburgs, Venetians, Circassians, Sefevids, and the Russians, which he vividly describes; Persia and the Caucasus; the fate of Jewish communities; epidemics and weather; and weapons and customs. The book, a historical mine that reads like a sweeping thriller, is now available in English for the first time.
The first encylopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world This is the first encyclopedic guide to the history of relations between Jews and Muslims around the world from the birth of Islam to today. Richly illustrated and beautifully produced, the book features more than 150 authoritative and accessible articles by an international team of leading experts in history, politics, literature, anthropology, and philosophy. Organized thematically and chronologically, this indispensable reference provides critical facts and balanced context for greater historical understanding and a more informed dialogue between Jews and Muslims. Part I covers the medieval p...
This previously unpublished chronicle contains valuable information on the Crimean Khanate and its relations with the Ottoman state between 1680-1730, as well as on other events in this important period. It was originally written by a local Jewish rabbi in Semi-Biblical Hebrew and was translated from the extant manuscripts.
Istanbul – Kushta – Constantinople presents twelve studies that draw on contemporary life narratives that shed light on little explored aspects of nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul. As a broad category of personal writing that goes beyond the traditional confines of the autobiography, life narratives range from memoirs, letters, reports, travelogues and descriptions of daily life in the city and its different neighborhoods. By focusing on individual experiences and perspectives, life narratives allow the historian to transcend rigid political narratives and to recover lost voices, especially of those underrepresented groups, including women and members of non-Muslim communities. The studies of this volume focus on a variety of narratives produced by Muslim and Christian women, by non-Muslims and Muslims, as well as by natives and outsiders alike. They dispel European Orientalist stereotypes and cross class divides and ethnic identities. Travel accounts of outsiders provide us with valuable observations of daily life in the city that residents often overlooked.
A “groundbreaking” portrait of the migration and resettlement of Spain’s Jewish community after 1492, and how the Sephardic identity emerged (American Historical Review). Honorable Mention, Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish History presented by the Association for Jewish Studies On August 3, 1492, the same day that Columbus set sail from Spain, the long and glorious history of that nation’s Jewish community officially came to a close. The expulsion of Europe’s last major Jewish community ended more than a thousand years of unparalleled prosperity, cultural vitality, and intellectual productivity. Yet, the crisis of 1492 also gave rise to a dynamic and ...
Touted as the "Jerusalem of the Balkans," the Mediterranean port city of Salonica (Thessaloniki) was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the city's incorporation into Greece in 1912 provoked a major upheaval that compelled Salonica's Jews to reimagine their community and status as citizens of a nation-state. Jewish Salonica is the first book to tell the story of this tumultuous transition through the voices and perspectives of Salonican Jews as they forged a new place for themselves in Greek society. Devin E. Naar traveled the globe, from New York to Salonica, Jerusalem, and Moscow, to excavate archives once confiscated by ...
This collection of articles discusses various political, social, cultural and economic aspects of the Ottoman Middle East. By using various textual and visual documents, produced in the Ottoman Empire, the collection offers new insights into the matrix of life during the long period of Ottoman rule. The different parts of the volume explore the main topics studied by Amnon Cohen: Ottoman Palestine, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent under Ottoman rule, Ottoman Jews and their relations with the surrounding societies and various social aspects of Ottoman societies.
If politics is about the state, can a stateless people be political? Until recently, scholars were fiercely divided regarding whether Jews engaged in politics, displayed political wisdom, or penned works of political thought over the two millennia when there was no Jewish state. But over the past few decades, the field of Jewish political thought has begun to examine the ways in which Jewish individuals and communal organizations behaved politically even in diaspora. The King Is in the Field centers writing from leading scholars that serves as an introduction to this exciting field, providing critical resources for anyone interested in thinking about politics both within and beyond the state...
Jewish masculinity as a diverse set of adaptive reactions to masculine hegemony and the political, religious, and social realities of American Jews throughout the twentieth century. For twentieth-century Jewish immigrants and their children attempting to gain full access to American society, performative masculinity was a tool of acculturation. However, as scholar Miriam Eve Mora demonstrates, this performance is consistently challenged by American mainstream society that holds Jewish men outside of the American ideal of masculinity. Depicted as weak, effeminate, cowardly, gentle, bookish, or conflict-averse, Jewish men have been ascribed these qualities by outside forces, but some have also...