Bibliography

Books and articles recommended by JIMENA staff for readers, students, and educators exploring the history, literature, languages, and traditions of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews. Browse children’s books, novels, history, Jewish languages, and Sephardic thought.

Articles

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Jewish schools must embrace Sephardi and Mizrahi culture

by Ty Alhadeff

Ramping Up Sephardic Education

by Paula Jacobs

Day schools can change: Incorporating Sephardic culture and traditions

by Ty Alhadeff

Many Jews of Color and Diverse Jews are Politically Conservative

by Mijal Bitton

Anti Semitism in the Sepharadi Mind

by Jose Faur

Holocaust “Kaddish Day” & Sephardic Shoah Voices

by Rabbi Daniel Bouskila

Books

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History & Nonfiction

The Jews of Kurdistan

by Eric Brauer (Author), Raphael Patai (Editor)

A ethnographic study of Kurdish Jewish life before World War II, documenting the community’s material culture, religious practices, family traditions, occupations, and relations with Muslim neighbors, while preserving the history and heritage of a Jewish community that largely migrated to Israel in the mid-twentieth century.

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Fiction & Literature

Jewish Subjects and Their Tribal Chieftains in Kurdistan

by Mordechai Zaken

A history of the relationship between Jews and their Kurdish tribal chieftains in nineteenth and twentieth century Kurdistan, largely in northern Iraq, based on oral testimonies and showing how Jews negotiated protection until their emigration to Israel.

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Fiction & Literature

Scapegoat

by Eli Amir

Nuri, a thirteen year old Iraqi Jewish immigrant sent with other newcomer teenagers to a kibbutz in the early 1950s, where they wrestle with religion, family loyalty, and pressure to remake themselves as Israelis.

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Fiction & Literature

The Dove Flyer

by Eli Amir

Set in Baghdad in the years before the mass exodus of 1950 and 1951, the novel follows Kabi, a teenage boy in an Iraqi Jewish family, as his community faces rising persecution, political upheaval, and the decision to leave the country it had called home for millennia.

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Fiction & Literature

Victoria

by Sami Michael

Victoria from girlhood in a crowded Jewish courtyard house in early twentieth century Baghdad through marriage, poverty, and family upheaval, a richly detailed portrait of Iraqi Jewish family and women's lives before the community's departure.

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History & Nonfiction

The Colonizer and the Colonized

by Albert Memmi

Albert Memmi's 1957 classic, written from his experience as a Jew in French colonial Tunisia, analyzes how colonialism shapes and damages both colonizer and colonized; essential background for understanding North African Jews caught between French rule and Arab nationalism.

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